Prices are sky-high, with profits to match. But looking further ahead, the industry faces wrenching change, says an expert of energy. "The time when we could count on cheap oil and even cheaper natural gas is clearly ending." That was the gloomy forecast delivered in February by Dave O"Reilly, the chairman of Chevron Texaco, to hundreds of oilmen gathered for a conference in Houston. The following month, Venezuela"s President Hugo Chavez gleefully echoed the sentiment: "The world should forget about cheap oil." The surge in oil prices, from $10 a barrel in 1998 to above $50 in early 2005, has prompted talk of a new era of sustained higher prices. But whenever a "new era" in oil is hailed, skepticism is in order. After all, this is essentially a cyclical business in which prices habitually yo-yo. Even so, an unusually loud chorus is now joining Messrs O"Reilly and Chavez, pointing to intriguing evidence of a new "price floor" of $30 or perhaps even $40. Confusingly, though, there are also signs that high oil prices may be caused by a speculative bubble that could burst quite suddenly. To see which camp is right, two questions need answering: why did the oil price soar? And what could keep it high? To make matters more complicated, there is in fact no such thing as a single "oil price": rather, there are dozens of varieties of crude trading at different prices. When newspapers write about oil prices, they usually mean one of two reference crudes: Brent from the North Sea, or West Texas Intermediate (WTI). But when ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) discuss prices, they usually refer to a basket of heavier cartel crudes, which trade at a discount to WTI and Brent. All oil prices mentioned in this survey are per barrel of WTI The recent volatility in prices is only one of several challenges facing the oil industry. Although at first sight Big Oil seems to be in rude health, posting record profits, this survey will argue that the western oil majors will have their work cut out to cope with the rise of resource nationalism, which threatens to choke off access to new oil reserves. This is essential to replace their existing reserves, which are rapidly declining. They will also have to respond to efforts by governments to deal with oil"s serious environmental and geopolitical side-effects. Together, these challenges could yet wipe out the oil majors.

We all thought it a pity that the conference should have been cancelled.

The sudden up thrust of warm, moist air into the terrible cold of the frozen heights is what creates thunder. The sudden stronger rubbing together or two unlike forces (very warm air against very cold air) develops a kind of electricity called "static electricity". Its charges pro duce lightning and thunder. (46) Thus the violence of the thunderstorm is an almost direct result of millions of warm water drops being thrown into compatible masses of ice crystals—hitting them, rolling over them, melting them, or being frozen by them into snow or hail. Exactly how the electric charge is developed by the many, complex forces of this battle of heat and cold is still a matter of opinion. Some scientists think the action of wind against the rain is the principal factor. (47) These scientists believe the wind tears off the outer surface of each falling drops, like pulling a sweater over a child"s head, making a fine negative charge while leaving the main part of the rain drop positive. Other scientists believe that the friction of snow crystals breaking in the wind sets up the electrical charge. In reality it may well be all these factors—and more—that combine to do the work. (48) In any case, huge masses of electrically charged raindrops and hailstones become sorted into positive and negative reserves of electrical energy at different parts of the thundercloud, creating between them fields of very great extremes. When the resistance between these fields breaks down, the energy that is suddenly discharged is lightning. I do not know of any case of lightning directly causing an airplane accident, Cattle and sheep are more likely to be struck by lightning than are airplanes or houses. There is a recorded case that occurred on a mountainside in the western part of the United States in which one bolt of lightning killed 835 sheep. (49) Evidently the hard, dry earth offered more resistance to the lightning than the route of traveling from the ground, up one leg of an animal, through its moist" body, and down another leg. A person"s chances of being killed by a thunderstorm are not very great. In the United States an average of one person in 265,000 dies as a result of a thunderstorm. Today houses, ships, airplanes, and electric power lines are well protected against lightning, and the risk is decreasing. Even a man whose work exposes him almost daily to lightning can do something about it. (50) Despite the saying that one never knows if lightning strikes him, a person can sometimes feel the bolt coming and, if quick enough take protective action in time.

