单选题Barack Obama spent much time on the campaign trail proposing a dramatic vision to change not only the United States for the better, but also the world. The candidate outlined a new, multilateral global order with America still leading, particularly regarding hard power, but sharing more burdens with others. There was a strong "anything but Bush" flavor in many of Obama"s campaign-trail foreign policies, such as his opposition to the Iraq war, his willingness to pragmatically negotiate with dictators, and his emphasis on a multilateral dimension to American foreign policy. He wanted—at least rhetorically—to bend the arc of history towards justice, freedom, progress, and prosperity. Has he fulfilled his vision during his first three years in the Oval Office? That is the question addressed by Bending History , a new book that offers a timely and insightful analysis of Obama"s foreign policy performance and what he could do if he wins a second term. Although national interests have been fairly well protected, the authors believe that Obama"s first three years in the Oval Office are defined by a considerable gap between his vision and his record. Despite limited success, the president has not yet bent history in any major way, especially when measured against his own standards. Importantly, the authors argue that robust and strategic foreign policy cannot be achieved without having one"s domestic affairs in order. Sadly, according to the authors, America has not done what it should to sustain its future global primacy. The country has been disinvesting in infrastructure and education, walking away from a serious program for clean energy, failing to address social divisions, and making merely partial fixes to the financial system that produced the crisis of 2008. Whoever occupies the Oval Office come 2013, Obama"s foreign policy successes will matter little if the economy fails to sustain American power. The authors conclude that Obama"s foreign policy to date has been more pragmatic than visionary. It suggests no clear road map for the future, no particularly compelling overall strategy for how the president would advance American interests and bend history in a second term. Obama"s accomplishments should be better understood as effective damage control than historic breakthroughs. Overall the book"s analysis is compelling, although more attention might have been paid to the president"s own role as a political leader and a strategic thinker. But all things considered, Bending History does a superb job of detailing what happened during the first three years of Obama"s presidency. It provides a timely and insightful analysis worth reading for anyone interested in U.S. foreign policy.

单选题For as long as multinational companies have existed—and some historians trace them back to banking under the Knights Templar in 1135—they have been derided by their critics as greedy rich-world beasts. If there was ever any truth to that accusation, it is fast disappearing. While globalisation has opened new markets to rich-world companies, it has also given birth to a pack of fast-moving, sharp-toothed new multinationals that is emerging from the poor world. The newcomers have some big advantages over the old firms. They are not restricted by the accumulated legacies of their rivals. Infosys, an Indian IT-service company, rightly sees itself as more energetic than IBM, because when it makes a decision it does not have to weigh the opinions of thousands of highly paid careerists in Armonk, New York. That, in turn, can make a difference in the competition for talent. Western multinationals often find that the best local people leave for a local rival as soon as they have been trained, because the prospects of rising to the top can seem better at the local firm. But the newcomers" advantages are not overwhelming. Take the difference in company ethics, for instance, which worries plenty of rich-world managers. They fear that they will engage in a race to the bottom with rivals unencumbered by the fine feelings of shareholders and domestic customers, and so are bound to lose. Yet the evidence is that companies harmonise up, not down. In developing countries multinationals tend to spread better working practices and environmental conditions; but when emerging-country multinationals operate in rich countries they tend to adopt local mores. So as those companies globalise, the differences are likely to narrow. Nor is cost as big an advantage to emerging-country multinationals as it might seem. They compete against the old guard on value for money, which depends on both price and quality. A firm like Tata Steel, from low-cost India, would never have bought expensive, Anglo-Dutch Corus were it not for its expertise in making fancy steel. This points to an enduring source of advantage for the wealthy companies under attack. A world that is not governed by cost alone suits them, because they already possess a formidable array of skills, such as managing relations with customers, polishing brands, building up know-how and fostering innovation. Nobody said that coping with a new brood of competitors was going to be easy. Some of today"s established multinational companies will not be up to the task. But others will emerge from the encounter stronger than ever. And consumers, wherever they are, will gain from the contest.

