Sunlight is free, but that is no reason to waste it. Yet even the best silicon solar cells—by far the most【C1】______sort—convert only a quarter of the light that falls on them. Silicon has the【C2】______of being cheap: manufacturing improvements have brought its price to a point where it is snapping at the heels of fossil fuels.【C3】______many scientists would like to replace it【C4】______something fundamentally better. John Rogers, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is one. The cells he has【C5】______can convert 42.5% of sunlight.【C6】______improved, Dr Rogers reckons, their efficiency could rise to 50%. Their【C7】______is that they are actually not one cell, but four, stacked one on top of another. Solar cells are made of semiconductors, and every type of semiconductor has a【C8】______called a band gap that is different from that of other semiconductors. The band gap【C9】______the longest wavelength of light a semiconductor can absorb (it is transparent to longer wavelengths). It also fixes the【C10】______amount of energy that can be【C11】______from shorter wavelength. The result is that long-wavelength photons are lost and short-wave ones incompletely utilised. Dr Rogers【C12】______this by using a different material for each layer of the stack. He chooses his materials【C13】______the bottom of the band gap of the top layer matches the top of the band gap of the one underneath, and so on【C14】______the stack. Each layer thus【C15】______off part of the spectrum, converts it efficiently into electrical energy and passes the rest on. The problem is that the materials needed to make these semiconductors are【C16】______But Dr Rogers has found a way to overcome this.【C17】______solar-cell modules are completely covered by semiconductor, but in his only 0.1% of the surface is so covered. The semiconducting stacks, each half a millimeter square, are【C18】______over that surface many dots. Each stack then has a pair of cheap glass lenses【C19】______over it. These focus the sun's light onto the stack, meaning that all【C20】______light meets a semiconductor.

How do you explain economics in plain English? The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been answering the question with an even more【C1】______tool: comic books. And it"s been doing that for【C2】______. The New York Fed has published comics about money and finance for【C3】______readers more interested in【C4】______since 1950s, according to Edward Steinberg, a former Fed employee who【C5】______several of the comic books【C6】______online today. In the latest ten years, Steinberg supervised a small team of writers and editors that produced the Fed"s print publications and educational【C7】______years, such as the comic books. Distributed free of charge to teachers, the comics were mostly【C8】______high school students, whom Steinberg felt weren"t learning enough about the economy and personal finance,【C9】______some of the more advanced titles, such as The Story of Monetary Policy, have been taught in several college classrooms. It"s no【C10】______that the comic books offer highly simplified opinions on the country"s complex financial systems, but they go out of their way to【C11】______dumbing down the content. Most of the booklets are more than 20 pages, and they"re packed with【C12】______and details that could【C13】______a teenager on a first read: The Story of the Federal Reserve System from 1999 starts off slow by comparing and contrasting the Fed with local neighborhood banks, but it soon【C14】______into specific information about monetary policy, open market operations, government securities, and reserve requirements. With guest【C15】______from Uncle Sam and a walking, talking bank, A Penny Saved offers a crash course in saving before touching【C16】______the advantages and disadvantages of【C17】______in the stock market, real estate, and fine art. But the【C18】______part of the series might be the fact that Steinberg doesn"t even like comics. "【C19】______the work that I did at the Fed, I don"t have an interest in comic books," Steinberg says over email. "It was appropriate,【C20】______, that I had a job writing comic books, because everybody can try to earn his living through humor."

Will the Apple launch have an audience of thousands clapping and cheering? Must be a new iPhone or iWatch? The truth may sound dull, but it matters as much as any fancy new product. What Apple's boss, Tim Cook, presented on June 2nd, at the company's annual conference for software developers in San Francisco, were upgraded operating systems, one for its Mac desktops and laptops and another for its mobile devices,plus a new programming language. These, combined with other moves to nurture the Apple "ecosystem" , should make its offerings even more attractive to both developers and consumers—and even more formidable to its rivals. Apple has long devoted to providing greater convenience and user experience. The new operating systems will do more than improve on the current versions when they are released in the autumn. They will allow devices to work together perfectly.

