阅读理解A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-emerges after 300 Years [A] Maria Sibylla Merian, like many European women of the 17th century, stayed busy managing a household and rearing children

阅读理解What must universities show to win recruitment campaigns?

阅读理解The energy crisis, which is being felt around the world, has dramatized how the careless use of the earth''s resources has brought the whole world to the brink of disaster. The over development of motor transport, with its increase of more cars, more highways, more pollution, more suburbs, more commuting, bas contributed to the near-destruction of our cities, the breakup of the family, and the pollution not only of local air but also of the earth''s atmosphere. The disaster has arrived in the form of the energy crisis. Our present situation is unlike war, revolution or depression. It is also unlike the great natural disasters of the past. Worldwide resources exploitation and energy use have brought us to a state where long-range planning is essential. What we need is not a continuation of our present serious state, which endangers the future of our country, our children, and our earth, but a movement forward to a new norm in order to work rapidly and effectively on planetary problems. This country has been falling back under the continuing exposures of loss morality and the revelation that lawbreaking has reached into the highest places in the land. There is a strong demand for moral revival and for some devotion that is vast enough and yet personal enough to enlist the devotion of all. In the past it has been only in a way in defense of their own country and their own ideals that any people have been able to devote themselves wholeheartedly. This is the first time that we have been asked to defend ourselves and what we hold dear in cooperation with all the other inhabitants of this planet, who share with us the same endangered air and the same endangered oceans. There is a common need to reassess our present course, to change that course and to devise new methods through which the world can survive. This is a priceless opportunity. To grasp it we need a widespread understanding of the nature of the crisis confronting us and the world, a crisis that is no passing inconvenience, no by-product of the ambitions of the oil-producing countries, no environmentalists'' mere fears, no by-product of any present system of government. What we face is the outcome of the invention of the last four hundred years. What we need is a transformed life style. This new life style can flow directly from science and technology, but its acceptance depends on a sincere devotion to finding a higher quality of life for the world''s children and future generation.

阅读理解Every year television stations receive hundreds of complaints about the loudness of advertisements. However, federal rules forbid the practice of making ads louder than the programming. In addition, television stations always operate at the highest sound level allowed for reasons of efficiency. According to one NBC executive, no difference exists in the peak sound level of ads and programming. Given this information, why do commercials sound so loud? The sensation of sound involves a variety of factors in addition to its peak level. Advertisers are skilful at creating the impression of loudness through their expert use of such factors. One major contributor to the perceived loudness of commercials is that much less variation in sound level occurs during a commercial. In regular programming the intensity of sound varies over a large range. However, sound levels in commercials tend to stay at or near peak levels. Other "tricks of the trade" are also used. Because low-frequency sounds can mask higher frequency sounds, advertisers filter out any noises that may drown out the primary message. In addition, the human voice has more auditory (听觉的) impact in the middle frequency ranges. Advertisers electronically vary voice sounds so that they stay within such a frequency band. Another approach is to write the script so that lots of consonants (辅音) are used, because people are more aware of consonants than vowel (元音) sounds. Finally, advertisers try to begin commercials with sounds that are highly different from those of the programming within which the commercial is buried. Because people become adapted to the type of sounds coming from programming, a dramatic change in sound quality draws viewer attention. For example, notice how many commercials begin with a cheerful song of some type. The attention-getting property of commercials can be seen by observing one-to two-year-old children who happen to be playing around a television set. They may totally ignore the programming. However, when a commercial comes on, their attention is immediately drawn to it because of its dramatic sound quality.