单选题When our children are born, we study their every eyelash and marvel at the perfection of their toes, and in no time become experts in all that they do. But then the day comes when we are expected to hand them over to a stranger standing at the head of a room full of bright colors and small chairs. Well aware of the difference a great teacher can make—and the damage a bad teacher can do—parents turn over their kids and hope. Please handle with care. Please don"t let my children get lost. They"re breakable. And precious. Oh, but push them hard and don"t let up, and make sure they get into Harvard. But if parents are searching for the perfect teacher, teachers are looking for the ideal parent, a partner but not a pest, engaged but not obsessed, with a sense of perspective and patience. And somehow just at the moment when the experts all say the parent-teacher alliance is more important than ever, it is also becoming harder to manage. At a time when competition is rising and resources are strained, when battles over testing and accountability force schools to adjust their priorities, when cell phones and e-mail speed up the information flow and all kinds of private ghosts and public quarrels creep into the parent-teacher conference, it"s harder for both sides to step back and breathe deeply and look at the goals they share. Ask teachers about the best part of their job, and most will say how much they love working with kids. Ask them about the most demanding part, and they will say dealing with parents. In fact, a new study finds that of all the challenges they face, new teachers rank handling parents at the top. According to preliminary results from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, parent management was a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. It"s one reason that 40% to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs." "Everyone says the parent-teacher conference should be pleasant, civilized, a kind of dialogue where parents and teachers build alliances," Lawrence-Lightfoot observes. "But what most teachers feel, and certainly what all parents feel, is anxiety, panic and vulnerability." While teachers worry most about the parents they never see, the ones who show up faithfully pose a whole different set of challenges. "I could summarize in one sentence what teachers hate about parents," says the head of a private school. "We hate it when parents undermine the education and growth of their children. That"s it, plain and simple."

单选题Over the past few days, the U.S. has been in the world"s crosshairs. Political argument in Washington produced a debt agreement widely criticized as insufficient and incomplete. Standard & Poor"s downgraded America"s credit rating, raising concerns about the health of the world"s most important economy. Slow growth in the U.S. is threatening the entire global recovery. Stock-market turmoil on Wall Street has turned markets from London to Seoul into roller coasters. Yes, the U.S. has been a source of much uncertainty in recent days. But in my opinion, the real danger for the global economy lies elsewhere: in Europe. If we"re going to have another financial crisis, chances are it will start in the euro zone, not Washington. On a macro level, you could say the U.S. is worse off economically than Europe right now. Economists were frantically reducing their 2011 growth forecasts for the U.S. as its GDP limped along in the first half of the year. In Europe, growth is holding up. The IMF raised its growth projection for the euro zone in late June to 2%. And as a recent HSBC report noted, the state of American national finances is actually more feeble than the euro zone"s taken as a whole. Even before the financial crisis, the U.S. fiscal path was unsustainable, an ageing population combined with extravagant social security commitments suggested either the need for massive tax increases or dramatic spending cuts. The crisis, however, made matters a lot worse. According to the OECD, the US federal, state and local government deficit (NOT the federal deficit alone) jumped from 2.9% of GDP in 2007 to 10.6% in 2010. Though that may be true, the U.S. has one huge advantage over Europe at this moment, the luxury of time. Ironically, the reaction of the world"s investor community to the recent financial turmoil has been to rush into U.S. debt—yes, the very bonds downgraded by S&P. What that means is U.S. borrowing costs will continue to decline, and that buys Washington time to get its act together and put in place a real plan to fill the deficit and restore American growth. The euro zone, on the other hand, has no such luck. Borrowing costs for the zone"s weakest economies—the PIIGS, including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy—remain highly elevated. That puts pressure on those governments to implement reform programs with great haste as well as pressure on the rest of the euro zone to take more and more dramatic action to stem the contagion. The European Central Bank swooped in to buy billions of dollars of Italian and Spanish debt, which is a major deviation from the ECB"s usual policy. But it is unlikely that the ECB can handle the crisis on its own over an extended period of time.

单选题The evolution of the social sciences has reached a crucial point that might be called a phase change in which old, atomistic, and impressionistic ways of doing research are superseded by a far more systematic and united methodology. To bring social science to the level of rigor already achieved by some of the physical sciences, a new type Of facility will be needed. This will be a transdisciplinary, Internet-based collaborative endeavour that will provide social and behavioral scientists with the databases, software and hardware tools, and other resources to conduct worldwide research that integrates experimental, survey, geographic, and economic methodologies on a much larger scale than was possible previously. This facility will enable advanced research and professional education in economics, sociology, psychology, political science, social geography, and related fields. In many branches of social science, a new emphasis on the rigor of formal laboratory experimentation has driven researchers to develop procedure and software to conduct online interaction experiment using computer terminals attached to local area networks. The opportunity to open these laboratories to the Internet will reduce the cost per research participant and increase greatly the number of institutions, researchers, students, and research participants who can take part. The scale of social science experimentation can increase by an order of magnitude or more, examining a much wider range of phenomena and ensuring great confidence in results through multiple replication of crucial studies. Technology for administering questionnaires to very large numbers of respondents over the Internet will revolutionize survey research. Data from past questionnaire surveys can be the springboard for new surveys with vastly larger numbers of respondents at lower cost than by traditional methods. Integrated research studies can combine modules using both questionnaire and experimental methods. Results can be linked via geographic analysis to other sources of data including census information, economic statistics, and data from other experiments and surveys. Longitudinal studies will conduct time-series comparisons across data sets to chart social and economic trends. Each new study will be designed so that the data automatically and instantly become part of the archives, and scientific publications will be linked to the data sets on which they are based so that the network becomes a universal knowledge system.

