Ellen Pao spent the last few years spotlighting the technology industry's lack of diversity, in court and beyond. Erica Baker caused a stir at Google when she started a spreadsheet last year for employees to share their salaries, highlighting the pay disparities between those of different genders doing the same job. Laura I. Gomez founded a start-up focused on improving diversity in the hiring process. Now the three are starting an effort to collect and share data to help diversify the rank-and-file employees who make up tech companies. The nonprofit venture, called Project Include, was unveiled on Tuesday. As part of Project Include, the group plans to extract commitments from tech companies to track the diversity of their work forces over time and eventually share that data with other start-ups. The effort will focus on start-ups that employ 25 to 1,000 workers, in the hope of spurring the companies to think about equality sooner rather than later. The project will also ask for participation from venture capital firms that advise and mentor the start-ups. Project Include aims to have 18 companies as part of its first cohort; a few have already signed up. The group will meet regularly for seven months to define and track specific metrics. At the end of that period, the group will publish an anonymized set of results to show the progress—or lack thereof—that the start-ups have made around diversity. The group' s push is intended to cut through tech' s slow pace of change on diversity. Large companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, have openly admitted their failings in creating diverse work forces, and some have started programs to move the needle . But that has not seemed to spur much movement in views on the issue. In December, for instance, Michael Moritz, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, made headlines when he said in an interview that his firm—which had no female investment partners in the United States—would focus on hiring women but would not "lower its standards" to do so. He also said the firm was blind to gender and race. "It is this incredibly self-serving mythology that we are the best and the brightest, and that the best ideas rise to the top and will get funded," said Ms. Kapor Klein, noting there is plenty of data to show that minority access to tech programs and networks is worse than that of white males. "Despite an avalanche of rigorous data to the contrary, the belief in pure meritocracy persists."

Nationally, an ageing population is a problem. But locally it can be a boon. The over-50s control 80% of Britain's wealth, and like to spend it on houses and high-street shopping. The young "generation rent", by contrast, is poor, distractible and liable to shop online. People aged between 50 and 74 spend twice as much as the under-30s on cinema tickets. Between 2000 and 2010 restaurant spending by those aged 65-74 increased by 33%, while the under-30s spent 18% less. And while the young still struggle to find work, older people are retiring later. During the financial crisis full-time employment fell for every age group but the over-65s, and there has been a rash of older entrepreneurs. Pensioners also support the working population by volunteering: some 100 retirees in Christchurch help out as business mentors. Even if they wanted to, most small towns and cities could not capture the cool kids. Mobile young professionals cluster, and greatly prefer to cluster in London. Even supposed meccas like Manchester are ageing: clubs in that city are becoming members-only. Towns that aim too young, like Bracknell and Chippenham, can find their high streets full of closed La Senzas (a lingerie chain) and struggling tattoo parlours. Companies often lag behind local authorities in working this out. They are London-obsessed, and have been slow to appreciate the growing economic heft of the old—who are assumed, often wrongly, to stick with products they learned to love in their youth. But Caroyln Freeman of Revelation Marketing reckons Britain could be on the verge of a marketing surge directed at the grey pound, "similar to what we saw with the pink". The window will not remain open forever: soon the baby boomers will start to ail, and no one else alive today is likely to have such a rich retirement. Meanwhile, with the over-50s holding the purse strings, the towns that draw them are likely to grow more and more pleasant. Decent restaurants and nice shops spring up in the favoured haunts of the old, just as they do in the trendy, revamped boroughs of London. Latimer House, a Christchurch furniture store full of retro clothing and 1940s music, would not look out of place in Hackney. Improved high streets then entice customers of all ages. Indeed, gentrification and gerontification can look remarkably similar. Old folk and young hipsters are similarly fond of vinyl and typewriters, and wander about in outsized spectacles. Some people never lose their edge.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

As a young bond trader, Buttonwood was given two pieces of advice, trading rules of thumb, if you will: that bad economic news is good news for bond markets and that every utterance dropping from the lips of Paul Volcker, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the man who restored the central bank's credibility by stomping on runaway inflation, should be respected than Pope's orders. Today's traders are, of course, a more sophisticated bunch. But the advice still seems good, apart from two slight drawbacks. The first is that the well-chosen utterances from the present chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is of more than passing difficulty. The second is that, of late, good news for the economy has not seemed to upset bond investors all that much. For all the cheer that has crackled down the wires, the yield on ten-year bonds—which you would expect to rise on good economic news—is now, at 4.2% , only two-fifths of a percentage point higher than it was at the start of the year. Pretty much unmoved, in other words. Yet the news from the economic front has been better by far than anyone could have expected. On Tuesday November 25th, revised numbers showed that America's economy grew by an annual 8.2% in the third quarter, a full percentage point more than originally thought, driven by the ever-spendthrift American consumer and, for once, corporate investment. Just about every other piece of information coming out from special sources shows the same strength. New houses are still being built at a fair clip. Exports are rising, for all the protectionist crying. Even employment, in what had been mocked as a jobless recovery, increased by 125 000 or thereabouts in September and October. Rising corporate profits, low credit spreads and the biggest-ever rally in the junk-bond market do not, on the face of it, suggest anything other than a deep and long-lasting recovery. Yet Treasury-bond yields have fallen. If the rosy economic backdrop makes this odd, making it doubly odd is an apparent absence of foreign demand. Foreign buyers of Treasuries, especially Asian central banks, who had been swallowing American government debt like there was no tomorrow, seem to have had second thoughts lately. In September, according to the latest available figures, foreigners bought only $ 5.6 billion of Treasuries, compared with $ 25.1 billion the previous month and an average of $ 38.7 billion in the preceding four months. In an effort to keep a lid on the yen's rise, the Japanese central bank is still busy buying dollars and parking the money in government debt. Just about everybody else seems to have been selling.[A] fairly well-chosen[B] rising rather slowly[C] setting a limit on yen's rise[D] buying American government debt bravely[E] spending more and more cautiously[F] carelessly selected[G] domestic consumers

Before a big exam, a sound night's sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then "edited" at night, to flush away what is superfluous. To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested in is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams. Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern — what is referred to as "artificial grammar". Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not. What is more, those with more to learn (i. e. , the "grammar" , as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The "editing" theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep. The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.

Visiting Oxford Street, a road filling with tatty shops and overcrowded with people, is plainly a trial. Less plainly, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) , a noxious gas, have been found to be around three times higher there than the legal limit. In 2013 the annual mean concentration of NO 2 on the street was one of the highest levels found anywhere in Europe. British air is far cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Fewer people use coal-burning stoves; old industrial plants have been decommissioned. But since 2009 levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, coarse or fine particles that are linked to lung cancer and asthma, have fallen more slowly. The exact number of deaths caused by dirty air is unknown. But in 2010 a government advisory group estimated that removing man-made fine particulate matter from the atmosphere would increase life expectancy for those born in 2008 by an average of six months. Much of the slowdown is the result of fumes from diesel cars, which were championed by successive governments because they use less fuel and thus produce less carbon dioxide than petrol cars. In 2001 only 14% of all cars ran on diesel; by 2013 the proportion had increased to 35%. (Greener "hybrid" and electric cars have increased nine fold since 2006, but account for just 0. 5% of the entire fleet.) Second-hand cars are particularly noxious, but even newer ones have not been as clean as hoped. Many cars that let out few pollutants in tests produced more on the roads. Government's hesitation has not helped. Part of the problem is that several departments are responsible for air pollution. This means nobody has taken a lead on it, complains Joan Walley, a Labour MP who chairs an environmental committee that has released a series of damning reports. And few politicians are keen to fire drivers. However, some improvements have been made. In 2008 a "low-emission zone" was created in London, which targets large vans and coaches. A smaller "ultra low-emission zone" has been proposed for 2020, which would charge all vehicles that are not of a certain standard 12. 50 pounds a day. European Commission fines for breaching limits may encourage cities to do more. But other countries are more ambitious; 60 such zones exist in Germany, targeting private cars as well as vans. In December Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, announced that she wanted to ban diesel cars by 2020.

When the government talks about infrastructure contributing to the economy the focus is usually on roads, railways, broadband and energy. Housing is seldom mentioned. Why is that? To some extent the housing sector must shoulder the blame. We have not been good at communicating the real value that housing can contribute to economic growth. Then there is the scale of the typical housing project. It is hard to shove for attention among multibillion-pound infrastructure projects, so it is inevitable that the attention is focused elsewhere. But perhaps the most significant reason is that the issue has always been so politically charged. This government does not want to see a return to large-scale provision of council housing, so it is naturally wary of measures that will lead us down that route. Nevertheless, the affordable housing situation is desperate. Waiting lists increase all the time and we are simply not building enough new homes. The comprehensive spending review offers an opportunity for the government to help rectify this. It needs to put historical prejudices to one side and take some steps to address our urgent housing need. There are some indications that it is preparing to do just that. The communities minister, Don Foster, has hinted that George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, may introduce more flexibility to the current cap on the amount that local authorities can borrow against their housing stock debt. Evidence shows that 60,000 extra new homes could be built over the next five years if the cap were lifted, increasing GDP by 0.6%. Ministers should also look at creating greater certainty in the rental environment, which would have a significant impact on the ability of registered providers to fund new developments from revenues. But it is not just down to the government. While these measures would be welcome in the short term, we must face up to the fact that the existing ￡ 4.5bn programme of grants to fund new affordable housing, set to expire in 2015, is unlikely to be extended beyond then. The Labour party has recently announced that it will retain a large part of the coalition' s spending plans if it returns to power. The housing sector needs to accept that we are very unlikely to ever return to the era of large-scale public grants. We need to adjust to this changing climate.

BPart B/B

BPart B/B

Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthechart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.

Inthispart,youareaskedtowriteanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechartand2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteatleast150words.WriteyouressayonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)FinancialSourcesofCollegeStudents1)描述中美大学生经济资助状况2）分子这种状况的成因3）预测中国大学生经济资助的可能变化

BSection III Writing/B

Suppose you found a ring in the reading room of the library in your university. Write a found notice to 1) inform others what you found, and 2) seek its owner. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead.

【C1】______the way it feels, loneliness often has nothing to do with being alone. For some people, feelings of【C2】______are sharpest during times that are in fact defined by togetherness—celebrations or the holidays, for instance. 【C3】______a bustling shopping mall or a buzzing holiday party, and even within a crowd—or perhaps especially in a crowd—it"s possible to feel unbearably alone. New research from experts in neuroscience and social science may give us some【C4】______as to why. Although we tend to think of it as a self-contained emotional state—a condition that【C5】______people individually, either by circumstance or by means of an antisocial personality—researchers now say that loneliness is more far-reaching than that. John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, believes it is a social【C6】______that exists within a society and can【C7】______through it like a disease. And while everyone feels lonely once in a while, for some it becomes a(n)【C8】______condition, one that has been【C9】______with more serious psychological ills like【C10】______, sleep disfunction, high blood pressure and even a(n)【C11】______risk of dementia in older age. Cacioppo and his team【C12】______on the children in Framingham. The results were【C13】______: If one person reported feeling lonely at one【C14】______, his closest connections (either family or close friends) were 52% more【C15】______to also report feeling lonely two years later. The effect was strongest among those in close relationships, declining【C16】______the connections became more distant, but remained【C17】______up to three degrees of separation—【C18】______one lonely person could influence whether his friend"s friend"s friend felt lonely. "Loneliness has been【C19】______in the past as depression, introversion, shyness or poor social skills," says Cacioppo. "Those turn out not to be right. Research we and others have done suggests that it really is a fundamental human motivational state very much like hunger, thirst or pain."【C20】______simply reflecting the emotional state of one person, Cacioppo says, loneliness is more like an indicator of the social health of our species on the whole—a temperature reading.

