单选题 Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of it is a goal of a growing number of workers in rich Western countries. Some are turning away from the ideals of their parents, for whom work always came first; others with scarce skills are demanding more because they know they can get it. Employers, caught between a failing population of workers and tight controls on immigration, are eager to identify extra perks that will lure more "talent" their way. Just now they are focusing on benefits ( especially flexible working) that offer employees more than just pay. Some companies saw the change of mood some time ago. IBM has more than 50 different programs promoting work-life balance and Bank of America over 30. But plenty of other firms remain unconvinced and many lack the capacity to cater to such ideas even if they wanted to. Helen Murlis, with Hay Group, a human-resources consultancy, sees a widening gap between firms "at the creative end of employment" and those that are not. The chief component of almost all schemes to promote work-life balance is flexible working. This allows people to escape rigid nine-to-five schedules and work away from a formal office. IBM says that 40% of its employees today work off the company premises. For many businesses, flexible working is a necessity. Globalization has spread the hours in which workers need to communicate with each other and increased the call for flexible shifts. Nella Barkley, an American who advises companies on work-life balance, says that large firms are beginning to understand the value of such schemes, "but only slowly. " For most of them, they still mean little more than child care, health care and flexible working. To some extent, the proliferation of work-life-balance schemes is a function of today's labor market. Companies in knowledge-based industries worry about the shortage of skills and how they are going to persuade talented people to work for them. Although white-collar workers are more likely to be laid off nowadays, they are also likely to get rehired. Unemployement among college graduates in America is just over 2%. The same competition for scarce talent is evident in Britain. For some time to come, talented people in the West will demand more from employers, and clear employers will create new {{U}}gewgaw{{/U}} to entice them to join. Those employers should note that for a growing number of these workers the most appealing gewgaw of all is the freedom to work as and when they please.

单选题It is hardly necessary for me to cite all the evidence of the depressing state of literacy. These figures from the Department of Education are sufficient: 27 million Americans cannot read at all, and a further 35 million read at a level that is less than sufficient to survive in our society. But my own worry today is less that of the overwhelming problem of elemental literacy than it is of the slightly more luxurious problem of the decline in the skill even of the middle-class reader, of his unwillingness to afford those spaces of silence, those luxuries of domesticity and time and concentration, that surround the image of the classic act of reading. It has been suggested that almost 80 percent of America"s literate, educated teenagers can no longer read without an accompanying noise music in the background or a television screen flickering at the corner of their field of perception. We know very little about the brain and how it deals with simultaneous conflicting input, but every common-sense intuition suggests we should be profoundly alarmed. This violation of concentration, silence, solitude goes to the very heart of our notion of literacy; this new form of part-reading, of part-perception against background distraction, renders impossible certain essential acts of apprehension and concentration, let alone that most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves, which is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital. Under these circumstances, the question of what future there is for the arts of reading is a real one. Ahead of us lie technical, psychic, and social transformations probably much more dramatic than those brought about by Gutenberg, the German inventor in printing. The Gutenberg revolution, as we now know it, took a long time; its effects are still being debated. The information revolution will touch every fact of composition, publication, distribution, and reading. No one in the book industry can say with any confidence what will happen to the book as we"ve known it.

单选题Kelly Sortino had a tough time recalling what she"d accomplished at the end of each busy workday. Her job as head of the upper school for the Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, Calif, often 1 working 12-hour days, including weekends and evenings. She enjoyed the 2 but worried that she wasn"t accomplishing everything she needed to. "I felt as if I wasn"t really having the time to do more of the strategic and 3 work to make those larger changes at the school." says Ms. Sortino. She decided to 4 a workshop at Stanford University on how to simplify work processes and reduce waste. She learned, 5 , to block out her time more efficiently and minimize distractions. She also 6 herself to systematically completing her daily task list and to completely clearing her email inbox and workspace on a regular 7 . The changes 8 a marked improvement in her time management. Ms. Sortino 9 works on weekends, but only as needed. It"s a tough time to be productive. Globalization, increased competition and the jarring immediacy of technology have made it difficult for modern employees to 10 on top of their growing workloads while maintaining a good work-life balance. 11 , experts say small adjustments to how employees 12 work can have a big impact on their workplace efficiency. Learn to prioritize and to commit yourself to working in 12 blocks of time throughout the day. A 2009 Stanford University study found that multitasking is less productive than single-tasking and that many self-proclaimed multitaskers have difficulty 13 out irrelevant information, further 14 their performance. It"s especially important to 15 what motivates the decisions your boss makes. Most subordinates have an employee-centric view 16 their managers, which tends not to be accurate. A better understanding of your boss can help you to "sell" the advice about 17 changes that can benefit the department and company. 18 with your boss to prioritize important work and eliminate unproductive tasks. Employees may think changing job functions is risky, 19 being proactive can impress your boss.

