阅读理解What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? [A]The most recent recession in the United States began in December of 2007 and ended in June of 2009, according to the official arbiter of recession dating, the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, two years after the official end of the recession, few Americans would say that economic troubles are behind us. The unemployment rate, in particular, remains above 9 percent. Some labor market indicators, such as the proportion of long-term unemployed, are worse now than for any postwar recession. 　　 [B]There are two widely circulated narratives to explain what is going on. The Keynesian narrative is that there has been a major drop in aggregate demand. According to this narrative, the slump can be largely cured by using monetary and fiscal stimulus.The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation. According to this narrative, the slump can be cured by having the government commit to and follow a more hands-off approach. 　　 [C]I want to suggest a third interpretation. Without ruling out a role for aggregate demand or for the regulatory environment, I wish to suggest that structural change is an important factor in the current rate of high unemployment. The economy is in a state of transition, in which the middle-class jobs that emerged after World War II have begun to decline.As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee put it in a recent e-book Race Against the Machine:The root of our problems is not that we're in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. [D]In fact, I believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition. The impact of the internal combustion engine and the small electric motor on farming and manufacturing reduced the value of uneducated laborers. Instead, by the 1950s, a middle class of largely clerical workers was the most significant part of the labor force.Between 1930 and 1950, the United States economy underwent a Great Transition. Demand fell for human effort such as lifting, squeezing, and hammering. Demand increased for workers who could read and follow directions. The evolutionary process eventually changed us from a nation of laborers to a nation of clerks. 　　 [E]The proportion of employment classified as “clerical and kindred workers” grew from 5.2 percent in 1910 to a peak of 19.3 percent in 1980. (However, by 2000 this proportion had edged down to 17.4 percent.) Overall, workers classified as clerical, professional workers, technical workers, managers, officials, and proprietors exceeded 50 percent of the labor force by 2000.Corresponding declines took place in the manual occupations. Workers classified as laborers, other than farm or mine, peaked at 11.4 percent of the labor force in 1920 but were barely 6 percent by 1950 and less than 4 percent by 2000. Farmers and farm laborers fell from 33 percent of the labor force in 1910 to less than 15 percent by 1950 and only 1.2 percent in 2000. 　　 [F]The introduction of the tractor and improvements in the factory rapidly reduced the demand for uneducated workers. By the 1930s, a marginal farm hand could not produce enough to justify his employment. Sharecropping, never much better than a subsistence occupation, was no longer viable. Meanwhile, machines were replacing manufacturing occupations like cigar rolling and glass blowing for light bulbs. [G]The structural-transition interpretation of the unemployment problem of the 1930s would be that the demand for uneducated workers in the United States had fallen, but the supply remained high. The high school graduation rate was only 8.8 percent in 1912 and still just 29 percent in 1931. By 1950, it had reached 59 percent.3 With a new generation of workers who had completed high school, the mismatch between skills and jobs had been greatly reduced. 　　 [H]What took place after the Second World War was not the revival of a 1920s economy, with its small farming units, urban manufacturing, and plurality of laborers. Instead, the 1950s saw the creation of a new suburban economy, with a plurality of white-collar workers. With an expanded transportation and communications infrastructure, businesses needed telephone operators, shipping clerks, and similar occupations. If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy. 　　 [I]The trend away from manual labor has continued. Even within the manufacturing sector, the share of production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing employment went from over 85 percent just after the Second World War to less than 70 percent in more recent years. To put this another way, the proportion of white-collar work in manufacturing has doubled over the past 50 years. On the factory floor itself, work has become less physically demanding. Instead, it requires more cognitive skills and the ability to understand and carry out well-defined procedures. [J]As noted earlier, the proportion of clerical workers in the economy peaked in 1980. By that date, computers and advanced communications equipment had already begun to affect telephone operations and banking. The rise of the personal computer and the Internet has widened the impact of these technologies to include nearly every business and industry. 　　 [K]The economy today differs from that of a generation ago. Mortgage and consumer loan underwriters have been replaced by credit scoring. Record stores have been replaced by music downloads. Book stores are closing, while sales of books on electronic readers have increased. Data entry has been moved off shore. Routine customer support also has been outsourced overseas. 　　 [L]These trends serve to limit the availability of well-defined jobs. If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries.The result is what David Autor calls the polarization of the American job market. [M]Using the latest Census Bureau data, Matthew Slaughter found that from 2000 to 2010 the real earnings of college graduates (with no advanced degree) fell by more in percentage terms than the earnings of high school graduates. In fact, over this period the only education category to show an increase in earnings was those with advanced degrees. 　　 [N]The outlook for mid-skill jobs would not appear to be bright. Communication technology and computer intelligence continue to improve, putting more occupations at risk.For example, many people earn a living as drivers, including trucks and taxicabs. However, the age of driver-less vehicles appears to be moving closer.Another example is in the field of education. In the fall of 2011, an experiment with an online course in artificial intelligence conducted by two Stanford professors drew tens of thousands of registrants. This increases the student-teacher ratio by a factor of close to a thousand. Imagine the number of teaching jobs that might be eliminated if this could be done for calculus, economics, chemistry, and so on. [O]It is important to bear in mind that when we offer a structural interpretation of unemployment, a “loss of jobs” means an increase in productivity. Traditionally, economists have argued that productivity increases are a good thing, even though they may cause dislocation for some workers in the short run. In the long run, the economy does not run out of jobs. Rather, new jobs emerge as old jobs disappear. The story we tell is that average well-being rises, and the more that people are able to adapt, the more widespread the improvement becomes.

