"Before the operation, I would look at someone and all I could see for their face was jelly," says Jonathan Wyatt "Now, I can see people's faces." The 65-year-old is one of six people in the world to receive gene therapy for a【C1】______type of inherited eye disease【C2】______choroideremia(an eye disease). The first published【C3】______of the trial, released today, suggest that【C4】______people's genes can stop the disease from causing blindness—and【C5】______sight in those whose vision has become【C6】______. Choroideremia is caused by【C7】______in the CHM gene. In those who have the disease, a【C8】______of REP-1 means that cells in the eyes stop working and slowly begin to【C9】______causing blindness. Enter gene therapy, which uses a virus to insert a【C10】______copy of a gene into cells with a gene defect and could【C11】______be used to treat many genetic conditions. Robert MacLaren of the University of Oxford and his colleagues decided to see if it could【C12】______choroideremia. Starting two years ago with Wyatt, they【C13】______a virus carrying a corrective copy of the CHM gene into the eyes of people with choroideremia. Today the team【C14】______that of the six people who received the treatment six months【C15】______or longer, all have described【C16】______in their vision. Still, the long-lasting effects of the treatment remain【C17】______Wyatt had the treatment first, so can【C18】______that the benefits seem to last two years,【C19】______he's just one case. The treatment also can't replace cells that have been【C20】______destroyed.

You are going to read a text about the topic of nuclear fusion, followed by a list of explanations(or examples). Choose the best explanation/example from the list for each numbered subheading/generalization. There is one extra explanation/example which you do not need to use. Scientists say they have achieved small-scale nuclear fusion in a tabletop experiment, using tried and true techniques that are expected to generate far less controversy than past such claims. This latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field. While the energy created was too small to harness cheap fusion power, the technique could have potential uses in medicine, spacecraft propulsion, the oil drilling industry and homeland security, said Seth Putterman, a physicist at the University of California at Los Angeles. Putterman and his colleagues at UCLA, Brian Naranjo and Jim Gimzewski, report their results in Thursday"s issue of the journal Nature. (41) Held up to ridicule Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. (42) Sound theoretical basis Fusion experts said the UCLA experiment will face far less skepticism because it conforms to well-known principles of physics. (43) Energy in waiting Fusion power has been touted as the ultimate energy source and a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels like coal and oil. Fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years. (44) Process of fusion In the UCL"A experiment, scientists placed a tiny crystal that can generate a strong electric field into a vacuum chamber filled with deuterium gas, a form of hydrogen capable of fusion. Then the researchers activated the crystal by heating it. (45) Commercial uses UCLA"s Putterman said future experiments will focus on refining the technique for potential commercial uses, including designing portable neutron generators that could be used for oil well drilling or scanning luggage and cargo at airports. In the Nature report, Putterman and his colleagues said the crystal-based method could be used in "microthrusters for miniature spacecraft". In such an application, the method would not rely on nuclear fusion for power generation, But rather on ion propulsion, Putterman said. "As wild as it is, that"s a conservative application", he said.A. In fusion, light atoms are joined in a high-temperature process that frees large amounts of energy. It is considered environmentally friendly because it produces virtually no air pollution and does not pose the safety and long-term radioactive waste concerns associated with modern nuclear power plants, where heavy uranium atoms are split to create energy in a process known as fission.B. The resulting electric field created a Beam of charged deuterium atoms that struck a nearby target, which was embedded with yet more deuterium. When some of the deuterium atoms in the beam collided with their counterparts in the target, they fused. The reaction gave off an isotope of helium along with subatomic particles known as neutrons, a characteristic of fusion. The experiment did not, however, produce more energy than the amount put in—an achievement that would be a huge breakthrough.C. Another technique, known as sonoluminescence, generates heat through the collapse of tiny bubbles in a liquid. Some scientists claim that nuclear fusion occurs during the reaction, but those claims have sparked sharp debate.D. In a Nature commentary, Michael Saltmarsh of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said the process was in some ways "remarkably low-tech", drawing upon principles that were first recorded by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus in 314 B.C. "This doesn"t have any controversy in it because they"re using a tried and true method", David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbane-Champaign, told The Associated Press. "There"s no mystery in terms of the physics".E. In one of the most notable cases, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world in 1989 when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed.F. The technology also could conceivably give rise to implantable radiation sources, which could target cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. "You could bring a tiny crystal into the body, place it next to a tumor, turn on the radiation and blast the tumor", Putterman told MSNBC.com.

A recruitment drive for 100,000 Olympic volunteers, which aims to help the Chinese and foreigners get involved in the 2008 Games, was Officially launched in Beijing last month. You intend to apply for certain positions, and now write a letter the recruitment office, showing your motivation and stating your eligibility for the requirements. Write your letter in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

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If you want to know why Denmark is the world's leader in wind power, start with a three-hour car trip from the capital Copenhagen to the small town of Lem on the far west coast of Jutland. You' 11 feel it as you cross the 6.8 km-long Great Belt Bridge: Denmark's bountiful wind, so fierce. But wind itself is only part of the reason. In Lem, workers in factories the size of aircraft hangars build the wind turbines. Most impressive are the turbine's blades, which scoop the wind with each sweeping revolution. But technology, like the wind itself, is just one more part of the reason for Denmark's dominance. In the end, it happened because Denmark had the political and public will to decide that it wanted to be a leader—and to follow through. Beginning in 1979, the government began a determined programme of subsidies and loan guarantees to build up its wind industry. It also mandated that utilities purchase wind energy at a preferential price—thus guaranteeing investors a customer base. As a result, wind turbines now dot Denmark. The country gets more than 19% of its electricity from the breeze and Danish companies control one-third of the global wind market, earning billions in exports and creating a national champion from scratch. The challenge now for Denmark is to help the rest of the world catch up. With Copenhagen set to host all-important U.N. climate change talks in December—where the world hopes for a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol, Denmark's example couldn't be more timely . "We' ll try to make Denmark a showroom," says Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "You can reduce energy use and carbon emissions, and achieve economic growth." It' s tempting to assume that Denmark is innately green, but the country' s policies were actually born from a different emotion, one now in common currency: fear. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, 90% of Denmark's energy came from petroleum, almost all of it imported. Denmark launched a rapid drive for energy conservation. Eventually the Danes themselves began enjoying the benefits of the petroleum and natural gas in their slice of the North Sea. It was enough to make them more than self-sufficient. But Denmark never forgot the lessons of 1973, and kept driving for greater energy efficiency and a more diversified energy supply. To the rest of the world, Denmark has the power of its example, showing that you can stay rich and grow green at the same time. "Denmark has proven that acting on climate can be a positive experience, not just painful." says NRDC' s Schmidt.

I came to feminism the way some people come to social movements in their early years: out of self-interest. I got on the equality bandwagon because I was a young woman with a streak of ambition a mile wide, and without a change in the atmosphere I thought I was going to wind up living a life that would make me crazy. As my father said not long ago, "Can you imagine what it would have been like if you had been born 50 years earlier? Your life would have been miserable." The great thing was that it was possible to do good for all while you were doing well for yourself. Each of us rose on the shoulders of women who had come before us. Move up, reach down: that was the motto of those who were worth knowing. But it was not just other women we elevated, but entire enterprises. More women on the staffs and the mastheads of the country"s largest publications changed them. It resulted in newspapers and magazines that covered women as more than a mixture of recipes and fashion collections. But there"s one question that always lurks around the margins of the battle for equal rights: how will we know when we"ve won? Sometimes it seems like a classic dance of two steps forward, one back. Indra Nooyi, an Indian-born number cruncher, was recently named CEO of Pepsi. But that makes her one of only 11 women now running a Fortune 500 company, which works out to slightly more than 2 percent. And Forbes magazine just published an essay titled "Don"t Marry Career Women" by a male writer who couldn"t see the advantages of a wife who could pay the mortgage and support the children even if her husband lost his job or suffered a massive coronary. That kind of nonsense takes you back in time, to the early days when women dumped babies on the desk of the mayor of Syracuse to protest the lack of child care. Maybe it was the classic protest slogan "Don"t cook dinner—starve a rat today," but the perception was that the fight for equality was a war against men. But the battle was really against the waste of talent, the waste to society, the waste of women who had certain gifts and goals and had to suppress both. The point was not to take over male terrain but to change it because it badly needed changing. The depth and breadth of that transformation is what reflects the success of the movement, and by that measure, women are doing well. And so is everyone else.

Prince Klemens Von Metternich, foreign minister of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, would have no trouble recognizing Google. To him, the world"s most popular web-search engine would closely resemble the Napoleonic France that in his youth humiliated Austria and Europe"s other powers. Its rivals—Yahoo!, the largest of the traditional web gateways, eBay, the biggest online auction and trading site, and Microsoft, a software empire that owns MSN, a struggling web portal—would look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Metternich responded by forging an alliance among those three monarchies to create a "balance of power" against France. Google"s enemies, he might say, ought now to do the same thing. Google announced two new conquests on August 7th. It struck a deal with Viacom, an "old" media firm, under which it will syndicate video clips from Viacom brands such as MTV and Nickelodeon to other websites, and integrate advertisements into them. This makes Google the clear leader in the fledgling but promising market for web-video advertising. It also announced a deal with News Corporation, another media giant, under which it will pro- vide all the search and text-advertising technology on News Corporation"s websites, including MySpace, an enormously popular social-networking site. These are hard blows for Yahoo! and MSN, which had also been negotiating with News Corporation. Both firms have been losing market share in web search to Google over the past year—Google now has half the market. They have also fallen further behind in their advertising technologies and networks, so that both make less money than Google does from the same number of searches. Sara Rashtchy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, a securities firm, estimates that for every advertising dollar that Google makes on a search query, Yahoo! makes only 60-70 cents. Last month Yahoo! said that a new advertising algorithm that it had designed to close the gap in profitability will be delayed, and its share price fell by 22%, its biggest-ever one-day drop. MSN is further behind Google than Yahoo! in search, and its parent, Microsoft, faces an even more fundamental threat from the expansionist new power. Many of Google"s new ventures beyond web search enable users to do things free of charge through their web browsers that they now do using Microsoft software on their personal computers. Google offers a rudimentary but free online word processor and spreadsheet, for instance. The smaller eBay, on the other hand, might in one sense claim Google as an ally. Google"s search results send a lot of traffic to eBay"s auction site, and eBay is one of the biggest advertisers on Google"s network. But the relationship is imbalanced. An influential recent study from Berkeley"s Haas School of Business estimated that about 12% of eBay"s revenues come indirectly from Google, whereas Google gets only 3% of its revenues from eBay. Worst of all for eBay, Google is starting to undercut its core business. Sellers are setting up their own websites and buying text advertisements from Google, and buyers are using its search rather than eBay to connect with sellers directly. As a result, "eBay would be wise to strike a deep partnership with Yahoo! or Microsoft in order to regain a balance of power in the industry", said the study"s authors, Julien Decot and Steve Lee, sounding like diplomats at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

