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1. We can say a lot of things about those( ) （毕生致力于诗歌的人）: they are passionate, impulsive, and unique.2. Mary couldn’t have received my letter, ( ) （否则她上周就该回信了）.3. Nancy is supposed to ( ) （做完化学实验）at least two weeks ago.4. Never once ( ) （老两口互相争吵） since they were married 40 years ago.5. ( ) （一个国家未来的繁荣在很大程度上有赖于） the quality of education of its people.

Seven years ago, when I was visiting Germany, I met with an official who explained to me that the country had a perfect solution to its economic problems. Watching the U.S. economy（1）during the ‘90s, the Germans had decided that they, too, needed to go the high-technology（2）. But how? In the late ‘90s, the answer schemed obvious: Indians.（3） all, Indian entrepreneurs accounted for one of every three Silicon Valley start-ups. So the German government decided that it would（4） Indians to Term any just as America does by（5） green cards. Officials created something called the German Green Card and（6） that they would issue 20,000 in the first year. （7）, the Germans expected that tens of thousands more Indians would soon be begging to come, and perhaps the（8） would have to be increased. But the program was a failure. A year later（9） half of the 20,000 cards had been issued. After a few extensions, the program was（10）. I told the German official at the time that I was sure the（11） would fail. It's not that I had any particular expertise in immigration policy, （12） I understood something about green cards, because I had one (the American（13）. The German Green Card was misnamed, I argued,（14） it never, under any circumstances, translated into German citizenship. The U.S.green card, by contrast, is an almost（15）path to becoming American (after five years and a clean record). The official（16） my objection, saying that there was no way Germany was going to offer these people citizenship. “we need young teach workers,” he said. “that's what this pro-gram is all（17）.”so Germany was asking bright young（18）to leave their country, culture and families, move thousands of miles away, learn a new language and work in a strange land—but without any（19）of ever being part of their new home. Germany was singing a signal, one that was（20） received in India and other countries, and also by Germany's own immigrant community.

In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fights. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I've twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids' college background as e prize demonstrating how well we've raised them. But we can't acknowledge that our obsession（痴迷） is more about us than them. So we've contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn't matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won't be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria（歇斯底里） is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible——and mostly wrong. We haven't found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don't systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures——professors' feedback and the number of essay exams——selective schools do slightly worse.By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates' lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2-4% for every 100-point increase in a school's average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke（偶然）. A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools. Kids count more than their colleges. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it's not the only indicator and,paradoxically,its significance is declining. The reason:so many similar people go elsewhere.Getting into college is not life only competition.Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D.program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in;degrees of prestigious universities didn't.So, parents, lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that.but too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that, other things being equal,graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints.

Imagine waking up and finding the value of your assets has been halved. No, you're not an investor in one of those hedge funds that failed completely. With the dollar slumping to a 26-year low against the pound, already - expensive. London has become quite unaffordable. A coffee at Starbucks, just as unavoidable in England as it is in the United States, runs about $8.The once all-powerful dollar isn't doing a Titanic against just the pound. It is sitting at a record low against the euro and at a 30-year low against the Canadian dollar. Even the Argentine peso and Brazilian real are thriving against the dollar.The weak dollar is a source of humiliation, for a nation's self-esteem rests in part on the strength of its currency. It's also a potential economic problem, since a declining dollar makes imported food more expensive and exerts upward pressure on interest rates. And yet there are substantial sectors of the vast U.S. economy-from giant companies like Coca-Cola to mom-and-pop restaurant operators in Miami-for which the weak dollar is most excellent news.Many Europeans may view the U.S. as an arrogant superpower that has become hostile to foreigners. But nothing makes people think more warmly of the U.S. than a weak dollar. Through April, the total number of visitors from abroad was up 6.8 percent from last year. Should the trend continue, the number of tourists this year will finally top the 2000 peak? Many Europeans now apparently view the U.S. the way many Americans view Mexico-as a cheap place to vacation, shop and party, all while ignoring the fact that the poorer locals can't afford to join the merrymaking.The money tourists spend helps decrease our chronic trade deficit. So do exports, which thanks in part to the weak dollar, soared 11 percent between May 2006 and May 2007. For first five months of 2007, the trade deficit actually fell 7 percent from 2006.If you own shares in large American corporations, you're a winner in the weak-dollar gamble. Last week Coca -Cola's stick bubbled to a five-year high after it reported a fantastic quarter. Foreign sales accounted for 65 percent of Coke's beverage business. Other American companies profiting from this trend include McDonald's and IBM.American tourists, however, shouldn't expect any relief soon. The dollar lost strength the way many marriages break up- slowly, and then all at once. And currencies don't turn on a dime. So if you want to avoid the pain inflicted by the increasingly pathetic dollar, cancel that summer vacation to England and look to New England. There, the dollar is still treated with a little respect.

