阅读理解Gregory Currie, a professor of philosophy eat the University of Nottingham, recently argued in The New York Times that we ought not to claim that literature improves us as people, because there is no “compelling evidence that suggests that people are morally or socially better for reading Tolstoy” or other great books. Actually, there is such evidence. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reported in studies published in 2006 and 2009 that individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize (起共鸣)with them and view the world from their perspective. This link persisted even after the researchers factored in the possibility that more empathetic individuals might choose to read more novels. Recent research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading of books is a distinctive experience, very different from the information-driven reading we do on the Web. Although deep reading does not, strictly speaking, require a conventional book, the built-in limits of the printed page are uniquely conducive to the deep reading experience. A books lack of hyperlinks allows the reader to remain fully immersed in the narrative, without having to make such decisions as whether to click on a link or not. That immersion is supported by the way the brain handles language rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity, by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brainregions that would be active if the scene were unfolding in real life. The emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even increasing our real-life capacity for empathy. This is not reading as many young people are coming to know it. Their reading, mostly done onscreen, is pragmatic and instrumental. If we allow our children to believe reading onscreen is all there is, we will have deprived them of an enjoyable and enlightening experience that will enlarge them as people. Instead molding our education around young people’s attachment to digital devices and onscreen habits, we need to show them some place they’ve never been to, a place only deep reading can take them to.

阅读理解Just over a decade into the 21st century, women’s progress can be celebrated across a range of fields. They hold the highest political offices from Thailand to Brazil, Costa Rica to Australia. A woman holds the top spot at the International Monetary Fund; another won the Nobel Prize in economics. Self-made billionaires in Beijing, tech innovators in Silicon Valley, pioneering justices in Ghana-in these and countless other areas, women are leaving their mark.But hold the applause. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to drive. In Pakistan, 1000 women die in honor killings every year. In the developed world, women lag behind men in pay and political power. The poverty rate among women in the U.S. rose to 14.5% last year.To measure the state of women’s progress. Newsweek ranked 165 countries, looking at five areas that affect women’s lives: treatment under the law, workforce participation, political power, and access to education and health care. Analyzing data from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, among others, and consulting with experts and academics, we measured 28 factors to come up with our rankings.Countries with the highest scores tend to be clustered in the West, where gender discrimination is against the law, and equal rights are constitutionally enshrined (神圣化). But there were some surprises. Some otherwise high-ranking countries had relatively low scores for political representation. Canada ranked third overall but 26th in power, behind countries such as Cuba and Burundi. Does this suggest that a woman in a nation’s top office translates to better lives for women in general? Not exactly. “Trying to quantify or measure the impact of women in politics is hard because in very few countries have there been enough women in politics to make a difference,” says Anne-Marie Goetz, peace and security adviser for U.N. Women.Of course, no index can account for everything. Declaring that one country is better than another in the way that it treats more than half its citizens means relying on broad strokes and generalities. Some things simply can’t be measured. And cross-cultural comparisons can’t account for differences of opinion.Certain conclusions are nonetheless clear. For one thing, our index backs up a simple but profound statement made by Hillary Clinton at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. “When we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and the world,” she said. “There’s a stimulative effect that kicks in when women have greater access to jobs and the economic lives of our countries: Greater political stability. Fewer military conflicts. More food. More educational opportunity for children. By harnessing the economic potential of all women, we boost opportunity for all people.”

