单选题Amazon is looking at drastically reducing its delivery times—to 30 minutes or less—as it plans a new service called Prime Air that it says could debut in a few years. The giant online retailer plans to use semi-autonomous drones to carry purchases to customers. CEO Jeff Bezos announced the plan Sunday on CBS" 60 Minutes. Bezos tells Charlie Rose that Amazon"s "octocopter" could be airborne within four to five years, using GPS coordinates to find customers. The drones would depart from the retailer"s "fulfillment centers," the huge warehouses it has built near many large population centers in the U. S. and elsewhere. They can carry about five pounds, Bezos says, a figure that covers around 85 percent of Amazon"s products. The delivery drones would be particularly useful in densely populated urban areas, Bezos says. Powered by electricity, their current range of operation is around 10 miles from the point of origin. Writing that "drones can explode, or run into things," the Quartz technology blog"s Heather Timmons notes that safety concerns may limit where the new delivery devices could be used. In addition to safety concerns, drones could face another challenge before they"re widely used for delivery: overcoming the possible suspicions of citizens who have mostly seen the unmanned aircraft mentioned in conjunction with military and surveillance uses. Rose"s interview of Bezos also touched on the retailer"s 10-year, $600 million contract with the CIA, through its Amazon Web Services unit. The company is using its technological expertise to build a computing cloud for the agency, Bezos said. When asked by Rose if that presented a conflict, Bezos answered, "We"re building what"s called a private cloud for them, Charlie, because they don"t want to be on the public cloud." Amazon isn"t alone in pursuing drone delivery. Earlier this year, a pilot project by Domino"s Pizza looked at flying hot pizzas to customers in Britain, posting a video of a successful test run. That led the site Singularity Hub to observe: "So why are drones such a big deal? In our robotic future, anything that can reduce urban congestion, minimize carbon emissions, save money and save trips to the emergency room (car accidents kill, you know) will drive huge value in the economy and make our lives better, to boot."

单选题Everyone complains that corporate America is 1 to hire additional workers. Far 2 attention has been paid to the flip side of the jobless recovery: the 3 improvement in American productivity. When the economy 4 in 2008, there was little of the fall in labor productivity that normally 5 a recession, and this was not just a one-off "batting average" effect (in which average productivity rises because the worst performers are fired). Rather, it was a productivity boost that has continued 6 expert predictions that workers can only be 7 so hard for a short while. In the third quarter of 2011, American labor productivity was 2.3% higher than in the same period a year earlier. Manufacturing productivity in that quarter rose by 2.9% compared with a year earlier. America"s productivity growth has been more 8 than most other rich countries"—a feat 9 to its flexible labor market and a culture of enterprise. Two things could keep productivity rising. First, workers are terrified of losing their jobs. This makes it easier to persuade them to put in extra hours or 10 new tasks. Second, tough times are forcing luaus to 11 every brain cell to become more efficient. Sealed Air, for example, has made numerous incremental tweaks, such as 12 a machine that makes absorbent pads for supermarket meat trays so that its output increased from 400 units per hour three years ago to 550—with the same number of workers. The 13 of firms to invest in such enhancements has varied 14 . Some would rather hoard cash or buy back their own shares 15 spend it on more efficient machinery or information technology. Yet there are 16 that leading industrial firms are starting to increase their capital spending, says Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research Partners, a research outfit. In particular, he has noticed firms investing in "debottlenecking" which, 17 its name suggests, means removing hold-ups in production processes, sometimes with an additional production line. 18 short, the recession has forced American firms to become more muscular. This should help them 19 when the good times realm. It should also give them an edge 20 foreign rivals.

