Picture-taking is a technique both for reflecting the objective world and for expressing the singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer"s temperament, discovering itself through the camera"s cropping of reality.【F1】 That is, photography has two directly opposite ideals: in the first, photography is about the world and the photographer is a mere observer who counts for little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of fearlessness, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all. 【F2】 These conflicting ideals arise from uneasiness on the part of both photographers and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in "taking" a picture. Accordingly, the ideal of a photographer as observer is attracting because it implicitly denies that picture-taking is an aggressive act. The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and championed. An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward photography" s means.【F3】 Whatever are the claims that photography might make to be a form of personal expression just like painting, its originality is closely linked to the power of a machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton"s high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke.【F4】 But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to the limit imposed by pre-modern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including Walker Evans and Cartier Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment. These photographers have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of "fast seeing". Cartier Bresson, in fact, claims that the modern camera may see too fast. This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future(of faster and faster seeing)alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past when images had a handmade quality.【F5】 This longing for some primitive state of the photographic enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes and the work of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness.

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) Few outside of Congress recognize the importance of leadership positions, personalities and powers in advancing a legislative agenda. Skilled leaders in both the House and Senate make the difference between success and gridlock in the dance of legislation. (41)______. Former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee was fond of metaphorically describing leading the upper body as akin to "herding cats". (42)______. Last week"s Republican rules change weakens the old seniority system, providing Majority Leader Bill Frist with new powers to appoint at least half of the vacancies on the 13 most important and sought after committees, such as Finance, Appropriations and Foreign Relations. Before the rules change Republicans filled these openings purely based on seniority—the most senior member would get the first shot at a vacancy. (43)______. This is a new process for the Republicans, allowing the leader to fill key committee slots based on factors such as party loyalty, substantive background, regional factors or political imperatives—not just seniority. (44)______. Mr. Santorum worked with seven of his colleagues to enhance the powers of the Senate Republican leader and modify those powers to reflect the way the Democrats have operated for many years. Members of Mr. Santorum"s task force, including Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Jim Talent of Missouri, developed the ultimate plan adopted last week. (45)______. Yet it is a step in the right direction, giving the Republican leader additional tools to install some party loyalists on all of the key committees at a time when operating as a "team" is critical to Republican success.A. New obligations accompany this new reality: The responsibility to produce. And toward that end, Republicans took an important step last week to do just that by enhancing the power of the Senate Majority Leader position.B. Now, by contrast, if four vacancies exist, the leader selects two and the other two are based on seniority. If three vacancies exist, the leader picks two of the three. And if only one exists, the leader fills it with his choice.C. Democrats in the Senate take a different approach to fill vacancies, using a variety of variables such as regional balance, party loyalty, policy views and occupational background. The Senate Democratic Leader, now Harry Reid of Nevada, appoints each member of the Steering and Coordination Committee and this body makes all appointments.D. Yet unlike the House, where a unified majority even a narrow one—can efficiently move the lawmaking process forward, the Senate is a different breed of cat.E. The rules change won"t alter the basic operational procedures of the Senate and it"s by no means a silver bullet to radically enhance the powers of the majority leader.F. The rules change is the handiwork of a task force convened this summer by Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.G. Given the rules and precedents of the Senate, a legislative leader"s arsenal of weapons to compel party unity is limited to non-existence.