阅读理解That question "why women live longer than men" can be answered at two levels. An evolutionary biologist would tell you that it is because women get evolutionary bonus points from living long enough to help bring up the grandchildren. Men, by contrast, wear themselves out competing for the right to procreate in the first place. That is probably true, but not much help to the medical profession. However, a group of researchers at John Moores University has just come up with a medically useful answer. It is that while 70-year-old men have the hearts of 70-year-olds, those of their female peers resemble the hearts of 20-year-olds. David Goldspink and his colleagues looked at 250 volunteers aged between 18 and 80 over two years. All the volunteers were healthy but physically inactive. The team''s principal finding was that the power of the male heart falls by 20-25% between the ages of 18 and 70, while that of the female heart remains undiminished. They found that between the ages of 20 and 70, men lose 1/3 of the contractile muscle cells in the walls of their hearts. Over the same period, women lose hardly any. There is a strong link between the number of these cells and the function of the heart. What remains a mystery is why men lose these cells and women do not. A previous theory of why women outlive men suggested that the female sex hormone, oestrogen, could have a protective effect on the heart. But Dr. Goldspink dismisses this idea, saying that there is no discernible drop-off in female heart function after menopause (更年期), when oestrogen (雌性激素) levels decrease dramatically. However, oestrogen does have a beneficial effect on blood vessels. The study found that blood flow to the muscles and skin of the limbs decreases with age in both sexes. The changes in the structure of the blood vessels occur earlier in men, but women catch up soon after menopause. It''s not all bad news for men, though. In a related study, the team found that the hearts of veteran male athletes were as powerful as those of inactive 20-year-old male undergraduates. But can men really recover lost heart function after a lifetime of inactivity and poor diet? Is it ever too late to start exercising? "I think the answer is no," says Dr. Goldspink. "The health benefits to be gained from sensible exercise are to be recommended, regardless of age." So if you are male and getting on, get on with it

阅读理解African elephants have been slaughtered at alarming rate over the past decade, largely because they are the primary source of the world''s ivory. Their population has been dwindled from 1.3 million in 1979 to just 625,000 today, and the rate of killing has been accelerating in recent years because many of the older, bigger tusked animals have already been destroyed. "The poachers now must kill as many elephants to get the same quantity of ivory," explained Curtis Bohlen, Senior vice-president of the World Wildlife Fund. Though its record on the environment has been spotty so far, the government last week took the lead in a major conservation issue by imposing a ban on ivory imports into the US. The move came just four days after a consortium of conservation groups, including the World Wildlife Fund and Wildlife Conservation International, called for that kind of action, and it made the US the first nation to forbid imports of both raw and finished ivory. The ban, says Bohlen, sends a very clear message to the ivory poachers that the game is over. In the past African nations have resisted an ivory ban, but increasingly they realized that the decimation of the elephant herds poses a serious threat to their tourist business. Last month Tanzania and several other African countries called for an amendment to the 102-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would make the ivory trade illegal worldwide. The amendment is expected to be approved at an October meeting in Geneva and to go into effect next January. But between now and then, conversationists contend, poachers may go on a rampage, killing elephants wholesale, so nations should unilaterally forbid imports right away. The US government brought that argument, and by week’s end the twelve-nation European Community had followed with its own ban.

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

阅读理解He was a funny looking man with a cheerful face, good-natured and a great talker. He was described by his student, the great philosopher Plato, as "the best and most just and wisest man." Yet, this same man was condemned to death for his beliefs. The man was the Greek philosopher, Socrates, and he was condemned for not believing in the recognized gods and for corrupting young people. The second charge stemmed from his association with numerous young men who came to Athens from all over the civilized world to study under him. Socrates'' method of teaching was to ask questions and, by pretending not to know the answers, to press his students into thinking for themselves. His teachings had been unsurpassed in influence in all the great Greek and Roman schools of philosophy. Yet, for all his fame and influence, Socrates himself never wrote a word. Socrates encouraged new idea and free thinking in the young, and this was frightening to the conservative people. They wanted him silenced. Yet, many were probably surprised that he accepted death so readily. Socrates had the right to ask for a lesser penalty, and he probably could have won over enough of the people who had previously condemned him. But Socrates, as a firm believer in law, reasoned that it was proper to submit to the death sentence. So, he calmly accepted his fate and drank a cup of poison hemlock in the presence of his grief-stricken friends and students.

