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First two hours, now three hours—this is how far in advance authorities are recommending people show up to catch a domestic flight, at least at some major U.S. airports with increasingly massive security lines. Americans are willing to tolerate time-consuming security procedures in return for increased safety. The crash of EgyptAir Flight 804, which terrorists may have downed over the Mediterranean Sea, provides another tragic reminder of why. But demanding too much of air travelers or providing too little security in return undermines public support for the process. And it should: Wasted time is a drag on Americans’ economic and private lives, not to mention infuriating. Last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) found in a secret check that undercover investigators were able to sneak weapons—both fake and real—past airport security nearly every time they tried. Enhanced security measures since then, combined with a rise in airline travel due to the improving economy and low oil prices, have resulted in long waits at major airports such as Chicago’s O’Hare International. It is not yet clear how much more effective airline security has become—but the lines are obvious. Part of the issue is that the government did not anticipate the steep increase in airline travel, so the TSA is now rushing to get new screeners on the line. Part of the issue is that airports have only so much room for screening lanes. Another factor may be that more people are trying to overpack their carry-on bags to avoid checked-baggage fees, though the airlines strongly dispute this. There is one step the TSA could take that would not require remodeling airports or rushing to hire: Enroll more people in the PreCheck program. PreCheck is supposed to be a win-win for travelers and the TSA. Passengers who pass a background check are eligible to use expedited screening lanes. This allows the TSA to focus on travelers who are higher risk, saving time for everyone involved. The TSA wants to enroll 25 million people in PreCheck. It has not gotten anywhere close to that, and one big reason is sticker shock: Passengers must pay $85 every five years to process their background checks. Since the beginning, this price tag has been PreCheck’s fatal flaw. Upcoming reforms might bring the price to a more reasonable level. But Congress should look into doing so directly, by helping to finance PreCheck enrollment or to cut costs in other ways. The TSA cannot continue diverting resources into underused PreCheck lanes while most of the traveling public suffers in unnecessary lines. It is long past time to make the program work. 1、The crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 is mentioned to ___.2、Which of the following contributes to long waits at major airports?3、The word “expedited” (Para. 5) is closest in meaning to _.4、One problem with the PreCheck program is ___.5、Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

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?

Could a hug a day keep the doctor away? The answer may be a resounding “yes!” 1 helping you feel close and 2 to people you care about, it turns out that hugs can bring a 3 of health benefits to your body and mind. Believe it or not, a warm embrace might even help you 4 getting sick this winter. In a recent study 5 over 400 healthy adults, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania examined the effects of perceived social support and the receipt of hugs 6 the participants’ susceptibility to developing the common cold after being 7 to the virus. People who perceived greater social support were less likely to come 8 with a cold, and the researchers 9 that the stress-reducing effects of hugging 10 about 32 percent of that beneficial effect. 11 among those who got a cold, the ones who felt greater social support and received more frequent hugs had less severe 12 . “Hugging protects people who are under stress from the 13 risk for colds that’s usually 14 with stress,” notes Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie. Hugging “is a marker of intimacy and helps 15 the feeling that others are there to help 16 difficulty.” Some experts 17 the stress-reducing, health-related benefits of hugging to the release of oxytocin, often called “the bonding hormone” 18 it promotes attachment in relationships, including that between mothers and their newborn babies. Oxytocin is made primarily in the central lower part of the brain, and some of it is released into the bloodstream. But some of it 19 in the brain, where it 20 mood, behavior and physiology.

Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should 1) describe the picture brieﬂy, 2) interpret the meaning, and 3) give your comments. Write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Write an email to all international experts on campus, inviting them to attend the graduation ceremony. In your email, you should include the time, place and other relevant information about the ceremony. You should write about 100 words on the ANSEWER SHEET Do not use your own name at the end of the email. Use “Li Ming” instead. (10 points)

Shakespeare’s lifetime was coincident with a period of extraordinary activity and achievement in the drama. (46) By the date of his birth Europe was witnessing the passing of the religious drama, and the creation of new forms under the incentive of classical tragedy and comedy. These new forms were at first mainly written by scholars and performed by amateurs, but in England, as everywhere else in western Europe, the growth of a class of professional actors was threatening to make the drama popular, whether it should be new or old, classical or medieval, literary or farcical. Court, school, organizations of amateurs, and the traveling actors were all rivals in supplying a widespread desire for dramatic entertainment; and (47) no boy who went to a grammar school could be ignorant that the drama was a form of literature which gave glory to Greece and Rome and might yet bring honor to England. When Shakespeare was twelve years old the first public playhouse was built in London. For a time literature showed no interest in this public stage. Plays aiming at literary distinction were written for schools or court, or for the choir boys of St. Paul’s and the royal chapel, who, however, gave plays in public as well as at court. (48) But the professional companies prospered in their permanent theaters, and university men with literary ambitions were quick to turn to these theaters as offering a means of livelihood. By the time that Shakespeare was twenty-five, Lyly, Peele, and Greene had made comedies that were at once popular and literary; Kyd had written a tragedy that crowded the pit; and Marlowe had brought poetry and genius to triumph on the common stage--where they had played no part since the death of Euripides. (49) A native literary drama had been created, its alliance with the public playhouses established, and at least some of its great traditions had been begun. The development of the Elizabethan drama for the next twenty-five years is of exceptional interest to students of literary history, for in this brief period we may trace the beginning, growth, blossoming, and decay of many kinds of plays, and of many great careers. We are amazed today at the mere number of plays produced, as well as by the number of dramatists writing at the same time for this London of two hundred thousand inhabitants. (50) To realize how great was the dramatic activity, we must remember further that hosts of plays have been lost, and that probably there is no author of note whose entire work has survived.

[A] In December of 1869, Congress appointed a commission to select a site and prepare plans and cost estimates for a new State Department Building. The commission was also to consider possible arrangements for the War and Navy Departments. To the horror of some who expected a Greek Revival twin of the Treasury Building to be erected on the other side of the White House, the elaborate French Second Empire style design by Alfred Mullett was selected, and construction of a building to house all three departments began in June of 1871. [B] Completed in 1875, the State Department’s south wing was the first to be occupied, with its elegant four-story library (completed in 1876), Diplomatic Reception Room, and Secretary’s office decorated with carved wood, Oriental rugs, and stenciled wall patterns. The Navy Department moved into the east wing in 1879, where elaborate wall and ceiling stenciling and marquetry floors decorated the office of the Secretary. [C] The State, War, and Navy Building, as it was originally known, housed the three Executive Branch Departments most intimately associated with formulating and conducting the nation’s foreign policy in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century--the period when the United States emerged as an international power. The building has housed some of the nation’s most significant diplomats and politicians and has been the scene of many historic events. [D] Many of the most celebrated national figures have participated in historical events that have taken place within the EEOB’s granite walls. Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met here with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. [E] The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) commands a unique position in both the national history and the architectural heritage of the United States. Designed by Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Alfred B. Mullett, it was built from 1871 to 1888 to house the growing staffs of the State, War, and Navy Departments, and is considered one of the best examples of French Second Empire architecture in the country. [F] Construction took 17 years as the building slowly rose wing by wing. When the EEOB was finished, it was the largest office building in Washington, with nearly 2 miles of black and white tiled corridors. Almost all of the interior detail is of cast iron or plaster; the use of wood was minimized to insure fire safety. Eight monumental curving staircases of granite with over 4,000 individually cast bronze balusters are capped by four skylight domes and two stained glass rotundas. [G] The history of the EEOB began long before its foundations were laid. The first executive offices were constructed between 1799 and 1820. A series of fires (including those set by the British in 1814) and overcrowded conditions led to the construction of the existing Treasury Building. In 1866, the construction of the North Wing of the Treasury Building necessitated the demolition of the State Department building. 41. → C → 42. → 43. → F → 44. → 45. A、[A]B、[B]C、[C]D、[D]E、[E]F、[F]G、[G]

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 .

