I am addicted to electricity. So are you. And so is your business. We live in an "always on" world—air conditioners, streetlights, TVs, PCs, cell phones, and more. And with forecasts that we"ll need 40% more electricity by 2030, determining how we can realistically feed our energy addiction without ruining our environment is the critical challenge of the new century. Of course, wecould buy energy-saving appliances or drive fuel-efficient cars. We can recycle cans, bottles, and newspapers. We can even plant carbon-absorbing trees. But, no matter how much we may wish they would, these acts by themselves won"t satisfy our energy demands.To do that, we need a diverse energy mix that takes a practical, rather than emotional, approach. Enter nuclear energy. Nuclear alone won"t get us to where we need to be, but we won"t get there without it. Despite its controversial reputation, nuclear is efficient and reliable. It"s also clean, emitting no greenhouse gases or regulated air pollutants while generating electricity. And with nuclear power, we get the chance to preserve the Earth"s climate while at the same time meeting our future energy needs. Moreover, many of the management woes that gave the early nuclear business a black eye have finally been overcome.A five-year project in Alabama was completed on time and very close to budget. Also, US-designed reactors have been built in about four years in Asia, and new nuclear plants on the drawing board for installation here in America will be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under a speedier process that should be far more efficient than the one in place when the 104 nuclear facilities operating today were licensed. But this streamlined process will not compromise nuclear safety and security. The NRC holds nuclear reactors to the highest safety and security standards of any American industry.A two-day national security simulation in Washington, D.C., in 2002 concluded nuclear plants "are probably our best defended targets." And because of their advanced design and sophisticated containment structures, US nuclear plants emit a negligible amount of radiation. Even if you lived next door to a nuclear power plant, you would still be exposed to less radiation each year than you would receive in just one round-trip flight from New York to Los Angeles. Here"s the reality: The US needs more energy, and we need to get it without further harming our environment. Everything is a trade-off. Nothing is free, and nuclear plants are not cheap to build. But we have a choice to make: We can either continue the 30-year debate about whether we should embrace nuclear energy, or we can accept its practical advantages. Love it or not, expanding nuclear energy makes both environmental and business sense.

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

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshouldfirstdescribethedrawing,theninterpretitsmeaning,andgiveyourcommentonit.都一样放假和开学一样上课和下课一样平时和考试一样家里和学校一样

What would happen if consumers decided to simplify their lives and spend less on material goods and services? This (1)_____ is taking on" a certain urgency as rates of economic growth continue to decelerate throughout the industrialized world, and (2)_____ millions of consumers appear to be (3)_____ for more frugal lifestyle. The Stanford Research Institute, which has done some of the most extensive work on the frugality phenomenon, (4)_____ that nearly five million American adults number" (5)_____ to and act on some but not all" of its basic tenets. The frugality phenomenon first achieved prominence as a middle-class (6)_____ of high consumption lifestyle in the industrial world during the 50"s and 60"s. In the Silent Revolution, Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michingan"s Institute of Social Research examined this (7)_____ in the United States and 10 Western European nations. He concluded that a change has taken place "from an (8)_____ emphasis on material well-being and physical security (9)_____ greater emphasis on the quality of life", that is, "a (10)_____ from materialism to postmaterialism". Inglehart calls the 60s the "fat year". Among their more visible trappings were the ragged blue jeans favored by the affluent young. Most of them (11)_____ from materialism; however, this was (12)_____ Comfortably fixed Americans were going (13)_____, (14)_____ making things last longer, sharing things with others, learning to do things for themselves and so on. But (15)_____ economically significant, it was hardly (16)_____ in a US Gross National Product climbing vigorously toward the $2 thousand billion mark (17)_____, as the frugality phenomenon matured—growing out of the soaring 80s and into the somber 90s—it seemed to undergo a (18)_____ transformation. American consumers continued to lose (19)_____ in materialism and were being joined by new converts who were (20)_____ frugality because of the darkening economic skies they saw ahead.

