单选题 How Diversity Training Infuriates Men and Fails Women A. Decades before Anita Hill, Gretchen Carlson or #MeToo, American companies dreamed up 'diversity training', typically a course that lasts anywhere from an hour to a couple of days, with the goal of wiping out biases against women and others from underrepresented groups. For most of its history, diversity training has been pretty much a cudgel, pounding white men into submission with a mix of finger-wagging and guilt-mongering. B. The first training programs surfaced in the 1950s, after men returned from World War II and were appalled and perplexed to find women in their offices. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the training took on more urgency. Within a decade, it had morphed into a knee-jerk response to legal actions, after a series of high-profile sex discrimination suits, including one by the women of Newsweek magazine, who were stranded (使滞留) in a pink ghetto. 'Women don't write at Newsweek. If you want to be a writer, go someplace else,' the bosses told them, according to Lynn Povich, one of the 46 women who sued. C. By the time I entered the workforce in the 1980s, the Newsweek suit and others like it—led by women at TIME, the Associated Press and the New York Times—were mostly forgotten. Diversity training had taken a backseat too. I don't recall ever hearing the phrase until the 1990s. By then, it had been reconstituted as a feel-good exercise in consciousness-raising. White men were told they should include women and minorities because it's the right thing to do. It was all about the importance of 'inclusion.' D. But here's the thing about diversity training: it doesn't work. Harvard organizational sociology professor Frank Dobbin and others have since delved into why such programs have failed. Dobbin combed through thousands of data points and found that for white women and black men and women in management positions, it actually made things worse. That's right: companies that introduced diversity training would actually employ more women and black men today if they had never had diversity training at all. He singled out three situations in which training is doomed to fail: when it's mandatory; when it so much as mentions the law; or when it is specific to managers, as opposed to being offered to all employees. Unfortunately, he found, about 75% of firms with diversity-training programs fall into at least one of those categories. E. Perhaps more to the point is the fact that the training infuriates (激怒) the people it's intended to educate: white men. 'Many interpreted the key learning point as having to walk on eggshells around women and minorities—choosing words carefully so as not to offend. Some surmised (猜测) that it meant white men were villains, still others assumed that they would lose their jobs to minorities and women, while others concluded that women and minorities were simply too sensitive,' executives Rohini Anand and Mary-Frances Winters noted in a 2008 analysis of diversity training in the Academy of Management Learning Education. F. Training done badly can also damage otherwise cordial relationships. Women and minorities often leave training sessions, thinking their co-workers must be even more biased than they had previously imagined. In a more troubling development, it turns out that telling people about others' biases can actually heighten their own. Researchers have found that when people believe everybody else is biased, they feel free to be prejudiced themselves. In one study, a group of managers was told that stereotypes are rare, while another group was told that stereotypes are common. Then both groups were asked to evaluate male and female job candidates. The managers who were told that stereotypes are common were more biased against the women. In a similar study, managers didn't want to hire women and found them unlikable. The evidence is damning. G. Yet companies continue to invest heavily in diversity training spending, by one estimate, almost $8 billion a year. It has led to what the Economist dubbed 'diversity fatigue'. In a recent article, the magazine suggested that 12 of the most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from human resources, and I'm here to organize a diversity workshop. H. Now companies are searching for more effective, less infuriating alternatives. Take tech firms, which have come under fire for being among the worst offenders when it comes to bias. The irony is that they have also been at the forefront of devising new ways to combat it. I. Can they turn around a culture where sexism has not only been tolerated but in many cases celebrated? I sat down with Brian Welle, director of people, analytics at Google, who is tasked with helping lead the latest trend: unconscious-bias training. J. We all have prejudices buried so deeply inside of us that we don't know they exist. Unconscious-bias training is supposed to arm employees with the tools they need to recognize it and neutralize these prejudices. His role, Welle told me, was to ensure that 'every decision we made, from hiring to promotion to pay to performance, didn't have an unintended bias' against women or other underrepresented groups. Welle seized on an insight that has proved to be key for anyone who is trying to wipe out hidden biases: if we believe that everyone around us is trying hard to fight against those stereotypes and prejudices, we'll do the same. Call it peer pressure, or call it a pack mentality. Whatever it is, it works. Our own biases disappear. K. Welle and his team ultimately developed a workshop for Google employees that strives to mimic those conditions. In a typical session, he explains the science, so that employees can understand that yes, we're all biased, and yes, we're all trying to fight it, and don't worry, it isn't your fault. He focuses on four ways to 'interrupt' bias, all of which boil down to one word: awareness. He encourages employees to use consistent criteria to measure success and to rely on data rather than on gut reactions when evaluating others. He urges them to notice how they react to subtle cues. Finally, he encourages employees to call out bias when they see it, even if the culprit is their own boss. L. To be sure, unconscious-bias training isn't a cure-all. Last year, a male Google engineer penned an anti-diversity 'manifesto' protesting such efforts, and later called the firm's training 'just a lot of shaming'. The company fired him—and he hit back in January, suing Google for discrimination against conservative white males. Google is also fighting U. S. Department of Labor allegations (指控) of 'extreme' underpayment to female Google employees, which the company denies.

