Neuroscientists have long understood that the brain can rewire itself in response to experience—a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. But until recently, they didn't know what causes gray matter to become plastic, to begin changing. Breakthrough research by a team at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has documented one type of environmental feedback that triggers plasticity: success. Equally important and somewhat surprising: Its opposite, failure, has no impact. Earl Miller, the lead researcher on the study, says understanding the link to environmental feedback is crucial to improving how people teach and motivate because it's a big part of how we learn. But we absorb more from success than from failure, according to the study. Miller's researchers gave monkeys a simple learning task: They presented one of two pictures. If it was Picture A, the monkeys were supposed to look to the left; if Picture B, to the right. When the monkeys looked in the correct direction, they were rewarded with a drop of juice. All the while the team recorded brain function. "Neurons(cells specialized to conduct nerve impulses)in the prefrontal cortex and striatum, where the brain tracks success and failure, sharpened their tuning after success," says Miller. What's more, those changes lingered for several seconds, making brain activity more efficient the next time the monkey did the task. Thereafter, each success was processed more efficiently. That is, the monkey had learned. "But after failure," Miller points out, "there was little change in brain activity." In other words, the brain didn't store any information about what went wrong and use it the next time. The monkey just tried, tried again. Miller says this means that on a neurological level, success is actually a lot more informative than failure. If you get a reward, the brain remembers what it did right. But with failure(unless there is a clear negative consequence, like the shock a child feels when she sticks something in an electrical outlet), the brain isn't sure what to store, so it doesn't change at all. Does this research confirm the management tenet of focusing on your—and your team's—strengths and successes? Miller cautions against making too tidy a connection between his findings and an environment like the workplace, but he offers this suggestion: "Maybe the lesson is to know that the brain will learn from success, and you don't need to dwell on that. You need to pay more attention to failures and challenge why you fail."

Britain"s richest people have experienced the biggest-ever rise in their wealth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. Driven by the new economy of Internet and computer entrepreneurs, the wealth of those at the top of the financial tree has increased at an unprecedented rate. The 12th annual Rich List will show that the collective worth of the country"s richest 1,000 people reached nearly 146 billion by January, the cut-off point for the survey. They represented an increase of 31 billion, or 27%, in just 12 months. Since the survey was compiled, Britain"s richest have added billions more to their wealth, thanks to the continuing boom in technology shares on the stock market. This has pushed up the total value of the wealth of the richest 1,000 to a probable 160 billion according to Dr. Philip Beresford, Britain"s acknowledged expert on personal wealth who compiles the Sunday Times Rich List. The millennium boom exceeds anything in Britain"s economic history, including the railway boom of the 1840s and the South Sea bubble of 1720. "It has made Margaret Thatcher"s boom seem as sluggish as Edward Heath"s three-day week," said Beresford. "We are seeing billions being added to the national wealth every week." William Rubinstein, professor of modem history at the University of Wales, Abe Ystwyth, confirmed that the growth in wealth was unprecedented. "Almost all of today"s wealth has been created since the industrial revolution, but even by those heady standards the current boom is extraordinary," he said. "There is no large-scale cultural opposition or guilt about making money. In many ways British business attitudes can now challenge the United States." Although the Britain"s richest are experiencing the sharpest surge in wealth, the rest of the population has also benefited from the stock market boom and rising house prices. Last year wealth rose by 16% to a record 4,267 billion, according to calculation by the investment bank Salomon Smith Barney. In real terms, wealth has increased by more than a third since the late 1980s. Much of the wealth of the richest is held in shares in start-up companies. Some of these paper fortunes, analysts agree, could easily be wiped out, although the wealth-generating effects of the interest revolution seem to be here to stay. A Sunday Times Young Rich List confirms that people are becoming wealthier younger. It includes the 60 richest millionaires aged 30 or under. At the top, on 600m, is the "old money" Earl of Iveagh, 30, head of the Guinness brewing family. In second place is Charles Nasser, also 30, who launched the Clara-NET Internet provider four years ago and is worth 300m. The remaining eight in the top 10 young millionaires made their money from computing and the Internet.

