You have planned to attend your friend"s party on Friday evening, but you now have to make an appointment with your professor. Write a letter to your friend which should include: 1) an apology for your absence, 2) an explanation as to why you cannot attend the party, 3) an offer to make up. 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 your address.

He is three years senior to me.

People who are depressed are literally siek at heart: they have a significantly increased risk for cardiovascular disease, and no one knows exactly why. Now three new studies have tried to explain this, and they arrive at subtly different conclusions. The first, led hy Dr. Mary A. Whooley, studied 1,017 patients with coronary artery disease for an average of more than four years. Although the study found an association of depression with heart disease, when researchers statistically corrected for other medical conditions, disease severity and physical inactivity, the association disappeared. They concluded with a relatively straightforward explanation: depression leads to physical inactivity, and lack of exercise increases the risk for heart disease. A second study provides a different perspective. It included more than 6,500 healthy men and women with an average age of 51. Researchers tested them for depressive symptoms and followed them for an average of more than seven years. This study, too, found that hehavioral issues like smoking and inactivity were the strongest factors in the increased risk for heart disease among people who are depressed or anxious, accounting for 65 percent of the difference in risk. But they also found that depressed people had higher rates of hypertension and higher levels of C-reactive protein, and that these two physiological factors together accounted for ahout 19 percent of the increased risk. Mark Harrier was the lead author. While these two studies suggest that the mechanism by which depression exerts its effect is mostly or entirely through poor health behaviors, a third study found that something else might be even more important. This paper, whose senior author was Dr. Brenda Penninx, studied 2,088 well-functioning adults ages 70 to 79. It found no difference in physical activity between those who were depressed and those who were not. But it did find that depressive symptoms were associated with an increase in visceral fat accumulation—the pot belly that is a known risk factor for cardiovascular illness. This suggests that there is a biological mechanism that links depression with physiological changes independent of how much a person exercises. To further complicate matters, Dr. Penninx suggested that her physically healthy subjects might have a different kind of depression. "There is now quite a lot of evidence that among heart attack patients, the physical symptoms of depression are more prevalent," she said, "which suggests that their depression is different from that seen in an otherwise healthy sample. " For now, Dr. Hamer offered what might be the last word on the complicated relationship between depression and heart disease. "It"s really quite difficult to understand," he said.

HighChargeofMedicalServiceWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.

In his 1979 book, The Sinking Ark, biologist Norman Myers estimated that (1)_____ of more than 100 human-caused extinctions occur each day, and that one million species (2)_____ by the century"s end. Yet there is little evidence of (3)_____ that number of extinctions. For example, only seven species on the (4)_____ species list have become extinct (5)_____ the list was created in 1973. Bio (6)_____ is an important value, according to many scientists. Nevertheless, the supposed mass extinction rates bandied about are (7)_____ by multiplying (8)_____ by improbables to get imponderables. Many estimates, for instance, rely a great deal on a "species-area (9)_____", which predicts that twice as many species will be found on 100 square miles (10)_____ on ten square miles. The problem is that species am not distributed (11)_____, so how much of a forest am destroyed may be as important as (12)_____. (13)_____, says Ariel Lugo, director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico, "Biologists who predict high (14)_____ rates (15)_____ the resiliency of nature". One of the main muses of extinctions is deforestation. According to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, what destroys tropical trees is not commercial logging, (16)_____ "poor farmers who have no other (17)_____ for feeding their families than slashing and burning a (18)_____ of forest". In countries that practice modern (19)_____ agriculture, forests are in (20)_____ danger. In 1920, U.S. forests covered 732 million acres. Today they cover 737 million.

BSection III Writing/B

Declining a Job Offer Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: You have received a job offer from the ABC Company. However, you are not going to work in that company. Write a letter to decline the offer and explain your reasons. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

