It may turn out that the "digital divide"—one of the most fashionable political slogans of recent years is largely fiction. As you will recall, the argument went well beyond the unsurprising notion that the rich would own more computers than the poor. The disturbing part of the theory was that society was dividing itself into groups of technology "haves" and "have-nots" and that this segregation would, in turn, worsen already large economic inequalities. It is this argument that is either untrue or wildly exaggerated. We should always have been suspicious. After all, computers have spread quickly because they have become cheaper to buy and easier to use. Falling prices and skill requirements suggest that the digital divide would spontaneously shrink—and so it has. Now, a new study further discredits the digital divide. The study, by economists David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, challenges the notion that computers have significantly worsened wage inequality. The logic of how this supposedly happens is straightforward: computers raise the demand for high-skilled workers, increasing their wages. Meanwhile, computerization—by automating many routine tasks—reduces the demand for low skilled workers and, thereby their wages. The gap between the two widens. Superficially, wage statistics support the theory. Consider the ratio between workers near the top of the wage distribution and those near the bottom. Computerization increased; so did the wage gap. But wait, point out Card and DiNardo. The trouble with blaming computers is that the worsening of inequality occurred primarily in the early 1980s. With computer use growing, the wage gap should have continued to expand, if it was being driven by a shifting demand for skills. Indeed, Card and DiNardo find much detailed evidence that contradicts the theory. They conclude that computerization does not explain "the rise in U.S. wage inequality in the last quarter of the 20th century." The popular perception of computers" impact on wages is hugely overblown. Lots of other influences count for as much, or more. The worsening of wage inequality in the early 1980s, for example, almost certainly reflected the deep 1981 1982 recession and the fall of inflation. Companies found it harder to raise prices. To survive, they concluded that they had to hold down the wages of their least skilled, least mobile and youngest workers. The "digital divide" suggested a simple solution (computers) for a complex problem (poverty). With more computer access, the poor could escape their lot. But computers never were the source of anyone"s poverty and, as for escaping, what people do for themselves matters more than what technology can do for them.