单选题 吃年夜饭是春节期间家家户户最热闹的时刻。除夕夜，丰盛的年夜菜摆满一大桌，一家人团聚在一起，围坐桌旁，欢声笑语，共享美餐。年夜饭可谓一年里最为丰盛的一顿大餐，为准备年夜饭，人们往往要提前忙上好几天，配备各种各样的食材。年夜饭上的菜肴各式各样，五花八门。一些地方一般少不了两样东西：一是火锅，二是鱼。火锅沸煮，热气腾腾，说明红红火火；“鱼”和“余”谐音，象征“吉庆有余”，也喻示“年年有余”。

单选题 South Africa has 11 official languages. If you want to say hello, it's 'sawubona' in Zulu, and 'hallo' in Afrikaans. Now, South Africa's school children may start using 'ni hao' to say hello. The country's education minister says, the nation is adding the Mandarin language teaching in some schools. Mandarin is the official spoken language of China. That country is a major trading power for South Africa. A recent agreement between the two nations centres on five areas of cooperation. They include development in basic education, school books and lessons, mathematics and science, teacher training and career education and research. South Africa officials have not said how much they teaching Mandarin will cost. Troy Martens is an official with South Africa's Ministry of Basic Education. She says the new partnership is extremely valuable. 'So it is very exciting and both countries have indicated that for them education is a high priority, and that is why education is high on the agenda of collaboration between the two countries,' said Martens. The part of the plan that has garnered the most attention is the inclusion of the Mandarin language in schools. A public opinion study last year found that South Africans have mixed feelings about China. The survey showed 46 percent of South Africans do not like the spread of Chinese ideas and customs in their country, the results also showed that 60 percent dislike Chinese music, movies and television. But Ms Martens said Chinese trade is more important than those feelings. She said it is extremely helpful to learners in South Africa to study Mandarin as well as Chinese culture. And she said not every school will offer Mandarin. 'Now this will not be compulsory, it will not be for every school, and it will not be for every child. But for schools that feel they have the capacity to offer Mandarin as a subject, we think it is a great opportunity for South African learners to be exposed to this international type of language,' said Martens. South Africa's population studies do not say how many native Chinese speakers are among its nearly 51 million people. Lisette Noonan heads the 80-year-old Pretoria Chinese School in South Africa's capital. The school serves about 500 students from kindergarten to grade 12. Every student studies Mandarin. Ms Noonan says the school welcomes the new cooperation between South Africa and China. She said it is in the best interests of children to study Mandarin. She said that especially true with China becoming what she called 'a huge economic power in the world'.