It's difficult to imagine a world without antibiotics. They cure diseases that killed our ancestors in crowds, and enable any number of medical procedures and treatments that we now take for granted. Yet in 1945, while accepting a Nobel Prize for【C1】______penicillin, Alexander Fleming【C2】______a future in which antibiotics had been used with【C3】______and bacteria had grown resistant to them. Today, this future is approaching. Speaking to reporters last fall, Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,【C4】______a similar alarm: "If we're not【C5】______, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era. In fact, for some patients and some bacteria, we are already there." The problem【C6】______overuse. Recent research by doctors at Harvard and Women's Hospital found that the vast majority of antibiotics【C7】______for sore throats and acute bronchitis—an illness almost always caused by a【C8】______, not bacteria—are useless. Up to 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.S. each year,【C9】______, are given to animals. Antibiotics are the lifeline of the meat and poultry industries, which have used drugs to domestic animals as a means of【C10】______growth and preventing illnesses caused by overcrowding and poor conditions. An increasing number of bacterial【C11】______have taken the opportunity to evolve【C12】______the reach of antibiotics. The CDC's 2013 threat report listed 17 antibiotic-resistant microorganisms that directly cause at least 23,000 deaths each year in the U.S.【C13】______Globally, drug-resistant pneumonia is an ever-increasing threat. Reported cases have【C14】______over the past nine years, killing an estimated 170,000 people last year. Although anti-bacterial resistance can be slowed, it is【C15】______. As a result, medicine companies have found antibiotics to be less【C16】______investments than drugs for chronic illnesses, which can be used over the long term. If we don't【C17】______our use of existing antibiotics and commit to developing new ones, the risks are not just medical, but【C18】______. The CDC estimates that, in the United States, antibiotic resistance already costs $20 billion in【C19】______health-care spend and $35 billion in lost productivity【C20】______.

The average British people get six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, according to the Sleep Council. It has been known for some time that the amount of sleep people get has,【C1】______declined over the years. But【C2】______the average amount of sleep we are getting has fallen, rates of obesity and diabetes have soared. Could the two be connected? We wanted to see what the【C3】______would be of increasing average sleep by just one hour. So we asked seven volunteers, who【C4】______sleep anywhere between six and nine hours, to be【C5】______at the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Centre. The volunteers were randomly【C6】______to two groups. One group was asked to sleep for six-and-a-half hours a night, the other got seven-and-a-half hours. After a week the researchers took blood tests and the volunteers were asked to switch sleep【C7】______. The group that had been sleeping six-and-a-half hours got an【C8】______hour, the other group slept an hour less. Computer tests designed to measure brain wave activity【C9】______that most of them struggled with mental agility tasks when they had less sleep, but the most interesting results came from the blood tests that were【C10】______. Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were【C11】______interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers【C12】______changes in the amount that we had made them sleep. "We found that【C13】______there were around 500 genes that were affected," Archer【C14】______. "Some which were going up, and some which were going down." What they discovered is that when the volunteers【C15】______back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours' sleep a night, genes that are【C16】______with processes like immune response and response to stress became more【C17】______The team also saw increase in the activity of genes related to diabetes and risk of cancer. The【C18】______happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep. So the clear【C19】______from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours' sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even one hour more, it could make you【C20】______.

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

Li-Fi, an alternative to Wi-Fi that transmits data using the spectrum of visible light, has achieved a new breakthrough, with UK scientists reporting transmission speeds of 10Gbit/s—more than 250 times faster than 'superfast' broadband. The fastest speed【C1】______reported was 3Gbit/s, achieved earlier this year in Germany. Chinese researchers also claimed this month to have【C2】______a 150Mbp/s connection, but some experts were doubtful without seeing further【C3】______ The term Li-Fi was【C4】______by Edinburgh University's Prof Harald Haas【C5】______the technology is also known as visible light communications (VLC). Many experts claim that Li-Fi represents the future of mobile internet【C6】______its reduced costs and greater efficiency compared to traditional Wi-Fi. Both Wi-Fi and Li-Fi transmit data【C7】______the electromagnetic spectrum, but【C8】______Wi-Fi utilizes radio waves, Li-Fi uses visible light. This is a【C9】______advantage in that the visible light is far more plentiful than the radio spectrum (10,000 times more in fact) and can achieve far greater data【C10】______Li-Fi signals work by【C11】______bulbs on and off【C12】______quickly—too quickly to be noticed by the human eye. This most recent breakthrough builds upon this by using tiny micro-LED bulbs to【C13】______several lines of data in parallel. The research was carried out by the Ultra Parallel Visible Light Communications project, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Existing LED light bulbs could be【C14】______to transmit Li-Fi signals with a single microchip, and the technology would also be of use in situations where radio frequencies cannot be used for fear of【C15】______with electronic circuit. And although Li-Fi bulbs would have to be kept on to transmit data, the bulbs could be【C16】______to the point that they were not visible to humans and yet still【C17】______. One draw-back is that the data receiver would have to be in sight of the transmitter-bulb as visible light does not【C18】______solid materials. The makers of Li-Fi note that this quality might actually be an advantage in some【C19】______making Li-Fi more【C20】______than Wi-Fi with hackers unable to access unsecured internet connections from out of sight of the transmitter.

