Global sourcing

The Ministry of Science and Technology also said in July that an independent watch-dog will be created to scrutinize the use of research funds.

Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese is seeing a decline 1. ______ of their traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has large 2. ______ fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don't know where they should go next. The coming of the age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into 3. ______ the male-dominated job market has limited the opportunities of teen-agers who 4. ______ are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved climbing 5. ______ Japan's rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent Japanese students were fully satisfied with 6. ______ school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 countries surveyed. While often 7. ______ praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics. Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanic learning 8. ______ over creativity and self-expression. Last year Japan experienced 2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Detoyama, who was then education minister, raised his eyebrow when he argued that liberal reforms introduced 9. ______ by the American occupation authorities after World War II had weakened the ' Japanese morality of respect of parents.' 10. ______

交流电

法治国家

Lowbrows are quite ______ for highbrows to have symphonies and their Russian novels.

高等学校

In her time, Isadora Duncan was ______ today a liberated woman.

Low-level slash-and-bum farming doesn't harm rainforest. On the contrary, it helps farmers and improves forest soils. This is the unorthodox view of a German soil scientist who has shown that burnt clearings in the Amazon, dating back more than 1,000 years, helped create patches of rich, fertile soil that farmers still benefit from today. Most rainforest soils are thin and poor because they lack minerals and because the heat and heavy rainfall destroy most organic matter in the soils within four years of it reaching the forest floor. This means topsoil contains few of the ingredients needed for long-term successful farming. But Bruno Glaser, a soil scientist of the University of Bayreuth, has studied unexpected patches of fertile soils in the central Amazon. These soils contain lots of organic matter. Glaser has shown that most of this fertile organic matter comes from ' black carbon'—the organic particles from camp fires and charred wood left over from thousands of years of slash-and-bum farming.' The soils, known as Terra Preta, contained up to 70 times more black carbon than the surrounding soil,' says Glaser. Unburnt vegetation rots quickly, but black carbon persists in the soil for many centuries. Radiocarbon dating shows that the charred wood in Terra Preta soils is typically more than 1,000 years old. 'Slash-and-burn farming can be good for soils provided it doesn't completely burn all the vegetation, and leaves behind charred wood,' says Glaser. 'It can be better than manure.' Burning the forest just once can leave behind enough black carbon to keep the soil fertile for thousands of years. And rainforests easily regrow after small- scale clearing. Contrary to the conventional view that human activities damage the environment, Glaser says: 'Black carbon combined with human wastes is responsible for the richness of Terra Preta soils.' Terra Preta soils turn up in large patches all over the Amazon, where they are highly prized by farmers. All the patches fall within 500 square kilometers in the central Amazon. Glaser says the widespread presence of pottery confirms the soil's human origins. The findings add weight to the theory that large areas of the Amazon have recovered so well from past periods of agricultural use that the regrowth has been mistaken by generations of biologists for 'virgin' forest. During the past decade, researchers have discovered hundreds of large earth works deep in the jungle. They are up to 20 meters high and cover up to a square kilometer. Glaser claims that these earth works, built between AD 400 and 1400, were at the heart of urban civilizations. Now it seems the richness of the Terra Preta soils may explain how such civilizations managed to feed themselves.

'Common language' here usually means a foreign language, but the same point applies in principle ______ any encounter with unfamiliar dialects or styles within a single language.

The painting was larger than it appeared to be, for hanging in a darkened recess of the chapel, it was ______ by the perspective.

DOS

When the young man realized that the police had spotted him, he made ______ the exit as quickly as possible, only to find that two policemen were waiting outside.

PPI

It's a modern city, full of ______ tower block.

