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In Cambodia, the choice of a spouse is a complex one for the young male. It may involve not only his parents and his friends,（1）those of the young woman, but also a matchmaker. A young man can（2）  a likely spouse on his own and then ask his parents to （3）the marriage negotiations, or the young man's parents may make the choice of a spouse, giving the child little to say in the selection. （4）, a girl may veto the spouse her parents have chosen. （5）a spouse has been selected, each family investigates the other to make sure its child is marrying（6）a good family.The traditional wedding is a long and colorful affair. Formerly it lasted three days, （7）by the 1980s it more commonly lasted a day and a half. Buddhist priests offer a short sermon and （8）  prayers of blessing. Parts of the ceremony involve ritual hair cutting, （9）cotton threads soaked in holy water around the bride's and groom's wrists, and （10）a candle around a circle of happily married and respected couples to bless the （11）. Newlyweds traditionally move in with the wife's parents and may（12）with them up to a year,（13）they can build a new house nearby.Divorce is legal and easy to （14）, but not common. Divorced persons are （15）with some disapproval. Each spouse retains（16）property he or she（17）into the marriage, and jointly-acquired property is（18）equally. Divorced persons may remarry, but a gender prejudice （19）up: The divorced male doesn't have a waiting period before he can remarry（20）the woman must wait ten months.

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        France, which prides itself as the global innovator of fashion, has decided its fashion industry has lost an absolute right to define physical beauty for women. Its lawmakers gave preliminary approval last week to a law that would make it a crime to employ ultra-thin models on runways. The parliament also agreed to ban websites that “incite excessive thinness” by promoting extreme dieting.        Such measures have a couple of uplifting motives. They suggest beauty should not be defined by looks that end up impinging on health. That's a start. And the ban on ultra-thin models seems to go beyond protecting models from starving themselves to death—as some have done. It tells the fashion industry that it must take responsibility for the signal it sends women, especially teenage girls, about the social tape-measure they must use to determine their individual worth.        The bans, if fully enforced, would suggest to women (and many men) that they should not let others be arbiters of their beauty. And perhaps faintly, they hint that people should look to intangible qualities like character and intellect rather than dieting their way to size zero or wasp-waist physiques.        The French measures, however, rely too much on severe punishment to change a culture that still regards beauty as skin-deep—and bone-showing. Under the law, using a fashion model that does not meet a government-defined index of body mass could result in a $85,000 fine and six months in prison.        The fashion industry knows it has an inherent problem in focusing on material adornment and idealized body types. In Denmark, the United States, and a few other countries, it is trying to set voluntary standards for models and fashion images that rely more on peer pressure for enforcement.        In contrast to France's actions, Denmark's fashion industry agreed last month on rules and sanctions regarding the age, health, and other characteristics of models. The newly revised Danish Fashion Ethical Charter clearly states: “We are aware of and take responsibility for the impact the fashion industry has on body ideals, especially on young people.” The charter's main tool of enforcement is to deny access for designers and modeling agencies to Copenhagen Fashion Week (CFW), which is run by the Danish Fashion Institute. But in general it relies on a name-and-shame method of compliance.        Relying on ethical persuasion rather than law to address the misuse of body ideals may be the best step. Even better would be to help elevate notions of beauty beyond the material standards of a particular industry. 1.According to the first paragraph, what would happen in France?2.The phrase “impinging on” (Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to（  ）.3.Which of the following is true of the fashion industry?4.A designer is most likely to be rejected by CFW for（  ）.  5.Which of the following may be the best title of the text?

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Caravanserais were roadside inns that were built along the Silk Road in areas including China, North Africa and the Middle East. They were typically _1_ outside the walls of a city or village and were usually funded by local governments or _2_.The word “Caravanserai” is a _3_ of the Persian words “karvan”, which means a group of travelers or a caravan, and “seray”, a palace or enclosed building. The term caravan was used to _4_ groups of people who travelled together across the ancient network for safety reasons, _5_ merchants, travelers or pilgrims.From the 10th century onwards, as merchant and travel routes became more developed, the _6_ of Caravanserais increased and they served as a safe place for people to rest at night. Travelers on the Silk Road _7_ the possibility of being attacked by thieves or being _8_ to extreme weather conditions. For this reason, Caravanserais were strategically placed _9_ they could be reached in a day’s travel time.Caravanserais served as an informal _10_ point for the various people who travelled the Silk Road. _11_, those structures became important centers for cultural _12_ and interaction with travelers sharing their cultures, ideas and beliefs, _13_ talking knowledge with them, greatly _14_ the development of several civilizations.Caravanserais were also an important marketplace for commodities and _15_ in the trade of goods along the Silk Road. _16_, it was frequently the first stop for merchants looking to sell their wares and _17_ supplies for their own journeys. It is _18_ that around 12,000 to 15,000 caravanserais were built along the Silk Road, _19_ only about 3,000 are known to remain today, many of which are in _20_.