阅读理解To understand the marketing concept, it is only necessary to understand the difference between marketing and selling. Not too many years ago, most industries concentrated primarily on the efficient production of goods, and then relied on "persuasive salesmanship" to move as much of these goods as possible. Such production and selling focuses on the needs of the seller to produce goods and then convert them into money. Marketing, on the other hand, focuses on the wants of consumers. It begins with first analyzing the preferences and demands of consumers and then producing goods that will satisfy them. This eye-on-the-consumer approach is known as the marketing concept, which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase. This concept does not imply that business is benevolent (慈善的) or that consumer satisfaction is given priority over profit in a company. There are always two sides to every business transaction -- the firm and the customer -- and each must be satisfied before trade occurs. Successful merchants and producers, however, recognize that the surest route to profit is through understanding and catering to customers. A striking example of the importance of catering to the consumer presented itself in mid-1985, when Coca Cola changed the flavor of its drink. The non acceptance of the new flavor by a significant portion of the public brought about a prompt restoration of the Classic Coke, which was then marketed alongside the new. King Customer ruled!

阅读理解Passage Two Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage

阅读理解When you were small, all ambitions fell into one category: when I am grown up, I''ll go up in space. I''m going to be an author. I''ll kill them all and then they''ll be sorry. I''ll be married in a cathedral with sixteen bridesmaids in pink lace. I''ll have a puppy of my own and no one will be able to take him away. None of it ever happened, of course to dam little; but the fantasies gave you the idea that there was something to grow up for. Indeed one of the saddest things about gilded adolescence is the feeling that from eighteen on, it''s all downhill; I read with horror of an American hippie wedding where someone said to the groom (age twenty) "You seem so kind of grown up somehow", and the lad had to go round seeking reassurance that he wasn''t, no, really he wasn''t. A determination to be better adults than the present incumbents is fine, but to refuse to grow up at all is just unrealistic. Right, so then you get some of what you wanted, or something like it, or something that will do all right; and for years you are too busy to do more than live in the present and put one foot in front of the other; your goals stretching little beyond the day when the boss has a stroke or the moment when the children can bring you tea in bed, and the later moment when they actually bring you hot tea, not mostly slopped in the saucer. However, I have now discovered an even sweeter category of ambition. When my children are grown up... When my children are grown up, I''ll learn to fly a plane. I will careen round the sky. knowing that if I do "go pop" there will be no little ones to suffer shock and maladjustment: that even if the worst does come to the worst I will at least dodge the geriatric ward and all that looking for your glasses in order to see where you have left your teeth. When my children are grown up, I''ll have fragile, lovely things on low tables; I''ll have a white carpet: I''ll go to the pictures in the afternoon. When the children are grown up, I''ll actually be able to do a day''s work in day, instead of spreading over three, and go away for a weekend without planning as if for a trip to the moon. When I''m grown up, I mean when they''re grown up. I''ll be free. Of course, I know it''s got to get worse before it gets better. Twelve-year-olds. I''m told, don''t go to bed at seven, so you don''t even get your evenings: once they’re just past ten you have to start worrying about their friends instead of simply shooing the intruders off the doorstep, and to settle down to a steady ten years of criticism of everything you''ve thought or done or worn. Boys, it seems, may be less of a trial than girls, since they can''t get pregnant and they don''t borrow your clothes, if they do borrow your clothes, of course, you''ve got even more to worry about. The young don''t respect their parents any more, and that''s that. Goodness, how sad. Still, like eating snails, it might be all right once you''ve got over the idea: it might let us off having to bother quite so much with them when the time comes. But one is simply not going to be able to drone away one''s days, toothless by the fire, brooding over the past.

阅读理解There are chilling parallels in two catastrophes that threaten the fabric of American life -- AIDS and drugs. AIDS destroys genetic immunity: drug addiction paralyzes the immune system of the body politic, preventing society from responding to evil, by taking political action. The irony of the malign perversities at work is that the war on drugs is ensuring the spread of AIDS. We had better understand the way this is happening and decode which is the lesser of two evils or they will both engulf us. The war on drugs presently takes priority in the public mind. This is, wholly understandable. No city in America, it seems, can afford enough police officers, enough firepower, enough judges and enough jails to stamp out the criminal behavior of thousands who distribute, buy and use cocaine or crack. Drug pushers are as visible as and more frequent than local newsstands. Some police, forces have acknowledged that parts of their cities are no-go areas where the guns and bombs of the drug runners are the law. This is a phenomenon of the black ghetto. Drug use declined among the white middle class and college students but crack at $ 3 and $4 a pop is ravaging the black population. Competing drug groups and teen gangs fight each other to the death, a convenient result one might think but for the reality that the drug war shatters thousands of decent black families and destroys the peace of mind of whole cities. This year''s fetus is on Washington D. C., where the murder rate now exceeds that of the West Bank and Gaza. Washington''s mayor says: Except for the killings, Washington is a safe city. One knows what he means. Outside the ghettos, Washington is wonderfully attractive in dynamic, but economic vitality does not console middle-class and working-class whites, who rage against the fear that dominates their cities, fear, of drugs sold by blacks: fear of black crime and of black gangs. They blame let. al political leaders and cry. out for action. And here is the rub. Since federal programs, including supply interdiction and Draconian penalties, have had virtually no effect on the epidemic, any escalation seems justified.

