It might take only the touch of peach fuzz to make an autistic child howl in pain. The odour of the fruit could be so overpowering that he gags. For reasons that are not well understood, people with autism do not integrate all of their senses in ways that help them understand properly what they are experiencing. By the age of three, the signs of autism—infrequent eye contact, over-sensitivity or under-sensitivity to the environment, difficulty mixing with others are in full force. There is no cure; intense behavioural therapies serve only to lessen the symptoms. The origins of autism are obscure. But a paper in Brain, a specialist journal, casts some light. A team headed by Marcel Just, of Carnegie Mellon University, and Nancy Minshew, of the University of Pittsburgh, has found evidence of how the brains of people with autism function differently from those without the disorder. Using a brain-scanning technique called functional magnetic-resonance imaging(FMRI), Dr. Just, Dr. Minshew and their team compared the brain activity of young adults who had "high functioning" autism (in which an autist"s IQ score is normal) with that of non-autistic participants. The experiment was designed to examine two regions of the brain known to be associated with language—Broca"s area and Wernicke"s area—when the participants were reading. Three differences emerged. First, Wernicke"s area, the part responsible for understanding individual words, was more active in autists than non-autists. Second, Broca"s area—where the components of language are integrated to produce meaning—was less active. Third, the activity of the two areas was less synchronised. This research has led Dr. Just to offer an explanation for autism, lie calls it "underconnectivity theory". It depends on a recent body of work which suggests that the brain"s white matter (the wiring that connects the main Bodies of the nerve ceils, or grey matter, together) is less dense and less abundant in the brain of an autistic person than in that of a non-autist. Dr. Just suggests that abnormal white matter causes the grey matter to adapt to the resulting lack of communication. This hones some regions to levels of superior ability, while others fall by the wayside. The team chose to examine Broca"s and Wernieke"s areas because language-based experiments are easy to conduct. But if the underconnectivity theory applies to the rest of the brain, too, it would be less of a mystery why some people with autism are hypersensitive to their environments, and others are able to do certain tasks, such as arithmetic, so well. And if it is true that underconnectivity is indeed the main problem, then treatments might be developed to stimulate the growth of the white-matter wiring.