This week, in Washington and cities across the nation, immigrant advocates, clergy members and labor and business leaders have been meeting to press their case for comprehensive immigration reform. Hopes have been raised before and repeatedly dashed. But this year there is a chance—if the White House provides real leadership and Congressional leaders show the courage and sense they have previously lacked. President Obama has pledged his support for reform that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented. At the same time, his administration has not done nearly enough to moderate enforcement policies that unfairly target citizens and legal residents—often because they are Hispanic—while feeding the fear and hopelessness of illegal immigrants as they await the opportunity to get right with the law. The Department of Homeland Security has been pressing ahead with the old Bush administration strategy of tightening the screws on the 12 million undocumented, particularly by lengthening the long arm of local law enforcement. Make no mistake: Stronger and more effective immigration enforcement should be a pillar of any reform plan. But stricter enforcement must be coupled with a path to legalization. And poorly designed enforcement without strict checks on errors and abuse is a remedy worse than the disease. The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, is sticking with the 287(g)program, which deputizes local police departments to enforce immigration law, despite all-too-frequent errors and abuses. Despite community outrage over racial profiling and mdiscriminate "crime sweeps" in Maricopa County, Ariz., by the notorious sheriff, Joe Arpaio, he remains a member in good standing of Ms. Napolitano"s enforcement team. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding its Secure Communities program, which automatically checks the immigration status of everyone booked in jail. That sounds benign, but advocates have raised legitimate concerns over its lack of oversight and internal controls. Any blanket checks of arrestees, both innocent and guilty, could easily provide cover to police departments that use neighborhood sweeps and mass arrests as a pretext to "clean" communities of unwanted immigrants—not just violent criminals, but harmless housekeepers, day laborers and gardeners. There could be no quicker way than this to erode the hard-won advances in community policing, through which law enforcement agencies rely on the trust and cooperation of the people they protect. There is a grim contradiction at work here, with the Obama administration simultaneously, and self-de-structively, twisting the dials of hope and fear.

动物的权利问题 ——1997年英译汉及详解 Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start.【F1】 Actually, it isn"t, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have. On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none.【F2】 Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore, animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—for instance to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it, how do you reply to somebody who says "I don"t like this contract"? The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless.【F3】 It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all? Many deny it.【F4】 Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice. Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans. This view which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely "logical." In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh others" interests against one"s own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy.【F5】 When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind"s instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.

Comforting a Heartbroken Friend Write an e-mail of about 100 words based on the following situation: Your friend David just broke up with his girlfriend and was feeling sad Now write him an e-mail to comfort him, and ask him not to lose confidence in himself. Do not sign your own name at the end of the e-mail. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

For the past five years, Dr. Stephen Post has been funding research projects that test how altruism (selflessness), compassion, and giving affect people"s lives and well-being. As head of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love(IRUL), at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, he has sponsored more than 50 studies by scientists from 54 major universities. In a wide range of disciplines—from public health to human development to neuroscience, sociology, and evolutionary biology—the studies have demonstrated that love and caring expressed in doing good for others lead people to have healthier, happier, and even longer lives. IRUL research is part of a significant shift under way within key scientific disciplines from focusing just on the deficit or disease model of human nature to studying the positive, virtuous, and thriving aspects. In the process, the research is broadening the understanding of what contributes to health and longevity. Even some in evolutionary biology, a field long known for proclaiming "the selfish gene," are on board. "A lot of my colleagues view it very positively," says David Sloan Wilson, a prominent evolutionary biologist famous for his work on "group selection." Dr.Wilson has studied how altruistic teenagers fare within differing social environments—situations where they thrive and others where they are under great stress—as well as group altruism. He praises the institute for identifying and supporting "a neglected set of subjects" for research. Research on people diagnosed with various illnesses—whether it be HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, or alcoholism-revealed that those patients involved in counseling or otherwise serving others show greater improvement in their own health. Volunteerism studies have demonstrated such positive results that some people have called for doctors to prescribe volunteer activities. Post emphasizes, however, that it"s not just the activity itself, but the feelings behind the acts that benefit those taking part. Numerous studies on the brain have provided images that confirm the "helper"s high"—the warm glow that people feel from helping activities. But Post doesn"t conclude that it"s the selfish pursuit of that high that spurs people to be givers. "It"s not just from the chemicals. There is this neurological activity in the human body," he says, "but I think there is a spiritual presence that enlivens and elevates this kind of natural substrate." The institute will then turn very practical, Post says, taking all that has been learned about love and seeing "how it can be applied in interventions to make the world a better place."