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Investment in the public sector, such as electricity, irrigation, public services and transport (excluding vehicles, ships and planes) increased by about 10%, although the emphasis moved to the transport and away from the other sectors mentioned. Trade and services recorded a 16%～17% investment growth, including a 30% increase in investment in business premises. Industrial investment is estimated to have risen by 8%. Although the share of agriculture in total gross in vestment in the economy continued to decline, investment grew 9% in absolute terms, largely spurred on by a 23% expansion of investment in agricultural equipment. Housing construction had 12% more invested in it in 1964, not so much owing to increased demand, as to fears of new taxes and limitation of building. Total consumption in real terms rose by close on 11% during 1964, and per capital personal consumption by under 7%, as in 1963. The undesirable trend towards a rapid rise in consumption, evident in previous years, remained unaltered. Since at current prices consumption rose by 16% and disposable income by 13%, there was evidently a fall in the rate of saving in the private sector of the economy. Once again consumption patterns indicated a swift advance in the standard of living. Expenditure on food declined in significance, although consumption of fruit increased. Spending on furniture and household equipment, health, education and recreation continued to increase. The greatest proof of altered living standards was the rapid expansion of expenditure on transport(including private cars) and personal services of all kinds, which occurred during 1964. The progressive wealth of large sectors of the public was demonstrated by the changing composition of durable goods purchased. Saturation point was rapidly being approached for items such as the first household radio, gas cookers, and electric, refrigerators, whereas increasing purchases of automobiles and television sets were registered.

You are going to read a text about The Big Melt, followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list A—F for each numbered subheading (41—45). There is one extra example which you do not need to use. Say goodbye to the world"s tropical glaciers and ice caps. Many will vanish within 20 years. When Lonnie Thompson visited Peru"s Quelccaya ice cap in 1977, he couldn"t help noticing a school-bus-size boulder that was upended by ice pushing against it. Thompson returned to the same spot last year, and the boulder was still there, but it was lying on its side. The ice that once supported the massive rock had retreated far into the distance, leaving behind a giant lake as it melted away. Foe Thompson, a geologist with Ohio State University"s Byrd Polar Research Center, the rolled-back rock was an obvious sign of climate change in the Andes Mountains. "Observing that over 25 years personally really brings it home", he says. "You don"t have to be a believer in global warming to see what"s happening". (41) Thawed ice caps in the tropics. Quelccaya is the largest ice cap in the tropics, but it isn"t the only one that is melting, according to decades of research by Thompson"s team. No tropical glaciers are currently known to be advancing, and Thompson predicts that many mountaintops will be completely melted within the next 20 years. (42) Situation in areas other than the tropics. The phenomenon isn"t confined to the tropics. Glaciers in Europe, Russia, New Zealand, the United States, and elsewhere are also melting. (43) The worsening effects of global warming. For many scientists, the widespread melt-down is a clear sign that humans are affecting global climate, primarily by raising the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (44) Receding ice caps. That"s not to say that glaciers, currently found on every continent except Australia, haven"t melted in the past as a result of natural variability. These rivers of ice exist in a delicate balance between inputs (accumulating snow and ice) and outputs (melting and "calving" of large chunks of ice). Over time, the balance can tilt in either direction, causing glaciers to advance or retreat. What"s different now is the speed at which the scales have tipped. "We"ve been surprised at how rapid the rate of retreat has been", says Thompson. His team began mapping one of the main glaciers flowing out of the Quelccaya ice cap in 1978, using satellite images and ground surveys. (45) Thinning ice cores. And its" not just the margin of the ice cap that is melting. At Quelccaya and Mount Kilimanjaro, the researchers have found that the ice fields are thinning as well. Besides mapping ice caps and glaciers, Thompson and his colleagues have taken core samples from Quelccaya since 1976, when the ice at the drilling location was 154 meters thick. Thompson and his colleagues have also drilled ice cores from other locations in South America, Africa, and China. Trapped within each of these cores is a climate record spanning more than 8,000 years. It shows that the past 50 years are the warmest in history. The 4-inch-thick ice cores are now stored in freezers at Ohio State. On the future, says Thompson, that may be the only place to see what"s left of the glaciers of Africa and Peru.A. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, prepared by hundreds of scientists and approved by government delegates from more than 100 nations, states. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". The report, released in January, says that the planet"s average surface temperature increased by about 0.6℃ during the 20th century, and is projected to increase another 1.4℃ to 5.8℃ by 2100. That rate of warming is "with-out precedent during at least the last 10,000 years", says the IPCC.B. Alaska"s massive Bering and Columbia Glaciers located in nontropical regions, for example, have receded by more than 10 kilometers during the past century. And a study by geologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder predicts that Glacier National Park in Montana, under the influence of melting, will lose all of its glaciers by 2070.C. For example, about 97 per cent of the planet"s water is seawater. Another 2 per cent is locked in icecaps and glaciers. There are also reserves of fresh water under the earth"s surface but these are too deep for us to use economically.D. For example, Africa"s Mount Kilimanjaro in tropical areas has lost 82 percent of its ice field since it was first mapped in 1912. That year, Kilimanjaro had 12.1 square kilometers of ice. By last year, the ice covered only 2.2 square kilometers. At the current rate of melting, the snows of Kilimanjaro that Ernest Hemingway wrote about will be gone within 15 years, Thompson estimates. "But it probably will happen sooner, because the rate is speeding up".E. "I fully expect to be able to return there in a dozen years or so and see the marks on the rock where our drill bit punched through the ice", says Thompson. If that happens, it will mean that a layer of ice more than 500 feet thick has vanished into thin air.F. The glacier, Qori Kalis, was then retreating by 4.9 meters per year. Every time the scientists returned, Qori Kalis was melting faster. Between 1998 and 2000, it was retreating at a rate of 155 meters per years (more than a foot per day), 32 times faster than in 1978. "You can almost sit there and watch it move", says Thompson.