Men cannot manufacture blood as efficiently as women can. This makes surgery riskier for men. Men also need more oxygen because they do not breathe as often as women. But men breathe more deeply and this exposes them to another risk. When the air is polluted, they draw more of it into their lungs. A more recent and chilling finding is the effect of automobile and truck exhaust fumes on children's intelligence. These exhaust fumes are the greatest source of lead pollution in cities. Researchers have found thatthe children with the highest concentration of lead in their bodies have the lower scores on intelligence tests and that boys' score lower than girls. It is possible that these low scores are connected to the deeper breathing that is typical of the male. Men's bones are larger than women's and they are arranged somewhat differently. The feminine walk that evokes so many whistles is a matter of bone structure. Men have broader shoulders and a narrower pelvis, which enables them to stride out with no waste motion. A woman's wider pelvis, designed for childbearing, forces her to put more movement into each step she takes with the result that she displays a bit of a jiggle and sway as she walks. If you think a man is brave because he climbs a ladder to clean out the roof gutters, don't forget that it is easier for him than for a woman. The angle at which a woman's thigh is joined to her knees makes climbing awkward for her, no matter whether it is a ladder or stairs or a mountain that she is tackling. A man's skin is thicker than a woman's and not nearly as soft. The thickness prevents the sun's radiation from getting through, which is why men wrinkle less than women do. Women also stay cooler in summer. The fat layer helps insulate them against heat. Men's fat is distributed differently. And they do not have that layer of it underneath their skin. In fact, they have considerably less fat than women and more lean mass. Forty-one percent of a man's body is muscle compared to thirty-five percent for women, which means men have more muscle power. When it comes to strength, almost 90 percent of a man's weight is strength compared to about 50 percent of woman's weight. The higher proportion of muscle to fat makes it easier for men to lose weight. Muscle burns up five more calories a pound that fat does just to maintain itself. So when a man goes on a diet. the pounds roll off much faster. For all men's muscularity they do not have the energy reserves women do. They have more startup energy, but the fat tucked away in women's nooks and crannies provides a rich energy reserve that men lack. Cardiologists at the University of Alabama who tested healthy women in treadmills discovered that over years the female capacity for exercise far exceeds the male capacity. A woman of sixty who is in good health can exercise up to 90 percent of what she could do when she was twenty. A man of sixty has 60 percent left of his capacity as a twenty-year-old.

All the flights ______ because of the snowstorm, we had to take the train instead.

The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx, once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Government financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most successful of Europe's regional languages, spoken by more than a half-million of the country's three million people. The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since $404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union. The Welsh showed little enthusiasm for devolution. Whereas the Scots voted overwhelmingly for a parliament, the vote for a Welsh assembly scraped through by less than one percent on a turnout of less than 25 percent. Its powers were proportionately limited. The Assembly can decide how money from Westminster or the European Union is spent. It cannot, unlike its counterpart in Edinburgh, enact laws. But now that it is here, the Welsh are growing to like their Assembly. Many people would like it to have more powers. Its importance as figurehead will grow with the opening in 2003, of a new debating chamber, one of many new buildings that are transforming Cardiff from a decaying seaport into a Baltimore-style waterfront city. Meanwhile a grant of nearly two million dollars from the European Union will tackle poverty. Wales is one of the poorest regions in Western Europe—only Spain, Portugal, and Greece have a lower standard of living. Newspapers and magazines are filled with stories about great Welsh men and women, boosting self-esteem. To familiar faces such as Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton have been added new icons such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie star, and Bryn Terfel, the opera singer. Indigenous foods like salt marsh lamb are in vogue. And Wales now boasts a national airline, Awyr Cymru. Cymru, which means 'land of compatriots', is the Welsh name for Wales. The red dragon, the nation's symbol since the time of King Arthur, is everywhere—on T-shirts, rugby jerseys and even cell phone covers. 'Until very recent times most Welsh people had this feeling of being second-class citizens,' said Dyfan Jones, an 18-year-old student. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on the grass with a group of young people in Llanelli, an industrial town in the south, outside the rock music venue of the National Eisteddfod, Wales's annual cultural festival. The disused factory in front of us echoed to the sounds of new Welsh bands. 'There was almost a genetic tendency for lack of confidence,' Dyfan continued. Equally comfortable in his Welshness as in his membership in the English-speaking, global youth culture and the new federal Europe, Dyfan, like the rest of his generation, is growing up with a sense of possibility unimaginable ten years ago. 'We used to think. We can't do anything, we're only Welsh. Now I think that's changing.'

The tickets each ______ 10 dollars.

The opening ceremony is a great occasion. It is essential ______ for that.