Almost all our major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of behavior, but we have been slow to develop the science from which such a technology might be drawn, (46) One difficulty is that almost all of what is called behavioral science continues to trace behavior to states of mind, feelings, traits of character, human nature, and so on. Physics and biology once followed similar practices and advanced only when they discarded them, (47) The behavioral sciences have been slow to change partly because the explanatory items often seem to be directly observed and partly because other lands of explanations have been hard to find. The environment is obviously important, but its role has remained obscure. It does not push or pull, it selects, and this function is difficult to discover and analyze. (48) The role of natural selection in evolution was formulated only a little more than a hundred years ago, and the selective role of the environment in shaping and maintaining the behavior of the individual is only beginning to be recognized and studied. As the interaction between organism and environment has come to be understood, however, effects once assigned to states of mind, feelings, and traits are beginning to be traced to accessible conditions, and a technology of behavior may therefore become available. It will not solve our problems, however, until it replaces traditional pre-scientific views, and these are strongly entrenched. Freedom and dignity illustrate the difficulty. (49) They are the possessions of the autonomous (self-governing) man of traditional theory, and they are essential to practices in which a person is held responsible for his conduct and given credit for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts both the responsibility and the achievement to the environment. It also raises questions concerning "values". Who will use a technology and to what ends? (50) Until these issues are resolved, a technology of behavior will continue to be rejected, and with impossibly the only way to solve our problems.

Lonely people, it seems, are at greater risk than the gregarious of developing illnesses associated with chronic inflammation, such as heart disease and certain cancers. A paper published last year in the Public Library of Science, Medicine, shows the effect on mortality of loneliness is comparable with that of smoking and drinking after examining the results of 148 previous studies and controlled for factors such as age and pre-existing illness. Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles, thinks he may know why this is so. He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., about his work studying the expression of genes in lonely people. Dr. Cole harvested samples of white blood cells from both lonely and gregarious people. He then analysed the activity of their genes, as measured by the production of a substance called messenger RNA. This molecule carries instructions from the genes telling a cell which proteins to make. The level of messenger RNA from most genes was the same in both types of people. There were several dozen genes, however, that were less active in the lonely, and several dozen others that were more active. Moreover, both the less active and the more active gene types came from a small number of functional groups. Broadly speaking, the genes less active in the lonely were those involved in staving off viral infections. Those that were more active were involved in protecting against bacteria. Dr. Cole suspects this could help explain not only why the lonely are iller, but how, in evolutionary terms, this odd state of affairs has come about. The crucial bit of the puzzle is that viruses have to be caught from another infected individual and they are usually species-specific. Bacteria, in contrast, often just lurk in the environment, and may thrive on many hosts. The gregarious are therefore at greater risk than the lonely of catching viruses, and Dr. Cole thus suggests that past evolution has created a mechanismwhich causes white cells to respond appropriately. Conversely, the lonely are better off ramping up their protection against bacterial infection, which is a bigger relative risk to them. What Dr. Cole seems to have revealed, then, is a mechanism by which social environment reaches inside a person" s body and tweaks its genome so that it responds appropriately. It is not that the lonely and the gregarious are genetically different from each other. Rather, their genes are regulated differently, according to how sociable an individual is. Dr. Cole thinks this regulation is part of a wider mechanism that tunes individuals to the circumstances they find themselves in.