If you"ve gotten used to smoke-free bars, here"s a new concept to wrap your mind around: smoke-free cigar lounges. This innovation comes to us by courtesy of Washington state"s voters, who recently approved an initiative that bans smoking in nearly every indoor location except for private residences. The ban makes no exception for businesses whose raison d"etre is tobacco consumption, even if they have ventilation systems that whisk smoke away as soon as it"s produced. By forbidding smoking within 25 feet of entrances and windows, it even threatens to eliminate sidewalk smoking sections and quick outdoor cigarette breaks. As these provisions suggest, the real motivation behind government-imposed smoking bans is not to shield customers and employees from secondhand smoke, although that rationale is popular with the general public. For the activists and government officials who push the bans, the main point is to discourage smoking by making it inconvenient and socially unacceptable, transforming it into a shameful vice practiced only in privacy and isolation. That doesn"t mean everyone who voted for the Washington ban, which will be the most restrictive state law of its kind in the country when it takes effect on December 8, is eager to save smokers from themselves. By and large, I"m sure, the ban"s supporters simply wanted to avoid tobacco smoke without having to make any sacrifices. For example, they did not want to have to choose between tolerating smoke and passing over otherwise appealing bars and restaurants that allow smoking. Instead they decided to force the owners of those establishments to change their policies by threatening to fine them and take away the licenses on which their livelihoods depend. Mow much courage does it take, in a state where nonsmokers outnumber smokers by four to one, to declare that the minority"s desires should count for nothing, even when business owners want to accommodate them? How admirable is it, in a state where 80 percent of restaurants already are smoke free, to insist that the rest follow suit? The employee protection excuse does not make this demand any more reasonable. As a nonsmoking Seattle bartender told The Seattle Times, "You know what you"re getting into when you work in a bar. If I had a problem with smoke, I"d get another job. " Secondhand smoke is, in any case, not the main concern of those who promote smoking bans in the name of "public health". Laws like Washington"s are "one of the most effective ways to provide the strong incentive often needed to get smokers to quit", according to John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health.