阅读理解The term “cliché” usually applied to a phrase -- "he was as hard as nails" you say of some tough character, or you might describe your heroine as having a "flawless oval face". This too is a cliche. It conjures up a picture, and the picture is what you want it to be, but by using a cliche --a phrase which has been done to death over the years, since it is so very apt -- you are making your writing trite, unoriginal and flat. When a cliche is born, it is such a wonderful phrase, so right, so apt, so perfect, that it immediately passes into common usage. The reason why Shakespeare is, according to some people who do not appreciate his works, difficult to read and boring is because it''s full of cliches. Every line in Hamlet, for instance, contains some phrases that will ring with ominous (恶兆的)familiarity in your ears. "Frailty, thy name is woman!" will make your readers squirm (扭动的、蠕动) every time you trot it out, as will "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks" or "I must be cruel, only to be kind." If you are the sort of person who refers in everyday conversation to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" or comments darkly that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark," you might well be wondering why people start to run the other way when they see you coming. Readers will do the same thing if they are faced with writing which is full of cliches. Yet as Thomas Carlyle put it: "The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor." When each cliche was born -- the very first time it was written or spoken--it was such a gem that society seized on it as absolutely the only way to express the thought it conveyed. Everyone else immediately began to use this wonderful phrase each time they wanted to express the same thought. And so it passed into common usage, the everyday speech of ordinary people. And since it was used so often in the years that followed it became worn, threadbare, predictable, boring. A cliche is a form of words which saves you from having to use your own brain to think what you want to say. If you were going to describe a character "as hard as nails", you might have to spend some time if you decided to avoid this phrase and employ one of your own. What exactly does "as hard as nails" mean? That Fred was tough? No, not just tough, ruthless as well. He never gave any quarter, he was always on the defensive, he would give out as good as he got, and mere. Before you know where you are, your own description of Fred will have run to three pages, and still you cannot encapsulate the exact meaning of the phrase "as hard as nails". But by trying to avoid a well worn clich6, you have started your brain ticking over, and you will begin to come up -- perhaps tentatively at first-with original thoughts and phrases which bear your own hallmark.

阅读理解Young men and women today are finding it more and more necessary to protest against what is known as the "Establishment": that is, the people who wield (掌握)power in our society. Clashes with the authorities are reported almost daily in the press. The tension that exists between old and young could certainly be lessened if some of the most obvious causes were re moved. In particular, the Establishment should adopt different attitudes to work and the re wards it brings. Today''s young people are ambitious. Many are equipped with a good education and are understandably impatient to succeed as quickly as possible. They want to be able to have their share of the good things in life while they are still young enough to enjoy them. The Establishment, however, has traditionally believed that people should be rewarded according to their age and experience. Ability counts for less. As the Establishment controls the purse-strings, its views are inevitably imposed on society. Employers pay the smallest sum consistent with keeping you in a job. You join the hierarchy and take your place in the queue. If you are young, you go to the very end of the queue and stay there no matter how brilliant you are. What you know is much less important than who you are and how old you are. If you are able, your abilities will be acknowledged and rewarded in due course, that is, after twenty or thirty years have passed. By that time you will be considered old enough to join the Establishment and you will be expected to adopt its ideals. God helps you if you don''t. There seems to be a gigantic conspiracy against young people. While on the one hand society provides them with better educational facilities, on the other hand it does its best to exclude them from the jobs that really matter. There are exceptions, of course. Some young people do manage to break through the barrier despite the restrictions, but the great majority has to wait patiently for years before they can really give full rein to their abilities. This means that, in most fields, the views of young people are never heard because there is no one to represent them. All important decisions about how society is to be run are made by people who are too old to remember what it was like to be young. Resentment is the cause of a great deal of bitterness. The young resent the old because they feel deprived of the good things life has to offer. The old resent the young because they are afraid of losing what they have. A man of fifty or so might say, "Why should a young rascal(家伙) straight out of school earn more than I do?" But if the young rascal is more able, more determined, harder-working than his middle-aged critic, why shouldn''t he? Employers should recognize ability and reward it justly. This would remove one of the biggest causes of friction between old and young and ultimately it would lead to a better society.