BSection III Writing/B

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

There are few more sobering online activities than entering data into college-tuition calculators and gasping as the Web spits back a six-figure sum. But economists say families about to go into debt to fund four years of partying, as well as studying, can console themselves with the knowledge that college is an investment that, unlike many bank stocks, should yield huge dividends(红利). A 2008 study by two Harvard economists notes that the " labor-market premium (额外收益) to skill"—or the amount college graduates earned that' s greater than what high-school graduates earned—decreased for much of the 20th century, but has come back with a vengeance (报复) since the 1980s. In 2005, the typical full-time year-round U.S. worker with a four-year college degree earned $50 900, 62% more than the $31 500 earned by a worker with only a high-school diploma. There's no question that going to college is a smart economic choice. But a look at the strange variations in tuition reveals that the choice about which college to attend doesn't come down merely to dollars and cents. Does going to Columbia University (tuition, room and board $49 260 in 2007-2008) yield a 40% greater return than attending the University of Colorado at Boulder as an out-of-state student ($ 35 542) ? Probably not. Does being an out-of-state student at the University of Colorado at Boulder yield twice the amount of income as being an in-state student ($17 380) there? Not likely. No, in this consumerist age, most buyers aren't evaluating college as an investment, but rather as a consumer product—like a car or clothes or a house. And with such purchases, price is only one of many crucial factors to consider. As with automobiles, consumers in today's college marketplace have vast choices, and people search for the one that gives them the most comfort and satisfaction in line with their budgets. This accounts for the willingness of people to pay more for different types of experiences (such as attending a private liberal-arts college or going to an out-of-state public school that has a great marine-biology program). And just as two auto purchasers might spend an equal amount of money on very different cars, college students (or, more accurately, their parents) often show a willingness to pay essentially the same price for vastly different products. So which is it? Is college an investment product like a stock or a consumer product like a car? In keeping with the automotive world's hottest consumer trend, maybe it's best to characterize it as a hybrid (混合动力汽车) : an expensive consumer product that, over time, will pay rich dividends.

What impact can mobile phones have on their users' health? Many individuals are concerned about the supposed ill effects caused by radiation from handsets and base stations,【C1】______ the lack of credible evidence of any harm. But evidence for the beneficial effects of mobile phones on health is rather more【C2】______ Indeed, a systematic review【C3】______ by Rifat Atun and his colleagues at Imperial College, London , gathers【C4】______ of the use of text-messaging in the 【C5】______ of health care. These uses【C6】______ three categories: efficiency gains; public-health gains; and direct benefits to patients by【C7】______ text-messaging into treatment regimes. Using texting to【C8】______ efficiency is not profound science, but big savings can be achieved. Several【C9】______ carried out in England have found that the use of text-messaging reminders【C10】______ the number of missed appointments with family doctors by 26-39% , and the number of missed hospital appointments by 33-50%. If such schemes were【C11】______ nationally, this would translate【C12】______ annual savings of ￡256-364 million. Text messages can also be a good way to deliver public-health information, particularly to groups【C13】______ are hard to reach by other means. Text messages have been used in India to【C14】______ people about the World Health Organization's strategy to control tuberculosis(肺结核) . In Iraq, text messages were used to support a【C15】______ to immunize nearly 5 million children【C16】______ polio(小儿麻痹症). 【C17】______ , there are the uses of text-messaging as part of a treatment regime. These involve sending reminders to patients to【C18】______ their medicine, or to encourage compliance with exercise regimes or efforts to stop smoking. However, Dr. Rifat notes that the evidence for the effectiveness of such schemes is generally【C19】______ . More quantitative research is【C20】______ —which is why his team also published three papers this week looking at the use of mobile phones in health care in more detail.

Sustainable development is applied to just about everything from energy to clean water and economic growth, and as a result it has become difficult to question either the basic assumptions behind it or the way the concept is put to use. This is especially true in agriculture, where sustainable development is often taken as the sole measure of progress without a proper appreciation of historical and cultural perspectives. To start with, it is important to remember that the nature of agriculture has changed markedly throughout history, and will continue to do so. Medieval agriculture in northern Europe fed, clothed and sheltered a predominantly rural society with a much lower population density than it is today. It had minimal effect on biodiversity, and any pollution it caused was typically localized. In terms of energy use and the nutrients(营养成分) captured in the product it was relatively inefficient. Contrast this with farming since the start of the industrial revolution. Competition from overseas led farmers to specialize and increase yields. Throughout this period food became cheaper, safer and more reliable. However, these changes have also led to habitat (栖息地) loss and to diminishing biodiversity. What's more, demand for animal products in developing countries is growing so fast that meeting it will require an extra 300 million tons of grain a year by 2050. Yet the growth of cities and industry is reducing the amount of water available for agriculture in many regions. All this means that agriculture in the 21st century will have to be very different from how it was in the 20th. This will require radical thinking. For example, we need to move away from the idea that traditional practices are inevitably more sustainable than new ones. We also need to abandon the notion that agriculture can be "zero impact". The key will be to abandon the rather simple and static measures of sustainability, which centre on the need to maintain production without increasing damage. Instead we need a more dynamic interpretation, one that looks at the pros and cons(正反两方面) of all the various ways land is used. There are many different ways to measure agricultural performance besides food yield: energy use, environmental costs, water purity, carbon footprint and biodiversity. It is clear, for example, that the carbon of transporting tomatoes from Spain to the UK is less than that of producing them in the UK with additional heating and lighting. But we do not know whether lower carbon footprints will always be better for biodiversity. What is crucial is recognizing that sustainable agriculture is not just about sustainable food production.