(46) The English language is being destroyed by a "deadly virus of management-speak" which has infected the mouths and minds of politicians like Tony Blair and George W. Bush, a leading UK journalist said recently. The British Prime Minister and his ally the U.S. President are mangling the language, destroying its meaning by avoiding the use of verbs, twisting nouns into verbs, and endlessly repeating phrases until they become "zombified". "It"s deeply depressing," says John Humphrys, one of Britain"s leading political journalists and the author of a new book "Lost for Words". Humphys" book laments the growth of "clichéd, dumbed-down, inflated and bogus management-speak" which he says now passes for English. (47) In particular he criticizes political leaders for being sucked into using meaningless phrases and unimaginative words to disguise policies or protect themselves from responsibility. Humphrys has been a journalist for 45 years and in his current post as a presenter on BBC radio"s news and current affairs program "Today," he regularly interviews world leaders. "The whole essence of a good lively democracy is that one has good lively argument," he told reporters in an interview. "But this kind of language kills real debate." (48) "And nobody is prepared to stand up and say: "what does that mean?" Because the assumption is made that if you don"t know what it means then there is something wrong with you." (49) Humphrys says the original wrongdoers in the destruction of English are "business leaders who are trying to sell their own particular theories and have invented their own ridiculous phrases and vocabulary to accompany those theories." But for him the more sinister development is that such language has taken root in political discourse. Humphrys picks on Bush—who once famously used the word "misunderestimate"—and pokes fun at him as someone who "often speaks as though English were his second language." (50) He also labels the U.S. leader a "master of the language of political manipulation" and accuses him of sweeping aside all the nuances of notions like freedom, truth and democracy. And instead he fires the words out like "dum-dum bullets." Blair, too, is singled out as a king of language corruption. Humphrys notes Blair"s apparent fear of verbs and mocks in his speeches, which are peppered with verbless phrases like "new challenges, new ideas," or "for our young people, a brighter future" and "the age of achievement, at home and abroad." By using this technique, Humphrys says, Blair is simply evading responsibility.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. Choose the most suitable one from the list A—G into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. If you think you can make the planet better by clever shopping, think again. You might make it worse. You probably go shopping several times a month, providing yourself with lots of opportunities to express your opinions. If you are worried about the environment, you might buy organic food; if you want to help poor farmers, you can do your bit by buying Fairtrade products; or you can express a dislike of evil multinational companies and rampant globalization by buying only local produce. And the best bit is that shopping, unlike voting, is fun; so you can do good and enjoy yourself at the same time. Sadly, it"s not that easy. (41)______. People who want to make the world a better place cannot do so by shifting their shopping habits: transforming the planet requires duller disciplines, like politics. Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilisers, is generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all depends on what you mean by "environmentally friendly". Farming is inherently bad for the environment: since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. (42)______. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive. So producing the world"s current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn"t be much room left for the rainforest. Fairtrade food is designed to raise poor farmers" incomes. It is sold at a higher price than ordinary food, with a subsidy passed back to the farmer. But prices of agricultural commodities are low because of overproduction, (43)______. Surely the case for local food, produced as close as possible to the consumer in order to minimise "food miles" and, by extension, carbon emissions, is clear? Surprisingly, it is not. A study of Britain"s food system found that nearly half of food-vehicle miles (i.e., miles travelled by vehicles carrying food) were driven by cars going to and from the shops. Most people live closer to a supermarket than a farmer"s market, so more local food could mean more food-vehicle miles. Moving food around in big, carefully packed lorries, as supermarkets do, may in fact be the most efficient way to transport the stuff What"s more, once the energy used in production as well as transport is taken into account, local food may turn out to be even less green. (44)______. And the local-food movement"s aims, of course, contradict those of the Fairtrade movement, by discouraging rich-country consumers from buying poor-country produce. But since the local-food movement looks suspiciously like old-fashioned protectionism masquerading as concern for the environment, helping poor countries is presumably not the point. (45)______. The problems lie in the means, not the ends. The best thing about the spread of the ethical-food movement is that it offers grounds for hope. It sends a signal that there is an enormous appetite for change and widespread frustration that governments are not doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage development.A. The aims of much of the ethical-food movement—to protect the environment, to encourage development and to redress the distortions in global trade—are admirable.B. By maintaining the price, the Fairtrade system encourages farmers to produce more of these commodities rather than diversifying into other crops and so depresses prices—thus achieving, for most farmers, exactly the opposite of what the initiative is intended to do.C. Proper free trade would be by far the best way to help poor farmers. Taxing carbon would price the cost of emissions into the price of goods, and retailers would then have an incentive to source locally if it saved energy.D. There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about three of the most popular varieties of "ethical" food: organic food, Fairtrade food and local food.E. But following the "green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation.F. And since only a small fraction of the mark-up on Fairtrade foods actually goes to the farmer—most goes to the retailer-the system gives rich consumers an inflated impression of their largesse and makes alleviating poverty seem too easy.G. Producing lamb in New Zealand and shipping it to Britain uses less energy than producing British lamb, because fanning in New Zealand is less energy-intensive.