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)______. But traffic experts say building more roads is a quick-fix solution that will not alleviate the traffic problem in the long run. Soaring land costs, increasing concern over social and environmental disruptions caused by road building, and the likelihood that more roads can only lead to more cars and traffic are powerful factors bearing down on a 1950s-style construction program. (42)______. Proponents of this advanced technology say electronic detection systems, closed-circuit television, radio communication, ramp metering, variable message singing, and other smart-highway technology can now be used at a reasonable cost to improve communication between drivers and the people who monitor traffic. Pathfinder, a Santa Monica, California-based smart-highway project in which a 14-mile stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway, making up what is called a "smart corridor", is being instrumented with buried loops in the pavement. Closed circuit television cameras survey the flow of traffic, while communications linked to properly equipped automobiles advise motorists of the least congested routes or detours. (43)______. "Electronics on the highway addresses just one aspect of the Problem: how to regulate traffic more efficiently", explains Michael Rennet, senior researcher at the World watch Institute. "It doesn"t deal with the central problem of too many cars for roads that can"t be built fast enough. It sends people the wrong message: They start thinking "Yes, there used to be a traffic congestion problem, but that"s been solved now because we have an advanced high-tech system in place. "" Larson agrees and adds, (44)"______". Other traffic problem-solving options being studied and experimented with include car pooling, rapid mass-transit systems, staggered or flexible work hours, and road pricing, a system whereby motorists pay a certain amount for the time they use a highway. (45)______.A. Smart highways are just one of the tools that we will use to deal with our traffic problems. It"s not the solution itself, just part of the package. There are different strategies.B. It seems that we need a new, major thrust to deal with the traffic problems of the next 20 years. There has to be a big change.C. It"s taking advantage of the technology you use in your everyday lives and putting it to work on highways.D. Traffic statistics paint a gloomy picture. To help solve their traffic woes, some rapidly growing U.S. cities have simply built more roads.E. The goal of smart-highway technology is to make traffic systems work at optimum efficiency by treating the road and the vehicles traveling on them as an integral transportation system.F. Smart highways that will allow a driver to program a destination on a dashboard computer, then sit back and enjoy the ride.G. Not all traffic experts, however, look to smart-highway technology as the ultimate solution to traffic gridlock. Some say the high-tech approach is limited and can only offer temporary solutions to a serious problem.

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

You are preparing to ask for some help from your teacher, write a letter that: 1) detail what you want him or she does for you, 2) express your thanks to your teacher, You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. You do not need to write the address.

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

When you ask young person to tell the names of some famous movies and the chances are that many of those mentioned will be popular because of computer-generated special effects. Some movies such as "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" rely heavily on computers to create special fantasy and space effects. 【C1】______However, genuinely "human" characters, indistinguishable from real actors, are still not quite possible, although we are getting very close to this elusive goal. The process of imagining and developing a computer-generated character is complex, involving many stages. The first stage is to design the look of the character, and to create a three-dimensional model on the computer. 【C2】______One way to achieve this is by building a real skeleton of the model. After using lasers to scan the real model into the computer, controls are added that allow the bones and muscles to be moved around. This is where computer animation comes in. Because people are so conscious of how "real" faces look, many detailed controls are needed on the computer to move the different features of the face. 【C3】______One way of achieving this is called motion capture, where a person acts out the character, and his movements are captured by video camera and uploaded into the computer.【C4】______These methods are often used together in creating an animated character; both of them are slow and painstaking, requiring hours of effort and planning. Enormous computer power is needed to make? 【C5】______There were up to 160 people working on computer graphics for these three movies, which took approximately【B4】______million processing hours. It is estimated that the same process would have taken up to 200 years on a 4-gigahertz PC! However, despite all of this extremely sophisticated and expensive technology, creating a real human face is still a challenge for our animators. People are very sensitive to facial expressions. We can immediately pick if a face is not human, and we often have a strong reaction to this. The closer the face is to looking truly human, the more negative this reaction can be; this effect has been christened the "uncanny valley" by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. [A]However, most experts also advised that once the animation gets close enough to the real thing, we begin to feel positive about it once more. So, maybe future Tom Cruises or Lindsay Lohans will be computer generated, and we will never know the difference. [B]The model must be able to move in a realistic manner and, most importantly, its face must mirror human faces when it laughs, frowns or talks. [C]Others, such as the famous "Lord of the Rings" movies, created surprisingly lifelike humanoid characters using sophisticated computer-generated techniques. The creative effort that lies behind these creatures is amazing. [D]Another way is key-frame animation, where, instead of modeling actions from a real person, the animators use the controls to move all of the parts of the body and face to create movement on the screen. [E]Enormous computer is needed to make animation look real. For the "Lord of the Rings", thousands of processors and numerous workstations were used to create all of the characters and special effects. [F]Up to a hundred may be needed to move the muscles of the face, so that the character' s eyes, skin, mouth and other features all look natural to our eyes. After designing all of the components of the face and body, and the computer controls, the character is ready to move, or be animated. [G]The real movie stars strive for improving their action so that they can attain more and more fans and become more famous, then enhance their appearance fee.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