阅读理解Counsellors often assure their clients that what they experience themselves is only______.

阅读理解Questions 1 to 10 are based on the following passage

阅读理解In a few weeks, high school students face the prospect of taking the much-publicized new SAT Reasoning Test, which for the first time will require them to write a timed essay. Yet colleges continue to send confusing signals about whether students applying in the fall to attend college must take the new exam. Some schools, including Harvard, say they will accept scores from either the new test or the old SAT I, which was administered for the last time in January and did not contain a writing section. The University of Central Florida, for example, will require the new test, which will be given for the first time on March 12. Still others, such as the University of Virginia, strongly recommend that prospective applicants take the new test but under some circumstances also will accept the old SAT. A number of colleges are delaying a decision. The College Board, which administers the SAT, surveyed more than 1,900 four-year schools and has heard back from slightly more than 500. Of those, 81% say they will require the new test, including schools such as Harvard that are giving students a choice in what will be a year of transition. "Anything new goes through a special lens of evaluation," says Lee Stetson, admissions dean at the University of Pennsylvania, which judiciously will use results from the new writing section until officials have a chance to study the revised SAT''s predictive validity. A number of admissions deans are skeptical that the new exam will be an improvement. Charles Deacon, dean of undergraduate admissions at Georgetown University, says adding the essay "will create more barriers to poor kids who are less well-prepared". The test was rushed to market because the University of California system, a major College Board customer, threatened to stop requiring the SAT, he says. The test "was developed and marketed for all the wrong reasons". Deacon, who says he has been "badgered" by the College Board to endorse the new exam, has refused to do so. Some schools, including Georgetown, Iowa''s Grinnell College and Pennsylvania''s Franklin and Marshall College, say that at least for now, they will not even look at scores from the writing section when making admission decisions. "We have adopted a wait-and-see attitude," says Dennis Trotter of Franklin and Marshall. College Board officials counter that based on extensive field tests, they are confident the test is as reliable a predictor of freshman-year performance as the old SAT. Moreover, they say, well-trained scorers, many of them high school English teachers, will grade the essays, which student have 25 minutes to write. Amidst all the confusion, what should students do? Admissions deans and school counselors say to be sure to check with each college for requirements.

阅读理解This looks like the year that hard-pressed tenants in California will get relief — not just in the marketplace, where rents have eased, but from the state capital Sacramento. Two significant tenant reforms stand a good chance of passage. One bill, which will give more time to tenants being evicted (逐出) , will soon be heading to the governor''s desk. The other, protecting security deposits, faces a vote in the Senate on Monday. For more than a century, landlords in California have been able to force tenants out with only 30 day''s notice. That will now double under SB 1403, which got through the Assembly recently. The new protection will apply only to renters who have been in an apartment for at least a year. Even 60 days in a tight housing market won''t be long enough for some families to find an apartment near where their kids go to school. But it will be an improvement in cities like San Jose, where renters rights groups charge that unscrupulous (不择手段的) landlords have kicked out tenants on short notice to put up rents. The California Landlords Association argued that landlords shouldn''t have to wait 60 days to get rid of problem tenants. But the bill gained support when a Japanese real estate investor sent out 30-day eviction notices to 550 families renting homes in Sacramento and Santa Rosa. The landlords lobby eventually dropped its opposition and instead turned its forces against AB 2330, regarding security deposits. Sponsored by Assembly woman Carole Migden of San Francisco, the bill would establish a procedure and a timetable for tenants to get back security deposits. Some landlords view security deposits as a free month''s rent, theirs for the taking. In most cases, though, there are honest disputes over damages — what constitutes ordinary wear and tear. AB 2330 would give a tenant the right to request a walk-through with the landlord and to make the repairs before moving out; reputable landlords already do this. It would increase the penalty for failing to return a deposit. The original bill would have required the landlord to pay interest on the deposit. The landlords lobby protested that it would involve too much paperwork over too little money — less than $10 a year on a $1,000 deposit, at current rates. On Wednesday, the sponsor dropped the interest section to increase the chance of passage. Even in its amended form, AB 2330 is, like SB 1403, vitally important for tenants and should be made state law.

阅读理解The youngish-looking man takes his little boy to the hermitage frequently so that when he grows up he will know_______.