If all forms of mercy killing are wrong, they should remain taboo. But are they? (46) Because many people accept that it is sad, undignified and gruesome to prolong the throes of death with all the might of medical technology, passive euthanasia—letting patients die—is widely accepted. Active euthanasia-killing remains controversial. How long can the distinction between killing and letting die hold out? Just as there can be culpable omissions, so too can there be blameless acts. Suppose that a man stands to gain from the death of a certain child. The child strikes his head in the bath and falls unconscious. The man sits down and watches him drown. The fact that the man has performed no action does not excuse him. Similarly, suppose that a doctor does no wrong by withholding some treatment in order, that death should come sooner rather than later. Is he then necessarily wrong if he uses enough painkillers to kill? Does the fact that the doctor performed an action, rather than an omission, condemn him? Many doctors working on the battlefield of terminal suffering think that no one should demand a firm difference between passive and active euthanasia on request. (47) Their argument for killing goes like this: one of a doctor"s duty is to prevent suffering; sometimes that is all there is left for him to do, and killing is the only way to do it. (48) Some people believed that the time of death is appointed by God and that no man should put the clock back on another. Yet if a patient"s philosophical views embrace euthanasia, it is not clear why the religious objections of others should intrude on his death. (49) Another worry is that a legal framework for euthanasia, permitting a doctor to comply with a dying man"s request in a prescribed set of circumstances, might pose dangers for society by setting a precedent for killing. That depends on the society. Holland, arguably, is ready for it. It is probably no coincidence that it was Dutch doctors who most heroically resisted pressure to join in the Second World War Nazi medical atrocities that have given euthanasia its worst name. (50) The same respect for individual liberty that stopped them killing healthy people, who did not want to die, now lets them help dying people who do. Germany, by contrast, will not be able to legalize any form of euthanasia for a long time to come. Opposition is too fierce, because of the shadow of the past. Countries with an uninterrupted recent libertarian tradition have less to fear from setting some limited rules for voluntary euthanasia. By refusing to discuss it, they usher in something worse.

The process of entering the confines of political and economic power can be pictured as a system in which persons are chosen from a political elite pool. (46) In this reservoir of possible leaders are the individuals with the skills, education, and other qualifications needed to fill elite positions. It is here that competition does exist, that the highest achievers do display their abilities, and that the best qualified do generally succeed. Here, what is more important is entering this reservoir of qualified people. (47) Many in the masses may have leadership abilities, but unless they can gain entrance into the elite pool, their abilities will go unnoticed. Those of the higher class and status rank enter more easily into this competition since they have been afforded greater opportunities to acquire the needed qualifications. (48) In addition to formal qualifications, there are less obvious social-psychological factors which tend to narrow the potential elite pool further. (49) "Self-assertion" and "self-elimination" are processes by which those of higher social status assert themselves and those of lower social status eliminate themselves from competition for elite positions. A young man whose family has been active in politics, who has attended Harvard, and who has established a network of connections to the high position in the business or political world will have a promising future. (50) On the other hand, a young man with less prestigious (有声望的) family background, no connections, and only a high school education or even a college degree from a state university would not likely expect a further place for himself at the top. As Prewitt and Stone explain, such an individual "has few models to follow, no contacts to put him into the right channels, and little reason to think of himself as potentially wealthy or powerful." Thus, self-selection aids in filtering out those of lower income and status groups from the pool of potential elites. Most eliminate themselves from the competition early in the game.