单选题For many years, people believed that the brain, like the body, rested during sleep. After all, we are rendered unconscious by sleep. Perhaps, it was thought, the brain just needs to stop thinking for a few hours every day. Wrong. During sleep, our brain--the organ that directs us to sleep—is itself extraordinarily active. And much of that activity helps the brain to learn, to remember and to make connections. It wasn"t so long ago that the regretful joke in research circles was that everyone knew sleep had something to do with memory except for the people who study sleep and the people who study memory. Then, in 1994, Israeli researchers reported that the average performance for a group of people on a memory test improved when the test was repeated after a break of many hours—during which some subjects slept and others did not. In 2000, a Harvard team demonstrated that this improvement occurred only during sleep. There are several different types of memory—including declarative (fact-based information), episodic (events from your life) and procedural (how to do something)—and researchers have designed ways to test each of them. In almost every case, whether the test involves remembering pairs of words, tapping numbered keys in a certain order or figuring out the rules in a weather-prediction game, "sleeping on it" after first learning the task improves performance. It"s as if our brains squeeze in some extra practice time while we"re asleep. This isn"t to say that we can"t form memories when we"re awake. If someone tells you his name, you don"t need to fall asleep to remember it. But sleep will make it more likely that you do. Sleep-deprivation experiments have shown that a tired brain has a difficult time capturing memories of all sorts. Interestingly, sleep deprivation is more likely to cause us to forget information associated with positive emotion than information linked to negative emotion. This could explain, at least in part, why sleep deprivation can trigger depression in some people: memories stained with negative emotions are more likely than positive ones to "stick" in the sleep-deprived brain. Sleep also seems to be the time when the brain"s two memory systems—the hippocampus and the neocortex—"talk" with one other. Experiences that become memories are laid down first in the hippocampus, eliminating whatever is underneath. If a memory is to be retained, it must be shipped from the hippocampus to a place where it will endure the neocortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain where higher thinking takes place. Unlike the hippocampus, the neocortex is a master at weaving the old with the new. And partly because it keeps incoming information at bay, sleep is the best time for the "undistracted" hippocampus to shuttle memories to the neocortex, and for the neocortex to link them to related memories.

单选题 It's a safe bet that David Joyce knows more than you did when you were his birth age. That's not hard, since what you knew back then was pretty much nothing at all. You knew warmth, you knew darkness, you knew a sublime, drifting peace. You had been conceived 29 weeks earlier, and if you were like most people, you had 11 weeks to go before you reached your fully formed 40. It was only then that you'd emerge into the storm of stimuli that is the world. No such luck for David. He was born Jan. 28—well shy of his April 16 due date—in an emergency cesarean (剖腹产的) section after his mother had begun bleeding heavily. He weighed 2 lb. 11 oz., or 1,200g, and was just 15 in. (38cm) tall. An American Girl doll is 3 in. (8cm) taller. Immediately, he began learning a lot of things—about bright lights and cold hands, needle sticks and loud noises. He learned what it feels like to be hungry, to be frightened, to be unable to breathe. What all this meant was that if David wanted to stay alive, he'd have to work hard at it, and he was. Take drinking from a bottle—which he had never tried until a morning in late March, at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. David had spent every day of his then seven-week life there, in the company of 58 other very fragile babies being looked after by a round-the-clock SWAT team of nearly 300 nutritionists, pharmacologists, pulmonary specialists, surgeons, nurses and dietitians and, for when the need arises, a pair of chaplains. Under their care, he had grown to 18.1 in (46cm) and weighed 5lb. 11.5 oz. (2594g), nourished by breast milk from his mother, which was fed to him through a nasogastric tube (鼻胃管) threaded through his nose to his stomach. David's father and mother live 90 minutes away in Randolph, Wis. They had been at the hospital every day after work for 51 days straight at that point—a three-hour round-trip—to spend a few more hours with David.

单选题Even in traditional offices, "the lingua franca of corporate America has gotten much more emotional and much more right-brained than it was 20 years ago," said Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn. She started spinning off examples. "If you and I parachuted back to Fortune 500 companies in 1990, we would see much less frequent use of terms like journey, mission, passion . There were goals, there were strategies, there were objectives, but we didn"t talk about energy ; we didn"t talk about passion ." Koehn pointed out that this new era of corporate vocabulary is very "team"-oriented—and not by coincidence. "Let"s not forget sports—in male-dominated corporate America, it"s still a big deal. It"s not explicitly conscious; it"s the idea that I"m a coach, and you"re my team, and we"re in this together. There are lots and lots of CEOs in very different companies, but most think of themselves as coaches and this is their team and they want to win." These terms are also intended to infuse work with meaning—and, as Rakesh Khurana, another professor, points out, increase allegiance to the firm. "You have the importation of terminology that historically used to be associated with non-profit organizations and religious organizations, terms like vision, values, passion , and purpose," said Khurana. This new focus on personal fulfillment can help keep employees motivated amid increasingly loud debates over work-life balance . The "mommy wars" of the 1990s are still going on today, prompting arguments about why women still can"t have it all and books like Sheryl Sandberg"s Lean In , whose title has become a buzzword in its own right. Terms like unplug, offline, life-hack, bandwidth , and capacity are all about setting boundaries between the office and the home. But if your work is your "passion," you"ll be more likely to devote yourself to it, even if that means going home for dinner and then working long after the kids are in bed. But this seems to be the irony of office speak: Everyone makes fun of it, but managers love it, companies depend on it, and regular people willingly absorb it. As a linguist once said, "You can get people to think it"s nonsense at the same time that you buy into it." In a workplace that"s fundamentally indifferent to your life and its meaning, office speak can help you figure out how you relate to your work—and how your work defines who you are.