阅读理解Age has its privileges in America

阅读理解When global warming finally came, it stuck with a vengeance (异乎寻常). In some regions, temperatures rose several degrees in less than a century. Sea levels shot up nearly 400 feet, flooding coastal settlements and forcing people to migrate inland. Deserts spread throughout the world as vegetation shifted drastically in North America, Europe and Asia. After driving many of the animals around them to near extinction, people were forced to abandon their old way of life for a radically new survival strategy that resulted in widespread starvation and disease. The adaptation was farming: the global-warming crisis that gave rise to it happened more than 10,000 years ago. As environmentalists convene in Rio de Janeiro this week to ponder the global climate of the future, earth scientists are in the midst of a revolution in understanding how climate has changed in the past — and how those changes have transformed human existence. Researchers have begun to piece together an illuminating picture of the powerful geological and astronomical forces that have combined to change the planet''s environment from hot to cold, wet to dry and back again over a time period stretching back hundreds of millions of years. Most important, scientists are beginning to realize that the climatic changes have had a major impact on the evolution of the human species. New research now suggests that climate shifts have played a key role in nearly every significant turning point in human evolution: from the dawn of primates (灵长目动物) some 65 million years ago to human ancestors rising up to walk on two legs, from the huge expansion of the human brain to the rise of agriculture. Indeed, the human history has not been merely touched by global climate change, some scientists argue, it has in some instances been driven by it. The new research has profound implications for the environmental summit in Rio. Among other things, the findings demonstrate that dramatic climate change is nothing new for planet Earth. The benign (宜人的) global environment that has existed over the past 10,000 years — during which agriculture, writing, cities and most other features of civilization appeared — is a mere bright spot in a much larger pattern of widely varying climate over the ages. In fact, the pattern of climate change in the past reveals that Earth''s climate will almost certainly go through dramatic changes in the future — even without the influence of human activity.

阅读理解Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which in formation is transmitted, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizens'' patterns of response to politics. By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television diminished the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By centering politics on the person of the candidate, television accelerated the citizen''s focus oh character than issues. Television has altered the forms of political communication as well. The messages on which most of us rely are briefer than they once were. The stump speech, a political speech given by traveling politicians and lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, which characterized nineteenth century political discourse, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and 10-second "sound bite (原声摘要)" in broadcast news. Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather viewing audience who will hear and see a snippet (摘录) of the speech on the news. In these abbreviated (缩减的)forms, much of what constituted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. In snippets, politicians assert but do not argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it required a changed political style that was more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach us to analyze words and print. However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills. Recognizing the power of television''s pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events, called pseudo events, designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.

阅读理解Frustrated with delays in Sacramento, Bay Area officials said Thursday they planned to take matters into their own hands to regulate the region''s growing pile of electronic trash. A San Jose councilwoman and a San Francisco supervisor said they would propose local initiatives aimed at controlling electronic waste if the California law-making body fails to act on two bills stalled in the Assembly. They are among a growing number of California cities and counties that have expressed the same intention. Environmentalists and local governments are increasingly concerned about the toxic hazard posed by old electronic devices and the cost of safely recycling those products. An estimated 6 million televisions and computers are stocked in California homes, and an additional 6,000 to 7,000 computers become outdated every day. The machines contain high levels of lead and other hazardous substances, and are already banned from California landfills (垃圾填埋场). Legislation by Senator Byron Sher would require consumers to pay a recycling fee of up to $30 on every new machine containing a cathode (阴极) ray tube. Used in almost all video monitors and televisions, those devices contain four to eight pounds of lead each. The fees would go toward setting up recycling programs, providing grants to non-profit agencies that reuse the tubes and rewarding manufacturers that encourage recycling. A separate bill by Los Angeles-area Senator Gloria Romero would require high-tech manufacturers to develop programs to recycle so-called e-waste. If passed, the measures would put California at the forefront of national efforts to manage the refuse of the electronic age. But high-tech groups, including the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group and the American Electronics Association, oppose the measures, arguing that fees of up to $30 will drive consumers to online, out-of-state retailers. "What really needs to occur is consumer education. Most consumers are unaware they''re not supposed to throw computers in the trash," said Roxanne Gould, vice president of government relations for the electronics association. Computer recycling should be a local effort and part of residential waste collection programs, she added. Recycling electronic waste is a dangerous and specialized matter, and environmentalists maintain the state must support recycling efforts and ensure that the job isn''t contracted to unscrupulous (毫无顾忌的) junk dealers who send the toxic parts overseas. "The graveyard of the high-tech revolution is ending up in rural China," said Ted Smith, director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. His group is pushing for an amendment to Sher''s bill that would prevent the export of e-waste.

