阅读理解More new is the impact of deregulation. With Japan''s recent dismantling of barriers to petroleum imports, for instance, the country''s inefficient oil industry is closing refineries, merging subsidiaries, shutting nearly half of all filling stations and most happily, reducing gasoline prices by a third. And for the first time in 35 years, new airlines are allowed to spring up -- and airfares to Hokkaido are down by more than half. But the most dramatic deregulation has accompanied Japan''s Big Bang, the opening of the financial sector, the opening of the financial sector. It''s no secret that Japanese banks, broker-ages and insurance companies are inefficient and in need of restructuring. Bank mergers have a long history in Japan, but the current crisis will bring many more shares which are being bought by foreign companies, led by GE Capital. Can they turn the sick institutions around? Certainly the foreign share of the finance sector is increasing and will add to the cost pressures driving the entire industry to restructure. It''s likely that as with autos, the survivors will emerge as world class competitors. Restructuring affects people. Here change is underway, as performance replaces seniority in determining pay and promotion. Many companies are shrinking their swollen boards of directors and reducing personnel costs by slashing overtime, cutting part-time workers and forcing full-timers to take early retirement though this has long been the practice in declining industries and companies, even in Japan. Despite all this change, the social contract between company and employee endures. The Japanese corporation is not simply a collection of physical and financial assets but also a social organization. The company belongs to its employees and the community, and its workers are its primary concern. Directors tend to come from management ranks, within the company community, and outside directors are a rarity. The peculiar Anglo-American notion that a firm is the exclusive property of its shareholders still has little currency in Japan. The shareholder as investor is entitled to a return on investment, but the company operates primarily for the well-being and security of its employees. There are no "Neutron Jacks" or "Chainsaw Als" among Japan''s business heroes. Despite all the current problems, there have been no mass layoffs. This is a testing time in Japan. Its competitive strength remains. Many exports to the world''s most demanding markets continue to increase. Japanese industry has been challenged before and has restructured before in the mid-70s after the oil crisis, for instance. As they did then, the best of Japan''s companies will emerge from all these problems and changes with values intact and competitive strength increased.

阅读理解What makes Brazil one of the world's top five contributors to greenhouse gases?

阅读理解Under existing law, a new drug may be labeled, promoted, and advertised only for those conditions in which safety and effectiveness have been demonstrated and which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved, or so-called approved uses. Other uses have come to be called "unapproved uses", and cannot be legally promoted. In a real sense, the term "unapproved" is a misnomer because it includes one phrase two categories of marketed drugs that are very different. It is common for new research and new insights to identify valid new uses for drugs already on the market. Before such advances can result in new indications for inclusion in drug labeling, however, the available data must meet the legal standard of substantial evidence derived from adequate and well-controlled clinical trials. Such evidence may require time to develop, and, without initiative on the part of the drug firm, it may not occur at all for certain uses. However, because medical literature on new uses exists, and these uses are medically beneficial, physicians often use these drugs for such purposes prior to FDA review or changes in labeling. This is referred to as "unlabeled uses" of drugs. A different problem arises when a particular use for a drug has been examined scientifically and has been found to be ineffective or unsafe, and yet physicians who either are uninformed or who refuse to accept the available scientific evidence continue their use. Such use may have been reviewed by FDA and rejected, or, in some cases, the use may actually be warned against in the labeling. This subset of uses may be properly termed "disapproved uses". Government policy should minimize the extent of unlabeled uses. If such uses are valid and many are -- it is important that scientifically sound evidence supporting them be generated and that the regulatory system accommodates them into drug labeling. Continuing rapid advances in medical care and the complexity of drug usage, however, make it impossible for government to keep drug labeling up to date for every conceivable situation. Thus, when a particular use of this type appears, it is also important, and in the interest of good medical care, that no label be attached to such use by practitioners while the formal evidence is assembled between the time of discovery and the time the new use is included in the labeling. In the case of disapproved uses, however, it is proper policy to warn against these in the package insert. Whether use of a drug for these purposes by the uninformed physician constitutes a violation of the cur rent Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act is a matter of debate that involves a number of technical and legal issues. Regardless of that, the inclusion of disapproved uses in the form of warnings or other precautionary statements in package inserts is an important practical deterrent to improper use. Except for clearly disapproved uses, however, it is in the best interests of patient care that physicians not be constrained by regulation form exercising their best judgment ill pre scribing a drug for both its approved uses and any unlabeled uses it may have.