Complaining Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: You ordered a hair dryer online at the cost of $22, but only received an empty package box. Something must be wrong. Now write a letter to complain about it and ask for a refund or another delivery. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Canadians like to think that although they are the junior partner in their trade relations with the United States, the 174 billion barrels of proven reserves in the oil sands of Alberta provide a powerful ace up their sleeve in any dealings with their energy-hungry neighbor. That belief has now been shaken by an American law that appears to prohibit American government agencies from buying crude produced in the oil sands of the western province. 41.______. But that is the effect of banning federal agencies from buying alternative or synthetic fuel, including that from non-conventional sources, if their production and use result in more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. Transforming Alberta"s tarry muck into a barrel of oil is an energy-intensive process that produces about three times the emissions of a barrel of conventional light sweet crude. Having woken belatedly to the danger, the Canadian government is now scrambling to secure an exception. Michael Wilson, Canada"s ambassador in Washington, has written to America"s secretary of defense, Robert Gates (whose department is a big purchaser of Canadian oil), stressing American dependence on Canadian oil, electricity, natural gas and uranium imports, and noting that some of the biggest players in the Alberta oil patch are American companies. Mr. Wilson added plaintively that both George Bush and his energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, have publicly welcomed expanded oil-sands production, given the increased contribution to American energy security. 42.______. The fear in Canada is that the American purchasing restriction, which at present applies only to federal agencies, is the start of a wholesale shift to greener as well as more protectionist policies under a Congress and potentially a White House controlled by the Democrats. 43.______. Yet environmentalists point out that Canada is now paying for its own foot-dragging at the federal level on green initiatives. Having signed the Kyoto agreement under a previous Liberal government, Canada did little to stop its emissions rising. They are now almost 35% above the Kyoto target. And although Mr. Baird likes to describe his plan as tough, it will not bring Canada into line with Kyoto. 44.______. The vagueness of the proposed federal rules did not stop the premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, from giving a defiant warning that he will stand up for the interests of Albertans (read oil industry) and will be examining the constitution to ensure that the federal government"s proposed plan does not intrude on provincial jurisdiction. His province has one of the weakest environmental regimes in Canada. 45.______. But even if a deal is reached with the outgoing Bush administration, any exception for Canada may be short-lived if greening Democrats take the White House in November.[A] Since 1999, Canada has been the largest supplier of U. S. crude and refined oil imports. In 2007, Canadian crude oil and petroleum products represented 18% of U. S. crude oil imports, at nearly 2. 5 million barrels per day. From 2005 to 2007, the volume of Canadian crude oil exports to the United States increased by 7. 4% per year.[B] John Baird, the Canadian environment minister, referred this week to the American move when he unveiled new proposals to reduce industrial emissions in Canada, including the oil sands, by 20% by 2020. Big states like California were making similar pronouncements, he told reporters. The oil sands were an important national resource, but had to be expanded in an environmentally friendly way.[C] As Canada"s representative in Washington, Mr. Wilson is the point man on Canada"s lobbying efforts either to kill the Buy American clause, or to get a special exemption for Canada.[D] The Energy Independence and Security Act 2007 did not set out to discriminate against Canada, America"s biggest supplier of oil.[E] With energy exports, mainly from Alberta, driving the Canadian economy, this is not a happy thought for Canadians.[F] Although the Canadian embassy says that there has been no official response to Mr. Wilson"s letter, there are reports of talks going on in Washington aimed at addressing Canada"s concerns.[G] The rules for the oil sands, now the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases, have yet to be finalized and will not come into force until 2010. Furthermore, they rely on carbon capture, a promising but un-proven technology.