单选题 The U.S. isn't the only country with an expanding waistline (腰围). A new study from the European Society of Cardiology predicts that rates of obesity will increase in almost all European countries by 2030. And Ireland comes in as the fattest country, with a 47% projected obesity rate for both men and women. To be fair, everywhere people are expanding. The prevalence of obesity worldwide nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, according to the World Health Organization (WHO. , and although the U.S. is still leading the pack with obesity at 34.9%, European countries aren't lagging far behind with rates at roughly 23% for women and 20% for men. Presented by Dr. Laura Webber at the EuroPRevent congress in Amsterdam, the study takes into account all available data on body mass index and obesity/overweight trends in the WHO's 53 Euro-region countries. In those countries the study revealed little evidence of any plateau (稳定期). Even as England's rate of increase today is less steep than it has been historically, levels continue to rise and will be much higher in 2030 than they were in 1993. Examining both overweight and obese rates combined, the numbers become even more shocking. The prevalence of overweight and obesity in males is set to reach 75% in the U.K. and 80% in the Czech Republic, Spain, and Poland. In Ireland, the projected rate is an enormous 90% for men and 84% for women. Considering that's almost everybody, Dr. Webber's comment that these results may be underestimates is all the more concerning. She points to the poor data available from many countries contributing to less certain predictions. The study also does not take into account the significant increase in childhood weight and obesity issues across Europe, with one in three 11-year-olds overweight or obese, according to the WHO. In accounting for differences in projected levels (the lowest found in Belgium at 44% and the Netherlands at 47%) the authors mention the potential effects of 'economic positioning' and 'type of market.' Ireland and the U.K., where obesity rates are highest, have unregulated markets similar to the U.S. Giant food companies work collectively to maximize profit-encouraging over-consumption. In areas with more controlled market economies, like the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland, obesity levels are lower. However, obesity is a complex disease. 'The United Nations has called for a whole-of-society approach to preventing obesity and related diseases,' Dr. Webber said. 'Policies that reduce obesity are necessary to avoid premature mortality and prevent economic strain on already overburdened health systems. The WHO has put in place strategies that aim to guide countries towards reducing obesity through the promotion of physical activity and healthy diets.'

单选题 Amitai Etzioni is not surprised by the latest headings about scheming corporate crooks(骗子). As a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School in 1989, he ended his work there disgusted with his students' overwhelming lust for money. 'They're taught that profit is all that matters,' he says. 'Many schools don't even offer ethics (伦理学) courses at all.' Etzioni expressed his frustration about the interests of his graduate students. 'By and large, I clearly had not found a way to help classes full of MBAs see that there is more to life than money, power, fame and self-interest,' he wrote at the time. Today he still takes the blame for not educating these 'business-leaders-to-be.' 'I really feel like I failed them,' he says. 'If I was a better teacher maybe I could have reached them.' Etzioni was a respected ethics expert when he arrived at Harvard. He hoped his work at the university would give him insight into how questions of morality could he applied to places where serf-interest flourished. What he found wasn't encouraging. Those would-be executives had, says Etzioni, little interest in concepts of ethics and morality in the boardroom—and their professor was met with blank stares when he urged his students to see business in new and different ways. Etzioni sees the experience at Harvard as an eye-opening one and says there's much about business schools that he'd like to change. 'A lot of the faculty teaching business are bad news them-selves.' Etzioni says. From offering classes that teach students how to legally manipulate contracts, to reinforcing the notion of profit over community interests, Etzioni has seen a lot that's left him shaking his head. And because of what he's seen taught in business schools, he's not surprised by the latest rash of corporate scandals. 'In many ways things have got a lot worse at business schools, I suspect,' says Etzioni. Etzioni is still teaching the sociology of right and wrong and still calling for ethical business leadership. 'People with poor motives will always exist,' he says. 'Sometimes environments con-strain those people and sometimes environments give those people opportunity. 'Etzioni says the booming economy of the last decade enabled those individuals with poor motives to get rich before getting in trouble. His hope now: that the cries for reform will provide more fertile soil for his long-standing messages about business ethics.