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

If there is one person to blame for economists' habit of commenting on everything, it is Gary Becker, who died on May 3rd. Not content with studying the world's economies, he was the first prominent economist to apply economic tools to all aspects of life. He revealed that people are often purposeful and rational in their decisions, whether they are changing jobs, taking drugs or divorcing their spouses. This insight, and the work that followed from it, earned him a Nobel prize in 1992. No less an eminence than Milton Friedman declared in 2001 that Mr Becker was "the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked in the last half-century". At the heart of Mr Becker's work was the view that " individuals maximise welfare as they conceive it. " Welfare need not mean income; it could derive from the pleasure of selflessness.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

You are going to study at a foreign university. Write a letter inquiring about the specific information as regards accommodation, fees and qualifications there. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

A self-described socialist and former shop steward, Sir Alex was an odd fit with the centrist Mr Blair. Yet he was much less impressed by Blair"s successor, Gordon Brown—though he was also born in Glasgow and is a lifelong football fan. Nor could Sir Alex quarrel with New Labour"s embrace of the market. English football has become the world"s best because it pays the most: the average weekly wage in the premiership rose by 1,500% between 1992 and 2010. Sir Alex was well rewarded, too; he named his mansion Fairfields, after the ship-making factory where his father once laboured. Sir Alex"s success was based on his enthusiastic embrace of globalisation, something too many people in Labour are still uncomfortable with. He inherited a team that contained two Danes, four Irishmen and 18 Britons. He leaves a squad with players from a dozen countries, including Serbia, Ecuador and Japan. In public-policy terms, United runs both a superb domestic education system and a liberal immigration policy. This is a lesson Labour"s current leader, Ed Miliband, badly needs to learn—having expressed regret, in a vague but toe-curling(令人厌恶的)way, that his New Labour forebears let so many foreigners in. Oddly, perhaps the politician Sir Alex most resembles was not of Labour at all; but rather its Tory female, Margaret Thatcher. He claimed to dislike her. Yet they are similar. Both won global successes through a combination of simple truths and constant drive. Both shared aspiration and opportunity. Both made Britain great. Sir Alex would now do well to avoid Lady Thatcher"s biggest mistake: by lingering at the scene of his triumph. He plans to stay on at United as a director and perhaps instructor to his successor, David Moyes, another able manager and working-class Scot. But such arrangement rarely works. It would be better, after such a glorious career, if he conceded that Fergie time is now over.

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

Data are everywhere these days; the problem is making sense of them. That is the role of statistics, the university course that so many people skip or forget. Charles Wheelan, a professor at Dartmouth College, does something unique here: he makes statistics interesting and fun. His latest book strips the subject of its complexity to expose the attractive stuff underneath. Statistics is an important intellectual tool which allows the compression of a massive amount of information to a few meaningful numbers. It is the bedrock of modem society, from putting rockets into orbit to managing junk e-mail filters. People from all fields are finding that they need a familiarity with figures and statistics. But the problem is that the subject is typically taught by people who like statistics, rather than those who simply care about putting them to use. "Naked Statistics" is interesting because it focuses on the purpose of stats, not their inner elegance.

