【F1】 We"re moving; into another era, as the toxic effects of the bubble and its grave consequences spread through the financial system. Just a couple of years ago investors dreamed of 20 percent returns forever. Now surveys show that they"re down to a "realistic" 8 percent to 10 percent range. But what if the next few years turn out to be below normal expectations? Martin Barners of the Bank Credit Analyst in Montreal expects future stock returns to average just 4 percent to 6 percent. Sound impossible?【F2】 After a much smaller bubble that burst in the mid-1960s Standard & Poor"s 5 000 stock average returned 6.9 percent a year(with dividends reinvested)for the following 17 years. Few investors are prepared for that. Right now denial seems to be the attitude of choice."That"s typical," says Lori Lucas of Hewitt, the consulting firm. You hate to look at your investments when they"re going down. Hewitt tracks 500,000 401(k)accounts every day, and finds that savers are keeping their contributions up. But they"re much less inclined to switch their money around. "It"s the slot-machine effect," Lucas says, "People get more interested in playing when they think they"ve got a hot machine—and nothing"s hot today. The average investor feels overwhelmed."【F3】 Against all common sense, many savers still shut their eyes to the dangers of owning too much company stock. In big companies last year, a surprising 29 percent of employees held at least three quarters of their 402(k)in their own stock. Younger employees may have no choice. You often have to wait until you"re 50 or 55 before you can sell any company stock you get as a matching contribution.【F4】 But instead of getting out when they can, old participants have been holding, too. One third of the people 60 and up chose company stock for three quarters of their plan, Hewitt reports. Are they inattentive? Loyal to a fault? Sick? It"s as if Lucent, Enron and Xerox never happened. No investor should give his or her total trust to any particular company"s stock. And while you"re at it, think how you"d be if future stock returns—averaging good years and bad—are as poor as Barnes predicts.【F5】 If you ask me, diversified stocks remain good for the long run, with a backup in bonds. But I, too, am figuring on reduced returns. What a shame. Dear bubble, I"ll never forget. It"s the end of a grand affair.

There is no smoke without fire.

The use of nuclear power has already spread all over the world. (1)_____, scientists still have not agreed with what should be done with the large (2)_____ of waste materials that (3)_____ to increase every year. Most waste materials (4)_____ of simply by placing them somewhere. But nuclear waste must be (5)_____ with great care. It (6)_____ dangerous radiation and it will continue to be (7)_____ for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. How should we get (8)_____ of such waste material in such a way (9)_____ it will not harm the (10)_____? Where can we (11)_____ distribute it? One idea is to put this radioactive waste inside a thick container, which is (12)_____ dropped to the deep bottom of the ocean. (13)_____ some scientists believe that this way of (14)_____ nuclear waste could kill fish and other living things in the oceans or interfere (15)_____ their growth. Another way to (16)_____ nuclear waste is to send it into space, to the sun, (17)_____ it would be burned. Other scientists suggest that this polluting material be (18)_____ thousands of meters under the earth"s surface. Such underground areas must be free (19)_____ possible earthquakes, and advances are being made. But it may still be many years (20)_____ this problem could be finally settled.

For the first time, George Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons around the world, where key terrorist suspects—100 in all, officials say—have been interrogated with "an alternative set of procedures". Fourteen of the suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks, were transferred on Monday to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where some will face trial for war crimes before special military commissions. Many of these men—as Mr. Bush confirmed in a televised speech at the White House on September 6th—are al-Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters who had sought to withhold information that could "save American lives". "In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly (and) questioned by experts", the president said. He declined to say where they had been held or why they had not simply been sent straight to Guantanamo, as some 770 other suspected terrorists have been. Mr. Bush also refused to reveal what interrogation methods had been used, saying only that, though "tough", they had been "safe and lawful and necessary". Many believe that the main purpose of the CIA"s prisons was to hide from prying eyes the torture and other cruel or degrading treatment used to extract information from prisoners. But Mr. Bush insisted that America did not torture: "It"s against our laws, and it"s against our values. I have not authorised it and I will not authorise it". The pentagon this week issued its long-awaited new Army Field Manual, forbidding all forms of torture and degrading treatment of prisoners by army personnel—though not the CIA. For the first time, it specifically bans forced nakedness, hooding, the Use of dogs, sexual humiliation and "water-boarding" (simulated drowning)—all practices that have been used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. So why did the president decide now to reveal the CIA"s secret programme? Partly, he confessed; because of the Supreme Court"s recent ruling that minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions applied to all military prisoners, no matter where they were. This has put American agents at risk of prosecution for war crimes. Mr. Bush has now asked Congress to ban suspected terrorists from suing American personnel in federal courts.