单选题 Technology can make us smarter or stupider, and we need to develop a set of principles to guide our everyday behavior and make sure that tech is improving and not hindering our mental processes. One of the big questions being debated today is: What kind of information do we need to have stored in our heads, and what kind can we leave 'in the cloud, ' to be accessed as necessary? An increasingly powerful group within education are championing 'digital literacy'. In their view, skills beat knowledge, developing 'digital literacy' is more important than learning mere content, and all facts are now Google-able and therefore unworthy of committing to memory. But even the most sophisticated digital literacy skills won't help students and workers navigate the world if they don't have a broad base of knowledge about how the world actually operates. If you focus on the delivery mechanism and not the content, you're doing kids a disservice. Indeed, evidence from cognitive science challenges the notion that skills can exist independent of factual knowledge. Data from the last thirty years leads to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that's true not only because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about most—critical thinking processes—are intimately intertwined (交织) with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory. In other words, just because you can Google the date of Black Tuesday doesn't mean you understand why the Great Depression happened or how it compares to our recent economic slump. There is no doubt that the students of today, and the workers of tomorrow, will need to innovate, collaborate and evaluate. But such skills can't be separated from the knowledge that gives rise to them. To innovate, you have to know what came before. To collaborate, you have to contribute knowledge to the joint venture. And to evaluate, you have to compare new information against knowledge you've already mastered. So here's a principle for thinking in a digital world, in two parts. First, acquire a base of factual knowledge in any domain in which you want to perform well. This base supplies the essential foundation for building skills, and it can't be outsourced (外包) to a search engine. Second, take advantage of computers' invariable memory, but also the brain's elaborative memory. Computers are great when you want to store information that shouldn't change. But brains are the superior choice when you want information to change, in interesting and useful ways: to connect up with other facts and ideas, to acquire successive layers of meaning, to steep for a while in your accumulated knowledge and experience and so produce a richer mental brew.

单选题 Honeybee populations declined by 13.6% over the winter, according to a survey of beekeepers across England. Losses were most severe in the north-east, where the survey recorded a loss rate of 17.1%. Experts worry that the declines will affect plant productivity. There are also concerns that the declines, along with drought conditions in some area, will mean less English honey this year. Martin Smith, president of the British Beekeepers Association, which carried out the survey, said: 'If this was measured against similar losses in livestock, it would be seen as disastrous and there would be great concern on the knock-on impact of food prices.' Beekeepers are puzzled by the decline because the cold winter and early spring should have favoured bees. They stay 'clustered' tightly in their hives when it is cold and dry, saving energy for spring foraging when the temperature rises about 12℃. However, there is good news that the rate of colony loss has slowed. Four years ago, one in three hives was wiped out. Beekeepers suspect that poor nutrition is a likely cause of weakness in adult bees that makes them succumb to diseases spread by a parasitic mite. 'The varroa mite is the number one reason why people lose bees, so the government needs to increase research to cure diseases caused by varroa,' said Smith. 'But a colony that has a good source of pollen and nectar will go into winter more strongly and better able to fend off disease.' The association is calling on everyone who has a garden, small, to plant bee-friendly plants this summer. 'It is really important that there are flowering nectar-rich plants around in August, September and October to provide the nutrition that's needed so the bees can top up their stores of honey in the hive to see them through winter,' said Smith. A campaign being launched next week to save all bees, spearheaded by Sam Roddick and Neal's Yard Remedies, pins the blame for the decline on pesticide. It will start a petition to hand to Downing Street in October to ban the use of a class of pesticides that has been implicated in bee deaths across the world. Roddick said, 'These neonicotinoid pesticides penetrate the plant and indiscriminately attack the nervous system of insects that feed off them, disorientating bees, impairing their foraging ability and weakening their immune system, causing bee Aids. On current evidence, Italy, Germany and Slovenia have banned some varieties. In the UK, it's up to the people to show the government that if there is any doubt that they are contributing to bee deaths, we need to ban them.' A spokesman for the government's National Bee Unit said: 'The UK has a robust system for assessing risks from pesticides and all evidence shows neonicotinoids do not pose an unacceptable risk when products are used correctly, but we will not hesitate to act if presented with any new evidence.'