阅读理解Passage One While human achievements in mathematics continue to reach new levels of complexity, many of us who arent mathematicians at heart (or engineers by trade) may struggle to remember the last time we used caculus(微积分）

阅读理解Rates are low, but consumers won’t borrow The US Federal Reserve(Fed)'s announcement last week that it intended to keep credit cheap for at least two more years was a clear invitation to Americans: Go out and borrow. But many economists say it will take more than low interest rates to persuade consumers to take on more debt. There are already signs that the recent stock market fluctuations, turbulence in Europe and the US deficit have scared consumers. On Friday, preliminary data showed that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index had fallen this month to lower than it was in November 2008, when the United States was deep in recession. Under normal circumstances, the Fed's announcement might have attracted new home and car buyers and prompted credit card holders to rack up fresh charges. But with unemployment high and those with jobs worried about keeping them, consumers are more concerned about paying off the loans they already have than adding more debt. And by showing its hand for the next two years, the Fed may have thoughtlessly invited prospective borrowers to put off large purchases. Lenders, meanwhile, are still dealing with the effects of the boom-gone-bust and are forcing prospective borrowers to go to extraordinary lengths to prove their creditworthiness. "I don't think lenders are going to be interested in extending a lot of debt in this environment," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, a macroeconomic consulting firm. "Nor do I think households are going to be interested in taking on a lot of debt." In housing, consumers have already shown a slow response to low rates. Applications for new mortgages have decreased this year to a 10-year low, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Sales of furniture and furnishings remain 22% below their pre-recession peak, according to Spending Pulse, a research report by MasterCard Advisors. Credit card rates have actually gone up slightly in the past year. The one bright spot in lending is the number of auto loans, which is up from last year. But some economists say that confidence among car buyers is hitting new lows. For Xavier Walter, a former mortgage banker who with his wife, Danielle, accumulated$20 000 in credit card debt, low rates will not change his spending habits. As the housing market topped out five years ago, he lost his six-figure income. He and his wife were able to modify the mortgage on their four-bedroom house in Medford, New Jersey, as well as negotiate lower credit card payments. Two years ago, Mr. Walter, a 34-year-old father of three, started an energy business. He has sworn off credit. "I'm not going to go back in debt ever again," he said. "If I can't pay for it in cash, I don't want it." Until now, one of the biggest restraints on consumer spending has been a debt aftereffect. Since August 2008, when household debt peaked at$12.41 trillion, it has declined by about$1.2 trillion, according to an analysis by Moody's Analytics of data from the Federal Reserve and Equifax, the credit agency. A large portion of that, though, was simply written off by lenders as borrowers defaulted on loans. By other measures, households have improved their position. The proportion of after-tax income that households spend to remain current on loan payments has fallen. Still, household debt remains high. That presents a paradox: many economists argue that the economy cannot achieve true health until debt levels decline. But credit, made attractive by low rates, is a time-tested way to increase consumer spending. With new risks of another downturn, economists worry that it will take years for debt to return to manageable levels. If the economy contracts again, said George Magnus, senior adviser at UBS, then "you could find a lot of households in a debt trap which they probably can never get out of." Mortgage lenders, meanwhile, burned by the housing crash, are extra careful about approving new loans. In June, for instance, Fannie Mae, the largest mortgage buyer in the United States, said that borrowers whose existing debt exceeded 45 to 50% of their income would be required to have stronger "compensating" factors, which might include higher savings. Even those borrowers in strong financial positions are asked to provide unusual amounts of paperwork. Bobby and Katie Smith have an extremely good credit record, tiny student debt and a combined six-figure income. For part of their down payment, they planned to use about$5 000 they had received as wedding gifts in February. But the lender would not accept that money unless the Smiths provided a certified letter from each of 14 guests, stating that the money was a gift, rather than a loan. "We laughed for a good 15 or 20 minutes." recalled Mr. Smith. 34. Mr. Smith, a program director for a radio station in Orlando, Florida, said they ended up using other savings for their down payment to buy a$300 000 four-bedroom house in April. For those not as creditworthy as the Smiths, low rates are irrelevant because they no longer qualify for mortgages. That leaves the eligible pool of loan applicants wealthier, "older and whiter," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. "It's creating much more of a divide," he said, "between the haves and the have-nots." Car shoppers with the highest credit ratings can also get loans more easily, and at lower rates, said Paul C. Taylor, chief economist of the National Automobile Dealers Association During the recession, inability to obtain credit severely cut auto buying as lenders rejected even those with good credit ratings. Now automakers are increasing their subprime（次级债的）lending again as well, but remain hesitant to approve large numbers of risky customers. The number of new auto loans was up by l6% in the second quarter compared with the previous year, said Melinda Zabritski, director of automotive credit at Experian, the information services company. But some economists warn that consumer confidence is falling. According to CNW Marketing Research, confidence among those who intend to buy a car this year is at its lowest since it began collecting data on this measure in 2000. On credit cards, rates have actually inched higher this year. largely because of new rules that curb the issuer's ability to charge fees or raise certain interest rates at will. At the end of the second quarter, rates averaged 14. 01% on new card offers, up from 13. 75% a year earlier, according to Mail Monitor, which tracks credit cards for Synovate, a market research firm. According to data from the Federal Reserve, total outstanding debt on revolving credit cards was down by 4. 6% during the first half of the year compared with the same period a year earlier. Even if the Fed's announcement helps keep rates steady. or pushes them down, businesses do not expect customers to suddenly charge up a storm. "It's not like, 'Oh, credit is so cheap. let's go back to the heydays（鼎盛时期）,",said Elizabeth Crowell, who owns Sterling Place, two high-end home furnishing and gift stores in New York. "People still fear for their jobs. So I think where maybe after other recessions they might return to previous spending habits, the pendulum hasn't swung back the same way."

