There is a general support for the argument Democrats are beginning to make that priority should be given to improving the ability of the government to prevent the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction into the entry and to respond effectively should such an attack occur.

The term "disruptive technology" is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that undermines an existing technology—and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Thirty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers. VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones—all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction-house, announced that it was buying Skype for $ 2.6 billion, plus an additional $ 1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. It seems that this is a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $ 60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new "click to call" advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice calling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, hut other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers.

A Recruitment Notice You are supposed to write for the Postgraduates" Association a notice to recruit volunteers for an international conference on globalization. The notice should include the basic qualifications for applicants and the other information which you think is relevant. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Postgraduates" Association" instead.

A recent case in Australia shows how easily fear can frustrate an informant"s good intentions. In December, a woman wrote anonymously to the country"s antitrust watchdog, the ACCC, alleging that her employer was colluding with others in breach of the Trade Practices Act. Her evidence was sufficient to suggest to the ACCC that fines of A$10m could be imposed on "a large company". But theagency needed more details. So just before Christmas it advertised extensively to try and persuade the woman to come forward again. Some days later her husband rang the ACCC, but he hung up before disclosing vital information. Now the agency is trying to contact the couple again. In America, there is some evidence that the events of September 11th have made people more public-spirited and more inclined to blow the whistle. The Government Accountability Project, a Washington based group, received 27 reproaches from potential informants in the three months before September 11th, and 66 in the three months after. Many of these complaints were about security issues. They included a Federal Aviation Adininistration employee who claimed that the agency had repeatedly failed to respond to known cases of security violations at airports. Legislation to give greater protection to people who expose corporate or government misbehavior externally (after having received no satisfaction internally) is being introduced in a number of countries. In America, it focuses on informants among federal employees. According to Billy Garde, a lawyer who was a member of BP"s Alaska inquiry team, they "have less rights than prisoners".A bill introduced last year by Senator Daniel Akaka to improve protection for them is currently stuck in congressional committees. In Britain, the Public Interest Disclosure Act came fully into force last year. Described by one American as "the most far-reaching informant protection in the world", it treats informants as witnesses acting in the public interest. This separates them from people who are merely pursuing a personal grievance. But even in Britain, the protection is limited. Rupert Walker, a fund manager, was fired by Govett Investments in September 2001 for expressing concerns in the Financial Times about a group of people of investment trusts that invest in each other.