单选题Waffles? French toast? Bacon? Big breakfasts may be a thing of the past. According to the Associated Press, more Americans are consuming breakfast in stages thanks to on-the-go lifestyles and the belief that multiple, smaller meals are 29 than three large ones. Serial eating is only expected to increase in the coming years. The NPD Group, a market research company, 30 that the number of times people will snack in the mornings will increase 23% in a decade, 31 with 20% and 15% increases in afternoon and evening snacking, 32 . Unlike their evening alter-egos, morning snackers tend to be more health 33 , looking for low-calorie foods with more fiber, antioxidants (抗氧化物) and whole grains. For instance, General Mills introduced its 140-calorie Fiber One bars in 2007, but recently added three more flavors as well as 90-calorie versions. This may be new in the US, but a second breakfast is 34 in countries such as Germany. In Bavaria, a traditional second breakfast 35 of white sausages, pretzels (椒盐卷饼), sweet mustard and, of course, beer. But snackers, beware: Though spreading calories across several meals is generally accepted to be healthier, it can actually cause people to over-consume and gain weight, David Levitsky, a professor of nutrition and psychology at Cornell University, told the AP. Maybe the trend toward portable, quick-hit breakfasts will 36 more people to eat in the morning. According to the Huffington Post, a 37 by the NPD Group found that 31 million Americans 38 the most important meal of the day. A. compared F. estimates K. particularly B. connected G. healthier L. respectively C. conscious H. inspire M. skip D. consists I. made N. supervision E. easier J. necessary O. survey

单选题 Researchers say infants who are exposed to things like rat and pet dander (屑), roach (蟑螂) allergens (过敏原) and household bacteria during their first year are actually less likely to suffer from allergies. A new study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology shows that being exposed to allergens before a child turns one can 27 allergies. To reach these findings, the researchers studied 467 inner-city infants in Boston and New York. They tracked their health over three years, and visited their homes to calculate the levels of a 28 of allergens. They also conducted allergy tests on the children and collected bacteria from dust 29 in their homes. The kids who lived homes with mouse and cat dander as well as cockroach droppings during their first year had lower rates of wheezing (喘息) by age 3. It's possible you've heard of the 'hygiene hypothesis', which is the 30 that the reason Americans have so many allergies is because we are, quite simply, too clean. Kids are kept in such completely clean environments that they never 31 immunities to common allergens. A significant amount of research has shown that kids who grow up living on farms with livestock, or with a pet are less likely to 32 allergies: Prior research has also suggested that it's not 33 dust that provides protection, but the microbes (微生物) that are in our body that influence our immune system and ability to fight off 34 . The new findings support a growing body of 35 that a little exposure to germs here and there never hurt no one, and in fact, could actually be protective. Letting a child put their shoe in their mouth is 36 , but possibly not the worst accident they could make. A. benefit I. gross B. build J. infections C. develop K. lawfully D. domination L. marvelous E. endangered M. necessarily F. evidence N. speculation G. gathered O. variety H. granted

单选题 At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from farm produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality? There are a number of familiar theories. Some argue that people are anxious and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers. Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners add to the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient. To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley, notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers—meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agricultural businesses in California. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9%between 1980-2000. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal (财政的) burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits. The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal. Even for those most acutely affected—say, low-skilled workers, or California residents—the impact isn't all that dramatic. 'The unpleasant voices have tended to dominate our perceptions, ' says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon, 'But when all those factors are put together and the economists calculate the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one. ' Too bad most people don't realize it.

单选题 甲骨文 甲骨文(oracle bone script)指中国商代和西周早期刻在龟甲或兽骨上的文字，用于占卜(divine)或记事。它是中国最早的文字体系，是汉语发展的关键阶段，现代汉字就是由甲骨文演变而来。人们通常认为甲骨文是王懿荣于1899年从来自河南安阳的甲骨上发现的。截至2012年，被人们发现的甲骨大约有15万片，刻有4500多个单字。这些甲骨所记载的内容极为丰富，涉及商代社会生活的诸多方面，包括政治、军事、文化、社会习俗、天文、历法、医药等。