A.Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan160—200words.B.Youressaymustbewrittenclearly.C.Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1)Describethepicture,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

It is a curious paradox that we think of the physical sciences as "hard", the social sciences as "soft", and the biological sciences as somewhere in between. This is interpreted to mean that our knowledge of physical systems is more certain than our knowledge of biological systems, and these in turn are more certain than our knowledge of social systems. In terms of bur capacity to sample the relevant universes, however, and the probability that our images of these universes are at least approximately correct, one suspects that a reverse order is more reasonable. We are able to sample earth"s social systems with some degree of confidence that we have a reasonable sample of the total universe being investigated. Our knowledge of social systems, therefore, while it is in many ways extremely inaccurate, is not likely to be seriously overturned by new discoveries. Even the folk knowledge in social systems on which ordinary life is based in earning, spending, organizing, marrying, taking part in political activities, fighting and so on, is not very "dissimilar from the more sophisticated images of the social system derived from the social sciences, even though it is built upon the very imperfect samples of personal experience. In contrast, our image of the astronomical universe, of even of earth"s geological history, can easily be subject to revolutionary changes as new data comes in and new theories are worked out. If we define the "security" of our image of various parts of the total system as the probability of their suffering significant changes, then we would reverse the order of hardness and see the social sciences as the most secure, the physical sciences as the least secure, and again the biological sciences as somewhere in between. Our image of the astronomical universe is the least secure of all simply because we observe such a fantastically small sample of it and its record-keeping is trivial as compared with the rich records of the social systems, or even the limited records of biological systems. Records of the astronomical universe, despite the fact that we see distant things as they were long ago, are limited in the extreme. Even in regard to such a close neighbor as the moon, which we have actually visited, theories about its origin and history are extremely different, contradictory, and hard to choose among. Our knowledge of physical evolution is incomplete and highly insecure.

In the following article, some sentences have been removed. Choose the most suitable one from the list A—G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) I remember one night a few years ago when my daughter was frantic with worry. After my Harvard Extension School classes, I usually arrived at the bus station near my home by 11 p.m., but on that night I was nowhere to be found. My daughter was nervous. It wasn"t safe for a single woman to walk alone on the streets at night, especially one as defenseless as I am: I can slay a mugger with my sharp wit, but I am just too short to do any real physical damage. That night my daughter checked the bus station, drove around the streets, and contacted some friends. But she couldn"t find me—until she called my astronomy professor who told her that I was on top of the Science Center using the telescope to gaze at the stars. Unaware of the time, I had gotten lost in the heavens and was only thinking about the new things I had learned that night in class. This story illustrates a habit I have developed over the years: I lose track of the time when it comes to learning. (41)______. I may have started late; but I will continue to learn as long as I am able because there is no greater feeling, in my opinion, than traveling to a faraway country as I have and being able to identify by sight the painting of a famous artist, the statue of an obscure sculptor, the cathedral of an ancient architect. (42)______. So I will continue to take classes and tell my story. Lately it seems that everyone is asking me, "Mary, what advice do you have for other students?" So while I have you all here, I m going to ease my burden of answering you each individually: (43)______. So listen to me when I tell you this: Knowledge is power. My studies were interrupted when I was in the 7th grade, back sometime around World War I. I loved school but I was forced to leave it to care for my family. I was con-signed to work in a Rhode Island cotton mill, where I labored for many years. I eventually married and raised 5 children, 20 grandchildren, and 18 great-grandchildren. But all the while I felt inferior to those around me. I knew I was as smart as a college graduate. I knew I was capable of doing a job well—I had proved it by running a successful family business for decades that still exists. But I wanted more. I wanted to feel confident when I spoke and I Wanted people to respect my opinions. Does it surprise you to discover how much you have in common with an 89 year old woman? (44)______. (45)______. That belief is what has motivated me for the last 75 years to get this degree. It is also the mission of the Harvard Extension School. Without the support I received from this school, I might not have graduated until I was 100—a phrase that many of you have probably used in jest.A. If the saying is true that wisdom comes with age, you may safely assume that I am one of the wisest people in this hall and possibly at this university today.B. f know that many of you graduates today, whether you were "born in 1907 or 1967, have faced similar barriers to completing your studies and have sometimes felt inferior around those you work or socialize with just because you didn"t have a degree.C. If you have treated education as your main goal, and not as s means to an end. Then you, too, have probably been claimed as a missing person once in your academic career, whether you were lost in the stars or the stacks of Widener Library.D. But I am here today like you are—to prove that it can be done; that the power gained by understanding and appreciating the world around us can be obtained by anyone regardless of social status, personal challenges, or age.E. How else do you explain a woman who began high school at age 71 and who is graduating with a bachelor s degree at 89?F. And you, too, know that the journey was worth it, and that the power of knowledge makes me the most formidable 89-year-old woman at the bus stop.G. I have found that the world is a final exam that you can never be prepared enough for.