If movie trailers（预告片）are supposed to cause a reaction, the preview for "United 93" more than succeeds. Featuring no famous actors, it begins with images of a beautiful morning and passengers boarding an airplane. It takes you a minute to realize what the movie's even about. That's when a plane hits the World Trade Center. the effect is visceral（震撼心灵的）. When the trailer played before "Inside Man" last week at a Hollywood theater, audience members began calling out, "Too soon!" In New York City, the response was even more dramatic. The Loews theater in Manhattan took the rare step of pulling the trailer from its screens after several complaints."United 93" is the first feature film to deal explicitly with the events of September 11, 2001, and is certain to ignite an emotional debate. Is it too soon? Should the film have been made at all? More to the point, will anyone want to see it? Other 9/11 projects are on the way as the fifth anniversary of the attacks approaches, most notably Oliver Stone's " World Trade Center." but as the forerunner, "United 93"will take most of the heat, whether it deserves it or not.The real United 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field after 40 passengers and crew fought back against the terrorists. Writer-director Paul Greengrass has gone to great lengths to be respectful in his depiction of what occurred, proceeding with the film only after securing the approval of every victim's family. "Was I surprised at the agreement? Yes. Very. Usually there're one or two families who're more reluctant," Greengrass writes in an e-mail. "I was surprised at the extraordinary way the United 93 families have welcomed us into their lives and shared their experiences with us." Carole O'Hare, a family member, says, "They were very open and honest with us, and they made us a part of this whole project." Universal, which is releasing the film, plans to donate 10% of its opening weekend gross to the Flight 93 National Memorial Fund. That hasn't stopped criticism that the studio is exploiting a national tragedy. O'Hare thinks that's unfair. "This story has to be told to honor the passengers and crew for what they did," she says. "But more than that, it raises awareness. Our ports aren't secure. Our borders aren't secure. Our airlines still aren't secure, and this is what happens when you're not secure. That's the message I want people to hear."