阅读理解Passage FourEarly decision—you apply to one school, and admission is binding—seems like a great choice fornervous applicants Schools let in a higher percentage of early-decision applicants, which arguablymeans that you have a better chance of getting in. And if you do, you’re done with the wholeagonizing process by December. But what most students and parents don’t realize is that schoolshave hidden motives for offering early decision.Early decision since it’s binding, allows schools to fill their classes with qualified students; it allowsadmissions committees to select the students that are in particular demand for their college and knowthose students will come. It also gives schools a higher yield rate which is often used as one of theways to measure college selectivity and popularity.The problem is that this process effectively shortens the window of time students have to make oneof the most important decisions of their lives up to that point. Under regular admissions, seniors haveuntil May 1 to choose which school to attend; early decision effectively steals six months from them,months that could be used to visit more schools, do more research, speak to current students andalumni and arguably make a more informed decision.There are, frankly, an astonishing number of exceptional colleges in America, and for any givenstudent, there are a number of schools that are a great fit. When students become too fixated on aparticular school early in the admissions process, that fixation can lead to severe disappointment ifthey don’t get in or, if they do, the possibility that they are now bound to go to a school that, giventime for further reflection, may not actually be right for them.Insofar as early decision offers a genuine admissions edge; that advantage goes largely to studentswho already have numerous advantages. The students who use early decision tend to be those whohave received higher quality college guidance, usually a result of coming from a more privilegedbackground. In this regard, there’s an argument against early decision, as students fromlower-income families are far less likely to have the admissions know-how to navigate the oftenconfusing early deadlines.Students who have done their research and are confident that there’s one school they would bethrilled to get into should, under the current system, probably apply under early decision. But forstudents who haven’t yet done enough research, or who are still constantly changing their minds onfavorite schools, the early decision system needlessly and prematurely narrows the field ofpossibility just at a time when students should be opening themselves to a whole range of thrillingoptions.

阅读理解Advertisers tend to think big and perhaps this is why theyre always coming in for criticism. Their critics seem to resent them because they have a flair for self-promotion and because they have so much money to throw around. ‘Its iniquitous,’ they say, ‘that this entirely unproductive industry (if we can call it that) should absorb millions of pounds each year. It only goes to show how much profit the big companies are making. Why dont they stop advertising and reduce the price of their goods? After all, it’s the consumer who pays...’The poor old consumer! He’d have to pay a great deal more if advertising didn’t create mass markets for products. It is precisely because of the heavy advertising that consumer goods are so cheap. But we get the wrong idea if we think the only purpose of advertising is to sell goods. Another equally important function is to inform. A great deal of the knowledge we have about household goods derives largely from the advertisements we read. Advertisements introduce us to new products or remind us of the existence of ones we already know about. Supposing you wanted to buy a washing machine, it is more than likely you would obtain details regarding performance, price, etc., from an advertisement.Lots of people pretend that they never read advertisements, but this claim may be seriously doubted. It is hardly possible not to read advertisements these days. And what fun they often are, too! Just think what a railway station or a newspaper would be like without advertisements. Would you enjoy gazing at a blank wall or reading railway byelaws while waiting for a train? Would you like to read only closely printed columns of news in your daily paper? A cheerful, witty advertisement makes such a difference to a drab wall or a newspaper full of the daily ration of calamities.We must not forget, cither, that advertising makes a positive contribution to our pockets. Newspapers, commercial radio and television companies could not subsist without this source of revenue. The fact that we pay so little for our daily paper, or can enjoy so many broadcast programmes is due entirely to the money spent by advertisers. Just think what a newspaper would cost if we had to pay its full price!Another thing we mustn’t forget is the ‘small ads.’ which arc in virtually every newspaper and magazine. What a tremendously useful service they perform for the community! Just about anything can be accomplished through these columns. For instance, you can find a job, buy or sell a house, announce a birth, marriage or death in what used to be called the hatch, match and dispatch’ column but by far the most fascinating section is the personal or agony column. No other item in a newspaper provides such entertaining reading or offers such a deep insight into human nature. It’s the best advertisement for advertising there is!

