单选题Death is a difficult subject for anyone, but Americans want to talk about it less than most. They have a cultural expectation that whatever may be wrong with them, it can be fixed with the right treatment, and if the first doctor does not offer it they may seek a second, third or fourth opinion. Legal action is a constant threat, so even if a patient is very ill and likely to die, doctors and hospitals will still persist with aggressive treatment, paid for by the insurer or, for the elderly, by Medicare. That is one reason why America spends 18% of its GDP on health care, the highest proportion in the world. That does not mean that Americans are getting the world"s best health care. For the past 20 years doctors at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice have been compiling the "Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care", using Medicare data to compare health-spending patterns in different regions and institutions. They find that average costs per patient during the last two years of life in some regions can be almost twice as high as in others, yet patients in the high-spending areas do not survive any longer or enjoy better health as a result. Ira Byock is the director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre. His book is a plea for those near the end of their life to be treated more like individuals and less like medical cases on which all available technology must be let loose. With two decades" experience in the field, he makes a good case for sometimes leaving well alone and helping people to die gently if that is what they want. That does not include assisted suicide, which he opposes. But it does include providing enough pain relief to make patients comfortable, co-coordinating their treatment among the different specialists, keeping them informed, having enough staff on hand to see to their needs, making arrangements for them to be cared for at home where possible—and not officiously keeping them alive when there is no hope. But it is not easy to decide when to stop making every effort to save someone"s life and allow them to die gently. The book quotes the case of one HIV-positive young man who was acutely ill with multiple infections. He spent over four months in hospital, much of the time on a ventilator, and had countless tests, scans and other interventions. The total bill came to over $1m. He came close to death many times, but eventually pulled through and has now returned to a normal life. It is an uplifting story, but such an outcome is very rare. Dr Byock"s writing style is not everybody"s cup of tea, but he is surely right to suggest better management of a problem that can only get worse. As life expectancy keeps on rising, so will the proportion of old people in the population. And with 75m American baby-boomers now on the threshold of retirement, there is a limit to what the country can afford to spend to keep them going on and on.

单选题In 2010, Pamela Fink, an employee of a Connecticut energy company, made a new kind of discrimination claim: she charged that she had been fired because she carries genes that predispose her to cancer. Fink quickly became the public face for the cutting edge of civil rights: genetic discrimination. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which was passed out of concern for just such cases in the wake of huge advances in genetics testing, took effect in late 2009. GINA, as it is known, makes it illegal for employers to fire or refuse to hire workers based on their "genetic information"— including genetic tests and family history of disease. GINA doesn"t just apply to employers: health-insurance companies can be sued for using genetic information to set rates or even just for investigating people"s genes. The numbers of genetic-discrimination complaints will almost certainly increase greatly in coming years, for the reason that, as biological science advances, there is likely to be even more genetic information available about people. Even though this sort of medical information should remain private, employers and insurance companies will have strong financial incentives to get access to it—and to use it to avoid people who are most likely to get sick. When genetic-discrimination claims start showing up in the courts in significant numbers, they are likely to get a sympathetic hearing. There are two major reasons that so many people—even congressional Republicans who are highly skeptical of civil rights laws—like GINA. First, there is the kind of discrimination it is aimed at: penalizing people for strands of DNA and RNA that they inherited from their parents through no fault of their own. In general, our society has decided to protect people for qualities that are " immutable "—that is, something about them that is impossible or, at least, very difficult to change. So we make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, skin color and sex. On the other hand, we generally do not protect people who are not hired because they lack a high school diploma or because they wear a beard. Our response to those people is that if you want the job you should get more education or shave. Genes are a classic immutable characteristic: outside of some complicated medical procedures, we"re pretty much stuck with the genes we were born with. The second major reason genetic-discrimination laws are popular is that this is a kind of bias everyone feels they could be exposed to. None of us has perfect genes—and for the most part, we have no idea what is lurking in our DNA and RNA. Our genes are complex enough that we all have some negative information encoded in there—and none of us wants to lose a job or be denied insurance over it. When juries begin to hear these cases, they are far more likely to identify with the plaintiffs than with the companies that discriminate. That doesn"t mean that there won"t be plenty of companies looking to benefit from genetic information, but if they use it, they may well have to pay.