This week some top scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, gave their vision of how the world will look in 2056, from gas-powered cars to extraordinary health advances, John Ingham reports on what the world's finest minds believe our futures will be.For those of us lucky enough to live that long, 2056 will be a world of almost perpetual youth, where obesity is a remote memory and robots become our companions.We will be rubbing shoulders with aliens and colonizing outer space. Better still, our descendants might at last live in a world at peace with itself. The prediction is that we will have found a source of inexhaustible, safe, green energy, and that science will have killed off religion. If they are right we will have removed two of the main causes of war-our dependence on oil and religious prejudice.Will we really, as today's scientist's claim, be able to live for ever or at least cheat the ageing process so that the average person lives to 150?Of course, all these predictions come with a scientific health warning. Harvard professor Steven Pinker says: “This is an invitation to look foolish, as with the predictions of domed cities and nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners that were made 50 year ago.”Living longerAnthony Attala, director of the Wake Forest Institute in North Carolina, believes failing organs will be repaired by injecting cells into the body. They will naturally to straight to the injury and help heal it. A system of injections without needles could also slow the ageing process by using the same process to “tune” cells.Bruce Lehn, professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, anticipates the ability to produce” unlimited supplies” of transplantable human organs without the needed a new organ, such as kidney, the surgeon would contact a commercial organ producer, give him the patient's immune-logical profile and would then be sent a kidney with the correct tissue type.These organs would be entirely composed of human cells, grown by introducing them into animal hosts, and allowing them to develop into and organ in place of the animal's own. But Prof. Lehn believes that farmed brains would be “off limits”. He says: “Very few people would want to have their brains replaced by someone else's and we probably don't want to put a human braining an animal body.” Richard Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan, thinks scientist could develop” authentic anti-ageing drugs” by working out how cells in larger animals such as whales and human resist many forms of injuries. He says:” It's is now routine, in laboratory mammals, to extend lifespan by about 40%. Turning on the same protective systems in people should, by 2056, create the first class of 100-year-olds who are as vigorous and productive as today's people in their 60s”AliensConlin Pillinger, professor of planetary sciences at the Open University, says:”I fancy that at least we will be able to show that life did start to evolve on Mars well as Earth.” Within 50years he hopes scientists will prove that alien life came here in Martian meteorites（陨石）.Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. Believes that in 50 years we may find evidence of alien life in ancient permanent forts of Mars or on other planers.He adds:” There is even a chance we will find alien life forms here on Earth. It might be as different as English is to Chinese.Princeton professor Freeman Dyson thinks it “likely” that life form outer space will be discovered deform 2056 because the tools for finding it, such as optical and radio detection and data processing, are improving.He says:”As soon as the first evidence is found, we will know what to look for and additional discoveries is likely to follow quickly. Such discoveries are likely to have revolutionary consequences for biology, astronomy and philosophy. They may change the way we look at ourselves and our place in the universe.Colonies in spaceRichard Gott professor of astrophysics at Princeton, hopes man will set up a self-sufficient colony on Mars, which would be a “life insurance policy against whatever catastrophes, natural or otherwise, might occur on Earth.“The real space race is whether we will colonies off Earth on to other worlds before money for the space programmed runs out.”Spinal injuriesEllen Heber-Katz, a professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, foresees cures for injuries causing paralysis such as the one that afflicted Superman star Christopher Reeve.She says:'' I believe that the day is not far off when we will be able to prescribe drugs that cause severed（断裂的）spinal cords to heal, hearts to regenerate and lost limbs to regroup.''‘‘People will come to expect that injured or diseased organs are meant to be repaired from within, inmuch the same way that we fix an appliance or automobile: by replacing the damaged part with a manufacturer-certified new part.” She predicts that within 5 to 10 years fingers and toes will be reground and limbs will start to be reground a few years later. Repairs to the nervous system will start with optic nerves and, in time, the spinal cord.” Within 50years whole body replacement will be routine,''Prof.Heber Katz adds.ObesitySydney Brenner, senior distinguished fellow of the Crick-Jacobs Center in California, won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Medicine and says that if there is a global disaster some humans will survive-and evolution will favor small people with bodies large enough to support the required amount of brain power.”Obesity，”he says.” will have been solved.”RobotsRodney Brooks, professor of robotic at Mitoses the problems of developing artificial intelligence for robots will be at least partly overcome. As a result,” the possibilities for robots working with people will open up immensely”EnergyBill Joy, green technology expert in California, says: "The most significant breakthrough would be to have an inexhaustible source of safe, green energy that is substantially cheaper than any existing energy source.”Ideally, such a source would be safe in that it could not be made into weapons and would not make hazardous or toxic waste or carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warning.SocietyGeoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico,says^"The US will follow the UK in realizing that religion is nor a prerequisite（前提）for ordinary human decency.“This, science will kill religion-not by reason challenging faith but by offering a more practical, universal and rewarding moral framework for human interaction.”He also predicts that “absurdly wasteful” displays of wealth will become unfashionable while the importance of close-knit communities and families will become clearer.This three changer, he says, will help make us all brighter, wiser, happier and kinder”.

1.（）（他们的独生儿子从未想过） to leave them and strike out on his own though he is in his late twenties.2. Before you take any action, please remember to（）（权衡你的决定会产生的后果）.3. He assured his friend that under no circumstances（）（他会违背还钱的承诺）.4. Most educators advise that kids（）（不要沉溺于电脑游戏）.5. Business major as he is, he has（）（从未考虑过从事推销员工作）.

A new study found that inner-city kids living in neighborhoods with more green space gained about 13% less weight over a two-year period than kids living amid more concrete and fewer trees. Such（1）tell a powerful story. The obesity epidemic began in the 1980s, and many people（2）it to increased portion sizes and inactivity, but that can't be everything. Fast foods and TVs have been（3）us for a long time. "Most experts agree that the changes were（4）to something in the environment," says social epidemiologist Thomas Glass of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That something could be a（5）of the green. The new research, （6）in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, isn't the first to associate greenery with better health, but it does get us closer（7）identifying what works and why. At its most straightforward, a green neighborhood（8）means more places for kids to play - which is（9） since time spent outdoors is one of the strongest correlates of children's activity levels. But green space is good for the mind（10）: research by environmental psychologists has shown that it has cognitive（11） for children with attention-deficit disorder. In one study, just reading （12）in a green setting improved kids' symptoms. （13）to grassy areas has also been linked to（14）stress and a lower body mass index （体重指数） among adults. And an（15）of 3,000 Tokyo residents associated walkable green spaces with greater longevity （长寿） among senior citizens. Glass cautions that most studies don't（16） prove a causal link between greenness and health, but they're nonetheless helping spur action. In September the U. S. House of Representatives（17） the delightfully named No Child Left Inside Act to encourage public initiatives aimed at exposing kids to the outdoors. Finding green space is not（18）easy, and you may have to work a bit to get your family a little grass and trees. If you live in a suburb or a city with good parks, take（19）of what's there. Your children in particular will love it - and their bodies and minds will be（20）to you.

