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Is There Life on Mars？ The American space agency, NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)， has drawn up a short list of ten research projects that will form the basic of an ambitious program to explore the planet Mars in a mission scheduled for launch in 2007. Scientists are being asked to use their ingenuity to devise novel ways to explore the red planet using intelligent robots and probes that might perhaps answer the biggest question of all—-is there life on Mars? NASA chose the ten projects from a list of 43 hopefuls. It has included missions for returning samples of Martian dust and gas to Earth， networks of small landers, orbiting constellations of microprobes and a rover that would try to date the precise age of rocks and soils. The ten "concepts" are part of the Mars Scout program to be launched in six years. This follows a decade of the most intensive interest in Mars since the two Viking probes of 1976 which sent back eerie images of the Martian landscape some 400 million kilometers away. But the history of Mars exploration is littered with fail—ore than half of the 30 missions to date have ended in fiasco. It was NASA’s announcement in August 1996 of possible signs of life in a Martian meteorite which had fallen to Earth that rekindled intense interest in Earth’s nearest neighbor. It was assumed that liquid water had once flowed on Mars and an ancient atmosphere might have supported living organisms. However， opposing camps of scientists bitterly disputed NASA’s evidence for primitive life-forms in the Martian meteorite ALH84001. This led to the conclusion that the only way of finding out whether life ever existed on Mars is to go there and have a look. NASA planned a bold series of increasingly complex missions involving the launch of a couple of space probes every year for a dozen years. One of the most successful so far was the shoe-box-sized So-journer rover which thrilled a world Internet audience when it was wheeled out in 1997. Since then, however， NASA has suffered a series of setbacks. In September 1999 its Mars Climate Orbiter was lost as a failed rocket bum plunged it into the Martian atmosphere. NASA blamed it on one of its team using imperial units and another using metric. Three months later, NASA lost contact with its Polar Lander as it approached touchdown on the frozen South Pole of the planet. Space commentators muttered darkly about Mars being a cosmic equivalent of the Bermuda triangle. The year of 2001 saw the successful completion of the Global Surveyor mission， an orbiting probe that took pictures of what some scientists say are channels in the dust where water may still occasionally flow from underground well. More recently, the Mars Odyssey probe was launched without hitch and is due to arrive in 2008. Meanwhile， the European Space Agency is planning its own visit to the red planet with the launch of its Mars Express mission scheduled for take-off in June 2003. Britain is designated to take a lead role in the project with the Beagle 2 Lander, a small craft， the size of a kitchen sink designed to shuffle over the Martian landscape taking soil and rock samples, analyzing them for signs of life and transmitting the data back to Earth. Beagle 2—framed after the ship that carded Charles Darwin on his voyage of discovery—will weigh just 60 kilograms and will cost about US $$225，000 to build, a fraction of the cost of building the Viking space probes more than 25 years ago. Beagle 2 will look for water， minerals and organic matter. Although it will reach Mars before NASA’s Scout mission is even launched, it will be considerably less sophisticated in tea’ms of analytical technology. The focus now for NASA is on what instruments and robots to put on the Mars Scout mission in six years. Ed Weiler， NASA’s associate administrator for space science, had to decide on a top ten to concentrate NASA’s limited resources. Each project is to receive a grant of $$150，000 to see them through the next six months of development. It all has to come out of a total project budget capped at $300 million. "These Scout concepts embody the spirit I first thought about more than a year ago; and will enable us to explore the diversity of Mars in new ways，" Dr Weiler said.

The Truth about Genetically Modified Food At almost every public lecture I give， someone asks me my opinion on genetic modification—whatever be the topic of the lecture. Genetic modification (GM) has the power to save lives through its use in medicine, such as the production of insulin for diabetics or the treatment of genetic disorders. The current outcry comes when it is used to produce food. Some of these public concerns reflect real problems， but others are fuelled by misinformation and overdramatisation. There is nothing new about crop modification; plant breeders have been doing it since agriculture began. The wonderful range of apples or potatoes we now enjoy is the result of crossing different varieties. Cabbages， Brussels sprouts, cauliflower， kohlrabi, kale and broccoli all originated from one botanical species. Modern molecular biology has enabled us to go much further. We can now isolate the gene for a particular characteristic of an organism and transfer it to another species. It is this practice of transforming a plant with alien genes—perhaps from an animal or bacterium—that is causing all the controversy. There are three main concerns. Scientists can now take a gene for resistance to a particular herbicide and transfer it to a crop： when these plants are sprayed with weed-killer, the weeds are destroyed while the crop is unharmed. A prime concern is the harmful effect this could have on the biodiversity of farmland， where so many insects, birds and other animals depend upon “weed” species. Another fear is that alien genes from a GM plant could escape into a wild population of a related species. Since plants are fertilized by pollen that is carried through their， often for great distances, this is entirely possible. A wild species modified in this way with pesticide resistance could become a “super-weed”， while a species that becomes unnaturally resistant to animals that feed on it could disrupt the food chain. The third worry concerns a proposal to produce seeds for cereals that cannot germinate to produce next year’s seeds. This “terminator technology” would be of obvious advantage to seed companies, since farms would be forced to buy new weed annually. But the same technology could be devastating to some farmers in the developing world who depend upon saving some seeds for next year’s crop. Fortunately this technology is not yet in use and there has been strong pressure to abandon it. I would not hesitate to eat a GM vegetable—it is most unlikely that the current modifications are harmful to the consumer， despite what we read in the press. However, the introduction of animal genes into food plants presents considerable ethical difficulties to vegetarinsarians and member of religious that forbid the eating of certain animals. This is one of the reasons people are demanding that tall genetically modified food products be clearly labeled. The public have a fight to know what they are eating and a fight to choose. I believe that in my own nation GM is well regulated， but this cannot be said for some other countries. One of the problems is that at the moment this technology is commercially motivated. Because the compositions developing GM food want to introduce it as quickly as possible, in my opinion， it is being rushed into without adequate research or precautions. Genetic’ modification is here to stay, and there is no doubt it will save lives. But， like so many other scientific discoveries, such as splitting the atom， it can be seriously misused. Instead of condemning the technique, we， should ensure it is used wisely. We need to evaluate each application carefully, from environmental and ethical standpoints， and we must urge governments and companies to use it for good rather than for greed.