Today there is widespread agreement that multinational corporations will have an important effect on international relations and world economy. But there is little agreement on exactly what that effect will be. There are two groups of those who see them as benevolent and those who see them as evil. Among those who see multinational corporations as benevolent, many emphasize their importance in helping reduce the gap between rich countries and poor ones. These business giants are referred to as "engines of development" because it is claimed that they do more to improve the economic life in less developed countries than all governmental foreign aid programs have ever done. By setting up factories abroad, they provide jobs; by equipping these factories with the latest machines and equipment, they make available the most modem technology. 【R1】______In fact, they do better on their own. It may have been necessary in the mid-nineteen century for Admiral Perry to threaten the Japanese with naval bombardment if they did not allow western countries to trade with them. Such threats would make no sense today. 【R2】______ The leaders of multinational corporations see patriotism as old-fashioned, the nation-state obsolete, and war in pursuit of national glory downright foolish. They believe that the multinational corporation is "a modern concept evolved to meet the requirements of modern age", while the nation-state is "still rooted in archaic concepts unsympathetic to the need of our complex world." 【R3】______ "I think, " an official of General Electric once said, "getting General Electric everywhere in the world is the biggest thing we can do for world peace." These proponents of the multinational corporations come by and large from the business world. There are, however, many critics among academic students of multinational corporations who regard them as a sinister force. They have produced detailed studies to prove that the benefits of multinational corporations are mostly illusory. To the claim that multinational corporations provide jobs, they point out that this is at the cost of jobs in other countries. To the claim that multinational corporations transfer technology, they reply: (1)often the equipment shipped overseas is out of date;(2)their technology is often unsuitable for many of the less developed countries where labor is plentiful and therefore cheap. 【R4】______ Therefore, they maintain that instead of being the "engines of development", the multinational corporations are actually "engines of impoverishment". These critics do not deny that consumption of the products of these corporations has risen in countries around the world. 【R5】______Therefore, although these corporations may breakdown national frontiers they strengthen class distinctions, widening the gap between the rich and the poor, creating greater social injustice and instability. [A]The long, expensive American war in Vietnam did not bring new opportunities in Southeast Asia for the multinational corporations. The decision of the Nixon administration to improve relations with China was more profitable to them. [B]The fact that both American teenagers and Mexican peasants are drinking Coca Cola does not mean that the life of the Mexican peasants is getting better due to the multinational corporations. [C]They therefore characterize themselves as hard-headed people who are helping to bring about a more cooperative system or world order by breaking down national, geographical, political, economic and ideological barriers. [D]One study actually showed that multinational corporations do not invest capital from wealthy countries, but prefer to finance their operations from the local economy. In other words, they are simply transferring wealth from poorer countries to richer ones. [E]According to these critics, states will soon realize that they have lost their control over issues such as taxation, employment and even the stability of their own currency. [F]But they point Out that this so-called "Global Shopping Center" is available only to a very small portion of the local population. [G]Because goods are now produced within the less developed countries, there is less need for them to import from abroad, and their balance of payments will improve. Multinational corporations today do not need their countries to provide military force to open foreign countries to their investment, products and sales.

Personality is to a large extent inherent——A-type parents usually bring about A-type off-spring. But the environment must also have a (1)_____ effect, since if competition is important to the parents, it is likely to become a (2)_____ factor in the lives of their children. One place where children (3)_____ A-characteristics is school, which is, by its very nature, a highly competitive institution. Too many schools adopt the "win at all costs" moral standard and (4)_____ their success by sporting (5)_____ The current passion for making children compete against their classmates or against the clock produces a two-layer system, in which competitive A-type seem in some way better than their B-type fellows. Being too (6)_____ to win can have dangerous (7)_____: remember that Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, dropped (8)_____ seconds after saying: "Rejoice, we (9)_____!" (10)_____ the worst form of competition in schools is the disproportionate emphasis on examinations. It is rare that school (11)_____ pupils to concentrate on those things they do well. The merits of competition by examination are somewhat (12)_____, but competition in the certain knowledge of failure is positively harmful. Obviously, it is neither practical nor (13)_____ that all A-youngsters change into B"s. The world needs different kinds of person, and schools have an important duty to try to fit a child"s personality to his possible future (14)_____ It is top management. If the (15)_____ of schools with academic work was (16)_____, more time might be spent teaching children surer values. Perhaps selection for the (17)_____ professions, especially medicine, could be made less by good grades in chemistry and more by such (18)_____ as (19)_____ and sympathy. It is surely a mistake to choose our doctors exclusively from A-type stock. B"s are important and should be (20)_____.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large, and there was actually a substantial deterioration in our trade account to a sizable deficit, almost two-thirds of which was with Japan. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. Also important will be our own efforts in the United States to fashion internal policies consistent with an improvement in our external balance. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead—and indeed for the longer run—remained a familiar one: to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our Competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation. Unless productivity growth is unexpectedly large, however, the expansion of real output must eventually begin to slow down to the economy"s larger run growth potential if generalized demand pressures on prices are to be avoided.Notes: inventory n.存货。East-West tensions 东西方紧张局势。fiscal (与国库的钱有关的)财务的(常指税收)。liquidity 周转率，清偿力。leeway n.回旋，余地。given 鉴于，由于。the Phase Three program 第三个阶段计划。