To paraphrase 18th-century statesman Edmund Burke, "all that is needed for the triumph of a misguided cause is that good people do nothing". One such cause now seeks to end biomedical research because of the theory that animals have rights ruling out their use in research. Scientists need to respond forcefully to animal rights advocates, whose arguments are confusing the public and thereby threatening advances in health knowledge and care. Leaders of the animal rights movement target biomedical research because it depends on public funding, and few people understand the process of health care research. Hearing allegations of cruelty to animals in research settings, many are perplexed that anyone would deliberately harm an animal. For example, a grandmotherly woman staffing an animal rights booth at a recent street fair was distributing a brochure that encouraged readers not to use anything that comes from or is tested in animals—no meat, no fur, no medicines. Asked if she opposed immunizations, she wanted to know if vaccines come from animal research. When assured that they do, she replied, "Then I would have to say yes." Asked what will happen when epidemics return, she said, "Don't worry, scientists will find some way of using computers." Such well-meaning people just don't understand. Scientists must communicate their message to the public in a compassionate, understandable way—in human terms, not in the language of molecular biology. We need to make clear the connection between animal research and a grandmother' s hip replacement, a father' s bypass operation, a baby' s vaccinations, and even a pet' s shots. To those who are unaware that animal research was needed to produce these treatments , as well as new treatments and vaccines, animal research seems wasteful at best and cruel at worst. Much can be done. Scientists could "adopt" middle school classes and present their own research. They should be quick to respond to letters to the editor, lest animal rights misinformation go unchallenged and acquire a deceptive appearance of truth. Research institutions could be opened to tours, to show that laboratory animals receive humane care. Finally, because the ultimate stakeholders are patients, the health research community should actively recruit to its cause not only well-known personalities such as Stephen Cooper, who has made courageous statements about the value of animal research, but all who receive medical treatment. If good people do nothing there is a real possibility that an uninformed citizenry will extinguish the precious embers of medical progress.

In the past few decades, remarkable findings have been made in ethology, the study of animal social behavior. Earlier scientists had【C1】______that nonhuman social life was almost totally instinctive or fixed by genetics. Much more careful observation has shown that【C2】______variation occurs among the social ties of most species, showing that learning is a part of social life. That is, the【C3】______are not solely fixed by the genes. 【C4】______, the learning that occurs is often at an early age in a process that is called imprinting. Imprinting is clearly【C5】______ instinctive, but it is not quite like the learning of humans; it is something in between the two. An illustration best【C6】______the nature of imprinting. Once, biologists thought that ducklings followed the mother duck because of instincts. Now we know that, shortly【C7】______they hatch, ducklings fix【C8】______any object about the size of a duck and will henceforth follow it. So ducklings may follow a basketball or a briefcase if these are【C9】______for the mother duck at the time when imprinting occurs. Thus, social ties can be considerably【C10】______, even ones that have a considerable base【C11】______by genetics. Even among the social insects something like imprinting【C12】______influence social behavior. For example, biologists once thought bees communicated with others purely【C13】______instinct. But, in examining a "dance" that bees do to indicate the distance and direction of a pollen source, observers found that bees raised in isolation could not communicate effectively. At a higher level, the genetic base seems to be much more for an all purpose learning rather than the more specific responses of imprinting. Chimpanzees, for instance, generally【C14】______very good mother but Jane Goodall reports that some chimps carry the infant upside down or 【C15】______fail to nurture the young. She believes that these females were the youngest or the【C16】______child of a mother. In such circumstances, they did not have the opportunity to observe how their own mother 【C17】______for her young. Certainly adolescent chimps who are still with their mothers when other young are born take much interest in the rearing of their young brother or sister. They have an excellent opportunity to learn, and the social ties that are created between mother and young【C18】______Goodall to describe the social unit as a family. The mother offspring tie is beyond【C19】______; there is some evidence to【C20】______that ties also continue between siblings of the same sex, that is "brother-brother" and "sister-sister".

Comparisons were drawn between the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened【C1】______As was discussed before, it was not【C2】______the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic【C3】______, following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the【C4】______of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution【C5】______up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading【C6】______through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures【C7】______the 20th-century world of the motor car and the airplane. Not everyone sees that process in【C8】______. It is important to do so. It is generally recognized,【C9】______, that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century,【C10】______by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process,【C11】______its impact on the media was not immediately【C12】______. As time went by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became "personal" too, as well as【C13】______, with display becoming sharper and storage【C14】______increasing. They were thought of, like people,【C15】______generations, with the distance between generations much【C16】______. It was within the computer age that the term "information society" began to be widely used to describe the【C17】______within which we now live. The communications revolution has【C18】______both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and time, but there have been【C19】______views about its economic, political, social and cultural implications. "Benefits" have been weighed【C20】______"harmful" outcomes. And generalizations have proved difficult.

It was just a footnote compared with the more infectious disaster that killed millions more people in 1918, but the 1957 influenza pandemic that sickened some 25 to 30 percent of the American population was a medical watershed for the clues that it offered about how a new strain of influenza could spread. Americans first got a whiff of the so-called Asian flu when Maurice Hilleman, aphysician at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., read about an unusually large number of people-some 250,000—who had come down with flu-like symptoms in Hong Kong. Concerned, he immediately requested samples from American servicemen in Asia and within days had his answer. The genetic structure of this strain was like nothing immunologists had ever seen before. When the virus finally hit America: "It went like a house on fire," recallsD.A Henderson, then the chief of the United States Epidemic Intelligence Service. Worsened by school openings that fall, the flu spread so rapidly from a few counties in Louisiana that just eight weeks later it had heavily infected more than half the counties in nearly all 50 states. Although it wasn"t particularly potent, the 1957 strain killed about 80,000 Americans. The victims were predominantly the very old and the very young, although the infection occasionally killed otherwise healthy adults as well. Pharmaceutical companies worked furiously to produce a vaccine, ultimately distributing some 40 million doses. But "they were just a little bit too late," says Arnold Monto, an influenza specialist at the University of Michigan. "They only had significant doses available when the pandemic was peaking." Earlier, scarcities raised questions about who deserved the vaccine first.A set of official rules gave priority to military personnel and necessary civic workers, but that didn"t stop members of the San Francisco 49ers football team from getting vaccinated before police and firemen. Despite some manufacturing improvements, experts say the same shortages could occur with a pandemic today. And that concern has caused preparedness officials to plan for community interventions such as school closings and isolation of sick people. But Henderson says, "It won"t work. And you don"t need a better example than "57. When you go from just a few scattered outbreaks in the end of August to the whole country infected in eight weeks, at a time when people didn"t travel as much as they do today and cities were not as densely populated, what do you think we"re going to see today?" Better, he says, to have good vaccines and to ensure that the medical system can handle the extra load.

For more than 40 years, a controlling insight in my educational philosophy has been the recognition that no one has ever been—no one can be—educated in school or college. (46) That would be the case if our schools and colleges were at their very best, which they certainly are not, and even if the students were among the best and the brightest as well as conscientious in the application of their powers. The reason is simply that youth itself—immaturity—is an unconquerable obstacle to becoming educated. Schooling is for the young. Education comes later, usually much later. (47) The very best thing for our schools to do is to prepare the young for continued learning in later life by giving them the skills of learning and the love of it. Our schools and colleges are not doing that now, but that is what they should be doing. (48) To speak of an educated young person or of a wise young person, rich in the understanding of basic ideas and issues is as much a contradiction in terms as to speak of a round square. The young can be prepared for education in the years to come, but only mature men and women can become educated, beginning the process of their 40s and 50s and reaching some amount of genuine insight, sound judgment and practical wisdom after they have turned 60. This is what no high school or college graduates know or can understand. As a matter of fact, most of their teachers do not seem to know it. (49) In their obsession with covering ground and in the way in which they test or examine their students, they certainly do not act as if they understood that they were only preparing their students for education in later life rather than trying to complete it within the realms of their institutions. There is, of course, some truth in the ancient insight that awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. But, remember, it is just the beginning. From there on one has to do something about it. (50) And to do it intelligently one must know something of its muses and cures—why adults need education and what, if anything, they can do about it.

GreenhouseFlowersCan'tStandtheWindandRainStudythedrawingscarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words.Youshould1)describethedrawings,interpretitsmeaning,and2)pointoutitsimplicationsinourlife.

Islamic law is a particularly instructive example of "sacred law". Islamic law is a phenomenon so different from all other forms of law notwithstanding, of course, a considerable and inevitable number of coincidences with one or the other of them as far as subject matter and positive enactments are concerned that its study is indispensable in order to appreciate adequately the full range of possible legal phenomena.【F1】 Even the two other representatives of sacred law that are historically and geographically nearest to it, Jewish law and Roman Catholic canon law, are perceptibly different. Both Jewish law and canon law are more uniform than Islamic law. Though historically there is a discernible break between Jewish law of the sovereign state of ancient Israel and of the Diaspora(the dispersion of Jewish people after the conquest of Israel), the spirit of the legal matter in later parts of the Old Testament is very close to that of the Talmud, one of the primary codifications of Jewish law in the Diaspora. Islam, on the other hand, represented a radical breakaway from the Arab paganism that preceded it; Islamic law is the result of an examination, from a religious angle, of legal subject matter that was far from uniform, comprising as it did the various components of the laws of pre Islamic Arabia and numerous legal elements taken over from the non-Arab peoples of the conquered territories.【F2】 All this was unified by being subjected to the same kind of religious scrutiny, the impact of which varied greatly, being almost nonexistent in some fields, and in others originating novel institutions. 【F3】 This central duality of legal subject matter and religious norm is additional to the variety of legal ethical and ritual rules that is typical of sacred law. In its relation to the secular state, Islamic law differed from both Jewish and canon law.【F4】 Jewish law was buttressed by the cohesion of the community, reinforced by pressure from outside: its rules are the direct expression of this feeling of cohesion, tending toward the accommodation of dissent. Canon and Islamic law, on the contrary, were dominated by the dualism of religion and state, where the state was not, in contrast with Judaism, an alien power but the political expression of the same religion. But the conflict between state and religion took different forms; in Christianity it appeared as the struggle for political power on the part of a tightly organized ecclesiastical hierarchy, and canon law was one of its political weapons. Islamic law, on the other hand, was never supported by any organized institution; consequently there never developed an overt trial of strength.【F5】 There merely existed discordance between application of the sacred law and many of the regulations framed by Islamic states; this antagonism varied according to place and time.

My Space and other Web sites have unleashed a potent new phenomenon of social networking in cyberspace,【1】at the same time, a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social【2】play a surprisingly powerful and under-recognized role in influencing how people behave. The latest research comes from Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, at the Harvard Medical School, and Dr. James H. Fowler, at the University of California at San Diego. The【3】reported last summer that obesity appeared to【4】from one person to another【5】social networks, almost like a virus or a fad. In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced【6】findings about another major health【7】: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person"s decision to【8】the habit is strongly affected by【9】other people in their social network quit—even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually【10】. For【11】of their studies, they【12】of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass. , many of the participants were【13】somehow—through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers—enabling the researchers to study a network that【14】12,067 people. Taken together, these studies are【15】a growing recognition that many behaviors are【16】by social networks in【17】that have not been fully understood. And【18】may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many【19】, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even【20】crime.

Some people are friendly drunks, whereas others are hostile, potentially posing a danger to themselves and others. The difference may【C1】______in their ability to foresee the consequences of their actions, according to a recent study-Brad Bushman, a psychologist at Ohio State University, and his colleagues asked nearly 500 volunteers to play a simple game. The subjects, an even mix of women and men, believed they were【C2】______against an opponent to press a button as quickly as possible. In【C3】______, they were simply using a computer program that randomly decided【C4】______they had won or lost When they lost, they【C5】______a shock. When the "opponent" lost, the participant gave the shock and chose how long and【C6】______it should be. 【C7】______playing, the participants completed a survey designed to【C8】______their general concern for the【C9】______consequences of their actions. Half the participants then received enough alcohol mixed with orange juice to make them legally【C10】______, and the other half received a drink with a very【C11】______amount of alcohol in it Subjects who expressed little interest in consequences were more likely to【C12】______longer, stronger shocks. In the【C13】______group, they were slightly more aggressive than people who【C14】______about consequences. When drunk,【C15】______, their aggressiveness was off the charts. "They are【C16】______the most aggressive people in the study," Bushman says. The good news is that this【C17】______can be changed. Michael McKloskey, a psychologist at Temple University, explains that if【C18】______people can learn to see the【C19】______more realistically, they"re able to stay calmer and develop a sense of【C20】______over their consequences.

萨皮尔一沃尔夫假说的形成 ——2004年英译汉及详解 The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many centuries.【F1】 The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some connection with the process of thought, which took root in Europe long before people realized how diverse languages could be. Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were very different from their own. Two anthropologist-linguists, Franz Boas and Edward Sapir, were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South America during the first half of the twentieth century.【F2】 We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since vanished, as the peoples who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost their native languages. Other linguists in the earlier part of this century, however, who were less eager to deal with bizarre data from "exotic" language, were not always so grateful.【F3】 The newly described languages were often so strikingly different from the well studied languages of Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of fabricating their data. Na-tive American languages are indeed different, so much so in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World War II to send secret messages. Sapir's pupil, Benjamin Lee Whorf, continued the study of American Indian languages.【F4】 Being interested in the relationship of language and thought, Whorf developed the idea that the structure of language determines the structure of habitual thought in a society. He reasoned that because it is easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language, the speakers of that language think along one track and not along another.【F5】 Whorf came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which, in its strongest form, states that language imprisons the mind, and that the grammatical patterns in a language can produce far-reaching consequences for the culture of a society. Later, this idea became to be known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but this term is somewhat inappropriate. Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the diversity of languages, Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of linguistic determinism.

Suggestions for Improving Library"s Service Write a letter to your university library, making suggestions for improving its service. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Everyone must have had at least one personal experience with a computer error by this time. Bank balances are suddenly reported to have jumped from 379 into the millions, appeals for charitable contributions are mailed over and over to people with crazy-sounding names at your address, department stores send the wrong bills, utility companies write that they"re turning everything off, that sort of thing. (46) If you manage to get in touch with someone and complain, you then get instantaneously typed, guilty letters from the same computer, saying, "Our computer was in error, and an adjustment is being made in your account." These are supposed to be the sheerest, blindest accidents. Mistakes are not believed to be part of the normal behavior of a good machine. If things go wrong, it must be a personal, human error, the result of fingering, tampering, a button getting stuck, someone hitting the wrong key. The computer, at its normal best, is infallible. I wonder whether this can be true. (47) After all, the whole point of computers is that they represent an extension of the human brain, vastly improved upon but nonetheless human, superhuman maybe. (48) A good computer can think clearly and quickly enough to beat you at chess, and some of them have even been programmed to write obscure verse. They can do anything "we can do, and more besides. It is not yet known whether a computer has its own consciousness, and it would be hard to find out about this. (49) When you walk into one of those great halls now built for the huge machines, and stand listening, it is easy to imagine that the faint, distant noises are the sound of thinking. And the turning of the spools gives them the look of wild creatures rolling their eyes in the effort to concentrate, choking with information. But real thinking, and dreaming, are other matters. On the other hand, the evidences of something like an unconscious, equivalent to ours, are all around, in every mail. (50) As extensions of the human brain, they have been constructed with the same property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities. Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not pro vided with the art of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

An Affidavit of Support Write an affidavit of about 100 words based on the following situation: Your younger sister is going to the United States for further education. Now write an affidavit of support for her to state that you will financially support her. Do not sign your own name at the end of the affidavit. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Starting with his review of Skinner"s Verbal Behavior, Noam Chomsky had led the psycholinguists who argue that man has developed an innate(天生的) capacity for dealing with the linguistic universals common to all languages. Experience and learning then provide only information about the (1)_____ instances of those universal aspects of language which are needed to communicate with other people within a particular language (2)_____. This linguistic approach (3)_____ the view that language is built upon learned associations between words. What is learned is not strings of words per se(本身), but (4)_____ rules that enable a speaker to (5)_____ an infinite variety of novel sentences. (6)_____ single words are learned as concepts: they do not stand in a one-to-one (7)_____ with the particular thing signified, but (8)_____ all members of a general class. This view of the innate aspect of language learning is at first not readily (9)_____ into existing psychological frameworks and (10)_____ a challenge that has stimulated much thought and new research directions. Chomsky argues that a precondition for language development is the existence of certain principles "intrinsic(原有的) to the mind" that provide invariant structures (11)_____ perceiving, learning and thinking. Language (12)_____ all of these processes; thus its study (13)_____ our theories of knowledge in general. Basic to this model of language is the notion that a child"s learning of language is a kind of theory (14)_____. It"s thought to be accomplished (15)_____ explicit instruction, (16)_____ of intelligence level, at an early age when he is not capable of other complex (17)_____ or motor achievements, and with relatively little reliable data to go on. (18)_____, the child constructs a theory of an ideal language which has broad (19)_____ power. Chomsky argues that all children could not develop the same basic theory (20)_____ it not for the innate existence of properties of mental organization which limit the possible properties of languages.

Americans are proud of their variety and individuality, yet they love and respect few things more than a uniform, whether it is the uniform of an elevator operator or the uniform of a five- star general.

At the moment, there are two reliable ways to make electricity from sunlight.【F1】 You can use a panel of solar cells to create the current directly, by liberating electrons from a semiconducting material such as silicon. Or you can concentrate the sun's rays using mirrors, boil water with them, and employ the steam to drive a generator. Both work. But both are expensive. Gang Chen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Zhifeng Ren of Boston College therefore propose, in a paper in Nature Materials, an alternative. They suggest that a phenomenon called the thermoelectric effect might be used instead—and they have built a prototype to show that the idea is practical. In their view, three things are needed to create a workable solar-thermoelectric device. The first is to make sure that most of the sunlight which falls on it is absorbed, rather than being reflected. The second is to choose a thermoelectric material which conducts heat badly(so that different parts remain at different temperatures)but electricity well.【F2】 The third is to be certain that the temperature gradient which that badly conducting material creates is not frittered away by poor design. The two researchers overcame these challenges through clever engineering. The first they dealt with by coating the top of the device with oxides of hafnium, molybdenum and titanium, in layers about 100 nanometres thick.【F3】 These layers acted like the anti-reflective coatings on spectacle lenses and caused almost all the sunlight falling on the device to be absorbed. The second desideratum, of low thermal and high electrical conductivity, was achieved by dividing the bismuth telluride into pellets a few nanometres across.【F4】 That does not affect their electrical conductivity, but nanoscale particles like this are known to scatter and obstruct the passage of heat through imperfectly understood quantum-mechanical processes. The third objective, efficient design, involved sandwiching the nanostructured bismuth telluride between two copper plates and then enclosing the upper plate(the one coated with the light-absorbing oxides)and the bismuth telluride in a vacuum. The copper plates conducted heat rapidly to and from the bismuth telluride, thus maintaining the temperature difference. The vacuum stopped the apparatus losing heat by convection. The upshot was a device that converts 4.6% of incident sunlight into electricity.【F5】 That is not great compared with the 20% and more achieved by a silicon-based solar cell, the 40% managed by a solar-thermal turbine, or even the 18-20% of one of the new generation of cheap and cheerful thin-film solar cells. But it is enough, Dr Chen reckons, for the process to be worth considering for mass production.