A new study from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University shows that today's youth vote in larger numbers than previous generations, and a 2008 study from the Center for American Progress adds that increasing numbers of young voters and activists support traditionally liberal causes. But there's no easy way to see what those figures mean in real life. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama assembled a racially and ideologically diverse coalition with his message of hope and change; as the reality of life under a new administration settles in, some of those supporters might become disillusioned. As the nation moves further into the Obama presidency, will politically engaged young people continue to support the president and his agenda, or will they gradually drift away?The writers of Generation O (short for Obama), a new Newsweek blog that seeks to chronicle the lives of a group of young Obama supporters, want to answer that question. For the next three months, Michelle Kremer and 11 other Obama supporters, ages 19 to 34, will blog about life across mainstream America, with one twist: by tying all of their ideas and experiences to the new president and his administration, the bloggers will try to start a conversation about what it means to be young and politically active in America today. Malena Amusa, a 24-year-old writer and dancer from St. Louis sees the project as a way to preserve history as it happens. Amusa, who is traveling to India this spring to finish a book, then to Senegal to teach English, has ongoing conversations with her friends about how the Obama presidency has changed their daily lives and hopes to put some of those ideas, along with her global perspective, into her posts. She's excited because, as she puts it, "I don't have to wait [until] 15 years from now" to make sense of the world.Henry Flores, a political-science professor at St. Mary's University, credits this younger generation's political strength to their embrace of technology. "[The Internet] exposes them to more thinking," he says, "and groups that are like-minded in different parts of the country start to come together." That's exactly what the Generation O bloggers are hoping to do. The result could be a group of young people that, like their boomer（二战后生育高峰期出生的美国人）parents, grows up with a strong sense of purpose and sheds the image of apathy（冷漠）they've inherited from Generation X（60 年代后期和 70 年代出生的美国人）. It's no small challenge for a blog run by a group of ordinary—if ambitious—young people, but the members of Generation O are up to the task.

Only two countries in the advanced world provide no guarantee for paid leave from work to care for a newborn child. Last spring one of the two, Australia, gave up the dubious distinction by establishing paid family leave starting in 2011. I wasn't surprised when this didn't make the news here in the United States—we're now the only wealthy country without such a policy.The United States does have one explicit family policy, the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993. It entitles workers to as much as 12 weeks' unpaid leave for care of a newborn or dealing with a family medical problem. Despite the modesty of the benefit, the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups fought it bitterly, describing it as "government-run personnel management" and a "dangerous precedent". In fact, every step of the way, as (usually) Democratic leaders have tried to introduce work-family balance measures into the law, business groups have been strongly opposed.As Yale law professor Anne Alstott argues, justifying parental support depends on defining the family as a social good that, in some sense, society must pay for. In her book No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents, she argues that parents are burdened in many ways in their lives: there is "no exit" when it comes to children. "Society expects—and needs—parents to provide their children with continuity of care, meaning the intensive, intimate care that human beings need to develop their intellectual, emotional and moral capabilities. And society expects—and needs—parents to persist in their roles for 18 years, or longer if needed."While most parents do this out of love, there are public penalties for not providing care. What parents do, in other words, is of deep concern to the state, for the obvious reason that caring for children is not only morally urgent but essential for the future of society. The state recognizes this in the large body of family laws that govern children' welfare, yet parents receive little help in meeting the life-changing obligations society imposes. To classify parenting as a personal choice for which there is no collective responsibility is not merely to ignore the social benefits of good parenting; really, it is to steal those benefits because they accrue （不断积累） to the whole of society as today's children become tomorrow's productive citizenry （公民）. In fact, by some estimates, the value of parental investments in children, investments of time and money (including lost wages), is equal to 20-30% of gross domestic product. If these investments generate huge social benefits—as they clearly do—the benefits of providing more social support for the family should be that much clearer.