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. You are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent text by choosing from the list A—G. The first and the last paragraphs have been placed for you.A. Is that what the American viewing public is getting? Perhaps 10% of prime-time network programming is a happy combination of entertainment and enrichment. There used to be television movies rich in human values, but they have now become an endangered species. I find television too much concerned with what people have and too little concerned with who they are, very concerned with taking care of No. 1 and not at all concerned with sharing themselves with other people. All too often it tells us the half truth we want to hear rather than the whole truth we need to hear.B. Why is television not more fully realizing its humanizing potential? Is the creative community at fault? Partially. But not primarily. I have lived and worked in that community for 32 years, as both priest and producer. As a group, these people have values. In fact, in Hollywood in recent months, audience enrichment has become the in thing. A coalition of media companies has endowed the Humanitas Prize so that it can recognize and celebrate those who accomplish it.C. Every good story will not only captivate its viewers but also give them some insight into what it means to be a human being. By so doing, it can help them grow into the deeply centered, sovereign free, joyously loving human being God made them to be. Meaning, freedom and love—the supreme human values. And this is the kind of human enrichment the American viewing public has a right to expect from those who make its entertainment.D. The problem with American TV is not the lack of storytellers of conscience but the commercial system within which they have to operate. Television in the U.S. is a business. In the past, the business side has been balanced by a commitment to public service. But in recent years the fragmentation of the mass audience, huge interest payments and skyrocketing production costs have combined with the FCC"s abdication of its responsibility to protect the common good to produce an almost total preoccupation with the bottom line. The networks are struggling to survive. And that, the statistics seem to indicate, is mindless, heartless, escapist fare. If we are dissatisfied with the moral content of what we are invited to watch, I think we should begin by examining our own consciences. When we tune in, are we ready to plunge into reality, so as to extract its meaning, or are we hoping to escape into a sedated world of illusion? And if church leaders want to elevate the quality of the country"s entertainment, they should forget about boycotts, production codes and censor-ship. They should work at educating their people in media literacy and at mobilizing them to support quality shows in huge numbers.E. It is not a question of entertainment or enrichment. These are complementary concerns and presuppose each other. The story that entertains without enriching is superficial and escapist. The story that enriches without entertaining is simply dull. The story that does both is a delight.F. That is the only sure way to improve the moral content of America"s entertainment.G. Despite questions of the motivation behind them, the attacks by the President and the Vice President on the moral content of television entertainment have found an echo in the chambers of the American soul. Many who reject the messengers still accept the message. They do not like the moral tone of American TV. In our society only the human family surpasses television in its capacity to communicate values, provide role models, form consciences and motivate human behavior. Few educator, church leaders or politicians possess the moral influence of those who create the nation"s entertainment.Order: G is the first paragraph and F is the last.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points) You are going to read a text about the topic of homebased business. Leaving corporate America to run a homebased business is the ideal situation for many people: There"s no boss breathing down your neck, no boring meetings to attend and no 45-minute drives in rush hour traffic. Working from home can be a rewarding experience, but it"s easy to forget the basic rules of running a successful business when it"s 10 hours of just you, your computer and the distractions of home. To help you stay on track, we"ve contacted homebased business expert Rosalind Resnick, CEO of Axxess Business Centers Inc., a New York small-business consulting firm. She"s put together several helpful tips for keeping your homebased business running smoothly. (41) Organize your family time. Once your professional life is organized, you may need to consider organizing your personal life. (42) Motivate yourself. Sit down and set some goals for yourself. (43) Take time out for good behavior. Take a break every now and then so you don"t get burned out. (44) Network. Network with other homebased business owners in either a formal or informal setting. (45) Consider moving out of your home. At the point when your business becomes so successful that you cannot efficiently work close together, start considering moving your office outside the home.A. This is a good way to find service providers, leaders and potential clients. Surrounding yourself with people who also work from home will give you the support you need, and refer you to people who can help you grow your business.B. Maybe you noticed right away, or maybe it"s just becoming apparent, that you tend to work around the schedule of your family members. This is especially true if you have children. A lot of people, especially young moms, decide that they"re going to quit their jobs in corporate America and work from home in order to care for their children and save on daycare expenses. But in reality, if you"re serious about running a homebased business and earning a decent income, you"re going to have to make arrangements for childcare in or outside the home. Otherwise it becomes too distracting. Consider hiring a babysitter so you"re guaranteed five to six solid hours to get your work done.C. You no longer have quarterly reviews or progress reports, so it"s important to keep track of whether or not you"re making progress in your business. It"s one thing to set small goals like completing your to-do list—you also have to set goals to motivate yourself to succeed. Hopefully by now you"re making as much, if not more, money at your homebased business than you were at your former job. If you aren"t, begin by setting a goal to bring in the same amount of income you were, and slowly raise the bar to increase your income by a couple of thousand a month. Once you"ve met a goal, make time to reward yourself by doing something fun, which brings us to the next tip.D. For a lot of people, working from home is a launching pad. In the beginning, many business owners work from home in order to keep overhead low. If you have more than one person with different roles working from your home office, you should ideally be working in separate rooms. It can be difficult having two people work side by side, even if those two people are spouses and love each other very much. It"s distracting for anyone to have someone three feet away from you talking on the phone. Be prepared for expansion.E. It"s not uncommon to find yourself working 60-to 70-hour weeks. But the good thing is, if you want to sneak out and see a movie at two in the afternoon, nobody"s going to tell you not to do it. You have that freedom and flexibility as a home business owner. It can be tempting to work all the time when you start seeing how successful your business has become, but know when to relax. You"ve already established a smooth-running business.F. In its high levels, the mantle is relatively cool; at greater depth, high temperatures make the rock behave more like a liquid than a solid.