The problem with today"s housing crisis, politically, is that it is just not all that visible. At the end of the Second World War, families with kids【C1】______into shared houses. In 1946, more than 46,000 families took over military camps, empty hotels and flats. That was a(n)【C2】______housing crisis. Today"s does not come【C3】______: most people still have somewhere to live. It is nonetheless【C4】______, and worthy of political attention. But the question of exactly why our expensive homes【C5】______a crisis is more subtly depicted than it can appear. Since 1973 at least, the total number of "dwellings" has climbed far faster than the population. How is this possible, 【C6】______that building rates have【C7】______? And doesn"t it mean that there isn"t really a housing crisis? First, in the 1960s and 1970s, while councils happily knocked【C8】______new estates, they were also busy pulling down lots of old "【C9】______" houses too. Social housing helped people move from broken old crowded houses into【C10】______new flats or houses, typically with much more【C11】______. Meanwhile, new homes were built on green fields. Average household sizes【C12】______ dramatically, even as the average house got bigger. Though the housing stock【C13】______by less than the rate of building,【C14】______got a lot more space in which to live. In recent decades, 【C15】______, everyone has got a lot less space. We have had【C16】______little new building, but【C17】______we have magically created lots of new housing. Essentially, so far, the housing crisis has been【C18】______by subdividing our homes to【C20】______the extra population growth.【C19】______, what new homes we do build are the smallest in the developed world.

Humans have altered the world"s climate by (1)_____ heat-trapping gases since almost the beginning of civilization and even prevented the start of an ice age several thousand years ago, a scientist said. Most scientists (2)_____ a rise (3)_____ global temperatures over the past century (4)_____ to emissions of carbon dioxide (5)_____ human activities like driving cars and operating factories. Dr. William Ruddiman, a professor at the University of Virginia, said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (6)_____ humans" effect (7)_____ climate went back nearly 10, 000 years (8)_____ people gave up hunting and gathering and began farming. In a commentary accompanying the article, Dr. Thomas J. Crowley of Duke University, said he (9)_____ Dr. Ruddiman"s premise at first. "But when I started reading, Dr. Crowley wrote, "I could not help but (10)_____ whether he just might be (11)_____ something." The climate of the last 10,000 years has been unusually stable, (12)_____ civilization to flourish. But that is only because people chopped down swaths of forest in Europe, China and India for croplands and pastures. Carbon dioxide (13)_____ by the destruction of the forests, plus methane, another heat-trapping gas, (14)_____ by irrigated rice fields in Southeast Asia, trapped enough heat to (15)_____ an expected natural cooling. Levels of carbon dioxide and methane rise and fall in natural cycles (16)_____ thousands of years, and both reached a peak at the end of the last ice age 11;000 years ago. Both then declined (17)_____ expected. Both (18)_____ declining through the present day, leading to lower temperatures, and a new ice age should have begun 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Dr. Ruddiman said. Instead, levels of carbon dioxide reversed 8,000 wears ago. The decline (19)_____ methane levels reversed 5,000 years ago, (20)_____ with the advent of irrigation rice farming.

People were afraid to leave their houses, for although the police had been ordered to stand by in case of emergency, they were just as confused and helpless as anybody else.