阅读理解The concept of personal choice in relation to health behaviors is an important one. An estimated 90 percent of all illnesses may be preventable if individuals would make sound personal heath choices based upon current medial knowledge. We all enjoy our freedom of choice and do not like to see it restricted when it is within the legal and moral boundaries of society. The structure of American society allows us to make almost all our own personal decisions that may concern our health. If we so desire, we can smoke, drink excessively, refuse to wear seat belts, eat whatever foods we want, and live a completely sedentary life-style without any exercise. The freedom to make such personal decisions is a fundamental aspect of our society, although the wisdom of these decisions can be questioned. Personal choices relative to health often cause a difficulty. As one example, a teenager may know the facts relative to smoking cigarettes and health but may be pressured by friends into believing it is the socially accepted thing to do.A multitude of factors, both inherited and environmental, influence the development of health-related behaviors, and it is beyond the scope of this text to discuss all these factors as they may affect any given individual. However, the decision to adopt a particular health-related behavior is usually one of personal choices. There are healthy choices and there are unhealthy choices. In discussing the morals of personal choice, Fries and Crapo drew a comparison. They suggest that to knowingly give oneself over to a behavior that has a statistical probability of shortening life is similar to attempting suicide. Thus, for those individuals who are interested in preserving both the quality and quantity of life,personal heath choices should reflect those behaviors that are associated with a statistical probability of increased vitality and longevity.

阅读理解Which is safer-staying at home, traveling to work on public transport, or working in the office? Surprisingly, each of these carries the same risk, which is very low. However, what about flying compared to working in the chemical industry? Unfortunately, the former is 65 times riskier than the latter! In fact, the accident rate of workers in the chemical industry is less than that of almost any of human activity, and almost as safe as staying at home.The trouble with the chemical industry is that when things go wrong they often cause death to those living nearby. It is this which makes chemical accidents so newsworthy. Fortunately, they are extremely rare. The most famous ones happened at Texas City (1947), Flixborough (1974), Seveso (1976), Pemex (1984) and Bhopal (1984).Some of these are always in the minds of the people even though the loss of life was small. No one died at Seveso, and only 28 workers at Flixborough. The worst accident of all was Bhopal, where up to 3,000 were killed. The Texas City explosion of fertilizer killed 552. The Pemex fire at a storage plant for natural gas in the suburbs of Mexico City took 542 lives, just a month before the unfortunate event at Bhopal.Some experts have discussed these accidents and used each accident to illustrate a particular danger. Thus the Texas City explosion was caused by tons of ammonium nitrate (硝酸铵), which is safe unless stored in great quantity. The Flixborough fireball was the fault of management, which took risks to keep production going during essential repairs. The Seveso accident shows what happens if the local authorities lack knowledge of the danger on their doorstep. When the poisonous gas drifted over the town, local leaders were incapable of taking effective action. The Pemex fire was made worse by an overloaded site in an overcrowded suburb. The fire set off a chain reaction of exploding storage tanks. Yet, by a miracle, the two largest tanks did not explode. Had these caught fire, then 3,000 strong rescue team and fire fighters would all have died.

阅读理解Passage Three: Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解Educating girls quite possibly yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world. Women’s education may be unusual territory for economists, but enhancing women’s contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social issue. And economics, with its emphasis on incentives, provides guideposts that point to an explanation for why so many girls are deprived of an education.Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family: girls grow up only to marry into somebody else’s family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school — the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling, trapping women in a vicious circle of neglect.An educated mother, on the other hand, has greater earning abilities outside the home and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and can insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a virtuous circle.Few will dispute that educating women has great social benefits. But it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 per cent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning. Educating women also has a significant impact on health practices, including family planning.

阅读理解It seems like only yesterday that we were extolling the virtues of such socially produced wonders as Linux and Wikipedia. These communal endeavors heralded a Utopian age of unparalleled access to systems and information at little or no cost, and converted Web 2.0 from a mere collection of technologies to a system of liberation and empowerment. But the road to Utopia all too often ends up detouring through the business district, and Web 2. 0 has been no exception. By offering the means of production free to their users, other leviathan sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have generated enormous amounts of content at almost no expense. Even better, this content is a gold mine for targeted advertising. Over in Utopia, the “workers”who generated all those articles, photos, tweets, and videos would get a cut of the profits they helped to generate. In the business district, however, users retain their amateur status, while the companies they labor for rake in billions. Worse, contributors don’t even own the content they create. The smallest of the small print in the terms of use, which you must agree to in order to get an account, states that the company can use your content as it sees fit. To Nicholas Carr, this smacks of exploitation rather than emancipation, and he coined a term for it: digital sharecropping. Just like the farm laborers of old age who worked the land but didn’t own it, digital sharecroppers grow the product that earns Web 2.0 companies their profits, but they relinquish ownership. Heck, even the most put-upon sharecropper earned a share of the crop he worked so hard to cultivate; today’s digital serfs work on their profiles, timelines, and feeds for free, with targeted ads their only “compensation.”To be sure, no one on these sites sees their uploading of posts, photos, and videos as “work.”But this ad hoc content creation isn’t enough for many companies, so now they’re outright asking nonemployees to contribute. This was preceded by crowdsourcing, which involves obtaining labor, products, or content from people outside the company, particularly from a large group of customers or amateurs who work for little pay. A good example is the phenomenon of microwork, a short, simple task that a company crowdsources for a small fee, particularly to workers in the underdeveloped world.

阅读理解 There is plenty we don't know about criminal behavior. Most crime goes unreported so it is hard to pick out trends from the data, and even reliable sets of statistics can be difficult to compare. But here is one thing we do know: those with a biological predisposition to violent behavior who are brought up in abusive homes are very likely to become lifelong criminals. Antisocial and criminal behavior tends to run in families, but no one was sure whether this was due mostly to social-environmental factors or biological ones. It turns out both are important, but the effect is most dramatic when they act together. This has been illustrated in several studies over the past six years which found that male victims of child abuse are several times as likely to become criminals and abusers themselves if they were born with a less-active version of a gene for the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), which breaks down neurotransmitters crucial to the regulation of aggression. Researchers recently made another key observation: kids with this 'double whammy' of predisposition and an unfortunate upbringing are likely to show signs of what's to come at a very early age. The risk factors for long-term criminality—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, low IQ, language difficulties—can be spotted in kindergarten. So given what we now know, shouldn't we be doing everything to protect the children most at risk? No one is suggesting testing all boys to see which variant of the MAO-A gene they have, but what the science is telling us is that we should redouble efforts to tackle abusive upbringings, and even simple neglect. This will help any child, but especially those whose biology makes them vulnerable. Thankfully there is already considerable enthusiasm in both the US and the UK for converting the latest in behavioral science into parenting and social skills: both governments have schemes in place to improve parenting in families where children are at risk of receiving poor care. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of early intervention because it implies our behavior becomes 'set' as we grow up, compromising the idea of free will. That view is understandable, but it would be negligent to ignore what the studies are telling us. Indeed, the cost to society of failing to intervene—in terms of criminal damage, dealing with offenders and helping victims of crime—is bound to be greater than the cost of improving parenting. The value to the children is immeasurable.

阅读理解Ethnography is the study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study. Contemporary ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork and requires the complete immersion of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life of the people who are the subject of his study. Ethnography, by virtue of its intersubjective nature, is necessarily comparative. Given that the anthropologist in the field necessarily retains certain cultural biases, his observations and descriptions must, to a certain degree, be comparative. Thus the formulating of generalizations about culture and the drawing of comparisons inevitably become components of ethnography.Modern anthropologists usually identify the establishment of ethnography as a professional field with the pioneering work of both the Polish-born British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands of Melanesia. Ethnographic fieldwork has since become a sort of rite of passage into the profession of cultural anthropology. Many ethnographers reside in the field for a year or more, learning the local language or dialect and, to the greatest extent possible, participating in everyday life while at the same time maintaining an observer’s objective detachment.This method, called participant-observation, while necessary and useful for gaining a thorough understanding of a foreign culture, is in practice quite difficult. Just as the anthropologist brings to the situation certain inherent, if unconscious, cultural biases, so also is he influenced by the subject of his study. While there are cases of ethnographers who felt alienated or even repelled by the culture they entered, many—perhaps most—have come to identify closely with “their people,” a factor that affects their objectivity. In addition to the technique of participant-observation, the contemporary ethnographer usually selects and cultivates close relationships with individuals, known as informants, who can provide specific information on ritual, kinship, or other significant aspects of cultural life. In this process also the anthropologist risks the danger of biased viewpoints, as those who most willingly act as informants frequently are individuals who are marginal to the group and who, for ulterior motives (e.g., alienation from the group or a desire to be singled out as special by the foreigner), may provide other than objective explanations of cultural and social phenomena. A final hazard inherent in ethnographic fieldwork is the ever-present possibility of cultural change produced by or resulting from the ethnographer’s presence in the group.Contemporary ethnographies usually adhere to a community, rather than individual, focus and concentrate on the description of current circumstances rather than historical events. Traditionally, commonalities among members of the group have been emphasized, though recent ethnography has begun to reflect an interest in the importance of variation within cultural systems. Ethnographic studies are no longer restricted to small primitive societies but may also focus on such social units as urban ghettos. The tools of the ethnographer have changed radically since Malinowski’s time. While detailed notes are still a mainstay of fieldwork, ethnographers have taken full advantage of technological developments such as motion pictures and tape recorders to augment their written accounts.

阅读理解Investors are being encouraged to continue ploughing their savings into the stock market after shares in London recovered all the losses incurred since September 11. The advice comes despite America’s Dow Jones industrial average tumbling on Friday after a case of anthrax was diagnosed in New York. Consumer spending in America also slumped by more than three times economists’ predictions in September, pushing share prices back below pre-attack levels.The FTSE 100 index of Britain’s largest companies closed on Friday at 5,145 — up 112 points on its September 10 close. The Dow in New York rallied late on to close at 9,344, down 66 points. Although most experts are predicting further volatility in the coming months, they remain cautiously optimistic that the FTSE 100 will begin a sustained, if rocky, rally towards 5,500 by the end of the year. The immediate economic outlook is still bleak. Some commentators predict that America will endure a recession lasting six months. They also expect Britain to suffer a sharp slowdown. But analysts say the market is well placed to absorb any further bad news.Sharp economic downturns can, perversely, be good for the market because they force firms to be more cost-efficient. Therefore, any announcements about rising unemployment or corporate streamlining could have a positive effect on shares. Of more concern to private investors is the impact that another terrorist attack would have on shares. If this were to happen, the market would almost certainly slump again. But history suggests that it would, once again, make up any lost ground within weeks.Experts are therefore urging private investors not to repeat their past mistakes, when they waited for a sustained rally before feeling confident enough to invest. Cross said, “It’s peculiar that investors feel it’s safer to invest after the market has risen by 25% than when it has fallen by 25%. Common sense suggests that the opposite would be more appropriate.” Mike Lenhoff of Gerrard, the stockbroker, said that if the market hit 5 500 and remained around that level for some weeks, it would be a sign that further, sustained gains were imminent. He said, “Getting back to 5 500 would be important, because if the index stayed at that level, the psychology of the market would change substantially. Defensive shares would become too expensive and big investors would start moving into value stocks, which are the type of firms that do well in an economic recovery.”But private investors could be forgiven for their pessimistic mood, as nearly all Isa buyers have suffered big losses. But investors can take some comfort from the fact that the next three months are traditionally the best-performing period of the year for the stock market. David Schwartz, the stock-market historian, said the index almost always rose in the period between November and April. Since 1974, the market went up on 24 occasions between November and April, by an average of 15%, and dropped only three times. Schwartz said, “It’s no guarantee for this year, but history is on our side.”