单选题Killing a soldier removes one enemy from the battle. Wounding him removes three: the victim and the two who have to carry him from the battlefield. That cynical calculation lies behind the design of many weapons that are intended to incapacitate rather than eliminate. But robotics may change the equation. The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, or BEAR for short, is a highly agile and powerful mobile robot capable of lifting and carrying a combat casualty from a hazardous area across uneven terrain. When it is not saving lives, it can perform difficult and repetitive tasks, such as loading and unloading bullets. The current prototype BEAR is a small, tracked vehicle with two hydraulic arms and a set of video cameras that provide a view of its surroundings to its operator via a wireless link. It has been developed by TATRC (a research center) in collaboration with Vecna Technologies. Daniel Theobald, BEAR"s inventor and Vecna"s boss, says versatility is at the heart of the robot"s design and "the whole idea from the start was to design a general-purpose robot." The BEAR"s operator can control the robot in two ways. One, a joystick, can be embedded into the grip of a rifle and manoeuvred by the soldier"s fingertip when he is holding his weapon to his shoulder. The advantage of this is that he does not need to put his gun down to rescue his comrades. The other means of control, a special glove designed by AnthroTronix, can sense the wearer"s hand movements and direct the BEAR accordingly. For example, if the gloved hand moves to the left, the robot will follow. If the hand moves backwards, the robot will slow down or stop. Over the past year BEAR has been tested at the army"s battle laboratory. It has shown that it can travel at around 12 mph across a fiat surface. It can also move over soil, sand and gravel, through trees and inside buildings, albeit at lower speeds. Several more years of tests are planned, but Dr. Gilbert is optimistic that BEAR will come through them. If it does, soldiers will be able to get on with their primary job of killing the enemy, without having to worry so much about what the enemy has done to their friends.

单选题British cancer researchers have found that childhood leukemia is caused by an infection and clusters of cases around industrial sites are the result of population mixing that increases exposure. The research published in the British Journal of Cancer backs up a 1988 theory that some as yet unidentified infection caused leukemia—not the environmental factors widely blamed for the disease. "Childhood leukemia appears to be an unusual result of a common infection," said Sir Richard Doll, an internationally-known cancer expert who first linked tobacco with lung cancer in 1950. "A virus is the most likely explanation. You would get an increased risk of it if you suddenly put a lot of people from large towns in a rural area, where you might have people who had not been exposed to the infection." Doll was commenting on the new findings by researchers at Newcastle University, which focused on a cluster of leukemia cases around the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria in northern England. Scientists have been trying to establish why there was more leukemia in children around the Sellafield area, but have failed to establish a link with radiation or pollution. The Newcastle University research by Heather Dickinson and Louise Parker showed the cluster of cases could have been predicted because of the amount of population mixing going on in the area, as large numbers of construction workers and nuclear staff moved into a rural setting. "Our study shows that population mixing can account for the (Sellafield) leukemia cluster and that all children, whether their parents are incomers or locals, are at a higher risk if they are born in an area of high population mixing," Dickinson said in a statement issued by the Cancer Research Campaign, which publishes the British Journal of Cancer. Their paper adds crucial weight to the 1988 theory put forward by Leo Kinlen, a cancer epidemiologist at Oxford University, who said that exposure to a common unidentified infection through population mixing resulted in the disease.

