In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Will America"s cities ever again be places most people want to live in? It seems unlikely. Here as in 1970 America"s suburbs contained 25% more families than its cities, today they contain 75 % more. Middle-class families—"the bedrock of a stable community", in the words of the Department of Housing and Urban Development—associate cities with poverty and therefore crime. (41)______. No wonder so many families equate the American dream with a home in the suburbs. But the resulting urban sprawl carries a cost. A report this week from the Sierra Club, which has been preaching ecological sensitivity for more than a century, underlines what it calls "the dark side of the American dream" traffic congestion; commuting journeys that "steal time from family and work"; air and water pollution; lost farmland and recreational space; increased flooding; and more taxes to pay for a suburban infrastructure that ranges from policing to sewage systems. (42)______. Putting numbers to its argument, the Sierra Club reckons air pollution "costs US agriculture more than $2.5 billion every year," and it argues that the paving over of natural wetlands helps produce the floods that cost America an average of $4.3 billion a year. In the period from 1970 to 1990, urban sprawl led the twin cities of Minneapolis—St Paul, in Minnesota, to close 162 schools in and around the city centers while building 78 new ones in the outer suburbs. Between1970 and 1995, Maine spent 6ver $338 million building new schools even as the number of students in its public schools fell by 27,000. (43)______. (44)______. Among the country"s largest cities, the most threatened, apparently, are the citizens of Atlanta; among medium-sized cities, it is the people of Orlando, Florida, who have most to fear; and among small cities, the inhabitants of McAllen, Texas. As for Los Angles, the "grand-daddy of sprawl", the city deserves a "dishonorable mention", along with San Diego and Phoenix. (45)______. One idea being tried in parts of Michigan and Maryland "is for communities to buy farmland or environmentally sensitive land to prevent its development; another idea, practiced in Oregon and Washington state, is to set an "urban growth boundary" to enclose an urban area within an inviolate green belt; a third is to offer tax inducements to communities that forgo development rights. But in the land of the car, perhaps the most unlikely idea is that Americans will follow the example of New Jersey, which recently voted for higher petrol taxes to preserve a million acres of undeveloped land over the next ten years.A. Moreover, as the suburb expands, the inner city"s tax base shrinks, setting off a vicious cycle of higher taxes, lower corporate profits, higher joblessness and lower property values.B. It was obvious that after 1970 people preferred to live in the suburb while work in the city.C. Can urban sprawl be repulsed?D. They have a point: the poverty rate in America"s urban areas rose from 14.2% in 1970 to 21.5% in 1993, with most of the increase in the inner-city areas from which the middle class has fled.E. Meanwhile, the exhaustion of commuters is hardly lessened by new and better roads, since each 1% increase in new lane-miles generates within five years a 0.9% increase in traffic.F. The house in the suburb may not be full of conveniences of every sort, so cars are the only means for shopping and transportation.G. All this, the Sierra Club maintains, illustrates the threat that urban sprawl represents to the quality of life.