It is commonly assumed that even if some forgeries have aesthetic merit, no forgery has as much as an original by the imitated artist would. Yet even the most prominent art specialists can be duped by a talented artist turned forger into mistaking an almost perfect forgery for an original. For instance, artist Han van Meegeren" s The Disciples at Emmaus(1937)—painted under the forged signature of the acclaimed Dutch master Jan Vermeer(1632 — 1675)—attracted lavish praise from experts as one of Vermeer"s finest works. The painting hung in a Rotterdam museum until 1945, when, to the great embarrassment of the critics; van Meegeren revealed its origin. Astonishingly, there was at least one highly reputed critic who persisted in believing it to be a Vermeer even after van Meegeren"s confession. Given the experts" initial enthusiasm, some philosophers argue that van Meegeren"s painting must have possessed aesthetic characteristics that, in a Vermeer original, would have justified the critics" plaudits. Van Meegeren" s Emmaus thus raises difficult questions regarding the status of superbly executed forgeries. Is a forgery inherently inferior as art? How are we justified, if indeed we are, in revising downwards our critical assessment of a work unmasked as a forgery? Philosopher of art Alfred Lessing proposes convincing answers to these questions. A forged work is indeed inferior as art, Lessing argues, but not because of a shortfall in aesthetic qualities strictly defined, that is to say, in the qualities perceptible on the picture" s surface. For example, in its composition, its technique, and its brilliant use of color, van Meegeren"s work is flawless, even beautiful. Lessing argues instead that the deficiency lies in what might be called the painting"s intangible qualities. All art, explains Lessing, involves technique, but not all art involves origination of a new vision, and originality of vision is one of the fundamental qualities by which artistic, as opposed purely aesthetic, accomplishment is measured. Thus Vermeer is acclaimed for having inaugurated, in the seventeenth century, a new way of seeing, and pioneering techniques for embodying this new way of seeing through distinctive treatment of light, color, and form. Even if we grant that van Meegeren, with his undoubted mastery of Vermeer" s innovative techniques, produced an aesthetically superior painting, he did so about three centuries after Vermeer developed the techniques in question. Whereas Vermeer" s origination of these techniques in the seventeenth century represents a truly impressive and historic achievement, van Meegeren"s production of The Disciples at Emmaus in the twentieth century presents nothing new or creative to the history of art. Van Meegeren"s forgery therefore, for all its aesthetic merits, lacks the historical significance that makes Vermeer"s work artistically great.

Scientists have found that although we are prone to snap overreactions, if we take a moment and think about how we are likely to react, we can reduce or even eliminate the negative effects of our quick, hardwired responses. Snap decisions can be important defense mechanisms; if we are judging whether someone is dangerous, our brains and bodies are hard-wired to react very quickly, within milliseconds. But we need more time to assess other factors. To accurately tell whether someone is sociable, studies show, we need at least a minute, preferably five. It takes a while to judge complex aspects of personality, like neuroticism or open-mindedness. But snap decisions in reaction to rapid stimuli aren't exclusive to the interpersonal realm. Psychologists at the University of Toronto found that viewing a fast-food logo for just a few milliseconds primes us to read 20 percent faster, even though reading has little to do with eating. We unconsciously associate fast food with speed and impatience and carry those impulses into whatever else we're doing. Subjects exposed to fast-food flashes also tend to think a musical piece lasts too long. Yet we can reverse such influences. If we know we will overreact to consumer products or housing options when we see a happy face(one reason good sales representatives and real estate agents are always smiling), we can take a moment before buying. If we know female job screeners are more likely to reject attractive female applicants, we can help screeners understand their biases—or hire outside screeners. John Gottman, the marriage expert, explains that we quickly"thin slice" information reliably only after we ground such snap reactions in "thick sliced" long-term study. When Dr. Gottman really wants to assess whether a couple will stay together, he invites them to his island retreat for a much longer evaluation: two days, not two seconds. Our ability to mute our hard-wired reactions by pausing is what differentiates us from animals: dogs can think about the future only intermittently or for a few minutes. But historically we have spent about 12 percent of our days contemplating the longer term. Although technology might change the way we react, it hasn't changed our nature. We still have the imaginative capacity to rise above temptation and reverse the high-speed trend.