Since much of the early impetus for applied ethics came from the U. S. civil rights movement, such topics as equality, human rights, and justice have been prominent. 【F1】 We often make statements such as "All humans are equal" without thinking too deeply about the justification for the claims. Since the mid-1960s much has been written about how they can be justified. Discussions of this sort have led in several directions, often following social and political movements. The initial focus, especially in the United States, was on racial equality, and here, for once, there was a general consensus among philosophers on the unacceptability of discrimination against blacks.【F2】 With so little disagreement about racial discrimination itself, the centre of attention soon moved to reverse discrimination: Is it acceptable to favour blacks for jobs and enrollment in universities and colleges because they had been discriminated against in the past and were generally so much worse off than whites? Or is this, too, a form of racial discrimination and unacceptable for that reason? Inequality between the sexes has been another focus of discussion. Does equality here mean ending as far as possible all differences in the sex roles, or could we have equal status for different roles?【F3】 There has been a lively debate—both between feminists and their opponents and, on a different level, among feminists themselves-about what a society without sexual inequality would be like. Here, too, the legitimacy of reverse discrimination has been a contentious issue. Feminist philosophers have also been involved in debates over abortion and new methods of reproduction. These topics will be covered separately below. Many discussions of justice and equality are limited in scope to a single society.【F4】 Even Rawls" s theory of justice, for example, has nothing to say about the distribution of wealth between societies, a subject that could make acceptance of his maximin principle much more onerous. But philosophers have now begun to think about the moral implications of the inequality in wealth between the affluent nations(and their citizens)and those living in countries subject to famine. What are the obligations of those who have plenty when others are starving?【F5】 It has not proved difficult to make a strong case for the view that affluent nations, as well as affluent individuals, ought to be doing much more to help the poor than they are generally now doing.

"This is a really exciting time—a new era is starting," says Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol, the television company behind "Big Brother" and other popular shows. He is referring to the upsurge of interest in mobile television, a nascent industry at the intersection of telecoms and media which offers new opportunities to device-makers, content producers and mobile- network operators. And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm. Already, many mobile operators offer a selection of television channels or individual shows, which are " streamed" across their third-generation (3G) networks. In South Korea, television is also sent to mobile phones via satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, which is far more efficient than sending video across mobile networks; similar broadcasts will begin in Japan in April. In Europe, the Italian arm of 3, a mobile operator, recently acquired Canale 7, a television channel, with a view to launching mobile-TV broadcasts in Italy in the second half of 2006. Similar mobile-TV networks will also be built in Finland and America, and are being tested in many other countries. Meanwhile, Apple Computer, which launched a video-capable version of its iPod portable music-player in October, is striking deals with television networks to expand the range of shows that can be purchased for viewing on the device , including "Lost", "Desperate Housewives" and "Law & Order". TiVo, maker of the pioneering personal video recorder (PVR), says it plans to enable subscribers to download recorded shows on to iPods and other portable devices for viewing on the move. And mobile TV was one of the big trends at the world"s largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, which took place in Las Vegas this week. Despite all this activity, however, the prospects for mobile TV are unclear. For a start, nobody really knows if consumers will pay for it, though surveys suggest they like the idea. Informa, a consultancy, says there will be 125 million mobile-TV users by 2010. But many other mobile technologies inspired high hopes and then failed to live up to expectations. And even if people do want TV on the move, there is further uncertainty in three areas: technology, business models and the content itself.

As many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. We suddenly can't remember【B1】______we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance' s name, or the name of an old band we used to love. As the brain【B2】______, we refer to these occurrences as "senior moments." 【B3】______seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a(n)【B4】______impact on our professional, social, and personal【B5】______. Neuroscientists, experts who study the nervous system, are increasingly showing that there' s actually a lot that can be done. It【B6】______out that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental【B7】______can significantly improve our basic cognitive【B8】______. Thinking is essentially a【B9】______of making connections in the brain. To a certain extent, our ability to【B10】______in making the connections that drive intelligence is inherited.【B11】______, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate【B12】______mental effort. Now, a new Web-based company has taken it a step【B13】______and developed the first "brain training program" designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental【B14】______. The Web-based program【B15】______you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills. The program keeps【B16】______of your progress and provides detailed feedback【B17】______your performance and improvement. Most importantly, it【B18】______modifies and enhances the games you play to【B19】______on the strengths you are developing—much like a (n)【B20】______exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use.