Last September, the U.S. government announced that its birthrate fell to "another record low". Morally speaking, there"s nothing wrong with this. It"s【C1】______. in a way. All over the world, birthrates tend to fall a-long with economic development. The thing about an increasingly childless economy is that it has major implications for【C2】______. It is confirmed by a new data from a Gallup survey【C3】______on the average daily spending of families. Even after you control for income, age, education, and【C4】______status, families with young kids spend more every day. What are parents spending on? Not just books, toys, and games. The Department of Agriculture【C5】______surveys the many ways we spend on our kids, to the tune of about $14,000 a year. The【C6】______majority of money goes to the【C7】______: housing, food, transportation, and education. Housing is kind of funny, because young children tend not to have their housing units,【C8】______the parents are extremely well-off and the children are terribly misbehaved. The survey estimates the housing portion of spending by trying to【C9】______a few factors: the cost of an extra bedroom, the cost of moving into safer【C10】______with better schools, and the cost of buying homes with larger yards. It is【C11】______that on economic growth, some of the most discussed variables on editorial pages and cable news are policy choices like tax rates or international events. But buried【C12】______these headlines is the glacier of demographics, the steady and unyielding force of human numbers to【C13】______the economy. The【C14】______in U.S. birthrates in recent years has almost certainly had a negative effect on consumer spending (and,【C15】______, lower birthrates are probably an outcome of the recession). In particular, childless couples don"t need space for more kids so they"re less【C16】______to buy homes in the suburbs,【C17】______demand for housing that badly needs to sell more homes. In other words,【C18】______families and less household formation【C19】______the U.S. economy of housing and transportation spending, which has historically accounted for half of family【C20】______.

If you want to lose weight, but are not a fan of the gym, the results of a new study could offer a welcome alternative. People who wake up and go to bed at the same time every day are【C1】______than those with irregular sleep patterns, the study found. Researchers studied more than 300 women and found that those with the best—or most consistent—sleeping【C2】______had less body fat. The volunteers were【C3】______for body composition, and then were given an activity tracker to【C4】______their movements during the day, and their sleep patterns at night. The. study found that getting【C5】______than 6.5 hours, or more than 8.5 hours, sleep a night is【C6】______higher levels of body fat. Women with more than 90 minutes of variation in sleep and wake time during the week had higher body fat levels than those with less than 60 minutes of variation. Exercise science professor Bruce Bailey said【C7】______sleep quality can result in higher body fat【C8】______affecting the hormones levels【C9】______to appetite. He said: "We have these【C10】______clocks and throwing them off and not【C11】______them to get into a pattern does have a(an) 【C12】______on our physiology." He says there are ways to【C13】______sleep quality, such as【C14】______exercise, keeping your bedroom quiet and dark, and using beds only for sleeping. "Sleep is often a casualty of trying to do more and be better and it is often【C15】______," Professor Bailey said. Previous research from Temple University revealed that when people get a good night"s sleep they don"t feel so【C16】______They found that when children slept more, they【C17】______134 fewer calories a day and lost weight. These findings were supported by research from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota which also revealed that sleep【C18】______people eat more calories. The researchers studied 17 healthy young people and found that when they slept less they ate more. They believe this is【C19】______when the volunteers were tired, they had higher levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin, both of which are【C20】______appetite.