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to bleed red ink. It reported a net loss of $5.6 billion for fiscal 2016, the 10th straight year its expenses have exceeded revenue. Meanwhile, it has more than $120 billion in unfunded liabilities, mostly for employee health and retirement costs. There are many reasons this formerly stable federal institution finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy. Fundamentally, the USPS is in a historic squeeze between technological change that has permanently decreased demand for its bread-and-butter product, first-class mail, and a regulatory structure that denies management the flexibility to adjust its operations to the new reality. And interest groups ranging from postal unions to greeting-card makers exert self- interested pressure on the USPS’s ultimate overseer--Congress--insisting that whatever else happens to the Postal Service, aspects of the status quo they depend on get protected. This is why repeated attempts at reform legislation have failed in recent years, leaving the Postal Service unable to pay its bills except by deferring vital modernization. Now comes word that everyone involved--Democrats, Republicans, the Postal Service, the unions and the system’s heaviest users--has finally agreed on a plan to fix the system. Legislation is moving through the House that would save USPS an estimated $28.6 billion over five years, which could help pay for new vehicles, among other survival measures. Most of the money would come from a penny-per-letter permanent rate increase and from shifting postal retirees into Medicare. The latter step would largely offset the financial burden of annually pre-funding retiree health care, thus addressing a long-standing complaint by the USPS and its unions. If it clears the House, this measure would still have to get through the Senate--where someone is bound to point out that it amounts to the bare, bare minimum necessary to keep the Postal Service afloat, not comprehensive reform. There’s no change to collective bargaining at the USPS, a major omission considering that personnel accounts for 80 percent of the agency’s costs. Also missing is any discussion of eliminating Saturday letter delivery. That common- sense change enjoys wide public support and would save the USPS $2 billion per year. But postal special-interest groups seem to have killed it, at least in the House. The emerging consensus around the bill is a sign that legislators are getting frightened about a politically embarrassing short-term collapse at the USPS. It is not, however, a sign that they’re getting serious about transforming the postal system for the 21st century.1、The financial problem with the USPS is caused partly by .2、According to Paragraph 2, the USPS fails to modernize itself due to .3、The long-standing complaint by the USPS and its unions can be addressed by .4、In the last paragraph, the author seems to view legislators with .5、Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A new survey by Harvard University finds more than two-thirds of young Americans disapprove of President Trump’s use of Twitter. The implication is that Millennials prefer news from the White House to be filtered through other sources, not a president’s social media platform. Most Americans rely on social media to check daily headlines. Yet as distrust has risen toward all media, people may be starting to beef up their media literacy skills. Such a trend is badly needed. During the 2016 presidential campaign, nearly a quarter of web content shared by Twitter users in the politically critical state of Michigan was fake news, according to the University of Oxford. And a survey conducted for BuzzFeed News found 44 percent of Facebook users rarely or never trust news from the media giant. Young people who are digital natives are indeed becoming more skillful at separating fact from fiction in cyberspace. A Knight Foundation focus-group survey of young people between ages 14 and 24 found they use “distributed trust” to verify stories. They cross-check sources and prefer news from different perspectives--especially those that are open about any bias. “Many young people assume a great deal of personal responsibility for educating themselves and actively seeking out opposing viewpoints,” the survey concluded. Such active research can have another effect. A 2014 survey conducted in Australia, Britain, and the United States by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that young people’s reliance on social media led to greater political engagement. Social media allows users to experience news events more intimately and immediately while also permitting them to re-share news as a projection of their values and interests. This forces users to be more conscious of their role in passing along information. A survey by Barna research group found the top reason given by Americans for the fake news phenomenon is“reader error,” more so than made-up stories or factual mistakes in reporting. About a third say the problem of fake news lies in “misinterpretation or exaggeration of actual news” via social media. In other words, the choice to share news on social media may be the heart of the issue. “This indicates there is a real personal responsibility in counteracting this problem,” says Roxanne Stone, editor in chief at Barna Group. So when young people are critical of an over-tweeting president, they reveal a mental discipline in thinking skills--and in their choices on when to share on social media.1、According to Paragraphs 1 and 2, many young Americans cast doubt on .2、The phrase “beef up” (Para. 2) is closest in meaning to .3、According to the Knight Foundation survey, young people .4、The Barna survey found that a main cause for the fake news problem is .5、Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

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 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 .

