Europe is desperate to succeed in business. Two years ago, the European Union"s Lisbon summit set a goal of becoming the world"s leading economy by 2010. But success, as any new-age executive coach might tell you, requires confronting the fear of failure. That is why Europe"s approach to bankruptcy urgently needs reform. In Europe, as in the United States, many heavily indebted companies are shutting up shop just as the economy begins to recover. Ironically, the upturn is often the moment when weak firms finally fail. But America"s failures have a big advantage over Europe"s weaklings: their country"s more relaxed approach to bankruptcy. In the United States the Chapter 11 law makes going bust an orderly and even routine process. Firms in trouble simply apply for breathing space from creditors. Managers submit a plan of reorganization to a judge, and creditors decide whether to give it a go or to come up with one of their own. Creditors have a say in whether to keep the firm running, or to liquidate it. If they keep it running, they often end up with a big chunk of equity, if not outright control. But shutting a bust European company is harder in two other ways. First, with no equivalent of Chapter 11, bankruptcy forces companies to stop trading abruptly. That damages the value of the creditors" potential assets, and may also cause havoc for customers. Second, a company that trades across the European Union will find that it has to abide by different bankruptcy laws in the 15 member states, whose courts and administrators may make conflicting and sometimes incompatible stipulations. The absence of provision for negotiations between companies and creditors increases the temptation for government to step in. When governments do not come to the rescue, the lack of clear rules can lead to chaos. As a result of all this, Europe"s teetering firms miss the chance to become more competitive by selling assets to others who might manage them more efficiently. Their sickly American rivals survive, transformed, to sweep the field. An opportunity now exists to think again about Europe"s approach to bankruptcy. The European Union is expected to issue a new directive on the subject in May. Germany has begun to update its insolvency law. And last year Britain produced a white paper saying that a rigid approach to bankruptcy could stifle the growth needed to meet Lisbon"s goals.

When and how much? Those are the questions on the lips of investors, bondholders, and other Federal Reserve watchers. The Fed kept interest rates on hold at its Mar. 19 meeting. But the accompanying statement, in which the Fed abandoned its view that economic weakness was the greatest risk in the outlook, makes it clear that policymakers are thinking about the timing of rate hikes in order to bring monetary policy back to a neutral stance. Even so, there are other factors that argue for some rise in short-term rates—perhaps as early as June, as Wall Street expects. While the Fed"s words lessen the chances of a rate hike at the May meeting, they do not set the criteria for a possible hike at the June 25-26 meeting. The latest data seem to come down on the "evenly mixed" scenario. Businesses are backing off from last year"s feverish pace of stock-cutting, but domestic demand is holding up. Factories are busier in response to rising orders. In particular, the makers of tech equipment are boosting output at a rapid clip. At the same time, the wider trade gap in January suggests that some of the inventory swing is benefiting foreign producers. Keep in mind that a bigger trade gap subtracts from economic growth, but a rise in U.S. imports is necessary to give rise to a global rebound. That will eventually boost exports as well and help to better align monetary policy around the world. The Fed"s decision to shift to a neutral stance was probably made easier by the latest good news on industrial production. Output at factories, utilities, and mines increased 0.4% in February on top of a 0.2% January gain, which was first reported as a 0.1% loss. Manufacturing output rose 0.3% in each month, the best showing since mid-2000. Surprisingly, the long-ailing tech sector is leading the charge. Tech production is growing at a double-digit annual rate in the first quarter, vs. almost no gain in the rest of manufacturing. But even that small rise in nontech manufacturing is a vast improvement from the steep declines of the previous six quarters. Just as tech is fueling the rebound in U.S. factory activity, tech imports are leading the import rise. Incoming shipments of tech goods jumped 14.6% in January, suggesting stronger capital spending. As demand picks up, the Fed will want to remove itself from the equation of economic pluses and minuses. Step One was the shift in its view of the outlook. Step Two will be a series of rate hikes that will bring policy more in line with sustainable economic growth.

Fiercely independent, 90 year-old Vincenzia Rinaldi wouldn"t consider a home health aide or nursing home. So Louis Critelli, her nephew had to coax the widowed homemaker into assisted living, the nation"s growing long-term care option for the elderly. For $1,100 a month, Rinaldi became the reluctant resident of an efficiency unit where she could still simmer her much-loved tomato sauce and where caregivers would make sure she took her pills. Instead, 30 months later, she died. Not because she was old. But because aides at her new home, Loretto Utica Center, one of the modern, hotel-style facilities that have sprouted across the country over the past decade, mistakenly gave her another resident"s prescription medication. That error led to her death, state inspectors concluded. Neither the state nor Loretto told her nephew about the cause of death. Critelli, thinking his aunt had been properly eared for, only learned of the finding years later from USA TODAY. "When they find something blatant like that, you"d think they"d tell the family," the shaken nephew told a reporter after a long pause. A USA TODAY investigation shows that Rinaldi"s death represents the tragic extreme in a pattern of mistakes and violations that lead to scores of injuries and occasional deaths among the estimated 1 million elderly residents of assisted living facilities. The centers are the state-regulated, largely private-pay residences that help seniors with medication and other activities of daily life. In a wide-ranging analysis, USA TODAY reviewed two years of inspection records within 2000-02 for more than 5,300 assisted living facilities in seven states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, New York and Texas. The precise time period varied slightly from state to state. The analysis covered a broad range—from mom-and-pop facilities with just a few residents to corporate-run centers with scores of beds and many levels of care. It is the first time such data have been gathered and analyzed across so many states. The review included less-detailed data from five other states and focused on broad quality-of-care categories to compensate for variations in regulations from state to state. As affluent and middle-class Americans cope with the infirmities of age, many turn to assisted living as an alternative to a nursing home industry that has been periodically plagued by abuse or neglect scandals. Even though assisted living facilities generally don"t provide 24-hour skilled medical care, they increasingly serve seniors who only a decade ago might have been in nursing homes.

As the Senate prepares to vote on legislation to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products, its members would be wise to consult a recent appeals court decision. The decision makes it clear that the tobacco companies have engaged in deceitful and harmful behavior for many decades and cannot be trusted to reform on their own. Regulatory oversight is the best chance to rein them in. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld major elements of a 2006 lower court decision that found big tobacco companies guilty of racketeering and fraud as part of a prolonged campaign to deceive and addict the public. That 1,742-page opinion, rendered by Judge Gladys Kessler, laid out in painstaking detail how the tobacco companies made false statements and suppressed evidence to deny or play down the addictive qualities and the adverse health effects of smoking. Judge Kessler found that the companies manipulated the design of cigarettes to deliver addictive doses of nicotine, falsely denied that secondhand smoke caused disease and falsely represented that light and low-tar cigarettes presented fewer health risks. The appeals court not only upheld her decision as legally sound, it seemed deeply impressed by the "volumes of evidence" and "countless examples of deliberately false statements" underlying many of Judge Kessler's findings. It also upheld some but not all of the marketing restrictions and other requirements she imposed to prevent the companies from making future false claims and engaging in additional fraudulent activities. The companies protested that they should not be subjected to such requirements because they had already agreed to numerous remedies under a settlement agreement with 46 states and the District of Columbia. The appeals panel was rightly unimpressed. It upheld the district court's findings that after the settlement went into effect in 1998, the companies almost immediately began to evade and violate various prohibitions against joint activities and false statements. The House has already voted to give the F.D.A. power to regulate tobacco. Senators, who are getting ready to vote on similar legislation, now have fair warning, if they needed any more, that this is a dishonest industry. It can't be trusted to behave responsibly or even adhere to agreements it has signed. It is time to grant the F.D.A. the power to regulate the content and marketing of tobacco products.

"Flexibility" has become a key metaphor potently vivifying a variety of contemporary life discourses.【F1】 As capital becomes more globalized and national economies increasingly integrated on a global basis, flexibility becomes both a key goal in, and a means of, maintaining and increasing economic competitiveness. Organizations are expected to respond flexibly and rapidly to market changes and a premium is now placed on the need for flexibility not only within workplaces but also between them. Within this context are located interlinking discourses of flexible organizations, flexible workers and a consequent perceived need amongst managers for flexible structures, modes and contents of learning to service these organizations and workers. 【F2】 Given this context, flexible learning can be seen as both a condition of and contributor to changes in the social and economic division of labor, the organization and management of work and production, and the management of workplace culture. Flexible learning is also, from an educational perspective, about the appropriate provisions required to meet such changes. Traditional knowledge canons and pedagogics are increasingly seen as inflexible, challenged and displaced by more flexible contents and modes of learning regarded as more congruent with the flexibility in labor processes, markets, products and patterns of consumption.【F3】 All this has contributed to accelerating the breakdown of the university's monopoly of knowledge legitimation and to a developing consciousness that the university is no longer the only or principal site in which "valid" learning occurs. As well as socio-economic and technological changes, the significance of changes in the cultural climate are an important means of understanding the contemporary workplace. These latter, to a large extent, are both the cause and outcome of postmodernism as a generalized social consciousness that involves the undermining of foundations, centers of authority and canonical knowledge and more decentred forms of social and economic organization. This has contributed to an acute consciousness of change, stimulation of diversity and difference and a consequent need to be ' flexible'. 【F4】 This simultaneous, continuous and rapid change—in both the higher education sector and in contemporary workplaces—is both an outcome and a reinforcement of a perceived urgency for continuous adaptation and flexible approaches to learning. Emerging in several OECD nations including the UK and Australia are university led work-based learning awards. 【F5】 These award programs can be aptly understood as an instance of flexible learning, characteristic of a contemporary situation that increasingly and significantly privileges "learning" as the term preferred over "education". This is manifesting not only flexibility in learning but also a flexibility of learning. This entails a reconfiguration of traditional educational principles of disciplines-based curricula, canonical texts, courses with fixed beginnings and ends, and face-to-face teaching.

White people tend to be nervous of raising the subject of race and education, but are often voluble on the issue if a black person brings it up. So when Trevor Phillips, chair man of Britain"s Commission for Racial Equality, said that there was a particular problem with black boys" performance at school, and that it might be a good idea to educate them apart from other pupils, there was a torrent of comment. Some of it commended his proposal, and some criticized it, but none of it questioned its premise. Everybody accepts that black boys are a problem. On the face of it, it looks as though Mr. Phillips is right. Only 27% of Afro-Caribbean boys get five A-C grades at GCSE, the exams taken by 16-year-olds, compared with 47% of boys as a Whole and 44% of Afro-Caribbean girls. Since, in some subjects, candidates who score less than 50% get Cs, those who don"t reach this threshold have picked up pretty little at school. Mr. Phillips"s suggestion that black boys should be taught separately implies that ethnicity and gender explain their underachievement. Certainly, maleness seems to be a disadvantage at school. That"s true for all ethnic groups: 57% of girls as a whole get five A-Cs, compared with 47% of boys. But it"s not so clear that blackness is at the root of the problem. Among children as a whole, Afro-Caribbeans do indeed perform badly. But Afro Caribbeans tend to be poor. So to get a better idea of whether race, rather than poverty, is the problem, one must control for economic status. The only way to do that, given the limits of British educational statistics, is to separate out the exam results of children who get free school meals: only the poor get free grub. Poor children"s results tell a rather different story. Afro-Caribbeans still do remark ably badly, but whites are at the bottom of the pile. All ethnic minority groups do better than them. Even Bangladeshis, a pretty deprived lot, do twice as well as the natives in their exams; Indians do better still. And absolute numbers of underperforming whites dwarf those of underperforming Afro-Caribbeans: last year, 131,393 of white boys failed to hit the government"s benchmark, compared with 3,151 Afro-Caribbean boys. These figures suggest that, at school at least, black people"s problem is not so much race as poverty. And they undermine the idea of teaching black boys separately, for if poor whites are doing worse than poor blacks, there"s not much argument for singling out blacks for special measures: whites need help just as badly.

Studythefollowingtableaboutthechangesinpeople"sdietandwriteanessayto1)describethetable,2)interpretitsmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwrite160-200wordsneatly.

Last November, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences delivered a stinging verdict on a White House plan to change the rules on how the government"s agencies measure risks, such as those resulting from chemical exposure or from smoking cigarettes. The academy said that a draft risk-assessment bulletin containing the plan was "fundamentally flawed" and ought to be completely withdrawn. Ten months later, the bulletin is still very much alive. After some hesitancy, Susan Dudley, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget(OMB), has indicated that it is still under review and likely to be finalized in some shape or form. Risk assessment is a complex and exacting activity, and the National Academies have played a globally acknowledged role over many years in providing guidance on how it should be done. But the academy panel, chaired by John Ahearne, a former president of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and director of ethics at the scientific society Sigma Xi, said that the bulletin was wrong in attempting to impose a "one-size-fits-all" approach to risk assessment overseen by so political an office as the OMB. It also charged that the bulletin failed to take account of the different approaches appropriate to the various fields of science and engineering, or of risks to particular groups, such as children or pregnant women. Thankfully, Congress is now applying some oversight to the OMB. In May, for example, Senators Jeff Bingaman(Democrat, New Mexico)and Joe Lieberman(Independent, Connecticut)wrote to Rob Portman, the director of the OMB, to seek assurances that it would take the National Academy of Sciences" advice and withdraw the risk-assessment bulletin. In an evasive response, Portman would say only that his office would "not finalize the bulletin without revision"—indicating, in effect, that it is planning to press ahead with the exercise in a revised form. Now the senators have written to the OMB again, asking its officials to state by next week exactly how they intend to proceed, given the devastating critique issued by the academy panel last year. "We began our review of the draft bulletin thinking we would only be recommending changes," said Ahearne at the time. "But the more we dug into it, the more we realized that from a scientific and technical standpoint, it should be withdrawn altogether. " The White House specifically went out and sought this advice: why won"t it take it?

Our daily existence is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night. We call them work and play. We work many hours a day and we allow the necessary minimum for such activities as eating and shopping. (46) The rest we spend in various activities which are known as recreations, an elegant word which disguises the fact that we usually do not even play in our hours of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive enjoyment or entertainment. We need to make, therefore, a hard-and-fast distinction not only between work and play but, equally, between active play and passive entertainment. (47) It is, I suppose, the decline of active play—of amateur sport—and the enormous growth of purely receptive entertainment which have given rise to a sociological interest in the problem. If the greater part of the population, instead of indulging in sport, spend their hours of leisure "viewing" television programs, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique. In addition, we have yet to trace the mental and moral consequences of prolonged diet of sentimental or sensational spectacles on the screen. (48) There is, if we are optimistic, the possibility that the diet is too thin and unnourishing to have much permanent effect on anybody. Nine films out of ten seem to leave absolutely no impression on the mind or imagination of those who have seen them. (49) It is only when entertainment is active, participated in, practiced, that it can properly be called play, and as such it is a natural use of leisure. In that sense play stands in contrast to work, and is usually regarded as an activity that alternates with work. Work itself is not a single concept. We say quite generally that we work in order to make a living. Some of us work physically, tilling the land, minding the machines, digging the coal; others work mentally, keeping accounts, inventing machines, teaching and preaching, managing and governing. (50) There does not seem to be any factor common to all these diverse occupations, except that they consume our time, and leave us little leisure.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points)You are going to read a list of headings and a text about Managing the Dell Way.A. No ExcuseB. Worry About saving Money, Not saving FaceC. Leave the Ego at the DoorD. No victory LapsE. No Easy TargetsF. Be Direct Michael Dell revolutionized the PC biz with a direct-sales model that keeps costs low and customer satisfaction high. That was 19 years ago, yet Dell is still outdistancing rivals. Credit his management principles: (41)______. It"s an attitude, not just a business model. When the CEO talks, he doesn"t mince words, and workers shouldn"t either. They"re supposed to question everything and challenge their bosses. And no one is exempt. In Dell"s own annual 360-degree review, workers complained of his detached style, so he has pledged to be more emotionally engaged. (42)______. Dell believes in accountability above all else: "There"s no "the dog ate my homework" at Dell," he warns. A manager must quickly admit a problem, confront it, and never be defensive. Dell ruthlessly exposes weak spots during grueling quarterly reviews. And execs know they had better fix the problem before the next meeting. (43)______. To Dell, celebration breeds complacency. He once rejected an idea to display Dell artifacts in the company"s lobby because "museums are looking at the past." When they succeed, managers must make due with a short e-mail or a quick pat on the back. The founder s mantra: Celebrate for a nanosecond, then move on." (44)______. The company favors "two-in-a-box" management, in which two executives share responsibility for a product, a region, or a company function. That forces them to work as a team, playing off each other"s strengths and watching out for each other"s weaknesses. (45)______. It"s not enough to rack up profits or turbocharge growth—execs must do both. Miss a profit goal, and you"re not cutting costs fast enough. Overshoot it, and you"re leaving sales on the table. In the past year, the server, storage, and networking chiefs were reassigned, despite solid results. "Pity the folks who didn"t use all the bullets in their gun "says a former exec. Unlike its rivals, Dell is quick to pull the plug on disappointing new ventures. The latest: Despite a year of work and extensive news coverage, Michael Dell spiked a plan to put e-commerce kiosks in Sears stores after just four were installed. Instead, kiosks are going into public areas in malls.

The methods of testing a person' s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. After all these years, educationists have still failed to device anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the skill of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person' s true ability and aptitude. As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none . That is because so much depends on them. They are markers of success or of failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedoms. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress. The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge' s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner's. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person ' s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: I were a teenage drop-out and now I am a teenage millionaire.

On 5th December, 1945, five bombers from a United States Naval Air Station left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a routine training flight over the Atlantic Ocean, east of Florida. A short time later the base received radio messages from the bombers (Flight 19) saying that they were lost. Then radio contact was broken. The flight didn"t return, and the planes that were sent to look for the bombers also fail to return. A massive search operation was mounted, but no trace of the missing planes or their pilots was found. They had simply and inexplicably disappeared. This event was sufficient to confirm in many people"s minds that the so-called "Devil"s Triangle", or "Bermuda Triangle"—a section of the North Atlantic bounded roughly by Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico—really was haunted, and in some mysterious way was responsible for the loss of ships and planes. In all, in this area (3,900,000 square kilometres) of open sea, more than 50 ships and 20 planes have mysteriously disappeared. These include the U.S. Navy ship Cyclops in 1918 and the merchant vessel Marine Sulphur Queen in 1963. In the same year two U.S. Air Force KC 135 planes also disappeared without trace. In other words, it is not only small boats and planes that have vanished in the area, but the most modern and best equipped too. Perhaps the most dramatic shipping loss in the area was the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine Scorpion. This vessel, like others before her, disappeared without explanation in May, 1968. Some months later she was found on the bottom of the ocean, but the reason for her loss has not been properly explained. Many theories about the area have been proposed, and whole books have been written on the subject. It has been suggested, for example, that the disappearances are caused by unknown magnetic forces from outer space or from the bottom of the sea. There is also a theory about underwater volcanic action that affects shipping, and another that suggests the lost continent of Atlantis, which according to legend lies somewhere beneath the Atlantic, is involved. However, others state that it is more likely that there is nothing special about this imaginary triangle of water, and that it is a product of Sensational Journalism. After all, ships, Boats and planes are lost at sea in all parts of the world due to weather, mechanical failure or human error, and several of the losses are mysterious. The Marie Celeste, an American cargo boat, for example, was found in 1872 off the coast of Portugal in perfect order but with no crew on board. Their disappearances has never been explained. Did some of them mutiny and then escape? Were all the crew killed by some unknown agent? Did they try to escape from some danger or other? We shall probably never know. However, regardless of the theories which exist about the "Bermuda Triangle", ships, boats and planes continue to travel daily through the area with great frequency, and it has not been proved that a higher percentage of accidents and losses occur in this section of the North Atlantic than in other areas of the world"s oceans.

Hurry up or you will miss your train.

In a quiet courtroom tucked away in a federal building here, a titanic battle is competing free speech against government efforts to protect children from the seemingly limitless pages of pornography in cyberspace. Titled simply enough, the American Library Association v. the United States of American, the trial will determine the constitutionality of the Children"s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). (46) Passed by Congress in December 2000, the law requires all libraries that receive federal technology funds to install "protection measures" on all computers that have access to the Internet. In other words, they must have blocking software to prevent youngsters from accidentally, or even intentionally, getting a peek at the multitude of hard-core sites available with just a few well-placed clicks on a computer terminal. To free-speech advocates from librarians to the American Civil Liberties Union, it"s a well-intentioned but dangerous assault on America"s First Amendment freedoms. (47) They argue that even the best blocking software is so flawed that it would also limit adult access to a wide array of constitutionally protected speech. "It"s very easy to suggest that we all believe in the First Amendment, we just want to keep our kids safe," says John Berry, president of the American Library Association in Chicago. (48) "But as soon as you start making those kinds of concessions, you began to undermine one of our founding principles, and you can"t sacrifice those kinds of things for a little temporary security." Supporters of the Internet filtering law argue that the First Amendment has nothing to do with CIPA because it"s nothing more than a funding bill. If libraries have objections, they simply don"t have to accept the federal funds upon which the blocking software"s use is conditioned. There"s the whole issue of the blocking software itself. Does it work or not? (49) One study of more than 7,000 websites that had been blocked by the various software companies found that between 65 and 70 percent of the sites were "deemed to have potential value" to a library user. As to worries about over blocking, the lawns supporters note the law allows adults to ask a librarian to turn off the blocking software. (50) But the librarians argue that the mandatory filter does take discretion away from librarians and their communities, which pay for about 80 percent of the average library"s budget, and gives it to the federal government. After this three-judge panel rules, one side or the other is expected to file an appeal, and that will go directly to the Supreme Court.

