If soldiering was for the money, the Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service (SBS) would have disintegrated in recent years. Such has been the explosion in private military companies (PMCs) that they employ an estimated 30,000 in Iraq alone—and no government can match their fat salaries. A young SAS trooper earns about￡ 2,000($3,500) a month; on the "circuit", as soldiers call the private world, he could get ￡15,000. Why would he not? For reasons both warm-hearted and cool-headed. First, for love of regiment and comrades, bonds that tend to be tightest in the most select units. Second, for the operational support, notably field medicine, and the security, including life assurance and pension, that come with the queen"s paltry shilling. Although there has been no haemorrhaging of special force (SF) fighters to the private sector, there has been enough of a trickle to cause official unease. A memo recently circulated in the Ministry of Defence detailed the loss of 24 SF senior non-commissioned officers to private companies in the past year. All had completed 22 years of service, and so were eligible for a full pension, and near the end of their careers. Yet there is now a shortage of hard-bitten veterans to fill training and other jobs earmarked for them, under a system for retaining them known as "continuance". America has responded to the problem by throwing cash at it, offering incentives of up to $150,000 to sign new contracts. The Ministry of Defence has found a cheaper ploy. It has spread the story of two British PMC employees, recently killed in Iraq, whose bodies were left rotting in the sun.

Studyingthefollowingpicturescarefullyandwriteanessayin160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandyouressayshouldcoverthesepoints:1)Describethetrend2)Andgiveyourcomments.

On behalf of the organizing committee, please write a welcome letter of about 100 words to welcome the newcomer to Chinese History Association.You should include the details you think necessary.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead.Do not write the address.

When you ask young person to tell the names of some famous movies and the chances are that many of those mentioned will be popular because of computer-generated special effects. Some movies such as "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" rely heavily on computers to create special fantasy and space effects. 【C1】______However, genuinely "human" characters, indistinguishable from real actors, are still not quite possible, although we are getting very close to this elusive goal. The process of imagining and developing a computer-generated character is complex, involving many stages. The first stage is to design the look of the character, and to create a three-dimensional model on the computer. 【C2】______One way to achieve this is by building a real skeleton of the model. After using lasers to scan the real model into the computer, controls are added that allow the bones and muscles to be moved around. This is where computer animation comes in. Because people are so conscious of how "real" faces look, many detailed controls are needed on the computer to move the different features of the face. 【C3】______One way of achieving this is called motion capture, where a person acts out the character, and his movements are captured by video camera and uploaded into the computer.【C4】______These methods are often used together in creating an animated character; both of them are slow and painstaking, requiring hours of effort and planning. Enormous computer power is needed to make? 【C5】______There were up to 160 people working on computer graphics for these three movies, which took approximately【B4】______million processing hours. It is estimated that the same process would have taken up to 200 years on a 4-gigahertz PC! However, despite all of this extremely sophisticated and expensive technology, creating a real human face is still a challenge for our animators. People are very sensitive to facial expressions. We can immediately pick if a face is not human, and we often have a strong reaction to this. The closer the face is to looking truly human, the more negative this reaction can be; this effect has been christened the "uncanny valley" by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. [A]However, most experts also advised that once the animation gets close enough to the real thing, we begin to feel positive about it once more. So, maybe future Tom Cruises or Lindsay Lohans will be computer generated, and we will never know the difference. [B]The model must be able to move in a realistic manner and, most importantly, its face must mirror human faces when it laughs, frowns or talks. [C]Others, such as the famous "Lord of the Rings" movies, created surprisingly lifelike humanoid characters using sophisticated computer-generated techniques. The creative effort that lies behind these creatures is amazing. [D]Another way is key-frame animation, where, instead of modeling actions from a real person, the animators use the controls to move all of the parts of the body and face to create movement on the screen. [E]Enormous computer is needed to make animation look real. For the "Lord of the Rings", thousands of processors and numerous workstations were used to create all of the characters and special effects. [F]Up to a hundred may be needed to move the muscles of the face, so that the character' s eyes, skin, mouth and other features all look natural to our eyes. After designing all of the components of the face and body, and the computer controls, the character is ready to move, or be animated. [G]The real movie stars strive for improving their action so that they can attain more and more fans and become more famous, then enhance their appearance fee.