While everyone is different, there arc a few common themes that surface for those with a history of abuse. For instance, it"s unlikely that one who suffered abuse was taught much about boundaries. Yet good boundaries are inherent in any healthy relationship. This comes up in a variety of ways. For example, many couples have learned to be very careful not to say hurtful things to their partner during a fight; they"ve learned not to be flirtatious with others if they are in an exclusive relationship. " These may seem like small concerns, but they actively maintain safety and respect, both for each other and for the integrity of the relationship. People without abuse history typically recognize when another person(man or woman)is "coming onto" them inappropriately, and they have no trouble telling the "intruder," so to speak, to back off. With abuse history, especially if the abuse was chronic, we don"t even recognize inappropriate behavior, because such behavior was "normalized" during one"s childhood. The abuse survivor then is less likely to take steps to protect oneself, and is left with an array of feelings, including frustration, disappointment, confusion, anger, and resignation. How different it becomes when the survivor learns to recognize inappropriate behavior for what it is, use appropriate boundaries, move on, and then be able to open to what we do want, a person who is respectful, loving, honest, and so on. "As children, when our parents directly contradict our inner voice, our intuitive knowing, we"ll trust them and discount our own truth. As adults, we have to learn to trust our intuition all over again. " Another unfortunate, but repairable, side effect of sexual abuse is that we have often lost trust in our intuition. If our intuition told us that something that happened wasn"t right, hut all the adults in our family said, "I don"t see any problem here", or "You"re lying! Shame on you!" we get confused. As children we need to trust our parents for our basic survival. When our parents say and do things that directly contradict our inner voice, our intuitive knowing, we"ll trust mom or dad, and discount ourselves. For children, it"s safer this way. But as adults, it takes retraining to trust our intuition again. This is a gradual process, but it can be done. Once we trust our inner knowing more fully, we become confident, more empowered, and more able to receive what is beneficial to us. Love, trust, intimacy, and ease are not only possible; they are our birthright. We mustn"t allow someone else"s violation of us to impede our right to love and be loved. Thankfully, we don"t have to.

TheImportanceofAbidingbyTrafficRulesWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Michael Porter, who has made his name throughout the business community by advocating his theories of competitive advantages, is now swimming into even more shark-infested waters, arguing that competition can save even America"s troubled health-care system, the largest in the world. Mr. Porter argues in "Redefining Health Care" that competition, if properly applied, can also fix what ails this sector. That is a bold claim, given the horrible state of America"s health-care system. Just consider a few of its failings: America pays more per capita for health care than most countries, but it still has some 45m citizens with no health insurance at all. While a few receive outstanding treatment, he shows in heart-wrenching detail that most do not. The system, wastes huge resources on paperwork, ignores preventive care and, above all, has perverse incentives that encourage shifting costs rather than cutting them outright. He concludes that it is "on a dangerous path, with a toxic combination of high costs, uneven quality, frequent errors and limited access to care". Many observers would agree with this diagnosis, but many would undoubtedly disagree with this advocacy of more market forces. Doctors have an intuitive distrust of competition, which they often equate with greed, while many public-policy thinkers argue that the only way to fix America"s problem is to quash the private sector"s role altogether and instead set up a government monopoly like Britain"s National Health Service. Mr. Porter strongly disagrees. He starts by acknowledging that competition, as it has been introduced to America"s health system, has in fact done more harm than good. But he argues that competition has been introduced piecemeal, in incoherent and counter-productive ways that lead to perverse incentives and worse outcomes: "health-care competition is not focused on delivering value for patients", he says. Mr. Porter offers a mix of solutions to fix this mess, and thereby to put the sector on a genuinely competitive footing. First comes the seemingly obvious (but as yet unrealized) goal of data transparency. Second is a redirection of competition from the level of health plans, doctors, clinics and hospitals, to competition "at the level of medical conditions, which is all but absent". The authors argue that the right measure of "value" for the health sector should be how well a patient with a given health condition fares over the entire cycle of treatment, and what the cost is for that entire cycle. That rightly emphasizes the role of early detection and preventive care over techno-fixes, pricey pills and the other failings of today"s system. If there is a failing in this argument, it is that he sometimes strays toward naive optimism. Mr. Porter argues, for example, that his solutions are so commonsensical that private actors in the health system could forge ahead with them profitably without waiting for the government to fix its policy mistakes. That is a tempting notion, but it falls into a trap that economists call the fallacy of the $20 bill on the street. If there really were easy money on the pavement, goes the argument, surely previous passers-by would have bent over and picked it up by now. In the same vein, if Mr. Porter"s prescriptions are so sensible that companies can make money even now in the absence of government policy changes, why in the world have they not done so already? One reason may be that they can make more money in the current suboptimal equilibrium than in a perfectly competitive market—which is why government action is probably needed to sweep aside the many obstacles in the way of Mr. Porter"s powerful vision.

