It seems to me that the main requirement of an international language is that it ______ easily learned.

Phone caller: Hello. Could I please speak to Helen? Helen: ______.

Attacking an increasingly popular Internet business practice, a consumer watchdog group Monday filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission(FTC), asserting that many online search engines are concealing the impact special fees have on search results by Internet users. Commercial Alert, a 3-year-old group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader, asked the FTC to investigate whether eight of the Web"s largest search engines are violating federal laws against deceptive advertising. The group said that the search engines are abandoning objective formulas to determine the order of their listed results and selling the top spots to the highest bidders without making adequate disclosures to Web surfers. The complaint touches a hot-button issue affecting tens of millions of people who submit search queries each day. With more than 2 billion pages and more than 14 billion hyperlinks on the Web, search requests rank as the second most popular online activity after E-mail. The eight search engines named in Commercial Alert"s complaint are: MSN, owned by Microsoft; Netscape, owned by AOL Time Warner; Directhit, owned by Ask Jeeves; HotBot and Lycos, both owned by Term Lycos; Altavista, owned by CMGI; LookSmart, owned by LookSmart; and iWon, owned by a privately held company operating under the same name. Portland, Ore.-based Commercial Alert could have named more search engines in its complaint, but focused on the biggest sites that are auctioning off spots in their results, said Gary Ruskin, the group"s executive director. "Search engines have become central in the quest for learning and knowledge in our society. The ability to skew(扭曲) the results in favor of hucksters(小贩) without telling consumers is a serious problem". Ruskin said. By late Monday afternoon, three of the search engines had responded to The Associated Press" inquiries about the complaint. Two, LookSmart and AltaVista, denied the charges. Microsoft spokesman Matt Pilla said MSN is delivering "compelling search results that people want". The FTC had no comment about the complaint Monday. The complaint takes aim at the new business plans embraced by more search engines as they try to cash in on their pivotal(关键的) role as Web guides and reverse a steady stream of losses. To boost revenue, search engines in the past year have been accepting payments from businesses interested in receiving a higher ranking in certain categories or ensuring that their sites are reviewed more frequently.

Educational attitudes in a country may be a【B1】by which its basic cultural values are reflected. To take the American higher education【B2】example, university classrooms share certain identical features though they【B3】from course to course in some aspects. Any student,【B4】their ethnic and social background, is not only allowed but also encouraged to have chances for active participation in class.【B5】, teachers often expect independent learning【B6】their students. It will be most appreciated if a student can【B7】the initiative and complete the assignment without too much【B8】upon his or her instructors. These two【B9】features in American university classrooms actually manifest the basic American values, especially self-reliance and【B10】of opportunity.

The customs officers______him open his three suitcases.

*Employeeswithintheorganizationhaveopportunitiesforadditionalsalaryadvancement.

Paul:Do you have to have that TV on quite so loud? Carol:______ Is it bothering you? Paul: Yes, I"m trying to sleep.

The evolution of the social sciences has reached a crucial point that might be called a phase change in which old, atomistic, and impressionistic ways of doing research are superseded by a far more systematic and united methodology. To bring social sciences to the level of rigor already achieved by some of the physical sciences, a new type of facility will be needed. This will be a trans-disciplinary, Internet-based collaboratory that will provide social and behavioral scientists with the databases, software and hardware tools, and other resources to conduct worldwide research that integrates experimental, survey, geographic, and economic methodologies on a much larger scale than was possible previously. This facility will enable advanced research and professional education in economics, sociology, political science, social geography, and related fields. In many branches of social sciences, a new emphasis on the rigor of formal laboratory experimentation has driven researchers to develop procedure and software to conduct online interaction experiment using computer terminals attached to local area networks. The opportunity to open these laboratories to the Internet will reduce the cost per research participant and increase greatly the number of institutions, researchers, students, and research participants who can take part. The scale of social sciences experimentation can increase by an order of magnitude or more, examining a much wider range of phenomena and ensuring great confidence in results through multiple replication of crucial studies. Technology for administering questionnaires to very large numbers of respondents over the Internet will revolutionize survey research. Data from past questionnaire surveys can be the springboard for new surveys with vastly larger numbers of respondents at lower cost than by traditional methods. Integrated researches can combine modules using both questionnaire and experimental methods.Results can be linked via geographic analysis to other sources of data including census information, economic statistics, and data from other experiments and surveys. Longitudinal studies will conduct time-series comparisons across data sets to chart social and economic trends. Each new study will be designed so that the data automatically and instantly becomes part of the archives, and scientific publications will be linked to the data sets on which they are based so that the network becomes a universal knowledge system.

Help Wanted Ad Outstanding opportunity with local real estate corporation. Requires strong background in real estate, financing. Some legal training helpful. Prefer candidate with M. A. and two or more years of successful real estate experience. Broker"s license required. Salary range $ 50, 000- $ 80, 000 yearly in accordance with education and experience. Begin immediately. Interviews will be conducted Tuesday and Thursday, June 10 and 12. Call for an appointment 243-11522, or send a letter of application and resume to: Personnel Department Executive Real Estate Corporation 500 Capital Avenue Lawrence, Kansas 67884

He"s only got one shirt because all the rest ______ being washed.