单选题The fundamental dilemma of computer-based instruction and other IT-based educational technologies is that their cost effectiveness compared to other forms of instruction—for example, smaller class sizes, self-paced learning, peer teaching, small group learning, innovative curricula, and in-class tutors—has never been proven. So why are we, as a nation, so fascinated with computers in childhood? This one-size-fits-all fix for elementary schools does seem to meet a lot of adult needs. It makes politicians and school administrators appear decisive and progressive. It tempts overworked parents and teachers with a convenient electronic baby-sitter. And it is irresistible to high-tech companies that hope to boost sales in the educational market. But a machine-centered approach does not meet the developmental needs of grade-school children. Nor will it prepare them to develop the human imagination, courage, and will power they will as adults need to tackle the huge social and environmental problems looming before us. Young children are not emotionally, socially, morally, or intellectually prepared to adapt themselves to the constraining logical abstractions that computers require. This inactive approach to learning is also unhealthy for their developing senses and growing bodies. What"s good for business is not necessarily good for children. We cannot afford educational policies that will expand the market for Microsoft, Compaq, IBM, Apple, and other companies at children"s expense. Nor can we afford the fantasy that pushing young children to operate the very latest technological gadgets will somehow save them from economic and cultural uncertainties in the future. Nothing can do that—certainly not soon-to-be outdated skills in operating machines. In the long term, what will serve them far better is a firm commitment from parents, educators, policy-makers, and communities to the remarkably low-tech imperatives of childhood. Those include good nutrition, safe housing, and high-quality health care for every child—especially the one in five now growing up in poverty. They also include consistent love and nurturing for every child; active, imaginative play; a close relationship to the rest of the living world; the arts; and lastly time—plenty of time for children to be children. A new respect for childhood itself, in other words, is the gift that will best prepare our children for the future"s unknowns. Empowered by this gift, our children can grow into strong and creative human beings, facing tomorrow"s uncertainties with competence and courage. School reform is a social challenge, not a technological problem. The Education Department"s own 1999 study, "Hope in Urban Education," offers powerful proof. It tells the story of nine troubled schools in high-poverty areas, all places resigned to low expectations, low achievement, and high conflict. But all transformed themselves into high-achieving, cohesive communities. In the process, everyone involved—principals, teachers, other staff members, parents, and students—developed high expectations of themselves, and of each other. The strategies that worked in these schools, the study emphasizes, were persistence, creativity in devising new ways of collaborating, maximizing the attention focused on each child, and a shared commitment to meeting the full range of children"s needs. Perhaps what we"re looking for is not a technology, not a product to be bought and sold at all. Perhaps the gold is something to be dug and refined within ourselves.

单选题Americans are proud of their variety and individuality, yet they love and respect few things more than a uniform, whether it is the uniform of an elevator operator or the uniform of a five-star general. Why are uniforms so popular in the United States? Among the arguments for uniforms, one of the first is that in the eyes of most people they look more professional than civilian clothes. People have become conditioned toexpect superior quality from a man who wears a uniform. The television repairman who wears a uniform tends to inspire more trust than one who appears in civilian clothes. Faith in the skill of a garage mechanic is increased by a uniform. What easier way is there for a nurse, a policeman, a barber, or a waiter to lose professional identity than to step out of uniform? Uniforms also have many practical benefits. They save on other clothes. They save on laundry bills. They are tax-deductible. They are often more comfortable and more durable than civilian clothes. Primary among the arguments against uniforms is their lack of variety and the consequent loss of individuality experienced by people who must wear them. Though there are many types of uniforms, the wearer of any particular type is generally stuck with it, without change, until retirement. When people look alike, they tend to think, speak, and act similarly, on the job at least. Uniforms also give rise to some practical problems. Though they are long-lasting, often their initial expense is greater than the cost of civilian clothes. Some uniforms are also expensive to maintain, requiring professional dry cleaning rather than the home laundering possible with many types of civilian clothes.

