Ever since Antarctic exploration began, men entering on the frozen continent have take

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1. Contemporary technological reporting is full of notions of electronic communities in which people interact across regions or entire continents. Could such "virtual communities" eventually replace geographically localized social relations? There are reasons to suspect that, as the foundation for a democratic society, virtual communities will remain seriously deficient. 2.For example, electronic communication filters out and alters mush of the subtlety, warmth, contextuality, and so no that seem important to fully human, morally engaged interaction. That is one reason many Japanese and European executives persist in considering face-to-face encounter essential to their business dealings and why many engineers, too, prefer face-to-face encounter essential to their business dealings and why many engineers, too, prefer face-to-face interaction and find it essential to their creativity. 3. Even hypothetical new media (e. g. advanced "virtual realities"), conveying a dimensionally richer sensory display, are unlikely to prove fully satisfactory substitutes for face-to-face interaction. Electronic media decompose holistic experience into analytically distinct sensory dimensions and then transmit the latter. At the receiving end, people can resynthesize the resulting parts into a coherent experience, but the new whole is invariably different and, is some fundamental sense less, than the original. Second, there is evidence that screen-based technologies (such as TV and computer monitors) are prone to induce democratically unpromising psychopathologies, ranging from escapism to passivity, obsession, confusing watching with doing, withdrawal from other forms of social engagement, or distancing from moral consequences. Third, a strength—but also a drawback—to a virtual community is that any member can exit instantly. Indeed, an entire virtual community can decline or perish in the wink of an eye. 4. To the extent that membership in virtual communities proves less stable than that obtaining in other forms of democratic community, or that social relations prove less thick (i. e. less embedded in a context filled with shared meaning and history), there could be adverse consequences for individual psychological and moral development. 5. no matter with whom we communicate nor how far our imaginations fly, our bodies—and hence many material interdependencies with other people—always remain locally situated. Thus it seems morally hazardous to commune with far-flung tele-mates, if that means growing indifferent to physical neighbors. It is not encouraging to observe just such indifference in Californias Silicon Valley, one of the words most "highly wired" regions.

ts a surprising number of experiments on animals some 3 million a year. America appears to use fewer animals—just 1.1 million a year, according to official statistics,but that is an illusion. Unlike Britains government, American does not think rats and mice worth counting. Japan and China have even less comprehensive data than America, and animals used in research in those two countries are not protected to the same extent that they are in the West. Even so, a-cademic centers supporting alternatives to animal testing have emerged in both places in recent years. In July China issued its first set of guidelines governing the use of animals in research. In an ideal world, there would be no animal testing. It is expensive and can be of dubious scientific value, since different species often react differently to the same procedure. That is why many researchers are working on ways of reducing the number of animal experiments needed and of making those that still happen more effective. However, the transition is proved easier for some types of experiments than for others, as a group of researchers in the field discussed at the sixth World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, held last week in Tokyo. The most important message from the congress was that things are going in the right direction. The number of animals used in experiments has fallen by half in the past 30 years, at least in those countries that record such things. There has also been a shift in the sort of animals used. Most of those employed today are rodents rather than dogs, cats, rabbits and monkeys.(That public opinion generally welcomes, this is, however, a good example of "cutist" prejudice for one specy over another: there is no reason to believe that rodents suffer less than other mammals.)Also, of the experiments that are still conducted, the majority are now concerned with developing and testing medicine rather than, say, checking how toxic cosmetics are. Of the animals involved each year in experiments that have to be reported to the European Commission, about 45% are used for medical and veterinary purposes and another 35% for basic biomedical research.

Which of the following is "an illusion"?

A．Britain protects animals used in research better than Japan and China.

B．China has issued guidelines governing the use of animals in research.

C．Japan has less comprehensive data on animal testing than America.

D．America conducts fewer experiments on animals than Britain.

ers can use two related research designs: longitudinal and cross-sectional. A longitudinal study is one that measures a behavior. or a characteristic of an individual over a period of time, perhaps decades. An example of such a study is the Berkeley Growth Study begun in 1928 by Nancy Bayley. The study focused on a group of 74 white, middle-class newborns. As they grew older, extensive measures of their intellectual, personality, and motor development were recorded. The subjects were studied for more than thirty years. The longitudinal research design is a powerful technique for seeking understandings of the effects of early experiences on later development. Also, differences in stability of behaviors or characteristics at different ages can be determined. Longitudinal studies, however, are expensive to conduct, time-consuming, and heavily contingent on the patience and persistence of the researchers. The findings of a longitudinal study may be jeopardized by relocation of subjects to another part of the country and by boredom or irritation at repeated testing. Another disadvantage is that society changes from one time to another and the subjects participating in the study reflect to some degree such changes. The methods of study or the questions guiding the researchers may also change from one time to another. If properly conducted, however, longitudinal studies can produce useful, direct information about development. A cross-sectional study is one in which subjects of differing ages are selected and compared on a specific behavior. or characteristic. They are alike with respect to socioeconomic status, sex, or educational level. For example, a researcher may be interested in looking at changes in intelligence over a thirty-year period. Three groups of subjects—ages ten, twenty and thirty, may be selected and tested. Conclusions are drawn from the test data. The cross-sectional research design has the clear advantage of being less expensive to conduct and certainly less time-consuming. The major disadvantage is that different individuals who make up the study sample have not been observed over time. No information about past influences on development or about age-related changes is secured. Like longitudinal studies, the cross-sectional methods cannot erase the generational influence that exists when subjects studied are born at different time. Psychologists are now beginning to use an approach that combines longitudinal and cross-sectional research methods.

Which of the following is NOT one of the disadvantages of a longitudinal research?

A．The subjects may become irritated at repeated testing.

B．The participants in the study may not stay in one place for many years.

C．The behavior. of a subject in the study may be measured continuously for many years.

D．Social changes may be reflected in the behaviors of the subjects participating in the study.

that people wanted to invest," said Martin Shell, Stanfords vice president for development.【M2】"This is an unbelievably generous response from unbelievably philanthropic set of alumni, parents, and friends. " 【M3】Harvard ranked two in fund-raising last year with $595 million. 【M4】National, donations from alumni rose 18. 3 percent from 2005. according to figures released yesterday by the Council for Aid to Education.【M5】Alumni donations account about 30 percent of giving to higher education.【M6】Giving from other groups, such as corporations and foundations, increased by much small amounts. 【M7】Survey director Ann Kaplan said the strong economics played a role, but universities also were asking more aggressively as part of formal fund-raising campaigns.

【M1】

p to the seriousness of global warming. What is not so widely appreciated is that unless the US government acts urgently and decisively, this problem could very quickly get very much worse. For reasons both economic and political coal is poised to be the fuel of choice in the coming decades as the US weans itself off foreign oil. Coal combustion generates half the USs electricity and releases about 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. If present trends continue, these figures will more than double by 2050, much to the detriment of the worlds climate. Without an alternative fuel, the only solution is to capture and store carbon dioxide from burning coal. Overcoming the engineering obstacles in the way of large-scale sequestration of carbon dioxide will be hard enough, but the bigger challenge is one of political will. US companies as yet have no incentive to capture carbon emissions. While moves at state and congressional levels are pushing in the right direction, the ambiguity in the administrations policy is counterproductive. It is time for the US government to put a price on carbon emissions so utilities that invest in technologies to reduce carbon emissions will see their efforts rewarded: Such a move would not only reduce the risks associated with global warming, but also go a long way to restoring Americas green credentials.

According to the author, what adds to the seriousness of global warming?

A．The American public was ignorant of the problem.

B．The American government is doing nothing to deal with the problem.

C．The US will choose coal as the major fuel which will have large carbon emissions.

D．There is no alternative fuel other than foreign oil which has large carbon emissions.

in industrialization, especially in the development of mining, canals, and railways. It now shrewdly associated itself with the new wave of commercial expansion: most banks and insurance companies had a lord to add tone to the managerial board. It also shored up its fortunes by astute marriages, notably with the new aristocracy of wealth in the United States; the best-known example was the marriage of the duke of Marlborough to Consuelo Vanderbilt. By these means, many of the great aristocratic estates were preserved despite agricultural decline. But they were playthings as well as engines of wealth, and came to be treated as such. The aristocracy came to be known to the urban population chiefly through their representation in the popular press and magazines as men and women of leisure: racing, hunting, shooting, and fishing in the country, gambling and attending the season in London. In a population for which leisure was becoming increasingly important, this did not make the aristocracy unpopular.

In the second sentence of this passage, "had a lord to add tone to the managerial board" means that____.

