单选题It"s hardly news that the immigration system is a mess. Foreign nationals have long been slipping across the border with fake papers, and visitors who arrive in the U.S. legitimately often overstay their legal welcome without being punished. But since Sept. 11, it"s become clear that terrorists have been shrewdly factoring the weaknesses of our system into their plans. In addition to their mastery of forging passports, at least three of the 19 Sept.11 hijackers were here on expired visas. That"s been a safe bet until now. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lacks the resources, and apparently the inclination, to keep track of the estimated 2 million foreigners who have intentionally overstayed their welcome. But this laxness toward immigration fraud may be about to change. Congress has already taken some modest steps. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, requires the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department and the INS to share more data, which will make it easier to stop watch-listed terrorists at the border. But what"s really needed, critics say, is even tougher laws and more resources aimed at tightening up border security. Reformers are calling for a rollback of rules that hinder law enforcement. They also want the INS to hire hundreds more border patrol agents and investigators to keep illegal immigrants out and to track them down once they"re here. Reformers also want to see the INS set up a database to monitor whether visa holders actually leave the country when they are required to. All these proposed changes were part of a new border-security bill that passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate last week. Before Sept. 11, legislation of this kind had been blocked by two powerful lobbies: universities, which rely on tuition from foreign students who could be kept out by the new law, and business, which relies on foreigners for cheap labor. Since the attacks, they"ve backed off. The bill would have passed this time but for congressional maneuverings and is expected to be reintroduced and to pass next year. Also on the agenda for next year: a proposal, backed by some influential law-makers, to split the INS into two agencies—a good cop that would tend to service functions like processing citizenship papers and a bad cop that would concentrate on border inspections, deportation and other functions. One reason for the division, supporters say, is that the INS has in recent years become too focused on serving tourists and immigrants. After the Sept. 11 tragedy, the INS should pay more attention to serving the millions of ordinary Americans who rely on the nation"s border security to protect them from terrorist attacks.

单选题I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room—a women"s group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening one man had been particularly talkative frequently offering ideas and anecdotes while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don"t talk to them. This man quickly nodded in agreement. He gestured toward his wife and said, "She"s the talker in our family." The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It"s true," he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn"t keep the conversation going, we"d spend the whole evening in silence." This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage. The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late 1970s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book Divorce Talk that most of the women she interviewed—but only a few of the men—gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year—a virtual epidemic of failed conversation. In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking and social arrangements. Instead, they focused on communication: "He doesn"t listen to me." "He doesn"t talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be first and foremost conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives. In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

单选题I came away from my years of teaching on the college and university level with a conviction that enactment, performance, dramatization are the most successful forms of teaching. Students must be incorporated, made, so far as possible, an integral part of the learning process. The notion that learning should have in it an element of inspired play would seem to the greater part of the academic establishment merely silly, but that is nonetheless the case. Of Ezekiel Cheever, the most famous schoolmaster of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, his onetime student Cotton Mather wrote that he so planned his lessons that his pupils "came to work as though they came to play," and Alfred North Whitehead, almost three hundred years later, noted that a teacher should make his/her students "glad they were there". Since, we are told, 80 to 90 percent of all instruction in the typical university is by the lecture method, we should give close attention to this form of education. There is, I think, much truth in Patricia Nelson Limerick"s observation that "lecturing is an unnatural act, an act for which God did not design humans. It is perfectly all right, now and then, for a human to be possessed by the urge to speak, and to speak while others remain silent. But to do this regularly, one hour and 15 minutes at a time... for one person to drag on while others sit in silence? ...I do not believe that this is what the Creator... designed humans to do." The strange, almost incomprehensible fact is that many professors, just as they feel obliged to write dully, believe that they should lecture dully. To show enthusiasm is to risk appearing unscientific, unobjective; it is to appeal to the students" emotions rather than their intellect. Thus the ideal lecture is one filled with facts and read in an unchanged monotone. The cult of lecturing dully, like the cult of writing dully, goes back, of course, some years. Edward Shils, professor of sociology, recalls the professors he encountered at the University of Pennsylvania in his youth. They seemed "a priesthood, rather uneven in their merits but uniform in their bearing; they never referred to anything personal. Some read from old lecture notes and then haltingly explained the thumb-worn last lines. Others lectured from cards that had served for years, to judge by the worn edges.... The teachers began on time, ended on time, and left the room without saying a word more to their students, very seldom being detained by questioners.... The classes were not large, yet there was no discussion. No questions were raised in class, and there were no office hours."

单选题Whatever else went wrong in the world this year, no one can complain about a shortage of celebrity breakups. From Jennifer Aniston"s split with Brad Pitt in January to Jessica Simpson"s divorce from Nick Lachey in December, 2005 was filled with ruined romance. But hold the tears—at least for the ex-wives. Bad marriages might have been making them sick. Researchers say that long-term anger and hostility between partners is much more dangerous for women than men and can impair our immune system and put us at risk for depression, high blood pressure and even heart disease. In a study published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues at Ohio State University recruited 42 healthy couples who had been married an average of 12 years to spend two 24-hour stretches in a hospital research unit. On the first visit, the couples were encouraged to be loving and supportive of each other. On the second visit, they talked about their areas of conflict. On each visit, a special vacuum tube created blister wounds on their arms that were monitored for healing. The most hostile couples took an average of a day longer to heal. "Hostile marital interactions really enhance production of stress hormones, especially for women," Kiecolt-Glaser says. "And immune change is greater for women than for men." What makes women so vulnerable to a husband"s hostility? Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, says women remember both positive and negative interactions more than men because they"re generally more aware of the emotional content of a relationship. Women have larger and broader social networks than men, she says, and they"re more sensitive to "adverse events" in their networks—a friend, a child, or a sister in trouble. That sensitivity is especially acute when it comes to their most intimate relationship, with their husband. A common laboratory strategy for studying marriage, Kiecolt-Glaser says, is to watch couples talk about a disagreement and then have each partner rate their own and their spouse"s behavior. "Women"s ratings of the behavior are much closer to the outside observer"s codings of hostility than men"s," she says. "Men simply don"t see it." Long-term unhappy marriages have serious health consequences. In another study published earlier this year in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and San Diego State University looked at data from more than 400 healthy women who were followed for 13 years before and after menopause. They found that marital dissatisfaction tripled a woman"s chances of having metabolic syndrome, a group of heart-risk factors. Only widows were more likely to have metabolic syndrome than the unhappy wives; even divorced and single women had better health-risk profiles. What should you take away from all this? Kiecolt-Glaser says couples should learn to keep hostility in check. "When relationships are stressed," she says, "you see a "tit for tat" kind of behavior where things really escalate. The most important thing is to cut that off early."

单选题Take the case of public education alone. The principal difficulty faced by the schools has been the tremendous increase in the number of pupils. This has been caused by the advance of the legal age for going into industry and the impossibility of finding a job even when the legal age has been reached. In view of the technological improvements in the last few years, business will require in the future proportionately fewer workers than ever before. The result will be still further raising of the legal age for going into employment, and still further difficulty in finding employment when that age has been attained. If we cannot put our children to work, we must put them in school. We may also be quite confident that the present trend toward a shorter day and a shorter week will be maintained. We have developed and shall continue to have a new leisure class. Already the public agencies for adult education are swamped by the tide that has swept over them since depression began. They will be little better off when it is over. Their support must come from the taxpayer. It is surely too much to hope that these increases in the cost of public education can be borne by the local communities. They cannot care for the present restricted and inadequate system. The local communities have failed in their efforts to cope with unemployment. They cannot expect to cope with public education on the scale on which we must attempt it. The answer to the problem of unemployment has been Federal relief. The answer to the problem of public education may have to be much the same, and properly so. If there is one thing in which the citizens of all parts of the country have an interest, it is in the decent education of the citizens of all parts of the country. Our income tax now goes in part to keep our neighbors alive. It may have to go in part as well to make our neighbors intelligent. We are now attempting to preserve the present generation through Federal relief of the destitute. Only a people determined to ruin the next generation will refuse such Federal funds as public education may require.

单选题Most people can recall a kid from grade school who couldn"t stay seated, who talked out of turn and fidgeted constantly, and who always had to ask other kids what the homework assignment was. This kind of student has been tagged with a variety of labels over the years: antisocial personality, conduct disorder, stupid. But recent advances in psychology and brain science are now suggesting that a child"s ability to inhibit distracting thoughts and stay focused may be a fundamental cognitive skill, one that plays a big part in academic success from preschool on. The scientific name for this set of skills is "executive function," or EF. It"s an emerging concept in student assessment and could eventually displace traditional measures of ability and achievement. EF comprises not only effortful control and cognitive focus but also working memory and mental flexibility—the ability to adjust to change, to think outside the box. These are the uniquely human skills that, taken together, allow us keep our more impulsive and distractible brain in check. New research shows that EF, more than IQ, leads to success in basic academics like arithmetic and grammar. It also suggests that we can pump up these EF skills with regular exercise, just as we do with muscles. Psychologist Adele Diamond of the University of British Columbia has been testing the EF concept in the classroom, with provocative results. In one recent study Diamond convinced a large low-income urban school district to let her experiment with its preschoolers. Half the classrooms, involving hundreds of children, adopted a new curriculum specifically designed to boost EF, while the other half used a more traditional academic curriculum aimed at basic literacy. The EF curriculum has many strands, but here is one example just to give a flavor. Instead of keeping the classroom quiet, kids are actually taught and encouraged to talk to themselves, privately but aloud, as a way of helping them exert mental control. In one exercise, for example, the kids have to match their movements to symbols. When the teacher holds up a circle they clap, with a triangle they hop, and so forth. The kids are taught to talk themselves through the mental exercise. "OK, now clap." "Twirl now." This has been shown to flex and enhance the brain"s ability to switch gears, to suppress one piece of information and sub in a new one. It takes discipline; it"s the elementary school equivalent of saying "I really need stop thinking about next week"s vacation and focus on this report." This is a vast oversimplification of a curriculum that has taken years to develop and is grounded in rigorous scientific studies of children"s brain development. The EF tests were very difficult cognitive challenges that require kids to inhibit their automatic responses. The EF-trained children outperformed the traditionally educated kids on every single test. In fact, the differences were so dramatic after one year that some school officials opted out of the experiment to give all the kids the benefit of EF training.

单选题"The world"s environment is surprisingly healthy. Discuss." If that were an examination topic, most students would tear it apart, offering a long list of complaints: from local smog to global climate change, from the felling of forests to the extinction of species. The list would largely be accurate, the concern legitimate. Yet the students who should be given the highest marks would actually be those who agreed with the statement. The surprise is how good things are, not how bad. After all, the world"s population has more than tripled during this century, and world output has risen hugely, so you would expect the earth itself to have been affected. Indeed, if people lived, consumed and produced things in the same way as they did in 1900 (or 1950, or indeed 1980), the world by now would be a pretty disgusting place: smelly, dirty, toxic and dangerous. But they don"t. The reasons why they don"t, and why the environment has not been ruined, have to do with prices, technological innovation, social change and government regulation in response to popular pressure. That is why today"s environmental problems in the poor countries ought, in principle, to be solvable. Raw materials have not run out, and show no sign of doing so. Logically, one day they must: the planet is a finite place. Yet it is also very big, and man is very ingenious. What has happened is that every time a material seems to be running short, the price has risen and, in response, people have looked for new sources of supply, tried to find ways to use less of the material, or looked for a new substitute. For this reason prices for energy and for minerals have fallen in real terms during the century. The same is true for food. Prices fluctuate, in response to harvests, natural disasters and political instability; and when they rise, it takes some time before new sources of supply become available. But they always do, assisted by new farming and crop technology. The long-term trend has been downwards. It is where prices and markets do not operate properly that this benign trend begins to stumble, and the genuine problems arise. Markets cannot always keep the environment healthy. If no one owns the resource concerned, no one has an interest in conserving it or fostering it: fish is the best example of this.

单选题No matter how many times you have seen images of the golden mask of Tutankhamen, come face to face with it in Egypt"s Cairo museum, and you will suck in your breath. It was on Nov 4, 1923, that British archaeologist Howard Carter accidentally found a stone at the base of a tomb in Luxor that eventually led to a sealed doorway. Then, on Nov 23, Carter found a second door and when he stuck his head through it, what he saw was to shock the world. Inside lay a great stone coffin enclosing three chests of gilded wood. A few months later, when the coffins were removed one after another, Carter found a solid block of gold weighing 110 kg. In it was the mummy of the 19-year-old Tutankhamen, covered in gold with that splendid funeral mask. And all this lay buried for more than 3,000 years. Cairo, a dusty city of 20 million people, is a place where time seems to both stand still and rush into utter chaos. It is a place where the ancient and contemporary happily go along on parallel tracks. Take the Great Pyramids of Giza, sitting on the western edge of the city. Even as the setting sun silhouettes these gigantic structures against the great desert expanse, a call for prayer floats over semi-finished apartment blocks filled with the activity of city life. While careful planning for the afterlife may lie buffed underground in Cairo, it is noise and confusion on the streets. Donkey carts battle for space with passers-by and the only operative road rule is "might is right". But it is a city that is full of life—from the small roadside restaurants to the coffee shops. Donkey carts piled high with flat-breads magically find their way in and out the maddening traffic; young women in long skirts and headscarves hold hands with young men in open collar shirts, while conversations revolve around Kuwait"s chances at the soccer World Cup.

单选题Paying $175 for the right to cram into Orlando"s Citrus Bowl Park with 50,000 other people for two days straight might not sound that appealing to some. But throw in nonstop live music on a number of open-air stages and people will turn up in large crowds, even in a state with one of the highest jobless rates in the country. That"s the thinking behind Los Angeles-based entertainment giant Live Nation"s latest endeavor in the music-festival business. Music festivals are a rare bright spot in the struggling music industry. The festival business has grown from almost nothing a few decades ago to roughly $1.36 billion in Britain, one of the world"s largest festival markets. In the U.S., live-music revenues have nearly doubled over the past decade, to $4.6 billion last year, fueled in part by the growth in festivals. That has shifted the music industry"s focus from recorded albums to live performances. After a decade of dwindling sales of recorded music, caused in part by free Internet downloads from music-sharing start-ups like Napster, live entertainment is the industry"s new cash cow—one that can"t be infinitely reproduced. According to trade group IFPI, global sales of recorded music have dropped more than 40% in the past 10 years, to $16 billion in 2010. Ticket sales for live music in Britain, meanwhile, have nearly quadrupled over the same period, to $2.4 billion. In the digital age, people "yearn for actual experiences, like concerts, and they"re willing to pay a premium price for them," says Nick George, a media analyst. The festival boom could mean big changes for the music industry and its customers. Digital media, which lend themselves to endless duplication and piracy, have driven down the value of recorded music over the past decade. But live shows, which are by definition a limited number of one-off events, promise to continue turning profits for years to come. That"s good news not just for big media corporations like Sony and Warner, which have been fishing for ways to redefine their music divisions in the digital age; it could also help boost the incomes of struggling musicians, especially independents who rely on even the smallest concerts to make a living. For music fans, festivals mean more access to live music in bulk and the chance to discover new bands in the flesh rather than through computer screens or on the radio. Festivals haven"t always held this kind of appeal in the music industry. A decade ago, many musicians viewed live performances as at times tedious marketing plugs for their latest albums. Nowadays the opposite is true. Corporate executives are seeing dollar signs too. For media-savvy companies, festivals have become a form of "experiential" media, interactive events through which they can market their brands. Unlike giveaways or ads, enjoyable experiences give brands "long-term engagement with a captive audience," says Bryan Duffy, a marketing executive at New York City consulting firm MKTG Inc.

单选题Priscilla Ouchida"s "energy-efficient" house turned out to be a horrible dream. When she and her engineer husband married a few years ago, they built a $100,000, three-bedroom home in California. Tightly sealed to prevent air leaks, the house was equipped with small double-paned windows and several other energy-saving features. Problems began as soon as the couple moved in, however. Priscilla"s eyes burned. Her throat was constantly dry. She suffered from headaches and could hardly sleep. It was as though she had suddenly developed a strange illness. Experts finally traced the cause of her illness. The level of formaldehyde gas in her kitchen was twice the maximum allowed by federal standards for chemical workers. The source of the gas? Her new kitchen cabinets and wall-to-wall carpeting. The Ouchidas are victims of indoor air pollution, which is not given sufficient attention partly because of the nation"s drive to save energy. The problem itself isn"t new. "The indoor environment was dirty long before energy conservation came along," says Moschandreas, a pollution scientist at Geomet Technologies in Maryland. "Energy conservation has tended to accentuate the situation in some cases." The problem appears to be more troublesome in newly constructed homes rather than old ones. Back in the days when energy was cheap, home builders didn"t worry much about unsealed cracks. Because of such leaks, the air in an average home was replaced by fresh outdoor air about once an hour. As a result, the pollutants generated in most households seldom build up to dangerous levels.

单选题People often think that other people are staring 1 them even when they aren"t, the research 2 by the University of Sydney has found. To be specific, when in doubt, the human brain is more 3 to tell its owner that he"s under the gaze of another person. To tell if they"re under someone"s gaze, people look at the 4 of the other person"s eyes and the direction of their heads. These 5 cues are then sent to the brain 6 there are specific areas that compute this information. However, the brain doesn"t just 7 receive information from the eyes. The study shows that when people have 8 visual cues, such as in dark conditions or when the other person is wearing sunglasses, the brain 9 with what it "knows". The researchers created images of faces and asked people to observe where the faces were looking. "We made it 10 for the observers to see where the eyes were pointed so they would have to 11 on their prior knowledge to judge the faces" direction of gaze," Professor Clifford explains. "It 12 that we"re likely to believe that others are staring at us, especially when we"re 13 ." "There are several 14 to why humans have this bias," Professor Clifford says. "Direct gaze can signal dominance or a threat, and if you perceive something as a threat, you would not want to miss it. So assuming 14 the other person is looking at you may simply be a safer strategy. Also, direct gaze is often a social cue that the other person wants to 15 with us, so it"s a signal for an upcoming interaction." "It"s important that we find out whether it"s 16 or learned—and how this might affect people with certain mental conditions," Professor Clifford said. Research has shown, for example, that people who have autism are 17 able to tell whether someone is looking at them. People 18 social anxiety, on the other hand, have a higher tendency to think that they are under the stare of others. "So if it is a learned behaviour, we could help them practice this task, letting them observe a lot of faces with different eyes and head directions, and 19 them feedback on whether their observations are accurate."

单选题Cultural responses to modernization often manifest themselves in the mass media. For example, Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, created a fictional world in which he cautioned readers that modern science and technology posed a threat to individual dignity. Charlie Chaplin"s film Modern Times, set in a futuristic manufacturing plant, also told the story of the dehumanizing impact of modernization and machinery. Writers and artists, in their criticisms of the modern world, often point to technology"s ability to alienate people from one another, capitalism"s tendency to foster greed, and government"s inclination to create bureaucracies that oppress rather than help people. Among the major values of the modern period, four typically manifest themselves in the cultural environment, celebrating the individual, believing in rational order, working efficiently, and rejecting tradition. These values of the modern period were originally embodied in the printing press and later in newspapers and magazines. The print media encouraged the vision of individual writers, publishers, and readers who circulated new ideas. Whereas the premodern period was guided by strong beliefs in a natural or divine order, becoming modern meant elevating individual self-expression to a central position. Along with democratic breakthroughs, however, individualism and the Industrial Revolution triggered modern forms of hierarchy, in which certain individuals and groups achieved higher standing in the social order. For example, those who managed commercial enterprises gained more control over the economic ladder, while an intellectual class of modern experts, who mastered specialized realms of knowledge, gained increasing power over the nation"s social, political, and cultural agendas. To be modern also meant to value the capacity of organized, scientific minds to solve problems efficiently. Progressive thinkers maintained that the printing press, the telegraph, and the railroad in combination with a scientific attitude would foster a new type of informed society. At the core of this society, the printed mass media, particularly newspapers, would educate the citizenry, helping to build and maintain an organized social framework. Journalists strove for the premodern ideal through a more fact-based and efficient approach to reporting. They discarded decorative writing and championed a lean look. Modern front-page news de-emphasized description, commentary, and historical context. The lead sentences that reported a presidential press conference began to look similar, whether they were on the front page in Tupelo, Mississippi, or Wahpeton, North Dakota. Just as modern architecture made many American skylines look alike, the front pages of newspapers began to resemble one another. Finally, to be modern meant to throw off the rigid rules of the past, to break with tradition. Modern journalism became captivated by timely and immediate events. As a result, the more standardized forms of front-page journalism, on the one hand, championed facts and current events while efficiently meeting deadlines. But on the other hand, modern newspapers often failed to take a historical perspective or to analyze sufficiently the ideas underlying these events.

单选题 Thanks to the GPS, the apps on your phone have long been able to determine your general location. But what if they could do so with enough precision that a supermarket, say, could tempt you with digital coupons depending on whether you were hovering near the white bread or the bagels? It may sound far-fetched, but there's a good chance the technology is already built into your iPhone or Android device. All it takes for retailers to tap into it are small, inexpensive transmitters called beacons. Here's how it works: using Bluetooth technology, handsets can pinpoint their position to within as little as 2cm by receiving signals from the beacons stores install. Apple's version of the concept is called iBeacon; it's in use at its own stores and is being tested by Macy's, American Eagle, Safeway, the National Football League and Major League Baseball. Companies can then use your location to pelt (连续攻击) you with special offers or simply monitor your movements. But just as with GPS, they won't see you unless you've installed their apps and granted them access. By melding your physical position with facts they've already collected about you from rewards programs, {{U}}brick-and-mortar businesses{{/U}} can finally get the potentially profitable insight into your shopping habits that online merchants now take for granted. The possibilities go beyond coupons. PayPal is readying a beacon that will let consumers pay for goods without swiping a card or removing a phone from their pocket. Doug Thompson of industry site Beekn.net predicts the technology will become an everyday reality by year's end. But don't look for stores or venues to call attention to the devices. "People won't know these beacons are there," he says. "They'll just know their app has suddenly become smarter."

单选题It"s easy to condemn economics as not being a "real" science, and I try not to do things that are too easy. But in recent weeks I"ve really started to wonder. It is fascinating, and frightening, to me that smart economists can disagree about whether what the economy needs right now is more government spending or less. The debate isn"t about how much stimulus, or how much austerity, or the way such stimulus/austerity should be applied, but rather about which one is called for in the first place. How is this possible? It"s like a group of doctors not being able to agree whether a patient"s blood should be thinned or coagulated. What am I supposed to make of that? Roger Backhouse, a historian and philosopher of economics at the U.K."s University of Birmingham, helps me out in his new book, The Puzzle of Modern Economics: Science or Ideology? I"ve been reading it over the past few weeks and at first I thought Backhouse was going to confirm my worst fear: that it is so difficult to employ scientific methods in understanding super-complex large-scale economic phenomena (like the U.S. economy) that ideology is pretty much necessary if you want to come to any useful conclusions about what"s going on or what should be done. Most scientific disciplines don"t have esteemed members regularly going after one another in the op-ed pages. Economics, in an important way, feels different. But the more I read Backhouse"s book, the more I understood that it"s important to distinguish economics from economics as it is typically practiced. Backhouse shows how the current mathematics-heavy top-down approach to economics is not the only one. He traces the origin of the approach—which necessarily assumes that people are rational agents trying to optimize their resources to the 1930s, but points out that it took some 30 years to really catch on. Before that, the field was rooted in empirical work. Theories tended to be tentative and not all-encompassing. Economists would gather data, and insight from other fields about how people behave (like psychology), in an attempt to come up with explanations about how the world works. The current fashion, of course, is to come up with theories about how the world is supposed to work. The obvious problem: people aren"t always rational. They are, in fact, influenced by things like advertising and a sense of fairness. As a result, math-heavy top- down models can prove disastrously wrong. After all, the economy is as much a product of sociology and policy as it is pure-form economics. Yet we"d not expect a sociologist or a political scientist to be able to write a computer model to accurately capture system-wide decision-making. The conclusion I"ve come to: while economists may have an important perspective on whether it"s time for stimulus or austerity, maybe we should stop looking to them as if they are people who are in the ultimate position to know.

单选题Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors. For educators, the big question is how to keep the momentum being built in the lower grades from dissipating once the students get to college. "We"re losing an alarming proportion of our nation"s science talent once the students get to college," says Mitchell J. Chang, an education professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter. "It"s not just a K-12 preparation issue." Professor Chang says that rather than losing mainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with poor records, the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students. The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who typically leave STEM fields (fields of science, technology, engineering and math) if their hopes for medical school fade. There is no doubt that the main majors are difficult and growing more complex. Some students still lack math preparation or aren"t willing to work hard enough. Other barriers are the tough freshman classes, typically followed by two years of fairly abstract courses leading to a senior research or design project. In September, the Association of American Universities, which represents 61 of the largest research institutions, announced a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques. The latest research also suggests that there could be more subtle problems at work, like the proliferation of grade inflation in the humanities and social sciences, which provides another incentive for students to leave STEM majors. It is no surprise that grades are lower in math and science, where the answers are clear-cut and there are no bonus points for talented answers. Professors also say they are strict because science and engineering courses build on one another, and a student who fails to absorb the key lessons in one class will have to struggle in the next. No one doubts that students need a strong theoretical foundation. But what frustrates education experts is how long it has taken for most schools to make changes. Notre Dame"s engineering dean, Peter Kilpatrick, will be the first to concede that sophomore and junior years, which focus mainly on theory, remain a "weak link" in technical education. He says his engineering school has gradually improved its retention rate over the past decade by creating design projects for freshmen and breaking "a deadly lecture" for 400 students into groups of 80. Only 50 to 55 percent of the school"s students stayed through graduation 10 years ago. But that figure now tops 75 percent, and efforts to create more labs in the middle years could help raise it further.

单选题Will the European Union make it? The question would have sounded strange not long ago. Now even the project"s greatest cheerleaders talk of a continent facing a "Bermuda triangle" of debt, population decline and lower growth. As well as those chronic problems, the EU faces an acute crisis in its economic core, the 16 countries that use the single currency. Markets have lost faith that the euro zone"s economies, weaker or stronger, will one day converge thanks to the discipline of sharing a single currency, which denies uncompetitive members the quick fix of devaluation. Yet the debate about how to save Europe"s single currency from disintegration is stuck. It is stuck because the euro zone"s dominant powers, France and Germany, agree on the need for greater harmonization within the euro zone, but disagree about what to harmonize. Germany thinks the euro must be saved by stricter rules on borrowing, spending and competitiveness, backed by quasi-automatic sanctions for governments that do not obey. These might include threats to freeze EU funds for poorer regions and EU mega-projects and even the suspension of a country"s voting rights in EU ministerial councils. It insists that economic co-ordination should involve all 27 members of the EU club, among whom there is a small majority for free-market liberalism and economic rigour; in the inner core alone, Germany fears, a small majority favour French interference. A "southern" camp headed by French wants something different: "European economic government" within an inner core of euro-zone members. Translated, that means politicians intervening in monetary policy and a system of redistribution from richer to poorer members, via cheaper borrowing for governments through common Eurobonds or complete fiscal transfers. Finally, figures close to the France government have murmured, euro-zone members should agree to some fiscal and social harmonization: e.g., curbing competition in corporate-tax rates or labour costs. It is too soon to write off the EU. It remains the world"s largest trading block. At its best, the European project is remarkably liberal, built around a single market of 27 rich and poor countries, its internal borders are far more open to goods, capital and labour than any comparable trading area. It is an ambitious attempt to blunt the sharpest edges of globalization, and make capitalism benign.

单选题For the typical American, the past decade has been economically brutal, the first time since the 1930s, according to some calculations, that inflation-adjusted incomes declined. While there are many causes, from declining unionization to the changing mix of needed skills, globalization has had the greatest impact. The phenomenon that free traders like me adore has created a nation of winners (think of those low-priced imported goods) but also many losers. Nowhere have these pressures been more intense than in the manufacturing sector. A typical General Motors worker costs the company about $56 per hour, which includes benefits. In Mexico, a worker costs the company $7 per hour, and in India, $1 per hour. Pressed by high unemployment and eager to keep jobs in this country, the United Auto Workers agreed that companies could cut their costs by hiring some workers at $14 an hour, with lower benefits. In these troubled times, any jobs are surely welcome. But we need to reverse the decline in incomes, and this requires a more thoughtful approach than the pervasive, politically attractive happy talk sentimentally centered on restoring lost manufacturing jobs. So let"s start by acknowledging that just as it occurred decades ago with agriculture, the declining role in our economy of manufacturing, which over the last half-century is down from 32 percent of the work force to 9 percent, will continue. Let"s also recognize that retreating into protectionism would turn a win-lose into a lose-lose. And even if organized labor could force wage rates back up, that would hardly help domestic manufacturing compete against lower-cost imports. Instead, we should follow the example of successful high-wage exporters in concentrating on products where we have an advantage, as Germany has done with products like sophisticated machine tools. While America still leads in sectors like defense and aviation, our greatest strength, and a source of high-paying jobs, lies in service industries with high intellectual content, like education, entertainment, digital media, and yes, even financial services. Facebook, Google and Microsoft are all American creations, as are the global credit card companies American Express, Visa and MasterCard. Achieving higher wages also requires a greater commitment to education. Following the German model of greater emphasis on engineering and technical training would also be advantageous. And there is the tricky question of what role government should play. While countries like China have put large resources behind industries they want to nurture, we should resist the temptation to plunge deeply into industrial policy. Particularly in its current dysfunctional condition, Washington is ill-equipped to pick winners and should concentrate its capital on infrastructure and other public investments that the private sector won"t make. To assist the private sector, particularly young companies, which are the biggest source of new hiring, tax incentives could be used to foster the creation of well-paying jobs. With global competition and its pressure on American wages intensifying, American workers deserve a more focused approach from Washington.

单选题The Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a debate when he attacked America"s colleges as "indoctrination mills" from which Americans should keep their distance. Calling President Obama a "snob" for urging all Americans to go to college, he joined a long tradition that runs from Andrew Carnegie, who more than a century ago described colleges as places that prepare students for "life upon another planet," to Newt Gingrich, who has claimed that alumni donations are often used "to subsidize bizarre and destructive Visions of reality." Mr. Santorum"s remarks have been widely, and justly, rebutted. Yet defenders of college should do more than respond to its critics with contempt. We should seize the opportunity for introspection. Why does the anti-college mantra still touch a nerve among so many Americans? Consider the fact that SAT scores (a big factor in college admissions) correlate closely with family wealth. The total average SAT score of students from families earning more than $100,000 per year is more than 100 points higher than for students in the income range of $50,000 to $60,000. Or consider that a mere 3 percent of students in the top 150 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile of American society. Only a very dogmatic Social Darwinist would conclude from these facts that intelligence closely tracks how much money one"s parents make. A better explanation is that students from affluent families have many advantages—test-prep tutors, high schools with good college counseling, parents with college savvy and so on. Yet once the beneficiaries arrive at college, what do they learn about themselves? It"s a good bet that the dean or president will greet them with congratulations for being the best and brightest ever to walk through the gates. A few years ago, the critic and essayist William Deresiewicz, who went to Columbia and taught at Yale, wrote that his Ivy education taught him to believe that those who didn"t attend "an Ivy League or equivalent school" were "beneath" him. Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one"s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God"s unmerited mercy—as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum. Benjamin Franklin, who founded the University of Pennsylvania, once defined true education as "an Inclination join"d with an Ability to serve Mankind, one"s Country, Friends, and Family; which Ability... should indeed be the great Aim and End of all Learning." We would be well served to keep this public-spirited conception of learning squarely in mind. Perhaps if our leading colleges encouraged more humility and less hubris, college-bashing would go out of style and we could get on with the urgent business of providing the best education for as many Americans as possible.

单选题Facebook has been 1 with fire and has got its fingers burned, again. On November 29th America"s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had reached a 2 settlement with the giant social network over 3 that it had misled people about its use of their personal data. The details of the settlement make clear that Facebook, which 4 over 800m users, betrayed its users" trust. It is also notable because it appears to be part of a broader 5 by the FTC to craft a new privacy framework to deal with the rapid 6 of social networks in America. The regulator"s findings come at a 7 moment for Facebook, which is said to be preparing for an initial public offering next year that could value it at around $100 billion. To 8 the way for its listing, the firm first needs to resolve its privacy 9 with regulators in America and Europe, 10 its willingness to negotiate the settlement 11 this week. Announcing the agreement, the FTC said it had found a number of cases where Facebook had made claims that were "unfair and deceptive, and 12 federal law". For instance, it 13 personally identifiable information to advertisers, and it failed to keep a promise to make photos and videos on deleted accounts 14 . The settlement does not 15 an admission by Facebook that it has broken the law, but it deeply 16 the company nonetheless. In a blog post published the same day, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook"s boss, tried to 17 the impact of the deal. First he claimed that "a small number of high-profile mistakes" were 18 the social network"s "good history" on privacy. The FTC is not relying on Facebook to police itself. Among other things, the company will now have to seek consumers" approval before it changes the way it shares their data. And it has agreed to an independent privacy audit every two years for the next 20 years. There is a clear pattern here. In separate cases over the past couple of years the FTC has insisted that Twitter and Google accept regular 19 audits, too, after each firm was accused of violating its customers" privacy. The intent seems to be to create a regulatory regime that is tighter than the status quo, 20 one that still gives social networks plenty of room to innovate.

单选题The clean-energy business is turning into the next big investment boom, in which risks are lightly ignored. Until recently, recalls Charlie Gay, a 30-year veteran of the solar-power business, venture capitalists were far too busy catering to captains of the information-technology industry to waste time on "hippy-dippy tree-huggers" like himself. But now the tree-huggers are in the ascendant and the IT barons are busy investing in clean-energy technology. Investors are failing over themselves to finance start-ups in clean technology, especially in energy. Venture Business Research reckons that investment in the field by venture capitalists and private-equity firms has quadrupled in the past two years, from some $500m in 2004 to almost $2 billion so far this year. The share of venture capital going into clean energy is rising rapidly. Clean-energy fever is being fuelled by three things: high oil prices, fears over energy security and a growing concern about global warming. The provision of energy, the industry"s cheerleaders say, will change radically over the coming decades. Polluting coal and gas-fired power stations will give way to cleaner alternatives such as solar and wind; fuels derived from plants and waste will replace petrol and diesel; and small, local forms of electricity generation will replace big power stations feeding far-flung grids. Eventually, it is hoped, fuel cells running on hydrogen will take the place of the internal combustion engine which is available everywhere. It is a bold vision, but if it happens very slowly, or only to a limited extent, boosters argue that it will still prompt tremendous growth for firms in the business. Analysts confidently predict the clean-energy business will grow by 20%～30% a year for a decade. Jefferies, an investment bank that organized a recent conference on the industry in London, asked participants how soon solar power would become competitive with old-fashioned generation technologies: in 2010, 2015 or 2020. About three-quarters of those present, one visitor happily observed, were "cheque-writers". This "megatrend", the keynote speaker advocated, "may be the biggest job and wealth-creation opportunity of the 21st century." Such exaggeration might remind people of dotcom bubble. But clean-energy advocates insist growth is sustainable because of the likes of Mr. Schwarzenegger. The Governor is a hero in green circles because of his enthusiasm for environmental regulation. He easily won reelection partly because he seized on global warming as a concern and signed into law—America"s first wide-ranging scheme to cap green-house-gas emissions.