阅读理解When people think about air pollution, they usually think about smog, acid rain, CFC''s, and other forms of outdoor air pollution. But do you know that air pollution also can exist inside homes and other buildings? It can, and every year, the health of many people is affected by chemical substances present in the air within buildings. A great deal of research on pollution is being conducted at laboratories and universities. The goals of the research are to find solutions and to educate the public about the problem. Two places where this type of work is being done are LBNL and the University of California, Berkeley. Let''s take a closer look at the various types of air pollution, the effects that they have on people, and what is being (or not being) done to correct the problem. What is Air Pollution? Air is the ocean we breathe. Air supplies us with oxygen which is essential for our bodies to live. Air supplies us with oxygen which is essential for our bodies to live. Air is 99.9% nitrogen (氮气), oxygen, water vapor and inert(惰性的) gases. Human activities can release substances into the air, some of which can cause problems for humans, plants, and animals. There are several main types of pollution and well-known effects of pollution which are commonly discussed. These include smog, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, and "holes" in the ozone layer. Each of these problems has serious implications for our health and well-being as well as for the whole environment. One type of air pollution is the release of particles (微粒) into the air from burning fuel for energy. Diesel smoke (柴油烟) is a good example of this particulate matter. The particles are very small pieces of matter measuring about 2.5 microns or about .0001 inches. This type of pollution is sometimes referred to as "black carbon" pollution. The exhaust from burning fuels in automobiles, homes, and industries is a major source of pollution in the air. Some authorities believe that even the burning of wood and charcoal (木炭) in fireplaces and barbeques can release significant quantities of soot (油烟) into the air. Another type of pollution is the release of noxious gases, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and chemical vapors. These can take part in further chemical reactions once they are in the atmosphere, forming smog and acid rain. Pollution also needs to be considered inside our homes, offices, and schools. Some of these pollutants can be created by indoor activities such as smoking and cooking. In the United States, we spend about 80-90% of our time inside buildings, and so our exposure to harmful indoor pollutants can be serious. It is therefore important to consider both indoor and outdoor air pollution. Outdoor Air Pollution Smog is a type of large-scale outdoor pollution. It is caused by chemical reactions between pollutants derived from different sources, primarily automobile exhaust and industrial emissions. Cities are often centers of these types of activities, and many suffer from the effects of smog, especially during the warm months of the year. Additional information about smog and its effects are available from the Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in southern California. For each city, the exact causes of pollution may be different. Depending on the geographical location, temperature, wind and weather factors, pollution is dispersed differently. However, sometimes this does not happen and the pollution can build up to dangerous levels. A temperature inversion occurs when air close to the earth is cooler is 99.9% nitrogen (氮气), oxygen, water vapor and inert(惰性的) gases. Human activities can release substances into the air, some of which can cause problems for humans, plants, and animals. There are several main types of pollution and well-known effects of pollution which are commonly discussed. These include smog, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, and "holes" in the ozone layer. Each of these problems has serious implications for our health and well-being as well as for the whole environment. One type of air pollution is the release of particles (微粒) into the air from burning fuel for energy. Diesel smoke (柴油烟) is a good example of this particulate matter. The particles are very small pieces of matter measuring about 2.5 microns or about .0001 inches. This type of pollution is sometimes referred to as "black carbon" pollution. The exhaust from burning fuels in automobiles, homes, and industries is a major source of pollution in the air. Some authorities believe that even the burning of wood and charcoal (木炭) in fireplaces and barbeques can release significant quantities of soot (油烟) into the air. Another type of pollution is the release of noxious gases, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and chemical vapors. These can take part in further chemical reactions once they are in the atmosphere, forming smog and acid rain. Pollution also needs to be considered inside our homes, offices, and schools. Some of these pollutants can be created by indoor activities such as smoking and cooking. In the United States, we spend about 80-90% of our time inside buildings, and so our exposure to harmful indoor pollutants can be serious. It is therefore important to consider both indoor and outdoor air pollution. Outdoor Air Pollution Smog is a type of large-scale outdoor pollution. It is caused by chemical reactions between pollutants derived from different sources, primarily automobile exhaust and industrial emissions. Cities are often centers of these types of activities, and many suffer from the effects of smog, especially during the warm months of the year. Additional information about smog and its effects are available from the Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in southern California. For each city, the exact causes of pollution may be different. Depending on the geographical location, temperature, wind and weather factors, pollution is dispersed differently. However, sometimes this does not happen and the pollution can build up to dangerous levels. A temperature inversion occurs when air close to the earth is cooler lives. We work, study, eat, drink and sleep in enclosed environments where air circulation may be restricted. For these reasons, some experts feel that more people suffer from the effects of indoor air pollution than outdoor pollution. There are many sources of indoor air pollution. Tobacco smoke, cooking and heating appliances, and vapors from building materials, paints, furniture, etc. cause pollution inside buildings. Radon is a natural radioactive gas released from the earth, and it can be found concentrated in basements in some parts of the United States. Pollution exposure at home and work is often greater than outdoors. The California Air Resources Board estimates that indoor air pollutant levels are 25-62% greater than outside levels and can pose serious health problems. Air pollution can affect our health in many ways with both short-term and long-term effects. Different groups of individuals are affected by air pollution in different ways. Some individuals are much more sensitive to pollutant''s than are others. Young children and elderly people often suffer more from the effects of air pollution. People with health problems such as asthma, heart and lung disease may also suffer more when the air is polluted. The extent to which an individual is harmed by air pollution usually depends on the total exposure to the damaging chemicals, i.e., the duration of exposure and the concentration of the chemicals must be taken into account. Research into the health effects of air pollution is ongoing. Medical conditions arising from air pollution can be very expensive. Healthcare costs, lost productivity in the workplace, and human welfare impacts cost billions of dollars each year. In many countries in the world, steps are being taken to stop the damage to our environment from air pollution. Scientific groups study the damaging effects on plant, animal and human life. Legislative bodies write laws to control emissions. Educators in schools and universities teach students, beginning at very young ages, about the effects of air pollution.