(46) Women make up 40 percent of the world"s work force in agriculture, a quarter in industry, and a third in services. Women farmers in the developing countries grow at least 50 percent of the world"s food, as much as 80 percent in some African countries. (47) In addition to income and generating activities (in cash and kind), women"s household activities include caring for the sick, house maintenance, and such vital work as caring for children, preparing food, and fetching firewood and water. Yet women"s productivity remains low. A woman works both in income-generating work and in home production. Improving women"s productivity can contribute to growth, efficiency, and poverty reduction? A key development goals everywhere. (48) Investing in women—in education, health, family planning—is thus an important part of development strategy as well as a matter of social justice. It is an integral part of the World Bank"s overall strategy for poverty reduction that calls for broadly based, labor-absorbing economic growth and improved human resource development. (49) If long-term change in the conditions of women is to be achieved, the actions and attitudes of men must change and it is important that men be brought along in the process of change. For example, family planning information campaigns should be aimed at men as well as women because it is when men and women are able to make joint informed decisions on family size, child spacing, and appropriate methods of contraception, that these programs are most successful. Likewise, problems affecting women are often close-related to the social relationships between men and women. (50) For example, many women"s health problems are embedded in unequal gender relation in work loads, responsibilities for family welfare, and access to resources and decision-making; it is impossible to deal effectively with women"s health problems through approaches that deal only with women.

Productivity is the yardstick by which socioeconomic revolutions are measured. Plows initiated the agrarian revolution by greatly improving the productivity of farmers. Engines, and (1)_____ electricity, (2)_____ the industrial revolutions by (3)_____ improving the productivity of workers in manufacturing and transportation. If there is to be a true in formation revolution, then computers will have to (4)_____ the pattern with information and information work. Information technology has (5)_____ begun to improve productivity, and it has even hurt it in some cases; it takes longer to wade (6)_____ those endless automated phone answering menus (7)_____ it does to talk to a human operator. (8)_____, productivity will rise (9)_____ computers and communications are used in the Information Marketplace to relieve people of brain work (10)_____ industrial machinery relieved us of physical work. The Information Marketplace will give (11)_____ to two great new forces that will drive (12)_____ in the twenty-first century. (13)_____, most people and companies buy new computers because the hardware has faster processors or more storage capacity, or because it is fashionable to own a new model, (14)_____ because competitors have bought them and "we can"t afford to fall behind." Imagine the (15)_____ of a company buying a new device be cause the motor turns at a higher (16)_____, or because it"s in vogue to do so, or because the competition just bought that model (17)_____ of whether the machine can move any more earth in an hour! Let"s explore how the Information marketplace might help us in the (18)_____ quest to get more results for less (19)_____. To do this, we will first examine a series of "faults"—ways in which computer technology is (20)_____ today, because of either technological or human weaknesses. Correcting these faults will be the first step toward increasing our productivity. Making the Information Marketplace easier to use will be the second step.

About two thousand years ago, the Celts were still in their primitive society and Britain was still covered with dense forests and swamps. They knew nothing of a written language, although they could utter different sounds to exchange simple ideas. But the Celts created their own civilization of which the most shining example was the historical Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The Stonehenge, still in existence now, was a circular arrangement of monoliths built by the ancient Britons for purposes still unknown to modern historians. The Celtic language didn"t disappeared completely, either. Some of the Celtic words or sounds were later assimilated into the English language. Some people in Scotland and Wales now still speak a language of Celtic origin. It is believed that the Celts were related with the ancient people in what is now France and they, perhaps, offered some help in the struggle to resist Julius Caesar when he invaded France. The Roman army, commanded by Julius Caesar, invaded England in the first century B.C. In the first Century A.D., the Romans went across the English Channel and invaded Britain for the second time. They did not meet with much resistance on the part of the natives and soon got possession of what is now known as England by driving many of the native Celts to mountainous Scotland and Wales. The Romans brought other things with them besides their swords. They introduced their Roman civilization into England. They built towns, temples, theatres and fane buildings, better ones than the Britons had ever dreamed of. They drained marshes, cleared away forests, built roads and taught the Britons to cultivate their land in a better way. They introduced a system of organized government in towns, which usually took on names ending in "shire". They remained in England for about 350 years until 410 A.D. when the Germanic races started invading Rome. The invasion made it necessary to withdraw the Roman soldiers from England to defend their home country. The island of Britain was again returned to the control of the native inhabitants. But the natives had been ruled and protected so long by the Roman troops that they did not know how to protect themselves, the island, therefore, became a tempting and easy prey to the tribes within easy reach. Invaders from Ireland and Scotland began to plunder and kill the weak and defenseless Britons in England. The Britons hardly knew what to do and they, in despair, asked the Romans to send back their soldiers to protect them Rome could not do this as she had more serious business on hand. Just at this time, a band of newcomers landed in the southern part of England, in what is now the county of Kent. These newcomers were known in history as the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons who had come from Northern Europe. They were aggressive rovers and pirates ready to plunder or to fight. To them the Britons turned for assistance. They asked the newcomers to join in the war against their fierce neighbors. The result was a victory for the combined Britons and Anglo-Saxons.