Spring is here: flowers are in bloom, birdsong fills the air, and the inboxes of employers are clogged with desperate pleas for summer internships. College students and graduates are well aware of the impact a plummy placement could have their careers. With ever fewer entry level jobs in many industries, internships have become a critical first step into employment. In America, three-quarters of students on a four-year university course will have toiled as an intern at least once before graduation. Up to half of these gimlet-eyed workers will have given their services free. Some may even have had to pay for the privilege of coming to work. Unpaid internships seem to be an example of mutual utility: inexperienced youngsters learn something about a chosen field while employers get to farm out some menial work. The arrangement is consensual, and companies often use internships to test potential recruits. But the increasing popularity of these unpaid placements has caused some controversy lately. Nick Clegg, Britain's deputy prime minister, recently launched a crusade to ban them, arguing that they favour the wealthy and privileged. Others complain that uncompensated internships flout labour standards, exploit nascent workers and surely depress wages for everyone else. In America, they tend to be illegal at for-profit companies, according to guidelines set out in 1947. But the Department of Labour barely enforces such rules, in part because interns are often too afraid to file complaints. Organisations in America save $2 billion a year by not paying interns a minimum wage, writes Ross Perlin in "Intern Nation", a new book about the "highly competitive race to the bottom of the corporate ladder". Perhaps one-third of all internships at for-profit companies are unpaid, and interns now often fill roles once held by full-time employees. "Young people and their parents are subsidising labour for Fortune 500 companies," Mr Perlin comments. To avoid legal complications, companies often encourage students to work in exchange for academic credits from their colleges. But such credits can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Some colleges waive their fees or earn them by offering guidance and oversight. For many institutions, however, they are an easy source of revenue, more beneficial to themselves than their students. Calls for new labour laws that reflect the growing prominence of internships have got nowhere. Instead, interns will have to look out for each other, for example by rating their experiences on websites such as InternshipRatings and Internocracy. At any rate, students may be buoyed by a rare bit of good news from the National Association of Colleges and Employers: employers intend to hire 19% more graduates this year than last. This should spare some from the drudgery of working without pay.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following outline. In your essay, you should: 1) More and more stars and celebrities make TV ads, describe the actuality in our daily lives briefly, 2) explain its intended meaning, and then 3) offer your suggestion(s).

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus (舆论)that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? (41)______. The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people"s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. (42)______. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. (43)______. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people"s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. (44)______. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes. (45)______. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the utopian(空想的) goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.A. Now it became customary, for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife.B. Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighbourhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centres of production and work?C. Men and women are all equal when applying for a job.D. Only in this way, can we solve the unemployment problem.E. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future of work.F. It was not only-women whose work" status suffered.G. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people"s homes.

If the various advocates of the conflicting options are all smart, experienced, and well informed, why do they disagree so completely? Wouldn"t they all have thought the issue through carefully and come to approximately the same "best"—conclusion? The answer to that crucial question lies in the structure of the human brain and the way it processes information. Most human beings actually decide before they think. When any human being—executive, specialized expert, or person in the street—encounters a complex issue and forms an opinion, often within a matter of seconds, how thoroughly has he or she explored the implications of the various courses of action? Answer: not very thoroughly. Very few people, no matter how intelligent or experienced, can take inventory of the many branching possibilities, possible outcomes, side effects, and undesired consequences of a policy or a course of action in a matter of seconds. Yet, those who pride themselves on being decisive often try to do just that. And once their brains lock onto an opinion, most of their thinking thereafter consists of finding support for it. A very serious side effect of argumentative decision making can be a lack of support for the chosen course of action on the part of the "losing" faction. When one faction wins the meeting and the others see themselves as losing, the battle often doesn"t end when the meeting ends. Anger, resentment, and jealousy may lead them to sabotage the decision later, or to reopen the debate at later meetings. There is a better way. As philosopher Aldous Huxley said, "It isn"t who is right, but what is right, that counts." The structured-inquiry method offers a better alternative to argumentative decision making by debate. With the help of the Internet and wireless computer technology, the gap between experts and executives is now being dramatically closed. By actually putting the brakes on the thinking process, slowing it down, and organizing the flow of logic, it"s possible to create a level of clarity that sheer argumentation can never match. The structured-inquiry process introduces a level of conceptual clarity by organizing the contributions of the experts, then brings the experts and the decision makers closer together. Although it isn"t possible or necessary for a president or prime minister to listen in on every intelligence analysis meeting, it"s possible to organize the experts" information to give the decision maker much greater insight as to its meaning. This process may somewhat resemble a marketing focus group; it"s a simple, remarkably clever way to bring decision makers closer to the source of the expert information and opinions on which they must base their decisions.