The United States is not the energy hog it once was. Efficiency gains are often measured in terms of "energy intensity," which is the amount of energy consumed per unit of gross domestic product. Since the energy crisis of the early 1970s, U. S. energy intensity has declined by an average of 2. 1% a year. That"s partly because of an economic shift, with a lot of factories closing or moving overseas. But mostly it"s because of greater efficiency in areas such as appliances and building standards, as well as fuel economy standards for cars. Still, the rest of the country has been very slow to embrace efficiency measures compared with California. Ours was the first state to implement efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, and it still has the toughest in the nation. California"s zeal for creative energy policy hasn"t always paid off for its residents; its disastrous experiment with deregulation in the late 1990s led to rolling blackouts and price gouging. But its efficiency measures have been a boon. The typical American uses 12,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, while the typical Californian uses less than 7,000. The state has a variety of regulatory schemes encouraging utilities to conserve power and invest in efficiency, but the most important is a concept called "decoupling". In most states, the more power utilities sell, the more money they make, so they have no incentive to encourage conservation. In California, annual targets are set for utility revenues and electricity use. If more money than expected comes in from high sales, the excess is refunded to consumers; if there"s a shortfall, the utility is allowed to charge more the following year. Decoupling has spread to a handful of states, but too few. The federal government should encourage more by requiring states to study the issue. California is accelerating its efforts to wring more savings out of its utilities, and greater energy efficiency is expected to contribute 17% toward the state"s goal of cutting its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. At the federal level, legislation is pending that could dramatically lower carbon emissions and power use. Both houses of Congress have approved energy bills, but many of the best energy-efficiency measures were passed by only one house. So, for example, the Senate bill calls for the first boost in fuel economy standards in two decades, while the House version says nothing about vehicle mileage. The House bill, meanwhile, requires more energy-efficient lightbulbs and sets strong national targets for reducing power consumption in buildings, while the Senate"s doesn"t. The two chambers are now working to reconcile their bills, and the future of both the economy and the environment hinges on negotiators making the right choices on efficiency.

This book is above me / beyond me.

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) Science develops through objective analysis, instead of through personal belief. Knowledge gained in science accumulates as time goes by, building on work performed earlier. Some of this knowledge-such as our understanding of numbers-stretches back" to the time of ancient civilizations, when scientific thought first began. Other scientific knowledge such as our understanding of genes that cause cancer or of quarks (the smallest known building block of matter)dates back less than 50 years. However, in all fields of science, old or new, researchers use the same systematic approach, known as the scientific method, to add to what is known. (41)______. For example, in 1676, the English physicist Robert Hooke discovered that elastic objects, such as metal springs, stretch in proportion to the force that acts on them. Despite all the advances that have been made in physics since 1676, this simple law still holds true. (42)______. Sometimes scientific predictions go much further by describing objects or events that are not yet known. An outstanding instance occurred in 1869, when the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev drew up a periodic table of the elements arranged to illustrate patterns of recurring chemical and physical properties. (43)______. At the time, most geologists discounted Wegener"s ideas, because the Earth"s crust seemed to be fixed. But following the discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s, in which scientists found that the Earth"s crust is actually made of moving plates, continental drift became an important part of geology. Through advances like these, scientific knowledge is constantly added to and refined. As a result, science gives us an ever more detailed insight into the way the world around us works. (44)______. However, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, this rapidly changed. Today, science has a profound effect on the way we live, largely through technology—the use. of scientific knowledge for practical (45)______. The refrigerator, for example, owes its existence to a discovery that liquids take in energy when they evaporate, a phenomenon known as latent heat.A. Scientists utilize existing knowledge in new scientific investigations to predict how things will behave. For example, a scientist who knows the exact dimensions of a lens can predict how the lens will focus a beam of light. In the same way, by knowing the exact makeup and properties of two chemicals, a researcher can predict what will happen when they combine.B. For a large part of recorded history, science had little bearing on people"s everyday lives. Scientific knowledge was gathered for it sown sake, and it had few practical applications.C. During scientific investigations, scientists put together and compare new discoveries and existing knowledge. In most cases, new discoveries extend what is currently accepted, providing further evidence that existing ideas are correct.D. Tile principle of latent heat was first exploited in a practical way in 1876, and the refrigerator has played a major role in maintaining public health ever since. Tile first automobile, dating from the 1880s, made use of many advances in physics and engineering, including reliable ways of generating high-voltage sparks, while the first computers emerged in the 1940s from simultaneous advances in electronics and mathematics.E. Some forms of technology have become so well established that it is easy to forget the great scientific achievements that they represent.F. In science, important advances can also be made when current ideas are shown to be wrong. A classic case of this occurred early in the 20th century, when the German geologist Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents were at one time connected, a theory known as continental drift.G. Other fields of science also play an important role in the things we use or consume every day. Research in food technology has created new ways of preserving and flavoring what we eat.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Those days are long gone when placing a telephone call meant simply picking up the receiver and asking the operator to patch you through. Modern cell phones require users to navigate a series of menus to find numbers, place calls or check messages. Even the most tech-savvy may take weeks to discover some of the more mysterious multimedia functions. Imagine the difficulty for someone unable to read. That is the challenge for mobile communications companies aiming to branch out into developing countries. The prospects seen from the last decade are alluring: only about one tenth of India"s population use cell phones. But selling to poor rural areas is not likely to happen with a marketing version of "plug and play." Most potential buyers have little exposure to anything other than simple electronics. Reading through a series of hierarchical menus and pushing buttons for multiple purposes would be new concepts for such customers. To come up with a suitable device, Motorola relied on a team of anthropologists, psychologists and designers to study how textually illiterate villagers use their aging televisions, tape players and phones. The researchers noticed that their subjects would learn each button"s dedicated function. With something more complicated, such as an automated teller machine, users would memorize a set of behaviors in order, which allowed them to move through the machine"s basic hierarchy without having to read the menu. The research, which lasted three years, led Motorola to craft a cellular phone slimmed down to three essential activities: calling, managing numbers and simple text messaging. "A lot of the functions in a cell phone are not useful to anyone," points out Gabriel White, who headed the interactive design team. The icon-based interface also required thought. Not all cell phone companies believe that a design for nonliterate users should start from scratch. Nokia"s behavioral researchers noticed that " newbies " rely on friends and relatives to help them with basic functions. Rather than confronting the challenge of a completely new interface, Nokia chose to provide some audio menus in its popular 1100 model and a preview mode so that people could try out functions without the risk of changing anything important. Mobile phones may even become tools for literacy, predicts BJ Fogg, who studies computer-human interaction at Stanford University. Phones might teach the alphabet or tell a story as users read along. "Imagine if it eventually could understand your weak points and drill you on those," Fogg proposes. And soon enough, he declares, designs or illiterate users will lead to more straightforward, elegant phones for everyone.