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about happiness. Choose the most suitable heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. Extensive applications of haptic technology.B. Possibilities rendered by haptic mechanisms.C. The feasibility of extending our senses and exploring abstract universes.D. An example of the progress in science of haptics.E. Bringing the potential of our senses into full play.F. Will haptics step into a bright future? "OOOF!" Using your mouse, you heave a data file across the screen—a couple of gigabytes of data weigh a lot. Its rough surface tells you that it is a graphics file. Having tipped this huge pile of data into a hopper that sends it to the right program, you examine a screen image of the forest trail you"ll be hiking on your Vacation. Then, using a gloved hand, you master its details by running your fingers over its forks and bends, its sharp rises and falls. Later you send an E-mail to your beloved, bending to the deskpad to attach a kiss. (41)______. The science of haptics (from the Greek haptesthai, "to touch") is making these fantasies real. A few primitive devices are extending human-machine communication beyond vision and sound. Haptic joysticks and steering wheels for computer games are already giving happy players some of the sensations of piloting a spaceship, driving a racing car or firing weapons. In time, haptic interfaces may allow us to manipulate single molecules, feel clouds and galaxies, even reach into higher dimensions to grasp the subtle structures of mathematics. (42)______. Most of our senses are passive. In hearing and vision, for example, the sound or light is simply received and analyzed. But touch is different: we actively explore and alter reality with our hands, so the same action that gathers information can also change the world—to model a piece of clay or press a button, for example. In providing direct contact between people, touch carries emotional impact. And in providing direct contact with the world, it is the sure sign of reality, as in "pinch me—am I dreaming?" (43)______. Some small steps have even been taken towards whole-body haptics. Touch Technology of Nova Scotia, Canada, has built a haptic chair. It looks like a full length lounge chair in a family den, but its surface is studded with 72 "tactors"—pneumatic piston rods, covered with rounded buttons, that can extend about an inch, and can be driven under computer control in any desired sequence and pattern. It could be programmed to imitate a real massage or to function in time to music. According to the manufacturer, that provides a powerful blending of sensations—a long-term goal of virtual reality. (44)______. Even at its present crude level, however, haptics can make tangible what once could not be touched or even pictured. To investigate the world of the very small, researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have developed the nanoManipulator. This adds touch to the technique of scanning probe microscopy, which can image a single atom by monitoring either the electrical current flowing between an extremely fine probe and a surface or the force between them. With the nanoManipulator, researchers can see and manipulate a universe a million times smaller than their own, to study viruses and tiny semiconducting devices. If the force feedback can be made sensitive enough, it may be possible to push molecular keys into specific molecular locks, to custom-design drugs or assemble silicon parts into intricate nanomachines. With other interfaces, there is no reason we shouldn"t also be able to touch the very large-clouds, ocean currents, mantle flows, mountains, galaxy clusters. Or the very strong—with a suitable force scaling, new ceramics or alloys could be squeezed and twanged to test their engineering properties. Or the physically extreme and inaccessible—such as ultra hot plasma flows in fusion machines. (45)______. Haptic technology could even make abstract ideas tangible. Many scientific concepts occupy spaces of more than three dimensions: string theory, for example, asserts that we live in a 10 or 11-dimensional Universe. As it is impossible to visualise such a space, we explore these ideas through mathematical expressions or two dimensional sketches on paper, But probing these unfamiliar geometries with touch may be more effective. And for blind people, haptics offers a new way to grasp information even in three dimensions. A group at the University of Delaware has developed an environment where a person can feel a mathematical function. Using a PHAN-TOM, the user "walks" along the surface of the figure. Like a hiker following mountainous terrain, the user feels where the function is steep, where it is level, and where its peaks and valleys lie. Other haptic systems could help blind people to browse the Internet, feeling images as well as words. The future of haptics is bright, but the only sensual relationship it will be sustaining any time soon is between you and your computer.