It never rains but it pours . Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn them—especially in America—the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Left, until now, to odd, low-level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information protection is now high on the boss" s agenda in businesses of every variety. Several massive leakages of customer and employee data this year—from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the University of California, Berkeley—have left managers hurriedly peering into their intricate IT systems and business processes in search of potential vulnerabilities. "Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as much as any other asset," says Haim Mendel-son of Stanford University"s business school. "The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value, which the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders." Indeed, just as there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.(GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP, Generally Accepted Security Practices , suggested Eli Noam of New York" s Columbia Business School. "Setting the proper investment level for security, redundancy, and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one," he says. The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore—and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands. The current state of affairs may have been encouraged—though not justified—by the lack of legal penalty(in America, but not Europe)for data leakage. Until California recently passed a law, American firms did not have to tell anyone, even the victim, when data went astray. That may change fast: lots of proposed data-security legislation is now doing the rounds in Washington, D.C..Meanwhile, the theft of information about some 40 million credit-card accounts in America, disclosed on June 17th, overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America"s Federal Trade Commission(FTC)that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fail to provide adequate data security.

We can certainly overcome these difficulties so long as we are closely united.

As a medium of exchange, money permits the separation of exchange into the two distinct acts of buying and selling, without requiring the seller to purchase goods from the person who buys his products, or vice versa. Hence producers who know they will be paid in money, can concentrate on finding the most suitable outlet for their goods, while buyers who will pay in money, can concentrate on finding the cheapest market for the things they wish to purchase. specialization, which is vital to an advanced economy, is encouraged, because people whose output is not a complete product but only a part of one in which many others are involved can be paid an amount equivalent to their share of the product. Another advantage of money is that it is a measure of value—that is, it serves as a unit in terms of which the relative values of different products can be expressed. In a barter economy it would be necessary to determine how many plates were worth one hundred weight of cotton, or how many pens should be exchanged for a ton of coal, which would be a difficult and time-consuming task. The process of establishing relative values would have to be undertaken for every act of exchange, according to what products were being offered against one another, and according to the two parties" desires and preferences. If I am trying to barter fish for bananas, for example, a lot would depend on whether the person willing to exchange bananas is or is not keen on fish. Thirdly, money acts as a store of wealth. It is difficult to imagine saving under a barter system. No one engaged on only one stage in the manufacture of a product could save part of his output, since he would be producing nothing complete. Even when a person actually produced a complete product the difficulties would be overwhelming. Most products deteriorate fairly rapidly, either physically or in value, as a result of long storage; even if storage were possible, the practice of storing products for years on end would involve obvious disadvantages—imagine a coal-miner attempting to save enough coal, which of course is his product, to keep him for life. If wealth could not be saved, or only with great difficulty, future needs could not be provided for, or capital accumulated to raise productivity.