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Scientific papers are the recordkeepers of progress in research. Each year researchers publish millions of papers in more than 30,000 journals. The scientific community measures the quality of those papers in a number of ways, including the perceived quality of the journal (as reflected by the title’s impact factor) and the number of citations a specific paper accumulates. The careers of scientists and the reputation of their institutions depend on the number and prestige of the papers they produce, but even more so on the citations attracted by these papers.Citation cartels, where journals, authors, and institutions conspire to inflate citation numbers, have existed for a long time. In 2016, researchers developed an algorithm to recognize suspicious citation patterns, including groups of authors that disproportionately cite one another and groups of journals that cite each other frequently to increase the impact factors of their publications. Recently, another expression of this predatory behavior has emerged: so-called support service consultancies that provide language and other editorial support to individual authors and to journals sometimes advise contributors to add a number of citations to their articles.The advent of electronic publishing and authors’ need to find outlets for their papers resulted in thousands of new journals. The birth of predatory journals wasn’t far behind. These journals can act as milk cows where every single article in an issue may cite a specific paper or a series of papers. In some instances, there is absolutely no relationship between the content of the article and the citations. The peculiar part is that the journal that the editor is supposedly working for is not profiting at all—it is just providing citations to other journals. Such practices can lead an article to accrue more than 150 citations in the same year that it was published.How insidious is this type of citation manipulation? In one example, an individual—acting as author, editor, and consultant—was able to use at least 15 journals as citation providers to articles published by five scientists at three universities. The problem is rampant in Scopus, a citation database, which includes a high number of the new “international” journals. In fact, a listing in Scopus seems to be a criterion to be targeted in this type of citation manipulation.Scopus itself has all the data necessary to detect this malpractice. Red flags include a large number of citations to an article within the first year. And for authors who wish to steer clear of citation cartel activities: when an editor, a reviewer, or a support service asks you to add inappropriate references, do not oblige and do report the request to the journal.1. According to Paragraph 1, the careers of scientists can be determined by ________.2. The support service consultancies tend to ________. 3. The function of the “milk cow” journals is to ________.4. What can be learned about Scopus from the last two paragraphs?5. What should an author do to deal with citation manipulators?

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In a rare unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court has overturned the corruption conviction of a former Virginia governor, Robert McDonnell. But it did so while holding its nose at the ethics of his conduct, which included accepting gifts such as a Rolex watch and a Ferrari automobile from a company seeking access to government.The high court's decision said the judge in Mr. McDonnell's trial failed to tell a jury that it must look only at his “official acts,” or the former governor's decisions on “specific” and “unsettled” issues related to his duties.Merely helping a gift-giver gain access to other officials, unless done with clear intent to pressure those officials, is not corruption, the justices found.The court did suggest that accepting favors in return for opening doors is “distasteful” and “nasty”. But under anti-bribery laws, proof must be made of concrete benefits, such as approval of a contract or regulation. Simply arranging a meeting, making a phone call, or hosting an event is not an “official act.’’The court's ruling is legally sound in defining a kind of favoritism that is not criminal. Elected leaders must be allowed to help supporters deal with bureaucratic problems without fear of prosecution for bribery. “The basic compact underlying representative government, ” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the court, “assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act on their concerns.”But the ruling reinforces the need for citizens and their elected representatives, not the courts, to ensure equality of access to government. Officials must not be allowed to play favorites in providing information or in arranging meetings simply because an individual or group provides a campaign donation or a personal gift. This type of integrity requires well-enforced laws in government transparency, such as records of official meetings, rules on lobbying, and information about each elected leader's source of wealth.Favoritism in official access can fan public perceptions of corruption. But it is not always corruption. Rather officials must avoid double standards, or different types of access for average people and the wealthy. If connections can be bought, a basic premise of democratic society— that all are equal in treatment by government — is undermined. Good governance rests on an understanding of the inherent worth of each individual.The court's ruling is a step forward in the struggle against both corruption and official favoritism. 1.The underlined sentence (Paragraph 1) most probably shows that the court（  ）.2.According to Paragraph 4, an official act is deemed corruptive only if it involves （  ）.  3.The court's ruling is based on the assumption that public officials are （  ）.  4.Well-enforced laws in government transparency are needed to （  ）.  5.The author's attitude toward the court's ruling is（  ）.