Trust is a tricky business. On the one hand, it’s a necessary condition 1 many worthwhile things: child care, friendships, etc. On the other hand, putting your 2 in the wrong place often carries a high 3 . 4 , why do we trust at all? Well, because it feels good. 5 people place their trust in an individual or an institution, their brains release oxytocin, a hormone that 6 pleasurable feelings and triggers the herding instinct that prompts humans to 7 with one another. Scientists have found that exposure 8 this hormone puts us in a trusting 9 : In a Swiss study, researchers sprayed oxytocin into the noses of half the subjects; those subjects were ready to lend significantly higher amounts of money to strangers than were their 10 who inhaled something else. 11 for us, we also have a sixth sense for dishonesty that may 12 us. A Canadian study found that children as young as 14 months can differentiate 13 a credible person and a dishonest one. Sixty toddlers were each 14 to an adult tester holding a plastic container. The tester would ask, “What’s in here?” before looking into the container, smiling, and exclaiming, “Wow!” Each subject was then invited to look 15 . Half of them found a toy; the other half 16 the container was empty--and realized the tester had 17 them. Among the children who had not been tricked, the majority were 18 to cooperate with the tester in learning a new skill, demonstrating that they trusted his leadership. 19 , only five of the 30 children paired with the “ 20 ” tester participated in a follow-up activity.

Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should 1) describe the picture brieﬂy, 2) interpret the implied meaning, and 3) give your comments. Write your answer on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Suppose you are working for the “Aiding Rural Primary School” project of your university. Write an email to answer the inquiry from an international student volunteer, specifying the details of the project. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name in the email. Use “Li Ming” instead. (10 points)

It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realized just how bad much of the medical literature frequently was. I came to recognize various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. (46) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms. Why is so much bad science published? A recent paper, titled ‘The Natural Selection of Bad Science’, published on the Royal Society’s open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. It says that the problem is not merely that people do bad science, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. What is important is not truth, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: (47) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number. (48) Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. (49) This would be reasonable enough if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors. Boiling down an individual’s output to simple metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. (50) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.

[A] These tools can help you win every argument--not in the unhelpful sense of beating your opponents but in the better sense of learning about the issues that divide people, learning why they disagree with us and learning to talk and work together with them. If we readjust our view of arguments--from a verbal fight or tennis game to a reasoned exchange through which we all gain mutual respect and understanding--then we change the very nature of what it means to “win” an argument. [B] Of course, many discussions are not so successful. Still, we need to be careful not to accuse opponents of bad arguments too quickly. We need to learn how to evaluate them properly. A large part of evaluation is calling out bad arguments, but we also need to admit good arguments by opponents and to apply the same critical standards to ourselves. Humility requires you to recognize weaknesses in your own arguments and sometimes also to accept reasons on the opposite side. [C] None of these will be easy, but you can start even if others refuse to. Next time you state your position, formulate an argument for what you claim and honestly ask yourself whether your argument is any good. Next time you talk with someone who takes a stand, ask them to give you a reason for their view. Spell out their argument fully and charitably. Assess its strength impartially. Raise objections and listen carefully to their replies. [D] Carnegie would be right if arguments were fights, which is how we often think of them. Like physical fights, verbal fights can leave both sides bloodied. Even when you win, you end up no better off. Your prospects would be almost as dismal if arguments were even just competitions--like, say, tennis games. Paris of opponents hit the ball back and forth until one winner emerges from all who entered. Everybody else loses. This kind of thinking is why so many people try to avoid arguments, especially about politics and religion. [E] In his 1936 work How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote: “There is only one way to get the best of an argument--and that is to avoid it.” This aversion to arguments is common, but it depends on a mistaken view of arguments that causes profound problems for our personal and social lives--and in many ways misses the point of arguing in the first place. [F] These views of arguments also undermine reason. If you see a conversation as a fight or competition, you can win by cheating as long as you don’t get caught. You will be happy to convince people with bad arguments. You can call their views stupid, or joke about how ignorant they are. None of these tricks will help you understand them, their positions or the issues that divide you, but they can help you win--in one way. [G] There is a better way to win arguments. Imagine that you favor increasing the minimum wage in our state, and I do not. If you yell, “Yes,” and I yell. “No,” neither of us learns anything. We neither understand nor respect each other, and we have no basis for compromise or cooperation. In contrast, suppose you give a reasonable argument: that full-time workers should not have to live in poverty. Then I counter with another reasonable argument: that a higher minimum wage will force businesses to employ fewer people for less time. Now we can understand each other’s positions and recognize our shared values, since we both care about needy workers. A、[A]B、[B]C、[C]D、[D]E、[E]F、[F]G、[G]