By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude. It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower. The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits. Their instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity. When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts. Thus the antlion whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as danger threatens, and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it, It knows no other mode of flight or if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and if interrupted it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions (as useless as cultivating an unsown field) or dies in helpless inactivity. Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil. Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts. Such beings we know in the ants and spiders. But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man. Habits, instead of being born ready-made (When they are called instincts and not habits at all) were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who now cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm. This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important. But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth. For although fixed automatic responses like those of the insect—like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance. The ability to acquire habits can conceivably inherit just as much as can definite responses to narrow situations. Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always supplementary factors.

On College Graduates' Starting Their Own Business A. Title: On College Graduates' Starting Their Own Business B. Word limit: 160~200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "Nowadays there is a growing tendency for college students to start their own business instead of hunting for a job after graduation." OUTLINE: 1. Some college students' starting their own business after graduation 2. The reasons for this phenomenon 3. My opinion

Fiercely independent, 90 year-old Vincenzia Rinaldi wouldn"t consider a home health aide or nursing home. So Louis Critelli, her nephew had to coax the widowed homemaker into assisted living, the nation"s growing long-term care option for the elderly. For $1,100 a month, Rinaldi became the reluctant resident of an efficiency unit where she could still simmer her much-loved tomato sauce and where caregivers would make sure she took her pills. Instead, 30 months later, she died. Not because she was old. But because aides at her new home, Loretto Utica Center, one of the modern, hotel-style facilities that have sprouted across the country over the past decade, mistakenly gave her another resident"s prescription medication. That error led to her death, state inspectors concluded. Neither the state nor Loretto told her nephew about the cause of death. Critelli, thinking his aunt had been properly cared for, only learned of the finding years later from USA TODAY. "When they find something blatant like that, you"d think they"d tell the family", the shaken nephew told a reporter after a long pause. A USA TODAY investigation shows that Rinaldi"s death represents the tragic extreme in a pattern of mistakes and violations that lead to scores of injuries and occasional deaths among the estimated 1 million elderly residents of assisted living facilities. The centers are the state regulated, largely private-pay residences that help seniors with medication and other activities of daily life. In a wide ranging analysis, USA TODAY reviewed two years of inspection records within 2000-02 for more than 5,300 assisted living facilities in seven states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, New York and Texas. The precise time period varied slightly from state to state. The analysis covered a broad range—from mom-and-pop facilities with just a few residents to corporate run centers with scores of beds and many levels of care. It is the first time such data have been gathered and analyzed across so many states. The review included less-detailed data from five other states and focused on broad quality-of-care categories to compensate for variations in regulations from state to state. As affluent and middle-class Americans cope with the infirmities of age, many turn to assisted living as an alternative to a nursing home industry that has been periodically plagued by abuse or neglect scandals. Even though assisted living facilities generally don"t provide 24-hour skilled medical care, they increasingly serve seniors who only a decade ago might have been in nursing homes.