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Any fair-minded assessment of the dangers of the deal between Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and DeepMind must start by acknowledging that both sides mean well. DeepMind is one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world. The potential of this work applied to healthcare is very great, but it could also lead to further concentration of power in the tech giants. It is against that background that the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has issued her damning verdict against the Royal Free hospital trust under the NHS, which handed over to DeepMind the records of 1.6 million patients in 2015 on the basis of a vague agreement which took far too little account of the patients' rights and their expectations of privacy.DeepMind has almost apologised. The NHS trust has mended its ways. Further arrangements — and there may be many — between the NHS and DeepMind will be carefully scrutinised to ensure that all necessary permissions have been asked of patients and all unnecessary data has been cleaned. There are lessons about informed patient consent to learn. But privacy is not the only angle in this case and not even the most important. Ms Denham chose to concentrate the blame on the NHS trust, since under existing law it “controlled” the data and DeepMind merely “processed” it. But this distinction misses the point that it is processing and aggregation, not the mere possession of bits, that gives the data value.The great question is who should benefit from the analysis of all the data that our lives now generate. Privacy law builds on the concept of damage to an individual from identifiable knowledge about them. That misses the way the surveillance economy works. The data of an individual there gains its value only when it is compared with the data of countless millions more.The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance feels slightly maladapted. This practice does not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develops will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that drugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as big pharma has done. We are still at the beginning of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Ms Denham's report is a welcome start.1.What is true of the agreement between the NHS and DeepMind?2.The NHS trust responded to Denham's verdict with（  ）.3.The author argues in Paragraph 2 that （  ）.  4.According to the last paragraph, the real worry arising from this deal is（  ）.  5.The author's attitude toward the application of AI to healthcare is（  ）.

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Robert F. Kennedy once said that a country's GDP measures “everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” With Britain voting to leave the European Union, and GDP already predicted to slow as a result, it is now a timely moment to assess what he was referring to.The question of GDP and its usefulness has annoyed policymakers for over half a century. Many argue that it is a flawed concept. It measures things that do not matter and misses things that do. By most recent measures, the UK's GDP has been the envy of the Western world, with record low unemployment and high growth figures. If everything was going so well, then why did over 17 million people vote for Brexit, despite the warnings about what it could do to their country's economic prospects?A recent annual study of countries and their ability to convert growth into well-being sheds some light on that question. Across the 163 countries measured, the UK is one of the poorest performers in ensuring that economic growth is translated into meaningful improvements for its citizens. Rather than just focusing on GDP, over 40 different sets of criteria from health, education and civil society engagement have been measured to get a more rounded assessment of how countries are performing.While all of these countries face their own challenges, there are a number of consistent themes. Yes, there has been a budding economic recovery since the 2008 global crash, but in key indicators in areas such as health and education, major economies have continued to decline. Yet this isn't the case with all countries. Some relatively poor European countries have seen huge improvements across measures including civil society, income equality and the environment.This is a lesson that rich countries can learn: When GDP is no longer regarded as the sole measure of a country's success, the world looks very different.So, what Kennedy was referring to was that while GDP has been the most common method for measuring the economic activity of nations, as a measure, it is no longer enough. It does not include important factors such as environmental quality or education outcomes — all things that contribute to a person's sense of well-being.The sharp hit to growth predicted around the world and in the UK could lead to a decline in the everyday services we depend on for our well-being and for growth. But policymakers who refocus efforts on improving well-being rather than simply worrying about GDP figures could avoid the forecasted doom and may even see progress.1.Robert F. Kennedy is cited because he（  ）.2.It can be inferred from Paragraph 2 that （  ）.  3.Which of the following is true about the recent annual study?4.In the last two paragraphs, the author suggests that （  ）.  5.Which of the following is the best title for the text?

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It's no surprise that Jennifer Senior's insightful, provocative magazine cover story, “I love My Children, I Hate My Life,” is arousing much chatter—nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that “the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.” The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive—and newly single—mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual “Jennifer Aniston is pregnant” news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands. In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing? It doesn't seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn't have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives. Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their “own” (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake. It's hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it's interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren't in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting “the Rachel” might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston. 1.Jennifer Senior suggests in her article that raising a child can bring （  ）.  2.We learn from Paragraph 2 that（  ）.3.It is suggested in Paragraph 3 that childless folks （  ）.  4.According to Paragraph 4, the message conveyed by celebrity magazines is （  ）.  5.Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph? 

