The money is there. So why is it not being spent? That is the big puzzle about the rich world"s efforts to improve health in poor countries. In June the leaders of the G8 promised up to $8 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an umbrella group coordinating health aid. The Global Fund closed its latest round of funding applications this week but much of themoney committed remains unused. officials at the fund insist that all is fine: disbursements always lag commitments and money can be released only if it will be spent effectively. But experts such as Joseph Dwyer of Management Sciences for Health say that the pitiful state of poor countries" health services is the main reason for the gap between what is promised and what is spent. Julian Schweitzer of the World Bank says that physical and human shortages in local health services represent "a huge bottleneck to aid". Now the aid efforts may be making things worse. Jordan Kassalow of the Scojo Foundation, an American charity, observes that rich singleissue outfits tend to divert the best medical talent to trendy causes and away from basic medicine against diarrhoea and respiratory infections—the chief killers of children. Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations has a different worry: those anti-corruption efforts have pushed donors into an obsession with often meaningless short-term targets. The result is a never-ending stream of documents and meetings. A sharp focus on process and targets ordained from on high makes it harder to be flexible and innovative or to take advantage of enterprising locals. In poor countries, laments Ms Garrett, "we almost spit on the private sector." But it is the private sector that may offer the most practical chance of progress. Fed up with the costs of an unhealthy workforce, many big local and multinational firms in Africa and Asia are now offering their own innovative health schemes. These started as simple anti-AIDS efforts at mining firms such as Anglo American. Now they have spread. HSBC, a London-based international bank, recently started a scheme to improve its suppliers" and customers" health. In training, too, private-sector and voluntary efforts may work better than official programmes. The International Centre for Equal Healthcare Access has trained thousands of local health-care workers in South-East Asia. Kenya"s HealthStore Foundation has helped nurses and community health workers set up dozens of for-profit clinics that reach patients government clinics don"t. Such ideas may yet transform the world"s most dilapidated health systems into better and more far-reaching ones—if only the current wave of top-down spending does not drown them out.

What is making the world so much older? There are two long-term causes and a temporary blip that will continue to show up in the figures for the next few decades.【F1】 The first of the big causes is that people everywhere are living far longer than they used to, and this trend started with the industrial revolution and has been slowly gathering pace. In 1900 average life expectancy at birth for the world as a whole was only around 30 years, and in rich countries under 50. The figures now are 67 and 78 respectively, and still rising. For all the talk about the coming old-age crisis, that is surely something to be grateful for-especially since older people these days also seem to remain healthy, fit and active for much longer. 【F2】 A second, and bigger, cause of the ageing of societies is that people everywhere are having far fewer children, so the younger age groups are much too small to counterbalance the growing number of older people. This trend emerged later than the one for longer lives, first in developed countries and now in poor countries too. In the early 1970s women across the world were still, on average, having 4.3 children each. The current global average is 2.6, and in rich countries only 1.6.【F3】 The UN predicts that by 2050 the global figure will have dropped to just two, so by mid-century the world"s population will begin to level out. The numbers in some developed countries have already started shrinking. Depending on your point of view, that may or may not be a good thing, but it will certainly turn the world into a different place. The temporary blip that has magnified the effects of lower fertility and greater longevity is the baby-boom that arrived in most rich countries after the Second World War.【F4】 The timing varied slightly from place to place, but in America—where the effect was strongest—it covered roughly the 20 years from 1945, a period when nearly 80 million Americans were born. The first of them are now coming up to retirement. For the next 20 years those baby-boomers will be swelling the ranks of pensioners, which will lead to a rapid drop in the working population all over the rich world. As always, the averages mask considerable diversity.【F5】 Most developing countries do not have to worry about ageing—yet, in the longer term, however, the same factors as in the rich world—fewer births, longer lives—will cause poorer countries to age too.

Doctors have treated the first reported case of "Internet addiction disorder" brought on by excessive use of Google Glass. In September 2013, a 31-year-old man was checked into the U.S. Navy"s Substance Abuse program for alcohol addiction【C1】______. The program requires patients to refrain from alcohol, drugs and cigarettes for 35 days and takes away electronic devices at the door.【C2】______they took away his Google Glass. Doctors quickly【C3】______that the man would frequently and involuntarily【C4】______his right hand and tap his temple area, a【C5】______usually necessary to【C6】______the display of Google Glass. He was going through withdrawal from his Google Glass. And the Google Glass withdrawal was【C7】______than the alcohol withdrawal he was experiencing. After checking into the program, he exhibited【C8】______symptoms of withdrawal: frustration, irritability, aggression and cravings. His addiction also【C9】______him with short-term memory problems. The Navy serviceman【C10】______the device 18 hours a day and took it off【C11】______to sleep and bathe. He【C12】______purchased Google Glass in order to【C13】______his performance at work But after owning the glasses for two months, the device【C14】______into his sleeping hours as well. Internet addiction is commonly【C15】______with cellphones, laptops and personal computers. This is the first reported case【C16】______Google Glass. Though it is a【C17】______problem, Internet addiction does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.【C18】______, it is included in the appendix as a disorder that requires further study. While some psychiatrists believe it can be a【C19】______problem, others maintain that it is【C20】______a symptom of other psychological issues.

As a young bond trader, Buttonwood was given two pieces of advice, trading rules of thumb, if you will: that bad economic news is good news for bond markets and that every utterance dropping from the lips of Paul Volcker, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the man who restored the central bank"s credibility by stomping on runaway inflation, should be respected than Pope"s orders. Today"s traders are, of course, a more sophisticated bunch. But the advice still seems good, apart from two slight drawbacks. The first is that the well-chosen utterances from the present chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is of more than passing difficulty.【F1】 The second is that, of late, good news for the economy has not seemed to upset bond investors all that much. For all the cheer that has crackled down the wires, the yield on ten-year bonds—which you would expect to rise on good economic news—is now, at 4.2%, only two-fifths of a percentage point higher than it was at the start of the year. Pretty much unmoved, in other words. Yet the news from the economic front has been better by far than anyone could have expected. On Tuesday November 25th, revised numbers showed that America"s economy grew by an annual 8.2% in the third quarter, a full percentage point more than originally thought, driven by the ever-spendthrift American consumer and, for once, corporate investment.【F2】 Just about every other piece of information coming out from special sources shows the same strength. New houses are still being built at a fair clip. Exports are rising, for all the protectionist crying. Even employment, in what had been mocked as a jobless recovery, increased by 125, 000 or thereabouts in September and October.【F3】 Rising corporate profits, low credit spreads and the biggest-ever rally in the junk-bond market do not, on the face of it, suggest anything other than a deep and long-lasting recovery. Yet Treasury-bond yields have fallen. If the rosy economic backdrop makes this odd, making it doubly odd is an apparent absence of foreign demand Foreign buyers of Treasuries, especially Asian certral banks, who had been swallowing American government debt like there was no tomorrow, seem to have had second thoughts lately.【F4】 In September, according to the latest available figures, foreigners bought only $5-6 billion of Treasuries, compared with $ 25.1 billion the previous month and an average of $38.7 billion in the preceding; four months. 【F5】 In an effort to keep a lid on the yen" s rise, the Japanese central bank is still busy buying dollars and parking the money in government debt. Just about everyboby else seems to have been selling.

After getting up, I wash my face. brush my teeth, and comb my hair.

In a paper just published in Science, Peter Gordon of Columbia University uses his study of the Piraha and their counting system to try to answer a tricky linguistic question. The Piraha, a group of hunter-gatherers who live along the banks of the Maici River in Brazil, use a system of counting called "one-two-many". In this, the word for "one" translates to "roughly one" (similar to "one or two" in English), the word for "two" means "a slightly larger amount than one" (similar to "a few" in English), and the word for "many" means "a much larger amount". This question was posed by Benjamin Lee Whorl in the 1930s. Whorl studied Hopi, an Amerindian language very different from the Eurasian languages that had hitherto been the subject of academic linguistics. His work led him to suggest that language not only influences thought but, more strongly, that it determines thought. While there is no dispute that language influences what people think about, evidence suggesting it determines thought is inconclusive. For example, in 1972, Eleanor Rosch and Karl Heider investigated the colour-naming abilities of the Dani people of Indonesia. The Dani have words for only two colours: black and white. But Dr. Rosch and Dr. Heider found that, even so, Dani could distinguish and comprehend other colours. That does not support the deterministic version of the Whorf hypothesis. While recognising that there are such things as colours for which you have no name is certainly a cognitive leap, it may not be a good test of Whorf"s ideas. Colours, after all, are out there everywhere. Numbers, by contrast, are abstract, so may be a better test. Dr. Gordon therefore spent a month with the Piraha and elicited the help of seven of them to see how far their grasp of numbers extended. The tests began simply, with a row of, say, seven evenly spaced batteries. Gradually, they got more complicated. The more complicated tests included tasks such as matching numbers of unevenly spaced objects, replicating the number of objects from memory, and copying a number of straight lines from a drawing. In the tests that involved matching the number and layout of objects they could see, participants were pretty good when faced with two or three items, but found it harder to cope as the number of items rose. Things were worse when the participants had to remember the number of objects in a layout and replicate it "blind", rather than matching a layout they could see. In this case the success rate dropped to zero when the number of items became, in terms of their language, "many". And line drawing produced the worst results of all—though that could have had as much to do with the fact that drawing is not part of Piraha culture as it did with the difficulties of numerical abstraction. Indeed, Dr. Gordon described the task of reproducing straight lines as being accomplished only with "heavy sighs and groans".

You have just spent a weekend staying at the Lilo Hotel in Adelaide. When you got home you found that you had left a bag at the hotel. Write to the manager of the hotel: 1) giving any relevant information about the bag and its contents, 2) asking the manager to contact you immediately if the bag is found and 3) telling him/her how the bag can be sent to you. 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)

The dot-com collapse may have been a disaster for Wall Street, but here in Silicon Valley, it was a blessing. It was the welcome end to an abnormal condition that very nearly destroyed the area in an overabundance of success. You see, the secret to the Valley"s astounding multiple-decade boom is failure. Failure is what fuels and renews this place. Failure is the foundation for innovation. The valley"s business ecology depends on failure the same way the tree-covered hills around us depend on fire—it wipes out the old growth and creates space for new life. The valley has always been in danger of drowning in the unwelcome waste products of success—too many people, too expensive houses, too much traffic, too little office space and too much money chasing too few startups. Failure is the safety valve, the destructive renewing force that frees up people, ideas and capital and recombines them, creating new revolutions. Consider how the Internet revolution came to be. After half a decade of start-up struggles, for example, hundreds of millions of Hollywood dollars were going up in smoke. It all seemed like a terrible waste, but no one noticed that the collapse left one very important byproduct, a community of laid-off C-H programmers who were now expert in multimedia design, and out on the street looking for the next big thing. These media geeks were the pioneer of the dot-com revolution. They were the Web"s business pioneers, applying their newfound media sensibilities to create one little company after another. Most of these start-ups failed, but even in failure they advanced the new medium of cyberspace. A few geeks, like Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark, succeeded and utterly changed our lives. In 1994 Clark was unemployed after leaving the company be founded, doggedly trying to develop a new interactive-TV concept. He approached Marc Andreessen, the co-developer of Mosaic, the first widely used Internet browser, in hope of persuading Andreessen to help him design his new system. Instead, Andreessen opened Clark"s eyes to the Web"s potential. Clark promptly tossed his TV plans in the trash, and the two co-founded Netscape, the cornerstone of the consumer Web revolution. Like the interactive-TV refugees and generations of innovators before them, the dot comers are already hatching new companies. Many are revisiting good ideas executed badly in the "90s, while others are striking out into entirely new spaces. This happy chaos is certain to mature into a new order likely to upset an establishment, as it delivers life-changing wonders to the rest of us. But this is just the start, for revolutions give birth to revolutions. So let"s hope for more of Silicon Valley"s successful failures.

IllegalCookingOilIsEverywhereWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Coinciding with the groundbreaking theory of biological evolution proposed by British naturalist Charles Darwin in the 1860s, British social philosopher Herbert Spencer put forward his own theory of biological and cultural evolution. Spencer argued that all worldly phenomena, including human societies, changed over time, advancing toward perfection.【C1】______ American social scientist Lewis Henry Morgan introduced another theory of cultural evolution in the late 1800s. Morgan helped found modern anthropology—the scientific study of human societies, customs and beliefs—thus becoming one of the earliest anthropologists. In his work, he attempted to show how all aspects of culture changed together in the evolution of societies.【C2】______. In the early 1900s in North America, German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas developed a new theory of culture known as Historical particularism, which emphasized the uniqueness of all cultures, gave new direction to anthropology.【C3】______. Boas felt that the culture of any society must be understood as the result of a unique history and not as one of many cultures belonging to a broader evolutionary stage or type of culture . 【C4】______ Historical particularism became a dominant approach to the study of culture in American anthropology, largely through the influence of many students of Boas. But a number of anthropologists in the early 1900s also rejected the particularist theory of culture in favor of diffusionism. Some attributed virtually every important cultural achievement to the inventions of a few, especially gifted peoples that, according to diffusionists, then spread to other cultures.【C5】______. Also in the early 1900s, French sociologist Emile Durkheim developed a theory of culture that would greatly influence anthropology. Durkheim proposed that religious beliefs functioned to reinforce social solidarity. An interest in the relationship between the function of society and culture became a major theme in European, and especially British, anthropology.[A] Other anthropologists believed that cultural innovations, such as inventions, had a single origin and passed from society to society. This theory was known as diffusionism.[B] In order to study particular cultures as completely as possible, he became skilled in linguistics, the study of languages, and in physical anthropology, the study of human biology and anatomy.[C] He argued that human evolution was characterized by a struggle he called the "survival of the fittest," in which weaker races and societies must eventually be replaced by stronger, more advanced races and societies.[D] They also focused on important rituals that appeared to preserve a people"s social structure, such as initiation ceremonies that formally signify children"s entrance into adulthood.[E] Thus, in his view, diverse aspects of culture, such as the structure of families, forms of marriage, categories of kinship, ownership of property, forms of government, technology, and systems of food production, all changed as societies evolved.[F] Supporters of the theory viewed culture as a collection of integrated parts that work together to keep a society functioning.[G] For example, British anthropologists Grafton Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry incorrectly suggested, on the basis of inadequate information, that farming, pottery making, and metallurgy all originated in ancient Egypt and diffused throughout the world. In fact, all of these cultural developments occurred separately at different times in many parts of the world.

Studythepicturecarefullyandwriteanessayto1)describethepicture,2)statetherisksbroughtbyspeeding,and3)suggestpossiblemeasuresagainstspeeding.Youshouldwriteabout160—200wordsneatly.

It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal(fatherly)wisdom—or at least confirm that he"s the kid"s dad. All he needs to do is shell out $30 for a paternity testing kit(PTK)at his local drugstore—and another $120 to get the results. More than 60, 000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last years, according to Doug Fogg, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests Directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2, 500. Among the most popular: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption. DNA testing is also the latest rage among passionate genealogists—and supports businesses that offer to search for a family"s geographic roots. Most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA. But some observers are skeptical. "There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing," says Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes that each individual has many ancestors—numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome inherited through men in a father" s line or mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal genetic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents. Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies don"t rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person" s test results may differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation.

In a science-fiction movie called "Species", a mysterious signal from outer space turns out to describe the genome of an unknown organism. When the inevitable mad scientist synthesizes the DNA described by the instructions, the creature he breeds from it turns out to resemble Natasha Henstridge, an athletic actress. Unfortunately, the alien harbors within her delicate form the destructive powers of a Panzer division, and it all ends badly for the rash geneticist and his laboratory. Glen Evans, chief executive of Egea Biosciences in San Diego, California, acknowledges regretfully that despite seeking his expert opinion—in return for which he was presented with the poster of the striking Mr. Henstridge that hangs on his office wall—the producers of "Species" did not hew very closely to his suggestions about the feasibility of their script ideas. Still, they had come to the right man. Dr Evans believes that his firm will soon be able to create, if not an alien succubus, at least a tiny biological machine made of artificial proteins that could mimic the behavior of a living cell. Making such proteins will require the ability to synthesize long stretches of DNA. Existing technology for synthesizing DNA can manage to make genes that encode a few dozen amino acids, but this is too short to produce any interesting proteins. Egea"s technology, by contrast, would allow biologists to manufacture genes wholesale. The firm"s scientists can make genes long enough to encode 6,000 amino acids. They aim to synthesize a gene for 30,000 amino acids within two years. Using a library of the roughly 1,500 possible "motifs" or folds that a protein can adopt, Egea"s scientists employ computers to design new proteins that are likely to have desirable shapes and properties. To synthesize the DNA that encodes these proteins, Egea uses a machine it has dubbed the "genewriter". Dr. Evans likens this device to a word-processor for DNA, on which you can type in the sequence of letters defining a piece of DNA and get that molecule out. As Egea extends the length of DNA it can synthesize, Dr. Evans envisages encoding not just proteins, but entire biochemical pathways, which are teams of proteins that conduct metabolic processes. A collection of such molecules could conceivably function as a miniature machine that would operate in the body and attack disease, just as the body"s own defensive cells do. Perhaps Dr. Evans and his colleagues ought to get in touch with their friends in Hollywood.

Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet. It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoe Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K. Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush"s predecessors(including his father)had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged(Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chre tien and Koizumi). The world"s three top central bankers(Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami)are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world"s five richest men(Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht). Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So shortsighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly. The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ . Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.

Writeanessayof160~200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawings.Inyouressay,youshould:1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretthephenomenonreflectedbyit,andthen3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyonANSWERSHEET2.(20points)

How to Tackle the Housing Problem in Big Cities?

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1.describethedrawingbriefly,2.interpretthecausesofthephenomenon,and3.giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

The California Public Employees" Retirement System (CalPERS) has positioned itself as the premier champion of investor rights, regularly singling out bad managers at some of the nation"s largest companies in its annual corporate-governance focus lists. And with $153 billion under management, Wall Street tends to listen when CalPERS speaks out. But the country"s largest pension fund has never taken on as big a fish as it did Dec. 16, when it filed a class action against the New York Stock Exchange and seven of its member firms. CalPERS" suit charges the NYSE and specialist firms with fraud, alleging that the exchange skirted its regulatory duties and allowed its members to trade stocks at the expense of investors. The move is a major slap in the face for the NYSE"s recently appointed interim Chairman John Reed. The former Citibank chairman and CEO came on board in September after the exchange"s longtime head, Richard Grasso, resigned under pressure over public outrage about his excessive compensation. Reed has been widely criticized by CalPERS and other institutional investors for not including representatives of investors on the exchange"s newly constituted board and not clearly separating the exchange"s regulatory function from its day-to-day operations. The CalPERS lawsuit is evidence that the investment communities" dissatisfaction hasn"t ebbed. "Our hopes were dashed when Mr. Reed didn"t perform", says Harrigan. The suit alleges that seven specialist firms profited by abusing and overusing a series of trading tactics. The tactics, which are not currently illegal, include "penny lumping", where a firm positions itself between two orders to capture a piece of the price differential, "front running", which involves trading in advance of customers based on confidential information obtained by their orders, and "freezing" the firm"s order book so that the firm can make trades on its own account first. Many of the suit"s allegations are based on a previously disclosed investigation of the exchange conducted by the Securities & Exchange Commission. According to the suit, the October SEC report found "serious deficiencies in the NYSE"s surveillance and investigative procedures, including a habit of ignoring repeat violations By specialist firms". The suit highlights the growing frustration that institutional investors have expressed with what they perceive as a system that needs to be revamped—if not eliminated. According to California State Comptroller Steve Westley, a CalPERS board member who participated in the Dec. 16 press conference, he has repeatedly called on the NYSE to end its use of specialist firms to facilitate trades and move to a system of openly matching of buyers and sellers. BLIND EYE? "There"s no reason not to move to a fully automated exchange", Westley says. "Every exchange in the world is using such a system. The time is now for the NYSE to move into the 21st century and remove the cloud that there"s self-dealing working against investors".