[A]Pick up the local paper [B]Save from the first place [C]Use a guidebook—your own [D]Pick up the phone [E]Choose cheap countries [F]Download magazines from web [G]Splurge when it matters You've mastered the art of modern-travel savings: Your airfare alerts are set up on Kayak: you flit around Europe on cheap carriers like EasyJet. You stay in apartments rented through Airbnb. You could probably shave a few more cents off travel costs by downloading five new apps and bookmarking 10 new sites. But real savings will come to those who go retro by stepping away from the screen, or using it differently, to find old-fashioned tactics that can save you big. Here are some old-school tips for getting the most out of your travel buck. 【R1】______ We think we can get everything done online these days, but sometimes a simple phone call is your best bet for saving money. Speak with an innkeeper and learn of potential discounts on extended stays or information on how to get there from the airport by public transit. Contact the specific location where you' 11 pick up your rental car and reserve a compact to avoid getting "upgraded" to a bigger vehicle that will increase(sometimes even double)your gas costs. Call travel agencies that strike special deals with airlines to get your prices below anything you' 11 find online. 【R2】______ Goodbye Norway, hello Bolivia. Or as a blogger put it, "Cheapest dorm bed in Zurich=nice room in Bangkok." Extrapolate that to tour guides, museum entries, food and more, and the savings start to add up. Of course, keep in mind how much it will cost you to get there in the first place. Luckily, a lot of the cheaper countries are also cheap to fly to: another blogger put together a list of 10 "Cheap Places to Travel on the U.S. Dollar, " which includes Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Hungary and Romania. 【R3】______ Most travelers will never be across-the-board cheapskates. Street food, nosebleed-theater seats and bunk beds are not for everyone. But you don' t have to be a purist. For each trip, decide on a themed "waste" or two—transportation, food, arts, lodging—and save on the rest. 【R4】______ No listings are more up-to-the-minute than Friday arts supplements, alternative weeklies or the local editions of Time Out magazine. Get them on actual paper while they last. You'll not only find the nontouristy scene laid out for you in one handy package, but often come across coupons or specials you certainly won' t find on Yelp. 【R5】______ I still carry a travel guide around when I travel—as backup, if nothing else. But those books are pricey, and there' s so much free information online that, with a little copying and pasting(and printing out), you can come pretty close to matching them with your own bespoke travel guide. So, in a retro twist, no Wi-Fi needed.

The European Union reached a preliminary deal to curb banker's compensation that would drastically limit the account that can be paid in bonuses. Britain resisted the move to cap the ratio between bankers' fixed and variable pay. In a nod to opposition from the City of London the new rules treat long-term incentives linked to equities and bonds more favourably. The deal has to be agreed on by finance ministries next week. The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is still majority owned by the British taxpayer five years after a government bail-out, reported an annual pre-tax loss of ￡5.2 billion, mostly because of an accounting quirk connected to the value of its own debts. RBS's loss was put in the shade, however, when Bankia later posted a net loss for 2012 of ￡19 billion. The Spanish government owns just under half the bank, but that is expected soon to rise to 70%. A report by McKinsey underlined the impact of the financial crisis on annual cross-border capital flows, which fell by 60% from 2007 to $4.6 trillion last year. The study says that financial globalisation has "stalled" and that markets have reached an "inflection point" that could lead to a "Balkanised" structure based on local, rather than global, banking systems. Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, nominated Haruhiko Kuroda to become the next governor of the Bank of Japan. Mr. Kuroda is the current head of the Asian Development Bank and had been a vocal critic of the BOJ. Mr. Abe has turned the central bank's record into a political issue, urging it to do more to help "the real economy". India's government unveiled the country's most important budget in years, as it seeks to boost output while controlling inflation. Growth has cooled rapidly to around 5%. The official forecast says that the economy will expand by up to 6.6% in 2013-2014, but the opposition is quick to point out that the estimate for this year was overly optimistic.

Salt, shells or metals are still used as money in out-the-way parts of the world today. Salt may seem rather a strange 【B1】______ to use as money, 【B2】______ in countries where were the food of the people is mainly vegetable, it is often an 【B3】______ necessity. Gakes of salt, stamped to show their【B4】______. were used as money in some countries until recent 【B5】______, and cakes of salt 【B6】______ buy goods in Borneo and parts of Africa. Sea shells 【B7】______ as money at some time 【B8】______ another over the greater part of the Old World. These were【B9】______mainly from the beaches of the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, and were traded to India and China. In Africa, shells were traded right across the【B10】______from East to West. Medal, valued by weight,【B11】______coins in many parts of the world. Iron, in lumps, bars or rings, is still used in many countries【B12】______paper money. It can either be exchanged【B13】______goods, or made into tools, weapons, or ornaments. The early money of China, apart from shells , was of bronze,【B14】______in flat, round pieces with a hole in the middle, called "cash". The【B15】______of these are between three thousand and four thousand years old—older than the earlist coins of the eastern Mediterranean. Nowadays, coins and notes have【B16】______nearly all the more picturesque【B17】______of money, and【B18】______in one or two of the more remote countries people still keep it for future use on ceremonial【B19】______such as weddings and funerals, examples of【B20】______money will soon be found only in museums.