单选题According to a survey, which was based on the responses of over 188,000 students, today"s traditional-age college freshmen are "more materialistic and less altruistic" than at any time in the 17 years of the poll Not surprising in these hard times, the student"s major objective "is to be financially well off. Less important than ever is developing a meaningful philosophy of life." It follows then that today the most popular course is not literature or history but accounting. Interest in teaching, social service and the "altruistic" fields is at a low. On the other hand, enrollment in business programs, engineering and computer science is way up. That"s no surprise either. A friend of mine (a sales representative for a chemical company) was making twice the salary of her college instructors her first year on the job—even before she completed her two-year associate degree. While it"s true that we all need a career, it is equally true that our civilization has accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge in fields far removed from our own and that we are better for our understanding of these other contributions-be they scientific or artistic. It is equally true that, in studying the diverse wisdom of others, we learn how to think. More important, perhaps, education teaches us to see the connections between things, as well as to see beyond our immediate needs. Weekly we read of unions who went on strike for higher wages, only to drive their employer out of business. No company; no job. How shortsighted in the long run! But the most important argument for a broad education is that in studying the accumulated wisdom of the ages, we improve our moral sense. I saw a cartoon recently which shows a group of businessmen looking puzzled as they sit around a conference table; one of them is talking on the intercom: "Miss Baxter," he says, "could you please send in someone who can distinguish right from wrong?" From the long-term point of view, that"s what education really ought to be about.

单选题 In the past, American colleges and universities were created to serve a dual purpose to advance learning and to offer a chance to become familiar with bodies of knowledge already discovered to those who wished it. To create and to impart, these were the distinctive features of American higher education prior to the most recent, disorderly decades of the twentieth century. The successful institution of higher learning had never been one whose mission could be defined in terms of providing vocational skills or as a strategy for resolving societal problems. Another purpose has now been assigned to the mission of American colleges and universities. Institutions of higher learning—public or private—commonly face the challenge of defining their programs in such a way as to contribute to the service of the community. This service role has various applications. Most common are programs to meet the demands of regional employment markets, to provide opportunities for upward social and economic mobility, to achieve racial, ethnic, or social integration, or more generally to produce "productive" as compared to "educated" graduates. Regardless of its precise definition, the idea of a service-university has won acceptance within the academic community. One need only be reminded of the change in language describing the two-year college to appreciate the new value currently being attached to the concept of a service-related university. The traditional two-year college has shed its {{U}}pejorative{{/U}} "junior" college label and is generally called a "community college", a clearly value-laden expression representing the latest commitment in higher education. Even the doctoral degree, long recognized as a required "union card" in the academic world, has come under severe criticism as the pursuit of learning for its own sake and the accumulation of knowledge without immediate application to the professor's classroom duties. The idea of a college or university that performs a triple function— communicating knowledge to students, expanding the content of various disciplines, and interacting in a direct relationship with society—has been the most important change in higher education in recent years. This novel development, however, is often overlooked. Educators have always been familiar with those parts of the two-year college curriculum that have a "service" or vocational orientation. It is important to know this. But some commentaries on American postsecondary education tend to underplay the impact of the attempt of colleges and universities to relate to, if not resolve, the problems of society. What's worse, they obscure a fundamental question posed by the service-university—what is higher education supposed to do?