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King Juan Carlos of Spain once insisted “kings don't abdicate, they dare in their sleep.” But embarrassing scandals and the popularity of the republican left in the recent Euro-elections have forced him to eat his words and stand down. So, does the Spanish crisis suggest that monarchy is seeing its last days? Does that mean the writing is on the wall for all European royals, with their magnificent uniforms and majestic lifestyle? The Spanish case provides arguments both for and against monarchy. When public opinion is particularly polarised, as it was following the end of the Franco regime, monarchs can rise above “mere” politics and “embody” a spirit of national unity. It is this apparent transcendence of politics that explains monarchs' continuing popularity polarized. And also, the Middle East excepted, Europe is the most monarch-infested region in the world, with 10 kingdoms (not counting Vatican City and Andorra). But unlike their absolutist counterparts in the Gulf and Asia, most royal families have survived because they allow voters to avoid the difficult search for a non-controversial but respected public figure. Even so, kings and queens undoubtedly have a downside. Symbolic of national unity as they claim to be, their very history—and sometimes the way they behave today—embodies outdated and indefensible privileges and inequalities. At a time when Thomas Piketty and other economists are warning of rising inequality and the increasing power of inherited wealth, it is bizarre that wealthy aristocratic families should still be the symbolic heart of modern democratic states. The most successful monarchies strive to abandon or hide their old aristocratic ways. Princes and princesses have day-jobs and ride bicycles, not horses (or helicopters). Even so, these are wealthy families who party with the international 1%, and media intrusiveness makes it increasingly difficult to maintain the right image. While Europe's monarchies will no doubt be smart enough to survive for some time to come, it is the British royals who have most to fear from the Spanish example. It is only the Queen who has preserved the monarchy's reputation with her rather ordinary (if well-heeled) granny style. The danger will come with Charles, who has both an expensive taste of lifestyle and a pretty hierarchical view of the world. He has failed to understand that monarchies have largely survived because they provide a service–as non-controversial and non-political heads of state. Charles ought to know that as English history shows, it is kings, not republicans, who are the monarchy's worst enemies. 1.According to the first two Paragraphs, King Juan Carlos of Spain（  ）.  2.Monarchs are kept as heads of state in Europe mostly （  ）.    3.Which of the following is shown to be odd, according to Paragraph 4? 4.The British royals “have most to fear” because Charle （  ）.    5.Which of the following is the best title of the text?  

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In 1924 America's National Research Council sent two engineers to supervise a series of industrial experiments at a large telephone-parts factory called the Hawthorne Plant near Chicago. It hoped they would learn how stop-floor lighting （1）workers' productivity. Instead, the studies ended （2） giving their name to the "Hawthorne effect", the extremely influential idea that the very （3） to being experimented upon changed subjects' behavior. The idea arose because of the behavior of the women in the （4） Hawthorne plant. According to （5） of the experiments, their hourly output rose when lighting was increased, but also when it was dimmed. It did not （6） what was done in the experiment; （7）something was changed, productivity rose. A(n) （8） that they were being experimented upon seemed to be （9） to alter workers' behavior （10） itself. After several decades, the same data were （11） to econometric the analysis. Hawthorne experiments has another surprise in store （12） the descriptions on record, no systematic （13） was found that levels of productivity were related to changes in lighting. It turns out that peculiar way of conducting the experiments  may have led to （14） interpretation of what happened. （15）, lighting was always changed on a Sunday. When work started again on Monday, output （16） rose compared with the previous Saturday and （17） to rise for the next couple of days. （18）, a comparison with data for weeks when there was no experimentation showed that output always went up on Monday, workers （19） to be diligent for the first few days of the week in any case, before （20） a plateau and then slackening off. This suggests that the alleged "Hawthorne effect" is hard to pin down.

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An old saying has it that half of all advertising budgets are wasted—the trouble is, no one knows which half. In the internet age, at least in theory, this fraction can be much reduced. By watching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim “behavioural” ads at those most likely to buy.In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grained information: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?In December 2010 America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed adding a “do not track” (DNT) option to internet browsers, so that users could tell advertisers that they did not want to be followed. Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari both offer DNT; Google's Chrome is due to do so this year. In February the FTC and the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) agreed that the industry would get cracking on responding to DNT requests.On May 31st Microsoft set off the row. It said that Internet Explorer 10, the version due to appear with windows 8, would have DNT as a default.Advertisers are horrified. Human nature being what it is, most people stick with default settings. Few switch DNT on now, but if tracking is off it will stay off. Bob Liodice, the chief executive of the Association of National Advertisers, says consumers will be worse off if the industry cannot collect information about their preferences. People will not get fewer ads, he says. “They'll get less meaningful, less targeted ads.”It is not yet clear how advertisers will respond. Getting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stop tracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tell whether someone really objects to behavioural ads or whether they are sticking with Microsoft's default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press on anyway.Also unclear is why Microsoft has gone it alone. After all, it has an ad business too, which it says will comply with DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upset Google, which relies almost wholly on advertising, it has chosen an indirect method: There is no guarantee that DNT by default will become the norm. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8—though the firm has compared some of its other products favourably with Google's on that count before. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, blogged: “We believe consumers should have more control.” Could it really be that simple?1.It is suggested in Paragraph 1 that “behavioural” ads help advertisers to（  ）.2.“The industry” (Line 4, Para.3) refers to （  ）.  3.Bob Liodice holds that setting DNT as a default（  ）.4.Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 6?5.The author's attitude towards what Brendon Lynch said in his blog is one of（  ）.