Alcohol may taste sweeter if you were exposed to it before birth, suggests a study in rats. The findings may shed new light【C1】______why human studies have previously【C2】______fetal alcohol exposure to increased alcohol【C3】______later in life, and to a【C4】______age at which a person【C5】______starts drinking alcohol. Alcohol"s taste is a(n) 【C6】______of sweet and bitter components. To【C7】______whether prenatal alcohol exposure could【C8】______the perception of these components, Steven Youngentob at the State University of New York in Syracuse and John Glendinning at Columbia University in New York【C9】______how eagerly rats consumed alcohol, sweet water【C10】______bitter water. They found that young rats whose mothers had consumed alcohol during pregnancy【C11】______ alcohol and consumed more of the bitter water than the【C12】______of mothers that didn"t consume alcohol. Rats that had been exposed to alcohol before birth also seemed to be more【C13】______to the smell of alcohol. Prenatal exposure seems to reduce the【C14】______bitterness of alcohol, making it seem【C15】______ , says Youngentob. Both of these differences seemed to【C16】______once the rats reached adulthood—but【C17】______they hadn"t tasted alcohol during their youth. If prertatally exposed rats did consume alcohol in their youth, these preferences seemed to becom【C18】______ for life. "The take-home message is to keep kids away from【C19】______for as long as possible—【C20】______ if they have had prenatal exposure," says Youngentob.

Prewriting refers to strategies you can use to generate ideas before starting the first draft of a paper. Prewriting techniques are like the warm-ups you do【C1】______going out to jog—they loosen you up, get you moving, and help you【C2】______a sense of confidence. Since prewriting techniques encourage【C3】______exploration, they also help you discover【C4】______interests you most about your subject. Having such a focus early in the writing process【C5】______you from plunging into your initial draft without first giving some thought to what you want to say.【C6】______prewriting saves you time in the long run by keeping you on course. Prewriting can help you in【C7】______ways, too. When we write, we often continually critique what we【C8】______on paper. "This makes no sense," "This is stupid," "I can"t say that," and other critical thoughts【C9】______into our minds. Such【C10】______, self-critical comments very often, if not always,【C11】______the flow of our thoughts and reinforce the fear that we have nothing to say and aren"t very good at writing. During prewriting, you【C12】______ignore your internal critic. Your purpose is simply to get ideas down on paper【C13】______evaluating their effectiveness. Writing without immediately judging what you produce can be liberating. Once you feel less【C14】______, you"ll probably find that you can generate a good deal of material, and that can make your【C15】______soar. One【C16】______advantage of prewriting: The random associations【C17】______prewriting tap the mind"s ability to make【C18】______connections. When you pre-write, you"re like an archaeologist going on a【C19】______. On the one hand, you may not unearth anything; on the other hand, you may stumble upon one interesting【C20】______after another. Prewriting helps you appreciate—right from the start—this element of surprise in the writing process.