单选题If there is one word I"m rapidly growing tired of, it"s passion. Not the sex and love type, but the workplace kind. Irately, it seems, I keep hearing career counselors advising the unemployed to identify and develop their passion. Then they need to turn that passion into paid work and presto! They"re now in a career they love. I know I"m being somewhat flippant, but I do wonder if passion is being oversold. Are we falling into a trap of believing that our work, and indeed, our lives, should always be fascinating and all-consuming? Are we somehow lacking if we"re bored at times or buried under routine tasks or failing to challenge ourselves at every turn? In these economic times, fewer of us are worried about being fulfilled and more of us are concerned about simply being paid. But as switching jobs and careers becomes increasingly common, as whole professions are disappearing, we"re more frequently forced to ask ourselves what we want to do with the rest of our lives. That"s where passion comes in. Professor Wart, who co-wrote the book "The Joy of Work? Jobs, Happiness and You", mentioned three factors for the workplace: supportive supervision, job security and the possibility of promotion, and fair treatment. He acknowledges that it is not easy to attain these goals, especially now. But it can still make a difference in your job satisfaction, he says, to examine what your strengths and needs are, and try, as much as possible, to match your work with those attributes. It doesn"t always mean getting a new job or career, but perhaps changing some things in your current employment. It would probably be better, Professor Warr suggested, to think less in terms of passion, and the inflated sense of drama that can go with that, and more in terms of job satisfaction or finding meaning in your work. The drive for passion or excitement, or whatever you call it, is deep in our genes. We feel good when the neurotransmitter dopamine is activated, and that"s what happens when we accomplish a given goal, said Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University. In fact, playing video games may not seem to be much of a passion, but if you"ve ever watched teenage boys going at it, their intensity and obliviousness to the outside world is the embodiment of flow. And that"s no accident. So maybe searching for a passion is not so bad. But it is also important to remember that there is no one way to find it, and someone else"s passion may be your idea of drudgery. And sometimes life—and work—is simply going to be putting one foot in front of the other. Or as Professor Warr said, "On the way to happiness, there must be unhappiness."

单选题Should the United States end its three quarters-of-a-century-long prohibition on drugs? Outraged by the seemingly endless deaths, violence, crime, corruption, border searches, and social costs generated by world drug trafficking, a growing number of public officials and scholars are arguing that it is time to consider the possibilities of selective drug legalization. The legalization argument rests on the proposition that drug laws—not drugs themselves—cause the greatest harm to society. If drugs were legal, the argument goes, drug black markets worth tens of billions of dollars would evaporate, the empires of drug traffickers would collapse, and addicts would stop committing street crimes to support their habit. But legalization would not only take the profit out of drug trafficking. Presumably police officers, courts, and prisons would no longer be overwhelmed with drug cases. And the nation would be spared the poisoning strains on its relations with important and otherwise friendly Latin American and Asian nations. Most advocates of legalization do no tolerate, let alone want to encourage, drug use. Rather they believe that making drugs a criminal matter has made the problem worse. They acknowledge that the nation would still have massive public health problems on its hands, but it would not be compounded by a big crime problem, a big corruption problem, and a big foreign policy problem. Government could also tax the sale of drugs and use the incomes to finance drug prevention and treatment programs. And civil libertarians cite another benefit: an end to violations of basic individual freedom, such as drug testing, that derive from excessive zeal for winning the drug war. In any event, proponents of legalization say the war on drugs is doomed. So long as there is demand for cocaine, heroin, and other drugs, someone is going to supply them, legally or illegally. Opponents of legalization regard the abandonment of antidrug laws as a frightening and dangerous policy, one morally equivalent to giving societal approval to what currently is taboo behaviour. With the legal stigma gone, opponents say, more law-abiding citizens would be tempted to experiment with drugs. Moreover, highly damaging substances would be cheaper, purer, and more widely available, thus causing a sharp jump in addiction, hospital costs, overdose deaths, family and social violence, and property damage. Now, at least, the expense and danger of purchasing illegal drugs limit the amount most people use. There is little information available that sheds light on what would happen to American society if cocaine and heroin were legalized. Indeed, the idea of legalization has been so far outside the realm of popular acceptance that virtually no financing of research into its potential effects has taken place. Of interest, however, is the fact that both advocates and opponents of drug legalization look to the nation"s experience with Prohibition as providing evidence for their respective cases.

单选题 At noon on May 4th the carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere around the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii hit 400 parts per million (ppm). The average for the day was 399.73 and researchers at the observatory expect this figure, too, to exceed 400 in the next few days. The last time such values prevailed on Earth was in the Pliocene epoch (上新世) 4m years ago, when jungles covered northern Canada. There have already been a few readings above 400ppm elsewhere—those taken over the Arctic Ocean in May 2012, for example—but they were exceptional. Mauna Loa is the benchmark (标准) for CO2 measurement because Hawaii is so far from large concentrations of humanity. The Arctic, by contrast, gets a lot of polluted air from Europe and North America. The concentration of CO2 peaks in May, falls until October as plant growth in the northern hemisphere's summer absorbs the gas, and then goes up again during winter and spring. This year the average reading for the whole month will probably also reach 400ppm, according to Pieter Tans, who is in charge of monitoring at Mauna Loa, and the seasonally adjusted annual figure will reach 400ppm in the spring of 2014 or 2015. Mauna Loa's readings are one of the world's longest-running measurement series. The first, made in March 1958, was 315ppm. That means they have risen by a quarter in 55 years. In the early 1960s they were going up by 0.7ppm a year. The rate of increase is now 2.1ppm—three times as fast—reflecting the relentless rise in green-house-gas emissions. As a rule of thumb, CO2 concentrations will have to be restricted to about 450ppm if global warming is to be kept below 2 degree. Because CO2 stays in the atmosphere for decades, artificial emissions of the gas would have to be cut immediately, and then fall to zero by 2075, in order to achieve 450ppm. There seems no chance of that. Emissions are still going up. At current rates, the Mauna Loa reading will rise above 450ppm in 2037.

单选题 Education is one of the key words of our time. A man, without an education, many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. Convinced of the importance of education, modem states "invest" in institutions of learning to get back "interest" in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, is punctuated by textbooks—those purchasable wells of wisdom—what would civilization be like without its benefits? So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and defendants, marriages and births; but our spiritual outlook would be different. We would lay less stress on "facts and figures" and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow citizens. If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of "college" imaginable. Among the people whom we like to call savages all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all; it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life. It is the ideal condition of the "equal start" which only our most progressive forms of modem education try to reach again. In primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding on all. There are no "illiterates"—if the term can be applied to peoples without a script—while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, in France in 1806, and in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of "civilized" nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the "happy few" during the past centuries. Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. All are entitled to an equal start. There is none of the hurry that, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. There, a child grows up under the ever-present attention of his parents; therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no "juvenile delinquency (违法行为)". No necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, and no father is confronted with his inability to "buy" an education for his child.

单选题One major reason for Germany"s high unemployment and the evident weakness of business investment is the nature of the tax system, which tends to discourage both individual effort and investment. Nominal corporate tax rates are, in fact, very high and it is these rates that potential investors primarily look at. However, the actual burden borne by companies is not as great as it might seem, because the tax base is fairly narrow. This combination in itself tends to encourage tax avoidance at both the personal and corporate levels. Moreover, by international standards, firms in Germany are still taxed quite heavily. A reform of corporate taxation, therefore, should start by reducing tax rates, cutting subsidies and broadening the taxable base. The resulting positive impact on growth would be reinforced if there were also a substantial easing of the net burden. How do the current plans for a reform of corporate taxation measure up to these goals? The overall tax burden on companies is to be brought down significantly, with the ceiling of 35% being set. To this end, a dramatic reduction in the corporate tax on retained earnings is planned. The related drop in revenues is to be offset by changes in the rules governing tax breaks. An approach incorporating these basic features would be a welcome step. If realized in its present form, it should ensure that the objective of making tax rates more attractive for businesses is achieved. At the same time, however, it would be unfortunate if an excessive broadening of the taxable base made it impossible to attain the equally important goal of providing relief. Comprehensive tax reform is needed in Germany to spur investment and to create new jobs, thus putting the economy on a higher growth path. The drop in revenues caused by the tax relief granted to both companies and households would, in time, be at least partially offset by the larger volume of tax receipts produced by economic growth. The gaps that remained should primarily be closed through spending cuts. If measure of this sort proved inadequate, then, as a last resort, an increase in indirect taxes could perhaps be considered.

