Since Henry Ford turned it into a mass-market product a century ago, the car has delivered many benefits. It has【C1】______economic growth, increased social mobility and given people a lot of【C2】______. No wonder mankind has taken to the vehicle with such【C3】______ that there are now a billion automobiles on the world"s roads. 【C4】______the car has also brought many【C5】______. It pollutes the air, creates crowding and kills people. An 【C6】______1.24m people die, and as many as 50m are hurt, in road accidents each year. Drivers and【C7】______waste around 90 billion hours in traffic jams each year. Fortunately, an【C8】______technology promises to make motoring more【C9】______less polluting and less【C10】______ to hold-ups. "Connected cars"—which may eventually evolve into driverless cars but for the foreseeable future will still have a human at the【C11】______—can communicate wirelessly with each other and with traffic-management systems, avoid 【C12】______ and other vehicles and find open parking spots. Some parts of the【C13】______are already in place. Many new cars are already being fitted with equipment that lets them maintain their distance and stay in a motorway lane automatically at a range of speeds, and【C14】______ a parking space and slot into it. Singapore has led the way with using variable tolls to【C15】______traffic flows during rush-hours; Britain is【C16】______ "smart motorways", whose speed limits vary constantly to achieve a similar effect Combined, these 【C17】______ could create a much more efficient system in which cars and their drivers are constantly【C18】______to hazards and routed around blockages, traffic always flows at the【C19】______speed and vehicles can travel closer together, yet with less risk of【C20】______.

George Williams, one of Scottsdale"s last remaining cowboys, has been raising horses and cattle on his 120 acres for 20 years. The cattle go to the slaughterhouse, the horses to rodeos. But Mr. Williams is stomping mad. His problems began last year when dishonest neighbours started to steal his cattle. Then other neighbours, most of them newcomers, took offence at his horses roaming on their properties. Such grumbles are common in Arizona. The most recent Department of Agriculture census shows that 1,213 of Arizona"s 8,507 farms closed down between 1997 and 2002. Many cattlemen are moving out to remoter parts of the state. Doc Lane is an executive at the Arizona Cattlemen"s Association, a trade group. He says Arizona"s larger ranch owners are making decent profits from selling. It is the smaller players who are the victims of rising land values, higher mortgages and stiffer city council rules. What happens all too often is that people move in next to a farm because they think the land pretty. But soon they start complaining to the council. In Mr. Williams"s case it was the horses that annoyed them. Other newcomers don"t like the noise, the pesticides and the smell of manure. Locals worry about the precious, dwindling cowboy culture. Arizona"s tourism boards like to promote a steady interest in all things about cowboy and western. Last year more British and German tourists came than usual, and many of them were looking precisely for that. Arizona"s Dude Ranch Association fills its $350-a-night luxury ranches most of the year; roughly a third of the guests are European. Many of the ranchers themselves see all this tourism as a cheeky attempt to commercialise a real and vanishing culture. In Prescott, estate agents promote "American Ranch-style" homes with posters of horse riders. On the other side of the street is Whiskey Row, a famous strip of historic cowboy bars. But in Matt"s Saloon on Saturday night, real cattlemen could not be found. Farm folk like Mr. Knox and Mr. Williams are weighing up their options. Many will migrate to remoter places where land is cheaper and not crowded with city people. Younger ones take on side-jobs as contractors and are cattle-hands part-time. Older cowboys aren"t sure what to do.

Not all of the potential solutions to climate change are futuristic, expensive or exotic. In fact, most Americans can find one of the most significant carbon-reducing innovations of the last 30 years standing in their kitchens, keeping the butter hard. Refrigerators sold in the United States have grown 5% more energy efficient every year since 1975. Today they save 200 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year compared to what they"d use if they were still built to 30-year-old standards, or about a third of the annual output of all the nation"s nuclear plants. Upgraded fridges have lowered electricity bills for consumers and avoided millions of tons of carbon that would otherwise have been emitted by power plants. Heating and air-conditioning systems also have grown more efficient, and fluorescent lightbulbs are a big step ahead of power-hungry incandescents. Critics of government efforts to fend off global warming often complain that the economic costs aren"t worth the gains — better to adapt later to a warmer planet than suffer now by turning down the thermostat. This argument relies on a lot of dubious assumptions, starting with the notion that quality of life won"t be significantly reduced in a world plagued by drought, wildfires, increased disease and famine, more powerful storms, mass species extinction and higher sea levels. It also assumes that the cost of cleaning up after all that will be less than the cost of preventing it from happening. Nicholas Stern, former chief economist with the World Bank, estimates that failing to invest in cutting carbon would eventually cost up to 20% in lost income worldwide. The final report from the U. N. "s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out that adapting to global warming is a necessity because it"s too late to stop the process, but that doesn"t reduce the need to head off the worst effects. Global-warming deniers are right about one thing: Phasing out fossil fuels will be expensive. But the most effective way of doing so not only doesn"t add costs, it saves money and boosts economies. Energy efficiency is the fastest, safest and cheapest method currently available for cutting carbon emissions. It"s also one of the least understood, because it involves a lot more than adding insulation to buildings or installing power-sipping air conditioners. To make really hefty efficiency gains, the U. S. must follow California"s lead in restructuring incentives for utilities, and regulatory agencies should do much more to encourage important innovations such as cogeneration plants.

A foreign delegation is to visit your university. You are assigned to make a welcome speech on behalf of all the students. Now write a welcome speech to express your welcome and make a brief introduction of your university. Write your letter with no less than 100 words. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

"Before the operation, I would look at someone and all I could see for their face was jelly," says Jonathan Wyatt "Now, I can see people"s faces." The 65-year-old is one of six people in the world to receive gene therapy for a【C1】______type of inherited eye disease【C2】______choroideremia(an eye disease). The first published【C3】______of the trial, released today, suggest that【C4】______people"s genes can stop the disease from causing blindness—and【C5】______sight in those whose vision has become【C6】______. Choroideremia is caused by【C7】______in the CHM gene. In those who have the disease, a【C8】______of REP-1 means that cells in the eyes stop working and slowly begin to【C9】______causing blindness. Enter gene therapy, which uses a virus to insert a【C10】______copy of a gene into cells with a gene defect and could【C11】______be used to treat many genetic conditions. Robert MacLaren of the University of Oxford and his colleagues decided to see if it could【C12】______choroideremia. Starting two years ago with Wyatt, they【C13】______a virus carrying a corrective copy of the CHM gene into the eyes of people with choroideremia. Today the team【C14】______that of the six people who received the treatment six months【C15】______or longer, all have described【C16】______in their vision. Still, the long-lasting effects of the treatment remain【C17】______Wyatt had the treatment first, so can【C18】______that the benefits seem to last two years,【C19】______he"s just one case. The treatment also can"t replace cells that have been【C20】______destroyed.

There is no smoke without fire.

Lawyers are less than 1% of American adults,【C1】______they are well-represented in government. Both the president and the vice-president trained as lawyers.【C2】______did 55% of senators and 100% of Supreme Court justices. There are【C3】______to having a bit of legal expertise among those who write and【C4】______the nation's laws, or assess their constitutionality. But there is also a potential conflict of interest.【C5】______florists had such a lock on the levers of【C6】______, you might expect subsidies for weddings and a campaign to beautify cities. Lawyers, alas, are no more【C7】______. The American legal system is the most lawyer-friendly on Earth. It is dizzily【C8】______. The regulations that accompany the Dodd-Frank law governing Wall Street,【C9】______are already more than 3 million words long—and not yet half-written. Companies must hire【C10】______lawyers to guide them【C11】______a maze created by other lawyers. They must also hire lawyers to【C12】______themselves against attacks by other lawyers on a playing field【C13】______by lawyers. The cost—roughly $800 a year for every American—is【C14】______to consumers. The【C15】______are hard to detect. Americans are probably no less likely to be injured or cheated than the citizens of countries【C16】______spend a fraction as much. 【C17】______it is hard to feel sympathy for lawyers facing a【C18】______labour market. America's 250 biggest law firms shed more than 9500 people last year. Law students are【C19】______to find the lavishly paid work they expected after graduation. One big law firm even went bust. None of this is nice for the people【C20】______especially those with large student debts.

The Federal Trade Commission had some sharp words for Internet companies Thursday, saying that they are not explaining to their users clearly enough what information they collect about them and how they use it for advertising. For now, the commission is sticking to its view that the Internet industry can voluntarily regulate its own privacy practices. But the tone of the report, and comments by several commission members and staff officials, indicated that if the industry does not move faster, the agency would increase regulation or call for Congress to legislate stricter online privacy rules. "People were worried that the commission would abandon its support for self-regulation," said Jules Polonetsky, the co-chairman of the Future of Privacy Forum, a trade group. "The commission is saying you have one last chance before I come upstairs and take your toys away. " Technically, the commission released an update to its principles for what it calls online behavioral advertising—ads shown to the user based on past patterns of behavior. These are voluntary guidelines first issued at the end of 2007. The new guidelines suggest that Web sites explain how they collect and use data in a "clear, concise, consumer friendly, and prominent" way. Few sites meet that standard right now, the commission found. "What we observe is that, with rare exception, it is not the rule for any Web sites to do those things," said Eileen Harrington, the acting director of the commission"s bureau of consumer protection, in an interview Thursday. "It is far more commonplace for them to put the information in the midst of lengthy and hard-to-understand privacy policies. " Ms. Harrington challenged Internet companies to explain what they are doing in a section other than its privacy policy. The commission did not specify what sort of notice companies should give, but it noted that some have proposed methods that are more visible to the average user, like a link right on each advertisement that leads to an explanation of what data the advertiser collects and uses. "This is about advertising, so these people ought to be creative," she said. Groups that want better online privacy were mixed in their reaction. Some praised the new, tougher standards for targeted ads. But others argued that the commission did not go far enough to regulate all the different ways that Internet companies monitor users. "These are baby steps for privacy at best," said Jeff Chester, the director of the Center for Digital Democracy.

This election year, the debate over cloning technology has become a circus—and hardly anybody has noticed the gorilla hiding in the tent. Even while President Bush has endorsed throwing scientists in jail to stop "reckless experiments", it"s just possible the First Amendment will protect researchers who want to perform cloning research. Dr. Leon Kass, the chairman of the President"s Council on Bioethics, would like to keep that a secret. "I don"t want to encourage such thinking", he said. But the notion that the First Amendment creates a "right to research" has been around for a long time, and Kass knows it. In 1977, four eminent legal scholars—Thomas Emerson, Jerome Barron, Walter Berns and Harold P. Green—were asked to testify before the House Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space. At the time, there was alarm in the country over recombinant DNA. Some people feared clones, designer babies, a plague of superbacteria. The committee wanted to know if the federal government should, or could, restrict the science. "Certainly the overwhelming tenor of the testimony was in favor of protecting it", Barron, who now teaches at George Washington University, recalls. Barns, a conservative political scientist, was forced to agree. He didn"t like this conclusion, because he feared the consequences of tinkering with nature, but even after consulting with Kass before his testimony, he told Congress that "the First Amendment protected this kind of research". Today, he believes it protects cloning experiments as well. Law-review articles written at the time supported Barns, and so would a report issued by Congress"s Office of Technology Assessment (O. T.A). But the courts never got the chance to face the right-to-research issue squarely. An oversight body called the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, formed by the National Institutes of Health, essentially allowed science to police itself. So the discussion was submerged until now. Why legal scholars would defend the right to research is hardly mysterious. The founding fathers passionately defended scientific and academic freedom, and the Supreme Court has traditionally had a high regard for it. But why would the right to read, write and speak as you please extend to the tight to experiment in the lab? Neoconservatives like Kass have emphasized the need to maintain a fixed conception of human nature. But the O.T.A. directly addressed this in a 1981 report. "Even if the rationale.., were expanded to include situations where knowledge threatens fundamental cultural values about the nature of man, control of research for such a reason probably would not be constitutionally permissible", The government can restrict speech if it can prove a "compelling interest", like public safety or national security. But courts have set that bar very high. Unlike, say, an experiment that releases smallpox into the wind to study how it spreads, which could be banned, embryo research presents no readily apparent danger to public health or security. And if that"s the case, scientists who wish to create stem cells by cloning might have a new source of succor: the U.S. Constitution.

Write a notice in about 100 words for the library to inform the readers that it"ll close during the Spring Festival. 1. You should write about 100 words. 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. 3. Do not write the address.

You have had an accident and are in hospital. Write a letter to Professor Johnson explaining why you will be absent from class for the next month. Ask for advice about how to continue your studies during this period. You should write about 100 words and do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

历史研究的方法论 ——1999年英译汉及详解 【F1】 While there are almost as many definitions of history as there are historians, modern practice most closely conforms to one that sees history as the attempt to recreate and explain the significant events of the past. Caught in the web of its own time and place, each generation of historians determines anew what is significant for it in the past. In this search the evidence found is always incomplete and scattered; it is also frequently partial or partisan. The irony of the historian's craft is that its practitioners always know that their efforts are but contributions to an unending process. 【F2】 Interest in historical methods has arisen less through external challenge to the validity of history as an intellectual discipline and more from internal quarrels among historians themselves. While history once revered its affinity to literature and philosophy, the emerging social sciences seemed to afford greater opportunities for asking new questions and providing rewarding approaches to an understanding of the past. Social science methodologies had to be adapted to a discipline governed by the primacy of historical sources rather than the imperatives of the contemporary world.【F3】 During this transfer, traditional historical methods were augmented by additional methodologies designed to interpret the new forms of evidence in the historical study. Methodology is a term that remains inherently ambiguous in the historical profession.【F4】 There is no agreement whether methodology refers to the concepts peculiar to historical work in general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historical inquiry. Historians, especially those so blinded by their research interests that they have been accused of "tunnel method", frequently fall victim to the"technicist fallacy". Also common in the natural sciences, the technicist fallacy mistakenly identifies the discipline as a whole with certain parts of its technical implementation. 【F5】 It applies equally to traditional historians who view history as only the external and internal criticism of sources, and to social science historians who equate their activity with specific techniques.

Education is not an end, but a means to an end. In other words, we do not educate children only for the aim of educating them. Our purpose is to fit them for life. Life is varied; so is education. As soon as we realize the fact, we will understand that it is very important to choose a proper system of education. In some countries with advanced industries, they have free education for all. Under this system, people, no matter whether they are rich or poor, clever or foolish, have a chance to be educated at universities or colleges. They have for some time thought, by free education for all, they can solve all the problems of a society and build a perfect nation. But we can already see that free education for all is not enough. We find in such countries a far larger number of people with university degrees than there are jobs for them to fill. As a result of their degrees, they refuse to do what they think is "low" work. In fact, to work with one"s hands is thought to be dirty and shameful in such countries. But we have only to think a moment to understand that the work of a completely uneducated farmer is as important as that of a professor. We can live without education, but we should die if none of us grow crops. If no one cleaned our streets and took the rubbish away from our houses, we should get terrible diseases in our towns. If there were no service people, because everyone was ashamed to do such work, the professors would have to waste much of their time doing housework. On the other hand, if all the farmers were completely uneducated, their production would remain low. As the population grows larger and larger in the modern world, we would die if we did not have enough food. In fact, when we say all of us must be educated to fit ourselves for life, it means that all must be educated: firstly, to realize that everyone can do whatever job is suited to his brain and ability; secondly, to understand that all jobs are necessary to society and that it is had to be ashamed of one"s own work or to look down upon someone else"s; thirdly, to master all the necessary know-how to do one"s job well. Only such education can be called valuable to society.

During the past 15 years, the most important component of executive pay packages, and the one most responsible for the large increase in the level of such compensation, has been stock-option grants. The increased use of option grants was justified as a way to align executives" interests with shareholders". For various tax, accounting, and regulatory reasons, stock-option grants have largely comprised "at-the-money options": rights to purchase shares at an "exercise price" equal to the company"s stock price on the grant date. In such at-the-money options, the selection of the grant date for awarding options determines the options" exercise price and thus can have a significant effect on their value. Earlier research by financial economists on backdating practices focused on the extent to which the company"s stock price went up abnormally after the grant date. My colleagues and I focused instead on how a grant-date"s price ranked in the distribution of stock prices during the month of the grant. Studying the universe of about 19,000 at-the-money, unscheduled grants awarded to public companies" CEOs during the decade 1996-2005, we found a clear relation between the likelihood of a day"s being selected as a grant date for awarding options, and the rank of the day"s stock price within the price distribution of the month: a day was most likely to be chosen if the stock price was at the lowest level of the month, second most likely to be chosen if the price was at the second-lowest level, and so forth. There is an especially large incidence of "lucky grants" (defined as grants awarded on days on which the stock price was at the lowest level of the month): 12 percent of all CEO option grants were lucky grants, while only 4 percent were awarded at the highest price of the month. The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in August 2002 required firms to report grants within two days of any award. Most firms complied with this requirement, but more than 20 percent of grants continued to be reported after a long delay. Thus, the legislation could be expected to reduce but not eliminate backdating. The patterns of CEO luck are consistent with this expectation: the percentage of grants that were lucky was a high 15 percent before enactment of the law, and declined to a lower, but still abnormally high, level of 8 percent afterwards. Altogether, we estimate that about 1,150 CEO stock-option grants owed their financially advantageous status to opportunistic timing rather than to mere luck. This practice was spread over a significant number of CEOs and firms: we estimate that about 850 CEOs (about 10 percent) and about 720 firms (about 12 percent) received or provided such lucky grants. In addition, we estimate that about 550 additional grants at the second-lowest or third-lowest price of the month owed their status to opportunistic timing. The cases that have come under scrutiny thus far have led to a widespread impression that opportunistic timing has been primarily concentrated in "new economy" firms. But while the frequency of lucky grants has been somewhat higher in such firms, more than 80 percent of the opportunistically timed grants have been awarded in other sectors. Indeed, there is a significantly higher-than-normal incidence of lucky grants in each of the economy"s 12 industries.

Americans don"t like to lose wars. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test patriotism and courage—and those are the kind at which the U.S. excels. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads? If American indulge in a bit of flag—when the job is done, they earned it. Now there is a similar challenge—global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of this very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if America is figting at all, it" s fighting on the wrong side. The U.S. produces nearly a quarter of the world" s greenhouse gases each year and has stubbornly made it clear that it doesn"t intend to do a whole lot about it. Although 174 nations approved the admittedly flawed Kyoto accords to reduce carbon levels, the U.S. walked away from them. There are vague promises of manufacturing fuel from herbs or powering cars with hydrogen. But for a country that tightly cites patriotism as one of its core values, the U.S. is taking a pass on what might be the most patriotic struggle of all. It"s hard to imagine a bigger fight than one for the survival of a country" s coasts and farms, the health of its people and stability of its economy. The rub is, if the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there" s far less agreement on how to fix it. Industry offers its plans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to native wish lists that could weaken America" s growth. But let" s assume that those interested parties and others will always bent the table and will always demand that their voices be heard and that their needs be addressed. What would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like—one that would leave the U.S. both environmentally safe and economically sound? Halting climate change will be far harder. One of the more conservative plans for addressing the problem calls for a reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon emissions over the next 52 years. And yet by devising a consistent strategy that mixes short-time profit with long-range objective and blends pragmatism with ambition, the U.S. can, without major damage to the economy, help halt the worst effects of climate change and ensure the survival of its way of life for future generations. Money will do some of the work, but what"s needed most is will. "I"m not saying the challenge isn"t almost overwhelming," says Fred Krupp. "But this is America, and America has risen to these challenges before."

After the terrorist attacks in America last September, terrorist risk became the pariah of perils. The airline industry was most directly affected by the attacks, and it was the first to find that no one wanted to insure terrorist risk. Insurance companies immediately increased premiums and cut cover for airlines" third-party terror and war liabilities to $50m per airline, per "event". Under pressure from airlines, the American government and the members of the European Union agreed to become insurers of last resort for airlines" war and terrorist liabilities, for a limited period. These government guarantees are due to expire at the end of the month. The American government has already agreed to extend its guarantee for another 60 days. The EU"s transport ministers are meeting next week in Brussels to decide what to do. Insurers and reinsurers are keen for the commercial market to resume the provision of all airline insurance as soon as possible. No wonder: The premiums for such cover have inevitably increased considerably. However, in the case of terrorism, and especially of terrorism in the skies, a number of special factors arise. Some are purely practical: a disaster as sudden and unforeseen as the attacks on the World Trade Center has had destructive effects on the insurance industry. The maximum cover for third-party terrorist risk available in the primary aviation market is now $50m, and that is not nearly enough cover risks that are perceived to be much higher since September 11th. Even if the market could offer sufficient cover, another catastrophe on such a scale would be more than the market could cope with. In addition, a rare and devastating risk of a political nature is arguably one that it is right for governments to cover, at least in part. In the wake of attacks by Irish terrorists the British government has recognized this point by agreeing to back a mutual fund to cover risks to property from terrorist attack. In the case of the airlines, the appropriate answer is some form of mutual scheme with government backing. In fact, under the code-name "Equitime", representatives of airlines, insurers and the American government are setting up an insurance vehicle to be financed by airlines and reinsured by the government. Governments would guarantee the fund"s excess risk, but their role would diminish as the fund grew. Setting something up will take time. So, to bridge the gap, governments will have to remain insurer of last resort for airlines" war and terrorist risk for some time to come.

In their quest to build profitable and more far-reaching digital audiences, publishers in the US and Europe have turned to the world"s largest【C1】______ network for help. Nine media organisations,【C2】______the BBC through its youth-oriented Newsbeat service, the Guardian and the New York Times, have【C3】______ a deal with Facebook to publish some of their【C4】______directly through the social network rather than【C5】______ hosting it on their own sites as part of a trial. The【C6】______comes as increasing numbers of, readers rely on the social network as the main site【C7】______which they receive news. Facebook wants not only to 【C8】______users to news sites 【C9】______to be the place where they stay and consume it, too. Facebook already 【C10】______ nearly 20 per cent of the Guardian"s web traffic, excluding visits to its own apps, and about 15 per cent of 【C11】______ to the New York Times site. The Facebook deal follows complaints by some 【C12】______ that internet groups such as Google and Face-book 【C13】______ their own online businesses. Rupert Murdoch" s News Corp, 【C14】______ , a critic of Google and Face-book, is not participating. Others have【C15】______concern that Facebook would have too much power 【C16】______ which stories appear and where they are placed. Facebook said the【C17】______ would give publishers "control over their stories, brand experience and profit opportunities", including【C18】______to some user data. Online sharing of news articles has already 【C19】______ some readers away from publishers" 【C20】______pages towards social media sites.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

[A]Studythefollowingsetofpicturescarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan120words.[B]YouressaymustbewrittenclearlyontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)[C]Youressayshouldcoveralltheinformationprovidedandmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Interpretthefollowingpictures.2.Predictthetendencyoftobaccoconsumptionandgiveyourreasons.

On Luxury Consumption A. Title: On Luxury Consumption B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "Nowadays, many people tend to spend more money on luxury commodities." OUTLINE: 1. The prevalence of luxury commodities in China 2. People's different opinions on luxury commodities 3. My opinion