Rent or Buy an Apartment?

Happiness Is an Attitude

Leaving the European Union would save every Dutch household 9,800 a year by 2035, claims Capital Economics, a London consultancy, in a report commissioned by Geert Wilders' far-right PVV party. Mr. Wilders calls this "the best news in years", painting a picture of a country freed from the chokehold of Brussels, mass migration and high taxes, and enjoying more trade, more jobs and a booming economy. The report lists the benefits of departure: lower business costs because of less regulation; no more net payments to the EU; a doubling of the share of trade with emerging markets; faster economic recovery. The only cost is the transition from the euro to a new guilder, and this is "modest and manageable". The report concludes that Dutch GDP would be 10-13% higher by 2035. This finds a receptive audience among those Dutch who are looking for scapegoats. Unemployment has doubled since 2008 and the economy is flat. A recent poll finds a majority of Dutch voters in favour of leaving the EU if that would lead to more jobs and growth. The PVV is leading in opinion polls before the European elections in May. Yet there are problems with the Capital Economics report. The idea that the economy would miraculously recover if freed from the European Central Bank's policies ignores the structural failings that hold it back. The assumption that having the guilder would allow a much looser monetary policy is, at best, questionable. And it defies political reality to imagine that Netherlands would enjoy virtually cost-free access to the EU's single market, which takes 75% of Dutch exports. Norway and Switzerland both pay for the privilege and have to comply with most EU laws and regulations; the latest Swiss vote for quotas on EU migration threatens the entire relationship. Despite its flaws, the report fires a welcome starting-gun for a debate about what is good and bad about the EU. Some 66% of the Dutch feel their "No" vote in the 2005 referendum on the EU constitution was largely ignored. If regulation costs as much as the report claims, and if the ECB's monetary policy is too restrictive, both should be changed. Defenders of the EU also need to stress its Jess tangible benefits, such as peace, shared interests and the boost to the fight against cross-border crime.

The family is the center of most traditional Asians" lives. Many people worry about their families welfare, reputation, and honor. Asian families are often 【C1】______, including several generations related by【C2】______or marriage living in the same home. An Asian person" s misdeeds are not blamed just on the individual but also on the family—including the dead 【C3】______. Traditional Chinese, among many other Asians, respect their elders and feel a deep sense of duty【C4】______them. Children repay their parents"【C5】______by being successful and supporting them in old age. This is accepted as a 【C6】______ part of life in China. 【C7】______, taking care of the aged parents is often viewed as a tremendous【C8】______ in the United States, where aging and family support are not 【C9】______ highly. 【C10】______, in the youth-oriented United States, growing old is seen as a bad thing, and many old people do not receive respect. Filipinos, the most Americanized of the Asians, are 【C11】______extremely family-oriented. They are 【C12】______ to helping their children and will sacrifice greatly for their children to get an education.【C13】______ , the children are devoted to their parents, who often live nearby. Grown children who leave the country for economic reasons 【C14】______ send large parts of their income home to their parents. The Vietnamese family 【C15】______ people currently 【C16】______ as well as the spirits of the dead and of the as-yet unborn. Any【C17】______or actions are done from family considerations, not individual desires. People" s behavior is judged 【C18】______whether it brings shame or pride to the family. The Vietnamese do not particularly believe in self-reliance; in this way, they are the 【C19】______ of people in the United States. Many Vietnamese think that their actions in this life will influence their【C20】______ in the next life.