单选题Some desert animals can survive the very strong summer heat and dryness because they have very unusual characteristics. The camel, for example, can 1 an increase in the temperature of its body and its blood of 9℃. In addition, it can drink an enormous 2 of water at one time, then store 3 water in its red blood cells and other parts of its body to 4 its needs for two weeks or more. The kangaroo rat, on the other hand, 5 all the water it needs from water that it produces during 6 However, most animals need to 7 a fairly constant body temperature, and will die if it 8 more than 5℃. 9 , they need to find some ways to 10 the strong sun rays. Nor can many animals either store or 11 water in their bodies, as the camel and kangaroo rat 12 . So they must find ways to 13 water loss from their bodies to the lowest degree. Because very few desert animals can 14 the strong rays, the temperature, and the evaporation rate 15 a typical summer"s day, most of them are 16 during the night. Only after the sun has set does the desert come fully to life. The night is relatively cool, and the darkness provides 17 , not only from the sun, but also from other animals and from the birds. So the coming of darkness is the signal 18 the large majority of animals and insects 19 their search for water and food. When morning comes, most of them seek 20 again. Many go underground; nearly all find somewhere shady where they can avoid the sun rays.

单选题About six years ago I was eating lunch in a restaurant in New York City when a woman and a young boy sat down at the next table. I couldn"t help overhearing parts of their conversation. At one point the woman asked: "So, how have you been?" And the boy—who could not have been more than seven or eight years old—replied: "Frankly, I"ve been feeling a little depressed lately." This incident stuck in my mind because it confirmed my growing belief that children are changing. As far as I can remember, my friends and I didn"t find out we were "depressed" until we were in high school. The evidence of a change in children has increased steadily in recent years. Children don"t seem childlike anymore. Children speak more like adults, dress more like adults and behave more like adults than they used to. Whether this is good or bad is difficult to say, but it certainly is different. Childhood as it once was no longer exists. Why? Human development is based not only on innate biological states, but also on patterns of access to social knowledge. Movement from one social role to another usually involves learning the secrets of the new status. Children have always been taught adult secrets, but slowly and in stages: traditionally, we tell sixth graders things we keep hidden from fifth graders. In the last 30 years, however, a secret-revelation machine has been installed in 98 percent of American homes. It is called television. Television passes information, and indiscriminately, to all viewers alike, be they children or adults. Unable to resist the temptation, many children turn their attention from printed texts to the less challenging, more vivid moving pictures. Communication through print, as a matter of fact, allows for a great deal of control over the social information to which children have access. Reading and writing involve a complex code of symbols that must be memorized and practices. Children must read simple books before they can read complex materials.

单选题Like many Americans, Mark Seery watched the Virginia Tech School shooting unfold on the cable news networks in April 2007. It wasn"t just the catastrophe that disturbed him—it was how some psychologists were advising the campus community to respond in the wake of the devastating tragedy. "There"s a sense that"s very much alive within the professional community that if people don"t talk about what they"re feeling, and try to suppress it that somehow it will only rebound down the road and make things worse," says Seery, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo. That, says Seery, is one of many examples of situations in which the first response to a tragedy"s psychological ramifications is to encourage victims and bystanders to talk about their emotions in the wake of the event. That idea is constantly reinforced by a battery of television therapists who harp on the importance of sharing your feelings. But is that really the best medicine? Seery"s new research offers an alternative to that philosophy. His work suggests that those who do not reveal their feelings in the wake of a collective trauma turn out just fine, if not better, than those who do. Seery used an online survey to query a national sample about their reactions to the 9/11 attacks, beginning on the day itself. The respondents were divided into two groups: those who said they were initially unwilling to talk about their feelings, and the rest. At the end of the two-year survey period, those who decided not to share their feelings reported fewer related mental and physical problems. That effect was even more pronounced among those who lived close to the tragedy. Seery also found an interesting correlation between the level of sharing and well-being. Participants could decide how much they wanted to report about their feelings on the survey. Seery found that there was a correlation between those who wrote the lengthier, more in-depth descriptions of their feelings and those who had worse mental and physical statuses. Does the study turn conventional wisdom completely on its head, suggesting that it"s better to stay quiet in the aftermath of a traumatic event? Not quite. Seery explains that the respondents who felt the need to divulge their emotions started off in a worse mental and physical state in the first place, likely a bit more susceptible to the stress of a collective traumatic event. "The people who were talking were probably more distressed by the event," says Seery. "The initial distress motivated them to want to have some place to talk about it... whereas people who chose not to talk were less likely to say that they were trying to cope." The take-home message, then, is that there is no one right way to react to traumatic events; there is a wide range of normal and healthy responses to tragedy.

单选题The State of North Carolina is set to execute a man for two murders he may not have committed. Had a jury heard all of the evidence in David Junior Brown"s case, he likely would not be contemplating death by lethal injection on November 19, 1999. The deaths of Shelly Diane Chalflinch and her daughter, Christine, surely deserve justice, but justice is not served by the execution of a man whom prosecutors cheated of the opportunity to prove his innocence. Concerned citizens, international human rights organizations, and religious leaders throughout the state are calling on Governor Jim Hunt to grant clemency. Brown was arrested in Pinehurst, N.C., on August 28, 1980, after the medical examiner found Brown"s ring in Ms. Chalflinch"s body. After the sensational discovery of the ring, law enforcement authorities effectively ended their investigation, ignoring or not pursuing evidence and leads that raise serious doubts about Brown"s guilt. Those doubts cry out for Governor Hunt, who has never granted clemency to a death row inmate, to do so in Brown"s case. The US Supreme Court has identified the Governor"s clemency power as an important safeguard for innocent persons condemned to death who for procedural reasons might be beyond the reach of the Court"s ability to protect. The Court writes, "Clemency is deeply rooted in our Anglo-American tradition of law, and is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted. " The criminal justice system and the clemency process are not perfect: two credible researchers, Hugo Adam Bedau and Michael L. Radelet, have identified at least 23 innocent people who were executed in the US in this century. The Governor should also consider the role racism played in Brown"s prosecution. Brown is African American; his jury was all white. In February 1999, nearly 20 years since the trial, the state was ordered to turn over all of its files. In the state"s files was a trial note, written by an assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, re{erring to "two nigger hairs". At 8:30 a. m. Tuesday, August 26, 1980, the bodies of Ms. Chalflinch and her 9-year-old daughter, who had been stabbed repeatedly, were discovered, and two days later Brown was arrested. The jury never heard evidence that raises not only serious questions about the prosecution"s theory of the murder, but evidence that in some cases directly contradicts it. It is impossible to dispute the assertion that Brown did not receive a fair trial. It is also certain that there are grave doubts about his guilt. The murders of Diane and Christine Chalflinch were horrific and incomprehensible. The execution of an innocent man, in an attempt to acknowledge their family"s and society"s devastation and fear, would only compound the horror.

单选题When we worry about who might be spying on our private lives, we usually think about the Federal agents. But the private sector outdoes the government every time. It"s Linda Tripp, not the FBI, who is facing charges under Maryland"s laws against secret telephone taping. It"s our banks, not the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), that pass our private financial data to telemarketing firms. Consumer activists are pressing Congress for better privacy laws without much result so far. The legislators lean toward letting business people track our financial habits virtually at will. As an example of what"s going on, consider U.S. Bancorp, which was recently sued for deceptive practices by the state of Minnesota. According to the lawsuit, the bank supplied a telemarketer called MemberWorks with sensitive customer data such as names, phone numbers, bank account and credit-card numbers, Social Security numbers, account balances and credit limits. With these customer lists in hand, MemberWorks started dialing for dollars—selling dental plans, videogames, computer software and other products and services. Customers who accepted a "free trial offer" had 30 days to cancel. If the deadline passed, they were charged automatically through their bank or credit-card accounts. U.S. Bancorp collected a share of the revenues. Customers were doubly deceived, the lawsuit claims. They didn"t know that the bank was giving account numbers to MemberWorks. And if customers asked, they were led to think the answer was no. The state sued MemberWorks separately for deceptive selling. The company defends that it did anything wrong. For its part, U.S. Bancorp settled without admitting any mistakes. But it agreed to stop exposing its customers to nonfinancial products sold by outside firms. A few top banks decided to do the same. Many other banks will still do business with MemberWorks and similar firms. And banks will still be mining data from your account in order to sell you financial products, including things of little value, such as credit insurance and credit-card protection plans. You have almost no protection from businesses that use your personal accounts for profit. For example, no federal law shields" transaction and experience" information—mainly the details of your bank and credit-card accounts. Social Security numbers are for sale by private firms. They"ve generally agreed not to sell to the public. But to businesses, the numbers are an open book. Self-regulation doesn"t work. A firm might publish a privacy protection policy, but who enforces it? Take U.S. Bancorp again. Customers were told, in writing, that "all personal information you supply to us will be considered confidential." Then it sold your data to MemberWorks. The bank even claims that it doesn"t "sell" your data at all. It merely "shares" it and reaps a profit. Now you know.

单选题Of all things in the world, I most dislike filling up forms; in fact, I have a 1 horror of it. Applying for a driving license, 2 for an evening course, booking a holiday abroad—everything nowadays seems to 3 giving information about one"s personal life and habits that has little or nothing to do with the matter 4 hand. When I apply for a job, it may be of some 5 interest to a 6 employer to learn that I collect stamps or had measles as a child, but why 7 he conceivably wants to know that my father was a tobacconist who died in 1988? The authorities who 8 one to fill up forms, frequently demand answers to questions that one would 9 to put to one"s intimate friends. The worst of it is that, when 10 with such questions, I find my mind goes blank. Have I ever suffered from a serious illness? My mother always 11 me I was "delicate". Do I suffer from any personal defects? Well, I wear 12 lenses and my upper teeth are not my own, but perhaps the word "defects" 13 to my character. Am I supposed to 14 that I like gambling, and find it difficult to get up in the morning? 15 of them are true. Of all, I think job applications are the 16 . "Education"—previous experience—post held— give 17 ...Terrified by the awful warning about giving false 18 which appears at the bottom of the form, I 19 to remember what exams I passed and how long I worked for what firms. However hard I try, there always seems to be a year or two for which I cannot satisfactorily account and which I am certain, if left 20 , will give the impression that I was in prison or engaged in some occupation too dubious to mention.

单选题For years, sports fanatics have turned to statistics to help them gauge the relative strength or weaknesses of different teams, though some have been more amenable to the process than others. Baseball and football, for example, seem to have a statistic for every action that occurs on the field of play, with different players ranked and rated by their numbers. International football, aka soccer on the other hand has generally defied such attempts due to their being far fewer things to measure with the sport and the continuity of play. That may change however, as mathematicians Javier López Pe ? a and Hugo Touchette of University College and Queen Mary University respectively, have applied network theory to the unique style of play of the European Championship 2012 victor, Spain. And as they describe in the paper they"ve uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, the graphic that results gives some clues as to why the team is considered one of the best of all time. Anyone who has watched the Spanish team knows that their style of play is different from other teams. It"s been given a name by fans: tiki-taka. It"s all about quick passes and exquisite teamwork. But trying to describe what the team does only leads to superlatives, which don"t really get to the heart of the matter. To help, Pe ? a and Touchette turned to network theory, which makes sense, because soccer is played as a network of teammates working efficiently together. The two used a simple drawing depicting players as nodes and their relationship to one another on the team, the amount of passing that is done between them, the way it is done and to whom, as lines between the nodes. What shows up in the drawing first, is what everyone already knows, namely, that the team passes the ball among its players a lot. More than a lot actually. In one match during 2010"s World Cup between Spain and the Netherlands, the Spanish players out-passed their opponent 417 to 266. The drawing also highlights the fact that two players on the team are "well connected" i.e. easy for others to get to, versus just one for the opponent. In many ways the graphic confirms what most suspect, that Spain wins more because it relies more on precise teamwork rather than the special skills of one or two superstars.

单选题The Bible is the great work of the religious literature and was in process of formation for about twelve hundred years. The Bible is composed of 1 , legend, biography, genealogies, ethics, law, proverbial wisdom, sermons, prophesy, lyric poetry, hymns and theology. It is not only 2 a book but a 3 of books. The Bible 4 two major 5 , the Old Testament and the New Testament . The Old Testament was written originally almost entirely 6 Hebrew with a little Aramaic, from the eleventh to the second century BC. It is the national 7 literature of the people of Israel. The New Testament was written in Greek from about 40 AD to 150. It 8 the earliest documents 9 the life, teaching, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and the establishment of the 10 church. The 11 work is from the first book Genesis, to the last, Revelations. The 12 and richness of the Bible 13 literature 14 the Old Testament are unparalleled. In the literary 15 , poetry, The Bible is 16 The Bible is an assemblage of literature. It is in a unique 17 among the world"s books 18 the richness of its 19 and spiritual values. It can be called the 20 of books.