单选题Commerce has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost several of its ships in a storm. But the toll is rising. The world has been so preoccupied with the man-made catastrophes of subprime mortgages and sovereign debt that it may not have noticed how much economic chaos nature has wreaked. With earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, floods in Thailand and Australia and tornadoes in America, last year was the costliest on record for natural disasters. This trend is not, as is often thought, a result of climate change. There is little evidence that big hurricanes come ashore any more often than, say, a century ago. But disasters now extract a far higher price, for the simple reason that the world"s population and output are becoming concentrated in vulnerable cities near earthquake faults, on river deltas or along tropical coasts. Those risks will rise as the wealth of Shanghai and Kolkata comes to rival that of London and New York. Meanwhile, interconnected supply chains guarantee that when one region is knocked out by an earthquake or flood, the reverberations are global. This may sound grim, but the truth is more encouraging. Richer societies may lose more property to disaster but they are also better able to protect their people. Indeed, although the economic toll from disasters has risen, the death toll has not, despite the world"s growing population. The right role for government, then, is not to resist urbanization but to minimize the consequences when disaster strikes. This means, first, getting priorities right. At present, too large a slice of disaster budgets goes on rescue and repair after a tragedy, and not enough on consolidating defenses beforehand. Cyclone shelters are useless if they fall into disrepair. Second, government should be fiercer when private individuals and firms, left to pursue their own self-interest, put all of society at risk. For example, in their quest for growth, developers and local governments have eradicated sand dunes, mangrove swamps, reefs and flood plains that formed natural buffers between people and nature. Preserving or restoring more of this natural capital would make cities more resilient, much as increased financial capital does for the banking system. Third, governments must eliminate the perverse incentives their own policies produce. Politicians are often under pressure to limit the premiums insurance companies can charge. The result is to underprice the risk of living in dangerous areas—which is one reason that so many expensive homes await the next hurricane on Florida"s coast. When governments rebuild homes repeatedly struck by floods and wildfires, they are subsidizing people to live in hazardous places. For their part companies need to operate on the assumption that a disaster will strike at some point. This means preparing contingency plans, reinforcing supply chains and even, costly though this might be, having reserve suppliers lined up: there is no point in having a perfectly efficient supply chain if it can be snapped whenever nature takes a turn for the worst. Disasters are inevitable; their consequences need not be.

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. Bingo draws a crowd: low beds, high loos and handrails assist the weak. Only the glint of razor wire outside shows this is not a social club. Detmold, near the German city of Hanover, is a pioneer of future prisons: {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}a pen for the young and hardy, they are now housing the old and {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}, too. In most rich countries, the {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}are the fastest growing category of prisoner. Definitions of old age in jail {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}, but the trend is clear. In the decade after 2000 the over-55s grew by 181% in America (the total prison population by 17%); the over-60s {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}by 128% in England and Wales; {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}in Australia the over-65s {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}by 140%. By 2030 perhaps a third of American prisoners will be over 55. The main cause is not crime rates {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}harsher sentences and less parole—plus an ageing {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Another, says Azrini Wahidin of Belfast University, is that better forensic science has fuelled a "phenomenal" clear-up rate of long-ago crimes. That catches now-elderly {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}} Locking up old people is {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}. In 2012 Human Rights Watch, a campaigning and research outfit, {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}that jails {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}up to nine times more on an ageing convict than on a typical prisoner. In Britain more than 80% of convicts over 60 have a chronic {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}or disability. {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}only Norwich prison has a 16-bed end-of-life unit, in operation since 2005. Britain's only elderly prison wing, complete with stairlifts, is at Kingston, near Portsmouth. Deafness, osteoporosis and dementia need nursing-home {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}—and a handful of jails are starting to {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}it. In December 2012 Rimutaka prison, New Zealand's biggest, opened the country's first unit for vulnerable inmates. Fishkill prison in New York {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}a dementia unit in 2007. Japan's Onomichi prison has {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}cells with rubber floors for the ill and ramps for the {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}.