[A] Big money and ideas from musicians, soldiers and private-equity gurus are behind major medal hauls.[B] Yet the transformation of Britain's performance in the Olympics remains a remarkable tale.[C] Britain not only has spent huge amounts on achieving Olympic success but also has been meticulous in how the funding is used.[D] But success for the elite has come at a time of falling sports participation in Britain, with the decline greatest among the poor.[E] The model has been unashamedly ruthless, concentrating on disciplines with the best medal prospects while ditching losers.[F] UK Sport has borrowed from a wide array of fields in pursuit of an edge.[G] Yet cash alone cannot explain all of Team GB's success: for the 2012 games, South Korea and Japan spent over three times more than Britain and had worse returns. It seems hardly an auspicious time to release a book on Britain's Olympic success. Numerous scandals—accusations of bullying, sexism and failure to keep proper records of drugs—are engulfing British Cycling, a symbol of national glory. 【B1】______ In 1996, Britain's "team of shame" came 36th in the medal table, below Algeria, Ireland and North Korea. At the London games of 2012, Team GB (as the United Kingdom's squad is officially known) won 65 medals, up from 15 in 1996. Britain performed even better in Rio last year, winning 27 golds and 67 medals in all, finishing second, above China, in the overall medal table, defying the trend of host nations' sliding down the tables in the following games. These hauls have been a triumph for detailed and ambitious planning, as Owen Slot, a sports writer for The Times, explains in an engaging book. Huge spikes in cash have helped. Across Olympic and Paralympic sports, UK Sport, Britain's funding body, spent ￡69m ($89m) on Sydney 2000 but almost ￡350m on Rio 2016. 【B2】______. UK Sport adopts the mindset of an investor seeking the best returns wherever they can be found. 【B3】______. Even among the sports that do receive funding, cash is diverted to a tiny coterie of elite athletes: the ￡21m allocated to swimming before Rio was focused on nine "Golden Children". Before Rio 2016, Liam Tancock, Britain's best male swimmer of recent times, lost his funding largely because he would turn 31 before the games—past his prime. Mr. Slot's attention to detail turns up some fascinating facts. East German-style national talent-scouting programmes were created, producing Olympic medallists from those who had never previously played the sport—in the process debunking a widespread notion that 10,000 hours are needed to achieve excellence in a skill. Coaches were hooked up to heart-rate-variance monitors, to understand how to manage their stress levels better, and Team GB's managers analysed the optimal way to coach athletes of different sexes. Teams engaged parents about the best techniques for nurturing high-performance athletes. The British Olympic Association made its first reconnaissance mission to Brazil, to find ideal hotels and training facilities, six years before Rio 2016. 【B4】______ Music schools and military special forces were asked for advice on spotting talent and performing under pressure, and an expert in turning around flagging businesses, borrowed from a private-equity firm, helped improve British shooting's meagre performance. Mr. Slot's book is written in conjunction with Simon Timson and Chelsea Warr, two of Team GB's directors of performance, who contribute a brief summary of lessons after each chapter. Their input is double-edged: it ensures that the book provides an unrivalled look inside UK Sport's medal-factory, but may also keep Mr. Slot from tackling some subjects with complete independence. The increased investment in the Olympics and the subsequent bonanza of medals, may have given Britain a reason to hold its head high. 【B5】______ For all the successes, the question lurking beneath this book is an uncomfortable one. In an era of austerity and impoverished grassroots sport, has the price of these medals been too great?

The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings. "Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal," writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors(SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal" s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts. Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: "The creation of the " statistics board" was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science" s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish." Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to "play primarily an advisory role." He agreed to join because he "found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science." John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is "a most welcome step forward" and "long overdue." "Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review," he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review. Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, "engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process". Vaux says that Science" s idea to pass some papers to statisticians "has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify "the papers that need scrutiny" in the first place."

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

After Los Angeles, Atlanta may be America"s most car-dependent city. Atlantans sentimentally give their cars names, compare speeding tickets and jealously guard any side-street where it is possible to park. The city"s roads are so well worn that the first act of the new mayor, Shirley Franklin, was to start repairing potholes. In 1998, 13 metro counties lost federal highway funds because their air-pollution levels violated the Clean Air Act. The American Highway Users Alliance ranked three Atlanta interchanges among the 18 worst bottlenecks in the country. Other cities in the same fix have reorganized their highways, imposed commuter and car taxes, or expanded their public-transport systems. Atlanta does not like any of these things. Public transport is a vexed subject, too. Atlanta"s metropolitan region is divided into numerous county and smaller city governments, which find it hard to work together. Railways now serve the city center and the airport, but not much else; bus stops are often near-invisible poles, offering no indication of which bus might stop there, or when. Georgia"s Democratic governor, Roy Barnes, who hopes for reelection in November, has other plans. To win back the federal highway money lost under the Clean Air Act, he created the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), a 15 member board with the power to make the county governments, the city and the ten-county Atlanta Regional Commission cooperate on transport plans, whether they like it or not. Now GRTA has issued its own preliminary plan, allocating $4.5 billion over the next three years for a variety of schemes. The plan earmarks money to widen roads; to have an electric shuttle bus shuttle tourists among the elegant villas of Buckhead; and to create a commuter rail link between Atlanta and Macon, two hours to the south. Counties will be encouraged, with generous ten-to-one matching funds, to start express bus services. Public goodwill, however, may not stretch as far as the next plan, which is to build the Northern Arc highway for 65 miles across three counties north of the city limits. GRTA has allotted $270m for this. Supporters say it would ease the congestion on local roads; opponents think it would worsen over-development and traffic. The counties affected, and even GRTA"s own board, are divided. The governor is in favor, however; and since he can appoint and fire GRTA"S members, that is probably the end of the story. Mr. Barnes has a tendency to do as he wants, regardless. His arrogance on traffic matters could also lose him votes. But Mr. Barnes think that Atlanta"s slowing economy could do him more harm than the anti-sprawl movement.