Speech, whether oral or written, is a used commodity. If we are to be heard, we must (1)_____ our words from those (2)_____ to us within families, peer groups, societal institutions, and political networks. Our utterances position us both in an immediate social dialogue (3)_____ our addressee and, simultaneously, in a larger ideological one (4)_____ by history and society. We speak as an individual and also, as a student or teacher, a husband or wife, a person of a particular discipline, social class, religion, race, or other socially constructed (5)_____. Thus, to varying degrees, all speaking is a (6)_____ of others" words and all writing is rewriting. As language (7)_____, we experience individual agency by infusing our own intentions (8)_____ other people"s words, and this can be very hard. (9)_____, schools, like into churches and courtrooms, are places (10)_____ people speak words that are more important than they are. The words of a particular discipline, like those of "God the father" or of "the law", are being articulated by spokespeople for the given authority. The (11)_____ of the addressed, the listener, is to acknowledge the words and their (12)_____. In Bakhtin"s (13)_____, "the authoritative word is located in a distanced zone, organically connected with a (14)_____ that is felt to be hierarchally higher". (15)_____, part of growing up in an ideological sense is becoming more "selective" about the words we appropriate and, (16)_____, pass on to others. In Bakhtin"s (17)_____, responsible people do not treat (18)_____ as givens, they treat them as utterances, spoken by particular people located in specific ways in the social landscape. Becoming alive to the socio-ideological complexity of language use is (19)_____ to becoming a more responsive language user and, potentially, a more playful one too, able to use a (20)_____ of social voices, of perspectives, in articulating one"s own ideas.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about what parents are supposed to do to guide their children into adulthood. Choose a heading from the list A—F that best fits the meaning of each numbered part of the text (41—45). The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There are two extra headings that you do net need to use. (10 points) Glass, in one form or another, has long been in noble service to humans. As one of the most widely used of manufactured materials, and certainly the most versatile, it can be as imposing as a telescope mirror the width of a tennis court or as small and simple as a marble rolling across dirt. (41)______. The uses of this adaptable material have been broadened dramatically by new technologies: glass fiber optics—more than eight million miles—carrying telephone and television signals across nations; glass ceramics serving as the nose cones of missiles and as crowns for teeth; tiny glass beads taking radiation doses inside the body to specific organs; even a new type of glass fashioned of nuclear waste in order to dispose of that unwanted material. (42)______. On the horizon are optical computers. These could store programs and process information by means of light—pulses from tiny lasers—rather than electrons. And the pulses would travel over glass fibers, not copper wire. These machines could function hundreds of times faster than today"s electronic computers and hold vastly more information. Today fiber optics are used to obtain a clearer image of smaller and smaller objects than ever before—even bacterial viruses. Anew generation of optical instruments is emerging that can provide detailed imaging of the inner workings of cells. It is the surge in fiber optic use and in liquid crystal displays that has set the U.S. glass industry (a 16 billion dollar business employing some 150,000 workers) to building new plants to meet demand. (43)______. But not all the glass technology that touches our lives is ultra-modem. Consider the simple light bulb; at the turn of the century most light bulbs were hand blown, and the cost of one was equivalent to half a day"s pay for the average worker. In effect, the invention of the ribbon machine by Coming in the 1920s lighted a nation. The price of a bulb plunged. Small wonder that the machine has been called one of the great mechanical achievements of all time. Yet it is very simple: a narrow ribbon of molten glass travels over a moving belt of steel in which there are holes. The glass sags through the holes and into waiting moulds. Puffs of compressed air then shape the glass. In this way, the envelope of a light bulb is made by a single machine at the rate of 66,000 an hour, as compared with 1,200 a day produced by a team of four glassblowers. (44)______. The secret of the versatility of glass lies in its interior structure. Although it is rigid, and thus like a solid, the atoms are arranged in a random disordered fashion, characteristic of a liquid. In the melting process, the atoms in the raw materials are disturbed from their normal position in the molecular structure; before they can find their way back to crystalline arrangements the glass cools. This looseness in molecular structure gives the material what engineers call tremendous "formability" which allows technicians to tailor glass to whatever they need. (45)______. Today, scientists continue to experiment with new glass mixtures and building designers test their imaginations with applications of special types of glass. A London architect, Mike Davies, sees even more dramatic buildings using molecular chemistry. "Glass is the great building material of the future, the "dynamic skin"", he said". Think of glass that has been treated to react to electric currents going through it, glass that will change from clear to opaque at the push of a button, that gives you instant curtains". Think of how the tall buildings in New York could perform a symphony of colours as the glass in them is made to change colours instantly. Glass as instant curtains is available now, but the cost is exorbitant. As for the glass changing colours instantly, that may come true. Mike Davies"s vision may indeed be on the way to fulfillment.A. What makes glass so adaptableB. Architectural experiments with glassC. Glass art galleries flourishD. Exciting innovations in fiber opticsE. A former glass technologyF. New uses of glass

TheGoalWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

She is beautiful and clever.