单选题For most thinkers since the Greek philosophers, it was self-evident that there is something called human nature, something that constitutes the essence of man. There were various views about what constitutes it, but there was agreement that such an essence exists—that is to say, that there is something by virtue of which man is man. Thus man was defined as a rational being, as a social animal, an animal that can make tools, or a symbol-making animal. More recently, this traditional view has begun to be questioned. One reason for this change was the increasing emphasis given to the historical approach to man. An examination of the history of humanity suggested that man in our epoch is so different from man in previous times that it seemed unrealistic to assume that men in every age have had in common something that can be called "human nature". The historical approach was reinforced, particularly in the United States, by studies in the field of cultural anthropology. The study of primitive peoples has discovered such a diversity of customs, values, feelings, and thoughts that many anthropologists arrived at the concept that man is born as a blank sheet of paper on which each culture writes its text. Another factor contributing to the tendency to deny the assumption of a fixed human nature was that the concept has so often been abused as a shield behind which the most inhuman acts are committed. In the name of human nature, for example, Aristotle and most thinkers up to the eighteenth century defended slavery. Or in order to prove the rationality and necessity of the capitalist form of society, scholars have tried to make a case for acquisitiveness, competitiveness, and selfishness as innate human traits. Popularly, one refers cynically to "human nature" in accepting the inevitability of such undesirable human behavior as greed, murder, cheating and lying. Another reason for skepticism about the concept of human nature probably lies in the influence of evolutionary thinking. Once man came to be seen as developing in the process of evolution, the idea of a substance which is contained in his essence seemed untenable. Yet I believe it is precisely from an evolutionary standpoint that we can expect new insight into the problem of the nature of man.

单选题Today, social scientists are rejecting the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty. And they attribute destructive attitudes and behavior not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation. To Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, culture is best understood as "shared understandings." "I study inequality, and the dominant focus is on structures of poverty," he said. But he added that the reason a neighborhood turns into a "poverty trap" is also related to a common perception of the way people in a community act and think. As part of a large research project in Chicago, Professor Sampson walked through different neighborhoods this summer, dropping stamped, addressed envelopes to see how many people would pick up an apparently lost letter and mail it, a sign that looking out for others is part of the community"s culture. In some neighborhoods, like Grand Boulevard, almost no envelopes were mailed; in others researchers received more than half of the letters back. Income levels did not necessarily explain the difference, Professor Sampson said, but rather the community"s cultural norms, the levels of moral cynicism and disorder. The shared perception of a neighborhood—is it on the rise or stagnant? —does a better job of predicting a community"s future than the actual level of poverty, he said. William Julius Wilson, whose pioneering work boldly confronted ghetto life while focusing on economic explanations for persistent poverty, defines culture as the way "individuals in a community develop an understanding of how the world works and make decisions based on that understanding." For some young black men, Professor Wilson, a Harvard sociologist, said, the world works like this. "If you don"t develop a tough demeanor, you won"t survive. If you have access to weapons, you get them, and if you get into a fight, you have to use them." Seeking to recapture the topic from economists, sociologists have ventured into poor neighborhoods to delve deeper into the attitudes of residents. Their results have challenged some common assumptions, like the belief that poor mothers remain single because they don"t value marriage. In Philadelphia, for example, low-income mothers told the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas that they thought marriage was profoundly important, even sacred, but doubted that their partners were "marriage material." Their results have prompted some lawmakers and poverty experts to conclude that programs that promote marriage without changing economic and social conditions are unlikely to work. Scholars like Professor Wilson said he felt compelled to look more closely at culture after the publication of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein"s controversial 1994 book, "The Bell Curve," which attributed African-Americans" lower I. Q. scores to genetics. The authors claimed to have taken family background into account, Professor Wilson said, but "they had not captured the cumulative effects of living in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods. I realized we needed a comprehensive measure of the environment, that we must consider structural and cultural forces."

单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. In the United States, the first day nursery was opened in 1854. Nurseries were established in various areas during the {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}half of the 19th century; most of {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}were charitable. Both in Europe and in the U.S., the day nursery movement received great {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}during the First World War, when {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}of manpower caused the industrial employment of unprecedented numbers of women. In some European countries nurseries were established {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}in munitions plants, under direct government sponsorship. {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}the number of nurseries in the U. S. also rose {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}, this rise was accomplished without government aid of any kind. During the years following the First World War, {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}, Federal State and local governments gradually began to exercise a measure of control {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}the day nurseries, chiefly by {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}them. The {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}of the Second World War was quickly followed by an increase in the number of day nurseries in almost all countries, as women were {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}called up on to replace men in the factories. On this {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}the U.S. government immediately came to the support of the nursery schools, {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}＄6,000,000 in July, 1942, for a nursery school program for the children of working mothers. Many States and local communities {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}this Federal aid. By the end of the war, in August, 1945, more than 100,000 children were being cared {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}in daycare centers receiving Federal {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Soon afterward, the Federal government {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}cut down its expenditures for this purpose and later {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}them, causing a sharp drop in the number of nursery schools in operation. However, the expectation that most employed mothers would leave their {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}at the end of the war was only partly fulfilled.