【F1】 During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months. In just one generation, millions of mothers have gone to work, transforming basic family economics. Scholars, policymakers, and critics of all stripes have debated the social implications of these changes, but few have looked at the side effect: family risk has risen as well. Today's families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status.【F2】 As a result, they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial setback—a back-up earner(usually Mom)who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick. This "added-worker effect" could support the safety net offered by unemployment insurance or disability insurance to help families weather bad times. But today, a disruption to family fortunes can no longer be made up with extra income from an otherwise-stay-at-home partner. During the same period, families have been asked to absorb much more risk in their retirement income.【F3】 Steelworkers, airline employees, and now those in the auto industry are joining millions of families who must worry about interest rates, stock market fluctuation, and the harsh reality that they may outlive their retirement money. For much of the past year, President Bush campaigned to move Social Security to a saving-account model, with retirees trading much or all of their guaranteed payments for payments depending on investment returns. For younger families, the picture is not any better. Both the absolute cost of healthcare and the share of it borne by families have risen—and newly fashionable health-savings plans are spreading from legislative halls to Wal-Mart workers, with much higher deductibles and a large new dose of investment risk for families' future healthcare.【F4】 Even demographics are working against the middle class family, as the odds of having a weak elderly parent—and all the attendant need for physical and financial assistance—have jumped eightfold in just one generation. 【F5】 From the middle-class family perspective, much of this, understandably, looks far less like an opportunity to exercise more financial responsibility, and a good deal more like a frightening acceleration of the wholesale shift of financial risk onto their already overburdened shoulders. The financial fallout has begun, and the political fallout may not be far behind.

For many people the New York Times is the greatest newspaper anywhere. But there has long been a small pool of conservative dissenters in its hometown. For them, the Times is left-wing, inaccurate, devoid of humor, and, worst of all, unopposed (they never seem to count the Wall Street Journal. which, to be fair, doesn"t write that much about the Big Apple). Now these criticisms are being made, daily, and often wittily, by a flee web-based publication. The publisher, reporting staff and editor of smartertimes.com is Ira Stoll, a 28-year-old former managing editor of Forward, a Jewish weekly. At 6 o"clock every morning he picks up a copy of the Times at a Brooklyn news-stand and, within four hours, unleashes an invariably scathing report on something he thinks either ridiculous or wrong. Categories on the website range from the pedantic—"New York, lack of basic familiarity with" (noting unbearable geographic errors) and "Misspelling of names" (including that of the Sulzberger family, which controls the Times)—to weightier topics such as taxes and immigration. Most of the time, Mr. Stoll is on the look-out for left-wing bias masked as objectivity. He is particularly tough on the citation of allegedly impartial "experts" in back up predictable Times conclusions—that the poor are getting poorer, private education is bad, welfare reform has failed, public housing is vital, and Republicans and policemen are insensitive, racist or mentally challenged. Occasionally, Mr. Stoll"s pieces precede (or perhaps cause) a correction. He was, for instance, the first to spot that the Times had attacked John Ashcroft, the conservative attorney-general, with a shortened and misleading quotation lifted from another newspaper. More often the sins are of leftish omission. Last weekend"s ode to the joys of traveling in Cuba, he points out, avoided "any mention of the country"s horrible human-rights record". Like other zealots, Mr. Stoll sometimes asks too much. Even the weekly newspapers occasionally get things wrong; it would be surprising if a daily as big as the Times never did. And Mr. Stoll"s bias, though overt, can get a little boring. This week he nicely skewered an absurdly solemn Times piece about a plan in Connecticut to stop high schools starting work before 8:30 a.m, because teenagers do "not physiologically wake up", for not even wondering whether it might be a good tiling for the little dears to go to bed earlier. But did Mr. Stoll really need to add a carp about those tired teenagers having sex "with the assistance of taxpayer-provided free contraceptives"? All the same, Mr. Stoll seems to have struck a nerve. In only seven months, with no marketing, he has developed a subscriber list for a daily e-mail of almost 2,000 people (including, inevitably, Newt Gingrich). And the Times seems to be taking some notice. Three of its journalists have already taken him out for lunch.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