Surveys find entrenched (根深蒂固的) pessimism over the country's economic outlook and overall trajectory (轨道). In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, 63% of the respondents said the US is on the wrong track. It's not difficult to see why. Set aside the gridlock in Washington for a moment and appreciate the weakness of the economic recovery: Households whose finances were too weak to spend. Large numbers of unemployed workers who couldn't do so either. Younger Americans who couldn't afford their own homes. Banks that were too broken to lend. Yet nearly a year ago, I wrote an essay for Time suggesting that the economy could surprise on the upside. That hypothesis looks even more valid today. Despite the pessimistic mood, America is experiencing a profound comeback. Yes, too many Americans are out of work and have been for far too long. And yes, there is a huge amount of slack to make up. In fact, if the 2008 collapse had not happened, the US GDP would be $1 trillion—or more than 5%—higher than it is today. But in terms of the growth outlook, the news is good. Goldman Sachs and many private-sector forecasters project a 3.3% growth rate for the remainder of 2014. The first half of 2014 saw the best job-creation rate in 15 years. Total household wealth and private employment surpassed 2008 levels last year. Bank loans to businesses exceeded previous highs this year. And income growth will soon improve too. America is finally returning to where it was seven years ago. As halting as the US recovery has been, the economy is now leaner and more capable of healthy, sustained growth through 2016 and beyond. The US outlook shines compared with that of the rest of the industrialized world, as Europe and Japan are stagnant. The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the US economy—not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy. Manufacturing costs are down. The banking system has been recapitalized. The excess and abuse that defined the housing market are gone. And it's all being turbocharged by an energy boom nobody saw coming.

They may not be the richest, but Africans remain the world"s staunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a research outfit, shows that, when asked whether this year will be better than last, Africa once again comes out on top. Out of 52,000 people interviewed all over the world, under half believe that things are looking up. But in Africa the proportion is close to 60%—almost twice as much as in Europe. Africans have some reasons to be cheerful. The continent"s economy has been doing fairly well with South Africa, the economic powerhouse, growing steadily over the past few years. Some of Africa"s long-running conflicts, such as the war between the north and south in Sudan and the civil war in Congo, have ended. Africa even has its first elected female head of state, in Liberia. Yet there is no shortage of downers too. Most of Africa remains dirt poor. Crises in places like Cote d"Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are far from solved. And the democratic credentials of Ethiopia and Uganda, once the darlings of western donors, have taken a bad knock. AIDS killed over 2 million Africans in 2005, and will kill more this year. So is it all just a case of irrational exuberance ? Meril James of Gallup argues that there is, in fact, usually very little relation between the survey"s optimism rankings and reality. Africans, this year led by Nigerians, are consistently the most upbeat, whether their lot gets better or not. On the other hand, Greece— hardly the worst place on earth—tops the gloom-and-doom chart, followed closely by Portugal and France. Ms James speculates that religion may have a lot to do with it. Nine out of ten Africans are religious, the highest proportion in the world. But cynics argue that most Africans believe that 2006 will be golden because things have been so bad that it is hard to imagine how they could possibly get worse. This may help explain why places that have suffered recent misfortunes, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, rank among the top five optimists. Moussaka for thought for those depressed Greeks.

It seems to happen with depressing frequency—sunny skies turn to rain just as the weekend arrives. Now Spanish researchers say they have evidence that in some parts of Europe the weather really does follow a weekly cycle, although not in the straightforward way that the anecdote might suggest. Evidence has been mounting over the years that the weather in certain parts of the world, including the US, Japan and China, can be driven by the weekly cycle of human activity. This is because we tend to produce more air pollution during the week and less at the weekend. Evidence that such an effect occurs in Europe is controversial and has been harder to come by. Arturo Sanchez-Lorenzo of the University of Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues examined data gathered between 1961 and 2004 from weather stations across Spain to see whether such a pattern existed. They claim to have found it in Spain, as well as hints of weekly changes in air circulation more broadly over Western Europe. The result is puzzling, but it is known that airborne pollutants produced by human activity can affect the weather in a variety of ways. For example, particles can be heated by absorbing sunlight, which in turn heats the air and changes air circulation patterns. Pollutant particles can also provide seeds for cloud formation. Exactly which effect has the greatest influence seems to depend on conditions that vary season by season. They also found signs that air pressure in Western Europe tends to be lower midweek than at the weekend in data from a global database. This suggests that the human influence on weather goes beyond known local effects, says team member Josep Calbo of the University of Girona in Spain. However, it is not clear whether the team"s findings are statistically significant, says Thomas Bell of NASA"s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was part of a team that found a stronger weekly cycle in the US. "This whole enterprise of looking for weekly cycles is rife with possibilities for misleading oneself." Why a weekly cycle would be less noticeable in Europe than in the US and Asia is still unknown. No weekly cycle has ever been found in the UK, probably because the weather is dominated by large systems blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. These larger systems may be harder for weekly pollution cycles to influence, points out Douglas Maraun of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, who studies UK precipitation. "I doubt that there is a weekly influence of human activity on such a large weather system," he says.

Is it any wonder that America is also a country of dangerously overweight people? According to a recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of adults characterized as overweight in the United States has jumped to an astonishing one-third of the population. Overweight in this case means beingabout 20 percent or more above a person"s desirable weight. Since the figures for "desirable weight" have moved upward over the last decade or so, total poundage—even at 20 percent over—may be considerable. So are the attendant health risks. Excess weight has been linked to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, adult-onset diabetes and some forms of cancer, among other diseases. Once, when work and school and the grocery store were a two-mile hike away, Americans could afford the calories they consume. But not now, not when millions spend four or five hours a day in front of a TV set—along with a bag of chips, a bowl of buttered popcorn and a six-pack—and there"s a car or two in every driveway. "There is no commitment to obesity as a public health problem," said Dr. William Dietz, director of clinical nutrition at the New England Medical Center in Boston. "We"ve ignored it, and blamed it on gluttony and sloth." If one definition of a public health problem is its cost to the nation, then obesity qualifies. According to a study done by Dr. Graham A Colditz, who teaches at Harvard Medical School, it cost America an estimated $68.8 billion in 1990. But what"s wrong blaming it on gluttony and sloth? True, some unfortunate overweight people have an underlying physical or genetic problem. But for most Americans, the problem is with two of the seven deadly sins. Losing weight is a desperately difficult business. Preventing gain, however, is not. Consumer information is everywhere, and there can be few adults who truly believe that hot dogs, fries, a soda and a couple of Twinkies make a good lunch. But they eat them anyway. As more and more Americans became educated to the risks of smoking, more and more Americans gave up the habit. Now it appears that Americans need an intensive education in the risks of stuffing themselves and failing to exercise as well. Given the seductiveness of chocolate and cheese, the couch and the car, that habit will be hard to break. But if an ounce of prevention can obviate a pound of fat, it is well worth the struggle.

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If good intentions and good ideas were all it took to save the deteriorating atmosphere, the planet"s fragile layer of air would be as good as fixed. The two great dangers threatening the blanket of gases that nurtures and protects life on earth—global warming and the thinning ozone layer—have been identified. Better yet, scientists and policymakers have come up with effective though expensive countermeasures. But that doesn"t mean these problems are anywhere close to being solved. The stratospheric ozone layer, for example, is still getting thinner, despite the 1987 international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol, which calls for a phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals by the year 2006. CFCs—first fingered as dangerous in the 1970s by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, two of this year"s Nobel—prizewinning chemists—have been widely used for refrigeration and other purposes. If uncontrolled, the CFC assault on the ozone layer could increase the amount of hazardous solar ultraviolet light that reaches the earth"s surface, which would, among other things, damage crops and cause cancer in humans. Thanks to a sense of urgency triggered by the 1085 detection of what has turned out to be an annual "hole" in the especially vulnerable ozone over Antarctica, the Montreal accords have spurred industry to replace CFCs with safer substances. Yet the CFCs already in the air are still doing their dirty work. The Antarctic ozone hole is more severe this year than ever before, and ozone levels over temperate regions are dipping as well. If the CFC phase-out proceeds on schedule, the atmosphere should start repairing itself by the year 2000, say scientists. Nonetheless, observes British Antarctic Survey meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin: "It will be the middle of the next century before things are back to where they were in the 1970s". Developing countries were given more time to comply with the Montreal Protocol and were promised that they would receive $250 million from richer nations to pay for the CFC phase-out. At the moment, though, only 60% of those funds has been forthcoming. Says Nelson Sabogal of the U.N. Environment Program: "If developed countries don"t come up with the money, the ozone layer will not recuperate. This is a crucial time". It is also a critical time for warding off potentially catastrophic climate change. Waste gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and the same CFCs that wreck the ozone layer all tend to trap sunlight and warm the earth. The predicted results: an eventual melting of polar ice caps, rises in sea levels and shifts in climate patterns.