单选题In the villages of the English countryside there are still people who remember the good old days when no one bothered to lock their doors. There simply wasn"t any crime to worry about. Amazingly, these happy times appear still to be with us in the world"s biggest community. A new study by Dan Farmer, a gifted programmer, using an automated investigative program of his own called SATAN, shows that the owners of well over half of all World Wide Web sites have set up home without fitting locks to their doors. SATAN can try out a variety of well-known hacking tricks on an Internet site without actually breaking in. Farmer has made the program publicly available, amid much criticism. A person with evil intent could use it to hunt down sites that are easy to burgle. But Farmer is very concerned about the need to alert the public to poor security and, so far, events have proved him right. SATAN has done more to alert people to the risks than cause new disorder. So is the Net becoming more secure? Far from it. In the early days, when you visited a Web site your browser simply looked at the content. Now the Web is full of tiny programs that automatically download when you look at a Web page, and run on your own machine. These programs could, if their authors wished, do all kinds of nasty things to your computer. At the same time, the Net is increasingly populated with spiders, worms, agents and other types of automated beasts designed to penetrate the sites and seek out and classify information. All these make wonderful tools for antisocial people who want to invade weak sites and cause damage. But let"s look on the bright side. Given the lack of locks, the Internet is surely the world"s biggest (almost) crime-free society. Maybe that is because hackers are fundamentally honest. Or that there currently isn"t much to steal. Or because vandalism isn"t much fun unless you have a peculiar dislike for someone. Whatever the reason, let"s enjoy it while we can. But expect it all to change, and security to become the number one issue, when the most influential inhabitants of the Net are selling services they want to be paid for.

单选题Lead deposits, which accumulated in soil and snow during the 1960s and 70s, were primarily the result of leaded gasoline emissions originating in the United States. In the twenty years that the Clean Air Act has mandated unleaded gas use in the United States, the lead accumulation world-wide has decreased significantly. A study published recently in the journal Nature shows that air-borne leaded gas emissions from the United States were the leading contributor to the high concentration of lead in the snow in Greenland. The new study is a result of the continued research led by Dr. Charles Boutron, an expert on the impact of heavy metals on the environment at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. A study by Dr. Boutron published in 1991 showed that lead levels in arctic snow were declining. In his new study, Dr. Boutron found the ratios of the different forms of lead in the leaded gasoline used in the United States were different from the ratios of European, Asian and Canadian gasolines and thus enabled scientists to differentiate the lead sources. The dominant lead ratio found in Greenland snow matched that found in gasoline from the United States. In a study published in the journal Ambio , scientists found that lead levels in soil in the Northeastern United States had decreased markedly since the introduction of unleaded gasoline. Many scientists had believed that the lead would stay in soil and snow for a longer period. The authors of the Ambio study examined samples of the upper layers of soil taken from the same sites of 30 forest floors in New England, New York and Pennsylvania in 1980 and in 1990. The forest environment processed and redistributed the lead faster than the scientists had expected. Scientists say both studies demonstrate that certain parts of the ecosystem respond rapidly to reductions in atmospheric pollution, but that these findings should not be used as a license to pollute.

单选题The United States has benefited immensely from its role as a magnet for the best and brightest workers from around the world, especially in innovative fields like high technology. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, sounded precisely that theme in senate testimony last month when asked about the visa program for skilled workers, the H-1B. Mr. Gates said that these workers are "uniquely talented" and highly paid—taking jobs that pay over $100,000 a year—and that America should "welcome as many of those people as we can get." But that is not how the H-1B visa program as a whole is working these days, according to an analysis by Ronil Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The median salary for new H-1B holders in the information technology industry is actually about $50,000, based on the most recent data filed by companies with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. That wage level, Mr. Hira says, is the same as starting salaries for graduating computer science majors with bachelor"s degrees. Yet salaries, according to Mr. Hira, are only part of the story. He says that while Microsoft may be paying its H-1B visa holders well and recruiting people with hard-to-find talents, other companies have a different agenda. The H-1B visa program, Mr. Hira asserts, has become a vehicle for accelerating the pace of offshore outsourcing of computing work, sending more jobs abroad. Holders of H-1B visas, he says, do the on-site work of understanding a client"s needs and specifications—and then most of the software coding is done back in India. "Information technology offshore outsourcing has just swamped the H-1B program in recent years, he said." The list of the top 10 companies requesting H-1B visas in fiscal 2006, the most recent government data available, was dominated by Indian-based technology outsourcing companies like Infosys Technologies, Wipro Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, and a few other companies that offer outsourced services and have sizable operations in India like Cognizant Technology Solutions, Accenture and Deloitte & Touche," according to a paper last month by Mr. Hira, which was published by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Over the years, the H-1B visa, which allows a person to work in the United States for three years and can be renewed for an additional three, has been used by many people as a stepping-stone to becoming a permanent resident. "Traditionally, about half of all H-1B holders eventually get green cards," immigration experts say.