[A] If such pills catch on, they could generate significant revenues for drug companies. In Pfizer"s case, the goal is to transfer as many qualified patients as possible to the combo pill. Norvasc"s patents expire in 2007, but Pfizer could avoid losing all its revenues from the drug at once if it were part of a superpill. Sena Lund, an analyst at Cathay Financial, sees Pfizer selling ＄4.2 billion worth of Norvasc-Lipitor by 2007. That would help take up the slack for falling sales of Lipitor, which he projects will drop to ＄5 billion in 2007, down from ＄8 billion last year. [B] As usual, economics could tip the scales. Patients now taking both Lipitor and Norvasc "could cut their insurance co-pay in half" by switching to the combo drug, Gavris notes. That"s a key advantage. Controlling hypertension, for instance, can require three or more drugs, and the fi- nancial burden on patients mounts quickly. If patients also benefit—as Pfizer and other drug companies contend—making the switch to superpills could be advantageous for everyone. [C] Multifunction superpills aren"t nearly as farfetched as they may sound. And reducing such serious risks to heart health as soaring cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure potentially could save many lives and be highly lucrative for drug companies. A combo pill from Pfizer (PFE) of its hypertension drug Norvasc and cholesterol-lowering agent Lipitor "could have huge potential," says Shaojing Tong, analyst at Mehta Partners. "Offering two functions in one pill itself is a huge convenience. " [D] Some other physicians are more skeptical. "If you want to change dosage on one of the new pill"s two drugs, you"re stuck," fears Dr. Irene Gavris, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She says she would feel most comfortable trying the combination pill on patients who "have been on the drugs for a while" and are thus unlikely to need changes in dosage. [E] Combining treatments would challenge doctors to approach heart disease differently. But better patient compliance is important enough, says Rockson, that he expects doctors to be open to trying the combined pill. [F] Doctors also may be quick to adopt Norvasc-Lipitor, Pfizer figures, because it"s made up of two well-studied drugs, which many physicians are already familiar with. But Dr. Stanley Rockson, chief of consultative cardiology at Stanford University Medical Center, says fixed-dose combination pills represent "an interesting crossroads" for physicians, who are typically trained to "approach each individual problem with care. " [G] Pfizer argues that addressing two distinct and serious cardiovascular risk factors in one pill has advantages. People with both hypertension and high LDL cholesterol (the "bad" kind) number around 27 million in the U. S. , notes Craig Hopkinson, medical director for dual therapy at Pfizer, and only 2% of that population reaches adequate treatment goals. Taking two treatments in one will increase the number of patients who take the medications properly and "assist in getting patients to goal," he says.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about maples. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. The influence of maples on the Canadian culture.B. The token of maples in Canada.C. Contemplation of global distribution of maples.D. The triumph of Nokomis over the devils with the help of maples.E. The popularity of the maple in a favorite myth.F. The maple signals the approach of fall. The maple smoke of autumn bonfires is incense to Canadians. Bestowing perfume for the nose, color for the eye, sweetness for the spring tongue, the sugar maple prompts this sharing of a favorite myth and original etymology of the word maple. (41)______. The maple looms large in Ojibwa folk tales. The time of year for sugaring-off is "in the Maple Moon." Among Ojibwa, the primordial female figure is Nokomis, a wise grandmother. In one tale about seasonal change, cannibal wendigos—creatures of evil—chased old Nokomis through the autumn countryside. Wendigos throve in icy cold. When they entered the bodies of humans, the human heart froze solid. Here wendigos represent oncoming winter. They were hunting to kill and eat poor Nokomis, the warm embodiment of female fecundity who, like the summer, has grown old. (42)______. Knowing this was a pursuit to the death, Nokomis outsmarted the cold devils. She hid in a stand of maple trees, all red and orange and deep yellow. This maple grove grew beside a waterfall whose mist blurred the trees" outline. As they peered through the mist, slavering wendigos thought they saw a raging fire in which their prey was burning. But it was only old Nokomis being hidden by the bright red leaves of her friends, the maples. And so, drooling ice and huffing frost, the wendigos left her and sought easier preys. For their service in saving the earth mother"s life, these maples were given a special gift: their water of life would be forever sweet, and Canadians would tap it for nourishment. (43)______. Maple and its syrup row sweetly into Canadian humor. Quebeckers have the standard sirop durable for maple syrup, but add a feisty insult to label imitation syrups that are thick with glucose glop. They call this sugary imposter sirop de Poteau "telephone-pole syrup" or dead tree syrup. (44)______. The contention that maple syrup is unique to North America is suspect, I believe, China has close to 10 species of maple, more than any country in the world. Canada has 10 native species. North America does happen to be home to the sugar maple, the species that produces the sweetest sap and the most abundant flow. But are we to believe that in thousands of years of Chinese history, these inventive people never tapped a maple to taste its sap? I speculate that they did. Could Proto-Americas who crossed the Bering land bridge to populate the Americas have brought with them a knowledge of maple syrup? Is there a very old Chinese phrase for maple syrup? Is maple syrup mentioned in Chinese literature? For a non-reader of Chinese, such questions are daunting but not impossible to answer. (45)______. What is certain is the maple"s holdfast on our national imagination. Its leaf was adopted as an emblem in New France as early as 1700, and in English Canada by the mid-19th century. In the fall of 1867, a Toronto schoolteacher named Alexander Muir was traipsing a street at the city, all squelchy underfoot from the soft felt of falling leaves, when a maple leaf alighted to his coat sleeve and stuck there. At home that evening, he wrote a poem and set it to music, in celebration of Canada"s Confederation. Muir"s song, "The Maple Leaf Forever," was wildly popular and helped fasten the symbol firmly to Canada. The word "maple" is from "mapeltreow", the Old English term for maple tree, with "mapl"—as its Proto—Germanic root, a compound in which the first "m"-is, I believe, the nearly worldwide "ma", one of the first human sounds, the pursing of a baby"s lips as it prepares to suck milk from mother"s breast. The "ma" root gives rise in many world languages to thousands of words like "mama", "mammary", "maia", and "Amazon." Here it would make "mapl" mean "nourishing mother tree," that is, tree whose maple sap in nourishing. The second part of the compound, "apl", is a variant of Indo-European able "fruit of any tree" and the origin of another English fruit word, apple. So the primitive analogy com pares the liquid sap with another nourishing liquid, mother"s milk.