How best to solve the pollution problems of a city sunk so deep within sulfurous clouds that it was described as hell on earth? Simply answered: Relocate all urban smoke-creating industry and encircle the metropolis of London with sweetly scented flowers and elegant hedges. In fact, as Christine L. Corton, a Cambridge scholar, reveals in her new book, London Fog, this fragrant anti-smoke scheme was the brainchild of John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist. King Charles II was said to be much pleased with Evelyn' s idea, and a bill against the smoky nuisance was duly drafted. Then nothing was done. Nobody at the time, and nobody right up to the middle of the 20th century, was willing to put public health above business interests. And yet it' s a surprise to discover how beloved a feature of London life these multicolored fogs became. A painter, Claude Monet, fleeing besieged Paris in 1870, fell in love with London's vaporous, mutating clouds. He looked upon the familiar mist as his reliable collaborator. Visitors from abroad may have delighted in the fog, but homegrown artists lit candles and vainly scrubbed the grime from their gloom-filled studio windows. "Give us light!" Frederic Leighton pleaded to the guests at a Lord Mayor's banquet in 1882, begging them to have pity on the poor painter. The more serious side of Corton' s book documents how business has taken precedence over humanity where London's history of pollution is concerned. A prevailing westerly wind meant that those dwelling to the east were always at most risk. Those who could afford it lived elsewhere. The east was abandoned to the underclass. Lord Palmerston spoke up for choking East Enders in the 1850s, pointing a finger at the interests of the furnace owners. A bill was passed, but there was little change. Eventually, another connection was established: between London' s perpetual veil of smog and its citizens' cozily smoldering grates. Sadly, popular World War I songs like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" didn't do much to encourage the adoption of smokeless fuel. It wasn 't until what came to be known as the "Great Killer Fog" of 1952 that the casualty rate became impossible to ignore and the British press finally took up the cause. It was left to a Member of Parliament to steer the Clean Air Act into law in 1956. Within a few years, even as the war against pollution was still in its infancy, the dreaded fog began to fade. Corton' s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London' s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. It' s discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual and enlightening experience.