单选题Long after the 1998 World Cup was won, disappointed fans were still cursing the disputed refereeing decisions that denied victory to their team. A researcher was appointed to study the performance of some top referees. The researcher organized an experimental tournament involving four youth teams. Each match lasted an hour, divided into three periods of 20 minutes during which different referees were in charge. Observers noted down the referees" errors, of which there were 61 over the tournament. Converted to a standard match of 90 minutes, each referee made almost 23 mistakes, a remarkably high number The researcher then studied the videotapes to analyse the matches in detail. Surprisingly, he found that errors were more likely when the referees were close to the incident. When the officials got it right, they were, on average, 17 meters away from the action. The average distance in the case of errors was 12 meters. The research shows the optimum distance is about 20 meters. There also seemed to be an optimum speed. Correct decisions came when the referees were moving at a speed of about 2 meters per second. The average speed for errors was 4 meters per second. If FIFA, football"s international ruling body, wants to improve the standard of refereeing at the next World Cup, it should encourage referees to keep their eyes on the action from a distance, rather than rushing to keep up with the ball, the researcher argues. He also says that FIFA"s insistence that referees should retire at age 45 may be misguided. If keeping up with the action is not so important, their physical condition is less critical.

单选题That Louise Nevelson is believed by many critics to be the greatest twentieth-century sculptor is all the more remarkable because the greatest resistance to women artists has been, until recently, in the field of sculpture. Since Neolithic times, sculpture has been considered the prerogative of men, partly, perhaps, for purely physical reasons: it was erroneously assumed that women were not suited for the hard manual labor required in sculpting stone, carving wood, or working in metal. It has been only during the twentieth century that women sculptors have been recognized as major artists, and it has been in the United States, especially since the decades of the fifties and sixties, that women sculptors have shown the greatest originality and creative power. Their rise to prominence parallels the development of sculpture itself in the United States: while there had been a few talented sculptors in the United States before the 1940s, it was only after 1945—when New York was rapidly becoming the art capital of the world that major sculptures were produced in the United States. Some of the best were the works of women. By far the most outstanding of these women is Louise Nevelson, who in the eyes of many critics is the most original female artist alive today. One famous and influential critic, Hilton Kramer, said of her work, "For myself, I think Ms. Nevelson succeeds where the painters often fail." Her works have been compared to the Cubist constructions of Picasso, the Surrealistic objects of Miro, and the Merzbau of Schwitters. Nevelson would be the first to admit that she has been influenced by all of these, as well as by African sculpture, and by Native American and pre-Columbian art, but she has absorbed all these influences and still created a distinctive art that expresses the urban landscape and the aesthetic sensibility of the twentieth century. Nevelson says, "I have always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except that it has to pass through a creative mind." Using mostly discarded wooden objects like packing crates, broken pieces of furniture, and abandoned architectural ornaments, all of which she has hoarded for years, she assembles architectural constructions of great beauty and power. Creating very freely with no sketches, she glues and nails objects together, paints them black, or more rarely white or gold, and places them in boxes. These assemblages, walls, even entire environments create a mysterious, almost awe-inspiring atmosphere. Although she has denied any symbolic or religious intent in her works, their three-dimensional grandeur and even their titles, such as Sky Cathedral and Night Cathedral, suggest such connotations. In some ways, her most ambitious works are closer to architecture than to traditional sculpture, but then neither Louise Nevelson nor her art fits into any neat category.

单选题 The sharing economy is a little like online shopping, which started in America 15 years ago. At first, people were worried about security. But having made a successful purchase from, say, Amazon, they felt safe buying elsewhere. Similarly, using Airbnb or a car-hire service for the first time encourages people to try other offerings. Next, consider eBay. Having started out as a peer-to-peer marketplace, it is now dominated by professional "power sellers" (many of whom started out as ordinary eBay users). The same may happen with the sharing economy, which also provides new opportunities for enterprise. Some people have bought cars solely to rent them out, for example. Incumbents are getting involved too. Avis, a car-hire firm, has a share in a sharing rival. So do GM and Daimler, two car-makers. In future, companies may develop hybrid models, listing excess capacity (whether vehicles, equipment or office space) on peer-to-peer rental sites. In the past, new ways of doing things online have not displaced the old ways entirely. But they have often changed them. Just as internet shopping forced Walmart and Tesco to adapt, so online sharing will shake up transport, tourism, equipment-hire and more. The main worry is regulatory uncertainty. Will room-renters be subject to hotel taxes, for example? In Amsterdam officials are using Airbnb listings to track down unlicensed hotels. In some American cities, peer-to-peer taxi services have been banned after lobbying by traditional taxi firms. The danger is that although some rules need to be updated to protect consumers from harm, incumbents will try to destroy competition. People who rent out rooms should pay tax, of course, but they should not be regulated like a Ritz-Carlton hotel. The lighter rules that typically govern bed-and-breakfasts are more than adequate. The sharing economy is the latest example of the internet's value to consumers. This emerging model is now big and disruptive enough for regulators and companies to have woken up to it. That is a sign of its immense potential. It is time to start caring about sharing.

