BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

During its formative years, the inner solar system was a rough-and-tumble place. There were a couple of hundred large objects flying around. Moon-size or bigger, and for millions of years they collided with one another. Out of these impacts grew the terrestrial planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth with its Moon, and Mars—and the asteroids. Scientists have thought of these collisions as mergers: a smaller object (the impactor) hits a larger one (the target) and sticks to it. But new computer modeling by Erik Asphaug and Craig B. Agnor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that things weren"t that simple. "Most of the time, the impactor and the target go off on their merry ways", Dr. Asphaug said. About half the collisions are these hit-and-nm affairs. Now the two researchers and a colleague, Quentin Williams. have done simulations to study the effects of these collisions on the impactors. They are not pretty. "The impactors suffer all kinds of fates", Dr. Asphaug said. They undergo tremendous shearing and gravitational forces that can cause them to fracture into smaller pieces or melt, causing chemical changes in the material and loss of water or other volatile compounds. Or the crust and cover can be stripped off, leaving just an embryonic iron core. The researchers, whose findings are published in Nature, discovered that two objects did not even have to collide to create an effect on the smaller one from the gravitational forces of a near-collision during the simulations. Dr. Asphaug said, "We"d look and say, "Gosh, we just got rid of the whole atmosphere of that planetoid: it didn"t even hit and it sucked the whole atmosphere off."" The researchers suggest that the remains of these beaten-up, fractured and melted objects can be found in the asteroid belt. Dr. Asphaug said that could explain the prevalence of "iron relics" in the belt. Some of these planetoid remnants also eventually hit Earth: that would help explain why certain meteorites lack water and other volatile elements. The hit-and-run collision model also provides an explanation for Vesta. a large asteroid with an intact crust and cover. How did Vesta keep its cover while so many other objects were losing theirs? Dr. Asphang said it could be that Vesta was always the target, never the impactor, and was thus less affected. "It just had to avoid being the hitter", he said, "until bigger objects left the system".

Those Europeans who are tempted, in the light of the dismal scenes in New Orleans this fortnight, to downgrade the American challenge should meditate on one world: universities. Five years ago in Lisbon European officials proclaimed their intention to become the world"s premier "knowledge economy" by 2010. The thinking behind this grand declaration made sense of a sort: Europe"s only chance of preserving its living standards lies in working smarter than its competitors rather than harder or cheaper. But Europe"s failing higher-education system poses a lethal threat to this ambition. Europe created the modern university. Scholars were gathering in Paris and Bologna before America was on the map. Oxford and Cambridge invented the residential university: the idea of a community of scholars living together to pursue higher learning. Germany created the research university. A century ago European universities were a magnet for scholars and a model for academic administrators the world over. But, as our survey of higher education explains, since the second world war Europe has progressively surrendered its lead in higher education to the United States. America boasts 17 of the world"s top 20 universities. American universities currently employ 70% of the world"s Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world"s output of articles on science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model for higher education. Why have European universities declined so precipitously in recent decades? And what can be done to restore them to their former glory."? The answer to the first question lies in the role of the state. American universities get their funding from a variety of different sources, not just government but also philanthropists, businesses and, of course, the students themselves. European ones are largely state-funded. The constraints on state funding mean that European governments force universities to "process" more and more students without giving them the necessary cash—and respond to the universities" complaints by trying to micromanage them. Inevitably, quality has eroded. Yet, as the American model shows, people are prepared to pay for good higher education, because they know they will benefit from it: that"s why America spends twice as much of its GDP on higher education as Europe does. The answer to the second question is to set universities free from the state. Free universities to run their internal affairs: how can French universities, for example, compete for talent with their American rivals when professors are civil servants? And free them to charge fees for their services—including, most importantly, student fees.