A．the banks and insurance companies would hire a lord on the board to give advice to their management

B．having lords involved in the management gave the banks or companies a very good public image

C．lords worked for the banks and insurance companies to bring in more profits

D．it had become a fashion to have a lord on the managerial board of a bank or a company

ench.This is especially true in politics. Although the Americans infuse into their legislation far more general ideas than the English,and although they strive more than the latter to adjust the practice of affairs to theory,no political bodies in the United States have ever shown so much love for general ideas as the Constituent Assembly and the Convention in France.At no time has the American people laid hold on ideas of this kind with the passionate energy of the French people in the eighteenth century,or displayed the same blind confidence in the value and absolute truth of any theory. This difference between the Americans and the French originates in several causes,but principally in the following one.The Americans are a democratic people who have always directed public affairs them-selves.The French are a democratic people who for a long time could only speculate on the best manner of conducting them.The social condition of the French led them to conceive very general ideas on the subject of government, while their political constitution prevented them from correcting those ideas by experiment and from gradually detecting their insufficiency;whereas in America the two things constantly balance and correct each other. It may seem at first sight that this is very much opposed to what I have said before,that democratic nations derive their love of theory from the very excitement of their active life.A more attentive-examination will show that there is nothing contradictory in the proposition. Men living in democratic countries eagerly lay hold of general ideas because they have but little leisure and because these ideas spare them the trouble of studying particulars.This is true,but it is only to be understood of those matters which are not the necessary and habitual subjects of their thoughts.Mer-cantile men will take up very eagerly,and without any close scrutiny,all the general ideas on philosophy, politics,science,or the arts which may be presented to them;but for such as relate to commerce,they will not receive them without inquiry or adopt them without reserve.The same thing applies to statesman with regard to general ideas in politics. If,then,there is a subject upon which a democratic people is peculiarly liable to abandon itself,blindly and extravagantly,to general ideas,the best corrective that can be used will be to make that subject a part of their daily practical occupation.They will then be compelled to enter into details,and the details will teach them the weak points of the theory This remedy may frequently be a painful one, but its effect is certain. Thus it happens that the democratic institutions which compel every citizen to take a practical part in the government moderate that excessive taste for general theories in polities which the principle of equality suggests.

According to the writer,what kinds of ideas have been favored by the French people?

A．Political ideas that can be adjusted to the practice of government

B．Concrete ideas that they believe to be truthful

C．General ideas in political affairs

D．Eighteenth century ideas

Americans,there are innumerable aspects of African life which tend to take one by surprise. The unfamiliar lies hidden everywhere,and the presence of Western culture seems merely to emphasize this unfamiliarity. Basically, the essence of our reaction to the strange,the unfamiliar,is a sense of fear. Every country contains landscapes that arouse unease-whether it be some remote Alpine valley,the wild lavender fields of Upper Province,or a lonely Norwegian fjord at twilight. But in my own experience West Africa contains more weird and eerie regions-rain-forest,mangrove swamp,parched plains of red earth-than any other place that I have seen. It is not only in the foreigner that these landscapes evoke fear. A large part of all old African religions is devoted to soothing the unknown and the unseen-evil Spirits which live in a particular tree or a particular rock,a thousand varieties of ghosts and witches,the ever-present spirits of dead ancestors or relatives. I have myself been kept awake at night in Calabar by a friend from Lagos who was convinced that the witches of the east were out to get him,or that he was about to be kidnapped and eaten. During four and a half hours in a canoe along the creeks of the Niger delta, gliding over the still and colorless water beneath an equally still and colorless but burning sky,I,too,have experienced a sense of fear,or at least a sense of awe. Except for the ticking of the little outboard engine the silence was complete. On either hand stretched the silver-white swamps of mangrove,seeming,with their awkward exposed roots,to be standing knee-deep in the water. Where the creek narrowed you could peer deep into these thickets of mangroves-vistas secret, interminable and somehow meaningless. There was no sign of life except for the shrill screech of some unseen bird. I was on my way to the ancient slaving port of Bonny,which we reached in late afternoon. Scrambling up some derelict stone steps(slithery with slime and which had managed to detach themselves from the landing-stage so that you had to jump a two-foot gap to reach wet land),I found myself in an area of black mud and tumbled blocks of stone.

There are features of Western culture which are present in West Africa_____.

A．This fact makes it easier to accept the unfamiliarity of West Africa.

B．This fact makes West Africa seem even stranger.

C．This fact makes no difference to our reaction to West Africa.

D．This fact has been greatly overemphasized.