"AMZN" is a four-letter word to many booksellers. The online retailer has been【C1】______of killing the bookselling industry. It certainly has【C2】______high street chains. But physical bookstore booksellers may【C3】______from Amazon's latest announcement. On January 7th the company【C4】______the option of free delivery—which it calls "Super Saver"—for book orders under ￡10 in Britain. This follows a【C5】______of the free-delivery option in July 2013, and【C6】______a similar scheme the retailer has introduced in America Amazon's aim is to push customers towards its Prime service, which costs ￡49 a year for next-day delivery on orders of any price and also includes its locker service. This preferential treatment has proven【C7】______And they seem to buy more【C8】______than non-Prime customers. But the【C9】______carries a risk. Amazon may【C10】______casual book buyers, for whom a Prime subscription would be【C11】______from shopping online—and send them back to physical shops. Such buyers may【C12】______away from delivery charges that will now【C13】______25% or more of an order's total【C14】______when buying a single book from Amazon. Readers could simply【C15】______their online buying habits, for instance by keeping a reading list and buying several books at a time. And the higher delivery【C16】______will make many books on Amazon as【C17】______as in high-street shops. Yet Amazon, which had a【C18】______Christmas season, selling 426 items each second, may not care if buyers give up physical books.【C19】______surveys show that people prefer the【C20】______of a newly printed book and the ability to crack the spine of a page-turner.

BPart B/B

Here I want to try to give you an answer to the question: what personal qualities are (1)_____ in a teacher? Probably no two people would (2)_____ exactly similar lists, but I think the following would be generally (3)_____. First, the teacher"s personality should be pleasantly (4)_____ and attractive. This does not rule out people who are physically (5)_____, or even ugly, because many such have great personal (6)_____. But it does rule out such types as the (7)_____, melancholy, frigid, sarcastic, frustrated, and over bearing: I would say too, that it (8)_____ all of dull or purely negative personality. Secondly, it is not merely desirable (9)_____ essential for a teacher to have a genuine (10)_____ for sympathy—a capacity to tune (11)_____ to the minds and feelings of other people, especially, to the minds and feelings of children. (12)_____ related with this is the capacity to be (13)—not, indeed, of what is wrong, but of the frailty and immaturity of human nature which (14)_____ people, and again especially children, to make mistakes. Thirdly, I (15)_____ it essential for a teacher to be both intellectually and morally honest. This does not mean being a saint. It means that he will be aware of his intellectual strength and (16)_____, and will have thought about and decided upon the moral principles by which his life shall be (17)_____. There is no contradiction in my going on to say that a teacher should be a (18)_____ of an actor. That is part of the technique of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should be able to (19)_____ an act—to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or (20)_____ praise. Children, especially young children, live in a world that is rather larger than life.

LackofResourcesWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

A "LOST TRIBE" that reached America from Australia may have been. the first Native Americans, according to a new theory. (46) If proved by DNA evidence, the theory will shatter long established beliefs about the southerly migration of people who entered America across the Bering Strait, found it empty and occupied it. On this theory rests the authority of Native Americans (previously known as Red Indians) to have been the first true Americans. They would be relegated to the ranks of also-rans, beaten to the New World by Aboriginals in boats. To a European, this may seem like an academic argument, but to Americans it is a philosophical question about identity, Silvia Gonzales of Liverpool John Moores University said. Her claims are based on skeletons found in the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico that have skulls quite unlike the broad Mongolian features of Native Americans. These narrow-skulled people have more in common with southern Asians, Aboriginal Australians and people of the South Pacific Rim. (47) The bones, stored at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, have been carbon-dated and one is 12,700 years old, which places it several thousand years before the arrival of people from the North. "We think there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups," Dr. Gonzales said. "The timing, route and point of origin of the first colonization of the Americas remains a most contentious topic in human evolution." (48) But comparisons based on skull shape are not considered conclusive by anthropologists, so a team of Mexican and British scientists, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council, has also attempted to extract DNA from the bones. (49) Dr. Gonzales declined yesterday to say exactly what the results were, as they need to be checked, but indicated that they were consistent with an Australian origin. (50) She believes that they arrived by boat, settled in what is now Mexico and at other points along the Pacific coast, and survived for thousands of years. The first Spanish colonists and missionaries described the people they found in the area, the Pericue, as slim hunter-gatherers. They lacked much culture, but did have burial customs in which bodies were laid out in the sun before being painted with ochre and buried. The Spanish collected the people into missions, where they died out in the 18th century.