One Number Gets It All—Phone， Fax or Voice Mail Tired of having to remember different numbers for your office phone, fax， pager or mobile phone? No room on your business card for the raft of numbers that are now part of everyday business contacts？ The answer is at hand—or rather in a number. One number can now be used for all your different devices and communications, thanks to a new system devised by a technology company which uses the science available in the high-growth， hi-tech modem world. Instead of numbers belonging to different devices, the company assigns you one number belonging to you， the person. You have one number for phone, fax， pagers and mobile phones. All your calls and contacts come to this one number so that you can divert unwanted callers politely to your voice mail if you want. Voice messages that come into the same personal number can be turned into emails for delivery to the desktop of your computer or to another person’s computer. You can have trouble-free call-forwarding anywhere in the world. Those are some of the features of Bloodhound, a new service offered by Auckland-based computer telephony integrator—Powercall Technologies Ltd. General manager Nick Little said the company， a subsidiary of the Brocker Technology Group, came to the new one-number system when they wanted to set up in a new office. It would have cost $$US 250 (RMB ￥2，000) a month to lease a small phone switchboard. To avoid the capital outlay or the hardware in the office, they set out instead to develop a switchboard based on a PC computer. Then， realizing the market was awash in such products, the company looked at ways to use its experience in voice mail， interactive voice response and unified messaging to develop new subscriber-based services. Mr. Little said Bloodhound, which costs $$US 20 (RMB ￥160) a month for full phone， fax and messaging, side-stepped the number portability issue (whether phone owners can use the same number in different phone company systems or not) because subscribers were given not a telephone number， but their own personal number. "The number we issue is a virtual number belonging to the person. It does not terminate on a physical device, " Mr. Little said. "The subscriber sets up devices behind the scenes." Bloodhound runs on NT servers and subscribers pay their telephone carriers for line connection and any toll charges. They also pay for calls received on mobile phones via Bloodhound at US$ 25c (RMB ￥2) a minute. But they can change phone carrier company or exchange without having to change all their stationery. Callers are greeted by an automated "virtual assistant"， which locates the Bloodhound subscriber or takes messages. Calls can be screened, with known callers announced to the subscriber who can choose to accept a call or divert it to another person or voice mail. Fax can be forwarded to any location for printing， without the cellular charges associated with cellphone-based fax services. And if users have a sudden inspiration, they can call Bloodhound and dictate a message for recall later. Simon Morgan from advertising and direct marketing agency Carpe Diem has been a pilot user of the service throughout the year 2000. He said Bloodhound helped his five-person company present a consistent and professional face to the world. "One of our staff works from home part-time， but with a Bloodhound number available to the world as her office number. As far as the world is connected, she works in the office. It’s also useful if I’m working at a client site. I can use the ‘I am Here’ feature and get calls forwarded through."

Green Gene Technology For the past 10，000 years humans have influenced the plants they use at first unknowingly, later by design. Today’s crops have been created by a process of selection and classical breeding. More specific improvements in breeding will be possible in future. Science has cracked the genetic information code. Green gene technology is an effective tool in crop breeding， enabling us to develop new crops even more rapidly and specifically. We can make them more efficient, optimizing their contents and valuable substances to suit the wishes and requirements of customers and the processing industry. Their metabolism can be individually modified， making them produce starch, protein and fats with special properties. Through gene transfer plants can be made more resistant to viruses， bacteria, harmful fungi and insect pests. Genetically modified plants can be cultivated to possess improved stress behavior， with the result that they absorb water better in dry locations and can make more efficient use of soil nutrients. We can also optimize weed control. To do so, we make crops tolerant to environmentally sound and easily degradable herbicides. This is not as simple as it sounds. But we have been successful： Innovator has been on the Canadian market since 1995. This is the first oilseed rape variety to contain the glufosinate tolerance gene, facilitating the use of AgrEvo’s broad-spectrum herbicide liberty. We are committed to green gene technology， with which we aim to make crop breeding even more efficient and environmentally friendly. Before being brought on to the market these genetically modified plants are researched and tested for years until the questions posed regarding their safety have been answered. This is a great opportunity for us to realize our vision: the use of faster methods to breed varieties which will continue to provide us with sufficient food and raw materials in future. Our fossil reserves will soon be exhausted. Experts estimate that we only have enough oil for another 43 years and natural gas for less than 60. This means we must rethink and act accordingly， using new crop varieties to step up the move to replenishable sources of raw materials and energy. In other words, green gene technology is the key technology for sustainable agriculture.

