Picture-taking is a technique which can both reflect the objective world and express 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. 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 intrepid, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all. 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 attractive 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. 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. 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. 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.

The United States has historically had higher rates of marriage than those of other industrialized countries. The current annual marriage (1)_____ in the United States-about 9 new marriages for every 1, 000 people-is (2)_____ higher than it is in other industrialized countries. However, marriage is (3)_____ as widespread as it was several decades ago. (4)_____ of American adults who are married (5)_____ from 72 percent in 1970 to 60 percent in 2002. This does not mean that large numbers of people will remain unmarried (6)_____ their lives. Throughout the 20th century, about 90 percent of Americans married at some (7)_____ in their lives. Experts (8)_____ that about the same proportion of today"s young adults will eventually marry. The timing of marriage has varied (9)_____ over the past century. In 1995 the average age of women in the United States at the (10)_____ of their first marriage was 25. The average age of men was about 27. Men and women in the United States marry (11)_____ the first time at an average of five years later than people (12)_____ in the 1950s. (13)_____, young adults of the 1950s married younger than did any previous (14)_____ in U.S. history. Today"s later age of marriage is (15)_____ the age of marriage between 1890 and 1940. (16)_____, a greater proportion of the population was married (95 percent) during the 1950s than at any time before (17)_____. Experts do not agree on (18)_____ the "marriage rush" of the late 1940s and 1950s occurred, but most social scientists believe it represented a (19)_____ to the return of peaceful life and prosperity after 15 years of severe economic (20)_____ and war.

Today, there are two approaches to how Americans perceive themselves. (46) "You can consider yourself valuable no matter what people think of you, but that"s very difficult because we are social creatures and Care what others think of us—so we improve our outward appearance because that"s really all we have. We get our own self-image from the way in which other people view us." Americans now have a different idea of happiness than did their 18th-century predecessors, says Nancy Pearcey, author of "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity". (47) "When the Founders talked about "the pursuit of happiness", they were using that term in the classical definition, in which it was thought to be the result of virtue. Happiness was something attained late in life, if at all, because it takes an entire lifetime to develop virtuous character," Mrs. Pearcey says. The Founders believed "that we may not be virtuous by nature, but by practice, virtue can become "second nature" to us." Today, she says, our definitions of happiness are based on products, career and being liked by peers. (48) "As a result, the focus of our lives tends to be on acquiring these external things instead of on becoming fuller, wiser human beings." Yet the shift from a morality-focused society to an appearance-focused society already was under way when America was founded. Thomas Jefferson, says Mr. Ellis, was interested in improving himself by bringing out his inherent goodness—a notion that came out of the Enlightenment. "It"s like the Army"s saying, "Be all that you can be", " said Mr. Ellis." It presumes that there is this natural well of goodness inside you that just needs to come out and express itself." Despite the underlying differences, says Mr. Ellis, the end result of self-improvement is ultimately the same. (49) Americans like self-improvement, whether physical or spiritual, because it makes them look better in the eyes of their peers or history. The goal for the Founders was "posterity"s judgment, that history will remember you," Mr. Ellis says, but for today"s citizen, the goal is more immediate recognition by peers. (50) The Founders focused on character and reputation, he says, because they knew that is what would have an effect in achieving practical rewards. "Take Franklin: He enters Philadelphia as a kid and 10 years later he"s the leading citizen," Mr. Ellis says. "You do good in order to better yourself, and the world will recognize that better self and reward it."

Title: Role Of Mass Media in Shaping Our ViewTime Limit: 40 minutesWord limit: about 200 wordsYour composition should be based on the outline below: 1. the role mass media; 2. your explanation; 3. your opinion.

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which man is liable, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple roles will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error. If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. (46) Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. He did not do so because he thought he knew. Thinking that you know when in fact you don"t is a fatal mistake, to which we am all liable. Many matters, however, are less easily brought to the test of experience. (47) If, like most of mankind, you have strong convictions on many such matters, there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own prejudice. If an opinion contrary, to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you subconsciously are aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. (48) The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence justifies. For those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an argument with a person having a different opinion. (49) This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not, subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi considered it unfortunate to have railways and steam-boats and machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries most people take the advantage of modern technology for granted. (50) But if you want to make sure that you are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have said in refutation of them. I have sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of imaginary dialogue. Furthermore, I have frequently found myself growing more agreeable through realizing the possible reasonableness of a hypothetical opponent.