阅读理解In the Real World, Nobody Cares that You Went to an Ivy League School [A] As a high school junior, everything in my life revolved around getting into the right college

阅读理解Apples Stance Highlights a More Confrontational TechIndustry A) The battle between Apple and lawenforcement officials over unlocking a terrorists smartphone is the culmination of a slowturning of the tables between the technology industry and the United Statesgovernment

阅读理解Before discussing the effects of inflation and deflation on the distribution of income, it will be useful to define these terms. By inflation we mean a time of generally rising prices for goods and factors of production, such as payments for work and money paid for the use of buildings or land. By deflation we mean a time when most prices and costs are falling. Neither in inflation nor in deflation do prices all move in the same direction or in exactly the same proportion. As a result of changes in relative prices and in total spending, the two processes of inflation and deflation cause clearly defined and typical changes in the distribution of income among economic classes. Inflation which is not expected tends to favor debtors(f|(债务人) and profit receivers at the expense of creditors(债权人) and receivers of income which does not change. Suppose, for example, that you lend $1,000 to someone today and are paid back one year from now. If in the time between when you lend the money and when you are paid back, prices have doubled, then your debtor will be paying back only one-half as much real purchasing power as you gave him. Or consider an American who was earning a fixed rate of 6 percent yearly on a mortgage before World War II. This war caused a high rate of inflation in the United States. This person found that as a result of inflation, he was not even maintaining his position, with regard to the real purchasing power of the dollar. In contrast, one who invests in real estate, in common stocks, or in goods makes a great money profit during times of unexpected inflation. During such times, the volume of business sales increases greatly, as do prices, between the time that businesspersons buy and sell their products. Fixed or overhead costs stay the same; other costs rise, but not so rapidly as prices. For all these reasons, profits increase — often faster than the cost of living. In time of deflation, the situation is the opposite. Creditors and receivers of income which is fixed tend to gain at the expense of debtors and profit receivers. If prices fall between the time that a creditor lends money and is repaid, then he gets back more purchasing power than he lent. Between the time that a merchant buys and sells goods, he will have to take a loss. The schoolteacher who keeps his job and whose pay is not cut, however, finds that his real income has increased. Likewise, a hoarder, who earns no interest on the money she keeps hidden, finds that the real value of her wealth increases every day. If prices fall at the rate of 10 percent a year, she is being rewarded for her act against society at a 10 percent rate of interest in real terms, while the businessperson who gives someone a job may find that he cannot even get back his outlay, much less earn a profit. Modern research suggests that the greatest redistribution of income resulting from inflation is from older people to younger people. This is because the dollars one saves at age 25 for the time when one can give up one''s work at age 70 often grow smaller in purchasing power.

阅读理解Did Sarah Josepha Hale write Mary s Little Lamb , the eternal nursery rhyme (儿歌) about a girl named Mary with a stubborn lamb? This is still disputed, but it s clear that the woman【C1】______for writing it was one of America s most fascinating【C2】______

阅读理解WhenElonMusksaysthathisnewpriorityisusingartificialintelligencetobuilddomesticrobots,weshouldlookforwardtothedayinadmiration