President Bush takes to the bully pulpit to deliver a stern lecture to America"s business elite. The Justice Dept. stuns the accounting profession by filing a criminal indictment of Arthur Andersen LLP for destroying documents related to its audits of Enron Corp. On Capitol Hill, some congressional panels push on with biased hearings on Enron"s collapse and, now, another busted New Economy star, telecom"s Global Crossing. Lawmakers sign on to new bills aimed at tightening oversight of everything from pensions and accounting to executive pay. To any spectators, it would be easy to conclude that the winds of change are sweeping Corporate America, led by George W. Bush, who ran as "a reformer with result". But far from deconstructing the corporate world brick by brick into something cleaner, sparer, and stronger, Bush aides and many legislators are preparing modest legislative and administrative reforms. Instead of an overhaul, Bush"s team is counting on its enforcers, Justice and a newly empowered Securities & Exchange Commission, to make examples of the most egregious offenders. The idea is that business will quickly get the message and clean up its own act. Why won"t the outraged rhetoric result in more changes? For starters, the Bush Administration warns that any rush to legislate corporate behavior could produce a raft of flawed hills that raise costs without halting abuses. Business has striven to drive the point home with an intense lobbying blitz that has convinced many lawmakers that over-regulation could startle the stock market and perhaps endanger the nascent economic recovery. All this sets the stage for Washington to get busy with predictably modest results. A surge of caution is sweeping would-be reformers on the Hill. "They know they don"t want to make a big mistake", says Jerry J. Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. That go-slow approach suits the White House. Aides say the President, while personally disgusted by Enron"s sellout of its pensioners, is reluctant to embrace new sanctions that frustrate even law-abiding corporations and create a litigation bonanza for trial lawyers. Instead, the White House will push for narrowly targeted action, most of it carried out by the SEC, the Treasury Dept., and the Labor Dept. The right outcome, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O"Neill said on Mar. 15, "depends on the Congress not legislating things that are over the top". To O"Neill and Bush, that means enforcing current laws before passing too many new ones. Nowhere is that stance clearer than in the Andersen indictment. So the Bush Administration left the decision to Justice Dept. prosecutors rather than White House political operatives or their reformist fellows at the SEC.

Within the span of a hundred years, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration one of the great folk wanderings of history—swept from Europe to America. 【F1】 This movement, driven by powerful and diverse motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and. by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent. 【F2】 The United States is the product of two principal forces—the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these traits. Of necessity, colonial America was a projection of Europe. Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world. 【F3】 But the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were gradual and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American. 【F4】 The first shiploads of immigrants bound for the territory which is now the United States crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred years after the 15th-and-16th-century explorations of North America. In the meantime, thriving Spanish colonies had been established in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America These travelers to North America came in small, unmercifully overcrowded craft. During their six- to twelve-week voyage, they survived on barely enough food allotted to them. Many of the ships were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes storms blew the vessels far off their course, and often calm brought unbearably long delay. To the anxious travelers the sight of the American shore brought almost inexpressible relief. Said one recorder of events, "The air at twelve leagues" distance smelt as sweet as a new-blown garden." The colonists" first glimpse of the new land was a sight of dense woods. 【F5】 The virgin forest with its richness and variety of trees was a real treasure-house which extended from Maine all the way down to Georgia. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores.

技术与天才哪个对科学发展更重要 ——1994年英译汉及详解 According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked force in expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge.【F1】 Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. 【F2】 "In short," a leader of the new school contends, "the scientific revolution, as we call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions." 【F3】 Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attached great importance to, and derived great benefit from, craft information and technological devices of different kinds that were usable in scientific experiments. The centerpiece of the argument of a technology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo"s role at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the center of all heavenly motions.【F4】 Galileo" s greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the Earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eyeglasses. Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute.【F5】 Whether the Government should increase the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.

When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company." Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision," McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn"t alone. In recent weeks the No. 2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don"t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached . Says Korn / Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey: "I can"t think of a single search I"ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first." Those who jumped without a job haven"t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it" s safer to stay where you are, but that"s been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who"ve been hurt the worst are those who" ve stayed too long."

Historians are understandably reluctant about predicting the future because of all the unknown variables involved. For example, a third world war—employing thermonuclear weapons—could conceivably destroy life on this planet.【C1】______. Faced with these prospects, the US government undertook to persuade the Canadian government to join in a continental program to exploit and market energy and mineral resources, particularly oil and water, of which Canada is one of the world's major suppliers. For the industrialized countries, a continental strategy of access to energy and fuel resources appeared to be imperative. We have singled out the North American resource situation because it illustrates a contemporary phenomenon. Peoples everywhere are caught up in the " revolution of rising expectation" so that in underdeveloped countries men look forward to owning at least a few modern western appliances.【C2】______ It is the application of technology to physical resources that sustains human life and ultimately sets the limits on the number of people who can be fed. But technology also provides the tools and techniques for lengthening life spans and reducing death rates. As a result, high birth rates are no longer closely matched by, high death rates as they were until modern times; infectious diseases are much less frequent in most parts of the world, due largely to public health measures; and physical vitality has been increased by improved nutrition.【C3】______. In 1000 A. D. the estimated population of the world was 275 million, a figure which had approximately doubled by 1650. But whereas it took some years for this increase to occur, the following 300 years brought a six-fold increase to over three billion people in 1962. In those three centuries some 23 billion people had been born, and the factor of acceleration continues. Asia, Africa and Latin America have been growing more rapidly than Europe, Russia and North America. In other words, the regions possessing the most advanced technology and highest living standards are likely to be a progressively diminishing portion of the global population.【C4】______. The scope and urgency of the questions raised by the population explosion are unprecedented.【C5】______. It remains to be seen what effective combined efforts can—or will—be made.[A] These changes have brought about what is today familiarly called the "population explosion"—which, unless checked, could conceivably become the most serious problem of the next century.[B] Assuming, however, that mankind can avoid this kind of disaster, it is possible, on the basis of variable data, to make meaningful guesses about feasible developments in man's physical, political and societal environments for the year 2010, and even beyond.[C] Last but not least, people in the richer countries of the world could also help save the rainforests by using wood-derived products such as paper more carefully and by recycling used paper products to help reduce the demand for newly cut wood.[D] On the other hand, it is heartening to note that the interaction relationship between population growth, technological change, and the use of resources has at last been recognized as an international challenge by the member states of the United Nations.[E] Since economic production is growing faster than biological reproduction in the advanced countries of the West while the reverse situation threatens to occur in the rest of the world during the decades ahead, the resulting imbalance between population growth and economic growth is almost certain to generate massive political and social tensions.[F] But this psychological phenomenon of our times poses the question; Will the earth's resources last long enough to enable the entire world to approach the living standards in the industrialized countries of today?

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

A pair of dice, rolled again and again, will eventually produce two sixes. Similarly, the virus that causes influenza is constantly changing at random and, one day, will mutate in a way that will enable it to infect billions of people, and to kill millions. Many experts now believe a global outbreak of pandemic flu is overdue, and that the next one could be as bad as the one in 1918, which killed somewhere between 25m and 50m people. Today however, advances in medicine offer real hope that another such outbreak can be contained—if governments start preparing now. New research published this week suggests that a relatively small stockpile of an antiviral drug—as little as 3m doses—could be enough to limit sharply a flu pandemic if the drugs were deployed quickly to people in the area surrounding the initial outbreak. The drug"s manufacturer, Roche, is talking to the World Health Organisation about donating such a stockpile. This is good news. But much more needs to be done, especially with a nasty strain of avian flu spreading in Asia which could mutate into a threat to humans. Since the SARS outbreak in 2003 a few countries have developed plans in preparation for similar episodes. But progress has been shamefully patchy, and there is still far too little international coordination. A global stockpile of drugs alone would not be much use without an adequate system of surveillance to identify early cases and a way of delivering treatment quickly. If an outbreak occurred in a border region, for example, a swift response would most likely depend on prior agreements between different countries about quarantine and containment. Reaching such agreements is rarely easy, but that makes the task all the more urgent. Rich countries tend to be better prepared than poor ones, but this should be no consolation to them. Flu does not respect borders. It is in everyone" s interest to make sure that developing countries, especially in Asia, are also well prepared. Many may bridle at interference from outside. But if richer nations were willing to donate anti-viral drugs and guarantee a supply of any vaccine that becomes available, poorer nations might be willing to reach agreements over surveillance and preparedness. Simply sorting out a few details now will have lives (and recriminations) later. Will there be enough ventilators, makes and drugs? Where will people be treated if the hospitals overflow? Will food be delivered as normal? Too many countries have no answers to these questions.

