单选题Our culture has caused most Americans to assume not only that our language is universal but that the gestures we use are understood by everyone. We do not realize that waving good-bye is the way to summon a person from the Philippines to one"s side, or that in Italy and some Latin-American countries, curling the finger to oneself is a sign of farewell. Those private citizens who sent packages to our troops occupying Germany after World War Ⅱ and marked them GIFT to escape duty payments did not bother to find out that "Gift" means poison in German. Moreover, we like to think of ourselves as friendly, yet we prefer to be at least 3 feet or an arm"s length away from others. Latins and Middle Easterners like to come closer and touch, which makes Americans uncomfortable. Our linguistic and cultural blindness and the casualness with which we take notice of the developed tastes, gestures, customs and languages of other countries, are losing us friends, business and respect in the world. Even here in the United States, we make few concessions to the needs of foreign visitors. There are no information signs in four languages on our public buildings or monuments; we do not have multilingual guided tours. Very few restaurant menus have translations, and multilingual waiters, bank clerks and policemen are rare. Our transportation systems have maps in English only and often we ourselves have difficulty understanding them. When we go abroad, we tend to cluster in hotels and restaurants where English is spoken. The attitudes and information we pick up are conditioned by those natives—usually the richer—who speak English. Our business dealings, as well as the nation"s diplomacy, are conducted through interpreters. For many years, America and Americans could get by with cultural blindness and linguistic ignorance. After all, America was the most powerful country of the free world, the distributor of needed funds and goods. But all that is past. American dollars no longer buy all good things, and we are slowly beginning to realize that our proper role in the world is changing. A 1979 Harris poll reported that 55 percent of Americans want this country to play a more significant role in world affairs; we want to have a hand in the important decisions of the next century, even though it may not always be the upper hand.

单选题A man walks into a conference room at the W hotel in downtown Austin. The setting, sleek and quiet, says business. The training shoes—red, puffy, and paired with a sports coat—add a wink: new business. "There are crazy awesome start-ups happening in every nook and cranny in this country," says Scott Case, the boss of a non-profit start-up, which helps inexperienced entrepreneurs by smoothing their access to private-sector money and mentoring. The idea is that as these young companies grow, they will create jobs—new jobs, good jobs—and related economic activity that enriches the entire community. Some of the start-ups may even be "gazelles", companies that grow by leaps and bounds. So people are keen to help. Obama announced a start-up initiative at the beginning of last year, and last month he renewed the call. Congress is considering a Start-up Act that could provide some regulatory exemptions. Regional economic development groups have taken up the idea of economic "gardening". The philosophy there is that regions should focus on core strengths and home-grown businesses, rather than squabbling with their neighbours in an effort to win a new car plant. This is mostly sensible. Many of the proposals for start-ups are generally sound. And some start-ups do turn out to be gazelles. Still, there is cause for caution. For one thing, there is some ambiguity over what sort of companies the policymakers are trying to promote. Mr. Obama talks about "start-ups and small businesses". Private-sector people, however, seem to have less interest in the latter. They would rather live in Silicon Valley than on Main Street. But high-tech concepts are not the only viable business ideas. Another issue is that the effects of start-ups on employment may be modest. Perhaps as a result of the recession, the number of new companies that actually employ people is declining. "What began as a small, two-person start-up working out of a pier in San Francisco has grown to a dozen employees," wrote Mike Krieger, the co-founder of America"s fastest-growing social mobile start-up. Even the bigger companies may not be labour-intensive. There is a danger that start-up jobs will be the next variant of "green jobs": worthwhile, but slightly overhyped .

单选题A union-backed campaign conducted scattered protests and employee walkouts at fast-food chains in 60 cities in an effort to ramp up pressure for increased wages while organizers are quietly working to create unions to represent fast-food workers. The impact and size of Thursday"s protests was difficult to gauge. Spokesmen for the protests" organizers estimated that they involved 1,000 fast-food outlets, and some other retailers, such as department stores, and claimed that walkouts shut down some restaurants. McDonald"s Corp. and Wendy"s Co. said the protests had minimal effects on operations and that they were unaware of any shutdowns. At midday Thursday in downtown Chicago, one of the cities targeted, several outlets of both chains seemed undisturbed. People protested outside one Chicago McDonald"s for about 45 minutes; a restaurant employee reached by phone, who didn"t want to be identified, said none of the protesters were employed there. Burger King Worldwide Inc. didn"t respond to requests for comment. Workers marching outside fast-food restaurants have called for the chains to increase wages to $15 an hour—wages now can be as low as the national minimum of $7.25 an hour and to allow a "fair process" to join a union. The restaurant companies say they pay fair and competitive wages and that increases of that size would force owners to cut staff. Previous strikes have targeted fast-food chains in more than a dozen cities from New York to Seattle. The chains have said those strikes also didn"t cause significant disruptions. But the momentum of demonstrations is unusual in an industry where organizing has been difficult because of high employee turnover. The protests come as the Service Employees International Union in recent months has helped establish a new union in at least six cities where the union and community advocacy groups have been organizing fast-food strikes, according to organizers and documents filed in recent months with the Labor Department. The cities include New York, Chicago and St. Louis. SEIU officials and members of nonunion community groups are listed as officers of those unions. "Fast-food workers need a union and we"re proud to help them get it started," said Kendall Fells, listed as president of a New York-based union called the Fast Food Workers Committee on documents filed with the Labor Department in February.

单选题 A deal is a deal-except, apparently, when Entergy is involved. The company, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it was reneging on a longstanding commitment to abide by the strict nuclear regulations. Instead, the company has done precisely what it had long promised it would not challenge the constitutionality of Vermont's rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant running. It's a stunning move. The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont's only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in Vernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant's license be subject to Vermont legislature's approval. Then, too, the company went along. Either Entergy never really intended to live by those commitments, or it simply didn't foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee's safety and Entergy's management-especially after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy's behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension. Now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point. The company seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has nothing left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a public trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the company's application, it should keep it mind what promises from Entergy are worth.

单选题Will the European Union make it? The question would have sounded strange not long ago. Now even the project's greatest cheerleaders talk of a continent facing a "Bermuda triangle" of debt, population decline and lower growth. As well as those chronic problems, the EU face an acute crisis in its economic core, the 16 countries that use the single currency. Markets have lost faith that the euro zone's economies, weaker or stronger, will one day converge thanks to the discipline of sharing a single currency, which denies uncompetitive members the quick fix of devaluation. Yet the debate about how to save Europe's single currency from disintegration is stuck. It is stuck because the euro zone's dominant powers, France and Germany, agree on the need for greater harmonization within the euro zone, but disagree about what to harmonies. Germany thinks the euro must be saved by stricter rules on borrow spending and competitiveness, marked by quasi-automatic sanctions for governments that do not obey. These might include threats to freeze EU funds for poorer regions and EU mega-projects and even the suspension of a country's voting rights in EU ministerial councils. It insists that economic co-ordination should involve all 27 members of the EU club, among whom there is a small majority for free-market liberalism and economic rigour; in the inner core alone, Germany fears, a small majority favour French interference. A "southern" camp headed by French wants something different: "European economic government" within an inner core of euro-zone members. Translated, that means politicians intervening in monetary policy and a system of redistribution from richer to poorer members, via cheaper borrowing for governments through common Eurobonds or complete fiscal transfers. Finally, figures close to the France government have murmured, euro-zone members should agree to some fiscal and social harmonization: e. g. , curbing competition in corporate-tax rates or labour costs. It is too soon to write off the EU. It remains the world's largest trading block. At its best, the European project is remarkably liberal: built around a single market of 27 rich and poor countries, its internal borders are far more open to goods, capital and labor than any comparable trading area. It is an ambitious attempt to blunt the sharpest edges of globalization, and make capitalism benign.

单选题If you know exactly what you want, the best route to a job is to get specialized training. A recent survey shows that companies like the graduates in such fields as business and health care who can go to work immediately with very little on-the-job training. That"s especially true of booing fields that are challenging for workers. At Cornell"s School of Hotel Administration, for example, bachelor"s degree graduates get an average of four or five job offers with salaries ranging from the high teens to the low 20s and plenty of chances for rapid advancement. Large companies, especially, like a background of formal education coupled with work experience. But in the long run, too much specialization doesn"t pay off. Business, which has been flooded with MBAs, no longer considers the degree an automatic stamp of approval. The MBA may open doors and command a higher salary initially, but the impact of a degree washes out after five years. As further evidence of the erosion (销蚀) of corporate faith in specialized degrees, Michigan State"s Scheetz cites a pattern in corporate hiring practices. Although companies tend to take on specialists as new hires, they often seek out generalists for middle and upper-level management. "They want someone who isn"t constrained by nuts and bolts to look at the big picture," says Scheetz. This sounds suspiciously like a formal statement that you approve of the liberal-arts graduate. Time and again labor-market analysts mention a need for talents that liberal-arts majors are assumed to have: writing and communication skills, organizational skills, open-mindedness and adaptability, and the ability to analyze and solve problems. David Birch claims he does not hire anybody with an MBA or an engineering degree, "I hire only liberal-arts people because they have a less-than-canned way of doing things," says Birch. Liberal-arts means an academically thorough and strict program that includes litera-ture, history, mathematics, economics, science, human behavior—plus a computer course or two. With that under your belt, you can feel free to specialize, "A liberal-arts degree coupled with an MBA or some other technical training is a very good combination in the marketplace," says Scheetz.

单选题Many people talked of the 288,000 new jobs the Labor Department reported for June, along with the drop in the unemployment rate to 6.1 percent, as good news. And they were right. For now it appears the economy is creating jobs at a decent pace. We still have a long way to go to get back to full employment, but at least we are now finally moving forward at a faster pace. However, there is another important part of the jobs picture that was largely overlooked. There was a big jump in the number of people who report voluntarily working part-time. This figure is now 830,000 (4.4 percent) above its year ago level. Before explaining the connection to the Obamacare, it is worth making an important distinction. Many people who work part-time jobs actually want fulltime jobs. They take part-time work because this is all they can get. An increase in involuntary part-time work is evidence of weakness in the labor market and it means that many people will be having a very hard time making ends meet. There was an increase in involuntary part-time in June, but the general direction has been down. Involuntary part-time employment is still far higher than before the recession, but it is down by 640,000 (7.9 percent) from its year ago level. We know the difference between voluntary and involuntary part-time employment because people tell us. The survey used by the Labor Department asks people if they worked less than 35 hours in the reference week. If the answer is "yes," they are classified as working part-time. The survey then asks whether they worked less than 35 hours in that week because they wanted to work less than full time or because they had no choice. They are only classified as voluntary part-time workers if they tell the survey taker they chose to work less than 35 hours a week. The issue of voluntary part-time relates to Obamacare because one of the main purposes was to allow people to get insurance outside of employment. For many people, especially those with serious health conditions or family members with serious health conditions, before Obamacare the only way to get insurance was through a job that provided health insurance. However, Obamacare has allowed more than 12 million people to either get insurance through Medicaid or the exchanges. These are people who may previously have felt the need to get a full-time job that provided insurance in order to cover themselves and their families. With Obamacare there is no longer a link between employment and insurance.

单选题Institutions of higher learning must move, as the historian Walter Russell Mead puts it, from a model of "time served" to a model of "stuff learned." Because increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know. And therefore it will not pay for a C-plus in chemistry, just because your state college considers that a passing grade and was willing to give you a diploma. We"re moving to a more competency-based world, where there will be less interest in how you acquired the competency and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency. Therefore, we have to get beyond the current system of information and delivery—the professorial "sage on the stage" and students taking notes, followed by a superficial assessment, to one in which students are asked and empowered to master more basic material online at their own pace, and the classroom becomes a place where the application of that knowledge can be honed through lab experiments and discussions with the professor. There seemed to be a strong consensus that this "blended model" combining online lectures with a teacher-led classroom experience was the ideal. Last fall, San Jose State used the online lectures and interactive exercises of MIT"s introductory online Circuits and Electronics course. Students would watch the MIT lectures and do the exercises at home. Then in class, the first 15 minutes were reserved for questions and answers with the San Jose State professor, and the last 45 were devoted to problem-solving and discussion. Preliminary numbers indicate that those passing the class went from nearly 60 percent to about 90 percent. We demand that plumbers and kindergarten teachers be certified to do what they do, but there is no requirement that college professors know how to teach. No more . The world of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) is creating a competition that will force every professor to improve his or her pedagogy or face an online competitor. Bottom line: There is still huge value in the residential college experience and the teacher-student and student-student interactions it facilitates. But to thrive, universities will have to nurture even more of those unique experiences while blending in technology to improve education outcomes in measurable ways at lower costs. We still need more research on what works, but standing still is not an option.

单选题Many Americans harbor a grossly distorted and exaggerated view of most of the risks surrounding food. Fergus Clydesdale, head of the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, says bluntly that if the dangers from bacterially contaminated chicken were as great as some people believe, "the streets would be littered with people lying here and there." Though the public increasingly demands no-risk food, there is no such thing, since it has been proved that up to 10% of a plant"s weight is made up of natural pesticides. Bruce Ames, chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, says: "Since plants do not have jaws or teeth to protect themselves, they employ chemical warfare." And many naturally produced chemicals, though occurring in tiny amounts, prove in laboratory tests to be strong carcinogens—a substance which can cause cancer. Mushrooms might be banned if they were judged by the same standards that apply to food additives. Declares Christina Stark, a nutritionist at Cornell University: "We"ve got far worse natural chemicals in the food supply than anything man-made." Yet the issues are not that simple. While Americans have no reason to be terrified to sit down at the dinner table, they have every reason to demand significant improvements in food and water safety. They unconsciously and unwillingly take in too much of too many dangerous chemicals. If food already contains natural carcinogens, it does not make much sense to add dozens of new man-made ones. Though most people will withstand the small amounts of contaminants generally found in food and water, at least a few individuals will probably get cancer one day because of what they eat and drink. To make good food and water supplies even better, the Government needs to tighten its regulatory standards, stiffen its inspection program and strengthen its enforcement policies. The food industry should modify some long-accepted practices or turn to less hazardous alternatives. Perhaps most important, consumers will have to do a better job of learning how to handle and cook food properly. The problems that need to be tackled exist all along the food-supply chain, from fields to processing plants to kitchens.

单选题 If the trade unionist Jimmy Hoffa were alive today, he would probably represent civil servant. When Hoffa's Teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in ten American government workers belonged to a union; now 36% do. In 2009 the number of unionists in America's public sector passed that of their fellow members in the private sector. In Britain, more than half of public-sector workers but only about 15% of private-sector ones are unionized. There are three reasons for the public-sector unions' thriving. First, they can shut things down without suffering much in the way of consequences. Second, they are mostly bright and well-educated. A quarter of America's public-sector workers have a university degree. Third, they now dominate left-of-centre politics. Some of their ties go back a long way. Britain's Labor Party, as its name implies, has long been associated with trade unionism. Its current leader, Ed Miliband, owes his position to votes from public-sector unions. At the state level their influence can be even more fearsome. Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California points out that much of the state's budget is patrolled by unions. The teachers' unions keep an eye on schools, the CCPOA on prisons and a variety of labor groups on health care. In many rich countries average wages in the state sector are higher than in the private one. But the real gains come in benefits and work practices. Politicians have repeatedly "backloaded" public-sector pay deals, keeping the pay increases modest but adding to holidays and especially pensions that are already generous. Reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps most egregiously in education, where charter schools, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-out battles. Even though there is plenty of evidence that the quality of the teachers is the most important variable, teachers' unions have fought against getting rid of bad ones and promoting good ones. As the cost to everyone else has become clearer, politicians have begun to clamp down. In Wisconsin the unions have rallied thousands of supporters against Scott Walker, the hardline Republican governor. But many within the public sector suffer under the current system, too. John Donahue at Harvard's Kennedy School points out that the norms of culture in Western civil services suit those who want to stay put but is bad for high achievers. The only American public-sector workers who earn well above $ 250,000 a year are university sports coaches and the president of the United States. Bankers' fat pay packets have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector system that does not reward high achievers may be a much bigger problem for America.

单选题If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses. Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses" convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "Oh, that"s God," came the reply, "but sometimes he thinks he"s a doctor. " If you are part of the group, which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it"ll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman"s notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn"t attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system. If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it"s the delivery that causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark. Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote "If at first you don"t succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.

单选题In recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into supersystems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. As recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70 percent of the total ton-miles moved by rails. Next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four railroads will control well over 90 percent of all the freight moved by major rail carriers. Supporters of the new supersystems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. Any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. But many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat. The vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one rail company. Railroads typically charge such "captive" shippers 20 to 30 percent more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. Shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government"s Surface Transportation Board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time-consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases. Railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long run it reduces everyone"s cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It"s a theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail. "Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace?" asks Martin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shippers. Many captive shippers also worry they will soon be hit with a round of huge rate increases. The railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. Yet railroads continue to borrow billions to acquire one another, with Wall Street cheering them on. Consider the $10.2 billion bid by Norfolk Southern and CSX to acquire Conrail this year. Conrail"s net railway operating income in 1996 was just $427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. Who"s going to pay for the rest of the bill? Many captive shippers fear that they will, as Norfolk Southern and CSX increase their grip on the market.

单选题For years, French, Italian and American luxury brands have 1 as China"s middle class developed a(n) 2 for high-end fashion and jewelry. But that sales boom is 3 based on the disappointing results many Western luxury retailers have reported of late, 4 much suggests this slowdown will be 5 . French luxury brand Hermès said watch sales fell 11% in large 6() because of China, and the company is expecting overall growth this year to remain 6 compared to recent averages. Meanwhile, Prada said it expects the tough times for luxury to continue after its China sales fell 4% in 2014. 7 , Hermès, known for its highly coveted Birkin bags and horse-themed silk scarves that go for thousands of dollars each, has continued to 8 its stores in China. Why? Because there is 9 data to suggest that luxury"s current slowdown in China is 10 a speed bump. According to a new report by the Economic Intelligence Unit 11 by Citigroup, China"s wealthy will have double the 12 of their U.S counterpart within five years. That means a lot of people will be wanting to shop at Prada and Gucci and buying expensive Estée Lauder beauty products. And such companies are happy to 13 . Fashion company Michael Kors which is just getting started with its China expansion, recently said sales there are "starting to 14 ." Kors" main competitor Coach, which plans several new stores in China, saw its sales there rise 13% in its most recent quarter. Tiffany is full 16 ahead with its China expansion 15 disappointing numbers over the holidays at its Hong Kong stores, a favorite haunt of mainland customers. So it"s clear that any Chinese slowdown is seen by luxury and retail executives as a temporary change. "China"s prestige beauty growth remains at high single digits, and we see 16 opportunities to enter additional cities, doors and 17 , and 18 more brands," Estée Lauder CEO said last month.

单选题Many of the tech industry"s biggest companies, like Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, are jockeying to become the leader for artificial intelligence (A.I.). In the industry"s term, the companies are engaged in a "platform war." A platform, in technology, is essentially a piece of software that other companies build on and that consumers cannot do without. Become the platform and huge profits will follow. Microsoft dominated personal computers because its Windows software became the center of the consumer software world. Google has come to dominate the Internet through its ubiquitous search bar. If true believers in A.I. are correct that this long-promised technology is ready for the mainstream, the company that controls A.I. could steer the tech industry for years to come. "Whoever wins this race will dominate the next stage of the information age," said Pedro Domingos, a machine learning specialist and the author of "The Master Algorithm," a 2015 book that contends that A.I. and big-data technology will remake the world. In this fight—no doubt in its early stages—the big tech companies are engaged in tit-for-tat publicity stunts, circling the same start-ups that could provide the technology pieces they are missing and, perhaps most important, trying to hire the same brains. Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University professor who is an expert in computer vision, said one of her Ph.D. candidates had an offer for a job paying more than $1 million a year, and that was only one of four from big and small companies. For years, tech companies have used man-versus-machine competitions to show they are making progress on A.I. In 1997, an IBM computer beat the chess champion Garry Kasparov. Five years ago, IBM went even further when its Watson system won a three-day match on the television trivia show "Jeopardy!" Today, Watson is the centerpiece of IBM"s A.I. efforts. By 2020, the market for machine learning applications will reach $40 billion, IDC, a market research firm, estimates. And 60 percent of those applications, the firm predicts, will run on the platform software of four companies—Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft. Intelligent software applications will become commonplace, said Jeff Dean, a computer scientist who oversees Google"s A.I. development. "And machine learning will touch every industry."

单选题As obvious as it may sound, the truth is there are a lot of businesses out there. The odds of not having any competition are next to impossible, and something any worthwhile business, whether big or small, has to eventually come to accept. Every one of those businesses are trying to do the exact same thing: get people to buy their products. When flooded with so many potential prospects it isn"t always easy for the customers to know which business is the best and which one has the best product. What you need to do is to help them along. Differentiating your business and your products from the competitors is by far one of the most important details when dealing With any kind of industry. Everything a company does, from the creative ads they run to the inventive promotions they produce to the full color business cards they hand out is geared towards separating themselves from the rest of the flock. If you"re going to compete with them you"re going to have to do the same, and do it more effectively. Sometimes the most effective approaches can be some of the most simple. Printing well-colored brochures gives businesses the chance to show their customers the subtle or not so subtle differences between them and the competitors, whether it is better designs, better features, or better prices. Handing them a list of all the products or services you offer allows them the ability to see exactly what they"re getting when they do business with you, and the more customers know about a business the better the odds are they"ll feel comfortable with them. But, even going beyond the products, boosting up your company can also be an effective tool to place you above the competitors. When you hand a person a business card, fully colored with a unique design you"re handing him a means to remember you. A business card can say a lot about a person and the business be run. Simple, drab colors can be off putting to the person looking for a friendlier business. The right color scheme alone can differentiate you from the competitors, and once you"ve managed to separate yourself out, you"ll be in a prime position to be whom the person favors when they need that specific product. With competition as steep as it is today, every business has its hands full trying to stay above the rest. When every little thing counts, the business the customers will take to heart will be the one who can show them just why they"re the best qualified. Printing out the right kind of colorful brochure or business card can be a valuable method of stepping away from the crowded business field.

单选题 Tens of thousands of 18-years-old will graduate this year and be handed meaningless diplomas. These diplomas won't look any different from those awarded their luckier classmates. Their validity will be questioned only when their employers discover that these graduates are semiliterate (半文盲). Eventually a fortunate few will find their way into educational-repair shops—adult-literacy programs, such as the one where I teach basic grammar and writing. There, high-school graduates and high-school dropouts pursuing graduate-equivalency certificates will learn the skills they should have learned in school. They will also discover they have been cheated by our educational system. I will never forget a teacher who got the attention of one of my children by revealing the trump card of failure. Our youngest, a world-class charmer, did little to develop his intellectual talents but always got by Until Mrs. Stifter. Our son was a high-school senior when he had her for English. "He sits in the back of the room talking to his friends," she told me. "why don't you move him to the front row?" I urged, believing the embarrassment would get him to settle down. Mrs. Stifter said, "I don't move seniors. I flunk (使……及格) them "Our son's academic life flashed before my eyes. No teacher had ever threatened him. By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good about this. It was a radical approach for these times, but, well, why not? "she's going to flunk you." I told my son. I did not discuss it any further. Suddenly English became a priority (头等要事) in his life. He finished out the semester with an A. I know one example doesn't make a case, but at night I see a parade of students who are angry for having been passed along until they could no longer ever pretend to keep up. Of average intelligence or better, they eventually quit school, concluding they were too dumb to finish. "I should have been held back," is a comment I hear frequently. Even sadder are those students who are high-school graduates who say to me after a few weeks of class, "I don't know how I ever got a high-school diploma." Passing students who have not mastered the work cheats them and employers who expect graduates to have basic skills. We excuse this dishonest behavior by saying kids can't learn if they come from terrible environments. No one seems to stop to think that most kids don't put school first on their list unless they perceive something is at risk. They'd rather be sailing. Many students I see at night have decided to make education a priority. They are motivated by the desire for a better job or the need to hang on to the one they've got. They have a healthy fear of failure. People of all ages can rise above their problems, but they need to have a reason to do so. Young people generally don't have the maturity to value education in the same way my adult students value it. But fear of failure can motivate both.

单选题"THE SERVANT" (1963) is one of those films that it is impossible to forget. The servant exploits his master"s weaknesses until he turns the tables: the story ends with the a cringing master ministering to a lordly servant. It is hard to watch it today without thinking of another awkward relationship—the one between businessfolk and their smartphones. Smart devices are sometimes empowering. They put a world of information at our fingertips. But for most people the servant has become the master. Not long ago only doctors were on call all the time. Now everybody is. Bosses think nothing of invading their employees" free time. Work invades the home far more than domestic chores invade the office. Hyperconnectivity exaggerates the decline of certainty and the general cult of flexibility. Smartphones make it easier for managers to change their minds at the last moment. Employees find it ever harder to distinguish between "on-time" and "off-time"—and indeed between real work and make-work. None of this is good for businesspeople"s marriages or mental health. It may be bad for business, too. When bosses change their minds at the last minute, it is hard to plan for the future. How can we reap the benefits of connectivity without becoming its slaves? One solution is digital dieting. Banning browsing before breakfast can reintroduce a small amount of civilization. Banning texting at weekends or, say, on Thursdays, can really show the iPhone who is boss. The problem with this approach is that it works only if you live on a desert island or at the bottom of a lake. Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School argues that for most people the only way to break the 24/7 habit is to act collectively rather than individually. One of the world"s most hard-working organisations, the Boston Consulting Group, introduced rules about when people were expected to be offline, and encouraged them to work together to make this possible. Eventually it forced people to work more productively while reducing burnout. Ms Perlow"s advice should be taken seriously. The problem of hyperconnectivity will only get worse, as smartphones become smarter and young digital natives take over the workforce. But ultimately it is up to companies to outsmart the smartphones by insisting that everyone turn them off from time to time.

单选题Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people"s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different stifle of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover, as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community"s population size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.

单选题What would make a smoker more likely to quit, a big reward for succeeding or a little penalty for failing? That is what researchers wanted to know when they assigned a large group of CVS employees (CVS Caremark is the country"s largest drugstore chain by sales), their relatives and friends to different smoking cessation programs. "Adding a bit of a stick was much better than a pure carrot. These large employers are spending an average of $800 to $900 per employee per year, but in ways that are often blind to normal human psychology" said Dr. Scott Halpern, who led the study. The trial was intended to change that . Researchers randomly assigned the participants to a number of program options and let them decide whether they wanted to participate. The penalty program required participants to deposit $150; six months later, those who had quit smoking would get the deposit back, along with a $650 reward. In the reward-only program, participants were simply offered an $800 payment if they stayed off cigarettes for six months. The trial, which was described in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, was the largest yet to test whether offering people financial incentives could lead to better health. Researchers found that offering incentives was far more effective in getting people to stop smoking than the traditional approach of giving free smoking cessation help, such as counseling or nicotine replacement therapy like gum, medication or patches. But they also found that requiring a $150 deposit that would be lost if the person failed to stay off cigarettes for six months nearly doubled the chances of success. "This is an original set of findings," said Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard law professor who helped develop some influential ideas in the field of behavioral economics, notably that if the social environment can be changed—for example, by posting simple warnings—people can be nudged into better behavior. "They could be applied to many health issues, like alcoholism, or whenever people face serious self-control problems." Over all, success eluded most of the study participants. More than 80 percent of smokers in the most popular pure rewards group were still smoking at the end of the study. Even so, researchers say, their success rate was far greater than for those who got the traditional treatment. Smoking is the largest cause of preventable death in the United States. Diseases linked to it kill more than 480,000 Americans a year. And even a small decline could have a big health effect.

单选题The chances are that you made up your mind about smoking a long time ago and decided it"s not for you. The chances are equally good that you know a lot of smokers—there are, after all about 60 million of them—work with them, and get along with them very well. And finally it"s a pretty safe bet that you"re open-minded and interested in all the various issues about smokers and non-smokers—or you wouldn"t be reading this. And those three things make you incredibly important today. Because they mean that it"s your voice—not the smoker"s and not the anti-smoker"s—that will determine how much of society"s efforts should go into building walls that separate us and how much into the search for solutions that bring us together. For one tragic result of the emphasis on building walls is the diversion of millions of dollars from scientific research on the causes and cures of diseases which, when all is said and done, still strike the non-smoker as well as the smoker. One prominent health organization, to cite but a single instance, now spends 28 cents of every publicly contributed dollar on "education" (much of it in anti-smoking propaganda) and only 2 cents on research. There will always be some who want to build walls, who want to separate people from people, and up to a point, even these may serve society. The anti-smoking wall-builders have, to give them their due, helped to make us all more keenly aware of choice. But our guess, and certainly our hope, is that you are among the far greatest members who know that wails are only temporary at best, and that over the long run, we can serve society"s interest better by working together in mutual accommodation. Whatever virtue walls may have, they can never move our society toward fundamental solutions. People who work together on common problems, common solutions, can.