奥鹏远程教育华中师大《综合英语（6）》在线作业

奥鹏华中师范大学平时在线作业

华师《综合英语（6）》在线作业-0005

Three English dictionaries published recently all lay claim to possessing a new feature. The BBC English Dictionary contains background information on 1,000 people and places prominent in the news since 1988; the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: Encyclopedia Edition is the OALD plus encyclopedia entries; the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture is the LDOCE plus cultural information.The key fact is that all three dictionaries can be seen to have a distinctly cultural as well as language learning content. That being said, the way in which they approach the cultural element is not identical, making direct comparisons between the three difficult.While there is some common ground between the encyclopedia/cultural entries for the Oxford and Longman dictionaries, there is a clear difference. Oxford lays claim to being encyclopedia on content whereas Longman distinctly concentrates on the language and culture of the English-speaking world. The Oxford dictionary can therefore stand more vigorous scrutiny for cultural bias than the Longman publication because the latter does not hesitate about viewing the rest of the world from the cultural perspectives of the English-speaking world. The cultural objectives of the BBC dictionary are in turn more distinct still. Based on an analysis of over 70 million words recorded from the BBC World Service and National Public Radio of Washington over a period of four years, their 1,000 brief encyclopedia entries are based on people and places that have featured in the news recently. The intended user they have in mind is a regular listener to the World Service who will have areasonable standard of English and a developed skill in listening comprehension.In reality, though, the BBC dictionary will be purchased by a far wider range of language learners, as will the other two dictionaries. We will be faced with a situation where many of the users of these dictionaries will at the very least have distinct socio-cultural perspectives and may have world views which are totally supposed and even hostile to those of the West. Advanced learners from this kind of background will not only evaluate a dictionary on how user-friendly it is but will also have definite views about the scope and appropriateness of the various socio-cultural entries.
答案问询微信：424329

For an increasing number of students at American universities, Old is suddenly in. The reason is obvious: the graying of America means jobs. Coupled with the aging of the baby-boom (生育高峰) generation, a longer life span means that the nation's elderly population is bound to expand significantly over the next 50 years. By 2050, 25 percent of all Americans will be older than 65, up from 14 percent in 1995. The change poses profound questions for government and society, of course. But it also creates career opportunities in medicine and health professions, and in law and business as well. In addition to the doctors, we're going to need more sociologists, biologists, urban planners and specialized lawyers, says Professor Edward Schneider of the University of Southern California's (USC) School of Gerontology (老年学). Lawyers can specialize in elder law, which covers everything from trusts and estates to nursing-home abuse and age discrimination (歧视). Businessmen see huge opportunities in the elder market because the baby boomers, 74 million strong, are likely to be the wealthiest group of retirees in human history. Any student who combines an expert knowledge in gerontology with, say, an MBA or law degree will have a license to print money, one professor says. Margarite Santos is a 21-year-old senior at USC. She began college as biology major but found she was really bored with bacteria. So she took a class in gerontology and discovered that she liked it. She says, I did volunteer work in retirement homes and it was very satisfying.
答案问询微信：424329

The relationship between the home and market economies has gone through two distinct stages. Early industrialization began the process of transferring some production processes (e.g. clothmaking, sewing and canning foods) from the home to the marketplace. Although the home economy could still produce these goods, the processes were laborious and the market economy was usually more efficient. Soon, the more important second stage was evidentthe marketplace began producing goods and services that had never been produced by the home economy, and the home economy was unable to produce them (eg. electricity and electrical appliances, the automobile, advanced education, sophisticated medical care). In the second stage, the question of whether the home economy was less efficient in producing these new goods and services was irrelevant; if the family were to enjoy these fruits of industrialization, they would have to be obtained in the marketplace. The traditional ways of taking care of these needs in the home, such as in nursing the sick, became socially unacceptable (and, in most serious cases, probably less successful). Just as the appearance of the automobile made the use of the horse-drawn carriage illegal and then impractical, and the appearance of television changed the radio from a source of entertainment to a source of background music, so most of the fruits of economic growth did not increase the options available to the home economy to either produce the goods or services or purchase them in the market. Growth brought with it increased variety in consumer goods, but not increased flexibility for the home economy in obtaining these goods and services. Instead, economic growth brought with it increased consumer reliance on the marketplace. In order to consume these new goods and services, the family had to enter the marketplace as wage earners and consumers. The neoclassical model that views the family as deciding whether to produce goods and services directly or to purchase them in the marketplace is basically a model of the first stage. It cannot accurately be applied to the second (and current) stage.
答案问询微信：424329

