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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 Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for disseminating “progressive”, or left-liberal propaganda.Today, professors routinely treat the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?

The US $3-million Fundamental Physics Prize is indeed an interesting experiment, as Alexander Polyakov said when he accepted this year’s award in March. And it is far from the only one of its type. As a News Feature article in Nature discusses, a string of lucrative awards for researchers have joined the Nobel Prizes in recent years. Many, like the Fundamental Physics Prize, are funded from the telephone-number-sized bank accounts of Internet entrepreneurs. These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.What’s not to like? Quite a lot, according to a handful of scientists quoted in the News Feature. You cannot buy class, as the old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs cannot buy their prizes the prestige of the Nobels. The new awards are an exercise in self-promotion for those behind them, say scientists. They could distort the achievement-based system of peer-review-led research. They could cement the status quo of peer-reviewed research. They do not fund peer-reviewed research. They perpetuate the myth of the lone genius.The goals of the prize-givers seem as scattered as the criticism. Some want to shock, others to draw people into science, or to better reward those who have made their careers in research.As Nature has pointed out before, there are some legitimate concerns about how science prizes—both new and old—are distributed. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, launched this year, takes an unrepresentative view of what the life sciences include. But the Nobel Foundation’s limit of three recipients per prize, each of whom must still be living, has long been outgrown by the collaborative nature of modern research—as will be demonstrated by the inevitable row over who is ignored when it comes to acknowledging the discovery of the Higgs boson. The Nobels were, of course, themselves set up by a very rich individual who had decided what he wanted to do with his own money. Time, rather than intention, has given them legitimacy.As much as some scientists may complain about the new awards, two things seem clear. First, most researchers would accept such a prize if they were offered one. Second, it is surely a good thing that the money and attention come to science rather than go elsewhere. It is fair to criticize and question the mechanism—that is the culture of research, after all—but it is the prize-givers’ money to do with as they please. It is wise to take such gifts with gratitude and grace.1. The Fundamental Physical Prize is seen as .2. The critics think that the new awards will most benefit .3. The discovery of the Higgs boson is a typical case which involves .4. According to Paragraph 4, which of the following is true of the Nobels?5. The author believes that the new awards are .

All around the world, lawyers generate more hostility than the members of any other profession—with the possible exception of journalism. But there are few places where clients have more grounds for complaint than America.During the decade before the economic crisis, spending on legal services in America grew twice as fast as inflation. The best lawyers made skyscrapers-full of money, tempting ever more students to pile into law schools. But most law graduates never get a big-firm job. Many of them instead become the kind of nuisance-lawsuit filer that makes the tort system a costly nightmare.There are many reasons for this. One is the excessive costs of a legal education. There is just one path for a lawyer in most American states: a four-year undergraduate degree in some unrelated subject, then a three-year law degree at one of 200 law schools authorized by the American Bar Association and an expensive preparation for the bar exam. This leaves today’s average law-school graduate with $100,000 of debt on top of undergraduate debts. Law-school debt means that they have to work fearsomely hard.Reforming the system would help both lawyers and their customers. Sensible ideas have been around for a long time, but the state-level bodies that govern the profession have been too conservative to implement them. One idea is to allow people to study law as an undergraduate degree. Another is to let students sit for the bar after only two years of law school. If the bar exam is truly a stern enough test for a would-be lawyer, those who can sit it earlier should be allowed to do so. Students who do not need the extra training could cut their debt mountain by a third.The other reason why costs are so high is the restrictive guild-like ownership structure of the business. Except in the District of Columbia, non-lawyers may not own any share of a law firm. This keeps fees high and innovation slow. There is pressure for change from within the profession, but opponents of change among the regulators insist that keeping outsiders out of a law firm isolates lawyers from the pressure to make money rather than serve clients ethically.In fact, allowing non-lawyers to own shares in law firms would reduce costs and improve services to customers, by encouraging law firms to use technology and to employ professional managers to focus on improving firms’ efficiency. After all, other countries, such as Australia and Britain, have started liberalizing their legal professions. America should follow.1. A lot of students take up law as their profession due to .2. Which of the following adds to the costs of legal education in most American states?3. Hindrance to the reform of the legal system originates from .4. The guild-like ownership structure is considered “restrictive” partly because it .5. In this text, the author mainly discusses .

In order to “change lives for the better” and reduce “dependency”, George Orborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the “upfront work search” scheme. Only if the jobless arrive at the job center with a CV register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit—and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly. What could be more reasonable?More apparent reasonableness followed. There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker’s allowance. “Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on.” he claimed. “We’re doing these things because we know they help people stay off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster.” Help? Really? On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with “reforms” to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsides laziness. What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for “fundamental fairness”—protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits.Losing a job is hurting: you don’t skip down to the job center with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state. It is financially terrifying, psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you are now excluded from the work environment that offers purpose and structure in your life. Worse, the crucial income to feed yourself and your family and pay the bills has disappeared. Ask anyone newly unemployed what they want and the answer is always: a job.But in Osborneland, your first instinct is to fall into dependency—permanent dependency if you can get it—supported by a state only too ready to indulge your falsehood. It is as though 20 years of ever-tougher reforms of the job search and benefit administration system never happened. The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unemployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens. Even the very phrase “jobseeker’s allowance”—invented in 1996—is about redefining the unemployed as a “jobseeker” who had no mandatory right to a benefit he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions. Instead, the claimant receives a time-limited “allowance”, conditional on actively seeking a job; no entitlement and no insurance, at £71.70 a week, one of the least generous in the EU.1. George Osborne’s scheme was intended to .2. The phrase “to sign on” (Para.2) most probably means .3. What promoted the chancellor to develop his scheme?4. According to Paragraph 3, being unemployed makes one feel .5. To which of the following would the author most probably agree?

As many people hit middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. We suddenly can’t remember _1_ we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance’s name, or the name of an old band we used to love. As the brain _2_, we refer to these occurrences as “senior moments”. _3_ seemingly innocent, this loss of mental focus can potentially have a (an) _4_ impact on our professional, social, and personal _5_.Neuroscientists, experts who study the nervous system, are increasingly showing that there’s actually a lot that can be done. It _6_ out that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental _7_ can significantly improve our basic cognitive _8_. Thinking is essentially a _9_ of making connections in the brain. To a certain extent, our ability to _10_ in making the connections that drive intelligence is inherited. _11_, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand and fluctuate _12_ mental effort.Now, a new Web-based company has taken it a step _13_ and developed the first “brain training program” designed to actually help people improve and regain their mental _14_.The Web-based program _15_ you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills. The program keeps _16_ of your progress and provides detailed feedback _17_ your performance and improvement. Most importantly, it _18_ modifies and enhances the games you play to _19_ on the strengths you are developing—much like a (an) _20_ exercise routine requires you to increase resistance and vary your muscle use.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret the implied meaning, and3) give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Directions: You are going to host a club reading session. Write an email of about 100 words recommending a book to the club members.You should state reasons for your recommendation.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use “Li Ming” instead.Do not write the address. (10 points)

Within the span of a hundred years, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration—one of the great folk wanderings of history—swept from Europe to America. (1) This movement, driven by powerful and diverse motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and, by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent.(2) The United States is the product of two principal forces—the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these traits. Of necessity, colonial America was a projection of Europe. Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world. (3) But the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were gradual and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American.(4) The first shiploads of immigrants bound for the territory which is now the United States crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred years after the 15th-and-16th-century explorations of North America. In the meantime, thriving Spanish colonies had been established in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. These travelers to North America came in small, unmercifully overcrowded craft. During their six- to twelve-week voyage, they survived on barely enough food allotted to them. Many of the ships were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes storms blew the vessels far off their course, and often calm brought unbearably long delay.To the anxious travelers the sight of the American shore brought almost inexpressible relief. Said one recorder of events, “The air at twelve leagues’ distance smelt as sweet as a new-blown garden.” The colonists’ first glimpse of the new land was a sight of dense woods. (5) The virgin forest with its richness and variety of trees was a real treasure-house which extended from Maine all the way down to Georgia. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores.

Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 Points)How does your reading proceed? Clearly you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar. 1. _______ You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved: Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where.The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement in inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues. 2. _Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or “true” meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relation of the text to the world. 3. _Such background material inevitably reflects who we are. 4. _ This doesn’t, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlap ping readings of the same words on the page including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values.How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it. 5. _________ Such dimensions of reading suggest as others introduced later in the book will also do that we bring an implicit (often unacknowledged) agenda to any act of reading. It doesn’t then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, different kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment.A. Are we studying that text and trying to respond in a way that fulfils the requirement of a given course? Reading it simply for pleasure? Skimming it for information? Ways of reading on a train or in bed are likely to differ considerably from reading in a seminar room.B. Factors such as the place and period in which we are reading, our gender, ethnicity, age and social class will encourage us towards certain interpretations but at the same time obscure or even close off others.C. If you are unfamiliar with words or idioms, you guess at their meaning, using clues presented in the context. On the assumption that they will become relevant later, you make a mental note of discourse entities as well as possible links between them.D. In effect, you try to reconstruct the likely meanings or effects that any given sentence, image or reference might have had: These might be the ones the author intended.E. You make further inferences, for instance, about how the text may be significant to you, or about its validity inferences that form the basis of a personal response for which the author will inevitably be far less responsible.F. In plays, novels and narrative poems, characters speak as constructs created by the author, not necessarily as mouthpieces for the author’s own thoughts.G. Rather, we ascribe meanings to texts on the basis of interaction between what we might call textual and contextual material: between kinds of organization or patterning we perceive in a text’s formal structures (so especially its language structures) and various kinds of background, social knowledge, belief and attitude that we bring to the text.

Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, spoke of the “unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions”. Integrity had collapsed, she argued, because of a collective acceptance that the only “sorting mechanism” in society should be profit and the market. But “it’s us, human beings, we the people who create the society we want, not profit.”Driving her point home, she continued: “It’s increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose, of a moral language within government, media or business could become one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism and freedom.” This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International, she thought, making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking.As the hacking trial concludes finding guilty one ex-editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, and finding his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, innocent of the same charge the wider issue of dearth of integrity still stands. Journalists are known to have hacked the phones of up to 5,500 people. This is hacking on an industrial scale, as was acknowledged by Glenn Mulcaire, the man hired by the News of the World in 2001 to be the point person for phone hacking. Others await trial. This long story still unfolds.In many respects, the dearth of moral purpose frames not only the fact of such widespread phone hacking but the terms on which the trial took place. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, how little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired how the stories arrived. The core of her successful defense was that she knew nothing.In today’s world, it has become normal that well-paid executives should not be accountable for what happens in the organizations that they run. Perhaps we should not be so surprised. For a generation, the collective doctrine has been that the sorting mechanism of society should be profit. The words that have mattered are efficiency, flexibility, shareholder value, business-friendly, wealth generation, sales, impact and, in newspapers, circulation. Words degraded to the margin have been justice, fairness, tolerance, proportionality and accountability.The purpose of editing the News of the World was not to promote reader understanding, to be fair in what was written or to betray any common humanity. It was to ruin lives in the quest for circulation and impact. Ms. Brooks may or may not have had suspicions about how her journalists got their stories, but she asked no questions, gave no instructions—nor received traceable, recorded answers.1. According to the first two paragraphs, Elisabeth was upset by .2. It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 that .3. The author believes that Rebekah Brooks’ defense .4. The author holds that the current collective doctrine shows .5. Which of the following is suggested in the last paragraph?

The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.“Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal,” writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors (SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: “The creation of the ‘statistics board’ was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science’s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish.”Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to “play primarily an advisory role”. He agreed to join because he “found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science.”John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is “a most welcome step forward” and “long overdue”. “Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review,” he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, “engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process”. Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians “has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify ‘the papers that need scrutiny’ in the first place”.1. It can be learned from Paragraph 1 that .2. The phrase “flagged up” (Para. 2) is the closest in meaning to .3. Giovanni Parmigiani believes that the establishment of the SBoRE may .4. David Vaux holds that what Science is doing now .5. Which of the following is the best title of the text?

Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest.California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling, particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest. It is hard, the state argues, for judges to assess the implications of new and rapidly changing technologies.The court would be recklessly modest if it followed California’s advice. Enough of the implications are discernable, even obvious, so that the justices can and should provide updated guidelines to police, lawyers and defendants.They should start by discarding California’s lame argument that exploring the contents of a smartphone—a vast storehouse of digital information—is similar to, say, going through a suspect’s purse. The court has ruled that police don’t violate the Fourth Amendment when they go through the wallet or pocketbook of an arrestee without a warrant. But exploring one’s smartphone is more like entering his or her home. A smartphone may contain an arrestee’s reading history, financial history, medical history and comprehensive records of recent correspondence. The development of “cloud computing”, meanwhile, has made that exploration so much the easier.Americans should take steps to protect their digital privacy. But keeping sensitive information on these devices is increasingly a requirement of normal life. Citizens still have a right to expect private documents to remain private and protected by the Constitution’s prohibition on unreasonable searches.As so often is the case, stating that principle doesn’t ease the challenge of line-drawing. In many cases, it would not be overly burdensome for authorities to obtain a warrant to search through phone contents. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while waiting for a warrant. The court, though, may want to allow room for police to cite situations where they are entitled to more freedom.But the justices should not swallow California’s argument whole. New, disruptive technology sometimes demands novel applications of the Constitution’s protections. Orin Kerr, a law professor, compares the explosion and accessibility of digital information in the 21st century with the establishment of automobile use as a virtual necessity of life in the 20th: The justices had to specify novel rules for the new personal domain of the passenger car then; they must sort out how the Fourth Amendment applies to digital information now.1. The Supreme Court will work out whether, during an arrest, it is legitimate to .2. The author’s attitude toward California’s argument is one of .3. The author believes that exploring one’s phone contents is comparable to .4. In Paragraphs 5 and 6, the author shows his concern that .5. Orin Kerr’s comparison is quoted to indicate that .

King Juan Carlos of Spain once insisted “kings don’t abdicate, they die 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 lifestyles?The Spanish case provides arguments both for and against monarchy. When public opinion is particularly polarized, 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 as heads of state. And so, 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 Charles .5. Which of the following is the best title of the text?

Though not biologically related, friends are as “related” as fourth cousins, sharing about 1% of genes. That is _1_ a study, published from the University of California and Yale University in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has _2_.The study is a genome-wide analysis conducted _3_ 1,932 unique subjects which _4_ pairs of unrelated friends and unrelated strangers. The same people were used in both _5_.While 1% may seem _6_, it is not so to a geneticist. As James Fowler, professor of medical genetics at UC San Diego, says, “Most people do not even _7_ their fourth cousins but somehow manage to select as friends the people who _8_ our kin.”The study _9_ found that the genes for smell were something shared in friends but not genes for immunity. Why this similarity exists in smell genes is difficult to explain, for now. _10_, as the team suggests, it draws us to similar environments but there is more _11_ it. There could be many mechanisms working together that _12_ us in choosing genetically similar friends _13_ “functional kinship” of being friends with _14_!One of the remarkable findings of the study was that the similar genes seem to be evolving _15_ than other genes. Studying this could help _16_ why human evolution picked pace in the last 30,000 years, with social environment being a major _17_ factor.The findings do not simply explain people’s _18_ to befriend those of similar _19_ backgrounds, say the researchers. Though all the subjects were drawn from a population of European extraction, care was taken to _20_ that all subjects, friends and strangers, were taken from the same population.

Directions: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the picture below. In your essay, you should1) describe the picture briefly,2) interpret the implied meaning, and3) give your comments.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (20 points)

Directions: Suppose you are a librarian in your university. Write a notice of about 100 words, providing the newly-enrolled international students with relevant information about the library.You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.Do not sign your own name at the end of the notice. Use “Li Ming” instead.Do not write the address. (10 points)

Mental health is our birthright. (1) We don’t have to learn how to be mentally healthy; it is built into us in the same way that our bodies know how to heal a cut or mend a broken bone. Mental health can’t be learned, only reawakened. It is like the immune system of the body, which under stress or through lack of nutrition or exercise can be weakened, but which never leaves us. When we don’t understand the value of mental health and we don’t know how to gain access to it, mental health will remain hidden from us. (2) Our mental health doesn’t really go anywhere; like the sun behind a cloud, it can be temporarily hidden from view, but it is fully capable of being restored in an instant.Mental health is the seed that contains self-esteem confidence in ourselves and an ability to trust in our common sense. It allows us to have perspective on our lives the ability to not take ourselves too seriously, to laugh at ourselves, to see the bigger picture, and to see that things will work out. It’s a form of innate or unlearned optimism. (3) Mental health allows us to view others with sympathy if they are having troubles, with kindness if they are in pain, and with unconditional love no matter who they are. Mental health is the source of creativity for solving problems, resolving conflict, making our surroundings more beautiful, managing our home life, or coming up with a creative business idea or invention to make our lives easier. It gives us patience for ourselves and toward others as well as patience while driving, catching a fish, working on our car, or raising a child. It allows us to see the beauty that surrounds us each moment in nature, in culture, in the flow of our daily lives.(4) Although mental health is the cure-all for living our lives, it is perfectly ordinary as you will see that it has been there to direct you through all your difficult decisions. It has been available even in the most mundane of life situations to show you right from wrong, good from bad, friend from foe. Mental health has commonly been called conscience, instinct, wisdom, common sense, or the inner voice. We think of it simply as a healthy and helpful flow of intelligent thought. (5) As you will come to see, knowing that mental health is always available and knowing to trust it allow us to slow down to the moment and live life happily.

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

There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. “Sometime in the future,” the paper’s publisher said back in 2010.Nostalgia for ink on paper and the rustle of pages aside, there’s plenty of incentive to ditch print. The infrastructure required to make a physical newspaper printing presses, delivery trucks isn’t just expensive; it’s excessive at a time when online-only competitors don’t have the same set of financial constraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print ad sales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print is still declining.Overhead may be high and circulation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.Peretti says the Times shouldn’t waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. “Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them,” he said, “but if you discontinue it, you’re going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you.”Sometimes that's worth making a change anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming. “It was seen as a blunder,” he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. And if Peretti were in charge at the Times? “I wouldn’t pick a year to end print,” he said. “I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product.”The most loyal customers would still get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they’d feel like they were helping sustain the quality of something they believe in. “So if you’re overpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping,” Peretti said. “Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional revenue.” In other words, if you’re going to make a print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it. Which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $500 a year more than twice as much as a digital-only subscription.“It’s a really hard thing to do and it’s a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn’t have a legacy business,” Peretti remarked. “But we’re going to have questions like that where we have things we’re doing that don’t make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it’s better to be more aggressive than less aggressive.”1. The New York Times is considering ending its print edition partly due to .2. Peretti suggests that, in face of the present situation, the Times should .3. It can be inferred from Paragraphs 5 and 6 that a “legacy product” .4. Peretti believes that, in a changing world, .5. Which of the following would be the best title of the text?

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business,” wrote Milton Friedman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, “That is, to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” But even if you accept Friedman’s premise and regard corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies as a waste of shareholders’ money, things may not be absolutely clear-cut. New research suggests that CSR may create monetary value for companies at least when they are prosecuted for corruption.The largest firms in America and Britain together spend more than $15 billion a year on CSR, according to an estimate by EPG, a consulting firm. This could add value to their businesses in three ways. First, consumers may take CSR spending as a “signal” that a company’s products are of high quality. Second, customers may be willing to buy a company’s products as an indirect way to donate to the good causes it helps. And third, through a more diffuse “halo effect”, whereby its good deeds earn it greater consideration from consumers and others.Previous studies on CSR have had trouble differentiating these effects because consumers can be affected by all three. A recent study attempts to separate them by looking at bribery prosecutions under America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It argues that since prosecutors do not consume a company’s products as part of their investigations, they could be influenced only by the halo effect.The study found that, among prosecuted firms, those with the most comprehensive CSR programs tended to get more lenient penalties. Their analysis ruled out the possibility that it was firms’ political influence, rather than their CSR stand, that accounted for the leniency: Companies that contributed more to political campaigns did not receive lower fines.In all, the study concludes that whereas prosecutors should only evaluate a case based on its merits, they do seem to be influenced by a company’s record in CSR. “We estimate that either eliminating a substantial labor-rights concern, such as child labor, or increasing corporate giving by about 20% results in fines that generally are 40% lower than the typical punishment for bribing foreign officials,” says one researcher.Researchers admit that their study does not answer the question of how much businesses ought to spend on CSR. Nor does it reveal how much companies are banking on the halo effect, rather than the other possible benefits, when they decide their do-gooding policies. But at least they have demonstrated that when companies get into trouble with the law, evidence of good character can win them a less costly punishment.1. The author views Milton Friedman’s statement about CSR with .2. According to Paragraph 2, CSR helps a company by .3. The expression “more lenient” is closest in meaning to .4. When prosecutors evaluate a case, a company’s CSR record .5. Which of the following is true of CSR, according to the last paragraph?

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