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The weather in Texas may have cooled since the recent extreme heat, but the temperature will be high at the State Board of Education meeting in Austin this month as officials debate how climate change is taught in Texas schools.Pat Hardy, who sympathized with views of the energy sector, is resisting the proposed change to science standards for pre-teen pupils. These would emphasize the primacy of human activity in recent climate change and encourage discussion of mitigation measures.Most scientists and experts sharply dispute Hardy’s views. “They casually dismiss the career work of scholars and scientists as just another misguided opinion.” says Dan Quinn, senior communications strategist at the Texas Freedom Network, a non-profit group that monitors public education, “What millions of Texas kids learn in their public schools is determined too often by the political ideology of partisan board members, rather than facts and sound scholarship.”Such debate reflects fierce discussions across the US and around the world, as researchers, policymakers, teachers and students step up demands for a greater focus on teaching about the facts of climate change in schools.A study last year by the National Center for Science Education, a non-profit group of scientists and teachers, looking at how state public schools across the country address climate change in science classes, gave barely half of US states a grade B+ or higher. Among the 10 worst performers were some of the most populous states, including Texas, which was given the lowest grade F and has a disproportionate influence because its textbooks are widely sold elsewhere.Glenn Branch, the center’s deputy director, cautions that setting state-level science standards is only one limited benchmark in a country that decentralizes decisions to local school boards. Even if a state is considered a high performer in its science standards, “that does not mean it will be taught”, he says.Another issue is that while climate change is well integrated into some subjects and at some ages—such as earth and space sciences in high schools it is not as well represented in curricula for younger children and in subjects that are more widely taught, such as biology and chemistry. It is also less prominent in many social studies courses.Branch points out that, even if a growing number of official guidelines and textbooks reflect scientific consensus on climate change, unofficial educational materials that convey more slanted perspectives are being distributed to teachers. They include materials sponsored by libertarian think-tanks and energy industry associations.1. In Paragraph 1, the weather in Texas is mentioned to ________.2. What does Quinn think of Hardy?3. The study mentioned in Paragraph 5 shows that ________.4. According to Branch, state-level science standards in the US ________.5. It is implied in the last paragraph that climate change teaching in some schools ________.

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Communities throughout New England have been attempting to regulate short-term rentals since sites like Airbnb took off in the 2010s. Now with record-high home prices and historically low inventory, there’s an increased urgency in such regulation, particularly among those who worry that developers will come in and buy up swaths of housing to flip for a fortune on the short-term rental market.In New Hampshire, where the rental vacancy rate has dropped below 1 percent, housing advocates fear unchecked short-term rentals will put further pressure on an already strained market. The State Legislature recently voted against a bill that would’ve made it illegal for towns to create legislation restricting short-term rentals.“We are at a crisis level on the supply of rental housing,” said Nick Taylor, executive director of the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast. Without enough affordable housing in southern New Hampshire towns, “employers are having a hard time attracting employees, and workers are having a hard time finding a place to live,” Taylor said.However, short-term rentals also provide housing for tourists, pointed out Ryan Castle, CEO of a local association of realtor. “A lot of workers are servicing the tourist industry, and the tourism industry is serviced by those people coming in short term,” Castle said, “and so it’s a cyclical effect.”Short-term rentals themselves are not the crux of the issue, said Keren Horn, an expert on affordable housing policy. “I think individuals being able to rent out their second home is a good thing. If it’s their vacation home anyway, and it’s just empty, why can’t you make money off it?” Horn said. Issues arise, however, when developers attempt to create large-scale short-term rental facilities—de facto hotels—to bypass taxes and regulations. “I think the question is, shouldn’t a developer who’s really building a hotel, but disguising it as not a hotel, be treated and taxed and regulated like a hotel?” Horn said.At the end of 2018, governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts signed a bill to rein in those potential investor-buyers. The bill requires every rental host to register with the state mandates they carry insurance, and opens the potential for local taxes on top of a new state levy. Boston took things even further, requiring renters to register with the city’s Inspectional Services Department.Horn said similar registration requirements could benefit struggling cities and towns, but “if we want to make a change in the housing market, the main one is we have to build a lot more.”1. Which of the following is true of New England? 2. The bill mentioned in Paragraph 2 was intended to ________.3. Compared with Castle, Taylor is more likely to support ________.4. What does Horn emphasize in Paragraph 5?5. Horn holds that imposing registration requirements is ________.