Community cancer clusters are viewed quite differently by citizen activists than by epidemiologists. Environmentalists and concerned local residents, for instance, might immediately suspect environmental radiation as the culprit when a high incidence of cancer cases occurs near a nuclear facility. Epidemiologists, in contrast, would be more likely to say that the incidences were "inconclusive" or the result of pure chance. And when a breast cancer survivor, Lorraine Pace, mapped 20 breast cancer cases occurring in her West Islip, Long Island, community, her rudimentary research efforts were guided more by hope—that a specific environmental agent could be correlated with the cancers—than by scientific method. When epidemiologists study clusters of cancer cases and other noncontagious conditions such as birth defects or miscarriage, they take several variables into account, such as background rate (the number of people affected in the general population), cluster size, and specificity (any notable characteristics of the individual affected in each case). If a cluster is both large and specific, it is easier for epidemiologists to assign blame. Not only must each variable be considered on its own, but it must also be combined with others. Lung cancer is very common in the general population. Yet when a huge number of cases turned up among World War II shipbuilders who had all worked with asbestos, the size of the cluster and the fact that the men had had similar occupational asbestos exposures enabled epidemiologists to assign blame to the fibrous mineral. Although several known carcinogens have been discovered through these kinds of occupational or medical clusters, only one community cancer cluster has ever been traced to an environmental cause. Health officials often discount a community's suspicion of a common environmental cause because citizens tend to include cases that were diagnosed before the afflicted individuals moved into the neighborhood. Add to this is the problem of cancer's latency. Unlike an infectious disease such as cholera, which is caused by a recent exposure to food or water contaminated with the cholera bacterium, cancer may have its roots in an exposure that occurred 10 to 20 years earlier. Do all these caveats mean that the hard work of Lorraine Pace and other community activists is for nothing? Not necessarily. Together with many other reports of breast cancer clusters on Long Island, the West Islip situation highlighted by Pace has helped epidemiologists lay the groundwork for a well-designed scientific study.

A.Studythefollowingtwopicturescarefullyandwriteanessayofatleast150words.B.YouressaymustbewrittenneatlyonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)C.Youressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Describethepictures.2.Deducethepurposeofthedrawerofthepictures.3.Suggestyourcounter-measures.

Last summer, some twenty-eight thousand homeless people were afforded shelter by the city of New York. Of this number, twelve thou sand were children and six thousand were parents living together in families. The average child was six years old, the average parent twenty seven. A typical homeless family included a mother with two or three children, but in about one-fifth of these families two parents were present. Roughly ten thousand single persons, then, made up the remainder of the population of the city"s shelter. These proportions vary somewhat from one area of the nation to another. In all areas, however, families are the fastest-growing sector of the homeless population, and in the Northeast they are by far the largest sector already. In Massachusetts, three-fourths of the homeless now are families with children; in certain parts of Massachusetts—Attleboro and Northampton, for example—the proportion reaches 90 percent. Two thirds of the homeless children studied recently in Boston were less than five years old. Of the estimated two to three million homeless people nationwide, about 500,000 are dependent children, according to Robert Hayes, counsel to the National Coalition for the homeless. Including their parents, at least 750,000 homeless people in America are family members. What is to be made, then, of the supposition that the homeless are primarily the former residents of mental hospitals, persons who were carelessly released during the 1970s? Many of them are, to be sure. Among the older men and women in the streets and shelters, as many as one-third (some believe as many as one-half) may be chronically disturbed, and a number of these people left mental hospitals during the 1970s. But in a city like New York, where nearly half the homeless are small children with an average of six, to operate on the basis of such a supposition makes no sense. Their parents, with an average age of twenty-seven, are not likely to have been hospitalized in the 1970s, either.

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayto1)describethepicture,2)illustratetheproblemitrevealsandthepossiblereasons,and3)giveyoursuggestionofsolutions.Youshouldwrite160-200wordsneatly.