单选题 When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rather than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving "to pursue my goal of running a company. " Broadcasting his ambition was "very much my decision," McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services Group, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29. McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isn't alone. In recent weeks the No. 2 executives at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who don't get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of letting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations. As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liberum Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders. The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poached. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey: "I can't think of a single search I've done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first. " Those who jumped without a job haven't always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later. Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading for top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one. "The traditional rule was it's safer to stay where you are, but that's been fundamentally inverted," says one headhunter. "The people who've been hurt the worst are those who've stayed too long. "

单选题Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a gamer is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing "Angry Birds" on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from "casual" games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop "freemium" models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

单选题Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of it is a goal of a growing number of workers in rich Western countries. Some are turning away from the ideals of their parents, for whom work always came first; others with scarce skills are demanding more because they know they can get it. Employers, caught between a failing population of workers and tight controls on immigration, are eager to identify extra perks that will lure more " talent" their way. Just now they are focusing on benefits (especially flexible working) that offer employees more than just pay. Some companies saw the change of mood some time ago. IBM has more than 50 different programs promoting work-life balance and Bank of America over 30. But plenty of other firms remain unconvinced and many lack the capacity to cater to such ideas even if they wanted to. Helen Murlis, with Hay Group, a human-resources consultancy, sees a widening gap between firms "at the creative end of employment" and those that are not. The chief component of almost all schemes to promote work-life balance is flexible working. This allows people to escape rigid nine-to-five schedules and work away from a formal office. IBM says that 40% of its employees today work off the company premises. For many businesses, flexible working is a necessity. Globalization has spread the hours in which workers need to communicate with each other and increased the call for flexible shifts. Nella Barkley, an American who advises companies on work-life balance, says that large firms are beginning to understand the value of such schemes, "but only slowly". For most of them, they still mean little more than child care, health care and flexible working. To some extent, the proliferation of work-life-balance schemes is a function of today's labor market. Companies in knowledge-based industries worry about the shortage of skills and how they are going to persuade talented people to work for them. Although white-collar workers are more likely to be laid off nowadays, they are also likely to get rehired. Unemployment among college graduates in America is just over 2%. The same competition for scarce talent is evident in Britain. For some time to come, talented people in the West will demand more from employers, and clear employers will create new gewgaw to entice them to join. Those employers should note that for a growing number of these workers the most appealing gewgaw of all is the freedom to work as and when they please.

单选题Facebook has been playing with fire and has got its fingers burned, again. On November 29th America"s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had reached a 1 settlement with the giant social network over accusations that it had 2 people about its use of their personal data. The details of the settlement make clear that Facebook, which 3 over 800 million users, betrayed its users" trust. It is also notable 4 it appears to be part of a broader attempt by the FTC to craft a new privacy framework to 5 the swift rise of social networks in America. The regulator"s findings come at a 6 time for Facebook, which is said to be 7 for an initial public offering next year that could value it at around $100 billion. To clear the way for its initial public offering, the firm first needs to resolve its 8 disputes with regulators in America and Europe. Hence its willingness to negotiate the settlement is 9 this week, which should be finalized at the end of December after a period for public comment. Announcing the agreement, the FTC said it had found a number of cases 10 Facebook had made claims that were " 11 and deceptive, and violated federal law". 12 , it passed on personally identifiable information to advertisers, even though it said it would not do so. And it failed to keep a promise to 13 photos and videos on deactivated and deleted accounts 14 . The settlement does not constitute (an) 15 by Facebook that it has broken the law. But the regulator"s findings are deeply embarrassing for the company nonetheless. In a blog post published the same day, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook"s boss, tried to 16 the impact of the deal. He claimed that "a small number of high-profile mistakes" were 17 the social network"s "good history" on privacy. But public 18 over Facebook"s behaviour could spur Congress into action anyway. And it will certainly not be lost on regulators who are 19 the social network"s privacy record too. Mr. Zuckerberg"s latest admission of its fault is 20 to be his last.