(46) A new study claiming to document a connection between violence on television and violence in real life is already coming under attack from academics. They say that the author is demanding action on his report before producing detailed findings to substantiate it. (47) Dr. William Belson told the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Birmingham last week that his research suggested that boys exposed to high levels of television violence were 50 percent more likely to commit acts of violence than boys who had not been exposed. His 110,000 pounds survey, paid for by CBS, the American television company, studied more than 15,000 London boys aged between 12 and 16. He closed his paper with a call for immediate action on his recommendations to reduce levels of TV violence and specific kinds of violence which he claimed were more damaging than others. His recommendations were enthusiastically endorsed by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse. Social scientists familiar with the field have a number of specific queries about Belson"s work. (48) They pointed out that a statistical technique invented by him and central to his research has been criticized by some academics in the past. Robin MrCorn, of the Mass Communication Research Centre at Leicester University, says", Self reporting—asking the subject to give his own account of the evidence is notoriously unreliable. Studies have put the possible error as high as 20 percent, and we don"t know what checks there were in this work. The fact that Belson paid the boys may" have had an influence. Without the full data, it can"t be checked". McCorn adds:" His questions on the programmes go back 12 years. If the boys were aged between 13 and 16 it means the oldest was only four years old when the first programmes were broadcast. How reliable is the memory of a child that young likely to be on the programmes he watched? Dr. Belson may have answers, but we just don"t know". (49) The Nelson affair highlights the difficulties faced by researchers into television violence-problems so severe that at least one British group has withdrawn from the field completely. "It"s impossible to do serious scientific work in his area now", says Robin McCron. "It has moved out of the academic world and it has been taken over by pressure groups and politics". Indeed, experience in television research in America reveals how treacherous this field has become. (50) Results of nervous projects there have been found, at worst, contradictory, at best, inconclusive.

Is anti-white bias a problem? A new study says whites think discrimination against them is a bigger problem than anti-black bias. They feel threatened by "【C1】______racism". In what some have called the new post-racial era, what constitutes discrimination is【C2】______. A new study has found that Americans think significant progress has been made in the fight【C3】______anti-black bias. But white Americans【C4】______that progress as coming at their【C5】______and that anti-white bias has become a more【C6】______social problem than anti-black bias. White Americans see blacks" progress as a(n) 【C7】______of their status. Is this finding surprising? Do we see this view【C8】______in government policies or court decisions? If so, how? Our recent research【C9】______that white and black Americans agree that bias against blacks was【C10】______in the 1950"s and 1960"s. And many Americans support the march【C11】______full and equal rights for all.【C12】______when blacks see such racism as continuing, whites【C13】______to see it as a problem that has been more or less "solved". Many whites now believe that it"s anti-white bias that"s on a rise, to the point where it"s even more【C14】______than anti-black bias. Why would the perception of anti-white bias have increased【C15】______among whites, particularly in recent years? The answer is still【C16】______. What is certain is that this【C17】______is a danger to the nation In fact, for all the gains of the civil rights movement, blacks【C18】______among the poorest, most isolated and most unemployed of all Americans. But such reality is【C19】______to white fellow citizens who are【C20】______instead by fantasies of competitive vic-timhood.