阅读理解With all the wars, fighting and sadness in the world today, its not only necessary, but alsoessential to have a good sense of humor just to help us get through each and every day of our lives.Putting a smile on someones face when you know they are feeling down in the dumps, as the sayinggoes, makes me feel good and warms my heart.How would you feel if you could not joke around with your wife, husband, child, co-worker,neighbor, close friend, or even just someone that you are standing in line with at your corner store? Iam always saying things that make others smile or laugh, even if I dont know the person Im jokingaround with. My Grandma always found humor in everything she did, even if it was the hardest jobanyone could imagine. This not only relieves stress in any situation, but also is common courtesy tospeak to others that are around you.I know of a few people that dont have a funny bone in their bodies, as they say. Everyone aroundthem could be rolling on the floor after hearing a great joke and they would sit there without theslightest smile on their face. They dont get the joke that makes others laugh. I am busting a gut whilethey just sit there, looking at me as if I were from outer space. How can people not get a really funnyjoke?Laughing is essential to keep your stress levels under control. Without humor we would findourselves with a lot of psychological problems, or on a lot of medications to keep us from goingcrazy. There is too much sadness in this present world. It drives people crazy. We all need to find away to bypass the sadness and bring a little light into our lives. So, I believe our best medicine is toget together and tell some jokes and have some fun laughing together.

阅读理解 Here is a shaming statistic: divide the US by race, sex and county of residence, and differences in average life expectancy across the various groups can exceed 30 years. The most disadvantaged look like denizens of a poor African country: a boy born on a Native American reservation in Jackson County, South Dakota, for example, will be lucky to reach his 60th birthday. A typical child in Senegal can expect to live longer than that. America is not alone in this respect. While the picture is extreme in other rich nations, health inequalities based on race, sex and class exist in most societies—and are only partly explained by access to healthcare. But fresh insights and solutions may soon be at hand. An innovative project in Chicago to unite sociology and biology is blazing the trail (开创), after discovering that social isolation and fear of crime can help to explain the alarmingly high death rate from breast cancer among the city's black women. Living in these conditions seems to make tumors more aggressive by changing gene activity, so that cancer cells can use nutrients more effectively. We are already familiar with the lethal effect of stress on people clinging to the bottom rungs of the societal ladder, thanks to pioneering studies of British civil servants conducted by Michael Marmot of University College London. What's exciting about the Chicago project is that it both probes the mechanisms involved in a specific disease and suggests precise remedies. There are drugs that may stave tumors of nutrients and community coordinators could be employed to help reduce social isolation. Encouraged by the US National Institutes Health, similar projects are springing up to study other pockets of poor health, in populations ranging from urban black men to white poor women in rural Appalachia. To realize the full potential of such projects, biologists and sociologists will have to start treating one other with a new respect and learn how to collaborate outside their comfort zones. Too many biomedical researchers still take the arrogant view that sociology is a 'soft science' with little that's serious to say about health. And too many sociologists reject any biological angle—fearing that their expertise will be swept aside and that this approach will be used to bolster discredited theories of eugenics, or crude race-based medicine. It's time to drop these outdated attitudes and work together for the good of society's most deprived members. More important, it's time to use this fusion of biology and sociology to inform public policy. This endeavor has huge implications, not least in cutting the wide health gaps between blacks and whites, rich and poor.

阅读理解Passage Four: Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解President Coolidges statement, “The business of America is business,” still points to an importanttruth today that business institutions have more prestige in American society than any other kind oforganization, including the government. Why do business institutions possess this great prestige?One reason is that Americans view business as being more firmly based on the ideal of competitionthan other institutions in society. Since competition is seen as the major source of progress andprosperity by most Americans, competitive business institutions are respected. Competition is notonly good in itself; it is the means by which other basic American values such as individual freedom,equality of opportunity, and hard work are protected.Competition protects the freedom of the individual by ensuring that there is no monopoly of power.In contrast to one, all-powerful government, many businesses compete against each other for profits.Theoretically, if one business tries to take unfair advantage of its customers, it will lose to competingbusiness which treats its customers more fairly. Where many businesses compete for the customersdollar, they cannot afford to treat them like inferiors or slaves.A contrast is often made between business, which is competitive, and government, which is amonopoly. Because business is competitive, many Americans believe that it is more supportive offreedom than government, even though government leaders are elected by the people and businessleaders are not. Many Americans believe, then, that competition is as important as, or even moreimportant than, democracy in preserving freedom.Competition in business is also believed to strengthen the idea of equality of opportunity.Competition is seen as an open and fair race where success goes to the swiftest person regardless ofhis or her social class background. Competitive success is commonly seen as the Americanalternative to social rank based on family background. Business is therefore viewed as an expressionof the idea of equality of opportunity rather than the aristocratic idea of inherited privilege.