In an effort to sustain commercial and recreational fishing for the next several decades, the United States this year will become the first country to impose catch limits for every species it manages, from Alaskan pollock to Caribbean queen conch. Although the policy has attracted scant attention outside the community of those who fish in America and the officials who regulate them, it marks an important shift in a pursuit that has helped define the country since its founding. Catch limits are indeed to protect the 528 species in federally managed fisheries. Unlike most recent environmental policy debates, which have divided neatly along party lines, this one is about a policy that was forged under President George W. Bush and finalized with President Obama's backing. "It's something that's arguably first in the world," said Eric Schwaab, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's assistant administrator for fisheries. "It's a huge accomplishment for the country." Five years ago, Bush signed a reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which dates to the mid-1970s and governs all fishing in U. S. waters. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers joined environmental groups, some fishing interests and scientists to insert language in the law requiring each fishery to have annual catch limits in place by the end of 2011 to end overfishing. Although NOAA didn't meet the law's Dec. 31 deadline—it has finalized 40 of the 46 fishery management plans that cover all federally managed stocks—officials said they are confident that they will have annual catch limits in place by the time the 2012 fishing year begins for all species. (The timing varies depending on the fish, with some seasons starting May 1 or later. ) Some fish, such as mahi-mahi and the prize game fish wahoo in the southeast Atlantic, will have catch limits for the first time. Until recently the nation's regional management councils, which write the rules for the 528 fish stocks under the federal government's jurisdiction, regularly flouted scientific advice and authorized more fishing than could could be sustained, according to scientists. Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, said the law's ban on overfishing forced fishery managers to impose limits that some commercial and recreational fishers had resisted for years." This simple but enormously powerful provision had eluded lawmakers for years and is probably the most important conservation statute ever enacted into America's fisheries law," Reichert said. And unlike many environmental regulations, which are written and enforced by Washington officials, the fishing limits were established by regional councils representing a mix of local interests." Because the final decisions were left on the local level, you have a higher assurance of success," said James L. Con-naughton, who helped prepare the reauthorization bill while chairing the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "If it had been imposed in Washington, we'd still be stuck in 10 years of litigation." But the changes have not come without a fight, and an array of critics are seeking to undo them. Some commercial and recreational operators, along with their congressional allies, argue that regulators lack the scientific data to justify the restrictions. And they suggest that the ambitious goals the law prescribes, including a mandate to rebuild any depleted fish stock within a decade, are arbitrary and rigid.

The koala, cuddly symbol of a nation and one of the most beloved animals on the planet, is in crisis. Before Europeans settled Australia more than two centuries ago, about ten million koalas lived in a 1, 500-mile-long swath of the east coast eucalyptus forests. Hunted for their luxurious fur, koalas were brought to the edge of extinction in the southern half of their range. In the northern half, Queensland, a million were killed in 1919 alone. After the last open season in Queensland was held in 1927, only tens of thousands remained. Through the next half century their numbers slowly rebounded, in part due to efforts to relocate and recolonize them. Then urbanization began to take its loll. Habitat was lost, and diseases spread. With urbanization came the threat of dogs and highways. Since 1990, when about 430,000 koalas inhabited Australia, their numbers have dropped sharply. Because surveys are difficult, current population estimates vary widely— from a low of 44,000 by advocacy groups to a high of 300,000 by government agencies. More than a decade ago a survey of the Koala Coast, a 93,000-acre region in southeastern Queensland, estimated a koala population of 6,200; today there are believed to be around 2,000. "Koalas are getting caught in fences and dying, being killed by dogs, struck by vehicles, even dying simply because a homeowner cut down several eucalyptus trees in his backyard," says Deidre de Villiers, one of the chief koala researchers at the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management. De Villiers insists that koalas and humans can coexist in urban environments, if developers get on board with koala-sensitive designs, such as lower speed limits for streets, green corridors for koala movement, and, most especially, preserving every precious eucalyptus tree. Unfortunately, koalas have another problem. "Disease is the other huge issue," says veterinarian Jon Hanger, 42, from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Queensland. Hanger has discovered that as much as half of Queensland"s koala population may be affected by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydiosis. In some wild koala populations more than 50 percent of the sexually mature females are infertile. The genesis of the disease is unknown, but it manifests itself as urogenital and ocular disease and is transmitted through mating and birthing, as well as fighting among males. Unlike in humans, chlamydiosis in koalas is often fatal. "Koala populations that used to be vibrant and sustainable are becoming extinct," says Hanger, who puts the blame squarely on the provincial government. "Queensland has failed miserably to do anything meaningful about the decline. The federal government needs to get involved and do it properly, listing the koala as vulnerable to extinction. " Such a designation might save the last remnants of critical koala habitat, he argues. Hanger is also part of a research team developing a chlamydia vaccine. A recent report presented to the Australian Senate made several recommendations to save the koalas, including listing the animals as threatened and vulnerable, funding a program to monitor koala populations, mapping their habitat, and managing federal and private lands to protect the koalas. Until such measures are taken, the efforts of grassroots koala emergency squads will continue to be essential.

Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it【C1】______develop a point of view. But this hasn"t stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing【C2】______the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras — they"re neat【C3】______for your PC, but they"re not suitable for everyday picture taking. The fans are wrong. More than anything else, digital cameras are radically【C4】______what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography【C5】______we know, is beginning to seem out of【C6】______with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder【C7】______, saving pictures as digital【C8】______and watching them on TV is no less practical — and in many ways more【C9】______than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be【C10】______. Paper is also terribly【C11】______Pictures that are incorrectly framed, 【C12】______, or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints. The digital medium changes the【C13】______. Still images that are【C14】______digitally can immediately be shown on a computer【C15】______, a TV screen, or a small liquid crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that【C16】______an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, 【C17】______being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted【C18】______ What"s it like to【C19】______with one of these digital cameras? It"s a little like a first date — exciting, confusing and fraught with【C20】______.

Most young people enjoy some form of physical activity. It may be walking, cycling or swimming, or in winter, skating or skiing; it may be a game of some kind: football, hockey, golf, or tennis; it may be mountaineering. Those who have a passion for climbing high and difficult mountains are often looked upon with astonishment. Why are men and women willing to suffer cold and hardship, and to take risks on high mountains? This astonishment is caused probably by the difference between mountaineering and other forms of activity to which men give their leisure. Mountaineering is a sport and not a game. There are no man-made rules, as there are for such games as golf and football. There are, of course, rules of a different kind which it would be dangerous to ignore, but it is this freedom from man-made rules that makes mountaineering attractive to many people. Those who climb mountains are free to use their own methods. If we compare mountaineering and other more familiar sports, we might think that one big difference is that mountaineering is not a "team game". We should be mistaken in this. There are, it is true, no "matches" between "teams" of climbers, but when climbers are on a rock face linked by a rope on which their lives may depend, there is obviously team work. The mountain climber knows that he may have to fight forces that are stronger and more powerful than man. He has to fight the forces of nature. His sport requires high mental and physical qualities. A mountain climber continues to improve in skill year after year. A skier is probably past his best by the age of thirty, and most international tennis champions are in their early twenties. But it is no unusual for a man of fifty or sixty to climb the highest mountains in the Alps. They may take more time than younger men, but they probably climb with more skill and less waste of effort, and they certainly experience equal enjoyment.

Zimbabweans cope with the shortage of the dollars that count in various ways. The government grabs them from other people. On February 9th, it told the country"s banks to start selling all their hard- currency inflows to the central bank and the state petrol-importing monopoly, at the official rate. It said that Zimbabwean embassies abroad face power cuts because they cannot pay their bills. But if staff in Moscow felt chilly, the grab did not warm them. Exporters told their customers to delay payments. Hard-currency inflows fell by some 90%, forcing the government to relent. Business folk were relieved. The economy is so stormy that many exporters stay afloat only by selling American dollars on the black market. Others try to keep their foreign earnings offshore. This is not easy, since most sell tobacco, gold, roses and other goods that can be observed and recorded as they leave the country. But some quietly set up overseas subsidiaries to buy their own products at artificially low prices. The subsidiary then sells the goods m the real buyer, and keeps the proceeds abroad. Since petrol, which must be imported, is scarce, some employers give their staff bicycles. But the two local bicycle makers have gone bankrupt, so bicycles must be imported too. Where possible, local products are replaced for imports. One firm, for example, has devised a way to make glue using oil from locally-grown castor beans instead of petroleum-based chemicals. But even the simplest products often have imported components. One manufacturer found it could not make first-aid kits, because it could not obtain zips for the bags. The local zip-maker had no dollars to import small but essential metal studs. An order worth $8,000 was lost for want of perhaps $100 in hard cash. Rich individuals are putting their savings into tangible assets, though not houses or land, which they fear the government may seize. Instead, they buy movable goods such as cars or jewellery. Unlike the Zimbabwean dollar, such assets do not lose half their value every year. Jewellery is also an easy way m move money abroad. Wear it on the plane, sell it in London. and leave the money there. The poor have fewer options. A typical unskilled wage now buys a loaf of bread and a litre of milk a day, plus the bus fare to work. For most poor Zimbabweans, the only measure against inflation is to plant maize in the back yard and hope they can harvest it before their landlord expels them.

As part of a student social survey project, you are leading a group to visit an exhibition in a small town. Write a letter of inquiry which should include; 1) details of the show and 2) any preferential treatment. You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points)

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