BPart B/B

With the Met Office predicting a summer heatwave, Macmillan Cancer Relief this week (1)_____ its customary warning about the sun"s ultraviolet rays: (2)_____, it says, for the huge rise in skin cancers affecting 70,000 people a year. (3)_____ a hat and long-sleeved shirt, it advises, keep in the (4)_____ in the middle of the day, and slap (5)_____ suncream with a protection factor of 15 or above. We all know it (6)_____ it"s the message that"s been drummed into us for the past 20 years. Too much sun (7)_____ But now there"s a fly in the suntan lotion, complicating the message"s clarity. It comes (8)_____ a thin, quietly-spoken and officially retired Nasa scientist, Professor William Grant, who says that sun doesn"t kill; in fact, it does us the world of (9)_____. What"s killing us, he says, is our (10)_____ with protecting ourselves from skin cancer. Grant is trying to turn the scientific world (11)_____ down. Talking to me on a trip to Britain this week, he (12)_____ his startling—and at first appearance off-the-wall—new calculation that (13)_____ excessive exposure to the sun is costing 1,600 deaths a year in the UK from melanoma skin cancers, (14)_____ exposure to the sun is the cause of 25,000 deaths a year from cancer generally. In other words, one sixth of all cancer deaths could be prevented (15)_____ we sunned ourselves a little more; in comparison, the melanoma (16)_____ is insignificant. The reason is vitamin D. Grant, the director of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Centre (SUNARC) he (17)_____ in California a year ago, says that he and other scientists have (18)_____ vitamin D deficiency as a key cause (19)_____ 17 different types of cancer including melanoma, osteoporosis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other neurological (20)_____.

Electronics(电子学) is the technology which marshals and controls electrons in materials, and today its applications seems to be boundless. The most striking application recently was the establishment of an electronic communications web around the world to make the moon landing possible. In the near future this web or a similar one will be used in a survey of the earth"s resources. (46) Satellites will not only record interesting geographical features but will be of invaluable service in reporting on outbreaks such as insect plague, plant disease, bush fire, and volcanic activity. Electronics is also the key to automation, where manual control of machines is replaced by electronics controls which are faster, and more accurate and reliable. (47) The automatic timing of traffic lights, the automatic mining and processing of ores(矿石) the numerical control of machine tools, the control of electrical power stations, the automatic monitoring of hospital patients" medical conditions, and the monitoring of plant and animal growth ate all examples of the rapidly growing applications of electronics in this area. (48) Apart from automation, other applications which arouse public opinion include satellites used for military purposes, electronic bugging systems and computer centers to record personal data on all citizens. As well as providing the nucleus for such data centres, computers will take over more and more of the routine operations of modem life. They seem destined to be the application of electronics which will have most influence on our lives in the coming decade. (49) Perhaps more significantly in the long-range view, they will extend man"s reasoning power as tools and machines have extended his muscles in the past and the telephone, radio, and TV are extending his senses at present. (50) Since electronics is used in so many activities and because it touches on many other subjects, it provides possible means of con tact between engineering and the social, natural and medical sciences.

