Over the past few decades, more and more countries have opened up the markets, increasingly transforming the world economy into one free-flowing global market. The question is：Is economic globalization 1 for all?
According to the World Bank, one of its chief supporters, economic globalization has helped reduce 2 in a large number of developing countries. It quotes one study that shows increased wealth 3 to improved education and longer life in twenty-four developing countries as a result of integration (融合) of local economies into the world economy. Home to some three billion people, these twenty-four countries have seen incomes 4 at an average rate of five percent—compared to two percent in developed countries.
Those who 5 globalization claim that economies in developing countries will benefit from new opportunities for small and home-based businesses. 6, small farmers in Brazil who produce nuts that would originally have sold only in 7 open-air markets can now promote their goods worldwide by the Internet.
Critics take a different view, believing that economic globalization is actually 8 the gap between the rich and poor. A study carried out by the U.N.-sponsored World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization shows that only a few developing countries have actually 9 from integration into the world economy and that the poor, the uneducated, unskilled workers, and native peoples have been left behind. 10, they maintain that globalization may eventually threaten emerging businesses. For example, Indian craftsmen who currently seem to benefit from globalization because they are able to 11 their products may soon face fierce competition that could put them out of 12. When large-scale manufacturers start to produce the same goods, or when superstores like Wal-Mart move in, these small businesses will not be able to 13 and will be crowded out.
One thing is certain about globalization—there is no 14. Advances in technology combined with more open policies have already created an interconnected world. The 15 now is finding a way to create a kind of globalization that works for the benefit of all. (347 words)
For some people, music is no fun at all. About four percent of the population is what scientists call "amusic." People who are amusic are born without the ability to recognize or reproduce musical notes (音调). Amusic people often cannot tell the difference between two songs. Amusics can only hear the difference between two notes if they are very far apart on the musical scale.
As a result, songs sound like noise to an amusic. Many amusics compare the sound of music to pieces of metal hitting each other. Life can be hard for amusics. Their inability to enjoy music set them apart from others. It can be difficult for other people to identify with their condition. In fact, most people cannot begin to grasp what it feels like to be amusic. Just going to a restaurant or a shopping mall can be uncomfortable or even painful. That is why many amusics intentionally stay away from places where there is music. However, this can result in withdrawal and social isolation. "I used to hate parties," says Margaret, a seventy-year-old woman who only recently discovered that she was amusic. By studying people like Margaret, scientists are finally learning how to identify this unusual condition.
Scientists say that the brains of amusics are different from the brains of people who can appreciate music. The difference is complex, and it doesn't involve defective hearing. Amusics can understand other nonmusical sounds well. They also have no problems understanding ordinary speech. Scientists compare amusics to people who just can't see certain colors.
Many amusics are happy when their condition is finally diagnosed (诊断). For years, Margaret felt embarrassed about her problem with music. Now she knows that she is not alone. There is a name for her condition. That makes it easier for her to explain. "When people invite me to a concert, I just say, ‘No thanks, I'm amusic,'" says Margaret. "I just wish I had learned to say that when I was seventeen and not seventy." (335 words)
A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.
“It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.
They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.
While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers' fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.
Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”
A. restore B. recall C. processing D. previously E. necessary F. locating G. instead H. fascinating I. elsewhere J. composition |
As infants, we can recognize our mothers within hours of birth. In fact, we can recognize the of our mother's face well before we can recognize her body shape. It's how the brain can carry out such a function at such a young age, especially since we don't learn to walk and talk until we are over a year old. By the time we are adults, we have the ability to distinguish around 100,000 faces. How can we remember so many faces when many of us find it difficult to such a simple thing as a phone number? The exact process is not yet fully understood, but research around the world has begun to define the specific areas of the brain and processes for facial recognition.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe that they have succeeded in a specific area of the brain called the fusiform face area (FFA), which is used only for facial recognition. This means that recognition of familiar objects such as our clothes or cars, is from in the brain. Researchers also have found that the brain needs to see the whole face for recognition to take place. It had been thought that we only needed to see certain facial features. Meanwhile, research at University College London has found that facial recognition is not a single process, but involves three steps. The first step appears to be an analysis of the physical features of a person's face, which is similar to how we scan the bar codes of our groceries. In the next step, the brain decides whether the face we are looking at is already known or unknown to us. And finally, the brain furnishes the information we have collected about the person whose face we are looking at. This complex is done in a split second so that we can behave quickly when reacting to certain situations.
A study of more than five million books, both fiction and non-fiction, has found a marked decline in the use of emotional words over time. The researchers form the University of Bristol used Google Ngram Viewer, a facility for finding the frequency of terms in scanned books, to search for more than 600 particular words identified as representing anger, dislike, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.
They found that almost all of the categories (类别) showed a drop in these “mood words” over time. Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.
“It is a steady and continuous decrease,” said Dr Alberto Acerbi. He assumed that the result might be explained by a change in the position occupied by literature, in a crowded media landscape. “One thing could be that in parallel to books the 20th century saw the start of other media. Maybe these media—movies, radio, drama—had more emotional content than books.”
Although both joy and sadness followed the general downwards trend, the research, published in the journal PLOS One, found that they also exhibited another interesting behaviour：the ratio (比率) between the two varied greatly, apparently mirroring historical events.
During the Roaring Twenties the joy-to-sadness ratio reached a peak that would not occur again until before the recent financial crash. But the ratio plunged at the height of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the researchers held a reserved opinion about their claim that their result reflected wider social trends. In the paper, they even argue that the reverse could be true.
“It has been suggested, for example, that it was the suppression (压抑) of desire in ordinary Elizabethan English life that increased demand for writing ‘filled with romance and sex' perhaps,” they conclude, “songs and books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.”
(Note：Answer the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS.)
A. Healthy way of life giving way to overuse of medicine B. Different findings as to taking additional vitamin C. EU's response to overuse of health products D. Worrying increase in multivitamin advertising E. EU directive for the benefit of individuals F. EU directive against prediction in novels |