单选题 After World War II the glorification of an ever-larger GNP formed the basis of a new materialism, which became a sacred obligation for all Japanese governments, businesses and trade unions. Anyone who mentioned the undesirable by-products of rapid economic growth was treated as a heretic. Consequently, everything possible was done to make conditions easy for the manufacturers. Few dared question the wisdom of discharging untreated waste into the nearest water body or untreated smoke into the atmosphere. This silence was maintained by union leaders as well as by most of the country's radicals; except for a few isolated voices, no one protested. An insistence on treatment of the various {{U}}effluents{{/U}} would have necessitated expenditures on treatment equipment that in turn would have given rise to higher operating costs. Obviously, this would have meant higher prices for Japanese goods, and ultimately fewer sales and lower industrial growth and GNP. The pursuit of nothing but economic growth is illustrated by the response of the Japanese government to the American educational mission that visited Japan in 1947. After surveying Japan's educational program, the Americans suggested that the Japanese fill in their curriculum gap by creating departments in chemical and sanitary engineering. Immediately, chemical engineering departments were established in all the country's universities and technical institutions. In contrast, the recommendation to form sanitary engineering departments was more or less ignored, because they could bring no profit. By 1960, only two second-rate universities, Kyoto and Hokkaido, were interested enough to open such departments. The reluctance to divert funds from production to conservation is explanation enough for a certain degree of pollution, but the situation was made worse by the type of technology the Japanese chose to adopt for their industrial expansion. For the most part, they simply copied American industrial methods. This meant that methods originally designed for use in a country that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific with lots of air and water to use as sewage receptacles were adopted for an area a fraction of the size. Moreover, the Japanese diet was much more dependent on water as a source of fish and as an input in the irrigation of rice; consequently discharged wastes built up much more rapidly in the food chain.

单选题In 1929 John D. Rockefeller decided it was time to sell shares when even a shoe-shine boy offered him a share tip. During the past week The Economist"s economics editor has been advised by a taxi driver, a plumber and a hairdresser that "you can"t go wrong" investing in housing—the more you own the better. Is this a sign that it is time to get out? At the very least, as house prices around the world climb to ever loftier heights, and more and more people jump on to the buy-to-let ladder, it is time to expose some of the fallacies regularly trotted out by so many self-appointed housing experts. One common error is that house prices must continue to rise because of a limited supply of land. For instance, it is argued that "house prices will always rise in London because lots of people want to live here". But this confuses the level of prices with their rate of change. Home prices are bound to be higher in big cities because of land scarcity, but this does not guarantee that urban house prices will keep rising indefinitely—just look at Tokyo"s huge price-drops since 1990. And, though it is true that a fixed supply of homes may push up house prices if the population is rising, this would imply a steady rise in prices, not the 20% annual jumps of recent years. A second flawed argument is that low interest rates make buying a home cheaper, and so push up demand and prices. Lower interest rates may have allowed some people, who otherwise could not have afforded a mortgage, to buy a home. But many borrowers who think mortgages are cheaper are suffering from money illusion. Interest rates are not very low in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Initial interest payments may seem low in relation to income, but because inflation is also low it will not erode the real burden of debt as swiftly as it once did. So in later years mortgage payments will be much larger in real terms. To argue that low nominal interest rates make buying a home cheaper is like arguing that a car loan paid off over four years is cheaper than one repaid over two years. Fallacy number three is a favourite claim of Alan Greenspan, chairman of America"s Federal Reserve. This is that price bubbles are less likely in housing than in the stock market because higher transaction costs discourage speculation. In fact, several studies have shown that both in theory and in practice bubbles are more likely in housing than in shares. A study by the IMF finds that a sharp rise in house prices is far more likely to be followed by a bust than is a share-price boom.

单选题Convenience food helps companies by creating growth, but what is its effect on people? For people who think cooking was the foundation of civilization, the microwave is the last enemy. The communion of eating together is easily broken by a device that liberates household citizens from waiting for mealtimes. The first great revolution in the history of food is in danger of being undone. The companionship of the campfire, cooking pot and common table, which have helped to bond humans in collaborative living for at least 150,000 years, could be destroyed. Meals have certainly suffered from the rise of convenience food. The only meals regularly taken together in Britain these days are at the weekend, among rich families struggling to retain something of the old symbol of togetherness. Indeed, the day"s first meal has all but disappeared. In the 20th century the leisure British breakfast was undermined by the cornflake; in the 21st breakfast is vanishing altogether, a victim of the quick cup of coffee in Starbucks and the cereal bar. Convenience food has also made people forget how to cook. One of the apparent paradoxes of modern food is that, while the amount of time spent cooking meals has fallen from 60 minutes a day in 1980 to 13 minutes a day in 2002, the number of books and television programmes on cooking has multiplied. But perhaps this isn"t a paradox. Maybe it is because people can"t cook any more, so they need to be told bow to do it. Or maybe it is because people buy books about hobbies-golf, yachting-not about chores. Cooking has ceased to be a chore and has become a hobby. Although everybody lives in the kitchen, its facilities are increasingly for display rather than for use. Mr. Silverstein"s new book, Trading Up , look at mid-range consumer"s willingness to splash out. He says that industrial-style Viking cooktops, with nearly twice the heat output of other ranges, have helped to push the "kitchen as theater" trend in home goods. They cost from $1,000 to $9,000. Some 75% of them are never used. Convenience also has an impact on the healthiness, or otherwise, on food. Of course, there is nothing bad about ready-to-eat food itself. You don"t get much healthier than an apple, and all supermarkets sell a better-for-you range of ready-meals. But there is a limit to the number of apple people want to eat; and these days it is easier for people to eat the kind of food that makes them fat. The three Harvard economists in their paper "Why have Americans become more obese?" point out that, in the past, if people wanted to eat fatty hot food, they had to cook it. That took time and energy—a good chip needs frying twice, once to cook the potato and once to get it crispy—which discouraged consumption of that sort of food. Mass preparation of food took away that constraint. Nobody has to cut and double-cook their own fries these days. Who has the time?