Research is commonly divided into "applied" and "pure". This classification is arbitrary and loose, but what is usually meant is that applied research is a deliberate investigation of a problem of practical importance, in contradistinction to pure research done to gain knowledge for its own sake. The pure scientist may be said to accept as an act of faith that any scientific knowledge is worth pursuing for its own sake, and, if pressed, he usually claims that in most instances it is eventually found to be useful. Most of the greatest discoveries, such as the discovery of electricity, X-rays, radium and atomic energy, originated from pure research, which allows the worker to follow unexpected, interesting clues without the intention of achieving results of practical value. In applied research it is the project which is given support, whereas in pure research it is the man. However, often the distinction between pure and applied research is a superficial one as it may merely depend on whether or not the subject investigated is one of practical irnl0ortance. For example, the investigation of the life cycle of a protozoon in a pond is pure research, but if the protozoon studied is a parasite of manor domestic animal the research would be termed applied. A more fundamental differentiation, which corresponds only very roughly with the applied and pure classification is (a) that in which the. objective is given and the means of obtaining it are sought, and (b) that in which the discovery is first made and then a use for it is sought. There exists in some circles a certain amount of intellectual snobbery and tendency to look contemptuously on applied investigation. This attitude is based on the following two false ideas: that new knowledge is only discovered by pure research while applied research merely seeks to apply knowledge already available, and that pure research is a higher intellectual activity because it requires greater scientific ability and is more difficult. Both these ideas are quite wrong. Important new knowledge has frequently arisen from applied investigation; for instance, the science of bacteriology originated largely from Pasteur"s investigations of practical problem in the beer, wine and silkworm industries. Usually it is more difficult to get results in applied research than in pure research, because the worker has to stick to and solve a given problem instead of following any promising clue that may turn up. Also in applied research most riel& have already been well worked over and marry of the easy and obvious things have been done. Applied research should not be confused with the routine practice of some branch of science where only the application of existing knowledge is attempted. There is need for both pure and applied research for they tend to be complementary.

How's this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. Although people hardly think of them in tandem, yet instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It's not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact contemporaries. Rather, it's because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world. They were both revolutionaries in the sense that both men upended realities that prevailed when they were born. They seem—and sound—modern to us, because the world they left behind them is more or less the one we still live in. So, considering the joint greatness of their contributions—and the coincidence of their conjoined birthdays—it is hard not to wonder: who was the greater man? It's an apples-and-oranges—or Superman-vs.-Santa—comparison. But if you limit the question to influence, very quickly the balance tips in Lincoln's favor. As great as his book on evolution is, it does no harm to remember that Darwin hurried to publish The Origin of Species because he thought he was about to be scooped by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin's theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as convincing as Darwin's—until Wallace came along—it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea. Lincoln, in contrast, is unique. Take him out of the picture, and there is no telling what might have happened to the country. True, his election to the presidency did provoke secession and, in turn, the war itself, but that war seems inevitable—not a question of if but when. Once in office, he becomes the indispensable man. Certainly we know what happened once he was assassinated: Reconstruction was ad-ministered punitively and then abandoned, leaving the issue of racial equality to dangle for another century. If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not negate his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly. Their identical birthdays afford us a superb opportunity to observe these men in the shared context of their time—how each was shaped by his circumstances, how each reacted to the beliefs that steered the world into which he was bom and ultimately how each reshaped his corner of that world and left it irrevocably changed.