阅读理解Passage Six The use of animals to better understand human anatomy and human disease is a centuries-old practice

阅读理解The MIT Sloan School of Management strongly believes that its purpose is to give students the toolsthey will need to be effective change agents in the rest of their careers. To do this it is necessary tostart off with an understanding of the essential driving forces that will be forcing organizations tochange. Change is not random, there are underlying processes. Three central driving forces—thegrowth of the world economy, the changing nature of the work force, and the arrival of genuinetechnological competition—are now at work.The globalization of the world capital markets that has occurred in the past 20 years will bereplicated right across the economy in the next decade. The need to produce goods and services atquality levels previously thought impossible to obtain in mass production and the spreading use ofparticipatory management techniques will require a work force with much higher levels of educationand skills. Managers are increasingly shifting from a “don’t think, do what you are told” to a “think,I am not going to tell you what to do” style of management.To be on top of this situation, tomorrow’s managers will have to have a strong background inorganizational psychology, human relations, and labor economics. The MIT Sloan School ofManagement attempts to advance our understanding in these areas through research and then quicklybrings the fruits of this new research to our students so that they can be leading-edge managers whenit comes to the human side of the equation.What this means is that American managers have to understand the forces of, technical change inways that were not necessary in the past. Conversely, managers from the rest of the world know thatit is now possible for them to dominate their American competitor if they understand the forces oftechnical change better than their American competitors do.In the world of tomorrow managers cannot be technologically illiterate regardless of their functionaltasks within the firm. If they don’t understand what is going on and technology effectively becomesa black box, they will fail to make the changes that those who do understand what is going on insidethe black box make. They will be losers, not winners.

阅读理解 For many environmentalists, all human influence on the planet is bad. Many natural scientists implicitly share this outlook. This is not unscientific, but it can create the impression that greens and environmental scientists are authoritarian tree-huggers who value nature above people. That doesn't play well with mainstream society, as the apparent backlash against climate scientist revels. Environmentalists need to find a new story to tell. Like it nor not, we now live in the antropocent (人类世)—an age in which humans are perturbing many of the planet's natural systems, from the water to the acidity of the oceans. We cannot wish that away we must recognize it and manage our impacts. Johan Rockstrom, head of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden, and colleagues have distilled recent research on how Earth systems work into a list of nine 'planetary boundaries' that we must stay within to live sustainably. It is preliminary work, and many will disagree with where the boundaries are set. But the point is to offer a new way of thinking about our relationship with the environment—a science-based picture that accepts a certain level of human impact and even allow us some room to expand. The result is a breath of fresh air: though we are already well past three of the boundaries, we haven't trashed the place yet. It is in the same spirit that we also probe the basis for key claims in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report on climate impacts. This report has been much discussed since our revelations about its unsubstantiated statement on melting Himalayan glaciers. Why return to the topic? Because there is a sense that the IPCC shares the same anti-human agenda and, as a result, is too dangerous of unverified numbers. While the majority of the report is assuredly rigorous, there is no escaping the fact that parts of it make claims that go beyond the science. Above all, we need a dispassionate view of the state of the planet and our likely future impact on it. There is no room for complacency: Rockstrom's analysis shows us that we face real dangers, but exaggerating our problems is not the way to solve them.

阅读理解Passage two: Questions are based on the following passage