The tiny Isle of Man in the Irish Sea is not known as a vanguard of technology， but this month it was to serve as the test bed for the highly acclaimed third-generation mobile phones. A subsidiary of British Telecom (BT), the British phone company， cobbled together a network and prepared to hand out prototype mobile handsets to about 200 volunteers. But problems arose in the software that keeps track of each call as it moves from one tower’s range to another’s. BT postponed the trial until late summer, after a similar delay announced a few weeks earlier by NTT DoCoMo in Japan. What’s the big deal？ Aren’t thousands of mobile calls “handed off” every day from one “cell” to another without a glitch? They are indeed. But third-generation technology， or 3G, is so radically new that it requires a rethinking of just about every aspect of how mobile phones work， from the handset to the transmission masts to the software that runs them. For this reason, 3G are a massive engineering and construction project that will take years to complete and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The magnitude of this effort has somehow been forgotten in the mad scramble to be first out. The handover problem is a case in point. When you talk on a conventional mobile phone， your call is beamed as a continuous stream of digital data to the nearest receiver. The technology for handing these calls off from one area to the next was worked out years ago. But a 3G phone is different it bundle up the data into little packets and sends them through the airwaves, one at a time. This creates the impression of an Internet connection’s being “always on，” which is good news. But keeping rack of these data bundles from one region to the next is a daunting engineering problem—and, more to the point， a brand-new one. NEC, the Japanese phone company that supplies BT with equipment for its Isle of Man trail， hasn’t had time to work it out. Handset makers also have work to do. The 3G technologies have so many features; only a wonder gizmo could handle all of them， which is why none exists. The phones are not only supposed to work with 3G networks but also with the less sophisticated ( but cheaper and more useful) General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology already being installed on the continent and also with the current mobile phone standard, Global System for Mobile (GSM). Phones for corporate executives are also supposed to adapt to dozens of other standards around the world. Doing all this requires powerful， custom-built computer chips, which are tough to make quickly. A device that does so many things is bound to guzzle a lot of power. Prototype 3G phones drain so much juice that they’ve been known to get uncomfortably hot. Batteries that can keep a conventional phone running for days would fizzle in a 3G handset in a matter of minutes. Engineers are searching for alternative， but at the moment the lack of a long-lasting battery is a major hurdle. None of these problems is insurmountable, but neither will they be resolved quickly. Analysts at Forrester Research in the Netherlands predict that even in 2005， when more than half of Europe’s phones will be connected to the Internet, fewer than 15 percent of them will use 3G. That’s a measure of this technology’s complexity and immaturity.

Guitar Today we tell about a very popular musical instrument. Listen and see if you can guess what it is. If you guess it was a guitar， you are correct. The Museum of Fine Arts in the eastern city of Boston, Massachusetts， recently began showing a collection of guitars. The exhibit is called Dangerous Curves: The Art of the Guitar. It shows how the instrument developed during the past four centuries. Probably no other musical instrument is as poplar around the world as guitar. Musicians use the guitar for almost every kind of music. Country and western music would not be the same without a guitar. The traditional Spanish folk music called Flamenco could not exist without a guitar. The second of American blues music would not be the same without the sad cry of the guitar. And rock and roll music would almost be impossible without this instrument. Music exports do not agree about where the guitar first was played. Most agree it is ancient. Some experts say an instrument very much like a guitar was played in Egypt more than a thousand years ago. Some other experts say that the ancestor of the modern guitar was brought to Spain from Persia sometime in the twelfth century. The guitar continued to develop in Spain. In the seventeen hundreds it became similar to the instrument we know today. Many famous musicians played the instrument. The famous Italian violinist Niccolo Paganinni played and wrote music for the guitar in the early eighteen hundreds. Franz Schubert used the guitar to write some of his famous works. In modem times Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia helped make the instrument extremely popular. One kind of music for the guitar developed in the southern area of Spain called Adalusia. It will always be strongly linked with the Spanish guitar. It is called Flamenco. One guitar in the Boston Fine Arts display was played by Les Paul. It is a very old electric guitar. Mister Paul began experimenting with ways to make an electric guitar in the nineteen thirties. The Gibson Guitar Company began producing its famous Les Paul Guitar in 1952. The instrument has the same shape and the same six strings as the traditional guitar， but it sounds very different. Listen to a Les Paul recording. It was the fifth most popular song in the United States in 1952. The guitar has always been important to blues music. The electric guitar Mister Paul helped develop made modem blues music possible: There have been many great blues guitarists. Yet， music experts say all blues guitar players are measured against one man and his famous guitar. That man is B-B King. Every blues fan knows that years ago B-B King named his guitar Lucille. Here B-B King plays Lucille on his famous recording of The Thrill Is Gone B-B King’s guitar, Lucille， is so important to American music that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC has asked for it. They want to display the large, beautiful black guitar in one of the museums because it is a part of American culture. Another famous guitar in American music also has a name. It belongs to country music star Willie Nelson. His guitar is as famous in country music as Lucille is in blues music. Its name is Trigger. Trigger is really a very ugly guitar. It looks like an old， broken instrument someone threw away. Several famous people have written their names on it. A huge hole was tom in the front of it a long time ago. It looks severely damaged. But the huge hole, the names and other marks seem to add to its sound. Listen while Willie Nelson and Trigger play of， Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground.

Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism was the name for an artistic movement that emerged in the USA during the 1950s. It was also known as the New York School since most of the important artists lived there， at least for a time. During World War Ⅱ many influential artists had fled the fighting and persecution of Europe and ended up in New York. The Abstract Expressionist group were made up of artists who had either come from Europe or who were directly influenced by the styles and techniques of those who had. Abstract Expressionism is a term used for art that uses elements of Expressionism in an abstract way. They were also influenced by Surrealism. Expressionist artists used symbols and particular" styles of painting to express feelings or emotions. Surrealists tried to express the subconscious by using through the actual process of painting. The physical property of paint (what it was like) was what was important. The style and the subject (what the painting was of) had lost all significance. The recognition of the Abstract Expressionists by the art world meant that for the first time the USA became known as an important force in avant-garde art. The term avant-garde is often used in art, and is used to describe anything radically new or different. The Abstract Expressionists fitted this description perfectly. For the first time it was the physical act of painting that was important rather than the end product. The New York School was not， in the strictest sense, an artistic movement. The Abstract Expressionists included artists who had each developed their own individual styles. But there were enough similarities in the way they thought about and approached painting that gradually the group became known as the Abstract Expressionists. Jackson Pollock， Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler， Lee Krasner and Franz Kline all became recognized for a technique called "action painting". This was where spontaneous physical movement and gestures were used to produce paintings. The term "action painting" was originally used by the art critic Harold Rosenberg. He was referring to Jackson Pollock, who became famous for his "drip" paintings. Pollock used a revolutionary new technique， which involved dripping, pouring or squirting the paint from syringes directly onto the canvases. We now use the term "action painting" in a wider sense to refer to any technique of making a painting with energetic and spontaneous application of paint. Other artists who also fall under the title of Abstract Expressionists include Mark Rothko， Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. These artists invented a softer, calmer technique where paint is applied with brushes in large areas， or "fields", of color covers the whole picture surface. This technique became known as "color field" painting. Both the "action" and "color field" painters shared methods and ideals. Paint is applied in bold， simple brushstrokes, dribbles or splashes， with blocks of color to make the maximum visual impact. The huge physical size of the paintings matched the artists’ grand philosophical ideas. Abstract Expressionists all shared a philosophy about painting. Paintings were a search for "truth", or the hidden meaning of life. The artists tried to find a way of painting that did not have to follow any particular style or "school" ofart. This way people would not associate the painting with anything else. They would just look at it as a painting and form their own ideas of what it meant.

Expressionism Expressionism is an art movement that produced a wealth of wonderful works of art， and the lives of the artists who created them were no less colorful and exciting. The word "expressionism" can be used to describe art from different times and places, most of them were part of a movement that took place in Germany from 1905 to 1920. They shared some of the beliefs. Those beliefs were that art should try to change society， to make it less conservative. It should express the energy of nature—following in the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh—-and personal feeling rather than simply representing nature. It should feel "uncomfortable", which means it should challenge the traditional ways of looking at the world. This differed from the opinion of Henri Matisse who believed that art should be "comfortable". Expressionist art should be inspired by folk art， and the art of what were then called "primitive" people, for example from Africa. The aim of the Expressionists was to express personal feeling about what they were painting rather than representing it exactly as it was. It should have strong colors and shapes， be relatively direct, untutored and unplanned and should still contain recognizable things， but not be realistic. The lines could be distorted, and the colors could be strengthened or changed as in the art movement that began in 1905 called Fauvism. Expressionism was more than a style in painting. It could be found in theatre and cinema， literature and architecture. It was a sharing of ideas and experiences across all these media. The life stories of the Expressionist artists show just how much they had in common. Many began by studying applied art, such as furniture design， often to please their parents. Although they later made more personal art, they continued to make use of those technical skills. Both art critics and the public received this new movement with derision and outrage. Expressionist artists were trying to shock by challenging the traditional， conservative views held by many people. Gradually, however， it became accepted and even admired. All the Expressionists were affected by World War I (1914-18). Some fled from Germany and spent the war years in exile. Some never returned to their homeland. Most served in the war and some were killed. At first some of them hoped a war would change society for the better but they were soon disillusioned when they saw the destruction and suffering that it caused. In the years after the war, many Expressionist artist revealed the horrors they experienced in their work. After World War I， Expressionism became very fashionable in Germany, where art was allowed to flourish. This freedom ended in 1933 when Hitler declared all Expressionists were "degenerate". This led to them being sacked from their jobs or forced to leave Germany. In 1937 the Nazis took thousands of art works from German museums and put them in an enormous exhibition called the Degenerate Art Exhibition， to show how bad and decadent this art was. It presented a view of the world that went against their political and cultural ambitions to rid Germany of all inferior races.

An Early History of Australia Before the arrival of European settlers， Aboriginal and Tortes Strait (托雷斯海峡) Islander peoples inhabited most areas of the Australian continent. Each people spoke one or more of hundreds of separate languages, with lifestyles and religious and cultural traditions that differed according to the region in which they lived. Adaptable and creative， with simple but highly efficient technology, Indigenous Australians had complex social systems and highly developed traditions reflecting a deep connection with the land and environment. Asian and Oceanic people had contact with Australia’s Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the European expansion into the Eastern Hemisphere. Some formed substantial relationships with communities in northern Australia. In 1606， the Spanish explorer Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through the strait that separates Australia and Papua New Guinea (巴布亚新几内亚). Dutch explorers charted the north and west coasts and found Tasmania. The first British explorer, William Dampier， landed on the northwest coast in 1688. But it was not until 1770 that his countryman, Captain James Cook， on the Endeavour, extended a scientific voyage to the South Pacific in order to chart the east coast of the continent that had become known as New Holland， and claimed it for the British Crown. The American war of independence shut off that country as a place to transport convicts, requiring Great Britain to establish a new penal colony. Sir Joseph Banks， the President of the Royal Society, had sailed as a naturalist (博物学家) with Captain Cook， and suggested Australia for this purpose. The First Fleet of 11 ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788. Governor Phillip preferred Sydney Harbor and the date he landed in the Harbor, 26 January， is now commemorated as Australia Day. The First Fleet carded 1, 500 people， half of them convicts. Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore (1987) is a classic book on the convict system. Hughes suggests that the penal system had lasting effects on Australian society. About 160, 000 convicts were sent to the Australian continent over the next 80 years. The wool industry and the gold rushes of the mid-19th century provided an impetus to free settlement. Scarcity of labor， the vastness of the bush and new wealth based on farming, mining and trade all contributed to the development of uniquely Australian institutions and sensibilities. At the time of European settlement in 1788 it is estimated there were at least 300，000 Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. European settlement involved the displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. It disrupted traditional land management practices and introduced new plants and animals into fragile Australian ecosystems.