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

In studying both the recurrence of special habits or ideas in several districts, and their prevalence within each district, there come before us ever-reiterated proofs of regular causation producing the phenomena of human life, and of laws of maintenance and diffusion conditions of society, at definite stages of culture.【F1】 But, while giving full importance to the evidence bearing on these standard conditions of society, let us be careful to avoid a pitfall which may entrap the unwary student. 【F2】 Of course, the opinions and habits belonging in common to masses of mankind are to a great extent the results of sound judgment and practical wisdom. But to a great extent it is not so. That many numerous societies of men should have believed in the influence of the evil eye and the existence of a firmament, should have sacrificed slaves and goods to the ghosts of the departed, should have handed down traditions of giants slaying monsters and men turning into beasts—all this is ground for holding that such ideas were indeed produced in men's minds by efficient causes, but it is not ground for holding that the rites in question are profitable, the beliefs sound, and the history authentic.【F3】 This may seem at the first glance a truism, but, in fact, it is the denial of a fallacy which deeply affects the minds of all but a small critical minority of mankind. Popularly, what everybody says must be true, what everybody does must be right. 【F4】 There are various topics where even the educated people can hardly be brought to see that the cause why men do hold an opinion, or practise a custom, is by no means necessarily a reason why they ought to do so. Now collections of ethnographic evidence, bringing so prominently into view the agreement of immense multitudes of men as to certain traditions, beliefs, and usages, are peculiarly liable to be thus improperly used in direct defense of these institutions themselves, even old barbaric nations being polled to maintain their opinions against what are called modern ideas. As it has more than once happened to myself to find my collections of traditions and beliefs thus set up to prove their own objective truth, without proper examination of the grounds on which they were actually received.【F5】 I take this occasion of remarking that the same line of argument will serve equally well to demonstrate, by the strong and wide consent of nations, that the earth is flat, and night-mare the visit of a demon.

Women"s fertility is determined in large part at birth. They are born with their total number of reproductive cells, which normally influences the age at which menopause—the shutting down of female reproductive system—begins. But in the 1990s, researchers proposed that if a child"s energy is depleted by malnutrition, disease, or other factors, he or she would be less fertile as an adult. Byusing the natural experiment of migration, researchers demonstrated how differences during childhood do alter the course of reproduction in adult women. Biological anthropologist Gillian Bentley of Durham University in the UK and colleagues compared levels of reproductive hormones in 250 Bangladeshi women, including women who migrated from Sylhet, Bangladesh to London; women who stayed in Sylhet; and Bangladeshi women born in London. In the first stage of their study, they found that women who migrated from Bangladesh as children had higher levels of reproductive hormones in their saliva than women who lived in Sylhet, but less than women born in London. This had a direct effect on fertility: Migrant women in London had an 11% higher rate of ovulation—discharging of mature ovum—during their lives than did women in Sylhet, the team reported in 2007. The team has now studied 900 women between the ages of 35 and 60 to see if the beginning of menopause varies between migrants and women in Sylhet. Bentley presented preliminary results from their measurement of hormones that regulate the maturation of reproductive cells and are indirect indices of how many ova they can still produce. Her team found that migrants enter menopause later than did women who stayed in Bangladesh but earlier than did those born in London. "The adult migrants seem to be sensitive to improved conditions," says Bentley. The group is trying to find out which environmental factors in Bangladesh lower growing girls" fertility. All the Bangladeshi women in the study came from middle-class, land-owning families, who grew up with adequate calories. However, girls growing up in Bangladesh were probably exposed to more infectious diseases during crucial developmental years. So, they may have had to make tradeoffs among using energy to grow, to maintain their bodies, or to maximize their reproductive potential as adults. Bentley plans to test that idea next year when her team returns to Bangladesh to see if girls there suffer from more diseases than do those in London. "In other words," says Bentley, "where you spend your childhood influences adult reproductive function."

Social conflicts know no bounds. It does not resonate in a certain age group, creed, color or race. Everyone experiences at least one social conflict in their lifetime. There are many ways to deal with social conflicts, with some being remarkable and even resolving the conflict at hand, and others that tend to fuel the fire or just make matters worse. A social conflict can be as small as a problem in the work place amongst coworkers and can be as big as a world leaders disagreeing on an international matter. As a child, many of us were told by our elders and mentors to ignore bullying. They told us that others were jealous or insecure and took it out on you as a result or coverup. A lot of us may remember resorting towards violence or other aggressive confrontations to try and deal with the matter. For many of us, this also resulted in punishment such as suspension, detention and worsening of the bullying. The truth is that if you go to a counselor or authority figure, and arrange a sit down with the person bullying and talk it out, you are usually better off. Trying to talk to a child or young adult in front of the peers, rarely works. They feel obligated to put on a show for their friends or uphold their status as the "tough kid" or the "class bully. " Once they let that guard down, they may very well be bullied by the peers that have stood behind them in many situations. In the work place, certain conflicts can arise such as conflict of roles or authority to conflict of interest and position conflict. Many times, the best way to deal with a conflict in the work place is to talk to the coworker or source of conflict first, while remembering to be polite, civil and on point. Some others decide to go to the head of the workplace such as the boss or a supervisor to address the matter at hand. Either way, it is never a good nor logical idea to confront the conflict with yelling, bullying, gossip, or physical violence. For one, this will not resolve the issue. You may also lead way to additional problems, such as suspension, loss of job, or loss of respect in the workplace. Social confliction is inevitable. The only way to deal with social conflict is resolution. You can take the road of violent and rash forms of trying to resolve your problems, or you can take the path of dealing with your problem civilly, legally and non-violently.