Question: My ninth-grade art teacher doesn't give any grade above 94% because, she says, "There's always room for improvement." In previous years, I earned a 99% and a 100%. The 94 I received this term does not reflect the hard work that I put into this course. Because of her "improvement" theory, I got a lower grade than I deserve. Is her grading philosophy ethical (符合职业道德规范的)?Answer: Your teacher's grading system may be unwise, but it is not unethical. A teacher deserves wide latitude in selecting the method of grading that best promotes learning in her classroom; that is, after all, the prime function of grades. It is she who has the training and experience to make this decision. Assuming that your teacher is neither biased nor corrupt and that her system conforms to school rules, you can't fault her ethics.You can criticize her methodology. A 100 need not imply that there is no possibility of improvement, only that a student successfully completed the course work. A ninth grader could get a well-earned 100 in English class but still have a way to go before she writes as well as Jane Austen. What's more, grades are not only an educational device but are also part of a screening system to help assign kids to their next class or program. By capping her grades at 94 while most other teachers grade on a scale that tops out at 100, your teacher could jeopardize a student's chance of getting a scholarship or getting into a top college.What it is wrong to condemn her for is overlooking your hard work. You diligence is worthy of encouragement, but effort does not equal accomplishment. If scholars suddenly discovered that Rembrandt had dashed off "The Night Watch" in an afternoon, it would still be "The Night Watch."I could spend months sweating over my own "paintings", but I'd produce something you wouldn't want to hang in your living room. Or your garage.One feature of a good grading system is that those measured by it generally regard it as fair and reasonable—not the case here. Simmering（难以平息的）resentment is seldom an aid to education.And so your next step should be to discuss your concerns with your teacher or the principal.

Obama's success isn't all good news for black AmericansAs Erin White watched the election results head towards victory for Barack Obama, she felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. "In that one second, it was a validation for my whole race," she recalls."I've always been an achiever," says White, who is studying for an MBA at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. "But there had always been these things in the back of my mind questioning whether I really can be who I want. It was like a shadow, following me around saying you can only go so far. Now it's like a barrier has been let down."White's experience is what many psychologists had expected - that Obama would prove to be a powerful role model for African Americans. Some hoped his rise to prominence would have a big impact on white Americans, too, challenging those who still harbour racist sentiments. "The traits that characterise him are very contradictory to the racial stereotypes that black people are aggressive and uneducated," says Ashby Plant of Florida State University. "He's very intelligent and eloquent."Sting in the tailAshby Plant is one of a number of psychologists who seized on Obama's candidacy to test hypotheses about the power of role models. Their work is already starting to reveal how the "Obama effect" is changing people's views and behaviour. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not all good news: there is a sting in the tail of the Obama effect.But first the good news. Barack Obama really is a positive role model for African Americans, and he was making an impact even before he got to the White House. Indeed, the Obama effect can be surprisingly immediate and powerful, as Ray Friedman of Vanderbilt University and his colleagues discovered.They tested four separate groups at four key stages of Obama's presidential campaign. Each group consisted of around 120 adults of similar age and education, and the test assessed their language skills. At two of these stages, when Obama's success was less than certain, the tests showed a clear difference between the scores of the white and black participants—an average of 12.1 out of 20, compared to 8.8, for example. When the Obama fever was at its height, however, the black participants performed much better. Those who had watched Obama's acceptance speech as the Democrats' presidential candidate performed just as well, on average, as the white subjects.After his election victory, this was true of all the black participants.Dramatic shiftWhat can explain this dramatic shift? At the start of the test, the participants had to declare their race and were told their results would be used to assess their strengths and weaknesses. This should have primed the subjects with "stereotype threat" - an anxiety that their results will confirm negative stereotypes, which has been shown to damage the performance of African Americans.Obama's successes seemed to act as a shield against this. "We suspect they felt inspired and energised by his victory, so the stereotype threat wouldn't prove a distraction," says Friedman.Lingering racismIf the Obama effect is positive for African Americans, how is it affecting their white compatriots （同胞）? Is the experience of having a charismatic （有魅力的） black president modifying lingering racist attitudes? There is no easy way to measure racism directly; instead psychologists assess what is known as "implicit bias", using a computer-based test that measures how quickly people associate positive and negative words—such as "love" or "evil"—with photos of black or white faces. A similar test can also measure how quickly subjects associate stereotypical traits—such as athletic skills or mental ability—with a particular group.In a study that will appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Plant's team tested 229 students during the height of the Obama fever. They found that implicit bias has fallen by as much as 90% compared with the level found in a similar study in 2006. "That's an unusually large drop," Plant says.While the team can't be sure their results are due solely to Obama, they also showed that those with the lowest bias were likely to subconsciously associate black skin colour with political words such as "government" or "president". This suggests that Obama was strongly on their mind, says Plant.Drop in biasBrian Nosek of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who runs a website that measures implicit bias using similar test, has also observed a small drop in bias in the 700,000 visitors to the site since January 2007, which might be explained by Obama's rise to popularity. However, his preliminary results suggest that change will be much slower coming than Plant's results suggest.Talking honestly"People now have the opportunity of expressing support for Obama every day," says Daniel Effron at Stanford University in California. "Our research arouses the concern that people may now be more likely to raise negative views of African Americans." On the other hand, he says, it may just encourage people to talk more honestly about their feelings regarding race issues, which may not be such a bad thing.Another part of the study suggests far more is at stake than the mere expression of views. The Obama effect may have a negative side. Just one week after Obama was elected president, participants were less ready to support policies designed to address racial inequality than they had been two weeks before the election.Huge obstaclesIt could, of course, also be that Obama's success helps people to forget that a disproportionate number of black Americans still live in poverty and face huge obstacles when trying to overcome these circumstances. "Barack Obama's family is such a salient （出色的） image, we generalise it and fail to see the larger picture—that there's injustice in every aspect of American life," says Cheryl Kaiser of the University of Washington in Seattle. Those trying to address issues of racial inequality need to constantly remind people of the inequalities that still exist to counteract the Obama's effect, she says.Though Plant's findings were more positive, she too warns against thinking that racism and racial inequalities are no longer a problem. "The last thing I want is for people to think everything's solved."These findings do not only apply to Obama, or even just to race. They should hold for any role model in any country. "There's no reason we wouldn't have seen the same effect on our views of women if Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin had been elected," says Effron. So the election of a female leader might have a downside for other women.Beyond raceWe also don't yet know how long the Obama effect —both its good side and its bad—will last.Political sentiment is notoriously changeable: What if things begin to go wrong for Obama, and his popularity slumps?And what if Americans become so familiar with having Obama as their president that they stop considering his race altogether? "Over time he might become his own entity," says Plant. This might seem like the ultimate defeat for racism, but ignoring the race of certain select individuals—a phenomenon that psychologists call subtyping—also has an insidious （隐伏的） side. "We think it happens to help people preserve their beliefs, so they can still hold on to the previous stereotypes." That could turn out to be the cruellest of all the twists to the Obama effect.

1. Even though they were already late, they ( ) （宁愿停下来欣赏美丽的景色） than just go on.2. No agreement was reached in the discussion between the two parties, as ( ) （任何一方都不肯放弃自己的立场）.3. The pills ( ) （本来可以治愈那位癌症病人的）, but he didn't follow the doctor's advice and take them regularly.4. It is ( ) （你真好，给了我那么多帮助）; I really feel obliged to you.5. The war left the family scattered all over the world, and it was thirty years ( )（他们才得以重聚）.

Organised volunteering and work experience has long been a vital companion to university degree courses. Usually it is left to（1）to deduce the potential from a list of extracurricular adventures on a graduate's resume, （2）now the University of Bristol has launched an award to formalise the achievements of students who（3）time to activities outside their courses. Bristol PLuS aims to boost students in an increasingly（4）job market by helping them acquire work and life skills alongside（5）qualifications. "Our students are a pretty active bunch, but we found that they didn't（6）appreciate the value of what they did（7）the lecture hall," says Jeff Goodman, director of careers and employability at the university. "Employers are much more（8）than they used to be. They used to look for（9） and saw it as part of their job to extract the value of an applicant's skills. Now they want students to be able to explain why those skills are（10）to the job." Students who sign（11）for the award will be expected to complete 50 hours of work experience or（12）work, attend four workshops on employ-ability skills, take part in an intensive skills-related activity（13）, crucially, write a summary of the skills they have gained. （14）efforts will gain an Outstanding Achievement Award. Those who（15）best on the sports field can take the Sporting PLuS Award which fosters employer-friendly sports accomplishments. The experience does not have to be（16）organised. "We're not just interested in easily identifiable skills," says Goodman. "（17）, one student took the lead in dealing with a difficult landlord and so（18）negotiation skills. We try to make the experience relevant to individual lives." Goodman hopes the（19） will enable active students to fill in any gaps in their experience and encourage their less-active（20）to take up activities outside their academic area of work.

Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you'll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women - the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school's picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach - arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management - at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.

At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from farm produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality?There are a number of familiar theories. Some argue that people are anxious and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers. Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners add to the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley, notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers - meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agricultural businesses in California. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9% between 1980-2000. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal ( 财政的) burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal. Even for those most acutely affected - say, low-skilled workers, or California residents - the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The unpleasant voices have tended to dominate our perceptions," says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists calculate the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one." Too bad most people don't realize it.

How good are you at saying "no"? For many, it's surprisingly difficult. This is especially true of editors, who by nature tend to be eager and engaged participants in everything they do. Consider these scenarios:It's late in the day. That front-page package you've been working on is nearly complete; one last edit and it's finished. Enter the executive editor, who makes a suggestion requiring a more-than-modest rearrangement of the design and the addition of an information box. You want to scream: "No! It's done!" What do you do?The first rule of saying no to the boss is don't say no. She probably has something in mind when she makes suggestions, and it's up to you to find out what. The second rule is don't raise the stakes by challenging her authority. That issue is already decided. The third rule is to be ready to cite options and consequences. The boss's suggestions might be appropriate, but there are always consequences. She might not know about the pages backing up that need attention, or about the designer who had to go home sick. Tell her she can have what she wants, but explain the consequences. Understand what she's trying to accomplish and propose a Plan B that will make it happen without destroying what you've done so far.Here's another case. Your least-favorite reporter suggests a dumb story idea. This one should be easy, but it's not. If you say no, even politely, you risk inhibiting further ideas, not just from that reporter, but from others who heard that you turned down the idea. This scenario is common in newsrooms that lack a systematic way to filter story suggestions.Two steps are necessary. First, you need a system for how stories are proposed and reviewed. Reporters can tolerate rejection of their ideas if they believe they were given a fair hearing. Your gut reaction （本能反应） and dismissive rejection, even of a worthless idea, might not qualify as systematic or fair.Second, the people you work with need to negotiate a "What if ...?" agreement covering "What if my idea is turned down?" How are people expected to react? Is there an appeal process? Can they refine the idea and resubmit it? By anticipating "What if...?" situations before they happen, you can reach understanding that will help ease you out of confrontations.

American universities are accepting more minorities than ever. Graduating them is another matter.Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, was justifiably proud of Bowdoin's efforts to recruit minority students. Since 2003 the small, elite liberal arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called under-represented minority students in entering freshman classes from 8% to 13%. "It is our responsibility to reach out and attract students to come to our kinds of places," he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. But Bowdoin has not done quite as well when it comes to actually graduating minorities. While 9 out of 10 white students routinely get their diplomas within six years, only 7 out of 10 black students made it to graduation day in several recent classes."If you look at who enters college, it now looks like America," says Hilary Pennington, director of postsecondary programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has closely studied enrollment patterns in higher education. "But if you look at who walks across the stage for a diploma, it's still largely the white, upper-income population."The United States once had the highest graduation rate of any nation. Now it stands 10th. For the first time in American history, there is the risk that the rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one. The graduation rate among 25- to 34-year-olds is no better than the rate for the 55- to 64-year-olds who were going to college more than 30 years ago. Studies show that more and more poor and non-white students want to graduate from college - but their graduation rates fall far short of their dreams. The graduation rates for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans lag far behind the graduation rates for whites and Asians. As the minority population grows in the United States, low college graduation rates become a threat to national prosperity.The problem is pronounced at public universities. In 2007 the University of Wisconsin-Madison - one of the top five or so prestigious public universities - graduated 81% of its white students within six years, but only 56% of its blacks. At less-selective state schools, the numbers get worse. During the same time frame, the University of Northern Iowa graduated 67% of its white students, but only 39% of its blacks. Community colleges have low graduation rates generally - but rock-bottom rates for minorities. A recent review of California community colleges found that while a third of the Asian students picked up their degrees, only 15% of African-Americans did so as well.Private colleges and universities generally do better, partly because they offer smaller classes and more personal attention. But when it comes to a significant graduation gap, Bowdoin has company. Nearby Colby College logged an 18-point difference between white and black graduates in 2007 and 25 points in 2006. Middlebury College in Vermont, another top school, had a 19-point gap in 2007 and a 22-point gap in 2006.The most selective private schools - Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - show almost no gap between black and white graduation rates. But that may have more to do with their ability to select the best students. According to data gathered by Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier, the most selective schools are more likely to choose blacks who have at least one immigrant parent from Africa or the Caribbean than black students who are descendants of American slaves."Higher education has been able to duck this issue for years, particularly the more selective schools, by saying the responsibility is on the individual student," says Pennington of the Gates Foundation. "If they fail, it's their fault." Some critics blame affirmative action - students admitted with lower test scores and grades from shaky high schools often struggle at elite schools. But a bigger problem may be that poor high schools often send their students to colleges for which they are "undermatched": they could get into more elite, richer schools, but instead go to community colleges and low-rated state schools that lack the resources to help them. Some schools out for profit cynically increase tuitions and count on student loans and federal aid to foot the bill - knowing full well that the students won't make it. "The school keeps the money, but the kid leaves with loads of debt and no degree and no ability to get a better job. Colleges are not holding up their end," says Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust.A college education is getting ever more expensive. Since 1982 tuitions have been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation. In 2008 the net cost of attending a four-year public university - after financial aid - equaled 28% of median（中间的）family income, while a four-year private university cost 76% of median family income. More and more scholarships are based on merit, not need. Poorer students are not always the best-informed consumers. Often they wind up deeply in debt or simply unable to pay after a year or two and must drop out.There once was a time when universities took pride in their dropout rates. Professors would begin the year by saying, "Look to the right and look to the left. One of you is not going to be here by the end of the year." But such a Darwinian spirit is beginning to give way as at least a few colleges face up to the graduation gap. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the gap has been roughly halved over the last three years. The university has poured resources into peer counseling to help students from inner-city schools adjust to the rigor（严格要求）and faster pace of a university classroom -and also to help minority students overcome the stereotype that they are less qualified. Wisconsin has a "laserlike focus" on building up student skills in the first three months, according to vice provost（教务长）Damon Williams.State and federal governments could sharpen that focus everywhere by broadly publishing minority graduation rates. For years private colleges such as Princeton and MIT have had success bringing minorities onto campus in the summer before freshman year to give them some prepara¬tory courses. The newer trend is to start recruiting poor and non-white students as early as the seventh grade, using innovative tools to identify kids with sophisticated verbal skills. Such pro¬grams can be expensive, of course, but cheap compared with the millions already invested in scholarships and grants for kids who have little chance to graduate without special support.With effort and money, the graduation gap can be closed. Washington and Lee is a small, selective school in Lexington, Va. Its student body is less than 5% black and less than 2% Latino. While the school usually graduated about 90% of its whites, the graduation rate of its blacks and Latinos had dipped to 63% by 2007. "We went through a dramatic shift," says Dawn Watkins, the vice president for student affairs. The school aggressively pushed mentoring （辅导） of minorities by other students and "partnering" with parents at a special pre-enrollment session. The school had its first-ever black homecoming. Last spring the school graduated the same proportion of minorities as it did whites. If the United States wants to keep up in the global economic race, it will have to pay systematic attention to graduating minorities, not just enrolling them.