(46) Economic growth involves increases over time in the volume of a country"s per capita gross national product (GNP) of goads and services. Such continuing increases can raise average living standards substantially and provide a stronger base for other policy objectives. (47) It is only in the last two centuries that continued growth in living standards has been realized for a number of now—developed countries, and this process has broadened in the 20th century to include a number of developing countries. (48) However, the fairly steady expansion in the third quarter of the 20th century gave way to a period of slower and more erratic growth for both-high-and low-income countries, while some of the economically poorest countries were thus far unable to establish a serf-sustaining pattern of development. It also became increasingly evident that there were serious environmental problems associated with some types of growth in production. In examining the record of economic growth and development, economists offer some explanations for the changes involved, and the attempts by governments to plan these changes. Five major issues are involved. The first is why economic growth occurs more quickly in some countries and periods than in others. It is the increase in the size and quality of the factors of production that underlies growth, but certain forces deserve special attention. A variety of models of economic growth give expression to the understanding of these forces. Increasing attention has been paid in these models and in policy to the international aspects of growth. This trend is partly a reflection of the growing internationalization of economic activity. It also reflects a number of potentially destabilizing changes in the international economy that became evident during the 1970s. (49) A second issue is the challenges facing the low-income countries, namely, to move from subsistence levels of per capita income to a level that would generate self-sustaining growth and also to reduce the gap between themselves and the higher-income countries. A third issue, productivity, is central to changes in living standards and to-the analysis of international competitiveness. A fourth major issue is the attempt to maintain growth and increase development through economic planning. (50) Planning became a widespread phenomenon during and just after World War II and was given further emphasis in many newly independent countries that were industrializing. Beginning in the 1970s the emphasis shifted to more decentralized planning, with deregulation and privatization of industry as two aspects of this process. Underlying economic growth and planning is a fifth issue, the attempt to predict economic activity. Modern forecasting involves a variety of computer-based techniques at the level of the firm, the country, and the international economy. The accuracy of forecasting has been reduced by increased uncertainty in the global and national economies since the early 1970s.

We don"t see or hear them, but every day they quietly go about their work--filtering and cleansing our rivers and streams. And if we don"t act soon, they"ll disappear from the workforce just when we need them most. I am talking about pigtoes, monkeyface, pink heelsplitter and purple wartyback--freshwater mussels (贻贝) with funny names that belie the seriousness of their labors. (41) . One mussel alone can cleanse as much as a gallon of water per hour. Add up the work of a whole mussel community, and you get a virtual water treatment plant. According to Ethan Nedeau, an expert on the freshwater mussels of New England, even half the population of mussels at work in a one-half mile segment of New Hampshire"s Ashuelot River can help cleanse more than 11.2 million gallons of water a day--roughly the quantity of household water used by 112 000 people. (42) . Today 69 percent of US freshwater mussel species are to some degree at risk of extinction or already extinct. The most diverse assemblage of freshwater mussels ever known was located in the middle stretch of the Tennessee River in northern Alabama. Before the damming of the river in the early 1900s, 69 mussel species had been spotted in this reach; 32 of them have apparently disappeared, with no recording sightings in nearly a century. (43) . Like many freshwater mussels, the orange-nacre mucket has a fascinating life cycle and exhibits some of the most sophisticated mimicry in the animal kingdom. The females essentially use their offspring to lure fish into helping them colonize new stream bottoms. They package their larvae (幼虫) at the end of jelly--like tubes that can extend eight feet out into the water. To fish swimming by, the larvae dancing in the riffles of the river current looks like a tasty minnow. When the fish bites, the tube breaks, releasing the larvae into the stream. A few of the offspring attach to the fish"s gills and hitchhike around with their firmed host for a week or two, absorbing nutrients and growing along the way. (44) . Along with 16 other threatened or endangered mussel species in the Mobile watershed, the orange-nacre mucket is at risk of extinction--in large part due to excessive pollution and dams that have diminished the river habitat they need to survive. To me, the loss of such industrious, fascinating creatures diminishes more than our water quality-- it diminishes our natural heritage and our world. (45) . So as we celebrate World Water Day, I hope we also celebrate the freshwater mussels that help keep our waters clean and healthy--and commit to efforts to conserve them. [A] My favorite freshwater mussel is the orange-nacre mucket, found only in the rivers and streams of Alabama"s Mobile River basin. [B] The United States ranks first in the world in the number of known species of freshwater mussels 292, com- pared with just 10 in all of Europe. But we"re losing these "living filters" all too fast. [C] Only habitat improvements, in some cases combined with mussel breeding and release efforts, can save these and the other 200 freshwater mussel species at risk nationwide. [D] Because I bet we"ll miss these little creatures with the whimsical names when they"re gone. [E] They suck water in, filter out bits of algae, bacteria and other tiny particles, and then release it back to the river cleaner than before. [F] Finally, the young mussels drop off, float to the river bottom, and colonize new territory--and before long begin their vital task of water purification. [G] It is our responsibility to take actions to protect the freshwater mussels, otherwise they will disappear in the future and the water will not be refreshed.