You have been asked to write a report on water-saving issue to the administrative committee of the university. Task: As a volunteer, write a one-paragraph report in about 100 words on the main findings of your personal check-up of the water supply facilities on campus. Include what you consider to be the best measures to effectively correct the situation.

In the next century we"ll be able to alter our DNA radically, encoding our visions and vanities while concocting new life-forms. When Dr. Frankenstein made his monster, he wrestled with the moral issue of whether he should allow it to reproduce, "Had I the right, for my own benefit, to inflict the curse upon everlasting generations?" Will such questions require us to develop new moral philosophies? Probably not. Instead, we"ll reach again for a time-tested moral concept; one sometimes called the Golden Rule and which Kant, the millennium"s most prudent moralist, conjured up into a categorical imperative, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; treat each person as an individual rather than as a means to some end. Under this moral precept we should recoil at human cloning, because it inevitably entails using humans as means to other humans" ends and valuing them as copies of others we loved or as collections of body parts, not as individuals in their own right. We should also draw a line, however fuzzy, that would permit using genetic engineering to cure diseases and disabilities but not to change the personal attributes that make someone an individual (IQ, physical appearance, gender and sexuality). The biotech age will also give us more reason to guard our personal privacy. Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, got it wrong: rather than centralizing power in the hands of the state, DNA technology has empowered individuals and families. But the state will have an important role, making sure that no one, including insurance companies, can look at our genetic data without our permission or use it to discriminate against us. Then we can get ready for the breakthroughs that could come at the end of the next century and the technology is comparable to mapping our genes: plotting the 10 billion or more neurons of our brain. With that information we might someday be able to create artificial intelligences that think and experience consciousness in ways that are indistinguishable from a human brain. Eventually we might be able to replicate our own minds in a "dry-ware" machine, so that we could live on without the "wet-ware" of a biological brain and body. The 20th century"s revolution in infotechnology will thereby merge with the 21st century"s revolution in biotechnology. But this is science fiction. Let"s turn the page now and get back to real science.

The first time Tom Kiklas saw an electronic cigarette, he recalls, "I couldn"t stand it.. . I thought, "I don"t want to be involved in this. " I"m an anti-smoking kind of guy. " But after Kiklas realized that electronic cigarettes, a. k. a. e-cigarettes, deliver nicotine without tobacco or combustion products, thereby eliminating virtually all of the health hazards associated with smoking, he was comfortable becoming media relations director for inLife, one of the companies that sell the devices in the United States. Unfortunately, many anti-smoking activists and public health officials are stuck in that first stage of visceral antipathy toward anything that resembles cigarettes, an emotional reaction that could prove deadly for smokers. Introduced by the Chinese company Ruyan in 2004, e-cigarettes produce water vapor containing nicotine and the food additive propylene glycol. The tip of the battery-powered "cigarette" lights up when a user sucks on it, and the vapor looks like smoke, but it dissipates immediately and contains none of the toxins and carcinogens that are generated when tobacco burns. Given the enormous differences between this vapor and tobacco smoke, the companies that sell e-cigarettes online and from shopping mall kiosks are on firm ground in advertising them as safer alternatives to conventional cigarettes that can be used in places where smoking is banned. The arguments of e-cigarette opponents, by contrast, reek of red herrings . The critics warn that nicotine is addictive, that it may contribute to cardiovascular problems, and that smokers may use e-cigarettes as way of coping with smoking bans, continuing their habits instead of quitting. All of these objections also apply to the nicotine gum, patches, sprays, and inhalers the FDA has approved as safe and effective smoking cessation tools. E-cigarettes are less expensive than those products and may be more appealing to smokers looking for an experience that"s closer to the real thing. Although they have not been subject to the sort of rigorous testing the FDA demands for new drugs, the drug they contain is not new. It"s the same one delivered, in a much dirtier manner, by the cigarettes that the government says kill 400,000 Americans every year. "The standard for lower-risk products for use by current smokers," argues the American Association of Public Health Physicians, "should be the hazard posed by cigarettes, not a pharmaceutical safety standard. " Telling smokers they may not use e-cigarettes until they"re approved by the FDA is like telling a floundering swimmer not to climb aboard a raft because it might have a leak.

In addition, changes made to the construction codes in Los Angeles during the last 20 years have strengthened the city" s buildings and highways, making them more resistant to quakes.

The topic of cloning has been a politically and ethically controversial one since its very beginning. While the moral and philosophical aspects of the issues are entirely up to the interpretation of the individual, the application of cloning technology can be studied objectively. Many in the scientific community advocate the use of cloning for the preservation and support of endangered species of animals, which aside from cloning, have no other practical hope for avoiding extinction. The goal of the use of cloning to avoid extinction is the reintroduction of new genes into the gene pool of species with few survivors, ensuring the maintenance and expansion of genetic diversity. Likely candidates for this technique are species known to have very few surviving members, such as the African Bongo Antelope, the Sumatran Tiger, and the Chinese Giant Panda. In the case of Giant Panda, some artificial techniques for creating offspring have already been performed, perhaps paving the way for cloning as the next step in the process. With the estimated population of only about 1000 Giant Pandas left in the world, the urgency of the situation has led to desperate measures. One panda was born through the technique of artificial insemination in the San Diego Zoo in the United States. "Hua Mei" was born in 1999 after her parents, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, had trouble conceiving naturally. The plan to increase the Giant Panda population through the use of cloning involves the use of a species related to the Giant Panda, the American Black Bear. Egg cells will be removed from female black bears and then fertilized with Panda cells such as those from Ling-Ling or Hsing-Hsing. The fertilized embryo will then re-implanted into the black bear, where it will grow and mature, until a new panda is delivered from the black bear host. Critics of cloning technology argue that the emphasis on cloning as a method by which to preserve species will draw funding away from other methods, such as habitat preservation and conservation. Proponents of cloning counter that many countries in which many endangered species exist are too poor to protect and maintain the species" habitats anyway, making cloning technology the only practical way to ensure that those species survive to future generations. The issue is still hotly debated, as both sides weigh the benefits that could be achieved against the risks and ethical concerns that constantly accompany any argument on the issue.Notes:ethically 道德上。gene pool 基因库。insemination n.受精。fertilize 使受精。embryo 胚胎。proponent支持者，拥护者。weigh A against B权衡A和B的利弊。

With increasing prosperity, Western European youth is having a fling that is creating distinctive consumer and cultural patterns. The result has been the increasing emergence in Europe of that phenomenon well known in America as the "youth market."【C1】______ In Western Europe, the youth market may appropriately be said to be in its infancy.【C2】______.Some manifestations of the market, chiefly sociological, have been recorded, but it is only just beginning to be the subject of organized consumer research and promotion. Characteristics of the evolving European youth market indicate dissimilarities as well as similarities to the American youth market. The market's basis is essentially the same — more spending power and freedom to use it in the hands of teenagers and older youth. Young consumers also make up an increasingly high proportion of the population. 【C3】______.Generally it now is difficult to tell in which direction trans-Atlantic teenage influences are flowing. Also, a pattern of conformity dominates European youth as in this country, though in Britain the object is to wear clothes that "make the wearer stand out," but also make him "in" , such as tight trousers and precisely tailored jackets. Worship and emulation of "idols" in the entertainment field, especially the "pop" singers and other performers is pervasive. There is also the same exuberance and unpredictability in sudden fad switches. In Paris, buyers of stores catering to the youth market carefully watch what dress is being worn by a popular television teenage singer to be ready for a sudden demand for copies. In Stockholm other followers of teenage fads call the youth market "attractive but irrational." 【C4】______.In the European youth market, unlike that of the United States, it is the working youth who provides the bulk of purchasing power. On the average, the school-finishing age still tends to be 14 years. This is the maximum age to which compulsory education extends, and with Europe's industrial manpower shortage, thousands of teenage youths may soon attain incomes equal in many cases to that of their fathers. 【C5】______. In Europe, an average is about $ 5 to $ 10 a month. Working youth, consequently, are the big spenders in the European youth market, but they also have less leisure than those staying on at school, who have less buying power. [A] In some countries such as Britain, West Germany and France, it is more advanced than in others. [B] In terms of volume and variety of sales, the market in Europe is only a shadow of its American counterpart, but it is a growing shadow. [C] This is a market in which enterprising businesses cater to the demands of teenagers and older youths in all their rock mania and pop-art forms. [D] But there are also these important dissimilarities generally with the American youth market [E] As in the United States, youthful tastes in Europe extend over a similar range of products-records and record players, transistor radios, leather jackets and "way out," extravagantly styled clothing, cosmetics and soft drinks. [F] The most obvious differences between the youth market in Europe and that in the United States is in size. [G] Although, because of general prosperity, European youths are beginning to continue school studies beyond the compulsory maximum age, they do not receive anything like the pocket money or "allowances" of American teenagers.

Your company intends to purchase some car parts. Now it has received a fax offer (传真报价单). Write a letter to the sales department of a car parts company to express your: 注: Should this transaction prove to be successful是虚拟条件句的省略形式，也可以写为If this transaction should prove to be successful。 1) thanks for the fax offer, 2) willingness to accept all the terms except price, and 3) request of reduction in price. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

Does using a word processor affect a writer s style? The medium usually does do something to the message after all, even if Marshall McLuhan"s claim that the medium simply is the message has been heard and largely forgotten now. The question matters. Ray Hammond, in his excellent guide The Writer and the Word Processor, predicts that over half the professional writers in Britain and the USA will be using word processors by the end of 1985. The best known recruit is Leu Deighton, from as long ago as 1968, though most users have only started since the microcomputer boom began in 1980. Ironically word processing is in some ways psychologically more like writing in rough than typing, since it restores fluidity and provisionality to the text. The typist"s dread of having to get out the Tippex, the scissors and paste, or of redoing the whole thing if he has any substantial second thoughts, can make him consistently choose the safer option in his sentences, or let something stand which he knows to be unsatisfactory or incomplete, out of weariness. In word processing the text is loosened up whilst still retaining the advantage of looking formally finished. This has, I think, two apparently contradictory effects. The initial writing can become excessively sloppy and careless, in the expectation that it will be corrected later. That crucial first inspiration is never easy to recapture, though, and therefore, on the other hand, the writing can become over-deliberated, lacking in flow and spontaneity, since revision becomes a larger part of composition. However, these are faults easier to detect in others than in oneself. My own experience of the sheer difficulty of committing any words at all to the page means I"m grateful for all the help I can get. For most writers, word processing quite rapidly comes to feel like the ideal method (and can always be a second step after drafting on paper if you prefer). Most of the writers interviewed by Hammond say it has improved their style ("immensely", says Deighton). Seeing your own word on a screen helps you to feel cool and detached about them. Thus is not just by freeing you from-the labor of mechanical retyping that a word processor can help you to write. One author (Terence Feely) claims it has increased his output by 400%. Possibly the feeling of having a reactive machine, which appears to do things, rather than just have things done with it, accounts for this—your slave works hard and so do you. Are there no drawbacks? It costs a lot and takes time to learn—"expect to lose weeks of work", says Hammond, though days might be nearer the mark. Notoriously it is possible to lose work altogether on a word processor, and this happens to everybody at least once. The awareness that what you have written no longer exists anywhere at all, is unbelievably enraging and baffling. Will word processing generally raise the level of professional writing then? Does it make writers better as well as more productive? Though all users insist it has done so for them individually, this is hard to believe. But reliance happens fast.

Young people in the early 1980s are taking on a set of attitudes and values remarkably different from those of the stormy" 60s and "70s. Instead of anti-establishment outbursts, today"s younger generation had turned more thoughtful and more serious. There is heightened concern for the future of the country and a yearning for the traditions and support systems that gave comfort in the past. Many young men and Women of high-school and college age are having second thoughts about the "new morality" and condemn what a soaring divorce rate has done to families. They speak openly of gaining strength from religion. Patriotism, too, seems to be making a modest comeback. One change in the early 1980s is a questioning of the permissive moral climate of recent years. More young people, while hesitant to preach or to condemn their peers, cite the destructive effects of the drugs and alcohol that are so widely available in the schools. It is peer pressure that pushes teenagers into drugs, but now the habit often is dropped after high school, according to Debbie Bishop, a 22-year-old secretary. James Elrod, a college junior in Kentucky, also reports that use of marijuana on campus has lessened. A Cornell University law student reflects the views of many with the comment: "I think that drug abuse is harmful to your own health and those around you". But he adds: "Drinking is fine only as long as it"s not done to excess". With the added pressures of a more uncertain world, most young people stress the importance of a healthy family life. Yet, as they look at the family"s breakup that has taken place in the past decade, they concede that the challenge for many is to make the best of one-parent families. "The American family is evolving and changing, "according to Nina Mule, "Women are going out into the world and having careers. They"re becoming more independent instead of being the burden of the family". "But a great need remains for a family structure, "says Nina, who still lives with her parents, "because people have to be able to survive emotionally". In Atlanta, 18-year-old Liss Joiner feels strongly about what"s happened to the family". People have realized that the family has disintegrated, "she says, "But today"s family—particularly the black family—is trying to pull itself together and become the strong unit as it once was. "A similar view is expressed by a senior at Brigham Young University: "A happy family means everything to me. I read a lot about how the American family is falling a part. But I see lots of strong families around me, and that makes me very optimistic".