Title: LIVING IN A SMALL TOWNWord limit: 160-200 wordsTime limit: 40 minutesYou are required to develop your essay according to the given topic sentence of each paragraph. 1. There are at least three major advantages to living in a small town. The first is the ease with which a person can get around. 2. The second advantage is the low cost of living. 3. The greatest benefit of small-town life is the friendliness.

When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans. That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass(the amount of living biological matter)of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators(animals that kill and eat other animals)in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then. Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative . One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today' s vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now. Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline." The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

With the publication of "On the Origin of Species" by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin in 1859 showed conclusively that species evolved and were not immutable over time.【F1】 This revolutionary idea permitted an explanation of the fossil record that did not need to invoke the Biblical story of the Flood or the view that all extinct animals and plants had perished as a result of this one global catastrophe. It became possible to compare modern and fossil animals and to construct lineages through time that documented the changes that had occurred, and the distribution of fossil forms began to take on new significance. It became apparent that assemblages of fossils betray climatic preferences at any given time and climatic change through time.【F2】 Another 12 years elapsed before Darwin applied his theory of evolution—and its mechanism, natural selection acting upon a pool of normal biological variation—to the case of man; the delay more likely was because of lack of fossil evidence than lack of courage. 【F3】 The so-called Darwinian tautology, "The survival of the fittest is the survival of those best fitted to survive", gives an insight into the adaptations of living organisms that lead to an increase in their chances of survival and of leaving more offspring than their rivals. The closer the adaptation to the environment, the greater the chances of survival. This pathway leads to specialization: fish need water in which to swim, birds need wings with which to fly, koalas need eucalyptus leaves to eat—nothing else will do. This approach to survival has its advantages but also its drawbacks.【F4】 Should the environment change suddenly, those who have gambled on specialization may lose, while those who have retained a generalized form and remained adaptable can adjust to the new situation and survive. 【F5】 On the whole, the order of Primates, which contains humans and their ancestors, has retained this approach, an evolutionary flexibility that has enabled primates to respond to change when it has arisen.

The success of Augustus owed much to the character of Roman theorizing about the state. The Romans did not produce ambitious blueprints 【B1】______ the construction of ideal states, such as【B2】______to the Greeks. With very few exceptions, Roman theorists ignored, or rejected 【B3】______ valueless, intellectual exercises like Plato' s Republic, in 【B4】______ the relationship of the individual to the state was 【B5】______ out painstakingly without reference to 【B6】______ states or individuals.The closest the Roman came to the Greek model was Cicero' s De Re Publica, and even here Cicero had Rome clearly in【B7】______. Roman thought about the state was concrete, even when it【B8】______religious and moral concepts. The first ruler of Rome, Romulus, was【B9】______to have received authority from the gods, specifically from Jupiter, the "guarantor" of Rome. All constitutional【B10】______was a method of conferring and administering the【B11】______. Very clearly it was believed that only the assembly of the【B12】______, the family heads who formed the original senate,【B13】______the religious character necessary to exercise authority, because its original function was to【B14】______the gods. Being practical as well as exclusive, the senators moved【B15】______to divide the authority, holding that their consuls, or chief officials, would possess it on【B16】______months, and later extending its possession to lower officials.【B17】______the important achievement was to create the idea of continuing【B18】______authority embodied only temporarily in certain upper-class individuals and conferred only【B19】______the mass of the people concurred. The system grew with enormous【B20】______, as new offices and assemblies were created and almost none discarded.