Marriage may improve your sleep, and better sleep may improve your marriage, two new studies suggest Women who are married or who have stable partners【C1】______to sleep better than women who have【C2】______a partner, according to research from an eight-year study【C3】______at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies annual meeting. They also found that marital【C4】______lowers the risk of sleep problems,【C5】______marital disharmony heightens the risk and women who were single at the start of the study but gained a partner had more【C6】______sleep than women who were【C7】______married. The study included 360 middle-aged women. Researchers used in-home sleep studies, activity monitors to【C8】______sleep-wake patterns and relationship histories to look at the【C9】______of stable marriages, unstable marriages and marital changes, such as a【C10】______had on sleep. Another small study of 29 couples found that on a【C11】______basis, the quality of a couple"s relationship and the quality of their sleep are closely linked. In that study, from the University of Arizona, 29 couples who【C12】______a bed and did not have children【C13】______sleep and relationship diaries for fifteen days. The results showed that【C14】______men get better sleep, they are more likely to feel【C15】______about their relationship the next day.【C16】______for women, problems in the relationship were strongly【C17】______with poor sleep for both themselves and their partner. The【C18】______from both studies suggest that sleep and relationship happiness are closely linked. The lesson for couples,【C19】______those who are struggling with problems, is that paying attention to sleep habits may help【C20】______other issues in the relationship.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1.describethedrawingbriefly,2.explainitsintendedmeaning,and3.giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyonANSHWERSHEET2.(20points)

Write an essay of 160—200 words based on the following topic My Ideal Future Job. In your essay, you should 1) state clearly what your ideal future job is, 2) illustrate why you would like to take this job, and 3) draw a nature conclusion to your essay. You should write neatly.

Thefollowingparagraphsaregiveninawrongorder.ForQuestions1-5,youarerequiredtoreorganizetheseparagraphsintoacoherentarticlebychoosingfromthelistA-Htofillineachnumberedbox.Thefirst,thefourthandthelastparagraphshavebeenplacedforyouinBoxes.[A]Inaddition,yourlegalsystemshouldmakeitnearlyimpossibleforanyonetolicenseanewbusiness,howeversmall.Thiswillofferopportunitiesforyourbureaucratstomakealivingthroughcorruptionandwillprotectyourcroniesfromdomesticcompetition.Anaddedadvantageisthatmostcommercewillbemadeillegalandsubjecttoarbitraryenforcement.[B]Ofcourse,youmayfindittootiresometonationalizeeverything,inwhichcaseitisveryimportantthatyouestablishhightariffsthatinsulateyourcountry"sremainingprivateindustries(usuallyownedbyyourcroniesanyway)fromcompetition.[C]First,makesurethatyourcountry"smoneyisnogood.Printmoneylikethere"snotomorrow.Hyperinflationisoneoftheeasiestandmostpopularwaystodismantleaneconomy.Anotherpopularmonetarygambitistomakesureyourcurrencyisnotconvertible.Thisguaranteesthatnoonewilleverwanttoinvestinyourcountry.[D]Keepingpeoplepoorishardwork,butfollowingtheabovepolicieswillachievethatgoal.Modernpovertyisamiraclethatonlyyoucanmakehappen.[E]Thisleadstothepointthatpropertyiscritical.Oncepeoplestarttoownsomething,theyinvestinitandimproveit,leadinginexorablytothecreationofwealth.Again,thelegalsystemcanhelptomakeitimpossibletoissuecleartitlessothatyourcitizenscan"tbuy,sell,orborrowagainsttheir"property".Also,forceyourfarmerstoselltheircropstogovernmentcommodityboardsatbelow-marketrates.Thiswilldiscouragethemfrominvestinginanythingmoreadvancedthansubsistenceagriculture,andyouwillbeabletosellwhatevercropsyoudoseizeatlowpricestokeeptheurbanpopulationsquiet.[F]"Poverty,noteconomicgrowth,istherealmiracletoday,"explainsLeonLouw,executivedirectoroftheFreeMarketFoundation.[G]Tofurtherdiscourageinvestment,besuretonationalizeallmajorIndustries.Nationalizationhasadditionalpoverty-enhancingbenefits.Forexample,itwillensurethatthenationalizedindustriesneverimprovetechnologicallyorbecomemoreefficient,anditmakesworkerspatheticallydependentontheirpoliticalmasters,namelyyou.[H]Hereisashortguideforkleptocratsandegalitarianswhowanttokeeptheircountriespoor.Allofthesepolicieshavestoodthetestoftimeastechniquesforcreatingandmaintainingpoverty.Thelistisbynomeansexhaustive,butitwillgivewould-bepoliticalleadersagoodideaofhowtostarttheircountriesontheroadtoruin.Order:

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about Rituals and ceremonies and cultural identity. Choose the most suitable from the list A—F for each numbered paragraph (41—45). The first paragraph of the text is not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.A. Preserving cultural identity can be achieved in different way.B. Ritual and ceremony are used in order to keep their own cultural identification.C. Ritual and ceremony should not be regarded as a only way of keeping cultural identification, for they have other function.D. Different cultures mainly use superstition to keep identification.E. Ritual and ceremony have a closer relation with superstition.F. In American ritual and ceremony can show their subcultures identity. The speaker asserts that rituals and ceremonies are needed for any culture or group of people to retain a strong sense of identity. I agree that one purpose of ritual and ceremony is to preserve cultural identity, at least in modern times. However, this is not their sole purpose; nor are ritual and ceremony the only means of preserving cultural identity. (41)______. I agree with the speaker insofar as one purpose of ritual and ceremony in today"s world is to preserve cultural identity. Native American tribes, for example, cling tenaciously to their traditional ceremonies and rituals, which typically tell a story about tribal heritage. The reason for maintaining these rituals and customs lies largely in the tribes" 500-year struggle against assimilation, even extinction, at the hands of European intruders. An outward display of traditional customs and distinct heritage is needed to put the world on notice that each tribe is a distinct and autonomous people, with its own heritage, values, and ideas. Otherwise, the tribe risks total assimilation and loss of identity. (42)______. The lack of meaningful ritual and ceremony in homogenous mainstream America underscores this point. Other than a few gratuitous ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, we maintain no common rituals to set us apart from other cultures. The reason for this is that as a whole America has little cultural identity of its own anymore. Instead, it has become a patchwork quilt of many subcultures, such as Native Americans, Hasidic Jews, Amish, and urban African Americans—each of which resort to some outward demonstration of its distinctiveness in order to establish and maintain a unique cultural identity. (43)______. Nevertheless, preserving cultural identify cannot be the only purpose of ritual and ceremony. Otherwise, how would one explain why isolated cultures that don"t need to distinguish themselves to preserve their identity nevertheless engage in their own distinct rituals and ceremonies? In fact, the initial purpose of ritual and ceremony is rooted not in cultural identity but rather superstition and spiritual belief. The original purpose of a ritual might have been to frighten away evil spirits, to bring about weather conditions favorable to bountiful harvests, or to entreat the gods for a successful hunt or for victory in battle. Even today some primitive cultures engage in rituals primarily for such reasons. (44)______. Nor are ritual and ceremony the only means of preserving cultural identity. For example, our Amish culture demonstrates its distinctiveness through dress and lifestyle. Hasidic Jews set themselves apart by their dress, vocational choices, and dietary habits. And African Americans distinguish themselves today by their manner of speech and gesture. Of course, these subcultures have their own distinct ways of cerebrating events such as weddings, coming of age, and so forth. Yet ritual and ceremony are not the primary means by which these subcultures maintain their identity. (45)______. In sum, to prevent total cultural assimilation into our modern-day homogenous soup, a subculture with a unique and proud heritage must maintain an outward display of that heritage—by way of ritual and ceremony. Nevertheless, ritual and ceremony serve a spiritual function as well—one that has little to do with preventing cultural assimilation. Moreover, rituals and ceremonies are not the only means of preserving cultural identity.

(46) A favourite prediction of environmentalism has bitten the dust—too many natural resources, rather than too few, are the cause of an increasing number of wars in the 21st century. (47) Many greens had predicted that the new century would see a rash of wars in countries where natural resources such as timber, water, minerals and fertile mils am running out. But far from it, says the 2002 State of the World report from the prestigious Washington-based think-tank, the Worldwatch Institute. In fact, says the report"s co-author Michael Rennet, there are "numerous places in the developing world where abundant natural resources help fuel conflicts". More than a quarter of current conflicts are either being fought over, or are funded by, some lucrative natural resource. Examples cited by the Worldwatch Institute include: .Diamond mines in Sierra Lame and Angola malting the two African nations ripe for plunder by warlords .Profits from sapphires, rubies and timber arming the Khmer Rouge in their interminable jungle war in Cambodia .Guerillas using the threat of sabotage to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies prospecting in Colombia .Opium funding 20 years of war in Afghanistan .The Congo"s continuing civil war subsisting on the proceeds of elephant tusks and coltan, a vital mineral in the manufacture of mobile phones With the end of the cold war, superpowers no longer fund civil wars for their own geopolitical ends, says Rennet. Their place has been taken by the market—in the form of the plunder and sale of natural resources. (48) "Nature"s bounty attracts groups that may claim they are driven by grievance, but which initiate violence not to overthrow a government but to gain and maintain control of lucrative resources", says Rennet. Such resource wars are being fought because of "greed rather than need". (49) According to David Keen at the London School of Economics: "We tend to regard conflict as pimply a breakdown in a particular system, rather than as the emergence of another, alternative system of profit and power, i.e. a "conflict economy" with the looting of natural resources at its heart". Rennet warns that warlords in such conflicts have no interest in winning the war, because its continuance is more profitable. (50) And he says too many Western governments are happy to turn a blind eye as their own corporations reap the benefits in cheap no-questions-asked raw materials. Rennet argues the issue of resource conflicts should be added to the agenda of the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August 2002.