A Nation of Immigrants Composed Mainly of the White People The United States of America has long been known as a nation of immigrants and a “melting pot”， because the great majority of its people are immigrants and descendants of settlers who came from all over the world to make their homes in the new land, seeking their dream in America. The first immigrants in American history came from England and the Netherlands. Now the descendants of European immigrants make up 80.3% of the American population of about 250 million. English colonization in North America in the sixteenth century repeatedly failed. It was not until 1607 that the first English permanent settlement in America was establish. The first wave of colonizing activity， which began in 1606 and lasted until 1637, planted three groups of English colonies： Virginia and Maryland on the Chesapeake, the Puritan commonwealths of New England， and the British West Indies, and also the Dutch colony of New Netherlands， which became New York. Some other European countries also established their colonies along North America’s Atlantic coastline. In 1713, the population of the twelve continental colonies was nearly 360，000, a fourfold increase. Quite a lot of them were German and Scots-Irish. Discontented Germans came to English America because the German states had no overseas possessions， and no colonies except those of the English would admit foreigners. Most Germans entered America at Philadelphia, whence they spread out fanwise into the back-country and became the most prosperous farmers in North America. The English-speaking Scots-Irish came from Ulster. They were largely descendents of the Scots who had colonized Northern Ireland when the English were first setting Virginia. After 1713 the pressure of the native Catholic Irish and the restrictive legislation of the British. Parliament forced them to emigrate in drove. As land was dear in the eastern colonies， these fighting Celts drifted to the frontier. A considerable number of southern Irish, mostly Protestants but including Catholic families came at the same time. They were mostly men of property who invested in land and remained in the older-settled regions. Britain gradually established its dominance over North America’s Atlantic coast. It successfully planted 13 colonies by edging out other colonial powers and by driving off the native Indians. Though the first English permanent settlement in America was established in Jamestown in 1607， modem America was established in Jamestown in 1607, modem Americans choose to look back to the Pilgrim Father， a group of Puritans who came from England in 1620 for a symbol of the origin of their new country. They were followed by other Englishmen. They were generally known as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP), who played the leading role in winning America’s independence. Their mother tongue， English, became the official language of the new nation. Today about 33% of Americans are of British origin. They control most of the national wealth and political power. The other white Americans， whose forefathers were from other European countries, are not so influential as the WASPs. All these white European immigrants and their descendants together constitute the majority of the American population. After the American Civil War， a large number of the “new immigrations” came to the United States of America. Even during the Civil War some 800, 000 immigrants had entered the United States， and in the ten years after the ending of the war, some 3.25 million immigrants flooded into the cities and the farms of the North and the West. In the single generation from 1880 to 1910 a tidal wave of immigration spilled almost 18 million persons on American shores. Unlike the old immigrations， who were “pushed out” of West Europe by religious persecution or impoverishment, the new immigrations were “pulled to” the United States by the prospect of good jobs and happy life. Most of them were unskilled. The large influx of the new immigrations resulted in the adoption of the Immigration Quota Law by the American government. A lot of Chinese coolies were brought into America after the discovery of gold in California. and for the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. The Chinese-Americans made a great contribution to the development of the American West. But， Chinese-Americans and other Asian-Americans never constitute a majority of the American population. The United States has always been a nation of immigrants composed mainly of the white people. Immigrants from different nations all over the world joined together to make one nation, the American. They speak almost the same kind of English with far less class or regional variety than in Great Britain. They have the same way of life， similar habits and manners. They have established a new universal national culture. With only a few exceptions, the national origins have well been mixed. In this sense， the United States of America has been known as a “melting pot”.

Transformation of St Kilda Seventy-five years ago， the residents of a group of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland packed up and left for good. Their home—St Kilda—-now has World Heritage status but with the departure of the St Kildans in August 1930, a way of life that had existed for thousands of years， vanished. St Kilda was years for years known as the most remote settlement in the entire British Empire, but actually it is not so far away—-around 200 km west of the nearest point of the Scottish mainland. Seventy-five years ago， at the end of August 1930, the last 36 islanders banked up their turf fires， opened their Bibles at Exodus, put some oats on the table， then left forever, bringing to an end a habitation and a way of life that stretched back at least two thousand years. St Kilda is an archipelago of sea stacks， skerries and four islands, of which only one， Hirta, was permanently inhabited. It was remote in ways other than geography. The people， who never numbered more than a couple of hundred, spoke not English but a distinctive form of Gaelic. Their economy， their whole culture, revolved round seabirds—fulmars， gannets and puffins. They ate them and exchanged their feathers and precious oil for goods such as tea and sugar from the mainland. In the Victorian era, at the height of Britain’s imperial adventure， this self-sufficient life held a strange fascination. St Kilda became a fashionable tourist destination and steamers regularly dropped anchor in Village Bay. But the visitors could not comprehend the St Kildans they gawped at. There is an astonishing recording in the BBC’s archives of an islander saying that her mother, in payment for a bale of tweed which had taken all winter to weave， was given an orange. She didn’t know what it was. There had been worse traumas: St Kilda’s graveyard is one of the most heartrending places. It is full of tiny hummocks， where infants are buried. Newborn babies were all anointed where the cord had been cut with a concoction of fulmar oil, dung and earth and 8 out of 10 of them died of neonatal tetanus. The minister finally put a stop to this in 1891 and after that the babies lived， but it was too late. Add to this grief, emigration and harsh religion and it’s no wonder that the St Kildans lost heart. By the 1920s there were no longer enough people to do all the work. In 1930 they planted no crops and petitioned the government to take them off the island. St Kilda is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland. There are tow National Trust wardens and in the summer volunteer work parties come to maintain the buildings. There’s a resident archaeologist. A century on St Kilda has become a chic destination once again. There were 15，000 visitors last year. Recently one of the wardens found the first piece of litter; a plastic water bottle wedged between the stones of a wall.