阅读理解Scattered through the seas of the world are billions of tons of small plants and animals called plankton. Most of these plants and animals are too small for the human eye to see. They drift about lazily with the currents, providing a basic food for many larger animals. Plankton has been described as the equivalent of the grasses that grow on the dry land continents, and the comparison is an appropriate one. In potential food value, however, plankton far outweighs that of the land grasses. One scientist has estimated that while grasses of the world produce about 49 billion tons of valuable carbohydrates each year, the sea''s plankton generates more than twice as much. Despite its enormous food potential, little effort was made until recently to farm plankton as we farm grasses on land. Now, marine scientists have at last begun to study this possibility, especially as the seas resources loom even more important as a means of feeding an expanding world population. No one yet has seriously suggested that "planktonburgers" may soon become popular around the world. As a possible farmed supplementary food source, however, plankton is gaining considerable interest among marine scientists. One type of plankton that seems to have great harvest possibilities is a tiny shrimp like creature called krill. Growing to two or three inches long, krill provide the major food for the giant blue whale, the largest animal ever to inhabit the earth. Realizing that this whale may grow to 100 feet and weigh 150 tons at maturity, it is not surprising that each one devours more than one ton of krill daily. Krill swim about just below the surface in huge schools sometimes miles wide, mainly in the cold Antarctic. Because of their pink color, they often appear, as a solid reddish mass when viewed from a ship or from the air. Krill are very high in food value. A pound of these crustaceans contains about 460 calories--about the same as shrimp or lobster, to which they are related. If the krill can feed such huge creatures as whales, many scientists reason, they must certainly be contenders as a new food source for humans.

阅读理解Conventional wisdom about conflict seems pretty much cut and dried. Too little conflict breeds apathy(冷漠) and stagnation(呆滞). Too much conflict leads to divisiveness(分裂) and hostility. Moderate levels of conflict, however, can spark creativity and motivate people in a healthy and competitive way. Recent research by Professor Charles R. Schwenk, however, suggests that the optimal level of conflict may be more complex to determine than these simple generalizations. He studied perception of conflict among a sample of executives. Some of the executives worked for profit-making organizations and others for not-for-profit organizations. Somewhat surprisingly, Schwenk found that opinions about conflict varied systematically as a function of the type of organization. Specifically, managers in not-for-profit organizations strongly believed that conflict was beneficial to their organizations and that it promoted higher quality decision making than might be achieved in the absence of conflict. Managers of for-profit organizations saw a different picture. They believed that conflict generally was damaging and usually led to poor-quality decision making in their organizations. Schwenk interpreted these results in term of the criteria for effective decision making suggested by the executives. In the profit-seeking organization, decision-making effectiveness was most often assessed in financial terms. The executives believed that consensus rather than conflict enhanced financial indicators. In the not-for-profit organizations, decision-making effectiveness was defined from the perspective of satisfying constituents. Given the complexities and ambiguities associated with satisfying many diverse constituents executives perceived that conflict led to more considered and acceptable decisions.

阅读理解What can be expected of “this tough-love teaching style” ?