Seven years ago, a group of female scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a piece of research which showed that senior women professors in the institute's school of science had lower salaries and received fewer resources for research than their male counterparts did. Discrimination against female scientists has cropped up elsewhere. One study conducted in Sweden, of all places—showed that female medical-research scientists had to be twice as good as men in order to win research grants. These pieces of work, though, were relatively small-scale. Now, a much larger study has found that discrimination plays a role in the pay gap between male and female scientists at British universities. Sara Connolly, a researcher at the University of East Anglia's school of economics, has been analyzing the results of a survey of over 7,000 scientists and she has just presented her findings at this year's meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Norwich. She found that the average pay gap between male and female academics working in science, engineering and technology is around ￡1,500 a year. That is not, of course, irrefutable proof of discrimination. An alternative hypothesis is that the courses of men's and women's lives mean the gap is caused by something else; women taking "career breaks" to have children, for example, and thus rising more slowly through the hierarchy. Unfortunately for that idea, Dr. Connolly found that men are also likely to earn more within any given grade of the hierarchy. Male professors, for example, earn over ￡4,000 a year more than female ones. To prove the point beyond doubt, Dr. Connolly worked out how much of the overall pay differential was explained by differences such as seniority, experience and age, and how much was unexplained, and therefore suggestive of discrimination. Explicable differences amounted to 77% of the overall pay gap between the sexes. That still left a substantial 23% gap in pay, which Dr. Connolly attributes to discrimination. Besides pay, her study also looked at the "glass-ceiling" effect—namely that at all stages of a woman's career she is less likely than her male colleagues to be promoted. Between postdoctoral and lecturer level, men are more likely to be promoted than women are, by a factor of between 1.04 and 2.45. Such differences are bigger at higher grades, with the hardest move of all being for a woman to settle into a professorial chair. Of course, it might be that, at each grade, men do more work than women, to make themselves more eligible for promotion. But that explanation, too, seems to be wrong. Different from the previous studies, Dr. Connolly's compared the experience of scientists in universities with that of those in other sorts of laboratory. It turns out that female academic researchers face more barriers to promotion, and have a wider gap between their pay and that of their male counterparts, than do their sisters in industry or research institutes independent of universities. In other words, private enterprise delivers more equality than the supposedly egalitarian world of academia does.

Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal.【F1】 But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet. It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoe Zysman.【F2】 English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet, yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K. 【F3】 Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush's predecessors(including his father)had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged(Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chretien and Koizumi). The world' s three top central bankers(Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami)are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world 's five richest men(Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht). Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early.【F4】 At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly. The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ.【F5】 Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.

Next time you feel the flu coming on, think twice before reaching for painkillers—they could do more【C1】______than good. With the flu season【C2】______way across Europe and North America, millions will be taking flu【C3】______, which commonly include painkillers. The general【C4】______advice in the UK and the US is to take painkillers. But although painkillers can make you feel better they also lower fever, which can make the virus【C5】______. The first analysis of the effect of this on the【C6】______shows that painkillers taken at current levels to【C7】______fevers could cause 2, 000 flu deaths each year in the US alone. Fever is thought to be a【C8】______against viruses, because many viruses find it hard to【C9】______above our normal 37 °C. Some studies have shown that lowering fever may【C10】______virus-related infections and increase the amount of virus we can【C11】______on to others. To find out what【C12】______this might have on a flu epidemic, David Earn and his colleagues【C13】______to a 1982 study which showed that ferrets, a【C14】______animal model for human flu produced more【C15】______flu virus if their fevers were lowered with painkillers. Earn's team used these findings to estimate how much more virus people with【C16】______flu might produce if their fevers were【C17】______. With the help of a mathematical model, Earn's team【C18】______their estimates to the number of people a year in the US who get flu,【C19】______fever and take the drugs. They found that painkillers as used in the US could be increasing the【C20】______of ordinary winter flu by up to 5 per cent.

They, not surprisingly, did not respond at all.

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayin160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandmeettherequirementsbelow:1)describethefollowingpictureandinterpretitsmeaning2)andpointoutitsimplicationsinourlife