The History of the Olympic Games The first Olympic games at Olympia were held in 776 B.C. Scholars have speculated that the games in 776 B.C. were not the first games， but rather the first games held after they were organized into festivals held every four years as a result of a peace agreement between the city-states of Elis and Pisa. The games were held every four years from 776 B.C. to 393 A.D. when they were abolished by the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I. The ancient Olympic Games lasted for 1, 170 years. If the Modern Olympic games last that long， they will still be held in 3066 A.D. The ancient Greeks were highly competitive and believed strongly in the concept of "competition" or "contest". The ultimate Greek goal was to be the best. All aspects of life, especially athletics， were centered around this concept. It was therefore considered one of the greatest honors to win a victory at Olympia. The fact that the only prize given at Olympia was an olive wreath illustrated this point. The athletes competed for honour, not for material goods. In ancient Greece， games were closely connected to the worship of the gods and heroes. Games were held as part of religious ceremonies in honour of deceased heroes. Games were also held in the context of many ancient fertility festivals. Later, the Olympic games began to be usurped by the prominent cult of Zeus， and eventually lost much of their religious character. The Greek calendar was based on the conception of the four-year Olympiad. When Greek historians referred to dates, they most often referred to a year within the Olympiad that the event occurred. The winner of the state race in a given year had the Olympiad named in honour of him. The first Oympiad is therefore known as that of Koromikos of ELis， the winner of the state in 776 B.C. Every four years for over 1, 100 years， from 776 B.C. to 393 A.D., thousands of people ceased all warfare and flocked to a small sanctuary in north-western Greece for five days in the late summer for a single reason—to witness the Olympic Games. During that time， competitors from all over the Greek world competed in a number of athletic events and worshipped the gods at the sanctuary of Olympia. However, unlike modern Olympics， only free men who spoke Greek could compete and the games were always held at Olympia instead of moving around to different sites every time. From the beginning, the games at Olympia served to strengthen the Greek sense of national unity. During the Hellenisitic period， Greeks who came to live in foreign surroundings such as Syria, Asia， and Egypt, strove to hold on to their own culture. One of the ways they did was to build athletic facilities and continue their athletic traditions. They organized competitions， and sent competitors from their towns to compete in the Panhellenic games. In the 2nd century A.D., Roman citizenship was extended to everyone within the Roman empire. After this point there were many competitors from outside of Greece， and the Olympic games became more internationalized. When the Greek government reinstated the games in 1896, this internationalized character of the competitions was preserved by Baron de Coubertin. Now， the Olympic games attract competitors from countries all over the world.

扶贫开发二十一世纪中国扶贫（poverty alleviation；poverty relief; aiding the poor）开发面临的难点和比较突出的问题是：第一, 虽然贫困人13的收入水平明显提高，但目前中国扶贫的标准是低水平的。第二, 由于受自然条件恶劣、社会保障系统（social insurance system）薄弱和自身综合能力差等因素的掣肘，目前已经解决温饱问题的贫困人口还存在很大的脆弱性, 容易重新返回到贫困状态。第三，尽管扶贫开发已使广大农村贫困地区的贫穷落后状况明显改变, 但贫困农户的基本生产生活条件还没有质的变化，贫困地区社会、经济、文化落后的状况还没有根本改观。第四, 由于中国人口基数很大，在今后相当长的一个时期将面临就业压力, 这必然会影响到贫困人口的就业，使很多本来能够奏效的扶贫措施难以发挥出应有的作用。第五, 尚未解决温饱（have enough to eat and wear）的贫困人口一般都生活在自然条件恶劣、社会发展程度低和社会服务水平差的地区，这些地区投入与产出效益的反差较大。

新型工业化我们要推进产业结构优化升级，坚持走新型工业化道路。依靠科技进步, 围绕提高自主创新能力，推动产业结构调整。加快开发对经济增长有重大带动作用的高新技术, 以及能够推动传统产业升级的共性技术和关键技术。抓紧制定若干重大领域关键技术创新的目标和措施，务求尽快取得新突破。完善鼓励创新的体制和政策体系。坚持引进先进技术和消化吸收创新相结合, 增强自主开发能力。大力发展高新技术产业，积极推进国民经济和社会信息化。加快用高新技术改造提升传统产业。以重大工程为依托, 推动装备制造业振兴。在专门项目指导下，继续加强能源、重要原材料等基础产业和水利、交通、通信等基础设施建设。积极发展现代配送、旅游、社区服务等第三产业。既要加快发展资金技术密集型产业, 又要继续发展劳动密集型产业。