Americans today don"t place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education— not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren"t difficult to find. "Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance." Ravitch"s latest book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits. But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society." "Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-intellectualism in American Life, a Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." Mark Twain"s Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized—going to school and learning to read—so he can preserve his innate goodness. Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines. School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country"s educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise." 16. What do American parents expect their children to acquire in school?

In 1960—1961, Chad(乍得) harvested 98,000 tons of cotton for the first time in its history, and put out the flag a little too soon. The efforts of the authorities to get the peasants "back" to work, as they had slacked off a great deal the previous year during independence celebrations, largely contributed to it. Also, rains were well spaced, and continued through the whole month of October. If the 1961—1962 total is back to the region of 45,000 tons, it is mostly because efforts slackened again and sowing was started too late. The average date of sowing is about July 1st. ff this date is simply moved up fifteen or twenty days, 30,000 to 60,000 tons of cotton are gained, depending on the year. The peasant in Chad sows his millet first, and it is hard to criticize this instinctive priority given to his "daily bread". An essential reason for his lateness with sowing cotton is that at the time when he should leave to prepare the fields he has just barely sold the cotton of the previous season. The work required to sow, in great heat, is psychologically far more difficult if one"s pockets are full of money. The date of cotton sales should therefore be moved forward as much as possible, and purchases of equipment and draught animals encouraged. Peasants should also be encouraged to save money, to help them through the difficult pealed between harvests. If necessary they should be forced to do so, by having the payments for cotton given to them in installments. The last payment would be made after proof that the peasant has planted before the deadline, the date being advanced to the end of June. Those who have done so would receive extra money whereas the last planters would not receive their last payment until later. Only the first steps are hard, because once work has started the peasants continue willingly on their way. Educational campaigns among the peasants will play an essential role in this basic advance, early sowing, on which all the others depend. It is not a matter of controlling the peasants. Each peasant will remain master of his fields. One could, however, suggest the need for the time being of kind but firm rule, which, as long as it cannot be realized "by the people", should at least be "for the people."

Many philosophers have argued that people make decisions about what"s right and wrong based on moral principles and rational thought. But other philosophers—and more recently, some psychologists and neuroscientists—have argued that there"s more to the story. When faced with a moral dilemma, these scholars say, we rely on emotional reactions as well as our powers of reasoning. In a study of brain damage, published today, neuroscientists report evidence that emotions indeed exert a powerful influence on moral judgments. In the new study, Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and colleagues examined moral reasoning in six people who had damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex(VMPC), a brain region that regulates emotions. The researchers presented the patients with moral dilemmas that forced them to decide whether it was acceptable to sacrifice one person"s life to save several others. For example, participants had to decide whether to flip a switch that diverts a runaway trolley from a track leading to five workers to a track leading to just one worker. The researchers also gauged the decisions of 12 people without brain damage and 12 patients with damage to brain regions unconnected to emotions. In the trolley scenario, most people in all three groups said it was okay to flip the switch. However, the VMPC patients" decisions diverged when the scenario required inflicting direct personal harm on one person to save several others—such as shoving a large person off a bridge to slow a trolley headed for five people. From a strictly rational point of view, it"s better to save five people instead of one, but the thought of pushing an innocent person to his death is emotionally wrenching. That may explain why only about 20% of people in the control groups said they"d push. The VMPC patients, on the other hand, made the utilitarian choice about twice as often, the researchers report online today in Nature. The findings fit nicely with other evidence that moral judgments often involve a conflict between emotion and reason and that those two competing influences rely on different networks of brain regions, says Joshua Greene, a philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University. But Jordan Grafman, a cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, isn"t convinced that extreme moral dilemmas like the trolley problem evoke the same cognitive processes—and involve the same brain regions as moral judgments in the real world involve. Even so, he says, the study "emphasizes that disciplines other than philosophy can contribute to issues related to moral behavior. "