We all know that the normal human daily cycle of activity is of some 7-8 hours' sleep alternation with some 16-17 hour's wakefulness and that, broadly speaking, the sleep normally coincides with the hours of darkness. Our present concern is with how easily and to what extent this cycle can be modified.The question is no mere academic one. The ease, for example, with which people can change from working in the day to working at night is a question of growing importance in industry where automation calls for round-the-clock working of machines. It normally, takes from five days to one week for a person to adapt to a reversed routine of sleep and wakefulness, sleeping during the day and working at night. Unfortunately, it is often the case in industry that shifts are changed every week; a person may work from 12 midnight to 8 a.m. one week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. the next, and 4 p.m. to 12 midnight the third and so on. This means that no sooner has he got used to one routine than he has to change to another, so that much of his time is spent neither working nor sleeping very efficiently.The only real solution appears to be to hand over the night shift to a number of permanent night workers. An interesting study of the domestic life and health of night-shifty workers was carried out by Brown in 1957. She found a high incidence of disturbed sleep and other disorders among those on alternating day and night shifts, but no abnormal occurrence of these phenomena among those on permanent night work.This latter system then appears to be the best long-term policy, but meanwhile something may be done to relieve the strains of alternate day and night work by selecting those people who can adapt most quickly to the changes of routine. One way of knowing when a person has adapted is by measuring his body temperature. People engaged in normal daytime work will have a high temperature during the hours of wakefulness and a low one at night; when they change to night work the pattern will only gradually go back match the new routine and the speed with which it does so parallels, broadly speaking, the adaptation of the body as a whole, particularly in terms of performance. Therefore, by taking body temperature at intervals of two hours throughout the period of wakefulness it can be seen how quickly a person can adapt to a reversed routine, and this could be used as a basis for selection. So far, however, such a form of selection does not seem to have been applied in practice.
答案问询微信：424329

It is hard to predict how science is going to turn out, and if it is really good science it is impossible to predict. If the things to be found are actually new, they are by definition unknown in advance. You cannot make choices in this matter. You either have science or you don't, and if you have it you are obliged to accept the surprising and disturbing pieces of information, along with the neat and promptly useful bits.The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illuminating piece of news. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this, we are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can yet be trusted.But we are making a beginning, and there ought to be some satisfaction. There are probably no questions we can think up that can't be answered,奥鹏华中师范大学平时在线作业 sooner or later, including even the matter of consciousness. To be sure, there may well be questions we can't think up, ever, and therefore limits to the reach of human intellect, but that is another matter. Within our limits, we should be able to work our way through to all our answers, if we keep at it long enough, and pay attention.
答案问询微信：424329

The decline in moral standards, which has long concerned social analysts, has at last captured the attention of average Americans. And Jean Bethke Elshtain, for one, is glad. The fact that ordinary citizens are now starting to think seriously about the nation's moral climate, says this ethics (伦理学) professor at the University of Chicago, is reason to hope that new ideas will come forward to improve it. But the challenge is not to be underestimated. Materialism and individualism in American society are the biggest obstacles. The thought that 'I'm in it for me' has become deeply rooted in the national consciousness, Ms. Elshtain says. Some of this can be attributed to the disintegration of traditional communities, in which neighbors looked out for one another, she says. With today's greater mobility and with so many couples working, those bonds have been weakened, replaced by a greater emphasis on self. In a 1996 poll of Americans, loss of morality topped the list of the biggest problems facing the U.S. And Elshtain says the public is correct to sense that: Data show that Americans are struggling with problems unheard of in the 1950s, such as classroom violence and a high rate of births to unmarried mothers. The desire for a higher moral standard is not a lament (挽歌) for some nonexistent golden age, Elshtain says, nor is it a wishful ( 一厢情愿的 ) longing for a time that denied opportunities to women and minorities. Most people, in fact, favor the lessening of prejudice. Moral decline will not be reversed until people find ways to counter the materialism in society, she says. Slowly, you recognize that the things that matter are those that can't be bought.
答案问询微信：424329

Sex and connections: these are not the criteria on which science should be judged, least of all by scientists. But in the first extensive analysis of the way that fellowships in science are awarded, which is published this week in Nature, Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, microbiologists at Gothenburg University, in Sweden, found that these factors matter as much as, if not more than, scientific merit.Peer review, the evaluation (often anonymous) of a piece of scientific work by other scientists in the same field, is central to the way in which science proceeds. Journals use it to help decide whether to publish papers and funding agencies use it when deciding to whom to award grants.Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold analyzed the reviews of the 114 applications that the Swedish Medical Research Council received for the 20 postdoctoral fellowships it offered in 1995. Of the applicants, 46% were women. Of the successful recipients of the awards, only 20% were women. In principle, of course, that might reflect their abilities. In practice, other factors seem to be at work.When the council gets a grant application, it is evaluated by five reviewers, on three measures: scientific competence, the proposed methodology and the relevance of the research. Each measure is given a score of between zero and four; each reviewers scores are multiplied together, giving a single score between zero and 64; and finally, the scores from the reviewers are averaged together, giving the total score.Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold identified, after careful analysis, two factors that improved the scores significantly: being male and knowing a reviewer. In fact, the difference was so great that in order to get the same competence score as a man, a woman need either to know someone in the committee or to have published three more papers than the man in Nature or Science. It is often joked that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to do well; Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold found that she need to be, on average, 2.5 times as good on their measures to be rated as highly by reviewers. Such being the case, ambitious women would perhaps do well to return to a time-honored but supposedly obsolete tradition, and apply under a male name.
答案问询微信：424329

Foxes and farmers have never got on well. These small dog-like animals have long been accused of killing farm animals. They are officially classified as harmful and farmers try to keep their numbers down by shooting or poisoning them. Farmers can also call on the services of their local hunt to control the fox population. Hunting consists of pursuing a fox across the countryside, with a group of specially trained dogs, followed by men and women riding horses. When the dogs eventually catch the fox they kill it or a hunter shoots it. People who take part in hunting think of it as a sport; they wear a special uniform of red coats and white trousers, and follow strict codes of behavior. But owning a horse and hunting regularly is expensive, so most hunters are wealthy. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people watch or take part in fox hunting. But over the last couple of decades the number of people opposed to fox hunting, because they think it is brutal, has risen sharply. Nowadays it is rare for a hunt to pass off without some kind of confrontation (冲突) between hunters and hunt saboteurs (阻拦者). Sometimes these incidents lead to violence, but mostly saboteurs interfere with the hunt by misleading riders and disturbing the trail of the fox's smell, which the dogs follow. Noisy confrontations between hunters and saboteurs have become so common that they are almost as much a part of hunting as the pursuit of foxes itself. But this year supporters of fox hunting face a much bigger threat to their sport. A Labour Party Member of the Parliament, Mike Foster, is trying to get Parliament to approve a new law which will make the hunting of wild animals with dogs illegal. If the law is passed, wild animals like foxes will be protected under the ban in Britain.
答案问询微信：424329

The average population density of the world is 47 persons per square mile. Continental densities range from no permanent inhabitants in Antarctica to 211 per square mile in Europe. In the Western Hemisphere, population densities range from about 4 per square mile in Canada to 675 per square mile in Puerto Rico. In Europe the range is from 4 per square mile in Iceland to 831 per square mile in the Netherlands. Within countries there are wide variations of population densities. For example, in Egypt, the average is 55 persons per square mile, but 1,300 persons inhabit each square mile in settled portions where the land is arable. High population densities generally occur in regions of developed industrialization, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Great Britain, or where lands are intensively used for agriculture, as in Puerto Rico and Java.Low average population densities are characteristic of most underdeveloped countries. Low density of population is generally associated with a relatively low percentage of cultivated land. This generally results from poor quality lands. It may also be due to natural obstacles to cultivation, such as deserts, mountains or malaria-infested jungles; to land uses other than cultivation, as pasture and forested land; to primitive methods that limit cultivation; to social obstacles; and to land ownership systems which keep land out of production. More economically advanced countries of low population density have, as a rule, large proportions of their populations living in urban areas. Their rural population densities are usually very low. Poorer developed countries of correspondingly low general population density, on the other hand, often have a concentration of rural population living on arable land, which is as great as the rural concentration found in the most densely populated industrial countries.
答案问询微信：424329

Some people say that the study of liberal arts is a useless luxury we cannot afford in hard times. Students, they argue, who do not develop salable skills will find it difficult to land a job upon graduation. But there is a problem in speaking of salable skills. What skills are salable? Right now, skills for automobiles are not highly salable, but they have been for decades and might be again. Skills in teaching are not now as salable as they were during the past 20 years, and the population charts indicate they may not be soon again. Home construction skills are another example of varying salability, as the job market fluctuates. Whats more, if one wants to build a curriculum exclusively on what is salable, one will have to make the courses very short and change them very often, in order to keep up with the rapid changes in the job market. But will not the effort be in vain? In very few things can we be sure of future salability, and in a society where people are free to study what they want, and work where they want, and invest as they want, there is no way to keep supply and demand in labor in perfect accord.A school that devotes itself totally to salable skills, especially in a time of high unemployment, sending the young men and women into the world armed with only a narrow range of skills, is also sending lambs into the lions den. If those people gain nothing more from their studies than supposedlysalable skills, and cant make the sale because of changes in the job market, they have been cheated. But if those skills were more than salable, if study gave them a better understanding of the world around them and greater adaptability in a changing world, they have not been cheated. They will find some kind of job soon enough. Flexibly, an ability to change and learn new things, is a valuable skill. People who have learned how to learn can learn outside school. That is where most of us have learned to do what we do, not in school. Learning to learn is one of the higher liberal skills.
答案问询微信：424329