单选题It would be enormously convenient to have a single, generally accepted index of the economic and social welfare of the people of the United States. A glance at it would tell us how much better or worse off we had become each year, and we would judge the desirability of any proposed action by asking whether it would raise or lower this index. Some recent discussion implies that such an index could be constructed. Articles in the popular press even criticize the Gross National Production because it is not such a complete index of welfare, ignoring, on the one hand, that it was never intended to be, and suggesting, on the other, that with appropriate changes it could be converted into one. The output available to satisfy our wants and needs is one important determinant of welfare. Whatever want, need, or social problem engages our attention, we ordinarily can more easily find resources to deal with it when output is large and growing than when it is not. GNP measures output fairly well, but to evaluate welfare we would need additional measures which would be far more difficult to construct. We would need an index of real costs incurred in production, because we are better off if we get the same output at less cost. Use of just man-hours for welfare evaluation would unreasonably imply that to increase total hours by raising the hours of eight women from 60 to 65 a week imposes no more burden than raising the hours of eight men from 40 to 45 a week, or even than hiring one involuntarily unemployed person for 40 hours a week. A measure of real costs of labor would also have to consider working conditions. Most of us spend almost half our waking hours on the job and our welfare is vitally affected by the circumstances in which we spend those hours. To measure welfare we would need a measure of changes in the need our output must satisfy. One aspect, population change, is now handled by converting output to a per capita basis on the assumption that, other things equal, twice as many people need twice as many goods and services to be equally well off. But an index of needs would also account for differences in the requirements for living as the population becomes more urbanized and suburbanized; for the changes in national defense requirements; and for changes in the effect of weather on our needs. The index would have to tell us the cost of meeting our needs in a base year compared with the cost of meeting them equally well under the circumstances prevailing in every other year. Measures of "needs" shade into measure of the human and physical environment in which we live. We all are enormously affected by the people around us. Can we go where we like without fear of attack? We are also affected by the physical environment—purity of water and air, accessibility of park land and other conditions. To measure this requires accurate data, but such data are generally deficient. Moreover, weighting is required, to combine robberies and murders in a crime index; to combine pollution of the Potamac and pollution of Lake Erie into a water pollution index; and then to combine crime and water pollution into some general index. But there is no basis for weighting these beyond individual preference. There are further problems. To measure welfare we would need an index of the "goodness" of the distribution of income. There is surely consensus that given the same total income and output, a distribution with fewer families in poverty would be the better, but what is the ideal distribution? Even if we could construct indexes of output, real costs, needs, state of the environment, we could not compute a welfare index because we have no system of weights to combine them.

单选题It is hard to track the blue whale, the ocean"s largest creature, which has almost been killed off by commercial whaling and is now listed as an endangered species. Attaching radio devices to it is difficult, and visual sightings are too unreliable to give real insight into its behavior. So biologists were delighted early this year when, with the help of the Navy, they were able to track a particular blue whale for 43 days, monitoring its sounds. This was possible because of the Navy"s formerly top-secret system of underwater listening devices spanning the oceans. Tracking whales is but one example of an exciting new world just opening to civilian scientists after the cold war as the Navy starts to share and partly uncover its global network of underwater listening system built over the decades to track the ships of potential enemies. Earth scientists announced at a news conference recently that they had used the system for closely monitoring a deep-sea volcanic eruption for the first time and that they plan similar studies. Other scientists have proposed to use the network for tracking ocean currents and measuring changes in ocean and global temperatures. The speed of sound in water is roughly one mile a second—slower than through land but faster than through air. What is most important, different layers of ocean water can act as channels for sounds, focusing them in the same way a stethoscope does when it carries faint noises from a patient"s chest to a doctor"s ear. This focusing is the main reason that even relatively weak sounds in the ocean, especially low-frequency ones, can often travel thousands of miles.