新挑战中往往蕴含着新的机遇。对于中英两国来说，危机将促使我们延伸和拓宽互利合作的内涵。目前, 中国各级政府和部门，正在积极落实保持经济稳定增长的各项举措。伴随大规模民生工程、基础设施和生态环境等领域的建设, 包括英资企业在内的数十万家在华外资企业将分享这些新的商机。我在中国各地调研过程中，感受到许多中国企业特别是民营企业, 对欧优势技术和装备的采购具有浓厚的兴趣。作为中国在欧盟中的第三大贸易伙伴和累计第一大对华投资国，中英两国在生物、信息、环保、低碳经济、能源科技、新材料、医药卫生等领域, 拥有巨大的合作潜力。中国还是世界服务贸易和高档消费品增长最快的市场。这意味着英国大量知名品牌产品以及金融、分销、设计、咨询等服务业企业，会有更多机会参与中国市场的竞争。当然, 也会有越来越多的中国企业具备与英国企业合作的实力。我们鼓励中英双方企业在各个领域扩大交流和深化合作，共同分享宝贵的发展机遇。

陪读妈妈——赔上青春随着越来越多的中国孩子来新加坡求学，“陪读妈妈”已逐渐成为新加坡社会的一个特殊群体。作为中国学生出国留学的选择地, 新加坡无疑具有其独特的优势：法律健全, 环境优美，社会治安良好, 双语社会，华人居多, 生活容易适应，又允许妈妈陪读。然而, 事实上，新加坡远非人们想象中的教育天堂。中国学生大多是通过新加坡设在中国的中介公司介绍来新。来新前, 中介公司的宣传天花乱坠，可是来新后, 多数妈妈发现由于生活、学习费用以及工作证的原因，生计问题迫在眉睫。试想, 如果中介公司能够公正、客观地介绍新加坡的求学和生活情况，来新求学的孩子和妈妈们就能根据自己的经济状况在权衡利弊之后做出明智的选择。再者, 对于多数陪读妈妈来说，这里没有家的感觉, 新加坡人好像总是对她们有所防范，她们感觉孤立、无助, 很难融入当地人的生活圈子。 “十年树木、百年树人”。教育本身就是一项长期的工程，短期行为根本无法留住人, 更无法留住人才。

发展教育我们要优先发展教育。要大力推进素质教育，加强学校思想政治工作, 促进学生德智体美全面发展。加强基础教育，特别是加快贫困地区和少数民族地区普及九年义务教育步伐。推进农村义务教育以县为主的管理体制改革, 保证教师工资按时足额发放。积极发展高中阶段教育。稳步发展普通高等教育，适应新形势, 调整学科结构。大力发展中等和高等职业教育。改革课程教材，更新教学内容, 提高教育质量。继续推进高校内部管理体制改革和后勤社会化。全面提高教师思想和业务素质。加快教育信息化建设，积极发展现代远程教育。加大政府对教育的投入。鼓励、支持和规范社会力量办学、中外合作办学。

Stop reclining your airplane seat.
Two domestic airlines already limit your ability to lean back in economy class. Even if the airline doesn't make the decision for you, it’s the polite thing to do. And, most important, it’s the right thing to do.
“Seat reclining is one of the most irritating, inconvenient, self-indulgent habits,” says Simon Sapper, an organizational consultant and frequent traveler based in London. “Period.”
But click around the internet for a while, and you’ll find that this debate is far from settled. Many of the blogosphere’s “experts” believe it’s their God-given right to recline. Ironically, the loudest seat recliners don’t even fly in economy class.
So, as a public service, let’s settle this argument now. Reclining your airline seat is unacceptable because we’re officially out of space. It’s rude—and it’s wrong.
There’s no space to recline. Airlines are trying to squeeze more passengers on a plane to make more money. Before airline deregulation, many economy class seats had a generous 36 inches of “pitch,” a rough measure of legroom. Today, some seats have as little as 28 inches.
“I feel most folks would rather sacrifice the 2 inches of reclining backward not to have someone sitting in their lap for the distance of a flight,” says Mary Camillo, a travel advisor from Middletown, New Jersey. “Airlines should instill on passengers what parents have been trying to instill in their children for years. That is, if you do not have enough to share with everyone, then wait until you do.”
Also, airlines should immediately stop using the phrase “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.” That’s an invitation to lean back all the way. But it’s a cruel joke. On two airlines—Delta and Spirit—you can’t fully recline. On other airlines, you’ll invade another passenger’s personal space, which might lead to an unfriendly confrontation.
You can do a lot of things on a plane. For example, you can tell your life story to your seatmate. You can eat a Limburger cheese and Bermuda onion sandwich. You can press the flight attendant call button repeatedly. But all are probably bad ideas.
“Seat recline is a moral issue,” says Jennifer Aspinwall, a frequent air traveler who writes the World On A Whim blog. “What do you do if the person in front of you reclines all the way? What if you turn around to discover that a 6-foot-4 passenger seated behind you? Do you eat your meal in your lap while the tray table cuts into your stomach or do recline as well and crush the legs of the person behind you?”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Reclining a seat is wrong.
Airlines should lock their economy seats from reclining—permanently.
So if there’s no room to recline your airplane seat, and it’s wrong, why do so many airlines still allow it? Because if they didn’t, it would be an admission that they no longer care about your comfort. Airlines are stacking you into a plane like cargo—no two ways about it.
“I wish all airlines would eliminate the recline function,” says Larry Hickerson, a retired Air Force inspector and million-miler from Peoria, Arizona. “Since airlines went to ridiculously tight pitches, recline sets up an untenable situation.”
Right now, about half the people reading this column probably want to name their firstborn after me. The other half want to kill me. And the airline folks? They’re laughing.
The airline industry loves the seat reclining argument because it divides us. And while we’re arguing about 2 inches of personal space, they’re busy collecting more money from passengers and slowly—ever so slowly—removing even more room. This debate is the perfect distraction.
Whether you think reclining your airline seat is wrong or not, let’s agree on one thing: Greedy airlines got us to this point. Fighting over the scraps of space won’t fix it. If we ever needed thoughtful government regulation, maybe it is now.
How to deal with a seat recliner?
Reclining an airline seat is still allowed on most domestic flights. Here’s how to deal with someone who leans into your airspace.
Ask them to lean forward. Timing and tone are important here. The moment someone leans back, gently tap the person on the shoulder and politely ask them if it would be possible not to recline their seat. Be. Extra. Nice.
Get a flight attendant involved. Some leaners are clever and wait for you to go to the restroom before leaning. Then they feign sleep, which makes you reluctant to bother them. Oldest trick in the book. You can always ask a flight attendant for help.
Move airplane seats. If you see another open seat in your class of service, feel free to move, as long as the seat belt sign isn’t illuminated. You might also want to ask a flight attendant for permission. As a reminder, the seats in front of the exit row don’t recline. So usually, an exit row seat means you’ll keep your legroom. And maybe, your sanity.