单选题They may not be the richest, but Africans remain the world"s staunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a research outfit, shows that, when asked whether this year will be better than last, Africa once again comes out on top. Out of 52,000 people interviewed all over the world, under half believe that things are looking up. But in Africa the proportion is close to 60%—almost twice as much as in Europe. Africans have some reasons to be cheerful. The continent"s economy has been doing fairly well with South Africa, the economic powerhouse, growing steadily over the past few years. Some of Africa"s long-running conflicts, such as the war between the north and south in Sudan and the civil war in Congo, have ended. Africa even has its first elected female head of state, in Liberia. Yet there is no shortage of downers too. Most of Africa remains dirt poor. Crises in places like Cote d"Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are far from solved. And the democratic credentials of Ethiopia and Uganda, once the darlings of western donors, have taken a bad knock. AIDS killed over 2 million Africans in 2005, and will kill more this year. So is it all just a case of irrational exuberance? Meril James of Gallup argues that there is, in fact, usually very little relation between the survey"s optimism rankings and reality. Africans, this year led by Nigerians, are consistently the most upbeat, whether their lot gets better or not. On the other hand, Greece— hardly the worst place on earth—tops the gloom-and-doom chart, followed closely by Portugal and France. Ms James speculates that religion may have a lot to do with it. Nine out of ten Africans are religious, the highest proportion in the world. But cynics argue that most Africans believe that 2006 will be golden because things have been so bad that it is hard to imagine how they could possibly get worse. This may help explain why places that have suffered recent misfortunes, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, rank among the top five optimists. Moussaka for thought for those depressed Greeks.

单选题In a provocative new book The Beauty Bias , Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor who proposes a legal regime in which discrimination on the basis of looks is as serious as discrimination based on gender or race, lays out the case for an American in which appearance discrimination is no longer allowed. Rhode is at her most persuasive when arguing that in America, discrimination against unattractive women and short men is as pernicious and widespread as bias based on race, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, and disability. Rhode cites research to prove her point: 11 percent of surveyed couples say they would abort a fetus predisposed toward obesity. College students tell surveyors they"d rather have a spouse who is an embezzler, drug user, or a shoplifter than one who is obese. The less attractive you are in America, the more likely you are to receive a longer prison sentence, a lower damage award, a lower salary, and poorer performance reviews. You are less likely to be married and more likely to be poor. And all of this is compounded by a virtually unregulated beauty and diet industry and soaring rates of elective cosmetic surgery. Rhode reminds us how Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor were savaged by the media for their looks, and says it"s no surprise that Sarah Palin paid her makeup artist more than any member of her staff in her run for the vice presidency. Critics such as Andrew Sullivan claim that if we legally ban appearance discrimination, the next step will be legal protection of "the short, the skinny, the bald, the knobbly kneed, the flat-chested and the stupid." But Rhode points out that there are already laws against appearance discrimination on the books in Michigan and six other locales. This hasn"t resulted in an explosion of frivolous suits, she notes. In each jurisdiction the new laws have generated between zero and nine cases annually. Of course the problem with making appearance discrimination illegal is that Americans just really, really like hot girls. And so long as being a hot girl is deemed a bona fide occupational qualification, there will be cocktail waitresses fired for gaining three pounds. It"s not just American men who like things this way. In the most troubling chapter in her book, Rhode explores the feminist movement"s complicated relationship to eternal youth. The truth is that women feel good about competing in beauty pageants. They love six-inch heels. They feel beautiful after cosmetic surgery. You can"t succeed in public life if you look old in America. This doesn"t mean we shouldn"t work toward eradicating discrimination based on appearance. But it may mean recognizing that the law won"t stop us from discriminating against the overweight, the aging, and the imperfect, so long as it"s the quality we all hate most in ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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