Many will doubt tobacco industry claims that it is sharpening its science to evaluate "healthier cigarettes". But that"s what will happen if the US Food and Drug Administration(FDA)gets the job of regulating the industry, as a Senate vote on the issue was expected to decide this week. Then the health agency will be placed in the bizarre situation of deciding whether to approve new versions of products that have killed millions. Radicals will argue that the only way of preventing tobacco-related death and disease is to ban cigarettes, not encourage more tobacco products onto the market—even if they might be safer. However, a ban is unlikely, and so helping people to quit, dissuading teens from smoking in the first place and helping people avoid second-hand smoke should remain at the heart of health policies. Such measures have already cut the number of US smokers from around 50 per cent of the population in the 1960s to around 20 per cent today—but this is still well short of the US government"s target of 12 per cent by 2010. Abstinence cannot be the only policy, however. Pragmatists will see the sense of safer cigarettes. There is a hard core of people who cannot or will not give up, and safer cigarettes could also help in poorer parts of the world, where more and more people are taking up smoking: the World Health Organization predicts that by 2030 more than 80 per cent of tobacco-related deaths will be in low to middle-income countries. We need to find new ways of cutting the risks of tobacco. Nicotine replacements are one solution; reduced-harm products like modified cigarettes might be another. Without robust science to back up the claims of safety, however, they could make things worse, as has happened before. The marketing of "light", "ultra-light" and "low-tar" cigarettes led many smokers to believe that these were healthier alternatives to stronger brands, yet we now know that they cause just as much cancer. The tobacco industry has a poor history of transparency when it comes to research. Tobacco companies are now developing biomarkers to assess risk more accurately. They should be applauded, but only if they are prepared to subject their research to tough examination. FDA regulation may force them to do this. It should also make the labeling of cigarettes even clearer, so that consumers understand the relative risks. Only good science can cut through the smokescreen that for decades has obscured the hazards of cigarettes.

Friends of the Earth International(FOE)has just issued its report Nature-. Poor People"s Wealth in conjunction with the G8 Summit of rich nations at Gleneagles in Scotland. The FOE report aims to highlight the importance of natural resources in poverty eradication. "Poverty is the greatest shame and scandal of our era," according to FOE. All too predictably, a good bit of the report consists of a tiresome standard-issue anti-globalization screed against "neoliberal" economic policies and evil "transnational corporations". FOE notes that policy debates over how to alleviate poverty "tend to emphasize the monetary aspect of poverty, whereas many other factors— including access to and control over natural resources and land, employment, health, nutrition, education, access to services, conflict, political power and social inclusion—also play crucial roles". In many of the instances cited by FOE where poor people and natural resources are being misused or abused, there are no clear property rights. In some cases, the governments simply assert ownership and ride roughshod over the desires of the local people who were under the impression that the land was theirs. In others, corrupt national governments collude with powerful interests to seize poor peoples" lands and resources. Amusingly, while the FOE report insists on all kinds of rights for the world"s poor, including environmental, human, political, collective, legal, and women"s rights, there is in the report not a single mention of the word "property", as in "property rights". While FOE is to be commended for its support for restoring stolen land to poor people around the globe, it just cannot bring itself to permit individual poor people to own land. Consequently, most of the "sustainable development" schemes endorsed by FOE involve collective ownership of land and natural resources.(By collective ownership, FOE most emphatically does not mean corporate ownership.)Collective ownership by a defined group is better than government theft, but it limits the options of the joint owners who are subject to the tyranny of generally conservative majorities who stifle entrepreneurship. Evidently, FOE would prefer that poor people sit around voting all day rather than getting rich. Friends of the Earth would do well to read the work of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who has minutely detailed how the lack of property rights throughout the developing world keeps billions poor. Without clear title to their land, houses, stores, and so forth, the poor cannot sell their assets or borrow against them. Since their "properties" are subject to seizure at the whim of a government bureaucrat, the poor are understandably reluctant to invest in improving them. Thus they remain poor. The poor benefit from secure private property rights even more than the rich do.