Transparency has hit the headlines. In the wake of evidence that many research findings are not reproducible, the scientific community has launched initiatives to increase data sharing, transparency and open critique. As with any new development, there are unintended consequences. Many measures that can improve science —shared data, post-publication peer review and public engagement on social media —can be turned against scientists. Endless information requests, complaints to researchers' universities, online harassment, distortion of scientific findings and even threats of violence: these were all recurring experiences shared by researchers from a broad range of disciplines at a Royal Society-sponsored meeting last year that we organized to explore this topic. Orchestrated and well-funded harassment campaigns against researchers working in climate change and tobacco control are well documented. Some hard-line opponents to other research, such as that on nuclear fallout, vaccination, chronic fatigue syndrome or genetically modified organisms, although less resourced, have employed identical strategies. Such attacks place scientists in a difficult position. Good researchers do not turn away when confronted by alternative views. However, their openness can be exploited by opponents who are keen to stall inconvenient research. When people object to science because it challenges their beliefs or jeopardizes their interests, they are rarely committed to informed debate. The progress of research demands transparency. But as scientists work to boost rigour, they risk making science more vulnerable to attacks. Awareness of tactics is paramount. Scientists should ignore critics who are abusive or illogical and those that make the same points repeatedly despite refutations. Internet trolling has been associated with sadism and psychopathy. Engagement with such bad-faith actors can endanger scientists' well-being in a way that university ethics committees would never condone in research on human subjects. All who participate in post-publication review should identify themselves. The drawbacks of anonymity ( its encouragement of bad behaviour) outweigh its advantages (for example, it allows junior people to criticize senior academics without fear of redress). What's more, the scientific community should not indulge in games of 'gotcha' (intentionally turning small errors against a person). Minor corrections and clarifications after publication should not be a reason to stigmatize fellow researchers. Scientific publications should be seen as "living documents," with corrigenda an accepted — if unwelcome — part of scientific progress. Similar attention must be devoted to stressors and threats to science that arise in response to research that is considered inconvenient. The same institutions and bodies that have scrutinized science must also start a conversation about how to protect it.

LoveIsLimitlessWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Don"t talk: your cell phone may be eavesdropping. Thanks to recent developments in "spy phone" software, a do-it-yourself spook can now wirelessly transfer a wiretapping program to any mobile phone. The programs are inexpensive, and the transfer requires no special skill. The would-be spy needs to get his hands on your phone to press keys authorizing thedownload,but ittakes just a few minutes—about the time needed to download a ringtone. This new generation of user-friendly spy-phone software has become widely available in the last year—and it confers stunning powers. The latest programs can silently turn on handset microphones even when no call is being made, allowing a spy to listen to voices in a room halfway around the world. Targets are none the wiser neither call logs nor phone bills show records of the secretly transmitted data. More than 200 companies sell spy-phone software online, at prices as low as $50. Vendors are loath to release sales figures. But some experts claim that a surprising number of people carry a mobile that has been compromised, usually by a spouse, lover, parent or co-worker. Many employees, experts say, hope to discover a supervisor"s dishonest dealings and tip off the top boss anonymously. Max Maiellaro, head of Agata Christie Investigation, a private-investigation firm in Milan, estimates that 3 percent of mobiles in France and Germany are tapped, and about 5 percent or so in Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain. James Atkinson, a spy-phone expert at Granite Island Group, a security consultancy in Gloucester, Massachusetts, puts the number of tapped phones in the U.S. at 3 percent. Even if these numbers are inflated, clearly many otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing to break wiretapping laws. Spyware thrives on iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smart phones because they have ample processing power. In the United States, the spread of GSM networks, which are more vulnerable than older technologies, has also enlarged the pool of potential victims. Spyware being developed for law-enforcement agencies will accompany a text message and automatically install itself in the victim"s phone when the message is opened, according to an Italian developer who declined to be identified. One worry is that the software will find its way into the hands of criminals. The current embarrassment is partly the result of decisions by Apple, Microsoft and Research In Motion (producer of the BlackBerry) to open their phones to outside application-software developers, which created the opening for spyware. Antivirus and security programs developed for computers require too much processing power, even for smart phones. Although security programs are available for phones, by and large users haven"t given the threat much thought. If the spying keeps spreading, that may change soon.

Sometimes the biggest changes in society are the hardest to spot precisely because they are hiding in plain sight. It could well be that way with wireless communications. Something that people think of as just another technology is beginning to show signs of changing lives, culture, politics, cities, jobs, even marriages dramatically. In particular, it will usher in a new version of a very old idea: nomadism. Futurology is a dangerous business, and it is true that most of the important arguments about mobile communications at the moment are to do with technology or regulation—bandwidth, spectrum use and so on. Yet it is worth jumping ahead and wondering what the social effects will be, for two reasons. First, the broad technological future is pretty clear: there will be ever faster cellular networks, and many more gadgets to connect to these networks. Second, the social changes are already visible: parents on beaches waving at their children while typing furtively on their BlackBerrys; entrepreneurs discovering they don"t need offices after all. Everybody is doing more on the move. Wireless technology is surely not just an easier-to-use phone. The car divided cities into work and home areas; wireless technology may mix them up again, with more people working in suburbs or living in city centers. Traffic patterns are beginning to change again: the rush hours at 9am and 5pm are giving way to more varied patterns, with people going backwards and forwards between the office, home and all sorts of other places throughout the day. Already, architects are redesigning offices and universities, more flexible spaces for meeting people, fewer private enclosures for sedentary work. Will it be a better life? In some ways, yes. Digital nomadism will liberate ever more knowledge workers from the cubicle prisons as depicted in Mr. Dilbert"s cartoons. But the old tyranny of place could become a new tyranny of time, as nomads who are "always on" all too often end up— mentally—anywhere but here. As for friends and family, permanent mobile connectivity could have the same effect as nomadism: it might bring you much closer to family and friends, but it may make it harder to bring in outsiders. Sociologists fret about constant e-mailers and texters losing the everyday connections to casual acquaintances or strangers sitting next to them in the cafe or on the Bus. The same tools have another dark side, turning everybody into a fully equipped paparazzo. Some fitness clubs have started banning mobile phones near the treadmills and showers lest exercising people find themselves pictured, flabby and sweaty, on some website. As in the desert, so in the city: nomadism promises the heaven of new freedom, but it also signals the hell of constant surveillance by the tribe.