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

A century ago, the immigrants from across the Atlantic included settlers and sojourners. Along with the many folks looking to make a permanent home in the United States came those who had no intention to stay, and who would make some money and then go home. Between 1908 and 1915, about 7 million people arrived while about 2 million departed. About a quarter of all Italian immigrants, for example, eventually returned to Italy for good. They even had an affectionate nickname, "uccelli di passaggio", birds of passage. Today, we are much more rigid about immigrants. We divide newcomers into two categories: legal or illegal, good or bad. We hail them as Americans in the making, or brand them as aliens to be kicked out. That framework has contributed mightily to our broken immigration system and the long political paralysis over how to fix it. We don"t need more categories, but we need to change the way we think about categories. We need to look beyond strict definitions of legal and illegal. To start, we can recognize the new birds of passage, those living and thriving in the gray areas. We might then begin to solve our immigration challenges. Crop pickers, violinists, construction workers, entrepreneurs, engineers, home health-care aides and physicists are among today"s birds of passage. They are energetic participants in a global economy driven by the flow of work, money and ideas. They prefer to come and go as opportunity calls them. They can manage to have a job in one place and a family in another. With or without permission, they straddle laws, jurisdictions and identities with ease. We need them to imagine the United States as a place where they can be productive for a while without committing themselves to staying forever. We need them to feel that home can be both here and there and that they can belong to two nations honorably. Accommodating this new world of people in motion will require new attitudes on both sides of the immigration battle. Looking beyond the culture war logic of right or wrong means opening up the middle ground and understanding that managing immigration today requires multiple paths and multiple outcomes, including some that are not easy to accomplish legally in the existing system.

Judith Vogtli, director of an upstate New York-based abstinence (the practice of refraining from sex, alcohol, etc) organization called Project Truth, is worried that the golden age of "abstinence-only" education may have come to an end. The former president helped increase funding for this kind of sex education— which focuses on chastity as the way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitteddiseases, and discusses condoms only in terms of failure—to over $175m a year. The fate of that money, and of abstinence education itself, is uncertain under a new adrninistration and Congress. Ms Vogtli need only wait a few weeks. The president will submit the first draft of his budget to Congress later this month. In the meantime, her organization, funded entirely by a government grant, is trying to go about business as usual. That means teaching about abstaining from sex, drugs and alcohol in New York schools and holding its sixth annual abstinence Creativity Contest, to which students submitted essays, poems, artwork and music on the theme of "Waiting is easier because..." Abstinence-only education programs have been controversial ever since they were introduced under Ronald Reagan in 1981.Some liberals have labeled it "ignorance-only" education and most favor a curriculum that includes discussion of both abstinence and contraception (the method to prevent pregnancy). Since the start of abstinence-only programs, the federal government has spent over $1.5 billion on them, but the United States still has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates of any developed country. Supporters of abstinence-only education mostly think that the media and a culture of casual sexual behaviors are to blame for this and that more government support for abstinence could help offset the rise of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. But opponents blame abstinence-only education. There is some evidence to support their case. According to Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, an advocacy organization, there has been no randomized study showing that abstinence-only education delays sexual activity, and research from the University of Washington suggests that teens who receive comprehensive sex education have a 50% lower risk of becoming pregnant than those enrolled in abstinence-only courses. Abstinence-only advocates want the government to let school districts choose which type of sex education they prefer. But in an unfavorable sign for them, the new Congress is already shifting its emphasis. Louise Slaughter, a congresswoman from New York and a former scientist, has introduced a bill that would fund "medically accurate" comprehensive sex education in schools. It is likely to pass.