Something big is happening to the human race—something that could be called The Great Transformation. The Transformation consists of all the changes that are occurring in human life due to advancing technology. For thousands of years such progress occurred slowly. Now, everything is changing so fast that you may find yourself wondering where all this progress is really leading. Fifty years ago, few people could even imagine things like computers and lasers. Today, a host of newly emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering are opening up all kinds of new paths for technologists. Like it or not, our advancing technology has made us masters of the earth. We not only dominate all the other animals, but are reshaping the world"s plant life and even its soil and rocks, its waters and surrounding air. Mountains are being dug up to provide minerals and stone for buildings. The very ground under our feet is washing away as we chop down the forests, plow up the fields, and excavate foundations for our buildings. Human junk is cluttering up not only the land but even the bottom of the sea. And so many chemicals are being released into the air by human activities that scientists worry that the entire globe may warm, causing the polar icecaps to melt and ocean waters to flood vast areas of the land. During the twentieth century, advancing technology has enabled man to reach thousands of feet into the ocean depths and to climb the highest mountains. Mount Everest, the highest mountain of all, resisted all climbers until the 1950"s. Now man is reaching beyond Earth to the moon, Mars, and the stars. No one knows what the Great Transformation means or where it will ultimately lead. But one thing is sure: human life 50 years from now will be very different from what it is today. It"s also worth noting that our amazing technology is posing an increasingly insistent question: When we can do so many things, how can we possibly decide what we really should do. When humans were relatively powerless, they didn"t have to make the choices they have to make today. Technology gives us the power to build a magnificent new civilization—if we can just agree on what we want it to be. But today, there is little global agreement on goals and how we should achieve them. So it remains to be seen what will happen as a result of our technology. Pessimists worry that we will use the technology eventually to blow ourselves up. But they have been saying that for decades, and so far we have escaped. Whether we will continue to do so remains unknown—but we can continue to hope.

Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest. California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumptions that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies. The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California's advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justice can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants. They should start by discarding California's lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect' s purse. The court has ruled that police don't violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one' s smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee' s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of "cloud computing", meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier. Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches. As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn't ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom. But the justices should not swallow California's argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution's protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.

Writeanessayof160—200wordsbasedonthefollowingpicture.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethepicturebriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)supportyourviewwithanexample/examplesYoushouldwriteneatly.(20points)

In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw—having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves. That"s a far different image from the cherry-tree-chopping George most people remember from their history books. But recently, many historians have begun to focus on the roles slavery played in the lives of the founding generation. They have been spurred in part by DNA evidence made available in 1998, which almost certainly proved Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one child with his slave Sally Hemings. And only over the past 30 years have scholars examined history from the bottom up. Works of several historians reveal the moral compromises made by the nation"s early leaders and the fragile nature of the country"s infancy. More significantly, they argue that many of the Founding Fathers knew slavery was wrong—and yet most did little to fight it. More than anything, the historians say, the founders were hampered by the culture of their time. While Washington and Jefferson privately expressed distaste for slavery, they also understood that it was part of the political and economic bedrock of the country they helped to create. For one thing, the South could not afford to part with its slaves. Owning slaves was "like having a large bank account," says Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. The southern states would not have signed the Constitution without protections for the "peculiar institution," including a clause that counted a slave as three fifths of a man for purposes of congressional representation. And the statesmen"s political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states. Still, Jefferson freed Hemings"s children—though not Hemings herself or his approximately 150 other slaves. Washington, who had begun to believe that all men were created equal after observing the bravery of the black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, overcame the strong opposition of his relatives to grant his slaves their freedom in his will. Only a decade earlier, such an act would have required legislative approval in Virginia.

It is the capacity of the computer for solving problems and making decisions that represents its greatest potential and that poses the greatest difficulties in predicting the impact on society.

Economists used to think wealth came from a combination of man-made resources(roads, factories, telephone systems), human resources(hard work and education), and technological resources(technical know how, or simply high-tech machinery).【F1】 Obviously, poor countries grew into rich countries by investing money in physical resources and by improving human and technological resources with education and technology transfer programs. Nothing is wrong with this picture as far as it goes. Education, factories, infrastructure, and technical know-how are indeed abundant in rich countries and lacking in poor ones. But the picture is incomplete, a puzzle with the most important piece missing. 【F2】 The first clue that something is amiss with the traditional story is its implication that poor countries should have been catching up with rich ones for the last century or so—and that the farther behind they are, the faster the catch-up should be. In a country that has very little in the way of infrastructure or education, new investments have the biggest rewards. In a world of diminishing returns, the poorest countries gain the most from new technology, infrastructure, and education. South Korea, for example, acquired technology by encouraging foreign companies to invest or by paying licensing fees. In addition to the fees, the investing companies sent profits back home. But the gains to Korean workers and investors, in the form of economic growth, were 50 times greater than the fees and profits that left the country. 【F3】 As for education and infrastructure, since the returns seem to be so high, there should be no shortage of investors willing to fund infrastructure projects or lend money to students(or to governments that provide education). Banks, domestic and foreign, should be lining up to lend people the money to get through school or to build a new road or a new power plant.【F4】 In turn, poor people, or poor countries, should be very happy to take out such loans, confident that investment returns are so high that the repayments will not be difficult. Even if, for some reason, that didn"t happen, the World Bank, established after World War 11 with the express aim of providing loans to countries for reconstruction and development, lends billions of dollars a year to developing countries.【F5】 Investment money is clearly not the issue; either the investments are not being made, or they are not delivering the returns the traditional model predicts.

At this time of year especially, weather is on everyone"s mind—and on everyone"s tongue.【F1】 It is the material for the conversation of board chairman and bored cleaning woman, of young and old, of the bright, the dull, the rich and the poor. As if this basic coin of conversation needed to be gilded, the average American constantly reads about the weather in his newspapers and magazines, listens to regular forecasts of it on the radio and watches while some TV prophet milks it for cuteness on the evening news. 【F2】 Since the weather is to man what the waters are to fish, his preoccupation with it serves a unique purpose, constituting a social phenomenon all its own. Far from arising merely to pass the time or bridge a silence, "weathertalk," as it might be called, is a sort of code by which people confirm and salute the sense of community they discover in the face of the weather"s implacable influence. Inspired by exceptional weather, otherwise immutable strangers suddenly find themselves in communion. 【F3】 As victims, people hate to cancel a picnic on account of rain, and yet they often cheer when the weather brings human activity to an abrupt stop. Most feel that the weather indeed affects their moods. If man sees the weather differently according to his circumstance, healthy fear works at the hub of his obsession with it. Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and caused some mighty cataclysms. Every year brings fresh reminders of the weather"s power over human life and events in the form of horrifying tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. No wonder, then, that man"s great dream has been some day to control the weather.【F4】 With computers on tap and electronic eyes in the sky, modern man has thus come far in dealing with the weather, alternately his enemy and benefactor, yet man"s difficulty today is not too far removed from that of his remote ancestors. For all the advances of scientific forecasting, in spite of the thousands of daily bulletins and advisories that get flashed about, the weather is still ultimately unstable and unpredictable. Man"s dream of controlling it is still just that—a dream. The very idea of control, in fact, raises enormous and troublesome questions.【F5】 The vision of scheduled weather also raises ambiguous feelings among the world"s billions of weather fans and poses at least one irresistible question: If weather were as predictable as holidays and eclipses, what in the world would everyone talk about?

Summer was, for a while, a child"s time, conferring an inviolate right to laziness. It was a form of education that had nothing to do with adult priorities, providing entire afternoons to watch exactly how many ants would dash out of one hill and what they would bring back. The holiness of that kind of summer was first diminished by necessity, when overcrowded classrooms brought us the year-round school calendar. Next, the battle against social promotion forced many an indifferent student into summer school—while the hard-charging students willingly packed into summer school as well, to get a leg up on the coming year. Then, as though the world of achievement had some sort of legitimate claim on summer, even schools that maintained the old-fashioned schedule began reaching their tentacles into summer. Some school districts start the traditional school year in August, the better to squeeze in a couple of more weeks of instruction before the all-important state standardized tests given in spring. Worse, what used to be recommended summer reading lists are now becoming compulsory assignments. And woe to the ambitious student who"s signed up for Advanced Placement classes, and thus a summer-load of note taking and homework. It"s not just the schools. As a society, we grow itchy at the sight of someone—even a kid-accomplishing nothing more than fun. Thus parents have become suckers for anything that lends a constructive air to summer. Summer camps used to exist for the purpose of marshmallow roasts and putting frogs in your bunkmates" beds. Those still exist, but they compete mightily with the new camps— the ones for improving a child"s writing style, building math skills, honing soccer stardom, learning a foreign language, building dance talents or finessing skills playing a musical instrument. Even many colleges and universities, such as Johns Hopkins, have climbed on board, mailing out silky brochures about their expensive summer programs for supposedly gifted, or at least financially gifted, students. None of this activity is required, of course. Unluckily, other societal changes also have pushed back at summer. Children can"t get together a pickup game of kickball when their streets are the turf of gangs. And without a shove out the door, today"s youngsters are more likely to spend a day clicking away at video games than swinging in a hammock. Still, it is a decision, however unconsciously made, to view summertime as a commodity to be prudently invested, rather than as a gift to be lavishly spent. There is only one sort of skill we are afraid to nurture in our kids—the ability to do nothing more constructive than make a blade of crabgrass, pressed between our thumbs and blown, blast a reedy note into the summer air.