Studythefollowingchartcarefullyandwriteanessayinwhichyoushould1)describethechart,2)deducethepurposeofthepainterofthechart,and3)suggestcounter-measures.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.

Based on Hindu scriptures the system of arranged marriage in India was well established during the FDIC period (4000-1000 B.C.) and has been closely adhered to by the vast majority of the population since that period. Marriage is seen as an indispensable event in the life of a Hindu and the unmarried person is viewed as incomplete and ineligible for participation in certain social and religious activities. The practice of arranged marriage cuts across all caste lines, regional boundaries and language barriers in India. Marriage is treated as an alliance between two families rather than two individuals. In the common joint family arrangement where several generations are living together, the prospective bride is evaluated on her suitability as part of the entire family environment rather than only as a wife to her husband. Love is not viewed as an important element in mate selection nor is courtship thought to be necessary for testing the relationship. In fact, romantic love is regarded as an uncontrollable and explosive emotion which interferes with the use of reason and logic in decision-making. Love is thought to be a disruptive element since it implies a transference of loyalty from the family of orientation to another individual. Thus, mate selection by self-choice is seen as endangering the stability of the entire joint family since it could lead to the selection of a mate of unsuitable temperament or background. Gupta has estimated that Indian marriages based on love occur among less than one percent of the population. Critical life decisions, such as choosing a mate, are generally determined by responsible members of the family or kin group, thus reflecting the cultural emphasis on feminism as opposed to freedom of the individual and pursuance of personal goals. However, it is anticipated that close ties and feelings of affection will develop between the couple following marriage. Most research on modern family life in India suggests that there has been little change in the views of Indians toward marriage. However, in their 1976 study of college students, Rae found that an increasing number of young adults in India wish to have more choice in the selection of their future mate, although they still prefer their parents to arrange their marriages. Cormack (1961) also states that the custom of prohibiting a prospective couple from seeing each other until their wedding day is becoming obsolete in most urban areas and among college-educated youth.

"It could have been worse" was the common refrain as American banks began reporting their second-quarter earnings. Indeed, the striking characteristic of the returns was their consistency.【F1】 Big and small, local and national, lenders across the country have been benefiting from some common tailwinds. Legal settlements are becoming sparser; the economy is expanding, albeit feebly, and the housing market is recovering; auditors are pushing banks to keep releasing loan-loss reserves; and actual losses are trivial. But avoiding disaster is not really cause for celebration. Consumers continue to shed debt; companies carry ever more cash. Banks' pre-provision revenue growth is muted, and there has been no recovery in loan growth of the sort seen after previous recessions.【F2】 This is so unusual that it may be unprecedented, says Michael Mayo, an analyst at CSLA, a securities firm, and it hardly suggests a good prediction for the banking system. He predicts that the current decade will show the worst revenue growth for banks since the 1930s. Pricing and margins will inevitably tighten as a result. In as much as borrowing activity has shifted from banks' balance-sheets to the capital markets, some have benefited.【F3】 The investment-banking arm of perpetually troubled Citigroup did well in the second quarter, as did the investment-banking arm of infrequently troubled Goldman Sachs. Underwriting and advisory revenues rose at both firms. Goldman reaped large gains from its own investments. But Goldman's return on equity was still barely in double digits. Its headcount is shrinking, not expanding. That is typically the single best indicator of an investment firm's perspective on its prospects. Citi's return on equity was well below Goldman's, at 6.5%. Investors will not tolerate that sort of performance for ever. A major source of Citi's revenue is in emerging markets, where conditions are deteriorating. The likelihood that the overall banking environment will improve in the near future is low. 【F4】 Recent rises in interest rates, prompted by expectations that the Federal Reserve will start slowing the pace of asset purchases, will take a toll on mortgage refinancing, a source of revenue that has produced a large sum of money for banks in recent years. It is probably no coincidence that share prices for most financial institutions have flattened in recent weeks. Regulators and politicians are still trying to suppress banks' risk appetite, not whet it. American financial institutions are already expecting to hold more risk-weighted capital in order to conform with the international Basel 3 standards. 【F5】 Worried by the potential for banks to game the calculations that support these same risk weightings, regulators this month proposed a higher "leverage ratio", a measure of capital that reflects the overall size of a bank's balance-sheet as well as its riskiness. The proposal calls for a 5% leverage ratio at the holding-company level, and 6% at the level of the bank, for the eight largest banks; Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo.