The molecules of carbon dioxide in the Earth"s atmosphere affect the heat balance of the Earth by acting as a one-way screen. (1)_____ these molecules allow radiation at visible wavelengths, where most of the energy of sunlight is concerned, to pass (2)_____, they absorb some of the longer-wave length, infrared emissions radiated from the Earth"s surface, radiation that would (3)_____ be transmitted back into space. For the Earth to maintain a constant average temperature, such emissions from the planet must (4)_____ incoming solar radiation. If there were no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, heat would (5)_____ from the Earth much more easily. Today, (6)_____, the potential problem is too much carbon dioxide. Could the increase in carbon dioxide (7)_____ a global rise in average temperature, and could such a rise have serious (8)_____ for human society? Mathematical models that allow us to calculate the rise in temperature as a function of the increase (9)_____ that the (10)_____ is probably yes. One mathematical model (11)_____ that doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide would raise the global mean surface temperature by 2.5℃. This model assumes that the atmosphere"s relative humidity remains constant and the temperature decreases with altitude at a (12)_____ of 6.5℃ per kilometer. The assumption of constant relative humidity is important, because water vapor in the atmosphere is another (13)_____ absorber or radiation at infrared wavelengths. Because warm air can hold more (14)_____ than cool air, the relative humidity will be constant (15)_____ the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases (16)_____ the temperature rises. (17)_____, more infrared radiation would be absorbed and reradiated (18)_____ to the Earth"s surface. The resultant warming at the surface could be expected to melt snow and ice, (19)_____ the Earth"s reflectivity. More solar radiation would be absorbed, (20)_____ to a further increase in temperature.

Sending a Gift Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: You want to send your friend Murphy a gift to thank him for helping you with your study. Now write him a letter about your gift. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

You are going to read a text about tips of how to make a good speech, followed by a list of examples and explanations. Choose the best example or explanation from the list for each numbered subheading. There is one extra example which you do not need to use. Before you speak to any audience, you should learn as much about its members as possible. Only in that way can you best adapt the level of your language and the content of your talk to your listeners. (41) Speaking to someone you know well. Where are you likely to speak? Certainly, in this class you"ll give several talks, and since you know most, ff not all, of the students, you should face no major problems in adapting your approach to them. Another speaking possibility exists in your workplace. A third speaking possibility exists in any organization (social, cultural, athletic, and so on) that you belong to. You may be asked to speak at the next meeting or at the annual banquet. Here again, you know the people involved, their background, their education level, and their attitudes? and that"s a tremendous advantage for you. Since we"re upbeat and positive in this course, we"ll assume that you"ve given successful talks under all three circumstances, and with this course under your belt, you can do it again. Since good speakers are hard to find and word about them travels fast, suppose that one day you get an invitation to speak to an organization in which you don"t know a soul. What do you do now? If you feel able to handle the topic you"re asked to speak on, accept this rare challenge. Here"s where audience analysis comes into play. Be sure to ask the person who invited you for information on the members, information that encompasses a broad spectrum, such as in the following areas. (42) How old are your listeners? (43) Sex composition of your listeners. (44) Interest in topic. (45) Interests or hobbies of the listeners.A. If you"re invited to speak to a women"s or men"s organization, you know the answer to this question at once. Quite often, however, audiences are mixed fairly evenly, although at times one sex may predominate.B. Do members of your prospective audience spend evenings watching TV movies and drinking beer at a local tavern, or do they read the Harvard Classics and attend concerts of Beethoven and Mozart? Do they play bingo and 21, or do they pursue the questions the intriguing intricacies of contract bridge and chess? Answers to these questions can help you choose the most appropriate material and language for your audience. Your choices can be crucial in determining the success or failure of your presentation.C. Are the members recent college graduates, senior citizens, or business executives in midcareer? Just remember, age exerts a powerful impact on people"s attitudes, values and motivations.D. For example, your department manager may ask you to explain and demonstrate a procedure to some fellow employee. Or she may select you to address your department on behalf of the local blood donor drive. In both speech situations—in class and on the job—you"re familiar with your audience; you speak their language; you have things in common with them.E. Are you aware of the educational background of your audience? How many of them have doctoral degrees, master degrees or bachelor degrees? This will decide what kind of language you should adopt and how much they can understand.F. Are the members of the organization interested in the topic or are they required to attend regardless of their interest? If the latter is true, what types of material will most likely pique their curiosity?

The field of development economics is concerned with the causes of underdevelopment and with policies that may accelerate the rate of growth of per capita income.【F1】 While these two concerns are related to each other, it is possible to devise policies that are likely to accelerate growth without fully understanding the causes of underdevelopment. Studies of both the causes of underdevelopment and of policies and actions that may accelerate development are undertaken for a variety of reasons.【F2】 There are those who are concerned with the developing countries on humanitarian grounds; that is, with the problem of helping the people of these countries to attain certain minimum material standards of living in terms of such factors as food, clothing, shelter, and nutrition. For them, low per capita income is the measure of the problem of poverty in a material sense. The aim of economic development is to improve the material standards of living by raising the absolute level of per capita incomes. Raising per capita incomes is also a staled objective of policy of the governments of all developing countries. For policymakers and economists attempting to achieve their governments " objectives, therefore, an understanding of economic development, especially in its policy dimensions, is important.【F3】 Finally, there are those who are concerned with economic development either because they believe it is what people in developing countries want or because they believe that political stability can be assured only with satisfactory rates of economic growth. These motives are not mutually exclusive. Those who are concerned with political stability tend to see the low per capita incomes of the developing countries in relative terms; that is, in relation to the high per capita incomes of the developed countries.【F4】 For them, even if a developing country is able to improve its material standards of living through a rise in the level of its per capita income, it may still be faced with the more intractable subjective problem of the discontent created by the widening gap in the relative levels between itself and the richer countries. 【F5】 Although there was once in development economics a debate as to whether raising living standards or reducing the relative gap in living standards was the true desideratum of policy, experience during the 1960-80 period convinced most observers that developing countries could, with appropriate policies, achieve sufficiently high rates of growth both to raise their living standards fairly rapidly and to begin closing the gap.

Some publications that rank schools and colleges say they do it to promote accountability; others say they do it to provide information to consumers. Those of us who work with students and parents have grave doubts about these motivations, doubts that were confirmed when The Wall Street Journal" s reporter told one of us that "this type of story gets a lot of readers". Indeed. Our belief is that rankings exist not because they help, but because they sell. The reality we see every day is that the choice of a college is a very personal matter, one that takes into account many different factors that all combine, sometimes mysteriously, into what we can only characterize as the right "fit. " Rankings never help us find that fit, for they misuse data in suggesting one can capture a general reality for all applicants, failing to understand the great differences we see between individual human beings trying to make sense of their own situations amid a wide array of options. If there is any type of ranking to be developed, it can only be a personal one, done based on one"s own unique set of criteria. No one ranking "fits" all. Far more important than where one goes to college is how well one engages with the opportunities afforded by that college, how much one learns at that college, and how well one is prepared for further study and adult life"s real challenges. Some highly ranked places turn out tragically wrong for students who manage to get in but find the burden of additional competition just too much to bear, while less-publicized colleges turn out to be powerfully positive places for young people we know. Each year, especially in the selective, college-preparatory, tuition-conscious schools where we work, we see students and parents who are vulnerable to the rankings-driven reasoning that they must matriculate at a certain set of places; otherwise, goes the conventional wisdom, they will have failed at someone else"s notion of what constitutes early adult success. We understand the desire to simplify the complex, to quantify the qualitative, to post a Top 10 or a ranking to satisfy the market-driven need to sell ad space an publications. But we reject doing so when it comes to colleges and schools. We who counsel young people and their parents would urge that such ratings and rankings concern matters of entertainment, not the educations of individual human beings who need more real help from the adults in their lives.

Can Wealth Bring Happiness?

It's almost become a cliché to note that women ate still under-earning compared to men in the workforce. But maybe this reality shouldn't keep surprising us. The recent headlines miss an important part of the work-life balance story: plenty of working mothers are earning less than men because they want the sort of jobs and working arrangements which indeed pay less. Current labor statistics bear out these fantasies: women are twice as likely as men to work part-time even though they are also more likely to be college-educated and thus more marketable. We spill a lot of ink trying to account for this seeming failure: corporate America doesn't do enough for families (undoubtedly true). Government doesn't do enough for families. (Ditto.) But there's a certain condescension in these explanations, as if we can't quite believe a woman knows her own mind. Even in countries like the Netherlands, with a tightly woven safety net and a high degree of gender equality, the majority of mothers still opt for more time at home with their families. And why not? Maybe it's time to stop searching for societal ills or individual pathologies to explain this fact. The costs of being a part-time worker can be high: lower pay and a sense of diminished value or exclusion, risk of lay-offs, as well as missed opportunities for promotions and praise. But these negatives may in fact be exaggerated or at the least offset by the equivalent downsides to full-time employment. The Pew poll found no difference at all on job satisfaction between full and part-time workers. The benefits of part-time work are substantial. Parents can be wage earners and role models without, literally, losing sleep. They can preserve most of their professional identity and work skills but still provide support to a wider group of dependents than would be possible with a full-time schedule, and without going insane in die process. Every family decision doesn't have to be contested: who's cooking, who's "on duty" tonight, who gets to take the business trip and who is left behind to pick up the kids. These complexities don't disappear with part-time work, of course, but they're just a whole lot easier to navigate. And you can forego some of the expenses that full-time workers need to offset their fatigue and time crunch: take-out dinners and house cleaning, for example, or buying a second car in lieu of public transportation. It's true that the trend toward part-time, benefit-free employment can be financially ruinous to individual workers. One fifth of the country's jobs are part-time, and many are low-skilled, dead end positions. But it's easy to overlook how unrewarding full-time employment can be for many people, too—especially when the researchers and reporters and pundits who write about workforce trends tend to have fascinating, flexible jobs with decent pay. We should stop limiting what women and men value by insisting that everyone has the same work aspirations. Some of us don't want to spend the most productive and precious years of our lives trapped at the water cooler with our 'work spouses,' and we're willing to pay the price.

When one of his employees phoned in sick last year, Scott McDonald, CEO of Monument Security in Sacramento, California., decided to investigate. He had already informed his staff of 400 security guards and patrol drivers that he was installing Xora, a software program that tracks workers" whereabouts through GPS technology on their company cell phones.A Web-based "geo-fence" aroundwork territories would alert the boss if workers strayed or even drove too fast. It also enabled him to route workers more efficiently. So when McDonald logged on, the program told him exactly where his worker was—and it wasn"t in bed with the sniffles. "How come you"re eastbound on 80 heading to Reno right now if you"re sick?" asked the boss. There was a long silence—the sound of a job ending—followed by, "You got me." Learn that truth, and learn it well: what you do at work is the boss"s business. Xora is just one of the new technologies from a host of companies that have sprung up in the past two years peddling products and service—software, GPS, video and phone surveillance, even investigators—that let managers get to know you really well. "Virtually nothing you do at work on a computer can"t be monitored," says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, which advocates workplace privacy. Nine out of 10 employers observe your electronic behavior, according to the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College.A study by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute found 76% of employers watch you surf the Web and 36% track content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. You can"t really blame companies for watching our Web habits, since 45% of us admit that surfing is our favorite time waster, according to a joint survey by Salary.com and AOL.A Northeast technology company found that several employees who frequently complained of overwork spent all day on MyS-pace.com. Businesses argue that their snooping is justified. Not only are they trying to guard trade secrets and intellectual property, but they also must ensure that workers comply with government regulations, such as keeping medical records and credit-card numbers private. And companies are liable for allowing a hostile work environment—say, one filled with porn-filled computer screens—that may lead to lawsuits. "People write very loosely with their e-mails, but they can unintentionally reach thousands, like posters throughout a work site," says Charles Spearman of diversity-management consultants Tucker Spearman & Associates. "In an investigation, that e-mail can be one of the most persuasive pieces of evidence."

World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline. For years, a handful of petroleum geologists, including me, have been predicting peak oil before 2007, but in an era of cheap oil, few people listened. Lately, several major oil companies seem to have got the message. One of Chevron"s ads says the world is currently burning 2 bbl. of oil for every barrel of new oil discovered. Exxon Mobil says 1987 was the last year that we found more oil worldwide than we burned. Shell reports that it will expand its Canadian oil-sands operations but elsewhere will focus on finding natural gas and not oil. It sounds as though Shell is kissing the oil business goodbye. M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist, correctly predicted in 1956 that oil production in the U.S. would peak in the early 1970s—the moment now known as "Hubbert"s Peak", I believe world oil production is about to reach a similar peak. Finding oil is like fishing in a pond. After several months, you notice that you are not catching as many fish. You could buy an expensive fly rod-new technology. Or you could decide that you have al ready caught most of the fish in the pond. Although increased oil prices (which ought to spur investment in oil production) and new technology help, they can"t work magic. Recent discoveries are modest at best. The oil sands in Canada and Venezuela are extensive, hut the Canadian operations to convert the deposits into transportable oil consume, large amounts of natural gas, which is in short supply. And technology cannot eliminate the difficulty Hubbert identified: the rate of producing oil depends on the fraction of oil that has not yet been produced. In other words, the fewer the fish in the pond, the harder it is to catch one. Peak production occurs at the halfway point. Based on the available data about new oil fields, there are 2,013 billion bbl. of total producible oil. Adding up the oil produced from the birth of the industry until today, we will reach the dreaded 1,006.5 billion bbl. halfway mark late this year. For two years, I"ve been predicting that world oil production would reach its peak on Thanksgiving Day 2005. Today, with high oil prices pushing virtually all oil producers to pull up every barrel they can sweat out of the ground, I think it might happen even earlier.

A moment"s drilling by the dentist may make us nervous and upset. Many of us cannot stand pain. To avoid the pain of a drilling that may last perhaps a minute or two, we demand the "needle"—a shot of novocaine(奴佛卡因)—that deadens the nerves around the tooth. Now it"s true that the human body has developed its millions of nerves to be highly aware of what goes on both inside and outside of it. This helps us adjust to the world. Without our nerves—and our brain, which is a bundle of nerves—we wouldn"t know what"s happening. But we pay for our sensitivity. We can feel pain when the slightest thing is wrong with any part of our body. The history of torture is based on the human body being open to pain. But there is a way to handle pain. Look at the Indian fakir(行僧) who sits on a bed of nails. Fakirs can put a needle right through an arm, and feel no pain; This ability that some humans have developed to handle pain should give us ideas about how the mind can deal with pain. The big thing in withstanding pain is our attitude toward it. If the dentist says, "This will hurt a little, it helps us to accept the pain". By staying relaxed, and by treating the pain as an interesting sensation, we can handle the pain without falling apart. After all; although pain is an unpleasant sensation, it is still a sensation, and sensations are the stuff of life.

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about the relationship between women and business. Choose the most suit able heading from the list for each numbered paragraph. The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. Every year, Fortune magazine celebrates women in the top echelons of corporate America by publishing a list Of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. Their titles are impressive—CEO, chairman, president—and photos portray them as polished and confident. What an inspiration they could be to the young women following them. (41) But what if those young women don"t aspire to a comer office? A week after the Fortune list appeared on newsstands, a major national study of teenagers revealed a surprising finding-while 97 percent of girls polled expect to work to support themselves or their families, only 9 percent want careers in business. Among boys, the figure is 15 percent. "Girls of this generation are quite ambitious, which is exciting," says Fiona Wilson, a professor at Simmons College School of Management and an author of the study, which polled more than 3,000 girls and 1,200 boys in middle school and high school. She finds it encouraging that half the girls prefer professions such as doctors, lawyers, and architects. "We"re not going back to the stereotype of their mothers-generation, where women were thinking about being nurses and teachers." (42) But why do girls shy away from business? The number of women applying to business schools has dropped off. By contrast, women make up half the students in medical and law schools. (43) Unlike boys in the study, who say they want to earn a lot of money, girls place great importance on helping others and improving society. But they don"t see connections between those goals and business, which they equate with finance and numbers. And they"re less confident than boys about their business related skills. Teen girls also place a high value on having enough time to spend with family and friends. (44) In describing business, Professor Wilson says, "they used many images involving stress-images about dads having to make conference calls on vacation, and moms always being tired when they got home, or complaining about their bad bosses." (45) As it happens, mothers are the primary source of career advice for daughters. But parents goals are often less well defined for girls than for boys. "Mothers express their hope and aspiration for daughters in terms of wanting them to be happy and have a lot of options, but they don"t translate that directly into business opportunities," says Connie Duckworth, head of The Committee of 200, a national women"s business leadership group that commissioned the study. Wilson Calls the lack of women at the top "alarming", adding that the study doesn"t offer a lot of hope that future generations will swell the ranks of women in leadership positions.A. Titles of the echelonB. Images used in describing businessC. Women student in schoolsD. Mothers play an important roleE. Why women are not willing to choose business carrierF. A surprising poll

The provision of positive incentives to work in the new society will not be an easy task.【F1】 But the most difficult task of all is to devise the ultimate and final sanction to replace the ultimate sanction of hunger—the economic whip of the old dispensation. Moreover, in a society which rightly rejects the pretence of separating economics from politics and denies the autonomy of the economic order, that sanction can be found only in some conscious act of society. We can no longer ask the invisible hand to do our dirty work for us. I confess that I am less horror-struck than some people at the prospect, which seems to me unavoidable, of an ultimate power of what is called direction of labour resting in some arm of society, whether in an organ of state or of trade unions. I should indeed be horrified if I identified this prospect with a return to the conditions of the pre-capitalist era. The economic whip of laissez-faire undoubtedly represented an advance on the serf-like conditions of that period: in that relative sense, the claim of capitalism to have established for the first time a system of "free" labour deserves respect.【F2】 But the direction of labour as exercised in Great Britain in the Second World War seems to me to represent as great an advance over the economic whip of the heyday of capitalist private enterprise as the economic whip represented over pre-capitalist serfdom. Much depends on the effectiveness of the positive incentives, much, too, on the solidarity and self-discipline of the community. After all, under the system of laissez-faire capitalism the fear of hunger remained an ultimate sanction rather than a continuously operative force.【F3】 It would have been intolerable if the worker had been normally driven to work by conscious fear of hunger; nor, except in the early and worst days of the Industrial Revolution, did that normally happen. 【F4】 Similarly in the society of the future the power of direction should be regarded not so much as an instrument of daily use but rather as an ultimate sanction held in reserve where voluntary methods fail. It is inconceivable that, in any period or in any conditions that can now be foreseen, any organ of state in Great Britain would be in a position, even if it had the will, to marshal and deploy the labour force over the whole economy by military discipline like an army in the field.【F5】 This, like other nightmares of a totally planned economy, can be left to those who like to frighten themselves and others with scarecrows.

At the start of the year, The Independent on Sunday argued that there were three over-whelming reasons why Iraq should not be invaded: there was no proof that Saddam posed an imminent threat; Iraq would be even more unstable as a result of its liberation; and a conflict would increase the threat posed by terrorists.【F1】 What we did not know was that Tony Blair had received intelligence and advice that raised the very same points. Last week"s report from the Intelligence and Security Committee included the revelation that some of the intelligence had warned that a war against Iraq risked an increased threat of terrorism. Why did Mr. Blair not make this evidence available to the public in the way that so much of the alarmist intelligence on Saddam"s weapons was published?【F2】 Why did he choose to ignore the intelligence and argue instead that the war was necessary, precisely because of the threat posed by international terrorism? There have been two parliamentary investigations into this war and the Hutton inquiry reopens tomorrow.【F3】 In their different ways they have been illuminating, but none of them has addressed the main issues relating to the war. The Foreign Affairs Committee had the scope to range widely, but chose to become entangled in the dispute between the Government and the BBC. The Intelligence Committee reached the conclusion that the Government"s file on Saddam"s weapons was not mixed up, but failed to explain why the intelligence was so hopelessly wrong. The Hutton inquiry is investigating the death of Dr. David Kelly, a personal tragedy of marginal relevance to the war against Iraq. Tony Blair has still to come under close examination about his conduct in the building-up to war. Instead, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, is being fingered as if he were master-minding the war behind everyone"s backs from the Ministry of Defence. Mr. Hoon is not a minister who dares to think without consulting Downing Street first. At all times he would have been dancing to Downing Street"s tunes. Mr. Blair would be wrong to assume that he can draw a line under all of this by making Mr. Hoon the fall-guy.【F4】 It was Mr. Blair who decided to take Britain to war, and a Cabinet of largely skeptical ministers that backed him. It was Mr. Blair who told MPs that unless Saddam was removed, terrorists would pose a greater global threat—even though he had received intelligence that suggested a war would lead to an increase in terrorism. Parliament should be the forum in which the Prime Minister is called more fully to account, but Iain Duncan Smith"s support for the war has neutered an already inept opposition.【F5】 In the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny, it is left to newspapers like this one to keep asking the most important questions until the Prime Minister answers them.

BPart B/B

[A]Sowhatdoesthisteachus?WelearnthatintheUnitedStates,wealthychildrenattendingpublicschoolsthatservethewealthyarecompetitivewithanynationintheworld.Sincethatisthecase,whywouldanyonethinkourpublicschoolsarefailing?[B]Similarly,asthefamiliesservedbyaschoolincreaseinwealthfromthelowestquartileinfamilywealthtothehighestquartileinfamilywealth,themeanscoresofallthestudentsatthoseschoolsgoesupquitesubstantially.Thus,characteristicsofthecohortattendingaschoolstronglyinfluencethescoresobtainedbythestudentsatthatschool.[C]DavidC.Berlinerisaneducationalpsychologistwhoisoneoftheclearestthinkersintheeducationworldaboutteaching,teachereducation,educationalpolicyandtheeffectsofcorporateschoolreformonschools.BerlinerhasissuedanewpostaboutwhatisreallyhappeninginAmerica'spublicschoolstodayasopposedtowhatsomeschoolreformersandnewsorganizationssayishappening.[D]Wefindthecommoncorrelatesofpoverty:lowbirthweightintheneighborhood,higher-than-averageratesofteenandsingleparenthood,residentialmobility,absenteeism,crime,andstudentsinneedofspecialeducationorEnglishlanguageinstruction.Theseproblemsofpovertyinfluenceeducationandaremagnifiedbyhousingpoliciesthatfostersegregation.[E]Formanyyearshehasbeenwritingabouttheliestoldaboutthepoorperformanceofourstudentsandthefailureofourschoolsandteachers.Journalistsandpoliticiansareoftenournations'mostirritatingcommentatorsaboutthestateofAmericaneducationbecausetheyhaveaccesstothesamefactsthatIhave.[F]Forexample,onthemathematicsportionofthe2012ProgramforInternationalStudentAssessmentorPISA,poorstudents—thosefromthelowestquartileinfamilyincome—whoattendedschoolsthatservedthepoorestfamilies—aschoolinthehighestquartileofthosereceivingfreeandreducedlunch—attainedameanscoreof425.Butwealthystudents—thoseinthehighestquartileoffamilyincome—whoattendedschoolsthatservedthewealthiestfamilies—schoolsinthelowestquartileofstudentsreceivingfreeandreducedlunch—scoredameanof528.That'saone-hundredpointdifference![G]Theyallcaneasilylearnthattheinternationaltests(e.g.PISA,TIMSS,PIRLS),thenationaltests(e.g.NAEP),thecollegeentrancetests(e.g.SAT,ACT),andeachoftheindividualstatetestsfollowanidenticalpattern.Itisthis:Asincomeincreasesperfamilyfromourpoorestfamilies(underthe25thpercentileinwealth),toworkingclass(26th-50thpercentileinfamilywealth),tomiddleclass(51st-75thpercentileinfamilywealth),towealthy(thehighestquartileinfamilywealth),meanscoresgoupquitesubstantially.Order

Today, deep-ocean mining is done only by the oil and gas industry. Yet the dream of mining the mineral wealth of the deep has never gone away. Now two firms hope to succeed where others have failed. Nautilus Minerals, based in Vancouver, is the more advanced of the pair. It has an exploratory licence from Papua New Guinea and has already begundrilling operations 1,600 metres below sea level off the east coast of the country. Another company, Neptune Minerals, based in London and Sydney, has completed test drilling in the deep waters near New Zealand. Nautilus"s deep-water exploration relies on a modified deep-sea remotely operated vehicle (ROV) of the kind normally used in the oil and telecoms industries. It has a manipulator hand containing drilling and cutting tools that allow the robot to retrieve samples of rock from the ocean bed. So far the drilling has only been exploratory, but the prospects look good. The presence of these rich deposits has been known about for years, says Steven Scott, a geologist at the University of Toronto. He has been researching underwater geology since the 1980s, and in the 1990s he co-discovered the deposit that Nautilus is exploring. So why has it taken so long to move towards the commercial exploitation of deep sea massive sulphide deposits? Mr. Heydon (the boss of Nautilus) says it is because the ROV technology has only recently become capable enough. He eventually hopes to use rock-cutting ROVs that will drive across the sea floor, grinding ore as they go and sending it to the surface via a tube at a rate of 400 tonnes per hour. It might also be possible to lift large deposits using compressed air. All of this can be done, Mr. Heydon believes, for about half as much as opening a new land based mine. Nautilus has spent about $12m in the past year on exploration, and Dr Scott says one test drilling found deposits 19 metres deep. Unlike manganese mines, which are like golf balls scattered across the seabed, these deep-ocean deposits occur in small areas around extinct hydrothermal vents.Such concentrated deposits ought to make underwater mining highly efficient. Even if the economics stack up, however, Nautilus and Neptune must overcome concerns over environmental damage. Dr Scott argues that underwater mining will be far less disruptive to the environment than terrestrial mining: there will be no piles of waste rock, since the deposits are directly on the sea floor. And whereas the oil industry lays pipelines underwater, mining would not leave any permanent structures behind. But governments will need to be convinced of the merit of these arguments before mining can begin.

It has been a wretched few weeks for America"s celebrity bosses. AIG"s Maurice Greenberg has been dramatically ousted from the firm through which he dominated global insurance for decades. At Morgan Stanley a mutiny is forcing Philip Purcell, a boss used to getting his own way, into an increasingly desperate campaign to save his skin. At Boeing, Harry Stonecipher was called out of retirement to lead the scandal-hit firm and raise ethical standards, only to commit a lapse of his own, being sacked for sending e-mails to a lover who was also an employee. Carly Fiorina was the most powerful woman in corporate America until a few weeks ago, when Hewlett-Packard (HP) sacked her for poor performance. The fate of Bernie Ebbers is much grimmer. The once high-profile boss of WorldCom could well spend the rest of his life behind bars following his conviction last month on fraud charges. In different ways, each of these examples appears to point to the same, welcome conclusion: that the imbalance in corporate power of the late 1990s, when many bosses were allowed to behave like absolute monarchs, has been corrected. Alas, appearances can be deceptive. While each of these recent tales of chief-executive woe is a sign of progress, none provides much evidence that the crisis in American corporate governance is yet over. In fact, each of these cases is an example of failed, not successful, governance. At the very least, the boards of both Morgan Stanley and HP were far too slow to address their bosses" inadequacies. The record of the Boeing board in picking chiefs prone to ethical lapses is too long to be dismissed as mere bad luck. The fall of Messrs Greenberg and Ebbers, meanwhile, highlights the growing role of government—and, in particular, of criminal prosecutors in holding bosses to account: a development that is, at best, a mixed blessing. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, passed in haste following the Enron and WorldCom scandals, is imposing heavy costs on American companies; whether these are exceeded by any benefits is the subject of fierce debate and may not be known for years. Eliot Spitzer, New York"s attorney-general, is the leading advocate and practitioner of an energetic "law enforcement" approach. He may be right that the recent burst of punitive actions has been good for the economy, even if some of his own decisions have been open to question. Where he is undoubtedly right is in arguing that corporate America has done a lamentable job of governing itself. As he says in an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, "The honour code among CEOs didn"t work. Board oversight didn"t work. Self-regulation was a complete failure." AIG"s board, for example, did nothing about Mr. Greenberg"s use of murky accounting, or the conflicts posed by his use of offshore vehicles, or his constant bullying of his critics let alone the firm"s alleged participation in bid rigging—until Mr. Spitzer threatened a criminal prosecution that might have destroyed the firm.

"I"ve never met a human worth cloning," says cloning expert Mark Westhusin from the cramped confines of his lab at Texas A&M University. "It"s a stupid endeavor."【F1】 That"s an interesting choice of adjective, coming from a man who has spent millions of dollars trying to clone a 13-year-old dog named Missy. So far, he and his team have not succeeded, though they have cloned two calves and expect to clone a cat soon. They just might succeed in cloning Missy later this year—or perhaps not for another five years. It seems the reproductive system of man"s best friend—dog is one of the mysteries of modern science. Westhusin"s experience with cloning animals leaves him vexed by all this talk of human cloning.【F2】 In three years of work on the Missyplicity project, using hundreds upon hundreds of canine eggs, the A&M team has produced only a dozen or so embryos carrying Missy"s DNA. 【F3】 The wastage of eggs and the many spontaneously aborted fetuses may be acceptable when you"re dealing with cats or bulls, he argues, but not with humans. "Cloning is incredibly inefficient, and also dangerous," he says. Even so, dog cloning is a commercial opportunity, with a nice research payoff. Ever since Dolly the sheep was cloned in 1997, Westhusin"s phone at A&M College of Veterinary Medicine has been ringing busily. Cost is no obstacle for customers like Missy"s mysterious owner, who wishes to remain unknown to protect his privacy. He"s plopped down $3.7 million so far to fund the research because he wants a twin to carry on Missy"s fine qualities after she dies. But he knows her clone may not have her temperament.【F4】 In a statement of purpose, Missy"s owners and the A&M team say they are "both looking forward to studying the ways that her clone differs from Missy." The fate of the dog samples will depend on Westhusin"s work.【F5】 He knows that even if he gets a dog viably pregnant, the offspring, should they survive, will face the problems shown at birth by other cloned animals: abnormalities like immature lungs and heart and weight problems. "Why would you ever want to clone humans," Westhusin asks, "when we"re not even close to getting it worked out in animals yet?"

【F1】 Material culture refers to the touchable, material "things —physical objects that can be seen, held, felt, used—that a culture produces. Examining a culture"s tools and technology can tell us about the group"s history and way of life. Similarly, research into the material culture of music can help us to understand the music-culture. The most vivid body of "things" in it, of course, are musical instruments.【F2】 We cannot hear for ourselves the actual sound of any musical performance before the 1870s when the phonograph was invented, so we rely on instruments for important information about music-cultures in the remote past and their development. Here we have two kinds of evidence: instruments well preserved and instruments pictured in art. Through the study of instruments, as well as paintings, written documents, and so on, we can explore the movement of music from the Near East to China over a thousand years ago, or we can outline the spread of Near Eastern influence to Europe that resulted in the development of most of the instruments on the symphony orchestra. Sheet music or printed music, too, is material culture. Scholars once defined folk music-cultures as those in which people learn and sing music by ear rather than from print, but research shows mutual influence among oral and written sources during the past few centuries in Europe, Britain and America. Printed versions limit variety because they tend to standardize any song, yet they stimulate people to create new and different songs.【F3】 Besides, the ability to read music notation has a far-reaching effect on musicians and, when it becomes widespread, on the music-culture as a whole. Music is deep-rooted in the cultural background that fosters it. We now pay more and more attention to traditional or ethnic features in folk music and are willing to preserve the folk music as we do with many traditional cultural heritage. Musicians all over the world are busy with recording classic music in their country for the sake of their unique culture.【F4】 As always, people"s aspiration will always focus on their individuality rather than universal features that are shared by all cultures alike. 【F5】 One more important part of music"s material culture should be singled out: the influence of the electronic media—radio, record player, tape recorder, and television, with the future promising talking and singing computers and other developments. This is all part of the "information-revolution", a twentieth century phenomenon as important as the industrial revolution in the nineteenth. These electronic media are not just limited to modern nations; they have affected music-cultures all over the globe.

So why is Google suddenly so interested in robots? That"s the question everyone"s asking after it emerged this month that the internet giant has quietly collected a portfolio of eight advanced-robotics firms. Google is【C1】______the venture as partly a long term "moonshot" project—the name【C2】______to its more bizarre or【C3】______ideas, such as its self-driving car or broadband via high-altitude balloons. But it also says it aims to【C4】______a batch of robotics products in the【C5】______term and it has a "10-year vision" of where the company is【C6】______. Based in the US and Japan, the new acquisitions make【C7】______products, ranging from walking humanoids (human-like Robots), to assembly robots, machine-vision systems and robotic special-effects movie cameras. The【C8】______of technologies that Google has acquired doesn"t point to【C9】______one type of robot being developed, says Chris Melhuish. "These technologies could【C10】______anything from a smart bed to a wheeled home-assistant robot for elderly people." But Will Jackson thinks Google will use its【C11】______in search engines to allow people to find【C12】______faster in shopping malls and airports. "You would never go over and talk to a touch screen, 【C13】______if a mechanical person talks to you and makes eye【C14】______and smiles it"s very hard indeed not to talk【C15】______. Google knows all about our【C16】______and market preferences already. A robot would be a good【C17】______for that information." Google"s moves are【C18】______of how robotics is changing, says Scott Eckert. "The robotics industry is in the early stages of a【C19】______from a primarily industrial market to a dynamic technology sector," he says. "This is an exciting industry with a【C20】______future."