Of all the varieties of music which fill our concert halls, theaters, and nightclubs, only jazz is native American music. Symphonies and concertos, the ancestors of movie and television scores as well as of "serious" or "legitimate" electronic music, were first composed in Germany. Musical comedies descended from opera, which was first performed in Italy. And our ever-popular nightclub singers are the musical heirs of the French singers of chansons. The one form of music which did not originate in Europe and which is popular today worldwide is jazz. Jazz was born in New Orleans, the child of the Blacks. It drew on the rhythms as well as the emotionalism of the African music of the Black ancestors, which had been transformed into ragtime and the blues. Improvisation was an indispensable element. Musicians were permitted, in solo performance, plenty of freedom to play in whatever variations just as their creative mood happened to lead them along. But during the Swing era(1930s—1950s), impromptu renditions gave way to arrangement. It was a period when jazz had its widest popular appeal with the big bands that boasted of such outstanding bandleaders as Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and a whole galaxy of top-notch instrumentalists. Rock music in the 1960s is a sociological expression rather than a musical force and the rock arena was seen as a sort of debating forum, a place where ideas clash and crash, where American youngsters struggle to define and redefine their feelings and beliefs. Bob Dylon touched a nerve of disaffection. He spoke of civil rights; nuclear fallout, and loneliness. He spoke of change and of the bewilderment of an older generation. "Something"s happening here," he sang. "You don"t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" Others entered the debate. The Beatles urged peace and piety with humor and maybe a little of help from drugs. Feelings, always a part of any musical statement, were a major subject. Elvis Presley became the pop icon, maybe because he acted out your wildest fantasies, brought out your subdued id, embodied your frustrated teenage spirit, and encouraged your protest against traditional values. In this sense, rock is the music of teenage rebellion. All aspects of music—its exciting offbeat, loudness, self-absorbed lyrics and raving delivery—indicated a defiance of adult authority.

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The Treasury could pocket 20 million a year in extra fines once the country' s speed camera network is expanded. Motoring organizations warned that the【B1】______could become a poll tax on wheels,【B2】______huge number of drivers. There could be many more incidents of vandalism【B3】______cameras. The warnings came 【B4】______a Daily Mail survey found almost all the 23 police forces in England and Wales were either【B5】______to expansion plans or considering【B6】______. Nationwide, the number of speeding tickets is expected to treble,【B7】______ 90 million a year. 【B8】______the scheme, police keep some of the cash from fines to【B9】______the costs of fitting and maintaining extra cameras and【B10】______that existing ones always have film in them. The rest will go to the Treasury. Both Ministers and police insist the scheme is aimed【B11】______at making roads safer. They point to trials in eight areas which cut collisions by a quarter and deaths and serious injuries by【B12】______a half. But motoring organizations fear cameras will be sited on relatively safe【B13】______fast stretches to catch as many drivers as possible. Some forces are also expected to【B14】______the "threshold" speeds at which cameras are【B15】______to the absolute legal minimum-15 mph in a 10 mph limit, and 26 mph in a 20 mph zone. This could encourage drivers to stare at their speedometers instead of concentrating on the road, and【B16】______to more accidents. Sue Nicholson, head of campaigns at the RAC, said, "We don't have a problem with speed cameras 【B17】______. But we do have concerns about【B18】______they are sited. Police risk losing credibility【B19】______motorists if cameras are seen as revenue-raising【B20】______safety devices."

A few common misconceptions. Beauty is only skin-deep. One"s physical assets and liabilities don"t count all that much in a managerial career. A woman should always try to look her best. Over the last 30 years, social scientists have conducted more than 1,000 studies of how we react to beautiful and not-so-beautiful people. The virtually unanimous conclusion: Looks do matter, more than most of us realize. The data suggest, for example, that physically attractive individuals are more likely to be treated well by their patents, sought out as friends, and pursued romantically. With the possible exception of women seeking managerial jobs, they are also more likely to be hired, paid well, and promoted. The scientists" typical experiment works something like this. They give each member of a group—college students, perhaps, or teachers or corporate personnel managers a piece of paper relating an individual"s accomplishments. Attached to the paper is a photograph. While the papers all say exactly the same thing the pictures are different. Some show a strikingly attractive person, some an average looking character, and some an unusually unattractive human being. Group members are asked to rate the individual on certain attributes, anything from personal warmth to the likelihood that he or she will be promoted. Almost invariably, the better looking the person in the picture, the higher the person is rated. In the phrase, borrowed from Sappo, that the social scientists use to sum up the common perception, what is beautiful is good. In business, however, good looks cut both ways for women, and deeper than for men. A Utah State University professor, who is an authority on the subject, explains: in terms of their careers, the impact of physical attractiveness on males is only modest. But its potential impact on females can be tremendous, making it easier, for example, for the more attractive to get jobs where they are in the public eye. On another note, though, there is enough literature now for us to conclude that attractive women who aspire to managerial positions do not get on as well as women who may be less attractive.

Stratford-on-Avon,as we all know,has only one industry—William Shakespeare—but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company(RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare MemorialTheatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway" s Cottage, Shakespeare" s birthplace and the other sights. The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC" s actors, them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It" s all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself an actor(with a beard)and did his share of noise-making. The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus—and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side—don"t usually see the plays, and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight-seeing along with their playgoing. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of the town" s revenue because they spend the night(some of them four or five nights)pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall. The townsfolk don"t see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally . Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive. Anyway, the townsfolk can"t understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy.(The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 percent occupied all year long and this year they"ll do better.)The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low. It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford"s most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike(though they come from all over)—lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a.m..

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B