ExtracurricularActivitiesandtheTimeSpentonThemA.Studythefollowingchartscarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words.B.Youressayshouldcoverthesethreepoints:1)themainextracurricularactivitiesstudentstakepartinandthetimetheyspendonthem2)possiblereasons3)yoursuggestions

After the dotcom boom of the 1990s, the world is about to experience a boom in dots. Over 1,000 new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) are set to join the 22 existing ones, such as .com and .org, and the 280 country-specific ones, such as .uk, that now grace the end of web addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) , the nonprofit organisation that manages the web's address book, reckons this will boost competition and innovation. It will also increase the cost to businesses of protecting their brands. Some of the new gTLDs, such as .guru and .sexy, will flatter owners' egos. Others, such as .clothing and .photography, will be used by firms to tout their wares. Among the first to go live, on February 4th, was ".web" written in Arabic script. That made history: until now all generic top-level domains have been written in Latin lettering, meaning internet users with Arabic keyboards had to wrestle with ALT, CTRL and the like to type the last few letters of most websites' names. Other gTLDs in scripts such as Chinese and Russian will follow in the coming months. Firms including Apple, Ford and IWC, a watchmaker, have already applied to register their names as gTLDs. That will allow them to ensure they are not used by crooks or cybersquatters. Google, Amazon and others have applied for numerous gTLDs, including .app and .kindle, presumably because they want to use them and think they can make money by selling the right to use "second-level" domains (for example, economist, app), typically for $10—50 a year. Firms may also be keen to buy certain second-level domains to stop them falling into the wrong hands. Donuts, a company that has lodged hundreds of applications for gTLDs, has .wtfand .sucks on its list. But there are costs to owning a gTLD. Firms must pay $185,000 to ICANN when applying for one, plus $25,000 for each year they use it. Deciding which ones to splash out on is tricky. New domains including .biz and .mobi have been added in the past, but have failed to put a dent in the wildly popular .com. The avalanche of new domains may also confuse web users, who often get to their destinations via search engines rather than by typing web addresses into browsers. Greater choice and competition should eventually bring them benefits. But the transition may be .complicated.

Write a letter to a travel agency, asking about the detailed information about a package tour. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

Who hasn"t wanted to master not just two languages but 10? Take Giuseppe Mezzofanti, a 19th-century priest who was said to be【C1】______in as many as 50 languages. Native speakers came from all over the world to test his【C2】______. and many left astonished. In Babel No More, Michael Erard investigates the legend of Mezzofanti and【C3】______linguistic geniuses. 【C4】______on Erard asks what it means to really know a language. Claire Kram-sch tells him the question【C5】______ not be "How many languages do you know?" but rather "In how many languages do you live?" Understanding the【C6】______cultural difference of a language requires extensive and【C7】______contact with its speakers, and for that reason Kramsch【C8】______that anyone could ever live in more than four or five languages. Fair enough, 【C9】______what about the astonishing feats of memory and calculation that people display when they【C10】______a new language, or eight? Erard points out that, for no good reason, this question has been【C11】______by science. After all, we study extraordinary【C12】______in mathematics and music; why not linguistic geniuses? Erard【C13】______down Mezzofanti"s papers, speaks to many language experts and even learns that some bilingual people experience mental illness in one【C14】______but not another. Most interestingly, he【C15】______a group of modern linguistic geniuses. Memory, 【C16】______and practice are all important, they say, but so is a practical strategy. 【C17】______who claimed to speak 11 languages did not much care about 【C18】______like a native. Unlike Mezzofanti, their goal was not to【C19】______but to do—see the world, read the local paper and not get【C20】______ .