阅读理解The History of Coca-Cola Today, the company''s trademark is world-famous and its products average a staggering 400 million servings per day in more than 155 countries. It''s a far cry from the humble beginnings of a hundred years ago when sales during the first year averaged a mere 13 drinks per day, and company profits totaled &paltry(微不足道的)$35. The product is Coca-Cola and, according to legend, it began in a three-legged kettle in the back yard of Atlanta pharmacist Dr. John Styth Pemberton who carried a jug of his concoction(调和物)down the street to Jacob''s pharmacy where it was sold at the soda fountain for 5 cents a glass. Frank Robinson, Pemberton''s partner and bookkeeper thought two "Cs" would look good in advertising and penned "Coca-Cola" in the flowering script so famous today. It is significant that Pemberton spent almost twice as much money on advertising during the first years of operation as he made in profits, for the growth of Coke''s popularity is as much due to the advertising and marketing strategy as it is to the quality of its product. The Coca-Cola Co. has been guided by the words of its former president, Robert Woodruff, who said that "advertising must move with the times." By continually monitoring changes in consumer attitudes and behavior, the Coca-Cola Co. has become a widely recognized leader in advertising. Pemberton could not foresee the great future awaiting his soft drink and sold out. After a succession of ownership changes over a three-year period, Asa Briggs Candler bought the business and organized the Coca-Cola Co. into a Georgia corporation. In 1893, he registered Coca-Cola as a trademark. Under Candler''s leadership, the company began to grow quickly. In order to instigate(鼓动) a demand for the product, he spent heavily on advertising. Signs dotted the landscape from coast to coast and appeared on calendars, serving trays and other merchandizing items, urging people to drink Coke. Candler''s campaign paid off. By 1898, Americans were buying Coke everywhere in the United States as well as in Hawaii, Canada and Mexico. Candler was a creative fellow at advertising, but showed little imagination in understanding the potential. Coke''s sold throughout most of the United States for $1, which he never bothered to collect. Candler saw Coke primarily as a soda-fountain drink. But two farsighted businessmen from Chattanooga, Tenn, Benjamin Franklin Thomas and Joseph Brown Whitehead, understood the potential, and, for the unpaid dollar, bought & franchise (特许权，经销权) that became worth millions. Their agreement with Candler began the franchising bottling system that still remains the foundation of the Coca-Cola Co.''s soft drink operations. Thomas and Whitehead sold the rights to bottle Coke to franchisers in every part of the country in return for the bottler''s agreement to invest in the necessary resources and effort to make the franchise a success. During the following decade, 179 bottling plants went into operation. In the early 20th century, Coke blazed(开辟道路) the advertising trail, developing innovative concepts that became accepted practices in the field. One of the most effective was the distribution and redemption of complimentary tickets, entitling the holder to a glass of Coke free at the soda fountain of a dispenser. In 1909, the company flew a dirigible(飞船) over Washington, D.C., with a huge Coke sign on the side of it, a foreshadowing of aerial advertising. Coke also originated one of the nation''s earliest animated signs. Standing 32 feet high and located along the Pennsylvania railroad line between Philadelphia and New York, it showed a young man drawing a glass of Coke from one of the crockery ums(陶罐) then used to dispense the beverage. The bills for Coke''s advertising campaign mounted. In 1893, the total stood at $12,395. It passed the $100,000 mark in 1900, and by 1912, it had skyrocketed to over $1 million, only to double eight years later. Early in its history, the company recognized the need for a distinctive package in which to sell its product. In 1915, Alexander Samuelson, a Swedish glassblower who had emigrated to Terre haute, Ind., designed the famous six-and-one-half-ounce bottle. The new packaging helped to make Coke internationally known. By 1928, the company was selling more Coke in bottles than at soda fountains. Coke sold in the original bottle or in glasses at fountains until 1955, but since then, it has been available in larger glass or plastic bottles and in cans. In 1919, three years after Asa Candler stepped down as president, Coca-Cola experienced a momentous change. The Candler family decided to sell the Coca-Cola Co. to a group headed by Georgia financier Ernest Woodruff for $25 million. At the time, it was the South''s largest financial transaction. Woodruff spent a brief spell as president, then chose his 23-year-old son Robert to take over. Under Woodruff''s guidance, Coke launched a campaign to encourage and assist fountain outlets in serving and aggressively selling Coca-Cola. He also cast an eye overseas and became convinced the entire world had tremendous market potential for the company. In 1926, Woodruff organized and initiated a concerted overseas advertising and marketing campaign. When Robert Woodruff took over, the company had fewer than 12 plants bottling Coke overseas. The numbers grew slowly until World War n when Gen. Dwight. D. Eisenhower gave his famous order "to see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for 5 cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs the company." During the war, the company established 64 bottling plants overseas for the military during the war and eventually supplied a total of 3 million drinks to U.S. military personnel. Now, sixty years after Woodruffs foreign campaign, more than 770 Coke bottlers operate overseas, and about 50 percent of all company profits come from foreign operations. An Italian newspaper once called the Coca-Cola Co. "a large and uniformed army that today has an outpost or guard station even in the remotest part of our countryside." Throughout its history, Coca-Cola has been able to devise catchy slogans, highlighted by such phrases as the "Pause that Refreshes" (1929), "Sign of Taste" (1957), and more recently, "Things Go Better with Coke." "It''s the Real Thing," first used in 1942, was reintroduced in 1969. Coca-Cola has recruited countless artists, movie stars and athletes to advertise its products. Haddon Sundlbom''s "portraits" for holiday ads, which began in the 1930s, made the company''s redsuited Santa Claus famous. Those who have starred in ads include John Weismuller, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Bill Cosby and "Mean Joe" Green. Perhaps Coke''s most intensive advertising campaign took place in 1979 when the company employed separate terms of advertising consultants in 15 different countries. The company flew the teams into New York for an exhaustive marathon brainstorming session. Given specific creative guidelines, the teams produced hundreds of promotional ideas and 10 potential ad campaigns. Consumer testing proved the best to be "Have a Coke and a Smile." The company then chose six teams to work around the clock for three weeks to design the new advertising. To push the change, the company spent the most money ever on advertising. Coca-Cola has evolved into more than a one-product company. Today, it sells 20 kinds of soft drinks, has fast-food sector that sells Minute Maid products and Hi-Cfruit drinks, and entertainment sector that includes Columbia Pictures. But the original Coke is still at the heart of the company''s operations, accounting for 70 percent of all its soft drink unit sales. Only Asa Candler and Frank Robinson knew the formula for what is now "Classic Coke". Over the years, it has been passed on from one company management to the next by word of mouth and is secured today in a bank vault. The formula''s secrecy has added a legendary, even mysterious quality to Coke. The combination of Pemberton''s formula and a succession of adroit marketing strategies, which developed a worldwide taste for the beverage, have made the company one of America''s most successful and enduring business institutions.