Britain's private schools are one of its most successful exports. The children of the well-heeled flock to them, whether from China, Nigeria or Russia: the number of foreign pupils rose by 1. 4% in the last year alone. One headmaster recently asked a room full of pupils whether they flew business class to Britain. Only a few hands went up, suggesting they were not quite as spoiled as he had thought. Then a boy explained; many of the pupils fly first class instead. Yet foreign students, whether educated in British private schools or elsewhere, are decreasingly likely to go to English universities. According to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, 307,200 overseas students began their studies in the country in 2012-2013, down from 312,000 two years earlier and the first drop in 29 years. Student numbers from the rest of the EU fell—probably a result of the increase in annual tuition fees in England from 6,000 a year to 9,000. But arrivals from India and Pakistan declined most sharply. In contrast to the visa regime for private schools, which is extremely lax (the Home Office counts private schools as favoured sponsors) , student visas have been tightened. Foreign students used to be allowed to work for up to two years after graduating. They now have only four months to find a job paying upwards of 20,600 if they want to stay in Britain. This change was intended to deal with sham colleges that were in effect offering two-year work visas. But it seems to have put off serious students too. Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute says the government has sent unclear messages about the sort of immigration it wants to restrict. An emphasis on holding down net immigration influences young Indians and Pakistanis in particular. Australia and America, which have more relaxed entry criteria for students, are becoming more favoured destinations. Colin Riordan, Cardiff University's vice-chancellor, adds that Britain's student-visa regime has become more strict and difficult. As a result, Britain is losing out to other countries in the contest for talent—an oddity, given how often the prime minister bangs on about the " global race". Its unwelcoming standpoint will harm its long-term prospects. And the drift of foreign students from leading British private schools to American colleges may have another, somewhat happier, consequence: America might become rather better at cricket.

No one word demonstrated the shift in corporations" attention in the mid-1990s from processes to people more vividly than the single word "talent".【C1】______the word lies the idea that more and more corporate【C2】______is going to be created by knowledge and by so-called "knowledge workers".【C3】______labour is worth less; knowledge is worth more. This has significantly shifted the balance of power in the【C4】______process. Companies used to be relaxed about finding enough qualified people to【C5】______their operations. What they could not find they would train, was the【C6】______attitude. That might take some time, but in a world where people【C7】______jobs for life time was in the company"s favour. But talent is not patient, and it is not faithful. Many companies found themselves training employees【C8】______for them to go on and sell their acquired skills to their【C9】______. So now they look for talent that is ready-made. In their eagerness to【C10】______this talent, companies have gone to considerable lengths to appear especially attractive. They have,【C11】______, devoted a great deal of effort to the【C12】______of their websites, often the first port of call these days for bright young【C13】______recruits. They have in many cases【C14】______their HR departments, in part so that they can【C15】______their compensation packages more finely for the individuals that they really require. And they have altered their approach to issues such as governance and environmental responsibility【C16】______they know that many of the talented people they are seeking want to work for ethical and【C17】______employers. Talented people increasingly want to work in places where they can feel good about what they do for most of the day. What"s more, in today"s knowledge-based businesses, these young people are far more【C18】______their working environment, of "what"s going on around here", than were their grandparents. It is harder for today"s businesses to【C19】______from their employees what they are【C20】______to—even when, as in cases such as Enron and WorldCom, they put a lot of effort into it.

BSection III Writing/B

Of the 658 schools in Chicago, only 126 are charter schools—publicly funded but independently run and largely free of union rules. Fifteen more are due to open this year. More notable, though, is that four of the most recently-approved charters are in areas where the city recently decided to close 49 public schools—the largest round of such closures in America"s history. Most of the closed schools served poor black children, and were in parts of the city with a shrinking population. The city government argued that these schools were under-used, and that closing them would save $ 233m that could be reinvested. So it has been; in new science labs, computers, wireless, libraries, art rooms and air conditioning in the charters that took in children from the closed schools. Charters have worked well in Chicago. Most parents like them, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Board of Education are behind them. The Noble Network, which already runs 14 charter high schools, has just been given permission to open two new ones. Around 36% of the 9,000, mostly poor, children enrolled with Noble can expect to graduate from college, compared with 11 % for this income bracket city-wide. A 2013 study by Stanford University found that the typical Illinois charter pupil gained two weeks of additional learning in reading, and a month in maths, over their counterparts in traditional public schools. One city network of charters, Youth Connection, is credited with reducing Chicago"s dropout rate by 7% in a decade. Overall, however, the city"s public schools are in a sorry state: 51,000 out of 240,000 elementary-school pupils did not meet state reading standards in 2013. Some will always argue that charters cream off the brighter children and leave sink schools, deprived of resources, behind. The teachers" unions hate charter schools because they are non-unionised. So they remain a rarity nationwide, with only 5% of children enrolled in them. But a PDK/Gallup poll last year found that 70% of Americans support them. Small wonder; a study of charter high schools in Florida found that they boosted pupils" earning power in later life by more than 10%.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B