当前，新冠疫情仍在全球蔓延，世界经济依然面临衰退风险。我们将坚持团结互助，与各国携手最终战胜新冠疫情。当前，疫苗是抵御疫情的关键。中国反对“疫苗民族主义”，疫苗应成为全球公共产品。
　　中国迄今已向全球160多个国家和国际组织提供了抗疫物资援助，正在以不同方式向100多个国家和国际组织提供急需的疫苗，为全球疫情防控提供了强大助力。接下来，中国将继续充分发挥自身优势，维护全球抗疫物资供应链稳定，将继续积极开展人道主义援助，向有需要的国家提供支持，将继续坚定秉持疫苗公共产品的“第一属性”，让更多发展中国家用得起、用得上安全可靠的疫苗。
　　我们将坚持开放合作，与各国携手推动世界经济复苏。我们已顺利开启“十四五”规划，加快建设更高水平开放型经济新体制。一个全面迈向高质量发展的中国，将更充分发掘自身超大市场潜力，为各国带来新的发展机遇。而一个持续扩大对外开放的中国，将进一步深化与各国互利合作，为世界经济复苏注入更多动力。
　　全人类是一个整体，生命与健康，生存与发展，是各国人民都应享有的平等权利。中国，将继续高举人类命运共同体旗帜，坚持共商共建共享原则，积极践行真正的多边主义，捍卫以《联合国宪章》为基础的国际秩序，持续完善全球治理体系，建设人类卫生健康共同体，与各国一道维护世界和平稳定，弥合人类发展鸿沟，共同开创更加美好的未来。

This month, the United Nations Development Program made water and sanitation the centerpiece of its flagship publication, the Human Development Report.
Claims of a “water apartheid,” where poor people pay more for water than the rich, are bound to attract attention. But what are the economics behind the problem, and how can it be fixed? In countries that have trouble delivering clean water to their people, a lack of infrastructure is often the culprit. People in areas that are not served by public utilities have to rely on costlier ways of getting water, such as itinerant water trucks and treks to wells. Paradoxically, as the water sources get costlier, the water itself tends to be more dangerous. Water piped by utilities - to the rich and the poor alike - is usually cleaner than water trucked in or collected from an outdoor tank.
The problem exists not only in rural areas but even in big cities, said Hakan Bjorkman, program director of the UN agency in Thailand. Further, subsidies made to local water systems often end up benefiting people other than the poor, he added.
The agency proposes a three-step solution. First, make access to 20 liters, or 5 gallons, of clean water a day a human right. Next, make local governments accountable for delivering this service. Last, invest in infrastructure to link people to water mains. The report says governments, especially in developing countries, should spend at least 1 percent of gross domestic product on water and sanitation. It also recommends that foreign aid be more directed toward these problems. Clearly, this approach relies heavily on government intervention, something Bjorkman readily acknowledged. But there are some market-based approaches as well.
By offering cut-rate connections to poor people to the water mainline, the private water utility in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, has steadily increased access to clean water, according to the agency's report. A subsidy may not even be necessary, despite the agency's proposals, if a country can harness the economic benefits of providing clean water.
People who receive clean water are much less likely to die from water-borne diseases - a common malady in the developing world - and much more likely to enjoy long, productive, taxpaying lives that can benefit their host countries. So if a government is trying to raise financing to invest in new infrastructure, it might find receptive ears in private credit markets - as long as it can harness the return. Similarly, private companies may calculate that it is worth bringing clean water to an area if its residents are willing to pay back the investment over many years.
In the meantime, some local solutions are being found. In Thailand, Bjorkman said, some small communities are taking challenges like water access upon themselves. “People organize themselves in groups to leverage what little resources they have to help their communities,” he said. “That's especially true out in the rural areas. They invest their money in revolving funds and saving schemes, and they invest themselves to improve their villages.” It is not always easy to take these solutions and replicate them in other countries, though. Assembling a broad menu of different approaches can be the first step in finding the right solution for a given region or country.