Financial regulators in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers accountable for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institutions. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making, not only by banks but by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations. “Short-termism”, or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economics, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “children who pick the plums out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last. The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hinder a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been dubbed “quarterly capitalism”. In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities, quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week. In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to defer performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short- termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance. Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company. Within companies, the right compensation design can provide incentives for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all stakeholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term. 1、According to Paragraph 1, one motive in imposing the new rule is to .2、Alfred Marshall is quoted to indicate .3、It is argued that the influence of transient investment on public companies can be .4、The US and France examples are used to illustrate .5、Which of the following would be the best title for the text ?

States will be able to force more people to pay sales tax when they make online purchases under a Supreme Court decision Thursday that will leave shoppers with lighter wallets but is a big financial win for states. The Supreme Court’s opinion Thursday overruled a pair of decades-old decisions that states said cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue annually. The decisions made it more difficult for states to collect sales tax on certain online purchases. The cases the court overturned said that if a business was shipping a customer’s purchase to a state where the business didn’t have a physical presence such as a warehouse or office, the business didn’t have to collect sales tax for the state. Customers were generally responsible for paying the sales tax to the state themselves if they weren’t charged it, but most didn’t realize they owed it and few paid. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the previous decisions were flawed. “Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States,” he wrote in an opinion joined by four other justices. Kennedy wrote that the rule “limited States’ ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field.” The ruling is a victory for big chains with a presence in many states, since they usually collect sales tax on online purchases already. Now, rivals will be charging sales tax where they hadn’t before. Big chains have been collecting sales tax nationwide because they typically have physical stores in whatever state a purchase is being shipped to. Amazon.com, with its network of warehouses, also collects sales tax in every state that charges it, though third-party sellers who use the site don’t have to. Until now, many sellers that have a physical presence in only a single state or a few states have been able to avoid charging sales taxes when they ship to addresses outside those states. Sellers that use eBay and Etsy, which provide platforms for smaller sellers, also haven’t been collecting sales tax nationwide. Under the ruling Thursday, states can pass laws requiring out-of-state sellers to collect the state’s sales tax from customers and send it to the state. Retail trade groups praised the ruling, saying it levels the playing field for local and online businesses. The losers, said retail analyst Neil Saunders, are online-only retailers, especially smaller ones. Those retailers may face headaches complying with various state sales tax laws. The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council advocacy group said in a statement, “Small businesses and internet entrepreneurs are not well served at all by this decision.” 1、The Supreme Court decision Thursday will .2、It can be learned from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the overruled decisions .3、According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, the physical presence rule has .4、Who are most likely to welcome the Supreme Court ruling?5、In dealing with the Supreme Court decision Thursday, the author .