Music is a mystery. It is unique to the human race: no other species produces elaborate sound for no particular reason. It has been, and remains, part of every known civilization on Earth. Lengths of bone fashioned into flutes were in use 40,000 years ago. And it engages people"s attention more comprehensively than almost anything else: scans show that when people listen to music, virtually every area of their brain becomes more active. Yet it serves no obvious adaptive purpose. Charles Darwin, in "The Descent of Man", noted that "neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life." Then, what is the point of music. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist, has called music "auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties." If it vanished from our species, he said, "the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged." Others have argued that, on the contrary, music, along with art and literature, is part of what makes people human; its absence would have a brutalizing effect. Philip Ball, a British science writer and an avid music enthusiast, comes down somewhere in the middle. He says that music is ingrained in our auditory, cognitive and motor functions. We have a music instinct as much as a language instinct, and could not rid ourselves of it. He goes through each component of music to explain how and why it works, using plentiful examples drawn from a refreshingly wide range of different kinds of music, from Bach to the Beatles, and from nursery rhymes to jazz. His basic message is encouraging and uplifting: people know much more about music than they think. They start picking up the rules from the day they are born, perhaps even before, by hearing it all around them. Very young children can tell if a tune or harmony is not quite right and most adults can differentiate between kinds of music even if they have had no training. Music is completely sui generis , ft should not tell a non-musical story; the listener will decode it for himself. Many, perhaps most, people have experienced a sudden rush of emotion on hearing a particular piece of music; a thrill or chill, a sense of excitement or exhilaration, a feeling of being swept away by it. They may even be moved to tears, without being able to tell why. Musical analysts have tried hard to find out how this happens, but with little success. Perhaps some mysteries are best preserved.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about happiness. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A—F for each numbered paragraph (41—45). The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. Extensive applications of haptic technology.B. Possibilities rendered by haptic mechanisms.C. The feasibility of extending our senses and exploring abstract universes.D. An example of the progress in science of haptics.E. Bringing the potential of our senses into full play.F. Will haptics step into a bright future? "OOOF!" Using your mouse, you heave a data file across the screen—a couple of gigabytes of data weigh a lot. Its rough surface tells you that it is a graphics file. Having tipped this huge pile of data into a hopper that sends it to the right program, you examine a screen image of the forest trail you"ll be hiking on your vacation. Then, using a gloved hand, you master its details by running your fingers over its forks and bends, its sharp rises and falls. Later you send an E-mail to your beloved, bending to the deskpad to attach a kiss. (41)______. The science of haptics (from the Greek haptesthai, "to touch") is making these fantasies real. A few primitive devices are extending human-machine communication beyond vision and sound. Haptic joysticks and steering wheels for computer games are already giving happy players some of the sensations of piloting a spaceship, driving a racing car or firing weapons. In time, haptic interfaces may allow us to manipulate single molecules, feel clouds and galaxies, even reach into higher dimensions to grasp the subtle structures of mathematics. (42)______. Most of our senses tire passive. In hearing and vision, for example, the sound or light is simply received and analyzed. But touch is different: we actively explore and alter reality with our hands, so the same action that gathers information can also change the world—to model a piece of clay or press a button, for example. In providing direct contact between people, touch carries emotional impact. And in providing direct contact with the world, it is the sure sign of reality, as in "pinch me—am I dreaming?" (43)______. Some small steps have even been taken towards whole-body haptics. Touch Technology of Nova Scotia, Canada, has built a haptic chair. It looks like a full-length lounge chair in a family den, but its surface is studded with 72 "tactors" -pneumatic piston rods, covered with rounded buttons, that can extend about an inch, and can be driven under computer control in any desired sequence and pattern. It could be programmed to imitate a real massage or to function in time to music. According to the manufacturer, that provides a powerful blending of sensations—a long-term goal of virtual reality. (44)______. Even at its present crude level, however, haptics can make tangible what once could not be touched or even pictured. To investigate the world of the very small, researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have developed the nanoManipulator. This adds touch to the technique of scanning probe microscopy, which can image a single atom by monitoring either the electrical current flowing between an extremely fine probe and a surface or the force between them. With the nanoManipulator, researchers can see and manipulate a universe a million times smaller than their own, to study viruses and tiny semiconducting devices. If the force feedback can be made sensitive enough, it may be possible to push molecular keys into specific molecular locks, to custom-design drugs or assemble silicon parts into intricate nanomachines. With other interfaces, there is no reason we shouldn"t also be able to touch the very large-clouds, ocean currents, mantle flows, mountains, galaxy clusters. Or the very strong—with a suitable force scaling, new ceramics or alloys could be squeezed and twanged to test their engineering properties. Or the physically extreme and inaccessible—such as ultra hot plasma flows in fusion machines. (45)______. Haptic technology could even make abstract ideas tangible. Many scientific concepts occupy spaces of more than three dimensions, string theory, for" example, asserts that we live in a 10 or 11-dimensional Universe. As it is impossible to visualise such a space, we explore these ideas" through mathematical expressions or two dimensional sketches on paper. But probing these unfamiliar geometries with touch may be more effective. And for blind people, haptics offers a new way to grasp information even in three dimensions. A group at the University of Delaware has developed an environment where a person can feel a mathematical function. Using a PHAN-TOM, the user "walks" along the surface of the figure. Like a hiker following mountainous terrain, the user feels where the function is steep, where it is level, and where its peaks and valleys lie. Other haptic systems could help blind people to browse the Internet, feeling images as well as words. The future of haptics is bright, but the only sensual relationship it will be sustaining any time soon is between you and your computer.