[A]Indeed,suchcollaborationsattheinstitutionallevelmustbeginwithstrongerinteractionbetweentheofficesthathaveoversightofresearchandinternationalaffairs.Universityresearchandinternationalofficescanpartneronincentivesandproceduralchanges(e.g.internationaltravelawards,promotionandtenureguidelinesthatencourageoutreach,etc.)aswellaslobbyfederalagenciestoprovidemorefundingformulti-institutionalcollaborativeprojects.Theseofficescanalsohelpstrategicallymapandforecastemergingresearchfields;identifygapsinexpertise,instrumentation,andresources;findforeignpartnersthatcancomplementinstitutionalprioritiesandstrengths,includingsharingofhigh-technologyequipment;facilitateinterdisciplinaryconnections;andpromotetargeteddomesticandinternationalinstitutional,multi-disciplinary,andmultilaterallinkages.[B]Forexample,newgenerationinfluenzavaccinesarosefromcollaborationsbetweenUSandJapanesepharmaceuticalcompanies;informationtechnologyandcybersecuritytoolsweredevelopedbytheUSDepartmentofDefensewithinternationalallies;andcleanenergyandlowcarbontechnologiesfromjointworkbyaconsortiumofUSandChineseuniversities,nationallaboratories,andprivatesectorcompanies.[C]InorderforUSresearchuniversitiestoremaincompetitiveintoday'sknowledge-and-innova-tion-drivenglobaleconomy,itisessentialtoexpandresearchandscholarlycollaborationsandforgepartnershipsinternationally.Inrecentyears,thevalueofinternationalcollaborationhasbeenincreasinglyemphasizedbyfederalagencies,includingtheNationalScienceFoundation(NSF),whichnowencouragesmorecross-bordercooperationinscience,technology,andeducation.[D]ThedecreaseinUS-basedglobalcollaborationsshouldconcernourscienceandtechnologypolicymakersandinstitutionalleaders.Suchworldlypartnershipsareessentialforproducingthebestscienceandremainingcompetitiveintheglobalscientificcommunity.Anyoneuniversitycannotsustainbroadexpertiseandinfrastructureinalldisciplinaryareas.Inadditiontodomesticcollaborations,transnationalpartnershipscanalsoprovideopportunitiesforgreaterresearchsynergiesandcomplementarities.Thesecollaborationsalsoincreasethebreadthofscientificinquiryandhaveacceleratedthecommercializationofresearcharoundtheglobe.[E]Someuniversitiesalreadyoffersuchservices,andthesupporthasresultedinnewinternationalresearchtravelawards,targetedworkshops,intra-institutionalandtransnationalinterdisciplinarycollaborations.Clearly,newuniversityorganizationalandoperationalinstritutionsthatpromoteinternationalcollaborationcanhelpadvanceresearchproductivityandimpact,andareneededtocomplementnationalandinternationalinitiatives.[F]However,the2012NSFreporthighlightedsomeconcerns.Asindicatedinthereport,twodirectmeasuresofinternationalcollaborationarecoauthorshipofresearchpublicationswithforeignresearchersandco-patentswithforeigninventors.Overthepastdecade,thenumberofpaperspublishedbyUSresearcherswithinternationalcollaboratorshasremainedrelativelyflat,increasingonlyat1-2percenteachyear.Furthermore,thetotalnumberofpatentsfiledjointlyunderthePatentCooperationTreatybyUSandforeigninventorsin2010was5,440,a6percentdecreaseovertheprevious3years.[G]Withoutadoubt,strongrelationshipsbetweenindividualresearchersarethemostcommonandstrongestindicatorofproductivity.Scientistsidentifycolleagueswithwhomtheywouldliketowork,andthesefriendshipstranslateintolong-termcollaborations,studentexchanges,andscientificandcreativeoutputs.Forexample,amongWSU'stop20researchers,16haveextensiveinternationalcollaborations,with32percentoftheirpeer-reviewedpublicationsbeinginternationallycoauthored.Butuniversitiescanalsoplayabiggerroleinpromotinginternationalresearchpartnerships.Order:

Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, spoke of the "unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions". Integrity had collapsed, she argued, because of a collective acceptance that the only "sorting mechanism" in society should be profit and the market. But "it's us, human beings, we the people who create the society we want, not profit". Driving her point home, she continued: "It's increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose, of a moral language within government, media or business could become one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism and freedom." This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International, she thought, making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking. As the hacking trial concludes—finding guilty one ex-editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, and finding his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, innocent of the same charge— the wider issue of dearth of integrity still stands. Journalists are known to have hacked the phones of up to 5,500 people. This is hacking on an industrial scale, as was acknowledged by Glenn Mulcaire, the man hired by the News of the World in 2001 to be the point person for phone hacking. Others await trial. This long story still unfolds. In many respects, the dearth of moral purpose frames not only the fact of such widespread phone hacking but the terms on which the trial took place. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, how little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired how the stories arrived. The core of her successful defence was that she knew nothing. In today' s world, it has become normal that well-paid executives should not be accountable for what happens in the organisations that they run. Perhaps we should not be so surprised. For a generation, the collective doctrine has been that the sorting mechanism of society should be profit. The words that have mattered are efficiency, flexibility, shareholder value, business-friendly, wealth generation, sales, impact and, in newspapers, circulation. Words degraded to the margin have been justice, fairness, tolerance, proportionality and accountability. The purpose of editing the News of the World was not to promote reader understanding, to be fair in what was written or to betray any common humanity. It was to ruin lives in the quest for circulation and impact. Ms Brooks may or may not have had suspicions about how her journalists got their stories, but she asked no questions, gave no instruction—nor received traceable, recorded answers.