You got an invitation to take part in a party. Write a declining letter which should include: 1) the purpose of writing this letter; 2) the reasons for your absence; 3) your good wishes to the participants. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

Since the industrial revolution, government, society, and industry have attempted to channel technological progress in useful directions. Whether it is the printing press, the cotton gin the automobile or the Internet, technological innovations often have profound economic and social effects. To harness the benefits and minimize the more harmful effects of new technologies, modern governments use four basic approaches: specific direction, market incentives, criminal prohibition, and behavior modification. Specific direction starts with governments identifying one or more key factors in the R&D phase. Then, using a variety of means ranging from administrative regulation to outright state ownership, the government seeks to control the implementation of the technology. Market incentives are the deliberate manipulation of the market by the government to control how a particularly technology is distributed and used. For example, some governments impose taxes to cover the hidden costs associated with the use of a particular technology. For example, raising gasoline taxes to pay for highway improvements. Other methods include the granting of subsidies to private researchers or the strengthening of intellectual property laws to give added incentives to developers. Criminal prohibition usually takes place when strong opposition exists to a particular technology or field of research. In recent years, most developed countries have enacted legislation to ban the cloning of human beings. Other examples are the enforcement of clean air regulations that force power plants to emit fewer greenhouse gasses. Finally, behavior modification includes the use of the media, advertising, and government and corporate leadership to encourage a particular society to use a technology in a beneficial way. For example, while there is limited government regulation of the Internet, websites are encouraged to install safeguards to prevent children from viewing inappropriate material. A recent national advertising campaign recently boosted the percentage of New York residents who recycled by almost 25%. Such campaigns do not use direct government regulation, but instead appeal to the user"s sense of civic duty or social responsibility. Of all new technologies, perhaps none has changed the landscape and character of American life more than the automobile. Yet, the costs of this technology are not always reflected in the price of using the technology. For example, it costs an oil company $0.89 per gallon of gas produced. This same liter is sold to U.S. consumers at about $1.20 per gallon. Yet while this price reflects the cost of production plus a profit for the oil company it does not reflect the actual cost of using the technology. For that, we must factor in the environmental costs associated with air pollution (increased health care, environmental degradation) and the political costs (dependence on foreign oil, energy shortages). In short, in order to be effective, all of these strategies for channeling technology to benefit society must incorporate all the costs associated with usage.

At the moment, there are two reliable ways to make electricity from sunlight.【F1】 You can use a panel of solar cells to create the current directly, by liberating electrons from a semiconducting material such as silicon. Or you can concentrate the sun's rays using mirrors, boil water with them, and employ the steam to drive a generator. Both work. But both are expensive. Gang Chen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Zhifeng Ren of Boston College therefore propose, in a paper in Nature Materials, an alternative. They suggest that a phenomenon called the thermoelectric effect might be used instead—and they have built a prototype to show that the idea is practical. In their view, three things are needed to create a workable solar-thermoelectric device. The first is to make sure that most of the sunlight which falls on it is absorbed, rather than being reflected. The second is to choose a thermoelectric material which conducts heat badly(so that different parts remain at different temperatures)but electricity well.【F2】 The third is to be certain that the temperature gradient which that badly conducting material creates is not frittered away by poor design. The two researchers overcame these challenges through clever engineering. The first they dealt with by coating the top of the device with oxides of hafnium, molybdenum and titanium, in layers about 100 nanometres thick.【F3】 These layers acted like the anti-reflective coatings on spectacle lenses and caused almost all the sunlight falling on the device to be absorbed. The second desideratum, of low thermal and high electrical conductivity, was achieved by dividing the bismuth telluride into pellets a few nanometres across.【F4】 That does not affect their electrical conductivity, but nanoscale particles like this are known to scatter and obstruct the passage of heat through imperfectly understood quantum-mechanical processes. The third objective, efficient design, involved sandwiching the nanostructured bismuth telluride between two copper plates and then enclosing the upper plate(the one coated with the light-absorbing oxides)and the bismuth telluride in a vacuum. The copper plates conducted heat rapidly to and from the bismuth telluride, thus maintaining the temperature difference. The vacuum stopped the apparatus losing heat by convection. The upshot was a device that converts 4.6% of incident sunlight into electricity.【F5】 That is not great compared with the 20% and more achieved by a silicon-based solar cell, the 40% managed by a solar-thermal turbine, or even the 18-20% of one of the new generation of cheap and cheerful thin-film solar cells. But it is enough, Dr Chen reckons, for the process to be worth considering for mass production.