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If you’re heading for your nearest branch of Waterstones, the biggest book retailer in the UK, in search of the Duchess of Sussex’s new children’s book The Bench, you might have to be prepared to hunt around a bit, the same may be true of The President’s Daughter, the new thriller by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. Both of these books are published next week by Penguin Random House (PRH), a company currently involved in a stand-off with Waterstones.The problem began late last year, when PRH confirmed that it had introduced a credit limit with Waterstones “at a very significant level”. The trade magazine The Bookseller reported that Waterstones branch managers were being told to remove PRH books from prominent areas such as tables, display spaces and windows, and were “quietly retiring them to their relevant sections”.PRH declined to comment on the issue, but a spokesperson for Waterstones told me: “Waterstones are currently operating with reduced credit terms from PRH, the only publisher in the UK to place any limitations on our ability to trade. We are not boycotting PRH titles but we are doing our utmost to ensure that availability for customers remains good despite the lower overall levels of stock. We are hopeful with our shops now open again that normality will return and that we will be allowed to buy appropriately. Certainly, our shops are exceptionally busy. The sales for our May Books of the Month surpassed any month since 2018.”In the meantime, PRH authors have been the losers. Big-name PRH authors may suffer a bit, but it’s those mid-list authors, who normally rely on Waterstones staff’s passion for promoting books by lesser-known writers, who will be praying for an end to the dispute.It comes at a time when authors are already worried about the consequences of the proposed merger between PRH and another big publisher, Simon & Schuster—the reduction in the number of unaligned UK publishers is likely to lead to fewer bidding wars, lower advances, and more conformity in terms of what is published.“This is all part of a wider change towards concentration of power,” says literary agent Andrew Lownie. “The publishing industry talks about diversity in terms of authors and staff but it also needs a plurality of ways of delivering intellectual contact, choice and different voices. After all, many of the most interesting books in recent years have come from small publishers.”We shall see whether that plurality is a casualty of the current need among publishers to be big enough to take on all-comers.1. The author mentions two books in Paragraph 1 to present ________.2. Why did Waterstones shops retire PRH books to their relevant sections?3. What message does the spokesperson for Waterstones seem to convey?4. What can be one consequence of the current dispute?5. Which of the following statements best represents Lownie’s view?

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Any fair-minded assessment of the dangers of the deal between Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) and DeepMind must start by acknowledging that both sides mean well. DeepMind is one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world. The potential of this work applied to healthcare is very great, but it could also lead to further concentration of power in the tech giants. It is against that background that the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, has issued her damning verdict against the Royal Free hospital trust under the NHS, which handed over to DeepMind the records of 1.6 million patients in 2015 on the basis of a vague agreement which took far too little account of the patients’ rights and their expectations of privacy.DeepMind has almost apologized. The NHS trust has mended its ways. Further arrangements—and there may be many—between the NHS and DeepMind will be carefully scrutinized to ensure that all necessary permissions have been asked of patients and all unnecessary data has been cleaned. There are lessons about informed patient consent to learn. But privacy is not the only angle in this case and not even the most important. Ms. Denham chose to concentrate the blame on the NHS trust, since under existing law it “controlled” the data and DeepMind merely “processed” it. But this distinction misses the point that it is processing and aggregation, not the mere possession of bits, that gives the data value.The great question is who should benefit from the analysis of all the data that our lives now generate. Privacy law builds on the concept of damage to an individual from identifiable knowledge about them. That misses the way the surveillance economy works. The data of an individual there gains its value only when it is compared with the data of countless millions more.The use of privacy law to curb the tech giants in this instance feels slightly maladapted. This practice does not address the real worry. It is not enough to say that the algorithms DeepMind develops will benefit patients and save lives. What matters is that they will belong to a private monopoly which developed them using public resources. If software promises to save lives on the scale that drugs now can, big data may be expected to behave as big pharma has done. We are still at the beginning of this revolution and small choices now may turn out to have gigantic consequences later. A long struggle will be needed to avoid a future of digital feudalism. Ms. Denham’s report is a welcome start.1. What is true of the agreement between the NHS and DeepMind?2. The NHS trust responded to Denham’s verdict with ________.3. The author argues in Paragraph 2 that ________.4. According to the last paragraph, the real worry arising from this deal is ________.5. The author’s attitude toward the application of AI to healthcare is ________.

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Directions: Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs (1-5). There are two extra subheadings. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 Points)No matter how formal or informal the work environment, the way you present yourself has an impact. This is especially true in first impressions. According to research from Princeton University, people assess your competence, trustworthiness, and likeability in just a tenth of a second, solely based on the way you look.The difference between today’s workplace and the “dress for success” era is that the range of options is so much broader. Norms have evolved and fragmented. In some settings, red sneakers or dress T-shirts can convey status; in others not so much. Plus, whatever image we present is magnified by social-media services like Linkedln. Chances are, your headshots are seen much more often now than a decade or two ago. Millennials, it seems, face the paradox of being the least formal generation yet the most conscious of style and personal branding. It can be confusing.So how do we navigate this? How do we know when to invest in an upgrade? And what’s the best way to pull off one that enhances our goals? Here are some tips:1. _______________As an executive coach, I’ve seen image upgrades be particularly helpful during transitions when looking for a new job, stepping into a new or more public role, or changing work environments. If you’re in a period of change or just feeling stuck and in a rut, now may be a good time. If you’re not sure, ask for honest feedback from trusted friends, colleagues and professionals. Look for cues about how others perceive you. Maybe there’s no need for an upgrade and that’s OK.2. _______________Get clear on what impact you’re hoping to have. Are you looking to refresh your image or pivot it? For one person, the goal may be to be taken more seriously and enhance their professional image. For another, it may be to be perceived as more approachable, or more modern and stylish. For someone moving from finance to advertising, maybe they want to look more “SoHo”. (It’s OK to use characterizations like that.)3. _______________Look at your work environment like an anthropologist. What are the norms of your environment? What conveys status? Who are your most important audiences? How do the people you respect and look up to present themselves? The better you understand the cultural context, the more control you can have over your impact.4. _______________Enlist the support of professionals and share with them your goals and context. Hire a personal stylist, or use the free styling service of a store like J.Crew. Try a hair stylist instead of a barber. Work with a professional photographer instead of your spouse or friend. It’s not as expensive as you might think.5. _______________The point of a style upgrade isn't to become more vain or to spend more time fussing over what to wear. Instead, use it as an opportunity to reduce decision fatigue. Pick a standard work uniform or a few go-to options. Buy all your clothes at once with a stylist instead of shopping alone, one article of clothing at a time.A. Create a new image of yourselfB. Have confidence in yourselfC. Decide if the time is rightD. Understand the contextE. Work with professionalsF. Make it efficientG. Know your goals

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“The Heart of the Matter”, the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America. Regrettably, however, the report’s failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good.In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identify actions that could be taken by “federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others” to “maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education.” In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the commission’s 51 members are top-tier-university presidents, scholars, lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism.The goals identified in the report are generally admirable. Because representative government presupposes an informed citizenry, the report supports full literacy; stresses the study of history and government, particularly American history and American government; and encourages the use of new digital technologies. To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students’ ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day. The report also advocates greater study of foreign languages, international affairs and the expansion of study abroad programs.Unfortunately, despite 21/2 years in the making, “The Heart of the Matter” never gets to the heart of the matter: the illiberal nature of liberal education at our leading colleges and universities. The commission ignores that for several decades America’s colleges and universities have produced graduates who don’t know the content and character of liberal education and are thus deprived of its benefits. Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for disseminating “progressive”, or left-liberal propaganda.Today, professors routinely treat the progressive interpretation of history and progressive public policy as the proper subject of study while portraying conservative or classical liberal ideas—such as free markets and self-reliance—as falling outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes legitimate, intellectual investigation.The AAAS displays great enthusiasm for liberal education. Yet its report may well set back reform by obscuring the depth and breadth of the challenge that congress asked it to illuminate.1. According to Paragraph 1, what is the author’s attitude toward the AAAS’s report?2. Influential figures in the Congress required that the AAAS report on how to ________.3. According to Paragraph 3, the report suggests ________.4. The author implies in Paragraph 5 that professors are ________.5. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

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From the early days of broadband, advocates for consumers and web-based companies worried that the cable and phone companies selling broadband connections had the power and incentive to favor affiliated websites over their rivals’. That’s why there has been such a strong demand for rules that would prevent broadband providers from picking winners and losers online, preserving the freedom and innovation that have been the lifeblood of the internet.Yet that demand has been almost impossible to fill—in part because of pushback from broadband providers, anti-regulatory conservatives and the courts. A federal appeals court weighed in again Tuesday, but instead of providing a badly needed resolution, it only prolonged the fight. At issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest take of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality, adopted on a party-line vote in 2017. The Republican-penned order not only eliminated the strict net neutrality rules the FCC had adopted when it had a Democratic majority in 2015, but rejected the commission’s authority to require broadband providers to do much of anything. The order also declared that state and local governments couldn’t regulate broadband providers either.The commission argued that other agencies would protect against anti-competitive behavior, such as a broadband-providing conglomerate like AT&T favoring its own video-streaming service at the expense of Netflix and Apple TV. Yet the FCC also ended the investigations of broadband providers that imposed data caps on their rivals’ streaming services but not their own.On Tuesday, the appeals court unanimously upheld the 2017 order deregulating broadband providers, citing a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 that upheld a similarly deregulatory move. But Judge Patricia Millett rightly argued in a concurring opinion that “the result is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service,” and said Congress or the Supreme Court could intervene to “avoid trapping Internet regulation in technological anachronism.”In the meantime, the court threw out the FCC’s attempt to block all state rules on net neutrality, while preserving the commission’s power to preempt individual state laws that undermine its order. That means more battles like the one now going on between the Justice Department and California, which enacted a tough net neutrality law in the wake of the FCC’s abdication.The endless legal battles and back-and-forth at the FCC cry out for Congress to act. It needs to give the commission explicit authority once and for all to bar broadband providers from meddling in the traffic on their network and to create clear rules protecting openness and innovation online.1. There has long been concern that broadband providers would ________.2. Faced with the demand for net neutrality rules, the FCC ________.3. What can be learned about AT&T from Paragraph 3?4. Judge Patricia Millett argues that the appeals court’s decision ________.5. What does the author argue in the last paragraph?