Every year, depression affects more that 19 million Americans, but men account for only about one in 10 diagnosed cases. Because of this, depression was once considered a "woman"s disease", linked to hormones and premenstrual syndrome. The lingering stereotype of depression being a female condition may prevent some men from recognizing its symptoms and seeking appropriate treatment. In reality, depression affects both sexes, disrupting relationships and interfering with work and daily activities. The symptoms of depression are similar for both men and women, but they tend to be expressed differently. The most common symptoms of depression include low self esteem, suicidal thoughts, loss of interest in usually pleasurable activities, fatigue, changes in appetite, sleep disturbances, apathy and sexual problems, including reduced sex drive. There are several reasons why the symptoms of depression in men are not commonly recognized: Men tend to deny having problems because they are supposed to "be strong". American culture suggests that expressing emotion is largely a feminine trait. As a result, men who are depressed are more likely to talk about the physical symptoms of their depression, such as feeling tired, rather than those related to emotions. Depression can affect sexual desire and performance. Men often are unwilling to admit to problems with their sexuality—mistakenly feeling that the problems are related to their manhood, when in fact they are caused by a medical problem such as depression. The observable symptoms of male depression are not as well understood as those in women. Men are less likely to show "typical" signs of depression, such as crying, sadness, loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities, or verbally expressing thoughts of suicide. Instead, men are more likely to keep their feelings hidden, but may become more irritable and aggressive. For these reasons, many men—as well as doctors and other healthcare professionals fail to recognize the problem as depression. Some mental healthcare professionals suggest that if the symptoms of depression were expanded to include anger, blame, lashing out and abuse of alcohol, more men might be diagnosed with depression and treated appropriately. Depression in men can have devastating consequences. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that men in the U. S. are about four times more likely than women to commit suicide. A staggering 75-80% of all people who commit suicide in the U. S. are men. Though more women attempt suicide, more men are successful at actually ending their lives. This may be due to the fact that men tend to use more lethal methods of committing suicide, for example using a gun rather than taking an overdose.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) (41)______. Many of the options have already been rehearsed in the press: excluding some treatments from the NHS, charging for certain drugs and services, and developing voluntary or compulsory health insurance schemes. (42)______. We spend about 7 percent of GDP on health, compared with 9 percent in the Netherlands and 10 percent in France and Germany. In terms of health outcomes versus spend, we compare pretty favourably. I don"t see private health care providing much of the solution to current problems. (43)______. Neither is close to being implemented, but the future could see a deliberate shift of attention to voluntary health insurance and an emphasis on social insurance. (44)______. Even so, higher taxes will plainly be needed to fund health care. I think we"ll eventually see larger NHS charges, more rationing of medical services and restrictions on certain procedures without proven outcomes. Stricter eligibility criteria for certain treatments are another possibility. (45)______. None of them is going to win votes for the political party desperate enough to introduce them—but then nobody is going to vote for ill—health or an early death either.A. English National Health Service is a universal health keeping system. But Now, the shortage of money becomes a serious problem.B. All such options would mean a sharp break with tradition and political fall out that could be extremely damaging.C. The options provides solution to the shortage of money problem.D. I expect individuals to take greater responsibility for their personal health using technology that allows self diagnosis followed by serf-treatment or home care.E. Looking at how far we"ll be able to fund the Health Service in the 21st century raises any number of thorny is-sues.F. More likely is a shift from universal health coverage to top up schemes which give people basic health entitlements but require them to finance other treatment through private financing, or opt out schemes which use tax relief to encourage individuals to make private provision.G. Compared to its European Union counterparts, Britain operates a low cost health system.

Given his recklessly eccentric personal life, Michael Jackson"s premature death seems almost destined—one of those deaths Yeats had in mind when he wrote of a friend"s lost son: "What made us dream that he could comb gray hair?" 【F1】 Still,the global outpouring of grief and craziness of public attentionfocused since Thursday on Jackson"s death is an acknowledgment not only of his popularity but of the reach and influence of America"s most successful export: popular culture. Jackson was an icon and, in the end, perhaps, a prisoner of that now all-pervasive, world-encompassing force. American popular culture"s triumphant appeal around the world is the product of several forces: First among them is this country"s historic dislike to assigning distinct values to high and low culture.【F2】 Some would say that a fair playing field has opened high culture—literature and classical music, for example—to a valuable interaction with popular media and made it more vigorous by forcing it to compete for its audience. The real strength of American popular culture, in fact, is its democratic impulse—a willingness to take into account the reality that, for most people, entertainment is an end in itself.【F3】 American entertainment bows to what economists call "consumer sovereignty," and Jackson"s popularity, with its demonstrable impact on music, dance and fashion, was a clear example of that. On cable TV and on newspaper websites, it was all Michael, all the time.【F4】 So, how did a pop singer heavily in debt and desperately hoping for a comeback, one who was best known for his bizarre life, obsession with cosmetic surgery, become in death the most beloved media figure since JFK? To understand, you need to go back to that all-conquering popular culture. America"s serious news media—whether print, broadcast or cable—are in the grip of a collective nervous breakdown. Embracing popular culture and its icons seems somehow remedial on several levels: It appears to address chargesthat seriousmedia areelitist,as well as themanifest indifferenceof younger readersand viewers to conventional news.【F5】 Then there"s the fact of simple, cruel commerce: popular culture in the form of film, music and TV now provides an outsized share of the financially strapped media"s advertising revenue. Finally, there"s that source of the news media"s anxiety and confusion—and that great enabler of popular culture—the Internet.

Branding an age category might sound like a frivolous exercise. But life stages are primarily social constructs, and history shows that their emergence can 【C1】______ deep changes in attitudes. Such change is needed 【C2】______ the questions that swirl around rising longevity are to get a 【C3】______ answer. Before 1800 no country in the world had an average life 【C4】______ at birth beyond 40. Today there is not a country that does not. 【C5】______ 1900, more years have been 【C6】______ human life than in the rest of history combined, 【C7】______ by reducing child mortality and lately by 【C8】______ lifespans. Longevity is one of humanity's great 【C9】______. 【C10】______ it is seen as one of society's great headaches. The problem 【C11】______ the increasing dependency of the old on the young. By 2100, the ratio of 65-plussers to "working-age" people will triple. 【C12】______ the world greys, growth, tax revenues and workforces will 【C13】______ while spending on pensions and health care will increase. So, 【C14】______, goes the orthodoxy. Doom-mongers tend to miss a bigger point, however. Those extra years of life are 【C15】______ healthy ones. Five of the additional six years that a British boy born in 2015 can expect to live, 【C16】______ one born in 1990, will be healthy, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, at the University of Washington. Too many governments and firms fail to 【C17】______this fact, instead lumping all the extra years in the damning category of 65 and over. This binary way of thinking, seeing retirement as a cliff edge 【C18】______ which workers and consumers suddenly tumble, 【C19】______ little relation to the real world. It also encourages unimaginative policy, 【C20】______ the retirement age is occasionally moved as lifespans lengthen.

With a series of well-timed deals, private-equity firms are giving traditional media managers cause to be envious, The Warner Music transaction, in which Edgar Bronfman junior and three private-equity firms paid Time Warner $2.6 billion for the unit in 2003, is already judged a financial triumph for the buyers. Their success is likely to draw still more private-equity into the industry. And the investments are likely to get bigger: individual private equity funds are growing—a $10 billion fund is likely this year—so even the biggest media firms could come within range, especially ff private-equity investors club together, Some private-equity firms have long put money in media assets, but mostly reliable, relatively obscure businesses with stable cash flows. Now, some of them are placing big strategic bets on the more volatile bits, such as music and movies. And they are currently far more confident than the media old guard that the advertising cycle is about to turn sharply upwards. One reason why private-equity is making its presence felt in media is that it has a lot of money to invest. Other industries are feeling its weight too. But private-equity"s buying spree(狂购乱买) reveals a lot about the media business in particular. Media conglomerates(联合公司) lack the confidence to make big acquisitions, after the last wave of deals went wrong. Executives at Time Warner, for instance, which disastrously merged with AOL in 2000, wanted to buy MGM, a movie studio, but the board (it is said) were too nervous. Instead, private-equity firms combined with Sony, a consumer-electronics giant, to buy MGM late last year. Private-equity"s interest also reflects the fact that revenue growth in media businesses such as broadcast TV and radio is now hard to come by. The average annual growth rate for 12 categories of established American media businesses in 1998—2003, excluding the internet, was just 3.4%, says Veronis Suhler Stevenson, an investment bank. Private-equity puts a higher value on low-growth, high cash-flow assets than the public stockmarket, says Jonathan Nelson, founder of Providence Equity Partners, a media-focused private-equity firm. What private-equity men now bring to the media business, they like to think, is financial discipline plus an enthusiastic attitude towards new technology. Old-style media managers, claim the newcomers, are still in denial about how technology is transforming their industry. Traditional media managers grudgingly agree that, so far, private-equity investors are doing very nicely indeed from their entertainment deals. The buyers of Warner Music have already got back most of their $2.6 billion from the farm by cutting costs, issuing debt and making special payouts to shareholders. This year, its investors are expected to launch an initial public offering, which could bring them hundreds of millions more.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The Catholic Church is changing in America at its most visible point: the parish church where believers pray, sing and clasp hands across pews to share the peace of God. Today there are fewer parishes and fewer priests than in 1990 and fewer of the nation"s 65 million Catholics in those pews. And there"s no sign of return. Some blame the explosive 2002 clergy sexual abuse scandal and its financial price tag. But a study of 176 Roman Catholic dioceses shows no statistically significant link between the decline in priests and parishes and the $772 million the church has spent to date on dealing with the scandal. Rather, the changes are driven by a constellation of factors: -Catholics are moving from cities in the Northeast and Midwest to the suburbs, South and Southwest. -For decades, so few men have become priests that one in five dioceses now can"t put a priest in every parish. -Mass attendance has fallen as each generation has become less religiously observant. -Bishops—trained to bless, not to budget—lack the managerial skills to govern multimillion-dollar institutions. All these trends had begun years before the scandal piled on financial pressures to cover settlements, legal costs, care and counseling for victims and abusers. The Archdiocese of Boston, epicenter of the crisis, sold chancery property to cover $85 million in settlements last year, and this year will close 67 churches and recast 16 others as new parishes or worship sites without a full-time priest. Archbishop Sean O"Malley has said the crisis and the reconfiguration plan are "in no way" related. He cites demographic shifts, the priest shortage and aging, crumbling buildings too costly to keep up. Fargo, N.D., which spent $821,000 on the abuse crisis, will close 23 parishes, but it"s because the diocese is short of more than 50 priests for its 158 parishes, some with fewer than a dozen families attending Mass. They know how this feels in Milwaukee. That archdiocese shuttered about one in five parishes from 1995 to 2003. The city consolidations "gave some people who had been driving back into the city from new homes in the suburbs a chance to say they had no loyalty to a new parish and begin going to one near their home", says Noreen Welte, director of parish planning for the Milwaukee Archdiocese. "It gave some people who already were mad at the church for one reason or another excuse to stop going altogether."

【F1】 Japan said Tuesday it had successfully extracted methane hydrate, known as "fire ice", from its seabed, possibly unlocking many years' worth of gas for the resource-starved country. In what they are claiming as a world first, a consortium is drilling for the hydrate, a fossil fuel that looks like ice but consists of very densely-packed methane surrounded by water molecules, one kilometre(3, 300 feet)below sea level.【F2】 The solid white substance burns with a pale flame, leaving nothing but water. One of it is estimated to contain many times the equivalent volume of methane in gas form. The consortium, led by Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, began initial work in February last year and on Tuesday started a two-week experimental production, an economy, trade and industry ministry official said. "It is the world's first offshore experiment producing gas from methane hydrate," the official said, adding that the team successfully collected methane gas extracted from the half-frozen substance.【F3】 Under the government-led project, the consortium is to separate methane—the primary component of natural gas—from the solid clathrate compound under the seabed using the high pressures available at depth, officials said. A huge layer of methane hydrate containing 1.1 trillion cubic metres(38.5 trillion cubic feet)in natural gas—equivalent to Japan's consumption of the gas for 11 years—is believed to lie in the ocean floor off the coast of Shikoku island, western Japan, the officials said. 【F4】 "We aim to establish methane hydrate production technologies for practical use by the fiscal 2018 year ending March 2019." a consortium official said. "We want to consolidate technologies for its commercialisation," economy, trade and industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi also told a news conference, according to Jiji Press. "I hope we can make use of resources surrounding our country as soon as possible by clearing hurdles one by one," he added. 【F5】 The move comes as resource-poor Japan has struck out in search of new energy supplies after it shut down its stable of nuclear reactors in the wake of 2011 's tsunami-sparked nuclear crisis.

Write an email to Mr. Brown in your high school, inviting him to attend the reunion in October. You should write about 100 words neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about selling your own product via the net 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. Design you web pageB. Price your product/serviceC. Contact your familiar peopleD. Perform a surveyE. Market your product onlineF. Find your own product If there is one thing I have learned trying to make money online, it is this: you will succeed if you have your own unique product. This might be your own e-book or even a tangible product that you think might sell well on the Internet. As you probably know, information is what sells best online. Do YOU have unique information or a very specific area of expertise? Even if you answer "yes", you must also ask yourself: Is there an online market for my product/service? Otherwise, you may be putting forth a lot of time, money, and effort for little gain. Let"s take these one at a time: (41)______. I had a hard time with this one; I was not really expert at anything. To me, an "expert" is a person who knows a subject so well that he can teach or publish a book on the subject. There are many so called "marketing gurus" on the Internet. Most of these guys were just lucky to have the foresight to see the Internet as a place where they could sell products. I wish I had started back in 1995 or 1996. You will notice that most of the "big" names in online marketing started back then. Timing is everything. Ask yourself: what do you know better than anyone else? What can you offer online that would be of value to a specific group of customers? Can you make things with your hands or with tools? Can you write well? What did you do in the offline world? Can any of this expertise be translated to the Internet? As mentioned above, information is the best-selling online item today. It will probably remain this way for the foreseeable future. (42)______. Hopefully, you already have newsletter subscribers or some sort of opt-in list. If so, you can simply send a survey to each one of them. Make it very simple, just yes or no answers. Ideally, just have them be able to click on one link for "yes", and another link for "no". Try not to ask more than five questions. Keep your language simple. A lot of my newsletter subscribers are not from the United States. If you are just starting out, you may have to find an E-zine that relates to your product or service. If you are lucky, you will get enough responses to come to a logical conclusion. You need at least 25 (this is very minimum). If you don"t get at least this many, try another E-zine. Once you have all your responses together, throw out any widely divergent answers. (43)______. If you ask how much people would be willing to pay for your products, and most answer in the range of $50～$60, then this is a range you can trust. You must throw out the two guys willing to pay $80 and $100, as well as the three persons who would only pay $25, $30, and $35. With these five divergent opinions, I am assuming you have at least 20 persons willing to pay $50～$60 for your product/service. (44)______. Now it"s time to think about your web page design. If you are not artistic at all, I would urge you to hire a reasonably priced web site designer. The saying "first impressions are important" is even more important on the Internet. My own sites have been very plain and unexciting, and had that "home-made" look about them. Do yourself a favor and hire a professional when you are ready. (45)______. Think how best to do this. It"s not just search engines. Look for specific E-zines whose subscribers might be interested in your products. For example, if you are offering doll houses for sale (that you make), advertise in dollhouse E-zines and dollhouse web sites. You will find your most "likely to buy" customers in these places. And of course, different people have different ways to do business. All of the above are just my suggestions resulting from my own experience and I hope you can get something useful from them. At last wish all of your online business make satisfying progress and go on smoothly as you expected.

In November the European Parliament"s culture and education committee is due to move forward on its proposed "audiovisual media services" directive, before sending it to the full parliament in December. The new rules update and relax the "Television Without Frontiers" directive of 1989, which opened Europe"s national markets. But critics complain that they also seek to extend fusty regulations from the era of broadcast television to today"s very different technologies. Rules on advertising, the protection of children and so on could potentially also apply to all kinds of video streams, including video blogs, online games and mobile-video services. This could have a chilling effect on innovation and risks stifling emerging technologies with rules designed for another age, says Chris Marsden of RAND Europe, a think-tank that has analysed the potential impact of the proposed rules for Ofcom, Britain"s media and telecoms regulator. "Regulators have to be thoughtful. They cannot predict the future of television "or the internet—no one can," says Niklas Zennstr. m, a co-founder of Skype, who is now setting up an internet television firm. The proposed rules may be unrealistic as well as onerous. The idea that websites can be regulated like broadcasters, which are required to keep strict records of what they show in order to help watchdogs investigate complaints, is untenable. Firms could simply relocate outside the European Union to escape the new rules. Last week Ruth Hieronymi, a member of parliament, said she would introduce wording that might help to overcome some of the objections. Behind the debate is the question of how best to balance competition and protection. Traditional broadcasters worry that they will be shackled by regulations while brisk start-ups can do as they please—so they like the idea of extending regulation to their new rivals. But even if the rules are approved as they stand, they will not come into force until 2010. Such a long, slow process seems incongruous given the pace of technological change.