If a girl in a poor country goes to school, she will probably have a more comfortable life than if she stays at home. She will be less likely to marry while still a child, and therefore less likely to die in childbirth. So, not surprisingly, there is an Indian charity that tries to get girls into school and ensure they learn something, and there are Western philanthropists willing to pay for its work. What is noteworthy is how they have gone about this transaction.
On July 13th the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, presents the results of the world's first large development-impact bond, which paid for girls' education in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.
In this novel way of funding charitable work, a financial institution gives money to a charity, which tries to achieve various specified outcomes.
If a neutral arbiter rules that it has succeeded, a donor or philanthropist repays the investor, plus a bonus. If it fails, the investor loses some or all of its money. This is more convoluted than the usual way of funding charitable projects, in which a donor gives money to a charity, which spends it according to a pre-agreed plan. The donor tries to ensure the money is not wasted by keeping track of inputs-the number of solar panels installed or vaccinations given, say. Often, no one knows whether the intervention did much good.
In this case, the more complicated approach did achieve something. Educate Girls, the charity, identified 837 out-of-school girls aged 7-14 in the villages where it was active, and enrolled 768 of them. By using volunteers to teach both boys and girls in village schools for a few hours a week, it managed to raise test scores substantially relative to a control group.
So the investor, UBS Optimus Foundation, will be repaid by the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. For Safeena Husain, who runs Educate Girls, the process was satisfying as the results.
Instead of having to send tedious reports to a donor about how she was spending money, she concentrated on solving problems. Educate Girls found, for example, that many pupils could not do long division because they did not understand the concept of place value. So its workers gave additional classes. ID insight，the independent assessor, found that the main boost to children test stones came in the third year of the programmer, when Educate Girls hit its stride. It would be good if development -impact bonds teach donors to focus on outcomes.
Creating the development-impact bond was also complicated and time-consuming. Staff from several organisations spent months pinning down what Educate Girls would aim to achieve, how progress would be measured and what would be repaid. Outside experts were drafted in. The randomised controlled trial that IDinsight used to assess the teaching was, like many such trials, neither simple nor cheap. More development-impact bonds are now under way or under discussion, some involving big donors like the World Bank, USAID and DfID (America's and Britain's aid agencies). But they will probably remain infrequent oddities in the aid landscape.
1.The author writes this passage in order to __________.
A. urge the public to be aware of the need to help
B. attract more investors to newly-started researchers
C. Introduce a different approach to helping the poor
D. explain the reason for the popularity of a new project.
2.Which of the following statements about the new practice of charity is TRUE?
A. It favors results over process
B. The donor keep tracks of inputs
C. A neutral assessor will be paid
D. The money is spent based on a pre-agreed plan.
3.Concerning the development-impact bond, what can be inferred from the passage?
A. It will be popular in the near future
B. It has achieved great success in India
C. It is very effective since it saves time and trouble
D. It is very costly to carry out the development -impact bond
4.What is the attitude of the author towards the development -impact bond？
A. Doubtful B. Neutral
C. Positive D. Negative
People are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Purchasing property that is environmentally responsible is a good investment for those who are concerned about their own health and the well-being of the earth. Based on this trend, entire districts, known as eco-communities, are being designed with a green focus in mind. Dockside Green in Victoria, British Columbia is one of them.
If everything goes according to plan, Dockside Green will be a self-sufficient community along the harbour front of British Columbia's capital city. The community will be home to 2500 people will consist of residential, office, and retail space. Builders of Dockside Green have the environment in mind with every choice they make. They ensure proper ventilation(通风), and guarantee residents 100% fresh indoor air. Building materials, such as paints and wood, are natural and non-poisonous. Eco-conscious builders use bamboo wherever possible because it grows fast and does not require pesticides(杀虫剂) to grow.
Energy efficiency is one of the top concerns in eco-communities, such as Dockside Green. Not only do energy efficient appliances and light fixtures(照明设备) reduce the environmental impact of heating and hot water, they also save residents and business owners money. Dockside Green claims that home owners will use 55% less energy than average residents in Canada. Residents will have individual water metres as studies show that people use around 20% less energy when they are billed for exactly what they use. In addition, water is treated at Dockside Green and reused on site for flushing(冲洗) toilets.
Planners of eco-communities such as Dockside Green must take the future into account. Dockside Green plans on reusing 90% of its construction waste. They also plan to continue using local suppliers for all of their transport and maintenance needs. This is a great way to reduce emissions(排放).
Dockside residents will be encouraged to make use of a mini transportation system and buy into the community's car share program. Finally, plans are in the works for a high-tech heating system that will use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels (化石燃料).
Dockside residents will benefit from excellent local services with high quality healthcare, shopping and education at the heart of the community, along with excellent recreation facilities and plentiful green open spaces. The Eco-Community will favour the use of locally-sourced goods and services; they will be desirable places to live, promoting a tangible(看得见的) sense of civic pride, responsibility and, as the name suggests, community.
1.Which of the following is TRUE about Dockside Green according to the passage?
A. It is an environmental charity aiming at reducing carbon footprint.
B. It is a self sufficient community with a population of 2500 people.
C. It is being built along the harbor front that is threatened by pollution.
D. It emphasizes the importance of green energy and energy efficiency.
2.Bamboo is a favorable choice for builders because it _________.
A. provides good air circulation B. keeps pets outside the house
C. grows quickly and easily D. does not produce any waste
3.Which is NOT one of the issues Dockside Green hope to address in the future?
A. Convincing local factories not to pollute the air.
B. Creating an alternative to fossil fuels heating.
C. Having people pay for individual household usage.
D. Promoting the car share program to the residents.
4.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A. Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprint B. Green Energy: New Trends in Canada
C. Eco-Communities: Dockside Green D. Wise Investment in Eco-Communities
The power and ambition of the giants of the digital economy is astonishing —Amazon has just announced the purchase of the upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods for $13.5bn, but two years ago Facebook paid even more than that to acquire the WhatsApp messaging service, which doesn’t have any physical product at all. What WhatsApp offered Facebook was an intricate and finely detailed web of its users’ friendships and social lives.
Facebook promised the European commission then that it would not link phone numbers to Facebook identities, but it broke the promise almost as soon as the deal went through. Even without knowing what was in the messages, the knowledge of who sent them and to whom was enormously revealing and still could be. What political journalist, what party whip, would not want to know the makeup of the WhatsApp groups in which Theresa May’s enemies are currently plotting? It may be that the value of Whole Foods to Amazon is not so much the 460 shops of owns, but the records of which customers have purchased what.
Competition law appears to be the only way to address these imbalances of power. But it is clumsy. For one thing, it is very slow compared to the pace of change within the digital economy. By the time a problem has been addressed and remedied it may have vanished in the marketplace, to be replaced by new abuses of power. But there is a deeper conceptual problem, too. Competition law as presently interpreted deals with financial disadvantage to consumers and this is not obvious when the users of these services don’t pay for them. The users of their services are not their customers. That would be the people who buy advertising from them — and Facebook and Google, the two virtual giants, dominate digital advertising to the disadvantage of all other media and entertainment companies.
The product they’re selling is data, and we, the users, convert our lives to data for the benefit of the digital giants. Just as some ants farm the bugs called aphids for the honeydew they produce when they feed, so Google farms us for the data that our digital liver yield. Ants keep enemy insects away from where their aphids(蚜虫) feed; Gmail keeps the spammers out of our inboxes. It doesn't feel like a human or democratic relationship, even if both sides benefit.
1.According to Paragraph1，Facebook acquired WhatsApp for its________.
A. digital products B. user information
C. physical assets D. quality service
2.Linking phone numbers to Facebook identities may________.
A. worsen political disputes B. mess up customer records
C. pose a risk to Facebook users D. mislead the European commission
3.Competition law as presently interpreted can hardly protect Facebook users because________.
A. they are no defined as customers B. they are not financially reliable
C. these services are generally digital D. the services are paid for by advertisers
4.The ants analogy is used to illustrate_________.
A. a win-win business model between digital giants
B. a typical competition pattern among digital giants
C. the benefits provided for digital giants' customers
D. the relationship between digital giants and their users
Social norms of right and wrong are vital to a well-functioning society. However, such moral standards are changeable and the psychological mechanisms(机制) driving this change are unknown. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institute report that our view of selfish and unselfish behaviors changes depending on how common they are.
The results are based on a combination of behavioral experiments, mathematical models and computer simulations. In the experiments, the participants first observed other people's behavior in a so-called "public goods game," in which players receive a sum of money and then choose either to invest it to varying degrees so that it benefits everyone in the group, or to keep it for themselves. After every round, the participants were asked to judge the different choices as morally right or wrong, and whether the choices ought to be punished with a reduction in how much the players gained.
Unselfish behavior was considered more morally right than selfish, but both behaviors were judged to be more moral and less deserving of punishment if the majority exhibited them than if they were uncommon. The commonness of the selfish behavior also affected the participants' willingness to themselves pay to punish selfishness.
"Tolerance of selfish behavior increased when the majority of the players kept the money for themselves, which surprised me," says principal investigator Andreas Olsson, senior lecturer at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Neuroscience. "The fact that a behavior is common doesn't automatically mean that it's right -- this idea is based on faulty logic that confuses facts with moral values."
The study shows our view of what is morally right and wrong has strong similarities with social conformity, in that we tend to adapt ourselves to the people around us and how they behave. This means that changes in our social environment can quickly alter our moral compass.
"This is interesting from several angles, and could explain why moral attitudes change over time, such as those towards public goods or legality," says Björn Lindström, postdoc at University of Zürich and Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Neuroscience.
1.According to Andreas Olsson’s analysis, if people accept selfish behavior, they actually________.
A. get facts and moral values mixed up B. misunderstand social mechanisms
C. follow the logic of their own D. consider it correct and reasonable
2.It can be concluded that the participants in the experiments are punished if _________.
A. they can’t play "public goods game"
B. invest the money to benefit group members
C. they behave differently from the majority
D. they keep the money for themselves
3.According to the passage, what is morally right or wrong is shaped by the following Except________.
A. the way people around us behave
B. changes in our social environment
C. personal standards of values and attitudes
D. how widespread a particular behavior is
4.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A. The psychological mechanisms behind attitude change
B. Behavior is considered more moral the more common it is
C. Our view of selfish and unselfish behaviors
D. Moral standards of selfish and unselfish behaviors
The study of psychology is facing a crisis. The Research Excellence Framework(the Ref) has led to a research culture which is holding back attempts to stabilize psychology in particular, and science in general. The Ref encourages universities to push for groundbreaking, novel, and exciting research in the form of 4* papers, but it does not reward the efforts of those who replicate(复制) studies.
The point of replicating a study is to test whether a statistically significant result will appear again if the experiment is repeated. Of course, a similar result may not appear – casting into question the validity(有效性) of the results from the first experiment.
Last year, the Open Science Collaboration attempted to replicate 100 studies from highly ranked psychological journals. While 97% of the original studies had a statistically significant result, just 36% of the replications had the same outcome. Equally worrying: when an effect did appear, it was often much smaller than previously thought.
Recent data calls into question some widely influential findings in psychological science. These problems are not confined to psychology however – many findings published in scientific literature may actually be false.
Science is supposed to be self-correcting and reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific method. Yet, we simply aren’t invested in replicating findings. We all want to be good researchers and understand more about how the world works. So why are we so reluctant to check our conclusions are valid?
Because no incentive is provided by the system we carry out our research in. In the UK, the Ref ranks the published works of researchers according to their originality (how innovative is the research?), significance (does it have practical or commercial importance?), and rigour (is the research technically right?). Outputs are then awarded one to four stars. 4* papers are considered world-leading. The cumulative total of 3* and 4* papers determines research funding allocation and has a knock-on effect on institutional position in league tables(排名表) and therefore attractiveness to students. Obviously, the more publications the better.
Worryingly, many academics admit to engaging in at least one questionable research practice in order to achieve publication. Examples of this include: coming up with a theory after data is collected, stopping collecting data when an effect appears in case it disappears later, or only reporting the significant effects from collected data. Others simply fabricate data – Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel shockingly falsified data from more than 50 studies.
The Ref completely harms our efforts to produce a reliable body of knowledge. Why? The focus on originality – publications exploring new areas of research using new paradigms, and avoiding testing well-established theories – is the exact opposite of what science needs to be doing to solve the troubling replication crisis. According to Ref standards, replicating an already published piece of work is simply uninteresting.
With the next Ref just four years away, many researchers are effectively faced with a choice: be a good scientist, or be a successful academic who gets funding and a promotion.
1.What crisis is the study of psychology facing?
A. The Ref has led to a revolution in not-only psychology but also science.
B. The universities are encouraged to generate more groundbreaking research.
C. The Ref tends to set up a different standard of replications of studies.
D. The Ref’s indifference to replications of studies has led to worrying effects.
2.The Ref’s focus on originality has brought about _______.
A. a reliable body of knowledge
B. publications exploring new areas
C. tests of well- established theories
D. uninteresting replications of studies
3.We can infer from the passage that the Ref _______.
A. is a system for assessing the quality of research in UK universities
B. provides UK researchers with funding and job opportunities
C. recognizes researchers’ work and adds to their attractiveness to students
D. is planning to change its standard before the next Ref submission
4.What does the writer mean by saying “be a good scientist”?
A. Contribute to the solution to the replication crisis.
B. Reform the standards that have been set up by the Ref.
C. Give up possible funding and promotion given by universities.
D. Avoid using false research practices to test old theories.
Traditional surgical procedures require surgeons to make large incisions(伤口) in a patient’s body in order to gain access to the internal organs. It was once common for heart surgeons, who perform highly specialized and complex procedures, to make long incisions in a patient’s chest and then split the breastbone to reach the heart. Patients who undergo surgery are often at the risk of infection, as bacteria can infect the cut in the skin. In addition, there is often a lengthy recovery period.
A surgical technique known as “keyhole surgery” has become more common in recent years. In general, the surgeon will make a couple of small incisions around the area where the operation is going to be performed. Tubes are pushed into the holes, and a tiny camera, which is called an endoscope, is put into the body. The camera is attached to a large monitor screen that is positioned so that the doctor can see it while he performs the operation. In addition to the camera, doctors also push their tiny surgical instruments through the tubes. The awkward part of keyhole surgery is that it is counterintuitive; that is to say, if a surgeon wants to move the tool to the left, he or she must push it to the right.
Other advancements in technology are also being used today in the OR (operation room). A new machine called the “da Vinci Surgical System” has been tested in hospitals in the U.S.. Unlike keyhole surgery, the da Vinci’s robot’s moving parts are designed to imitate the natural hand and wrist movement of a surgeon, thus providing better control and sensitivity. The system is controlled by a surgeon from a console(控制台). Sitting at a console a few feet from the patient, the surgeon can perform an operation by holding and moving highly sensitive pads that enable him or her to control the instruments. The area of the body on which the surgeon is working is enlarged on a screen, which is attached to the console. This gives surgeons a realistic three-dimensional view of the area — similar to what they would see during a traditional surgical procedure.
Although the da Vinci Surgical System is undergoing some trials for some procedures, it has been welcomed as revolutionary by many surgeons. Patients with serious illnesses must still undergo major surgery, but the smaller incisions and less invasive procedures typically mean that a shorter recovery time is needed. In some cases, the patient’s stay in the hospital has been cut in half when the da Vinci Surgical System was used. On the downside, some operations have taken up to fifty minutes longer because surgeons are inexperienced at using the new technology. As surgeons become more familiar with the machines, the time needed for surgical procedures is likely to decrease.
1.What can be learned about the traditional surgery according to the passage?
A. The cost of the traditional surgery is very high.
B. It often leaves a large wound in a person’s body.
C. Long incisions are made in a patient’s chest.
D. The incision is often infected after the operation.
2.Which of the following is one DISADVANTAGE of keyhole surgery?
A. It requires the use of long, thin tools and a tiny camera.
B. The doctor can not view the inside of the patient’s body clearly.
C. The direction in which a doctor moves the surgical tools is reversed.
D. An endoscope has to be inserted into the patient’s body in advance.
3.The da Vinci Surgical System differs from keyhole surgery in that _______.
A. requires that a surgeon make more small incisions on a patient
B. reduces the amount of time it takes to perform a surgical procedure
C. allows the surgeon to use the surgical instruments more sensitively
D. eliminates the need for surgeons to make large incisions on patients
4.The passage mainly tells the reader ________.
A. the challenges brought about by new technology
B. the benefits and drawbacks of the da Vinci Surgical System
C. the reflections on the development in medical science
D. the application of new technologies in modern surgery