阅读理解For years, doctors advised their patients that the only thing taking multivitamins does is give them expensive urine (尿). After all, true vitamin deficiencies are practically unheard of in industrialized countries. Now it seems those doctors may have been wrong. The results of a growing number of studies suggest that even a modest vitamin shortfall can be harmful to your health. Although proof of the benefits of multivitamins is still far from certain, the few dollars you spend on them is probably a good investment. Or at least that''s the argument put forward in the New England Journal of Medicine. Ideally, say Dr. Walter Willett and Dr. Meir Stampfer of Harvard, all vitamin supplements would be evaluated in scientifically rigorous clinical trials. But those studies can take a long time and often raise more questions than they answer. At some point, while researchers work on figuring out where the truth lies, it just makes sense to say the potential benefit outweighs the cost. The best evidence to date concerns folate, one of the B vitamins. It''s been proved to limit the number of defects in embryos (胚胎) , and a recent trial found that folate in combination with vitamin B 12 and a form of B6 also decreases the re-blockage of arteries after surgical repair. The news on vitamin E has been more mixed. Healthy folks who take 400 international units daily for at least two years appear somewhat less likely to develop heart disease. But when doctors give vitamin E to patients who already have heart disease, the vitamin doesn''t seem to help. It may turn out that vitamin E plays a role in prevention but cannot undo serious damage. Despite vitamin C''s great popularity, consuming large amounts of it still has not been positively linked to any great benefit. The body quickly becomes saturated with C and simply excretes (排泄) any excess. The multivitamins question boils down to this: Do you need to wait until all the evidence is in before you take them, or are you willing to accept that there''s enough evidence that they don''t hurt and could help.? If the latter, there''s no need to go to extremes and buy the biggest horse pills or the most expensive bottles. Large doses can cause trouble, including excessive bleeding and nervous system problems. Multivitamins are no substitute for exercise and a balanced diet, of course. As long as you understand that any potential benefit is modest and subject to further refinement, taking a daily multivitamin makes a lot of sense.

阅读理解Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people''s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin (亲戚) and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else. Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers. These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover, as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community''s population size and its social heterogeneity (多样性). For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan (见多识广者的) outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so-called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.