Few men who find themselves cast as heroes early in life continue to command universal esteem till the end. Sir Edmund Hillary was one. To be the first to reach the top of the world"s highest mountain ensured international celebrity and a place in history, but the modesty of a slightly awkward New Zealand beekeeper never departed him. Nor was mountaineering, or indeed beekeeping, his only accomplishment. Two views are often expressed about his life. One is that conquering Everest was everything. No one would play down the role of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who reached the peak with him, possibly even before him; their partnership was like that of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But it was Sir Edmund who first struggled his way up a crack in the 12-metre (40-foot) rockface that had to be overcome after the south summit if the real one was to be achieved, and below which only oblivion awaited. News of the British-led expedition"s triumph on May 29th 1953 reached the world through a report in the London Times four days later. The Times, a sponsor of the expedition, had used an elaborate code to trick any rivals monitoring the radio waves. Its scoop was indeed a coup: June 2nd was the day of Queen Elizabeth"s coronation, at which her majesty was crowned. Sir Edmund was a man of action. After Everest came more expeditions in Nepal, a race to the South Pole and further adventures in the Antarctic, the Himalayas and India But for some onlookers neither these nor even the Everest expedition was especially remarkable: fitness and physical courage are all very well, they argued, but the world"s highest peak was simply waiting to be scaled, and a steady traffic nowadays makes its way to the top unnoticed, except for the litter it leaves. Both the indifferent and the awe-struck, however, agree that Sir Edmund"s other life was wholly admirable, and he himself said he was prouder of it than of anything else. This was his tireless work for the Sherpas, of whom he had become so fond. Through his efforts, and those of Tenzing, hospitals, clinics, bridges, runways and nearly 30 schools have been built in the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal just south of Everest. If New Zealand claimed Sir Edmund"s loyalty, Nepal, and especially its Sherpas, could surely claim his heart.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Students apply to college online, e-mail their papers to their professors and, when they want to be cheeky, pass notes in class by text-messaging. But that doesn"t necessarily mean they have a high Internet IQ. 【C1】______ Or as Lorie Roth, assistant vice chancellor of academic programs at California State University puts it: "Every single one that comes through the door thinks that if you just go to Google and get some hits— you"ve got material for your research paper right there. " That"s why Cal State and a number of other colleges are working with ETS to create a test to evaluate Internet intelligence, measuring whether students can locate and verify reliable online information and whether they know how to properly use and credit the material. 【C2】______"If you don"t come to the university with it, you need to know that you are lacking some skills that educated people are expected to have. " A preliminary version of the new test, the Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment, was given to 3,300 Cal State students this spring to see how well it works, i. e. testing the test. 【C3】______ Next year, the test is expected to be available for students to take on a voluntary basis. Cal State is the lead institution in a consortium which includes UCLA, the University of Louisville, the California Community College System, the University of North Alabama, the University of Texas System and the University of Washington. Some of the institutions involved are considering using the test on incoming students to see if they need remedial classes, says Egan, ETS" project manager for the Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment. 【C4】______ Robert Jimenez, a student at Cal State-Fullerton who took the prototype test this spring, gives it a passing grade. " It was pretty good in that it allowed us to go ahead and think through real-life problems. " 【C5】______So, a question on bee sting remedies presents a choice of sites ranging from ads to a forum for herb treatments to(the correct answer)a listing from the National Institutes of Health, identifiable by having "nih" in the URL(site address)along with the ". gov" suffix that connotes an official government listing. High tech has been a fixture of higher ed for some years. A 2002 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 79 percent of college Internet users thought the Internet had a positive impact on their academic experience. More than 70 percent used the Internet more than the library and 56 percent said e-mail improved their relationships with professors. [A]Sample questions include giving students a simulated page of Web search results on a particular subject and asking students to pick the legitimate sources. [B]Individual scores aren"t being tallied but campuses will be getting aggregate reports. [C]Which doesn"t necessarily mean they all "suddenly become fabulous information evaluators and seekers, but it gives them a little bit of an idea that this isn" t something that" s apart from learning". [D]"This test measures a skill as important as having mathematics and English skills when you come to the university," says Roth. [E]Other schools are thinking about giving the test as a follow up to communications courses to gauge curricula efficiency. [F]"They"re real comfortable instant-messaging, downloading MP3 files. They"re less comfortable using technology in ways that require real critical thinking," says Teresa Egan of the Educational Testing Service. [G]Roth notes that the bulk of the assessment focuses on critical thinking skills, being able to analyze the legitimacy of Web sites, and knowing the difference between properly cited research and plagiarism, things that "haven"t changed very much since I enrolled in college in 1969".

The idea of humanoid robots is not new, of course. They have been part of the imaginative landscape ever since Karl Capek, a Czech writer, first dreamed them up for his 1921 play "Rossum"s Universal Robots". (The word "robot" comes from the Czech word for drudgery, robota.) Since then, Hollywood has produced countless variations on the theme, from the sultry False Maria in Fritz Lang"s silent masterpiece "Metropolis" to the wittering C-3PO in "Star Wars" and the ruthless assassin of "Terminator". Humanoid robots have walked into our collective subconscious, colouring our views of the future. But now Japan"s industrial giants are spending billions of yen to make such robots a reality. Their new humanoids represent impressive feats of engineering: when Honda introduced Asimo, a four-foot robot that had been in development for some 15 years, it walked so fluidly that its white, articulated exterior seemed to conceal a human. Honda continues to make the machine faster, friendlier and more agile. Last October, when Asimo was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, it walked on to the stage and accepted its own plaque. At two and a half feet tall, Sony"s QRIO is smaller and more toy-like than Asimo. It walks, understands a small number of voice commands, and can navigate on its own. If it falls over, it gets up and resumes where it left off. It can even connect wirelessly to the Internet and broadcast what its camera eyes can see. In 2003, Sony demonstrated an upgraded QRIO that could run. Honda responded last December with a version of Asimo that runs at twice the speed. In 2004, Toyota joined the fray with its own family of robots, called Partner, one of which is a four-foot humanoid that plays the trumpet. Its fingers work the instrument"s valves, and it has mechanical lungs and artificial lips. Toyota hopes to offer a commercial version of the robot by 2010. This month, 50 Partner robots will act as guides at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Despite their sudden proliferation, however, humanoids are still a mechanical minority. Most of the world"s robots are faceless, footless and mute. They are bolted to the floors of factories, stamping out car parts or welding pieces of metal, machines making more machines. According to the United Nations, business orders for industrial robots jumped 18% in the first half of 2004. They may soon be outnumbered by domestic robots, such as self-navigating vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers and window washers, which are selling fast. But neither industrial nor domestic robots are humanoid.

The use of heat pumps has been held back largely by skepticism about advertisers" claims that heat pumps can provide as many as units of thermal energy for each unit of electrical energy used, thus apparently contradicting the principle of energy conservation. Heat pumps circulate a fluid refrigerant that cycles alternatively from its liquid phase to its vapor phase in a closed loop. The refrigerant, starting as a low-temperature, low-pressure vapor, enters compressor driven by an electric motor. The refrigerant leaves the compressor as a hot, dense vapor and flows through a heat exchanger called the condenser, which transfers heat from the refrigerant to a body or air. Now the refrigerant, as a high-pressure, cooled liquid, confronts a flow restriction which causes the pressure to drop. As the pressure falls, the refrigerant expands and partially vaporizes, becoming chilled. It then passes through a second heat exchanger, the evaporator, which transfers heat from the air to the refrigerant, reducing the temperature of this second body of air. Of the two heat exchangers, one is located inside, and the other one outside the house, so each is in contact with a different body of air: room air and outside air, respectively. The flow direction of refrigerant through a heat pump is controlled by valves. When the refrigerant flow is reversed, the heat exchangers switch function. This flow-reversal capability allows heat pumps—either to heat or cool room air. Now, if under certain conditions a heat pump puts out more thermal energy than it consumes in electrical energy, has the law of energy conservation been challenged? No, not even remotely: the additional input of thermal energy into the circulating refrigerant via the evaporator accounts for the difference in the energy equation. Unfortunately, there is one real problem. The heating capacity of a heat pump decreases as the outdoor temperature falls. The drop in capacity is caused by the lessening amount of refrigerant mass moved through the compressor at one time. The heating capacity is proportional to this mass flow rate: the less the mass of refrigerant being compressed, the less the thermal load it can transfer through the heat-pump cycle. The volume flow rate of refrigerant vapor through the single-speed rotary compressor used in heat pumps is approximately constant. But cold refrigerant vapor entering a compressor is at lower pressure than warmer vapor. Therefore, the mass of cold refrigerant—and thus the thermal energy it carries—is less than if the refrigerant vapor were warmer before compression. Here, then, lies a genuine drawback of heat pumps: in extremely cold climates—where the most heat is needed—heat pumps are least able to supply enough heat.

【F1】 Most people know that awkward feeling when you shuffle into an elevator with other people and try not to make eye contact. 【F2】 But new research suggests it may be down to a subconscious power struggle being played out as you make your way up or down. A study found that people decide where they stand based on a micro social hierarchy, established within seconds of entering the lift. Rebekah Rousi, a Ph.D. student in cognitive science, conducted an ethnographic study of elevator behaviour in two of the tallest office buildings in Adelaide, Australia.【F3】 As part of her research, she took a total of 30 lift rides in the two buildings, and discovered there was an established order to where people tended stand. In a blog for Ethnography Matters, she writes that more senior men seemed to direct themselves towards the back of the elevator cabins. She said, "In front of them were younger men, and in front of them were women of all ages." She also noticed there was a difference in where people directed their gaze half way through the ride.【F4】 "Men watched the monitors, looked in the side mirrors(in one building)to see themselves, and in the door mirrors(of the other building)to also watch others. Women would watch the monitors and avoid eye contact with other users(unless in conversation)and the mirrors." She writes. 【F5】 The doctorate student concluded it could be that people who are shyer stand toward the front, where they can't see other passengers, whereas bolder people stand in the back, where they have a view of everyone else.

You have arranged tea party and have invited your friend Tom/Mary. But now you have something urgent and you have to put the tea party off and set a new date. Then you have to write a note to Tom/Mary to apologize and arrange another date. Imagine some details about the reason and the new arrangement. Write your note in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter; use" Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Studythefollowinggraphcarefullyandwriteanessayinabout200words.Youressayshouldcoveralltheinformationprovidedandmeettherequirementsbelow:1)interpretthefollowinggraph.2)possiblereasonsforthephenomenon.3)yourcomments.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Manufacturers of everything from running shoes to deodorants, a substance to remove unpleasant odors, design products specifically for women. One of the latest entries: the first artificial joint created for—and heavily advertised to— females. Doctors say it"s too soon to tell whether the Gender Knee represents a giant leap for womankind or if it gives its maker, Zimmer Holdings Inc., a leg up in the market. In the case of the knees, according to Zimmer, here"s how men and women are different: First, the kneecap, is thinner in women. Also, women"s wider hips create a different angle between the knee and pelvis—the wide, curved group of bones at the level of hips, which can mean the kneecap gets pulled to the side when the muscles contract. And the end of the thighbone is typically narrower in men. Most artificial knees were modeled on the male anatomy—which may explain why knee replacements in women aren"t as successful when measured by reported pain and do-over rates. But will the new(and more expensive)replacement actually serve women better? "In theory, yes, but the evidence isn"t there," says Kimberly Templeton, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery(prevention or correction of disorders of the bones and associated muscles and joints)at the University of Kansas Medical Center and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. Sheryl Conley, Zimmer"s chief marketing officer, says seven studies now underway will look at patient satisfaction and range of motion. Preliminary data will be available in a year or so. Anatomical differences aside, Templeton says, replacement knees may not perform well in women in part because females tend to delay surgery—sometimes until they"re bound to the house by disability. In addition, it"s not clear that the manufacturer"s specialized design will translate to less pain, says Steven Haas, an orthopedic surgeon and chief of the knee service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. For example, making the front of the replacement knee thinner by one twenty-fifth of an inch won"t necessarily make a noticeable difference to recipients. Having a correctly fitted device is clearly important, says Haas, who notes that other companies have modified their smaller knees to account for gender differences in anatomy.(Haas has consulted with Smith & Nephew, a rival to Zimmer.) More important, says Haas, is to find a skillful surgeon. Differences between implants, he argues, are relatively minor compared to the technique of the surgeon putting them in.

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

BSection III Writing/B

Picture-taking is a technique both for reflecting the objective world and for expressing the singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer"s temperament, discovering itself through the camera"s cropping of reality. That is, photography has two directly opposite ideals: in the first, photography is about the world and the photographer is a mere observer who counts for little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of fearlessness, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all. These conflicting ideals arise from uneasiness on the part of both photographers and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in "taking" a picture. Accordingly, the ideal of a photographer as observer is attracting because it implicitly denies that picture-taking is an aggressive act. The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and championed. An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward photography"s means. Whatever are the claims that photography might make to be a form of personal expression just like painting, its originality is closely linked to the power of a machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton"s high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke. But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to the limit imposed by pre-modern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including Walker Evans and Cartier Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment. These photographers have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of "fast seeing". Cartier Bresson, in fact, claims that the modern camera may see too fast. This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future (of faster and faster seeing) alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past when images had a handmade quality. This longing for some primitive state of the photographic enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes and the work of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness.Notes:crop vt.播种，修剪(树木),收割。count for little 无关紧要。predatory 掠夺成性的。champion n.冠军; vt.支持。benevolent 好心肠的，行善的。ambivalence 矛盾心理。make (+不定式)似乎要：He makes to begin. (他似乎要开始了)。swirls and eddies 漩涡。cult 狂热崇拜。daguerreotype 银板照相法。

"Poverty", wrote Aristotle, "is the parent of crime." But was he right? Certainly, poverty and crime are【C1】______. And the idea that a lack of income might drive someone to【C2】______sounds plausible. But research by Amir Sari-aslan casts【C3】______on the chain of causation— at least as far as violent crime and the misuse of【C4】______are concerned. Sariaslan consulted the【C5】______collected by Scandinavian governments which contained information about people"s annual family incomes and criminal【C6】______. In Sweden the age of criminal responsibility is 15, so Sariaslan【C7】______his subjects from the dates of their 15th birthdays【C8】______, for an average of three-and-a-half years. When he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, the younger children—those born into relative【C9】______—were just as likely to misbehave as the elder children. Family income was, in itself not the【C10】______factor. That suggests two【C11】______. One is that a family"s culture, once established, is "【C12】______"— that you can take the kid out of the neighborhood,【C13】______not the neighborhood out of the kid.【C14】______children"s inclination to imitate elder brothers or sisters whom they admire, that sounds【C15】______plausible. The other is that genes which make them susceptible to criminal behavior are common at the【C16】______of society, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control also tends to reduce someone"s earning capacity. Neither of these conclusions is likely to be welcome to【C17】______reformers. They suggest that merely【C18】______people"s incomes will not by itself address questions of bad behavior. Such conclusions will need to be【C19】______by others. If they are confirmed, the fact that they are【C20】______will be no excuse for ignoring them.

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, was supposed to transform American health insurance. Critics have long feared that it would do much more. Republicans have cast Obamacare as a job-killing, economy-crushing villain. On February 4th they appeared to get more ammunition from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO, as part of its projection of economic growth over the next decade, estimates that Obamacare will lower full-time employment by 2.3m in 2021, compared with what might have been without reform, and by 2.5m in 2025. The main reason is not that firms are already slashing jobs to avoid the burden the law imposes, as Republicans have complained, but that Americans will choose to work less. The insight that Obamacare would lower the supply of labour is not new, but the magnitude of the CBO's estimate is—the 2.3m drop in 2021 is nearly three times larger than the CBO's earlier projection. Many factors account for the decline. Chief among them is the effect of subsidies for health insurance. To help Americans buy coverage on new health "exchanges", Obamacare offers tax credits to those earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line (about $11,500 to $46,000 for a single adult). Those tax credits are offered on a sliding scale, by income, so workers in effect pay a higher tax rate as their wages rise. This may dissuade them from trying to earn more. The White House, mining the report for good news, argued that Obamacare liberates American workers. "At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams," the White House press secretary said in a statement. "This CBO report bears that out." The supply-side effects are not all bad. Some Americans, no longer tied to their employer-provided insurance, may feel freer to take better jobs or start their own businesses. But this effect is unlikely to offset the ranks of people who choose to work less, or not at all. And although leisure is often agreeable, does America really want to encourage its citizens to put their feet up?

When one of his employees phoned in sick last year, Scott McDonald, CEO of Monument Security in Sacramento, California,, decided to investigate. He had already informed his staff of 400 security guards and patrol drivers that he was installing Xora, a software program that tracks workers" whereabouts through GPS technology on their company cell phones. A Web-based "geo-fence" aroundwork territories would alert the boss if workers strayed or even drove too fast. It also enabled him to route workers more efficiently. So when McDonald logged on, the program told him exactly where his worker was—and it wasn"t in bed with the sniffles. "How come you"re eastbound on 80 heading to Reno right now if you"re sick?" asked the boss. There was a long silence—the sound of a job ending— followed by, "You got me." Learn that truth, and learn it well: what you do at work is the boss"s business. Xora is just one of the new technologies from a host of companies that have sprung up in the past two years peddling products and services—software, GPS, video and phone surveillance, even investigators—that let managers get to know you really well. "Virtually nothing you do at work on a computer can"t be monitored," says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, which advocates workplace privacy. Nine out of 10 employers observe your electronic behavior, according to the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College. A study by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found 76% of employers watch you surf the Web and 36% track content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. You can"t really blame companies for watching our Web habits, since 45% of us admit that surfing is our favorite time waster, according to a joint survey by Salary.com and AOL. A Northeast technology company found that several employees who frequently complained of overwork spent all day on MySpace.com. Businesses argue that their snooping is justified. Not only are they trying to guard trade secrets and intellectual property, but they also must ensure that workers comply with government regulations, such as keeping medical records and credit-card numbers private. And companies are liable for allowing a hostile work environment—say, one filled with porn-filled computer screens—that may lead to lawsuits. "People write very loosely with their e-mails, but they can unintentionally reach thousands, like posters throughout a work site," says Charles Spearman of diversity-management consultants Tucker Spearman & Associates. "In an investigation, that e-mail can be one of the most persuasive pieces of evidence."