The energy crisis, which is being felt around the world, has dramatized how the careless use of the earth"s resources has brought the whole world to the brink of disaster. Tile over development of motor transport, with its increase of more cars, more highways, more pollution, more suburbs, more commuting, has contributed to the near destruction of our cities, the breakup of the family, and the pollution not only of local air but also of the earth"s atmosphere. The disaster has arrived in the form of the energy crisis. Our present situation is unlike war, revolution or depression. It is also unlike the great natural disasters of the past. Worldwide re sources exploitation and energy use have brought us to a state where long-range planning is essential. What we need is not a continuation of our present serious slate, which endangers the future of our country, our children, and our earth, but a movement forward to a new norm in order to work rapidly and effectively on planetary problems. This country has been falling back under the continuing exposures of loss morality and the revelation that lawbreaking has reached into the highest places in the bad. There is a strong demand for moral revival and for some devotion that is vast enough and yet personal enough to enlist, the devotion of all. In the past 5t has been only in a way in defense of their own country and their own ideals that any people have been able to devote themselves wholeheartedly. This is the first time that we have been asked to defend ourselves and what we hold dear in cooperation with all the other inhabitants of this planet who share with us the same endangered air and the same endangered oceans. There is a common need it reassesses our present course, to change that courser and to devise new methods through which the world can survive. This is a priceless opportunity. To grasp item we need a widespread understanding of nature if the crisis confronting us—and the world—a crisis that is no passing in convenience, no by-product of the ambitions of the oil-producing countries, no environmentalists" mere fears, no by-product of any present system of government. What we face is the outcome of the invention of the last four hundred years. What we need is a transformed lifestyle. This new lifestyle can flow directly from science and technology, but its acceptance depends on a sincere devotion to finding a higher quality of life for the world"s children and future generation.

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond? You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.

A number of ethical questions cluster around both ends of the human life span. Whether abortion is morally justifiable has popularly been seen as depending on our answer to the question "When does a human life begin?" Many philosophers believe this to be the wrong question to ask because it suggests that there might be a factual answer that we can somehow discover through advances in science. 【F1】 Instead, these philosophers think we need to ask what it is that makes killing a human being wrong and then consider whether these characteristics, whatever they might be, apply to the fetus in an abortion. There is no generally agreed upon answer, yet some philosophers have presented surprisingly strong arguments to the effect that not only the fetus but even the newborn infant has no right to life. Such views have been hotly contested, especially by those who claim that all human life, irrespective of its characteristics, must be regarded as sacrosanct. The task for those who defend the sanctity of human life is to explain why human life, no matter what its characteristics, is specially worthy of protection.【F2】 Explanation could no doubt be provided in terms of such traditional Christian doctrines as that all humans are made in the image of God or that all humans have an immortal soul. In the current debate, however, the opponents of abortion have eschewed religious arguments of this kind without finding a convincing secular alternative. Somewhat similar issues are raised by euthanasia when it is non-voluntary, as, for example, in the case of severely disabled newborn infants.【F3】 Euthanasia, however, can be voluntary, and this has brought it support from some who hold that the state should not interfere with the free, informed choices of its citizens in matters that do not cause others harm. 【F4】 Opposition to voluntary euthanasia has centred on practical matters such as the difficulty of adequate safeguards and on the argument that it would lead to a "slippery slope" that would take us to non-voluntary euthanasia and eventually to the compulsory involuntary killing of those the state considers to be socially undesirable. 【F5】 Philosophers have also canvassed the moral significance of the distinction between killing and allowing to die, which is reflected in the fact that many physicians will allow a patient with an incurable condition to die when life could still be prolonged, but they will not take active steps to end the patient"s life.

ChoiceWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo"s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake"s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between sciences and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century. Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could effort to ignore its critics—but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked "antiscience" in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul Regress, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Leavitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon Haunted World, by Car Satan of Cornell University. Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as "The Flight from Science and Reason", held in New York City in 1995, and "Science in the Age of (Miss)information", which assembled last June near Buffalo. Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Leavitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics, that have questioned science"s objectivity. Saga is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview. A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research. Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pre-technological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest. The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and other consequences of industrial growth. Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. "The term "antiscience" can lump together too many, quite different things," notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science. "They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened."