There is extraordinary exposure in the United States to the risk of injury and death from motor vehicle accidents. More than 80 percent of all households own passenger cars or light trucks and each of these is driven an average of more than 11,000 miles each year. Almost one-half of fatally injured drivers have a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.1 percent or higher. For the average adult, over five ounces of 80 proof spirits would have to be consumed over a short period of time to attain these levels. A third of drivers who have been drinking, but fewer than 4 percent of all drivers, demonstrate these levels. Although less than 1 percent of drivers with BAC's of 0.1 percent or more are involved in fatal crashes, the probability of their involvement is 27 times higher than for those without alcohol in their blood.There are a number of different approaches to reducing injuries in which intoxication plays a role. Based on the observation that excessive consumption correlates with the total alcohol consumption of a country's population, it has been suggested that higher taxes on alcohol would reduce both. While the heaviest drinkers would be taxed the most, anyone who drinks at all would be penalized by this approach. To make drinking and driving a criminal offense is an approach directed only at intoxicated drivers. In some states, the law empowers police to request breath test of drivers cited for any traffic offense and elevated BAC can be the basis for every arrest. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates, however, that even with increased arrests, there are about 700 violations for every arrest. At this level there is little evidence that laws serve as deterrents to drinking while intoxicated. In Britain, motor vehicle fatalities fell 25 percent immediately following implementation of the Road Safety Act in 1967. As Britishers increasingly recognized that they could drink and not to be stopped, the effectiveness declined, although in the following three years the fatality rate seldom reached that observed in the seven years prior to the Act.

“失落之城”马丘比丘坐落在秘鲁热带山地森林，直到1911年才被美国探险家海勒姆·宾厄姆发现。马丘比丘海拔2430米，为热带森林所包围。它可能是印加帝国全盛时期最辉煌的城市建筑，那巨大的城墙和梯田好像是在连绵的悬崖绝壁上自然形成的一样。古城矗立在安第斯山脉东边的斜坡上，环绕着亚马孙河上游的盆地。马丘比丘废墟是世界上最美最神秘的古代遗址之一。早在15世纪初期，印加人就在那里建起数百座石建筑，传说和神话表明马丘比丘曾是一个圣地。古城废墟有宫殿、洗浴室、寺庙、贮藏室和大约150间房子，皆保存完好。这些建筑均用山顶的灰色花岗岩雕筑而成，是建筑学和美学的奇迹。

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