单选题Why has crime in the U.S. declined so dramatically since the 1990s? Economists and sociologists have offered a bounty of reasons, including more police, more security technology, more economic growth, more immigration, more imprisonment, and so on. The "real" answer is almost certainly a combination of these factors, rather than one of them to the exclusion of the rest. But a new paper adds a surprising variable to the mix. What if the decline of crime in America started with the decline of cash? Cash is critical to the health of an underground economy, because it"s anonymous, nearly untraceable, and easily stolen. This makes it the lifeblood of the black market. But Americans are rapidly abandoning cash thanks to credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments. Half a century ago, cash was used in 80 percent of U.S. payments. Now that figure is about 50 percent, according to researchers. In the 1980s, the federal government switched from paper money to electronic benefit transfers. They didn"t switch all at once. They switched one county at a time within states. This created a kind of randomly controlled environment for the researchers, who studied Missouri"s counties to establish whether the areas that switched from welfare cash to electronic transfers saw a concurrent decline in crime. The results were striking: The shift away from cash was associated with "a significant decrease in the overall crime rate and the specific offenses of burglary and assault in Missouri and a decline in arrests." In other words, the counties saw a decline in specific crimes when they switched away from cash welfare. Perhaps most interestingly, they found that the switch to electronic transfers reduced robbery but not rape, suggesting that the move away from cash only had an impact on crime related to getting and spending cash. The move toward cashlessness in the U.S. continues quickly. Google now lets you attach money to emails to send to friends, which means that for some shoppers, pulling out your credit card could become as rare as finding exact change in your coin purse. It might seem absurd to imagine Visa, Square, and Google Wallet as crime-fighting technologies. But with a better understanding of how cash"s availability affects crime, perhaps the government should consider killing more than just the penny.

单选题The country"s inadequate mental health system gets the most attention after instances of mass violence that the nation has seen repeatedly over the past few months. Not all who 1 these sorts of cruelties are mentally ill, but 2 have been. After each, the national discussion quickly, but temporarily, turns toward the mental health services that may have 3 to prevent another attack. Mental illness usually is not as dangerous or dramatic. 4 23 million Americans live with mental disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Very few of these men and women are 5 mass-murderers; they need help for their own well-being and for that of their 6 . The Affordable Care Act has significantly increased insurance coverage 7 mental health care. But that may not be enough to expand 8 to insufficient mental-health-care resources. Tim Murphy has a bill that would do so. The Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act is more 9 than other recent efforts to reform the system and perhaps has the brightest prospects in a divided Congress. The 10 would reorganize the billions the federal government pours into mental health services. It would 11 the way Medicaid pays for certain mental health treatments. It would fund mental health clinics that 12 certain medical standards. And it would 13 states to adopt policies that allow judges to order some severely mentally ill people to undergo treatment. Not everyone is satisfied. Some patients" advocates have 14 Mr. Murphy"s approach as coercive and 15 to those who need help. The government should not be expanding the system"s capability to hospitalize or impose treatment on those 16 severe episodes, they say. It should instead be investing in community care that 17 the need for more serious treatment. 18 , for a small class who will not accept treatment between hospital visits or repeat arrests, they say, states have good reason to 19 them to accept care, under judicial supervision. Mr. Murphy"s reform package may not prevent the next Sandy Hook. 20 the changes would help relieve a lot of suffering that does not make the front page.

单选题How best to solve the pollution problems of a city sunk so deep within sulfurous clouds that it was described as hell on earth? Simply answered: Relocate all urban smoke-creating industry and encircle the metropolis of London with sweetly scented flowers and elegant hedges. In fact, as Christine L. Corton, a Cambridge scholar, reveals in her new book, London Fog, this flagrant anti-smoke scheme was the brainchild of John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist. King Charles Ⅱ was said to be much pleased with Evelyn"s idea, and a bill against the smoky nuisance was duly drafted. Then nothing was done. Nobody at the time, and nobody right up to the middle of the 20th century, was willing to put public health above business interests. And yet it"s a surprise to discover how beloved a feature of London life these multicolored fogs became. A painter, Claude Monet, fleeing besieged Paris in 1870, fell in love with London"s vaporous, mutating clouds. He looked upon the familiar mist as his reliable collaborator. Visitors from abroad may have delighted in the fog, but homegrown artists lit candles and vainly scrubbed the grime from their gloom-filled studio windows. "Give us light!" Frederic Leighton pleaded to the guests at a Lord Mayor"s banquet in 1882, begging them to have pity on the poor painter. The more serious side of Corton"s book documents how business has taken precedence over humanity where London"s history of pollution is concerned. A prevailing westerly wind meant that those dwelling to the east were always at most risk. Those who could afford it lived elsewhere. The east was abandoned to the underclass. Lord Palmerston spoke up for choking East Enders in the 1850s, pointing a finger at the interests of the furnace owners. A bill was passed, but there was little change. Eventually, another connection was established: between London"s perpetual veil of smog and its citizens" cozily smoldering grates. Sadly, popular World War I songs like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" didn"t do much to encourage the adoption of smokeless fuel. It wasn"t until what came to be known as the "Great Killer Fog" of 1952 that the casualty rate became impossible to ignore and the British press finally took up the cause. It was left to a Member of Parliament to steer the Clean Air Act into law in 1956. Within a few years, even as the war against pollution was still in its infancy, the dreaded fog began to fade. Corton"s book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London"s ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. It"s discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual and enlightening experience.

单选题 The domestic economy in the United States expanded in a remarkably vigorous and steady fashion. The revival in consumer confidence was reflected in the higher proportion of incomes spent for goods and services and the marked increase in consumer willingness to take on installment debt. A parallel strengthening in business psychology was manifested in a stepped-up rate of plant and equipment spending and a gradual pickup in expenses for inventory. Confidence in the economy was also reflected in the strength of the stock market and in the stability of the bond market. For the year as a whole, consumer and business sentiment benefited from the ease in East-West tensions. The bases of the business expansion were to be found mainly in the stimulative monetary and fiscal policies that had been pursued. Moreover, the restoration of sounder liquidity positions and tighter management control of production efficiency had also helped lay the groundwork for a strong expansion. In addition, the economic policy moves made by the President had served to renew optimism on the business outlook while boosting hopes that inflation would be brought under more effective control. Finally, of course, the economy was able to grow as vigorously as it did because sufficient leeway existed in terms of idle men and machines. The United States balance of payments deficit declined sharply. Nevertheless, by any other test, the deficit remained very large, and there was actually a substantial deterioration in our trade account to a sizable deficit, almost two-thirds of which was with Japan. While the overall trade performance proved disappointing, there are still good reasons for expecting the delayed impact of devaluation to produce in time a significant strengthening in our trade picture. Given the size of the Japanese component of our trade deficit, however, the outcome will depend importantly on the extent of the corrective measures undertaken by Japan. Also important will be our own efforts in the United States to fashion internal policies consistent with an improvement in our external balance. The underlying task of public policy for the year ahead—and indeed for the longer run—remained a familiar one: to strike the right balance between encouraging healthy economic growth and avoiding inflationary pressures. With the economy showing sustained and vigorous growth, and with the currency crisis highlighting the need to improve our competitive posture internationally, the emphasis seemed to be shifting to the problem of inflation. The Phase Three program of wage and price restraint can contribute to reducing inflation. Unless productivity growth is unexpectedly large, however, the expansion of real output must eventually begin to slow down to the economy's larger run growth potential if generalized demand pressures on prices are to be avoided.

单选题Directions: There are 20 blanks in the following passage. For each blank there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should choose the ONE that best fits into the passage. Then mark the corresponding letter on the with a single line through the center. It's an annual back-to-school routine. One morning you wave goodbye, and that {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}evening you're burning the late-night oil in sympathy. In the race to improve educational standards, {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}are throwing the books at kids. {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}elementary school students are complaining of homework {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}What's a well-meaning parent to do? As hard as {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}may be, sit back and chill, experts advise. Though you've got to get them to do it, {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}helping too much, or even examining {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}too carefully, you may keep them {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}doing it by themselves. "I wouldn't advise a parent to check every {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}assignment," says psychologist John Rosemond, author of Ending the Tough Homework. "There's a {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}of appreciation for trial and error. Let your children {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}the grade they deserve. " Many experts believe parents should gently look over the work of younger children and ask them to rethink their {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}. But "you don't want them to feel it has to be {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}," she says. That's not to say parents should {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}homework—first, they should monitor how much homework their kids {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Thirty minutes a day in the early elementary years and an hour in {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}four, five, and six is standard, says Rosemond. For junior-high students it should be " {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}more than an hour and a half," and two for high-school students. If your child {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}has more homework than this, you may want to check {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}other parents and then talk to the teacher about {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}assignment.

单选题A nine year old schoolgirl single handedly cooks up a science fair experiment that ends up debunking (揭……的真相) a widely practiced medical treatment. Emily Rosa"s target was a practice known as therapeutic (治疗的) touch (TT for short), whose advocates manipulate patients" "energy field" to make them feel better and even, say some, to cure them of various ills. Yet Emily"s test shows that these energy fields can"t be detected, even by trained "IT practitioners (行医者). Obviously mindful of the publicity value of the situation, Journal editor George Lundberg appeared on TV to declare, "Age doesn"t matter. It"s good science that matters, and this is good science." Emily"s mother Linda Rosa, a registered nurse, has been campaigning against TT for nearly a decade. Linda first thought about TT in the late "80s, when she learned it was on the approved list for continuing nursing education in Colorado. Its 100,000 trained practitioners (48,000 in the U.S.) don"t even touch their patients. Instead, they waved their hands a few inches from the patient"s body, pushing energy fields around until they"re in "balance." TT advocates say these manipulations can help heal wounds, relieve pain and reduce fever. The claims are taken seriously enough that TT therapists are frequently hired by leading hospitals, at up to $70 an hour, to smooth patients" energy, sometimes during surgery. Yet Rosa could not find any evidence that it works. To provide such proof, TT therapists would have to sit down for independent testing—something they haven"t been eager to do, even though James Randi has offered more than $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human energy field. (He"s had one taker so far. She failed.) A skeptic might conclude that TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn down an innocent fourth grader? Says Emily: "I think they didn"t take me very seriously because I"m a kid." The experiment was straight forward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs left or right and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were recorded, they"d done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn"t feel it.

单选题Some futurologists have assumed that the vast upsurge of women in the workforce may portend a rejection of marriage. Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse of this concern is that the prospects of becoming a multi-paycheck household could encourage marriages. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic downturns tend to postpone marriage because the parties cannot afford to establish a family or are concerned about rainy days ahead. As the economy rebounds, the number of marriages also rises. Coincident with the increase in women working outside the home is the increase in divorce rates. Yet, it may be wrong to jump to any simple cause-and-effect conclusions. The impact of a wife"s work on divorce is no less cloudy than its impact on marriage decisions. The realization that she can be a good provider may increase the chances that a working wife will choose divorce over an unsatisfactory marriage. But the reverse is equally plausible. Tensions grounded in financial problems often play a key role in ending a marriage. Given high unemployment, inflationary problems, and slow growth in real earnings, a working wife can increase household income and relieve some of these pressing financial burdens. By raising a family"s standard of living, a working wife may strengthen her family"s financial and emotional stability. Psychological factors also should be considered. For example, a wife blocked from a career outside the home may feel caged in the house. She may view her only choice as seeking a divorce. On the other hand, if she can find fulfillment through work outside the home, work and marriage can go together to create a stronger and more stable union. Also, a major part of women"s inequality in marriage has been due to the fact that, in most cases, men have remained the main breadwinners. With higher earning capacity and status occupations outside of the home comes the Capacity to exercise power within the family. A working wife may rob a husband of being the master of the house. Depending upon how the couple reacts to these new conditions, it could create a stronger equal partnership or it could create new insecurities.

单选题What are the roads not taken because students must take out loans for college? For one thing, it appears that people with student loans are less likely to start businesses of their own. A new study has found that areas with higher relative growth in student debt show lower growth in the formation of small businesses. The correlation makes sense. People normally have only a certain amount of "debt capacity". When students use up their "debt capacity" on student loans, they can"t commit it elsewhere. Given the importance of an entrepreneur"s personal debt capacity in financing a start-up business, student loan debt, which cannot be discharged via bankruptcy, can have lasting effects later in life and may impact the ability of future small-business owners to raise capital. Considering that 60 percent of jobs are created by small business, "if you shut down the ability to create new businesses, you"re going to harm the economy," said Brent Ambrose, a professor of risk management at Pennsylvania State University. Student loan debt also appears to be affecting homeownership trends. According to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, fewer 30-year-olds in general have bought homes since the recession, but the decline has been steeper for people with a history of student loan debt and has continued even as the housing market has recovered. Student loan debt may also affect career choices. Having a college loan appears to reduce the likelihood that people will choose a low-paying public-interest job, according to a 2011 study by Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley, and Cecilia Elena Rouse of Princeton. They arrived at their conclusion by studying a well-off university that began meeting students" financial needs through a combination of work-study money and grants, and dispensing with loans altogether. Before the new policy started in the early 2000s, students were more likely to choose well-paid professions like investment banking and consulting. After the policy took effect, more students chose jobs in areas like teaching and the nonprofit sector. In many cases, the choices that student borrowers make are just common sense, based on the financial realities they face. If society wants to change the skewing effect of student loans, some tough decisions about allocating educational resources may well lie ahead.

单选题Psychologists have known for a century that individuals vary in their cognitive ability. But are some groups, like some people, reliably smarter than others? In order to answer that question, we grouped 697 volunteer participants into teams of two to five members. Each team worked together to complete a series of short tasks, which were selected to represent the varied kinds of problems that groups are called upon to solve in the real world. One task involved logical analysis, another brainstorming; others emphasized coordination, planning and moral reasoning. Individual intelligence, as psychologists measure it, is defined by its generality: People with good vocabularies, for instance, also tend to have good math skills, even though we often think of those abilities as distinct. The results of our studies showed that this same kind of general intelligence also exists for teams. On average, the groups that did well on one task did well on the others, too. In other words, some teams were simply smarter than others. We found the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics. First, their members contributed more equally to the team"s discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group. Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at "mindreading" than men. In a new study, we replicated these earlier findings. We randomly assigned each of 68 teams to complete our collective intelligence test in one of two conditions. Half of the teams worked face to face. The other half worked online, with no ability to see any of their teammates. We wanted to see whether groups that worked online would still demonstrate collective intelligence, and whether social ability would matter as much when people communicated purely by typing messages into a browser. And they did. Online and off, some teams consistently worked smarter than others. More surprisingly, the most important ingredients for a smart team remained constant regardless of its mode of interaction: members who communicated a lot, participated equally and possessed good emotion-reading skills.

单选题Comparisons were drawn (1) the development of television in the 20th century and the diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened 21. As was discussed before, it was not (2) the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic (3) , following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the (4) of the periodical. It was during the same time that the communications revolution (5) up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading (6) through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures (7) the 20th-century world of the motor car and the airplane. Not everyone sees that process in (8) . It is important to do so. It is generally recognized, (9) , that the introduction of the computer in the early 20th century, (10) by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process, (11) its impact on the media was not immediately (12) . As time went by, computers became smaller and more powerful, and they became "personal" too, as well as (13) , with display becoming sharper and storage (14) increasing. They were thought of, like people, (15) generations, with the distance between generations much (16) . It was within the computer age that the term "information society" began to be widely used to describe the (17) within which we now live. The communications revolution has (18) both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and time, but there have been (19) views about its economic, political, social and cultural implications. "Benefits" have been weighed (20) "harmful" outcomes. And generalizations have proved difficult.

单选题There is virtually no limit to how one can serve community interests, from spending a few hours a week with some charitable organization to practically fulltime work for a social agency. Just as there are opportunities for voluntary service overseas (VSO) for young people before they take 1 full-time employment, 2 there are opportunities for overseas service for qualified technicians in developing countries. Some people, 3 those who retire early, offer their technical and business skills in countries 4 there is a special need. So in considering voluntary or 5 community service, there are more opportunities 6 there were ever when one first began work. Most voluntary organizations have only a small fulltime 7 , and depend very much on volunteers and part-timers. This means that working relationships are different from those in commercial organizations, and values may also be 8 . 9 some ways they may seem more casual and less efficient, but one should not 10 them by commercial criteria. The people who work with them do so for different reasons and with different 11 , both personal and 12 One should not join them, 13 to arm them with professional expertise; they must be joined with commitment to the 14 , not business efficiency. Because salaries are 15 or non-existent, many voluntary bodies offer modest expenses. But many retired people take part in community service for free, simply 16 they enjoy the work. Many community activities possible 17 retirement were also possible during one"s working life, but they should not be undertaken less 18 for that. Retired people who are just looking for something different or unusual to do should not consider 19 community service. 20 , the voluntary work is usually in the everyday life.