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Among the annoying challenges facing the middle class is one that will probably go unmentioned in the next presidential campaign: What happens when the robots come for their jobs?Don’t dismiss that possibility entirely. About half of U.S. jobs are at high risk of being automated, according to a University of Oxford study, with the middle class disproportionately squeezed. Lower-income jobs like gardening or day care don’t appeal to robots. But many middle-class occupations—trucking, financial advice, software engineering—have aroused their interest, or soon will. The rich own the robots, so they will be fine.This isn’t to be alarmist. Optimists point out that technological upheaval has benefited workers in the past. The Industrial Revolution didn’t go so well for Luddites whose jobs were displaced by mechanized looms, but it eventually raised living standards and created more jobs than it destroyed. Likewise, automation should eventually boost productivity, stimulate demand by driving down prices, and free workers from hard, boring work. But in the medium term, middle-class workers may need a lot of help adjusting.The first step, as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue in The Second Machine Age, should be rethinking education and job training. Curriculums from grammar school to college should evolve to focus less on memorizing facts and more on creativity and complex communication. Vocational schools should do a better job of fostering problem-solving skills and helping students work alongside robots. Online education can supplement the traditional kind. It could make extra training and instruction affordable. Professionals trying to acquire new skills will be able to do so without going into debt.The challenge of coping with automation underlines the need for the U.S. to revive its fading business dynamism: Starting new companies must be made easier. In previous eras of drastic technological change, entrepreneurs smoothed the transition by dreaming up ways to combine labor and machines. The best uses of 3D printers and virtual reality haven’t been invented yet. The U.S. needs the new companies that will invent them.Finally, because automation threatens to widen the gap between capital income and labor income, taxes and the safety net will have to be rethought. Taxes on low-wage labor need to be cut, and wage subsidies such as the earned income tax credit should be expanded: This would boost incomes, encourage work, reward companies for job creation, and reduce inequality.Technology will improve society in ways big and small over the next few years, yet this will be little comfort to those who find their lives and careers upended by automation. Destroying the machines that are coming for our jobs would be nuts. But policies to help workers adapt will be indispensable.1. Who will be most threatened by automation?2. Which of the following best represents the author’s view?3. Education in the age of automation should put more emphasis on ________.4. The author suggests that tax policies be aimed at ________.5. In this text, the author presents a problem with ________.

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In Cambodia, the choice of a spouse is a complex one for the young male. It may involve not only his parents and his friends, _1_ those of the young woman, but also a matchmaker. A young man can _2_ a likely spouse on his own and then ask his parents to _3_ the marriage negotiations, or the young man’s parents may make the choice of a spouse, giving the child little to say in the selection. _4_, a girl may veto the spouse her parents have chosen. _5_ a spouse has been selected, each family investigates the other to make sure its child is marrying _6_ a good family.The traditional wedding is a long and colorful affair. Formerly it lasted three days, _7_ by the 1980s it more commonly lasted a day and a half. Buddhist priests offer a short sermon and _8_ prayers of blessing. Parts of the ceremony involve ritual hair cutting, _9_ cotton threads soaked in holy water around the bride’s and groom’s wrists, and _10_ a candle around a circle of happily married and respected couples to bless the _11_. Newlyweds traditionally move in with the wife’s parents and may _12_ with them up to a year, _13_ they can build a new house nearby.Divorce is legal and easy to _14_, but not common. Divorced persons are _15_ with some disapproval. Each spouse retains _16_ property he or she _17_ into the marriage, and jointly-acquired property is _18_ equally. Divorced persons may remarry, but a gender prejudice _19_ up: The divorced male doesn’t have a waiting period before he can remarry _20_ the woman must wait ten months.

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