The consequences of heavy drinking are well documented: failing health, broken marriages, regrettable late-night phone calls. But according to Gregory Luzaich"s calculations, there can be a downside to modest drinking, too—though one that damages the wallet, not the liver. The Pek Wine Steward prevents wine from spoiling by injecting argon, an inert gas, into the bottle before sealing it airtight with silicon. Mr. Luzaich, a mechanical engineer in Windsor, Calif—in the Sonoma County wine country—first tallied the costs of his reasonable consumption in October 2001. "I"d like to come home in the evening and have a glass of wine with dinner", he said. "My wife doesn"t drink very much. so the bottle wouldn"t get consumed. And maybe I would forget about it the next day, and I"d check back a day or two later, and the wine would be spoiled". That meant he was wasting most of a $15 to $20 bottle of wine dozens of times a year. A cheek of the wine-preservation gadgets on the market left Mr. Luzaich dissatisfied High-end wine cabinets cost thousands of dollars—a huge investment for a glass-a-day drinker. Affordable preservers, meanwhile, didn"t quite perform to Mr. Luzaich"s liking; be thought they allowed too much oxidation, which degrades the taste of a wine. The solution, he decided, was a better gas. Many preservers pumped nitrogen into an opened bottle to slow a wine"s decline, even though oenological literature suggested that argon was more effective. So when he began designing the Pek Wine Steward, a metal cone into which a wine bottle is inserted, Mr. Luzaich found that his main challenge was to figure out how best to introduce the argon. He spent months fine-tuning a gas injection system. "We used computational fluid dynamics to model the gas flow", Mr. Luzaich said, referring to a computer-analysis technique that measures how smoothly particles are flowing. The goal was to create an injector that could swap a bottle"s oxygen atoms for argon atoms; argon is an inert gas, and thus unlikely to harm a nice Chianti. Mr. Luzaich, who had previously designed medical and telecommunications products, also worked on creating an airtight seal, to secure the bottle after the argon was injected. He experimented with several substances, from neoprene to a visco-elastic polymer (which he dismissed as "too gooey"), before settling on a food-grade silicon. To save wine, a bottle is placed inside the Pek Wine Steward, the top is closed, and a trigger is pulled for 5 to 10 seconds, depending on how much wine remains. When the trigger is released, the bottle is sealed automatically, preserving the wine for a week or more. The company says. "We wanted to make it very easy for the consumer", Mr. Luzaich said. "It"s basically mindless". The device, which resembles a high-tech thermos, first became available to consumers in March 2004, and 8,000 to 10,000 have been sold, primarily through catalogs like those of The Wine Enthusiast and Hammacher Schlemmer The base model sells for $99; a deluxe model, which also includes a thermoelectric cooler, is $199.

When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company." Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision," McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn" t alone. In recent weeks the No. 2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don"t get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn / Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey: "I can"t think of a single search I"ve done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first." Those who jumped without a job haven"t always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it" s safer to stay where you are, but that"s been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who"ve been hurt the worst are those who" ve stayed too long."

For a quarter of a century, surveys of reading habits by the National for the Arts (NEA), a federally-funded body, have been favorite material for anyone who thinks America is dumbing down. Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason", for example, cites the 2007 NEA report that "the proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing(unless required todo so forschool) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004." So it is a surprise that this trend seems to have taken a turn for the better. This week the NEA reported that, for the first time since 1982 when its survey began, the number of adults who said they had read a novel, short story, poem or play in the past 12 months had gone up, rising from 47% of the population in 2002 to over 50% in 2008. The increase, modest as it is, has thrown educationalists into excitement "It"s just a blip," one professor told The New York Times. It is certainly a snapshot. But it is not statistically insignificant. As the NEA"s research director, Sunil Iyengar, points out, almost every demographic and ethnic group seems to be reading more. The increase has been most marked in groups whose reading had declined most in the past 25 years, African-Americans and Hispanics (up by 15% and 20% respectively since 2002). It has also been larger among people at lower levels of education: reading among college graduates was flat, but among those who dropped out of high school it rose from under a quarter to over a third. Most remarkable of all has been the rebound among young men. The numbers of men aged 18-24 who say they are reading books (not just online) rose 24% in 2002-08. Teachers sometimes despair of young men, whose educational performance has lagged behind that of young women almost across the board. But the reading gap at least may be narrowing. Dana Gioia, the NEA"s outgoing chairman, thinks the reason for the turnaround is the public reaction to earlier reports which had sounded the alarm. "There has been a measurable change in society"s commitment to literacy," he says. "Reading has become a higher priority." It may also be benefiting from the growing popularity of serious-minded leisure pursuits of many kinds. Museums, literary festivals and live opera transmissions into cinemas are all reporting larger audiences. Mr. Iyengar thinks the division between those who read a lot and those who don"t is eroding. What has not changed, though, is America"s "functional illiteracy" rate. Fully 21% of adult Americans did not read a book last year because they couldn"t, one of the worst rates in the rich world.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B