Browse through the racks of dresses, skirts, and tops in almost any trendy clothing store in fashion-savvy Argentina, and whether you find something that fits depends on your size. But shops carry few—if any—options for curvaceous women. When you go into a store and find an extra large, you know that it is really the equivalent of a medium or even a small based on American standards. You feel frustrated bemuse you start to think that everybody is like this, and that you are big. But that"s not true. In this beauty-conscious nation, which has the world"s second-highest rate of anorexia, many are partially blarning the country"s clothing industry for offering only tiny sizes of the latest fashions. The result is a dangerous paradox of girls and women adapting to the clothes rather than clothes adapting to them. The Argentine legislature is considering whether to force clothing manufacturers to cover "all the anthropometric measurements of the Argentine woman" up to extra large size. The bill also ad dresses the related problem of so-called "tricky" labeling in which S, M, and L designations vary by brand and are smaller than international standards. The proposal has raised eyebrows in a historically flirtatious society skeptical of government and well known for its obsession with beauty. "Argentina has the world"s highest rates of aesthetic surgery," says Mabel Bello, founder of the Association for the Fight Against Anorexia. "When you axe talking about how preoccupied with beauty our society is, that is the most telling statistic." For experts such statistics spell futility for legal remedies. "These types of laws are not going to cause lasting changes," says Susana Saulquin, a sociologist of fashion. "A better way to address the problem is through public education that emphasizes balanced eating habits over an unrealistic ideal of beauty." Currently, companies try to preserve brand image by catering to young and extremely thin customers, but over time, she believes, a more balanced view of beauty will emerge. For their part, industry groups condemn the bill as overreaching state intervening. They say their business decisions are guided by consumer demand. "We are not in favor of anything that regulates the market," says Laura Codda, a representative of major clothing manufacturers. "Every clothing company has the right to make anything they can sell—any color, any sizes." She says her group is not op posed to measures that would standardize sizing, but she notes that many, if not most, clothes in Argentine stores already carry the numerical designations called for in the hill. If history is a guide, the fate of the proposed law is somewhat bleak. However, in 2005, the provincial government of Buenos Aires managed to pass a similar law—although the governor failed to sign it.

This question is less difficult than that question.

EnergyCrisisWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Europe's biggest countries were once among the biggest anywhere. In 1950, four of the world's ten most 【C1】______ states were in western Europe. But decades of falling birth rates have 【C2】______ slow population growth in Europe. By 2017, Europe's most populous country【C3】______ just 16th globally. The continent's birth rate is now so low that the total population in many European countries has begun to 【C4】______. One solution is to attract foreigners. Eurostat said that the region's population rose in 2016【C5】______ immigration. The number of births and deaths were equal at 5.1m, while net migration 【C6】______ the population to 511.8m. In 13 【C7】______ its 28 member countries, more people died than were born last year. 【C8】______ not all saw their populations fall. A large intake of migrants to Germany meant that populations there still 【C9】______ grow. By 2050, Eurostat estimates that only Ireland, France, Norway and Britain would see their populations rise 【C10】______ migration. 【C11】______ , Germany and Italy need migrants badly. 【C12】______migration does continue, Eurostat's central forecast 【C13】______ that Germany will still only maintain its current population. Even 【C14】______ migration at current levels is unlikely to prevent most eastern and Mediterranean countries 【C15】______ shrinking. The former group has been losing people 【C16】______ the break-up of the Soviet Union. 【C17】______ those countries joined the EU, large shares of their populations emigrated to richer EU member countries to work. For those who leave, the freedom to live and work is an immense boon. But the countries 【C18】______ they were raised face a hard task. They must attract and 【C19】______ new workers, increase their birth rates, or learn to 【C20】______ a declining population.