[A] Use diesel-electric hybrid buses in rural areas. [B] Talk about the benefits of walking to school. [C] Talk about the prices of traditional school buses.[D] Find new ways to cut bus costs in rural areas.[E] Compare school buses with private cars in safety.[F] Discuss the disadvantage of driving to school.[G] Discuss walking to school from the perspective of parents. Until last spring, Nia Parker and the other kids in her neighborhood commuted to school on Bus 59. But as fuel costs have risen, the Columbia school district has needed to find a way to cut its transportation costs. So the school's busing company redrew its route map, eliminating Nia's bus altogether, and advocated students to walk to school. 【C1】______ Instead, Nia and her neighbors travel the half mile to school via a "walking school bus"—a group of kids, supervised by an adult or two, who make the trek together. "It's healthier for them to walk," Nia's mom, who approves of the change. Nia, a 9-year-old who's in fourth grade, sees other advantages. Since the bus used to pick up many children along a circuitous route, walking to school is actually quicker. "I like it because I get to sleep late, and I don't get as grouchy," Nia says. Like the rest of us, school districts are feeling pinched by rising fuel costs—and finding new ways to adapt. The diesel fuel that powers school buses now costs an average of $4.28 a gallon, up 34 percent in the past two years. According to a survey done by the American Association of School Administrators in July, more than one third of school administrators have eliminated bus stops or routes in order to stay within budget. 【C2】______ Many parents are delighted to see their kids walking to school, partly because many did so themselves: in 1969, according to the National Household Travel Survey, nearly half of school kids walked or biked to school, compared with only 16 percent in 2001. Modern parents have been leery of letting kids walk to school for fear of traffic, crime or simple bullying, but with organized adult supervision, those concerns have diminished. Schools and busing companies are finding other ways to save by cutting field trips and redrawing athletic schedules to reduce the distances of "away" sporting events. 【C3】______ In rural areas where busing is a must, some schools have even opted for four-day school weeks. First Student Transportation, the leading US school bus provider, is training drivers to eliminate extra stops from routes, to turn off the engine while idling and to check tire pressure every time they leave the lot. First Student is also using route-optimization software to determine the most fuel-efficient routes, which aren't always the shortest ones. A few schools now use diesel-electric hybrid buses, which achieve 12 miles per gallon (compared with 7mpg for a traditional bus). But at $180,000, hybrids cost more than twice as much as a traditional diesel bus, so few schools have switched. 【C4】______ There could be downsides, however, to the busing cutbacks. If every formerly bused student begins hoofing it to school, it's an environmental win—but if too many of their parents decide to drive them instead, the overall carbon footprint can grow. 【C5】______ "On average, one school bus replaces 36 private vehicles," says Mike Martin of the National Association for Pupil Transportation, a pro-busing advocacy group. Replacing buses with many more parent-driven minivans can also increase safety risks: Martin cites a 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences that concluded students are 13 times safer on a school bus than in a passenger car, since buses have fewer accidents and withstand them better due to their size.

Writing for an historical series is tricky, and the outcome is not always a success. The best overall European history in English is the old Fontana History of Europe, but it was uneven in quality, and it suffered because the volumes appeared so far apart in time. The new Penguin History of Europe has only recently begun. But judging by this second volume in a projected eight-volume se-ries, it is going to be a smashing success. Tim Blanning, a Cambridge history professor brings to his period knowledge, experience, sound judgment and a colorful narrative style. His broad range is evident from the start when, in place of the usual recitation of politics and battles, he expounds on such themes as communications, transport, demography and farming. Indeed, much of what might be seen as traditional history is pushed back to the fourth and final part of the book. Not the least of Mr. Blanning"s achievements is his integrated approach to the entire continent. He jumps nimbly from Spain to the Low Countries, from Russia to Austria, from Prussia to Turkey. Many of Europe"s royal families were related, after all. The author also expertly places the history of the two greatest rivals of the day, England and France, in its wider European context. Any British Eurosceptic who thinks his country"s history is detached from continental Europe"s would realize from even the most inadequate reading of this book how bound up with the continent it has in fact always been. The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe were, above all, a period of war. Indeed, it seemed at times as if France and Austria, the leading martial powers in 1648, did little else but fight. Sometimes war helped to stimulate economic and commercial development. But it is striking that it fell to Britain, which enjoyed at least a few years of peace, to pioneer Europe"s industrialization. The book is stronger on the 18th century than on the second half of the 17th, reflecting the author"s own historical bias. Another weakness is that, though there is a reasonable bibliography, it has no footnotes citing sources, a scandalous omission in a work with serious academic pretensions. It also sometimes takes for granted a basic grounding in the history of the period, which may be problematic for students at whom it is presumably in part aimed. But overall Mr.Blanning has produced a triumphant success.