Grade inflation--the gradual increase in average GPAs (grade-point averages) over the past few decades--is often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased. But another, related force -- a policy often buried deep in course catalogs called “grade forgiveness”--is helping raise GPAs. Grade forgiveness allows students to retake a course in which they received a low grade, and the most recent grade or the highest grade is the only one that counts in calculating a student's overall GPA. The use of this little-known practice has accelerated in recent years, as colleges continue to do their utmost to keep students in school (and paying tuition) and improve their graduation rates. When this practice first started decades ago, it was usually limited to freshmen, to give them a second chance to take a class in their first year if they struggled in their transition to college-level courses. But now most colleges, save for many selective campuses, allow all undergraduates, and even graduate students, to get their low grades forgiven. College officials tend to emphasize that the goal of grade forgiveness is less about the grade itself and more about encouraging students to retake courses critical to their degree program and graduation without incurring a big penalty. “Ultimately,” said Jack Miner, Ohio State University’s registrar, “we see students achieve more success because they retake a course and do better in subsequent courses or master the content that allows them to graduate on time.” That said, there is a way in which grade forgiveness satisfies colleges’ own needs as well. For public institutions, state funds are sometimes tied partly to their success on metrics such as graduation rates and student retention--so better grades can, by boosting figures like those, mean more money. And anything that raises GPAs will likely make students--who, at the end of the day, are paying the bill--feel they’ve gotten a better value for their tuition dollars, which is another big concern for colleges. Indeed, grade forgiveness is just another way that universities are responding to consumers’ expectations for higher education. Since students and parents expect a college degree to lead to a job, it is in the best interest of a school to turn out graduates who are as qualified as possible--or at least appear to be. On this, students’ and colleges’ incentives seem to be aligned. 1、What is commonly regarded as the cause of grade inflation?2、What was the original purpose of grade forgiveness?3、According to Paragraph 5, grade forgiveness enables colleges to .4、What does the phrase “to be aligned” (Para. 6) most probably mean?5、The author examines the practice of grade forgiveness by _.

This year marks exactly two centuries since the publication of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley. Even before the invention of the electric light bulb, the author produced a remarkable work of speculative fiction that would foreshadow many ethical questions to be raised by technologies yet to come. Today the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) raises fundamental questions: “What is intelligence, identify, or consciousness? What makes humans humans?” What is being called artificial general intelligence, machines that would imitate the way humans think, continues to evade scientists. Yet humans remain fascinated by the idea of robots that would look, move, and respond like humans, similar to those recently depicted on popular sci-fi TV series such as “Westworld” and “Humans”. Just how people think is still far too complex to be understood, let alone reproduced, says David Eagleman, a Stanford University neuroscientist. “We are just in a situation where there are no good theories explaining what consciousness actually is and how you could ever build a machine to get there.” But that doesn’t mean crucial ethical issues involving AI aren’t at hand. The coming use of autonomous vehicles, for example, poses thorny ethical questions. Human drivers sometimes must make split-second decisions. Their reactions may be a complex combination of instant reflexes, input from past driving experiences, and what their eyes and ears tell them in that moment. AI “vision” today is not nearly as sophisticated as that of humans. And to anticipate every imaginable driving situation is a difficult programming problem. Whenever decisions are based on masses of data, “you quickly get into a lot of ethical questions,” notes Tan Kiat How, chief executive of a Singapore-based agency that is helping the government develop a voluntary code for the ethical use of AI. Along with Singapore, other governments and mega-corporations are beginning to establish their own guidelines. Britain is setting up a data ethics center. India released its AI ethics strategy this spring. On June 7 Google pledged to not “design or deploy AI” that would cause “overall harm,” or to develop AI-directed weapons or use AI for surveillance that would violate international norms. It also pledged not to deploy AI whose use would violate international laws or human rights. While the statement is vague, it represents one starting point. So does the idea that decisions made by AI systems should be explainable, transparent, and fair. To put it another way: How can we make sure that the thinking of intelligent machines reflects humanity’s highest values? Only then will they be useful servants and not Frankenstein’s out-of-control monster. 1、Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is mentioned because it .2、In David Eagleman’s opinion, our current knowledge of consciousness .3、The solution to the ethical issues brought by autonomous vehicles .4、The author’s attitude toward Google’s pledge is one of .5、Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

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