Happiness is becoming a huge area in psychological research and even in government policy, with the UK government exploring a "happiness index. " It"s tough, though, to define exactly what happiness is, and what makes us happy. There are two broad ways of looking at happiness: short-term happiness(a great cookie, a bottle of wine)and long-term happiness(financial security, achieving your goals). Both types of happiness are valid, and important. The problem is, they"re often in competition. Let"s say you"ve got a goal of losing 50 pounds this year. You know you"d be happier and healthier if you weren"t carrying that extra weight. To achieve long-term happiness, you need to go on a diet. In the short-term, though, it"s not that easy. A chocolate cake, or a large glass of wine, might seem like just the thing to cheer you up at the end of a long day—or to celebrate with friends. It"s the same with lots of other goal. If you"ve got a tendency to prioritize long-term happiness at the expense of day-to-day pleasures, you should start looking for some small ways to bring a little joy back into your life. I"m not suggesting that you go out and get drunk every night, or that you stuff yourself with cake. There are plenty of other ways to enjoy yourself. Don"t pin all your hopes of happiness on some far-off future, though. There"s no point working a 60-hour week and making yourself thoroughly miserable in the belief that things will be perfect as soon as you"re making a six-figure salary.

Edie: I think Professor Holt is smart and she"s really a good teacher. Rosa: OK. I"ll try to get into her class. Edie: ______!

Even plants can run a fever, especially when they"re under attack by insects or disease. But unlike humans, plants can have their temperature taken from 3,000 feet away—straight up. A decade ago, adapting the infrared scanning technology developed for military purposes and other satellites, physicist Stephen Paley came up with a quick way to take the temperature of crops to determine which ones are under stress. The goal was to let farmers precisely target pesticide(杀虫剂) spraying rather than rain poison on a whole field, which invariably includes plants that don"t have pest(害虫) problems. Even better, Paley"s Remote Scanning Services Company could detect crop problems before they became visible to the eye. Mounted on a plane flown at 3,000 feet at night, an infrared scanner measured the heat emitted by crops. The data were transformed into a color-coded map showing where plants were running "fevers". Farmers could then spot-spray, using 40 to 70 percent less pesticide than they otherwise would. The bad news is that Paley"s company closed down in 1984, after only three years. Farmers resisted the new technology and long-term backers were hard to find. But with the renewed concern about pesticides on produce, and refinements in infrared scanning, Paley hopes to get back into operation. Agriculture experts have no doubt the technology works. "This technique can be used on 75 percent of agricultural land in the United States". says George Oerther of Texas A&M. Ray Jackson, who recently retired from the Department of Agriculture, thinks remote infrared crop scanning could be adopted by the end of the decade. But only if Paley finds the financial backing which he failed to obtain 10 years ago.

The Xinhua bookstore chain, China"s largest official publishing enterprise, has become a surprising flash point for interest among foreign venture capital investors. "We are actively promoting the process of shareholding reform. Everyday, we receive lots of offers from domestic and foreign investors interested in getting involved and may pick one or two to do so in the next two to three months", Zhang Yashan, the leading cadre of the head store"s office said. According to a Company insider who requested anonymity, several securities firms are overseeing Xinhua bookstore"s reform and the company could list on the domestic stock market once reforms are reported to the government in May and then completed. The source would not reveal the specific names of the firms involved or details of the reform. "We will stipulate that we must remain the majority shareholder, but we will welcome all kinds of investment, including foreign capital, to establish a shareholding enterprise. We hope the No. 2 shareholder will be a foreign enterprise", the source said. In keeping with its World Trade Organization entry promises, China must allow foreign investment in domestic publication retailers by the end of this year.

______his sister, Jack is quiet and does not easily make friends with others.

People once widely believed that intelligent life existed on Mars. The 19th-century discovery of what appeared to be geometric designs cut across the surface was taken as evidence. The lines were thought to have been a system of canals that had been built to irrigate the surface. It is now clear that "canals"—perhaps the most spectacular geologic features of Mars—are natural valleys where ancient rivers once flowed. Another fragmented idea concerns the planet"s seasonal changes in color. Once attributed to the rapid spread of some life-form, these shifts are now known to develop from the movement of fine dust in the atmosphere. By the close of the 20th century none of the many experiments conducted by spacecraft had ever found persuasive evidence of life. Nevertheless, speculation continued over the existence of some form of life, in either the present or the past. In 1996 scientists discovered organic compounds and minerals in a meteorite(陨石), consisting of Martian rock, that collided with Earth around 11,000 B.C. These compounds suggest that Mars may have been inhabited by organisms more than three billion years ago.

Joanne: Hey, you look concerned.______. Harry: The final exam. I"m not fully prepared yet.

Many people start relationships because of loneliness. Loneliness and being alone are not synonymous. Loneliness is a state of painful isolation, of feeling cut off from friends and family. Being alone, a state of solitude(独处), can be quite desirable most of the time, since it allows us to work, study, live, or reflect on the world around us. Solitude is usually a matter of choice; loneliness is not. Lonely people tend to spend a lot of time by themselves, eat dinner alone, spend weekends alone, and participate in few if any social activities. They are unlikely to date. Some lonely people report having many friends, but a closer look suggests that these " friendships" are shallow. Lonely people are unlikely to share confidences. Loneliness tends to peak during adolescence(青春期). This is when most young people begin to replace family ties with peer relationships. Loneliness is quite often connected with feelings of depression and with a feeling of being " sick at heart. " Loneliness is even reported among some married people. In one of the recent studies, lonely wives tended to feel less liking and love for their partners and expressed less satisfaction with their married life. Lonely husbands reported less liking for their wives and less intimacy in their relationships.

We all questioned______accurate the result was.

Bats are long-lived creatures,______a life-expectancy of around 20 years.