By 1,800 about half the population of Brazil had come from Africa. So had about half the population of Venezuela. So had a smaller but still large part of all the population of Trans-Atlantic republics, whether in North, Central or South Africa, or in the Caribbean islands. It was these men and women of African descent conquered the wilderness of the Americas, clearing and working in countless farms and plantations, founding and opening innumerable mines of iron or precious metals. Harsh and painful as it was, the overseas slave trade (like the not much less painful movement of millions of hungry and jobless men and women from Europe) laid the foundations of American republics. These Africans beyond the seas have their place in the story of Africa (the story of West Africa), for what they attempted and achieved was also a reflection of the strong and independent civilization from which they came. Consider, for example, the heroic and successful struggle for independence conducted by the slaves of the Caribbean land of St. Domingue. In 1789, at the moment of the French Revolution, this French colony in the Caribbean was probably the wealthiest colony in the world. Its tens of thousands of African slave-workers produced enormous quantities of sugar, whole European communities lived off the profits. When news of the Revolution in France reached St. Domingue, these slaves claimed their share in its ideals and benefits. They demanded their freedom. When denied this, they rose in revolt against their masters. In years of hard fighting against large armies sent by France, and afterwards against large armies sent by Britain, these men of St. Domingue won their freedom and founded the Republic of Haiti. Yet more than half these soldiers of freedom had made the "middle passage" across the Atlantic. More than half, in other words, had been born in Africa, had spent their childhood in Africa, and had learned in Africa their respect for freedom; while nearly all the rest were the children of parents or grandparents born in Africa. And they were led by Africans: by men of genius and courage such as Boukman, the unforgettable Toussaint Louverture, and Dessalines. Raised by Toussaint and his Africans, the banner of freedom across the Atlantic was carried from people to people. Many threw off their bondage. Large numbers of men of African origin fought in the armies that made the United States what they are today. It was a general of African descent, Antonio Maceo, who led the military struggle for Cuban independence against Spain in 1868. Like other men of vision, Maceo had no time for racism, for the false idea that one race of men is better or worse than any other. Some of the whites of Cuba disagreed with him. They were Spanish settlers who thought that white was going to be better than black even in an independent Cuba. One day Maceo was approached by a Spanish Cuban who suggested that the regiments of independence army should be divided into whites and non-whites. Maceo made him a reply which became famous in Cuba. "If you were not white", Maceo said to this man, "I would have you shot on the spot. But I do not wish to be accused of being racialist as you are, and so I let you go, but with the warning that I shall not be so patient another time. The revolution has no color".

How does literary style evolve? Surprisingly,【C1】______ lie in words with seemingly little meaning, such as "to" and "that". By analysing【C2】______writers use such "content-free" words, Daniel Rockmore and colleagues at Dartmouth College in Hanover were able to conduct the first, large-scale style analysis of literature. Content-free words are【C3】______of writing style, Rockmore says. While two authors might use the【C4】______content words to describe a similar event, they will use content-free words to【C5】______their content words in a different way. Using the Project Gutenberg digital library, Rockmore"s team analysed 7733 English language works written since 1550, 【C6】______how often and in what【C7】______content-free words appeared. As you might expect, they found that writers were 【C8】______influenced by their predecessors. They also found that as the number of literature works grew, the influence of older works【C9】______. Authors in the【C10】______periods wrote in a very similar way to one another, the researchers found, probably because they all read the same【C11】______body of literature. But approaching the modern era,【C12】______more people were writing and more works were【C13】______ from many eras and numerous styles, authors" styles were still very similar to those of their【C14】______contemporaries. "It"s as if they find dialects in time," says Alex Bentley. "Content is what makes us【C15】______, but content-free words put us in different【C16】______." 【C17】______writers should be most influenced by their contemporaries【C18】______the great works of the past is interesting, Rockmore says, because it challenges the【C19】______of "classic" literature. When it comes to style 【C20】______, perhaps we aren"t so strongly influenced by the classics after all.

In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose to advance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the distinctive features of American higher education prior to the most recent, disorderly decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. In a subtle way Americans believed higher education to be useful, but not necessarily of immediate use. Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning—public or private—commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community. This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community. One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its pejorative "junior" college label and is generally called a "community" college, a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized as a required "union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to a professor"s classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function—communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society has been the most important change in higher education in recent years. This novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What"s worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university—what is higher education supposed to do?

Write an announcement to your schoolmates , informing them an off-campus activity on September 18th.You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2.Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter", use "Li Ming" instead.Do not write the address. (10 points)

For those who regard the al-Jazeera TV channel as a biased, anti-western mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, the announcement that it will start broadcasting 24 hours a day in English next year will be unwelcome. Its likeliest audience is Muslims (1)_____ the Middle East who do not speak Arabic. Will al-Jazeera"s reports of suffering and rage in Iraq and beyond inspire anger (2)_____ America and its (3)_____ at home, too? The new service may prove a bit less (4)_____ than its Arabic sibling. Nigel Parsons, its managing editor, says that al-Jazeera has been too strident on (5)_____ in the past, and that the English channel will (6)_____ to redress that. It will strive (7)_____ balance, credibility and authority, he says, and it will signal a new maturity for al-Jazeera, which was started by the emir of Qatar in 1996. It will broadcast its own original content—news, documentaries and talk shows—(8)_____ studios in Doha, London and Washington, (9)_____ international news beyond the Middle East. especially the developing countries often (10)_____ by existing English-language channels. A1-Jazeera is already enjoying a fresh burst of (11)_____ outside the Middle East. Around the same time that the interim government in Iraq ordered it to shut its bureau in Baghdad, westerners started watching "Control Room", a film sympathetic (12)_____ the station directed by Jehane Noujaim. At a screening in London last week an audience of local journalists laughed along (13)_____ al-Jazeera"s reporters and editors (14)_____ the (15)_____ of the American military. The biggest mystery about al-Jazeera surround its funding, which "Control Room" sadly did not (16)_____. Qatar has a new (17)_____ in the world (18)_____ to the station. That may be why the emir is willing to spend (19)_____ an English-language channel even (20)_____ the original Arabic one is probably losing money.

Write a letter to your general manager, Mr. David, telling him that you've decided to quit the job as a secretary in the company. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from Nature certain natural laws, and that out of these, by some special skill of their own, they build up their theories.

Germany"s chimney sweeps—hallowed as bringers of good luck, with their black top hats and coiled-wire brushes—are under attack. Last week the European Commission"s directorate for the internal market revived proceedings against an antiquated German law that protects sweeps against competition. The country"s chimney sweeps enjoy a near-perfect monopoly. Germany is divided into around 8000 districts, each ruled by its own master sweep who usually employs two more sweeps. Although this is a private enterprise, the maintenance and inspection service provided is compulsory and prices are set by the local authority: sweeps cannot stray outside their district, nor can householders change their sweep even if they loathe him. This rule cuts both ways. "There are some customers I can"t stand either", says one Frankfurt sweep. The rationale is simple: chimney-sweeping and related gas and heating maintenance in Germany are treated as a matter of public safety. Annual or semi-annual visits are prescribed, keeping the sweeps busy all year round. For centuries, chimney-sweeps in Europe were a wandering breed. But in 1937 the chimney-sweep law was revised by Heinrich Himmler, then the acting interior minister. His roles tied chimney sweeps to their districts and decreed that they should be German, to enable him to use sweeps as local spies. The law was updated in 1969, leaving the local monopolies in place but opening up the profession, in theory at least, to non-Germ, ans. But in practice few apply. Four years ago a brave Pole qualified as a master in Kaiserslautern, according to a fellow student, and this year an Italian did so in the Rhineland Palatinate. But he, like most newly qualified German masters, will spend years on a waiting list before he gets his own district. The European Commission would like to see a competitive market in which people can choose their own sweeps, just as they choose builders or plumbers. It first opened infringement proceedings in 2003, and the German government of the time promised to change the law but failed to do so. And despite the huffing and puffing from Brussels, the government is still reluctant to dismantle its antiquated system on safety grounds. The number of deaths from carbon-monoxide poisoning in Germany is around one-tenth that in France or Belgium, claims the Frankfurt sweep. So Germans are likely to be stock with their neighbourhood Schornsteinfegers—whether they can stand each other or not—for some time to come.

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