阅读理解Surprisingly enough, modern historians have rarely interested themselves in the history of the American South in the period before the South began to become self-consciously and distinctively "Southern" -- the decades after 1815. Consequently, the cultural history of Britain''s North American empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been written almost as if the Southern colonies had never existed. The American culture that emerged during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras has been depicted as having been simply an extension of New Eng land Puritan culture. However, Professor Davis has recently argued that the South stood apart from the rest of American society during this early period, following its own unique pattern of cultural development. The case for Southern distinctiveness rests upon two related premises: first, that the cultural similarities among the five Southern colonies were far more impressive than the differences, and second, that what made those colonies alike also made them different from the other colonies. The first, for which Davis offers an enormous amount of evidence, can be accepted without major reservations; the second is far more problematic. What makes the second premise problematic is the use of the Puritan colonies as a basis for comparison. Quite properly, Davis decries the excessive influence ascribed by historians to the Puritans in the formation of American culture. Yet Davis inadvertently adds weight to such ascriptions by using the Puritans as the standard against which to assess the achievements and contributions of Southern colonials. Throughout, Davis focuses on the important, and undeniable, differences between the Southern and Puritan colonies in motives for and patterns of early settlement, in attitudes toward nature and Native Americans, and in the degree of receptivity to metropolitan cultural influences. However, recent scholarship has strongly suggested that those aspects of early New England culture that seem to have been most distinctly Puritan, such as the strong religious orientation and the communal impulse, were not even typical of New England as a whole, but were largely confined to the two colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus, what in contrast to the Puritan colonies appears to Davis to be peculiarly Southern -- acquisitiveness, a strong interest in politics and the law, and a tendency to cultivate metropolitan cultural models was not only more typically English than the cultural patterns exhibited by Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, but also almost certainly characteristic of most other early ''modern British colonies from Barbados north to Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Within the larger framework of American colonial life, then, not the Southern but the Puritan colonies appear to have been distinctive, and even they seem to have been rapidly assimilating to the dominant cultural patterns by the last Colonial period.

阅读理解More and more, the operations of our businesses, governments, and financial institutions are controlled by information that exists only inside computer memories. Anyone clever enough to modify this information for his own purposes can reap substantial rewards. Even worse, a number of people who have done this and been caught at it have managed to get away without punishment. It''s easy for computer crimes to go undetected if no one checks up on what the computer is doing. But even if the crime is detected, the criminal may walk away not only unpunished but with a glowing recommendation from his former employers. Of course, we have no statistics on crimes that go undetected. But it''s disturbing to note how many of the crimes we do know about were detected by accident, not by systematic inspections or other security procedures. The computer criminals who have been caught may be the victims of uncommonly bad luck. For example, a certain keypunch operator complained of having to stay overtime to punch extra cards. Investigation revealed that the extra cards she was being asked to punch were for dishonest transactions. In another case, dissatisfied employees of the thief tipped off the company that was being robbed. Unlike other lawbreakers, who must leave the country, commit suicide, or go to jail, computer criminals sometimes escape punishment, demanding not only that they not be charged but that they be given good recommendations and perhaps other benefits. All too often, their demands have been met. Why? Because company executives are afraid of the bad publicity that would result if the public found out that their computer had been misused. They hesitate at the thought of a criminal boasting in open of how he juggled the most confidential records right under the noses of the company'' s executives, accountants, and security staff. And so another computer criminal departs with just the recommendations he needs to continue his crimes elsewhere.

阅读理解For centuries, explorers have risked their lives venturing into the unknown for reasons that were to varying degrees economic and nationalistic. Columbus went west to look for better trade routes to the Orient and to promote the greater glory of Spain. Lewis and Clark journeyed into the American wilderness to find out what the U.S. had acquired when it purchased Louisiana, and the Appolo astronauts rocketed to the moon in a dramatic show of technological muscle during the cold war. Although their missions blended commercial and political-military imperatives, the explorers involved all accomplished some significant science by going where no scientists had gone before. Today Mars looms (隐约出现) as humanity''s next great terra incognita (未探明之地). And with doubtful prospects for a short-term financial return, with the cold war a rapidly fading memory and amid a growing emphasis on international cooperation in large space ventures, it is clear that imperatives other than profits or nationalism will have to compel human beings to leave their tracks on the planet''s reddish surface. Could it be that science, which has long played a minor role in exploration, is at last destined to take a leading role? The question naturally invites a couple of others: Are there experiments that only human could do on Mars7 Could those experiments provide insights profound enough to justify the expense of sending people across interplanetary space.* With Mars the scientific stakes are arguably higher than they have ever been. The issue of whether life ever existed on the planet, and whether it persists to this day, has been highlighted by mounting evidence that the Red Planet once had abundant stable, liquid water and by the continuing controversy over suggestions the bacterial fossils rode to Earth on a meteorite (陨石) from Mars. A more conclusive answer about life on Mars, past or present, would give researchers invaluable data about the range of conditions under which a planet can generate the complex chemistry that leads to life. If it could be established that life arose independently on Mars and Earth, the finding would provide the first concrete clues in one of the deepest mysteries in all of science: the prevalence of life in the universe.

阅读理解Companies Are Working with Consumers to Reduce Waste A) As consumers, we are very wasteful

阅读理解When we worry about who might be spying on our private lives, we usually think about the Federal agents. But the private sector outdoes the government every time. It''s Linda Tripp, not the FBI, who is facing charges under Maryland''s laws against secret telephone taping. It''s our banks not the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), that pass our private financial data to telemarketing firms. Consumer activists are pressing Congress for better privacy laws without much result so far. The legislators lean toward letting business people track our financial habits virtually at will. As an example of what''s going on, consider U.S. Bancorp, which was recently sued for deceptive practices by the state of Minnesota. According to the lawsuit, the bank supplied a telemarketer called Member Works with sensitive customer data such as names, phone numbers, bank-account and credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, account balances and credit limits. With these customer lists in hand, Member Works started dialing for dollars-selling dental plans, videogames, computer software and other products and services. Customers who accepted a "free trial offer" had 30 days to cancel. If the deadline passed, they were charged automatically through their bank or credit-card accounts. U. S. Bancorp collected a share of the revenues. Customers were doubly deceived, the lawsuit claims. They didn''t know that the bank was giving account numbers to Member Works. And if customers asked, they were led to think the answer was no. The state sued Member Works separately for deceptive selling. The company denies that it did anything wrong. For its part, U.S. Bancorp settled without admitting any mistakes. But it agreed to stop exposing its customers to nonfinancial products sold by outside firms. A few top banks decided to do the same. Many other banks will still do business with Member Works and similar firms. And banks will still be mining data from your account in order to sell you financial products, including things of little value, such as credit insurance and credit-card protection plans. You have almost no protection from businesses that use your personal accounts for profit. For example, no federal law shields "transaction and experience" information-mainly the details of your bank and credit-card accounts. Social Security numbers are for sale by private firms. They''ve generally agreed not to sell to the public. But to businesses, the numbers are an open book. Self-regulation doesn''t work. A firm might publish a privacy-protection policy, but who enforces it? Take U.S. Bancorp again. Customers were told, in writing, that "all personal information you supply to us will be considered confidential." Then it sold your data to Member Works. The bank even claims that it doesn''t "sell" your data at all. It merely "shares" it and reaps a profit. Now you know.

阅读理解Countries that have a shortage of young adults will be less willing to commit them to ____________________________.

阅读理解Go to iTunes or Rhapsody and search for "Beatles" and where do you wind up? Nowhere, man. The greatest rock group ever doesn''t sell its songs online. That''s why the managing director of the Beatles'' record label, Neil Aspinall, made a stir recently when he revealed that the Fab Four were finally planning to sell their songs on Internet stores—but only after a long-term project of remastering the songs was completed. During their heyday, the mop tops could get away with anything (like selling watered-down versions of their U.K. albums in America, or "Revolution No. 9"). But the Beatles today (the living members and heirs of George and John) don''t seem to understand that even they can''t control the Internet. A glimpse of their thinking came in 2004, when the group considered going online with a service other than iTunes. Microsoft was building an Internet store to compete with iTunes, and the Fab Four''s people actually discussed terms with the Softies. According to a source close to the negotiations (who would not be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue), the Beatles wanted $15 million for starters — not as an advance against royalties, but a cash payout— for a window of exclusivity that would end after 90 days. After that the Beatles would be free to sell their songs everywhere else on the Net. Even worse, the Beatles demanded that their tunes be treated differently from any other songs in the store. "It would be a walled garden, a Beatles store within the store," the source told me. "If you bought a Beatles song, you'' d go immediately to checkout and wouldn''t be able to add anyone else''s songs to the purchase." This approach is antithetical to what makes an online music store successful — it must be so convenient and delightful that people pay for what is available on the file-sharing services free of charge. Microsoft walked away. The Beatles'' stance only hurts the band. Their obstinacy has not deterred millions of fans from loading Beatles music on computers and MP3 players — it just means that no one pays for the songs. Even George W. Bush has figured out how to get Beatles songs on his iPod. People simply rip the CDs they already own into iTunes or other jukebox software. Or they use their friends'' CDs. Or they grab the songs online; according to the market-research firm NPD Group, the Beatles are the fifth most popular band among illegal downloaders. During the mania years of the 1960s, John Lennon once described the Beatles as being bigger than Jesus. But in 2006, the Internet is bigger than the Beatles. Instead of fighting the Net, the Beatles can use it to reinvigorate their glory. What happened to "We can work it out" ?

阅读理解As early as in 1710 the iron industry in England complained of increasing competition from the American colonies. The American iron industry developed rapidly from that date until, by 1750, numerous furnaces, forges and mills were in operation in New England, the middle colonies, and Virginia. When large quantities of pig iron from the American colonies first entered England in 1735, the product proved to be such excellent quality that England iron makers became involved in a hitter argument over the future of the colonial iron industry. The English smelters, who changed native English iron ore into pig iron, insisted that American pig iron be kept out of England by means of high import taxes and, in fact, that the whole colonial iron industry be suppressed. In agreement with the iron smelters were owners of English mines and even forests, whose wood was used to fuel the furnaces which smelted the iron ore. On the other side of the issue were the English iron manufacturers who desired more cheap pig iron to make into nails, tools and other iron wares. The iron manufacturers therefore encouraged the production of pig iron in the American colonies. They wanted it to enter England tax-free, but, at the same time, demanded that the colonists be prevented from working their crude iron into finished products. In addition to the iron manufactures, English merchant ship owners were in favor of receiving American pig iron, for they looked forward to transporting the crude iron from America to England and the manufactured iron products from England to the colonies. The English wool industry supported the iron manufacturers, also, in the belief that the Americans would use the money received for shipments of crude iron to buy cloth made in England, thus discouraging the growth of wool manufacturing in America.

阅读理解How can the university sector play a key role in the UK's economic growth?

阅读理解What does the author think of private space travel?

阅读理解Datasharing:Anopenmindonopendate [A]Itisamovementbuildingsteadymomentum:acalltomakeresearchdata,softwarecodeandexperimentalmethodspubliclyavailableandtransparent

阅读理解Passage One Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Because of satellite links which now enable broadcast news organizations to originate live programming from any part of the globe, the entire world is becoming one giant sound stage for television news. As a result, Marshall McLean''s reference to the post-television world as being a single "global village" is gaining new acceptance and Shakespeare''s famous line, "all the world''s a stage," has taken on an interesting new twist in meaning. But, beyond the philosophical dimensions of global television communications there are some dramatic, political implications. Even before today''s worldwide satellite links were possible, the growing effect of broadcast news technology on national and international politics was becoming increasingly evident. Because television is a close-up medium and a medium that seems to most readily involve e motions, it is most effective when it is revealing the plights of people. It was probably the appalling footage of the Nazi death camps that first demonstrated the power of motion pictures and television to affect the collective consciousness of a world audience. In the United States during the 50''s and 60''s the power of television to stir the consciousness of large numbers of people was demonstrated in another way. Night after night graphic news footage (英尺数)of the civil rights struggle was brought into US homes. Years later, this role was to take on a new and even more controversial dimension during the Vietnam War. Reading about war was one thing; but war took on a deeper and more unsavory(令人讨厌的)dimension when it was exported directly into US living rooms night after night by television. Public opinion eventually turned against the war and to some measure against President Johnson who was associated with it. As a result of the public opinion backlash (消极反应)during these times, the Pentagon was thereafter much more careful to control what foreign correspondents and TV crews would be allowed to see and report. It was during this time that President Carter brought the issue of human rights to the center of his foreign policy, and, to some degree, to the center of international politics. "Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy," Carter said. "Of all human rights the most basic is to be free of arbitrary violence, whether that violence comes from government, from terrorists, from criminals, or from self-appointed messiahs(救世主) operating under the cover of politics or religion." Although political viewpoints have changed since then, because of the emotional nature of human rights, this has emerged as the "soul" of television news. The transgression (侵犯)of human rights has been the focus of many, if not most, major international television news stories. The reporting of these stories has created outrage in the world, prompted attempts at censorship by dictators, and in many cases resulted in the elimination of human rights abuses.

阅读理解Beef consumes far more water to produce than vegetables.