阅读理解It being not only possible but even easy to predict which ten-year-old boys are at greatest risk of growing up to be persistent offenders, what are we doing with the information? Just about the last thing that we should do is to wait until their troubles have escalated (逐步升级)in adolescence and then attack them with the provisions of the new Criminal Justice Bill. If this bill becomes law, magistrates will have the power to impose residential care orders. More young people will be drawn into institutional life when all the evidence, shows that this worsens rather than improves their prospects. The introduction of short sharp shocks in detention (拘留) centers will simply give more young people a taste of something else they don''t need; the whole regime of'' detention centers is one of toughening delinquents, and if you want to train someone to be anti-establishment, "I can''t think of a better way to do it," says the writer of this report. The Cambridge Institute of Criminology comes up with five key factors that are likely to make for delinquency (不良行为): a low-income family, a large family, parents deemed by social workers to be bad at raising children, parents who themselves have a criminal record, and low intelligence in the child. Not surprisingly, the factors tend to overlap. Of the 63 boys in the sample who had at least three of them when they were ten, half become juvenile delinquents compared with only a fifth of the sample as a whole. Three more factors make the prediction more accurate: being judged troublesome by teachers at the age of ten, having a father with at least two criminal convictions and having another member of the family with a criminal record. Of the 35 men who had at least two of these factors in their background 18 became persistent delinquents and 8 more were in trouble with the law. Among those key factors, far and away the most important was having a parent with a criminal record, even if that had been acquired in the distant past, even though very few parents did other than condemn delinquent behavior in their children. The role of the schools emerges as extremely important. The most reliable prediction of all on the futures of boys came from teachers'' ratings of how troublesome they were at the age of ten. If the information is there in the classroom there must be a response that brings more attention to those troublesome children: a search for things to give them credit for other than academic achievement, a refusal to allow them to go on playing truant, and a fostering of ambition and opportunity which should start early in their school careers.

阅读理解The liberal view of democratic citizenship that developed in the 17th and 18th centuries was fundamentally different from that of the classical Greeks. The pursuit of private interests with as little interference as possible from government was seen as the road to human happiness and progress rather than the public obligations and involvement in the collective community that were emphasized by the Greeks. Freedom was to be realized by limiting the scope of governmental activity and political obligation and not through immersion in the collective life of the polls. The basic role of the citizen was to select governmental leaders and keep the powers and scope of public authority in check. On the liberal view, the rights of citizen against the state were the focus of special emphasis. Over time, the liberal democratic notion of citizenship developed in two directions. First, there was movement "to increase the proportion of members of society who were eligible to participate as citizens-especially through extending the right of suffrage-and to ensure the basic political equality of all. Second there was a broadening of the legitimate activities of government and a use of governmental power to redress imbalances in social and economic life. Political citizenship became an instrument through which groups and classes with sufficient numbers of votes could use the state power to enhance their social and economic well-being. Within the general liberal view of democratic citizenship, tensions have developed over the degree to which government can and should be used as an instrument for promoting happiness and well-being. Political philosopher Martin Diamond has categorized two views of democracy as follows. On the one hand, there is the "libertarian" perspective that stresses the private pursuit of happiness and emphasizes the necessity for restraint on government and protection of individual liberties. On the other hand, there is the "majoritarian" view that emphasizes the "task of the government to uplift and aid the common man against the malefactors of great wealth." The tensions between these two views are very evident today. Taxpayer revolts and calls for smaller government and less government regulation clash with demands for greater government involvement in the economic marketplace and the social sphere.

阅读理解I live in the land of Disney, Hollywood and year-round sun. You may think people in such a glamorous, fun-filled place are happier than others. If so, you have some mistaken ideas about the ''nature of happiness. Many intelligent people still equate happiness with fun. The truth is that fun and happiness have little or nothing in common. Fun is what we experience during an act. Happiness is what we experience after an act. It is a deeper, more abiding emotion. Going to an amusement park or ball game, watching a movie or television, are fun activities that help us relax, temporarily forget our problems and maybe even laugh. But they do not bring happiness, because their positive effects end when the fun ends. I have often thought that if Hollywood stars have a role to play, it is to teach us that happiness has nothing to do with fun. These rich, beautiful individuals have constant access to glamorous parties, fancy cars, expensive houses, everything that spells "happiness". But in memoir (论文集) after memoir, celebrities reveal the unhappiness hidden beneath all their fun: depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, broken marriages, troubled children and profound loneliness. Ask a bachelor why he resists marriage even though he finds dating to be less and less satisfying. If he''s honest, he will tell you that he is afraid of making a commitment: For commitment is in fact quite painful. The single life is filled with fun. adventure and excitement. Marriage has such moments, but they are not its most distinguishing features. Similarly, couples that choose not to have children are deciding in favor of painless fun over painful happiness. They can dine out ever they want and sleep as late as they want. Couples with infant children are lucky to get a whole night''s sleep or a three-day vacation. I don''t know any parent who would choose the word fun to describe raising children. Understanding and accepting that true happiness has nothing to do with fun is one of the most liberating realizations we can ever come to. It liberates time: now we can devote more hours to activities that can genuinely increase our happiness. It liberates money: buying that new car or those fancy clothes that will do nothing to increase our happiness now seems point- less. And it liberates us from envy: we now understand that all those rich and glamorous people we were so sure are happy because they are always having so much fun actually may not be happy at all. The moment we understand that fun does not bring happiness we begin to lead our lives differently. The effect can be quite literally life-transforming.