阅读理解Almost everyone with or without a computer is aware of the latest technological revolution destined to change forever the way in which humans communicate, namely, the Information Superhighway, best exemplified by the ubiquitous (普遍存在的) Internet. Already, millions of people around the world are linked by computer simply by having a modem and an address on the "Net", in much the same way that owning a telephone links us to almost everyone who pays a phone bill. In fact, since the computer connections are made via the phone line, the Internet can be envisaged as network of visual telephone links. It remains to be seen in which direction the Information Superhighway is headed, but many believe it is the educational hope of future. The World Wide Web, an enormous collection of Internet address or sites, all of which can be accessed for information, has been mainly responsible for the increase in the Internet in the 1990s. Before the World Wide Web, the "Net" was comparable to an integrated collection of computerized typewriters, but the introduction of the "Web" in 1990 allowed not only text links to be made but also graphs and even video. A web site consists of a "home page", the first screen of a particular site on the computer to which you are connected, from where access can be had to other subject related "pages" (or screens) at the site and thousands of other computers all over the world. This is achieved by a process called "hypertext". By clicking with a mouse device on various parts of the screen, a person connected to the "Net" can go travelling, or surfing through a web of pages to locate whatever information is required. Anyone can set up a site; promoting your club, your institution, your company''s products or simply yourself, is what the Web and the Internet is all about. And what is more, information on the Internet is not owned or controlled by any organization. It is, perhaps, true to say that one and therefore everyone owns the "Net". Because of the relative freedom of access to information, the Internet has often been criticized by the media as a potentially hazardous tool in the hands of young computer users. This perception has proved to be largely false however, and the vast majority of users both young and old get connected with the Internet for dual purposes for which it was intended discovery and delight.

阅读理解What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage?