2020 《经济学人》及各英语学习资料整理(更新到4月上旬)

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经济学人精听材料

第1 页：中英文本第2 页：重点讲解Employment就业市场Zero tolerance毫无余地The problem with zero-hours contracts is not that they are too flexible零时工合同的问题可不是时间太灵活BRITAIN'S flexible labour market was a boon during the economic slump, helping keep joblessness down and then, when the recovery began, allowing employment to rise. Yet one of its bendier bits is causing politicians to fret. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, has promise d a crackdown on “zero-hours contracts” if he wins the next election. The government has launched a consultation.英国灵活的劳动力市场在经济衰退期间是一个福音，因为这既帮助压低失业率,而且当经济开始复苏又促进就业。

但其所带来的一些福利却让政客们烦躁不安。

工党领袖埃德·米利班德承诺如果他赢得下次选举，他将打击“零时工合同”。

政府也就打击零时工合同的事项展开磋商。

就业市场.jpgZero-hours contracts allow firms to employ workers for as few or as many hours as they need, with no prior notice. In theory, at least, people can refuse work. Fully 1.4m jobs were based on these contracts in January 2014, according to a snapsho taken by the Office for National Statistics. That is just 4% of the total, but the share rises to a quarter in the hospitality business.零时工合同政策允许在没有事先通知的情况下雇佣工人工作，工作时间根据公司需求可长可短。

The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结44531723共142页

1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。

2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。

3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。

4、需求的弧弹性（ Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。

例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。

6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。

也称为平均总成本。

7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。

8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。

9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。

10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。

对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。

11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。

12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。

收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。

13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。

2020考研英语：有关经济学人常用词汇的梳理（十九）

2020考研英语：有关经济学人常用词汇的梳理（十九）考研英语有许多题目组成，方便大家及时了解，下面由小编为你精心准备了“2020考研英语：有关经济学人常用词汇的梳理(十九)”，持续关注本站将可以持续获取更多的考试资讯!2020考研英语：有关经济学人常用词汇的梳理(十九)361、Econometrics 经济计量学经济学的一个分支。

利用统计方法衡量和估计经济中的数量关系。

362、Economic goods 经济物品就总需求量而言总是稀缺的那些商品。

通常必须通过收取一个正的价格来进行配给。

363、Economic growth 经济增长一国一定时期内总产出的增长。

经济增长通常用一国实际GDP(或潜在GDP)的年增长率进行衡量。

364、Economic reguation 经济管制见管制(regulation)。

365、Economic rent 经济租金见"经济租金"(rent， economic)。

366、Economic surplus 经济剩余一种术语，指产出的总体的令人满意程度或效用水平超过其生产成本的部分。

等于消费者剩余(消费者满意度超过总购买价值的部分)和生产者剩余(生产者收入超过成本的部分)之和。

367、Economics of information 信息经济学将信息也视为一种商品的经济形势分析。

因为信息的生产成本较高、而复制却很便宜，因此存在信息的商品和服务(如发明、出版、软件等)的市场，经常会出现市场不灵。

368、Economies of scale 规模经济劳动生产率的提高或平均生产成本的降低，都源于全部生产要素投人的同比例的增加。

369、Economies of scope 广度经济多样化生产经营商品或服务的经济。

当同时生产商品X和商品Y 的成本低于单独生产两种商品时，就存在广度经济。

370、Effective tax rate 有效税率所征税收占总收人或其他税基的一个百分比。

TheEconomist《经济学人》常用词汇总结我眼泪都流出来了太珍.

两种变量系统地相互联系在一起的程度。

307、Cost ，average 平均成本等于总成本（参见 "总成本" ， cost ，total ）除以产出的单位数。

The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结我眼泪都流出来了太珍The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结我眼泪都流出来了太珍贵了 !! 16 小时前 301、Consumption function 消费函数总消费与个人可支配收人（ PDI ）认为会对消费产生影响。

的数值对应关系。

总财富和其他变量也常被 302、Consumption-possibility line 消费可能线见预算线（ budget line ）。

303、Cooperative equilibrium合作性均衡博弈论中，指各方协调行动，以求共同的支付（ joint pay － offs ）最优化的策略而达到的结果。

304、Corporate income tax 公司所得税对公司年净收入课征的税收。

305、Corporation 公司现代资本主义经济中企业组织的主要形式。

它是由个人或其他公司所拥有的企业，具有与个人一样的购买、销售和签订合同的权利。

公司和对公司负责任" 的所有人二者，在法律上是不同的概念。

"有限306、Correlation相关308、Cost ，average fixed 平均固定成本等于固定成本除以产出的单位数。

309、Cost，average variable 平均可变成本等于可变成本（参见" 可变成本" ，cost ，variable ）除以产出的单位数。

310、Cost ，fixed 固定成本一企业在某时段即使在产量为零时也会发生的成本。

总固定成本由诸如利息支出、抵押支出、管理者费用等契约性开支所组成。

311、Cost ，marginal 边际成本多生产1 单位产品所增加的成本（或总成本的增加额），或少生产1 单位产品总成本的减少额。

经济学人》杂志原版英文(The_Economist整理版4-5)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(4-5)Hot to trotA new service hopes to do for texting what Skype did for voice callsTALK is cheap—particularly since the appearance of voice-over-internet services such as Skype. Such services, which make possible very cheap (or even free) calls by routing part or all of each call over the internet, have forced traditional telecoms firms to cut their prices. And now the same thing could be about to happen to mobilephone text messages, following the launch this week of Hotxt, a British start-up.Users download the Hotxt software to their handsets, just as they would a game or a ringtone. They choose a user name, and can then exchange as many messages as they like with other Hotxt users for £1 ($1.75) per week. The messages are sent as data packets across the internet, rather than being routed through operators' textmessaging infrastructure. As a result, users pay only a tiny data-transport charge, typically of a penny or so per message. Since text messages typically cost 10p, this is a big saving—particularly for the cost-conscious teenagers at whom the service is aimed.Most teenagers in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, pay for their mobile phones on a “pre-paid” basis, rather than having a monthly contract with a regular bill. Pre-paid tariffs are far more expensive: bundles of free texts and other special deals, which can reduce the cost of text messaging, are generally not available. For a teenager who sends seven messages a day, Hotxt can cut the cost of texting by 75%, saving £210 per year, says Doug Richard, the firm's co-founder. For really intensive text-messagers, the savings could be even bigger: Josh Dhaliwal of mobileYouth, a market-research firm, says that some teenagers—chiefly boys aged 15-16 and girls aged 14-15—are “supertexters” who send as many as 50 messages per day.While this sounds like good news for users, it could prove painful for mobile operators. Text-messaging accounts for around 20% of a typical operator's revenues. With margins on text messages in excess of 90%, texting also accounts for nearly half of an operator's profits. Mr Richard is confident that there is no legal way that operators can block his service; they could raisedata-transport costs, but that would undermine their own efforts to push new services. Hotxt plans to launch in other countries soon.“The challenge is getting that initial momentum,” says Mr Dhaliwal. Hotxt needs to persuade people to sign up, so that they will persuade their friends to sign up, and so on. Unlike Skype, Hotxt is not free, so users may be less inclined to give it a try. But as Skype has also shown, once a disruptive, low-cost communications service starts to spread, it can quickly become very big indeed. And that in turn can lead to lower prices, not just for its users, but for everyone.A discerning viewA new way of processing X-rays gives much clearer imagesX-RAYS are the mysterious phenomenon for which Wilhelm Röntgen was awarded the first Nobel prize in physics, in 1901. Since then, they have shed their mystery and found widespread use in medicine and industry, where they are used to revealthe inner properties of solid bodies.Some properties, however, are more easily discerned than others. Conventional Xray imaging relies on the fact that different materials absorb the radiation to different degrees. In a medical context, for example, bones absorb X-rays readily, and so show up white on an X-radiograph, which is a photographic negative. But Xrays are less good at discriminating between different forms of soft tissue, such as muscles, tendons, fat and blood vessels. That, however, could soon change. For Franz Pfeiffer of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland, and his colleagues report, in the April edition of Nature Physics, that they have manipulated standard X-ray imaging techniques to show many more details of the inner body.The trick needed to discern this fine detail, according to Dr Pfeiffer, is a simple one. The researchers took advantage not only of how tissues absorb X-rays but also of how much they slow their passage. This slowing can be seen as changes in the phase of the radiation that emerges—in other words of the relative positions of the peaks and troughs of the waves of which X-rays are composed.Subtle changes in phase are easily picked up, so doctors can detect even small variations in the composition of the tissue under investigation, such as might be caused by the early stages of breast cancer. Indeed, this trick—known as phase-contrast imaging—is already used routinely in optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Until now, however, no one had thought to use it for medical X-radiography.To perform their trick, the researchers used a series of three devices called transmission gratings. They placed one between thesource of the X-rays and the body under examination, and two between the body and the X-ray detector that forms the image. The first grating gathers information on the phases of the X-rays passing through it. The second and third work together to produce the detailed phase-contrasted image. The approach generates two separate images—the classic X-ray image and the phase-contrasted image—which can then be combined to produce a high-resolution picture.The researchers tested their technique on a Cardinal tetra, a tiny iridescent fish commonly found in fish tanks and aquariums. The conventional X-ray image showed the bones and the gut of the fish, while the phase-contrasted image showed details of the fins, the ear and the eye.Dr Pfeiffer's technique would thus appear to offer a way to get much greater detail for the same amount of radiation exposure. Moreover, since it uses standard hospital equipment, it should be easy to introduce into medical practice. X-rays may no l onger be the stuff of Nobel prizes, but their usefulness may just have increased significantly.Here be dragonsWith luck, you may soon be able to buy a mythological petPAOLO FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. That dream is a dragon in every home.GeneDupe's business is biotech pets. Not for Dr Fril, though, the mundane cloning of dead moggies and pooches. He plans a range of entirely new animals—or, rather, of really quite old animals, with the twist that even when they did exist, it was only in the imagination.Making a mythical creature real is not easy. But GeneDupe's team of biologists and computer scientists reckon they are equal to the task. Their secret is a new field, which they call “virtual cell biology”.Biology and computing have a lot in common, since both are about processing information—in one case electronic; in the other, biochemical. Virtual cell biology aspires to make a software model of a cell that is accurate in every biochemical detail. That is possible because all animal cells use the same parts list—mitochondria for energy processing, the endoplasmic reticulum for making proteins, Golgi body for protein assembly, and so on.Armed with their virtual cell, GeneDupe's scientists can customise the result so that it belongs to a particular species, by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal's genome. Then, if the cell is also loaded with the right virtual molecules, it will behave like a fertilised egg, and start dividing and developing—first into an embryo, and ultimately into an adult.Because this “growth” is going on in a computer, it happens fast. Passing from egg to adult in one of GeneDupe's enormous Mythmaker computers takes less than a minute. And it is here that Charles Darwin gets a look in. With such a short generation time, GeneDupe's scientists can add a little evolution to their products.Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn, gryphon, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn and, most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle for the gryphon). The virtual genomes of these real animals are then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled.Using this rapid evolutionary process, GeneDupe's scientists have arrived at genomes for a range of mythological creatures—in a computer, at least. The next stage, on which they are just embarking, is to do it for real.This involves synthesising, with actual DNA, the genetic material that the computer models predict will produce the mythical creatures. The synthetic DNA is then inserted into a cell that has had its natural nucleus removed. The result, Dr Fril and his commercial backers hope, will be a real live dragon, unicorn or what have you.Tales of the unexpectedWhy a drug trial went so badly wrongIN ANY sort of test, not least a drugs trial, one should expect the unexpected. Even so, on March 13th, six volunteers taking part in a small clinical trial of a treatment known as TGN1412 got far more than they bargained for. All ended up seriously ill, with multiple organ failure, soon after being injected with the drug at a special testing unit at Northwick Park Hospital in London, run by a company called Parexel. One man remains ill in hospital.Small, preliminary trials of this sort are intended to find out whether a drug is toxic. Nevertheless, the mishap was so seri ous that Britain's Medic ines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), a government body, swiftly launched a full inquiry.On April 5th it announced its preliminary findings. These were that the trial was run correctly, doses of the drug were given as they were supposed to have been, and there was no contamination during manufacturing. In other words, it seems that despite extensive tests on animals and human-cell cultures, and despite the fact that the doses in the human trial were only a five-hundredth of those given to the animals, TGN1412 is toxic in people in a way that simply had not shown up.This is a difficult result for the drug business because it raises questions about the right way of testing medicines of this kind. TGN1412 is unusual in that it is an antibody. Most drugs are what are known as “small molecules”. Antibodies are big, powerful proteins that are the workhorses of the immune system. A mere 20 of them have been approved for human therapy, or are in latestage clinical trails, in America and Europe, but hundreds are in pre-clinical development, and will soon need to be tried out on people.Most antibody drugs are designed to work in one of three ways: by recruiting parts of the immune system to kill cancer cells; by delivering a small-molecule drug or a radioactive atom specifically to a cancer; or by blocking unwanted immune responses. In that sense, TGN1412 was unusual because it worked in a fourth way. It is what is called a “superagonistic” antibody, designed to increase the numbers of a type of immune cell known as regulatory T-cells.Reduced numbers, or impaired function, of regulatory T-cells has been implicated in a number of illnesses, such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Boosting the pool of these antibodies seemed like a good treatment strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy fell disastrously to pieces and it will take a little longer to find out why.The result highlights concerns raised in a paper just published by the Academy of Medical Sciences, a group of experts based in London. It says there are special risks associated with novel antibody therapies. For example, their chemical specificity means that they might not bind to their targets in humans as they do in other species.Accidence and substanceTwo possible explanations for the bulk of realityTHE unknown pervades the universe. That which people can see, with the aid of various sorts of telescope, accounts for just 4% of the total mass. The rest, however, must exist. Without it, galaxies would not survive and the universe would not be gently expanding, as witnessed by astronomers. What exactly constitutes this dark matter and dark energy remains mysterious, but physicists have recently uncovered some more clues, about the former, at least.One possible explanation for dark matter is a group of subatomic particles called neutrinos. These objects are so difficult to catch that a screen made of lead a light-year thick would stop only half the neutrinos beamed at it from getting through. Yet neutrinos are thought to be the most abundant particles in the universe. Some ten thousand trillion trillion—most of them produced by nuclear reactions in the sun—reach Earth every second. All but a handful pass straight through the planet as if it wasn't there.According to the Standard Model, the most successful description of particle physics to date, neutrinos come in three varieties, called “flavours”. These are known as electron neutrinos, tau neutrinos and muon neutrinos. Again, according to the Standard Model, they are point-like, electrically neutral and massless. But in recent years, this view has been challenged, as physicists realised that neutrinos might have mass.The first strong evidence came in 1998, when researchers at an experiment called SuperKamiokande, based at Kamioka, in Japan, showed that muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere had gone missing by the time they should have reached an underground detector. SuperKamiokande's operators suspect that the missing muon neutrinos had changed flavour, becoming electron neutrinos or—more likely—tau neutrinos. Theory suggests that this process, called oscillation, can happen only if neutrinos have mass.Since then, there have been other reports of oscillation. Results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada suggest that electron neutrinos produced by nuclear reactions in the sun change into either muon or tau neutrinos on their journey to Earth. Two other Japanese experiments, one conducted at Kamioka and one involving the KEK partic le-accelerator laboratory in Tsukuba, near Tokyo, also hint at oscillation.Last week, researchers working on the MINOS experiment at Fermilab, near Chicago, confirmed these results. Over the coming months and years, they hope to produce the most accurate measurements yet. The researchers created a beam of muon neutrinos by firing an intense stream of protons into a block of carbon. On the other side of the target sat a particle detector that monitored the number of muon neutrinos leaving the Fermilab site. The neutrinos then traveled 750km (450 miles) through the Earth to a detector in a former iron mine in Soudan, Minnesota.Myths and migrationDo immigrants really hurt American workers' wages?EVERY now and again America, a nation largely made up of immigrants and their descendants, is gripped by a furious political row over whether and how it should stem the flood of people wanting to enter the country. It is in the midst of just such a quarrel now. Congress is contemplating the erection of a wall along stretches of the Mexican border and a crackdown on illegal workers, as well as softer policies such as a guest-worker programme for illegal immigrants. Some of the arguments are plain silly. Immigration's defenders claim that foreigners come to do jobs that Americans won't—as if cities with few immigrants had no gardeners. Its opponents say that immigrants steal American jobs—succumbing to the fallacy that there are only a fixed number of jobs to go around.One common argument, though not silly, is often overstated: that immigration pushes down American workers' wages, especially among high-school dropouts. It isn't hard to see why this might be. Over the past 25 years American incomes have become less equally distributed, typical wages have grown surprisingly slowly for such a healthy economy and the real wages of the least skilled have actually fallen. It is plausible that immigration is at least partly to blame, especially because recent arrivals have disproportionately poor skills. In the 2000 census immigrants made up 13% of America's pool of workers, but 28% of those without a high-school education and over half of those with eight years' schooling or less.In fact, the relationship between immigration and wages is not clear-cut, even in theory. That is because wages depend on the supply of capital as well as labour. Alone, an influx of immigrants raises the supply of workers and hence reduces wages. But cheaper labour increases the potential return to employers of building new factories or opening new valet-parking companies. In so doing, they create extra demand for workers. Once capital has fully adjusted, the final impact on overall wages should be a wash, as long as the immigrants have not changed the productivity of the workforce as a whole.However, even if wages do not change on average, immigration can still shift the relative pay of workers of different types. A large inflow of low-skilled people could push down the relative wages of low-skilled natives, assuming that they compete for the same jobs. On the other hand, if the immigrants had complementary skills, natives would be relatively better off. To gauge the full effect of immigration on wages, therefore, you need to know how quickly capital adjusts and how far the newcomers are substitutes for local workers.Roaming holidayThe EU hopes to slash the price of cross-border mobile calls“TODAY it is only when using your mobile phone abroad that you realise there are still borders in Europe,” lamented Viviane Reding, the European commissioner responsible for telecoms and media regulation, as she announced plans to slash the cost of mobile roaming last month. It is a laudable aim: European consumers typically pay €1.25 ($1.50) per minute to call home from another European country, and €1 per minute to receive calls from home while abroad. With roaming margins above 90%, European mobile operators make profits of around €10 billion a year from the trade, the commission estimates.Ms Reding's plan, unveiled on March 28th and up for discussion until May 12th, is to impose a “home pricing” scheme. Even while roaming, callers would be charged whatever they would normally pay to use their phones in their home countries; charges for incoming calls while roaming would be abolished. That may sound good. But, as the industry is understandably at pains to point out, it could have some curious knock-on effects.In particular, consumers could sign up with operators in foreign countries to take advantage of lower prices. Everyone would take out subscriptions to the cheapest supplier and bring them back home, says John Tysoe of the Mobile World, a consultancy. “You'd end up with a complete muddle. An operator might have a network, bu t no customers, because they've all migrated.”Another problem with Ms Reding's plan, he says, is that operators would compensate for the loss of roaming fees— thought to account for around 3% of their revenues and 5% of profits—by raising prices elsewhere. This would have the perverse effect of lowering prices for international business travellers, a big chunk of roaming traffic, while raising prices for most consumers.The commission's proposals are “economically incoherent”, says Richard Feasey of Vodafo ne, which operates mobile networks in many European countries. Imposing price caps on roaming is legally questionable, he says, and Vodafone has, in any case, been steadily reducing its roaming charges. (European regulators prevented it from doing so for three years on antitrust grounds after its takeover of Mannesmann in 2000.) Orange, another multinational operator, says it is planning to make price cuts,too. “Of course, now everybody's got price cuts,” says Stefano Nicoletti of Ovum, a consultancy.But perhaps Ms Reding's unspoken plan is to use the threat of regulation as a way to prompt action. Operators are right that her proposals make no sense, but they are charging too much all the same. So expect them to lobby hard against the proposals over the next couple of years, while quietly cutting their prices—an outcome that would, of course, allow both sides to claim victory.Devices and their desiresEngineers and chemists get togetherTHERE used to be a world of difference between treating a patient with a device—such as a fake hip or a pacemaker—and using biology and biochemistry. Different ailments required wholly different treatments, often with little in common. But that is changing as medical advances—such as those being trumpeted at the biotechnology industry's annual gathering this week in Chicago—foster combinations of surgical implants and other hardware with support from medicines. Drug-releasing stents were one of the first fruits of this trend, which increasingly requires vastly different sorts of health-care firms to mesh their research efforts.That will be a challenge. While pharmaceutical and biotech firms are always in search of the next big thing, devicemakers prefer gradual progress. Instead of hanging out with breathless entrepreneurs near America's east and west coasts, where most drug and biotechnology firms are based, many of the device-makers huddle in midwestern cities such as Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Kalamazoo. And unlike Big Pharma, which uses marketing blitzes to tell ailing consumers about its new drugs, medical-device sales teams act more as instructors, showing doctors how to install their latest creations.Several companies, however, are now trying to bring these two business cultures together. Earlier this year, for example, Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, a Canadian firm, bought American Medical Instruments (AMI). Angiotech's managers reckon their company has devised a good way to apply drug coatings to all sorts of medical paraphernalia, from sutures and syringes to catheters, in order to reduce the shock to the body. AMI makes just the sorts of medical supplies to which Angiotech hopes to apply its techniques.One of America's biggest makers of medical devices, Medtronic, has been doing joint research with Genzyme, a biotechnology company that is also keen on broader approaches to health care. Genzyme says that it was looking for better ways to treat ailments, such as coronary and kidney disease, and realised that it needed to understand better how electro-mechanical devices and information technology work. But combining its efforts with those of Medtronic “on a cultural level is very hard”, the company says. Biotechnology firms are used to much more risky projects and far longer development cycles.Another difference is that device-makers know that if a problem emerges with their hardware, the engineers will tinker around and try to resolve the glitch. Biotech and pharmaceutical firms have no such option. If a difficulty emerges after years of developing and testing a new pill, as with Merck's Vioxx, there may be little they can do about it. “You can't futz with a molecule”, says Debbie Wang, a health-care industry analyst.Strangely, says Ms Wang, some of the most promising engineering outfits were once divisions of pharmaceutical andhealth-care companies, which got rid of them precisely because they did not appear to offer the rapid growth that managers saw in prescription drugs. Guidant, a maker of various cardiovascular devices, was spun off by Eli Lilly in 1994 and a decade later became the prize in a bidding war between Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific, which Boston won earlier this year.Pfizer sold Howmedica, which makes joint replacements and prosthetics, to Kalamazoo-based Stryker in 1998. Anotherjoint-replacement maker, Zimmer, was spun off from Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2001. Now both those companies are looking for ways to add “anti-interactive coatings”—ie, drugs—to their business. One of the most troublesome complications in joint replacement is infection.The big drug companies might be tempted to reacquire the firms that they let go. But, given the potential for cultural and strategic clashes, it may make more sense for a few big and broad medical-device makers, such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St Jude Medical, to continue consolidating their own industry while co-operating, along the lines of the Medtronic-Genzyme venture, with biotech and pharmaceutical firms as they see fit. There would still be irritation; but probably less risk of wholesale rejection.Eat less, live moreHow to live longer—maybeDIETING, according to an old joke, may not actually make you live longer, but it sure feels that way. Nevertheless, evidence has been accumulating since the 1930s that calorie restriction—reducing an animal's energy intake below its energy expenditure—extends lifespan and delays the onset of age-related diseases in rats, dogs, fish and monkeys. Such results have inspired thousands of people to put up with constant hunger in the hope of living longer, healthier lives. They have also led to a search for drugs that mimic the effects of calorie restriction without the pain of going on an actual diet.Amid the hype, it is easy to forget that no one has until now shown that calorie restriction works in humans. That omission, however, changed this month, with the publication of the initial results of the first systematic investigation into the matter. This study, known as CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy), was sponsored by America's National Institutes of Health. It took 48 men and women aged between 25 and 50 and assigned them randomly to either a control group or a calorie-restriction regime. Those in the second group were required to cut their calorie intake for six months to 75% of that needed to maintain their weight.The CALERIE study is a landmark in the history of the field, because its subjects were either of normal weight or only slightly overweight. Previous projects have used individuals who were clinically obese, thus confusing the unquestionable benefits to health of reducing obesity with the possible advantages of calorie restriction to the otherwise healthy.At a molecular level, CALERIE suggests these advantages are real. For example, those on restricted diets had lower insulin resistance (high resistance is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes) and lower levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (high levels are a risk factor for heart disease). They showed drops in body temperature and blood-insulin levels—both phenomena that have been seen in long-lived, calorie-restricted animals. They also suffered less oxidative damage to their DNA.Eric Ravussin, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who is one of the study's authors, says that such results provide support for the theory that calorie restriction produces a metabolic adaptation over and above that which would be expected from weight loss alone. (He also points out that it will be a long time before such work reveals whether calorie restriction actually extends life.) Nevertheless, such metabolic adaptation could be the reason why calorie restriction is associated with longer lifespans in other animals—and that is certainly the hope of those who, for the past 15 years, have been searching for ways of triggering that metabolic adaptation by means other than semi-starvation.The search for a drug that will stave off old age is itself as old as the hills—as is the wishful thinking of the suckers who finance such efforts. Those who hope to find it by mimicking the effect of calorie restriction are not, however, complete snake-oil salesmen, for there is known to be a family of enzymes called sirtuins, which act both as sensors of nutrient availability and as regulators of metabolic rate. These might provide the necessary biochemical link between starving and living longer.Universal service?Proponents of “software as a service” say it will wipe out traditional softwareSOMETHING momentous is happening in the software business. Bill Gates of Mi crosoft calls it “the next sea change”. Analysts call it a “tectonic shift” in the industry. Trade publications hail it as “the next big thing”. It is software-as-a-service (SaaS)—the delivery of software as an internet-based service via a web browser, rather than as a product that must be purchased, installed and maintained. The appeal is obvious: SaaS is quicker, easier and cheaper to deploy than traditional software, which means technology budgets can be focused on providing competitive advantage, rather than maintenance.This has prompted an outbreak of iconoclasm. “Traditional software is dead,” says Jason Maynard, an analyst at Credit Suisse. Just as most firms do not own generators, but buy electricity from the grid, so in future they will buy software on the hoof, he says. “It's the end of software as we know it. All software is becoming a service,” declares Marc Benioff of , thebest-known proponent of the idea. But while SaaS is growing fast, it still represents only a tiny fraction of the overall software industry—a mere $3.35 billion last year, estimates Mr Maynard. Most observers expect it to be worth around $12 billion by 2010—but even that is equal only to Microsoft's quarterly sales today. There is no denying that SaaS is coming. But there is much debate, even among its advocates, about how quickly it will grow, and how widely it will be adopted.At the moment, small and medium-sized businesses are the most enthusiastic adopters of SaaS, since it is cheaper and simpler than maintaining rooms of server computers and employing staff to keep them running. Unlike the market for desktop software,。

英语学习《经济学人》中英对照

从太空采集太阳能Solar power from space,Beam it down 从太空采集太阳能,传送电力到地球吧Harvesting solar power in space, for use on Earth, comes a step closer to reality将太空收获的太阳电能在地球上利用，这种理想又向现实迈出了一大步。

THE idea of collecting solar energy in space and beaming it to Earth has been around for at least 70 years. In "Reason", a short story by Isaac Asimov that was published in 1941, a space station transmits energy collected from the sun to various planets using microwave beams.从太空中收集太阳能并将其传送到地球的想法已经存在了至少70年。

艾萨克·阿西莫夫(Isaac Asimov )在1941年出版的短篇小说Reason中曾设想利用微波束将空间站收集到的太阳能传送到各类行星上。

The advantage of intercepting sunlight in space, instead of letting it find its own way through the atmosphere, is that so much gets absorbed by the air. By converting it to the right frequency first (one of the so-called windows in the atmosphere, in which little energy is absorbed) a space-based collector could, enthusiasts claim, yield on average five times as much power as one located on the ground.从太空直接截获太阳光而不任由它们穿过大气层的优点是大部分光能量不会被大气吸收。

《经济学人》杂志原版英文(整理完整版)之欧阳道创编

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(6-7)Hard to digestA wealth of genetic information is to be found in the human gutBACTERIA, like people, can be divided into friend and foe. Inspired by evidence that the friendly sort may help with a range of ailments, many people consume bacteria in the form of yogurts and dietary supplements. Such a smattering of artificial additions, however, represents but a drop in the ocean. There are at least 800 types of bacteria living in the human gut. And research by Steven Gill of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleagues, published in this week's Science, suggests that the collective genome of these organisms is so large that it contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.Dr Gill and his team were able to come to this conclusion by extracting bacterial DNA from the faeces of two volunteers. Because of the complexity of the samples,they were not able to reconstruct the entire genomes of each of the gut bacteria, just the individual genes. But that allowed them to make an estimate of numbers.What all these bacteria are doing is tricky to identify—the bacteria themselves are difficult to cultivate. So the researchers guessed at what they might be up to by comparing the genes they discovered with published databases of genes whose functions are already known.This comparison helped Dr Gill identify for the first time the probable enzymatic processes by which bacteria help humans to digest the complex carbohydrates in plants. The bacteria also contain a plentiful supply of genes involved in the synthesis of chemicals essential to human life—including two B vitamins and certain essential amino acids—although the team merely showed that these metabolic pathways exist rather than proving that they are used. Nevertheless, the pathways they found leave humans looking more like ruminants: animals such as goats and sheep that use bacteria to break down otherwise indigestible matter in the plants they eat.The broader conclusion Dr Gill draws is that peopleare superorganisms whose metabolism represents an amalgamation of human and microbial attributes. The notion of a superorganism has emerged before, as researchers in other fields have come to view humans as having a diverse internal ecosystem. This, suggest some, will be crucial to the success of personalised medicine, as different people will have different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial flora. Accordingly, the next step, says Dr Gill, is to see how microbial populations vary between people of different ages, backgrounds and diets.Another area of research is the process by which these helpful bacteria first colonise the digestive tract. Babies acquire their gut flora as they pass down the birth canal and take a gene-filled gulp of their mother's vaginal and faecal flora. It might not be the most delicious of first meals, but it could well be an important one.Zapping the bluesThe rebirth of electric-shock treatmentELECTRICITY has long been used to treat medical disorders. As early as the second century AD, Galen, a Greek physician, recommended the use of electric eels fortreating headaches and facial pain. In the 1930s Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, used electroconvulsive therapy to treat schizophrenia. These days, such rigorous techniques are practised less widely. But researchers are still investigating how a gentler electric therapy appears to treat depression.Vagus-nerve stimulation, to give it its proper name, was originally developed to treat severe epilepsy. It requires a pacemaker-like device to be implanted in a patient's chest and wires from it threaded up to the vagus nerve on the left side of his neck. In the normal course of events, this provides an electrical pulse to the vagus nerve for 30 seconds every five minutes.This treatment does not always work, but in some cases where it failed (the number of epileptic seizures experienced by a patient remaining the same), that patient nevertheless reported feeling much better after receiving the implant. This secondary effect led to trials for treating depression and, in 2005, America's Food and Drug Administration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, includingdrugs and psychotherapy.Not only does the treatment work, but its effects appear to be long lasting. A study led by Charles Conway of Saint Louis University in Missouri, and presented to a recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, has found that 70% of patients who are better after one year stay better after two years as well.The technique builds on a procedure called deep-brain stimulation, in which electrodes are implanted deep into the white matter of patients' brains and used to “reboot” faulty neural circuitry. Such an operation is a big undertaking, requiring a full day of surgery and carrying a risk of the patient suffering a stroke. Only a small number of people have been treated this way. In contrast, the device that stimulates the vagus nerve can be implanted in 45 minutes without a stay in hospital.The trouble is that vagus-nerve stimulation can take a long time to produce its full beneficial effect. According to Dr Conway, scans taken using a technique called positron-emission tomography show significant changes in brain activity starting three months after treatment begins. Thechanges are similar to the improvements seen in patients who undergo other forms of antidepression treatment. The brain continues to change over the following 21 months. Dr Conway says that patients should be told that the antidepressant effects could be slow in coming.However, Richard Selway of King's College Hospital, London, found that his patients' moods improved just weeks after the implant. Although brain scans are useful in determining the longevity of the treatment, Mr Selway notes that visible changes in the brain do not necessarily correlate perfectly with changes in mood.Nobody knows why stimulating the vagus nerve improves the mood of depressed patients, but Mr Selway has a theory. He believes that the electrical stimulation causes a region in the brain stem called the locus caeruleus (Latin, ironically, for “blue place”) to flood the brain with norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter implicated in alertness, concentration and motivation—that is, the mood states missing in depressed patients. Whatever the mechanism, for the depressed a therapy that is relatively safe and long lasting is rare cause for cheer.The shape of things to comeHow tomorrow's nuclear power stations will differ from today'sTHE agency in charge of promoting nuclear power in America describes a new generation of reactors that will be “highly economical” with “enhanced safety”, that “minimise wastes” and will prove “proliferation resistant”. No doubt they will bake a mean apple pie, too.Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear energy, fine words are not enough. America got away lightly with its nuclear accident. When the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania overheated in 1979 very little radiation leaked, and there were no injuries. Europe was not so lucky. The accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 killed dozens immediately and has affected (sometimes fatally) the health of tens of thousands at the least. Even discounting the association of nuclear power with nuclear weaponry, people have good reason to be suspicious of claims that reactors are safe.Yet political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about globalwarming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactors operate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet's electricity, according to America's Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?Clearly, modern designs need to be less accident prone. The most important feature of a safe design is that it “fails safe”. Fo r a reactor, this means that if its control systems stop working it shuts down automatically, safely dissipates the heat produced by the reactions in its core, and stops both the fuel and the radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactions from escaping by keeping them within some sort of containment vessel. Reactors that follow such rules are called “passive”. Most modern designs are passive to someextent and some newer ones are truly so. However, some of the genuinely passive reactors are also likely to be more expensive to run.Nuclear energy is produced by atomic fission. A large atom (usually uranium or plutonium) breaks into two smaller ones, releasing energy and neutrons. The neutrons then trigger further break-ups. And so on. If this “chain reaction” can be controlled, the energy released can be used to boil water, produce steam and drive a turbine that generates electricity. If it runs away, the result is a meltdown and an accident (or, in extreme circumstances, a nuclear explosion—though circumstances are never that extreme in a reactor because the fuel is less fissile than the material in a bomb). In many new designs the neutrons, and thus the chain reaction, are kept under control by passing them through water to slow them down. (Slow neutrons trigger more break ups than fast ones.) This water is exposed to a pressure of about 150 atmospheres—a pressure that means it remains liquid even at high temperatures. When nuclear reactions warm the water, its density drops, and the neutrons passing through it are no longer slowedenough to trigger further reactions. That negative feedback stabilises the reaction rate.Can business be cool?Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriouslyRUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executivesof Mr Murdoch's News Corporation—which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate's attitude tothe internet—will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climatechangemovie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by hisson, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carboninto the atmosphere.The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that itwas carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, aninvestment bank, in waging war on climate-warminggases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last yearGeneral Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output ofgreenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced aseries of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade.Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain's biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7thsome leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involvesharsher regulation.The greening of business is by no means universal, however. Money from Exxon Mobil, Ford and General Motorshelped pay for television advertisements aired recently in America by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsa re engaged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climatechange, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, and even a “carbon calculator” on its website that helps consumers measuretheir personal “carbon footprint”, or overall emissions of carbon. Yet, critics complain, BP's recent record profits arelargely thanks to sales of huge amounts of carbon-packed oil and gas.On the other hand, some free-market thinkers see the support of firms for regulation of carbon as the latestattempt at “regulatory capture”, by those who stand to profit from new rules. Max Schulz of the ManhattanInstitute, a conservative think tan k, notes darkly that “Enron was into pushing the idea of climate change, becauseit was good for its business”.Others argue that climate change has no more place in corporate boardrooms than do discussions of other partisanpolitical issues, such as Darfur or gay marriage. That criticism, at least, is surely wrong. Most of the corporateconverts say they are acting not out of some vague sense of social responsibility, or even personal angst, butbecause climate change creates real business risks andopportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although these concerns vary hugely from one company to the next, few firms can besure of remaining unaffected.Testing timesResearchers are working on ways to reduce the need for animal experiments, but new laws mayincrease the number of experiments neededIN AN ideal world, people would not perform experiments on animals. For the people, they are expensive. For theanimals, they are stressful and often painful.That ideal world, sadly, is still some way away. People need new drugs and vaccines. They want protection fromthe toxicity of chemicals. The search for basic scientific answers goes on. Indeed, the European Commission isforging ahead with proposals that will increase the number of animal experiments carried out in the EuropeanUnion, by requiring toxicity tests on every chemical approved for use within the union's borders in the past 25years.Already, the commission has identified 140,000 chemicals that have not yet been tested. It wants 30,000 oftheseto be examined right away, and plans to spend between €4 billion-8 billion ($5 billion-10 billion) doing so. Thenumber of animals used for toxicity testing in Europe will thus, experts reckon, quintuple from just over 1m a yearto about 5m, unless they are saved by some dramatic advances in non-animal testing technology. At the moment,roughly 10% of European animal tests are for general toxicity, 35% for basic research, 45% for drugs andvaccines, and the remaining 10% a variety of uses such as diagnosing diseases.Animal experimentation will therefore be around for some time yet. But the hunt for substitutes continues, and lastweekend the Middle European Society for Alternative Methods to Animal Testing met in Linz, Austria, to reviewprogress.A good place to start finding alternatives for toxicity tests is the liver—the organ responsible for breaking toxicchemicals down into safer molecules that can then be excreted. Two firms, one large and one small, told themeeting how they were using human liver cells removed incidentally during surgery to test various substancesforlong-term toxic effects.PrimeCyte, the small firm, grows its cells in cultures over a few weeks and doses them regularly with the substanceunder investigation. The characteristics of the cells are carefully monitored, to look for changes in theirmicroanatomy.Pfizer, the big firm, also doses its cultures regularly, but rather than studying individual cells in detail, it counts cellnumbers. If the number of cells in a culture changes after a sample is added, that suggests the chemical inquestion is bad for the liver.In principle, these techniques could be applied to any chemical. In practice, drugs (and, in the case of PrimeCyte,food supplements) are top of the list. But that might change if the commission has its way: those140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knows whether the new tests will be ready for use by2009, when the commission proposes that testing should start.Other tissues, too, can be tested independently of animals. Epithelix, a small firm in Geneva, has developed anartificial version of the lining of the lungs. According toHuang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, thefirm'scultured cells have similar microanatomy to those found in natural lung linings, and respond in the same way tovarious chemical messengers. Dr Huang says that they could be used in long-term toxicity tests of airbornechemicals and could also help identify treatments for lung diseases.The immune system can be mimicked and tested, too. ProBioGen, a company based in Berlin, is developing anartificial human lymph node which, it reckons, could have prevented the near-disastrous consequences of a drugtrial held in Britain three months ago, in which (despite the drug having passed animal tests) six men sufferedmultiple organ failure and nearly died. The drug the men were given made their immune systems hyperactive.Such a response would, the firm's scientists reckon, have been identified by their lymph node, which is made fromcells that provoke the immune system into a response. ProBioGen's lymph node could thus work better than animaltesting.Another way of cutting the number of animalexperiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At the moment, allbatches of vaccine are subject to the same battery of tests. DrHendriksen argues that this is over-rigorous. When new vaccine culturesare made, belt-and-braces tests obviously need to be applied. But if abatch of vaccine is derived from an existing culture, he suggests that itneed be tested only to make sure it is identical to the batch from which itis derived. That would require fewer test animals.All this suggests that though there is still some way to go before drugs,vaccines and other substances can be tested routinely on cells ratherthan live animals, useful progress is being made. What is harder to see ishow the use of animals might be banished from fundamental research.Anger managementTo one emotion, men are more sensitive than women MEN are notoriously insensitive to the emotional world around them. At least, that is the stereotype peddled by athousand women's magazines. And a study by two researchers at the University of Melbourne, inAustralia,confirms that men are, indeed, less sensitive to emotion than women, with one important and suggestiveexception. Men are acutely sensitive to the anger of other men.Mark Williams and Jason Mattingley, whose study has just been published in Current Biology, looked at the way aperson's sex affects his or her response to emotionally charged facial expressions. People from all cultures agreeon what six basic expressions of emotion look like. Whether the face before you is expressing anger, disgust, fear,joy, sadness or surprise seems to be recognised universally—which suggests that the expressions involved areinnate, rather than learned.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley showed the participants in their study photographs of these emotional expressions inmixed sets of either four or eight. They asked the participants to look for a particular sort of expression, andmeasured the amount of time it took them to find it. The researchers found, in agreement with previous studies,that both men and women identified angry expressions most quickly. But they also found that anger was morequicklyidentified on a male face than a female one.Moreover, most participants could find an angry face just as quickly when it was mixed in a group of eightphotographs as when it was part of a group of four. That was in stark contrast to the other five sorts of expression,which took more time to find when they had to be sorted from a larger group. This suggests that something in thebrain is attuned to picking out angry expressions, and that it is especially concerned about angry men. Also, thishighly tuned ability seems more important to males than females, since the two researchers found that men pickedout the angry expressions faster than women did, even though women were usually quicker than men to recognizeevery other sort of facial expression.Dr Williams and Dr Mattingley suspect the reason for this is that being able to spot an angry individual quickly hasa survival advantage—and, since anger is more likely to turn into lethal violence in men than in women, the abilityto spot angry males quickly is particularly valuable.As to why men are more sensitive to anger than women, it is presumably because they are far more likely togetkilled by it. Most murders involve men killing other men—even today the context of homicide is usually aspontaneous dispute over status or sex.The ability to spot quickly that an alpha male is in a foul mood would thus have great survival value. It would allowthe sharp-witted time to choose appeasement, defence or possibly even pre-emptive attack. And, if it is right, thisstudy also confirms a lesson learned by generations of bar-room tough guys and schoolyard bullies: if you wantattention, get angry.The shareholders' revoltA turning point in relations between company owners and bosses?SOMETHING strange has been happening this year at company annual meetings in America:shareholders have been voting decisively against the recommendations of managers. Until now, mostshareholders have, like so many sheep, routinely voted in accordance with the advice of the people theyemploy to run the company. This year managers have already been defeated at some 32 companies,including household names such as Boeing, ExxonMobil and GeneralMotors.This shareholders' revolt has focused entirely on one issue: the method by which members of the boardof directors are elected. Shareholder resolutions on other subjects have mostly been defeated, as usual.The successful resolutions called for directors to be elected by majority voting, instead of by thetraditional method of “plurality”—which in practice meant that only votes cast in favour were counted,and that a single vote for a candidate would be enough to get him elected.Several companies, led by Pfizer, a drug giant, saw defeat looming and pre-emptively adopted a formalmajority-voting policy that was weaker than in the shareholder resolution. This required any director whofailed to secure a majority of votes to tender his resignation to the board, which would then be free todecide whether or not to accept it. Under the shareholder resolution, any candidate failing to secure amajority of the votes cast simply would not be elected. Intriguingly, the shareholder resolution wasdefeated at four-fifths of the firms that adopted a Pfizer-style majority voting rule, whereas it succeedednearly ninetimes out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions wereall“precatory”—meaning that they merely advised management on the course of action preferred byshareholders, but did not force managers to do anything. Several resolutions that tried to imposemajority voting on firms by changing their bylaws failed this year.Even so, wise managers should voluntarily adopt majority voting, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen&Katz, a Wall Street law firm that has generally helped managers resist increases in shareholder power butnow expects majority voting eventually to “become universal”. It advises that, at the very least,managers should adopt the Pfizer model, if only to avoid becoming the subject of even greater scrutinyfrom corporate-governance activists. Some firms might choose to go further, as Dell and Intel have donethis year, and adopt bylaws requiring majority voting.Shareholders may have been radicalised by the success last year of a lobbying effort by managersagainst a proposal from regulators to make it easier for shareholders to put upcandidates in boardelections. It remains to be seen if they will be back for more in 2007. Certainly, some of the activistshareholders behind this year's resolutions have big plans. Where new voting rules are in place, they plancampaigns to vote out the chairman of the compensation committee at any firm that they think overpaysthe boss. If the 2006 annual meeting was unpleasant for managers, next year's could be far worse. Intangible opportunitiesCompanies are borrowing against their copyrights, trademarks and patentsNOT long ago, the value of companies resided mostly in things you could see and touch. Today it liesincreasingly in intangible assets such as the McDonald's name, the patent for Viagra and the rights toSpiderman. Baruch Lev, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, puts theimplied value of intangibles on American companies' balance sheets at about $6 trillion, or two-thirds ofthe total. Much of this consists of intellectual property, the collective name for copyrights, trademarksand patents. Increasingly, companies and their clever bankers are usingthese assets to raise cash.The method of choice is securitisation, the issuing of bonds based on the various revenues thrown off byintellectual property. Late last month Dunkin' Brands, owner of Dunkin' Donuts, a snack-bar chain, raised$1.7 billion by selling bonds backed by, among other things, the royalties it will receive from itsfranchisees. The three private-equity firms that acquired Dunkin' Brands a few months ago have used thecash to repay the money they borrowed to buy the chain. This is the biggest intellectual-propertysecuritisation by far, says Jordan Yarett of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a law firm that hasworked on many such deals.Securitisations of intellectual property can be based on revenues from copyrights, trademarks (such aslogos) or patents. The best-known copyright deal was the issue in 1997 of $55m-worth of “Bowie Bonds”supported by the future sales of music by David Bowie, a British rock star. Bonds based on the films ofDreamWorks, Marvel comic books and the stories of John Steinbeck have also been sold. As well asDunkin' Brands, several restaurant chains andfashion firms have issued bonds backed by logos andbrands.Intellectual-property deals belong to a class known as operating-asset securitisations. These differ fromstandard securitisations of future revenues, such as bonds backed by the payments on a 30-yearmortgage or a car loan, in that the borrower has to make his asset work. If investors are to recoup theirmoney, the assets being securitised must be “actively exploited”, says Mr Yarett: DreamWorks mustcontinue to churn out box-office hits.The market for such securitisations is still small. Jay Eisbruck, of Moody's, a rating agency, reckons thataround $10 billion-worth of bonds are outstanding. But there is “big potential,” he says, pointing out thatlicensing patented technology generates $100 billion a year and involves thousands of companies.Raising money this way can make sense not only for clever private-equity firms, but also for companieswith low (or no) credit ratings that cannot easily tap the capital markets or with few tangible assets ascollateral for bank loans. Some universities have joined in, too. Yale built a new medical complex withsome of the roughly $100m it。

经济学人官方双语汇总.docx

进出口贸易实务教程材料国贸1093目录：c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\绪论c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第一篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第一章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、商品的名称c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、商品质量的含义和要求c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、商品质量的规定方法c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\四、卖卖合同中的品名质量条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第二章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、数量的计算c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、买卖合同中的数量条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第三章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、运输包装c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、销售包装c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、定牌、无牌和中性包装c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\四、买卖合同中的包装条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第二篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第四章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、贸易术语的含义和作用c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、有关贸易术语的国际惯例c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、六种主要贸易术语c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\四、其他五种贸易术语c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\五、本章总结c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第五章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、作价方法c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、计价货币c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、计价数量单位与单位价格金额c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\四、贸易术语的选用c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第六章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、出口商品成本核算c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、佣金和折扣c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第三篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第七章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、交货时间c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、装运港（地）和目的港（地）c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\四、分批装运和转运c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\五、买卖合同中的装运条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第八章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、海洋运输c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\五、集装箱运输c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第九章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、保险的基本原则c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、货物运输保险保障的范围c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、我国海洋运输货物保险的险别与条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\五、伦敦保险业协会海运货物保险条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第四篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、汇票c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十一章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、汇付c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、托收c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十二章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、二、信用证的定义、当事人c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、四、信用证主要内容、收付的一般程序c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\五、六、信用证的性质作用、跟单信用证统一惯例c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\七、八、信用证特点、种类c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十四章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、选择结算方式应该考虑的因素c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、不同结算方式的结合使用c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、分期付款与延期付款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十五章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、二、三、汇付条款、托收条款、信用证支付条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第五篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十六章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、买方的检验权c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、检验的时间和地点c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十七章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、违约责任c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\二、索赔与理赔c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\三、买卖合同中的索赔条款c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十八章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、二、不可抗力的认定和处理、通知和证明c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第十九章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、二、仲裁的形式和机构、仲裁协议c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第六篇c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第二十章c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\一、二、出口交易磋商的形式和内容、一般程序c:\iknow\docshare\data\cur_work\第二十一章班级国贸1093 姓名学号绪论1.国际货物卖卖合同适用的法律有：国内法，国际贸易惯例，国际条约。

The_Economist整理版(《经济学人》原版英文,有4000词汇即可,练习阅读绝好资料)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(2-3)Moving marketsShifts in trading patterns are making technology ever more importantAN INVESTOR presses a button, sending 1,000 small “buy” orders to a stock exchange. The exchange's computer system instantly kicks in, but a split second later, 99% of the orders are cancelled. Having found the best price, the investor makes his trade discreetly, leaving no visible trace on the market—all in less time than it takes to blink. His stealth strategy remains intact.Events like this happen many times a day, as floods of orders from active hedge funds and “algorithmic” traders—who use automated programs to buy and sell—rush through the information-technology systems of the world's exchanges. The average transaction size on leading stock exchanges has fallen from about 2,000 shares in the mid-1990s to fewer than 400 today, although total trading volume has soared. But exchanges' systems have to cope with more than just a growing onslaught of “buy” and “sell” messages. Customers want to trade in more complicated ways, combining different types of assets on different exchanges at once. Then, as always, there is regulation. All this is pushing technology further to the fore.Recent embarrassments at the Tokyo Stock Exchange have illustrated what can happen when systems fail to keep up with the times. In just the past few months, the importance of technology has been plain in mergers (those of the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago, and NASDAQ and INET); collaborations (the decision by the New York Board of Trade to use the Chicago Board of Trade's trading platform); and the creation of off-exchange trading networks (including one unveiled recently by Citigroup).Technology is hardly a new element in financial markets: the advent of electronic trading in the 1980s (first in Europe, later in America) helped to globalise financial markets and drove up trading volumes. But having slowed after the dotcom bubble it is now demanding ever more of exchanges' and intermediaries' attention. Investors can now deal more easily with exchanges or each other, bypassing traditional routes. As customers' demands and bargaining power have increased, so the exchanges have had to ramp up their own systems. “Technology created the monster that has to be ad dressed by more technology,” says Leslie Sutphen of Calyon Financial, a big futures broker.Aite Group, a research firm, reckons that in America alone the securities and investment industry spent $26.4 billion last year on IT (see chart), and may spend $30 billion in 2008. Sell-side firms spend most: J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley each splashed out more than $2 billion in 2004, while asset-management firms such as State Street Global Advisors, Barclays Global Investors and Fidelity Investments spent between $250m and $350m apiece. With brokerage fees for trades whittled down, many have concluded that better technology is one way to cut trading costs and keep customers.Testing all enginesGlobal growth is looking less lopsided than for many yearsLARR Y SUMMERS, a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, once said that “the world economy is flying on one engine” to describe its excessive reliance on American demand. Now growth seems to be becoming more even at last: Europe and Japan are revving up, as are most emerging economies. As a result, if (or when) the American engine stalls, the global aeroplane will not necessarily crash.For the time being, America's monetary policymakers think that their economy is still running pretty well. This week, as Alan Greenspan handed over the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve to Ben Bernanke, the Fed marked the end of Mr Greenspan's18-year reign by raising interest rates for the 14th consecutive meeting, to 4.5%. The central bankers also gave Mr Bernanke more flexibi lity by softening their policy statement: they said that further tightening “may be needed”rather than “is likely to be needed”, as before.Most analysts expect the Fed to raise rates once or twice more, although the economy slowed sharply in late 2005. Real GDP growth fell to an annual rate of only 1.1% in the fourth quarter, the lowest for three years. Economists were quick to ascribe this disappointing number to special factors, such as Hurricane Katrina and a steep fall in car sales—the consequence of generous incentives that had encouraged buyers to bring purchases forward to the third quarter. The consensus has it that growth will bounce back to an annual rate of over 4% in the first quarter and stay strong thereafter.This sounds too optimistic. A rebound is indeed likely in this quarter, but the rest of the year could prove disappointing, as a weakening housing market starts to weigh on consumer spending. In December sales of existing homes fell markedly and the stock of unsold homes surged. Economists at Goldman Sachs calculate that, after adjusting for seasonal patterns, the median home price has fallen by almost 4% since October. Experience from Britain and Australia shows that even a soft landing for house prices can cause an acute slowdown in consumer spending.American consumers have been the main engine not just of their own economy but of the whole world's. If that engine fails, will the global economy nose-dive? A few years ago, the answer would probably have been yes. But the global economy may now be less vulnerable. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Jim O'Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, argued convincingly that a slowdown in America need not lead to a significant global loss of power.Start with Japan, where industrial output jumped by an annual rate of 11% in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs has raised its GDP growth forecast for that quarter (the official number is due on February 17th) to an annualized 4.2%. That would pushyear-on-year growth to 3.9%, well ahead of America's 3.1%. The bank predicts average GDP growth in Japan this year of 2.7%. It thinks strong demand within Asia will partly offset an American slowdown.Japan's labour market is also strengthening. In December the ratio of vacancies to job applicants rose to its highest since 1992 (see chart 1). It is easier to find a job now than at any time since the bubble burst in the early 1990s. Stronger hiring by firms is also pushing up wages after years of decline. Workers are enjoying the biggest rise in bonuses for over a d ecade.Pass the parcelOnline shoppers give parcels firms a new lease of lifeTHINGS must be going well in the parcels business. At $2.5m for a 30-second TV commercial during last weekend's Super Bowl, an ad from FedEx was the one many Americans found the most entertaining. It showed a caveman trying to use a pterodactyl for an express delivery, only to watch it be gobbled up on take-off by a tyrannosaur. What did the world do before FedEx, the ad inquired? It might have asked what on earth FedEx did before the arrival of online retailers, which would themselves be sunk without today's fast and efficient delivery firms.Consumers and companies continue to flock in droves to the internet to buy and sell things. FedEx reported its busiest period ever last December, when it handled almost 9m packages in a single day. Online retailers also set new records in America. Excluding travel, some $82 billion was spent last year buying things over the internet, 24% more than in 2004, according to comScore Networks, which tracks consumer behaviour. Online sales of clothing, computer software, toys, and home and garden products were all up by more than 30%. And most of this stuff was either posted or delivered by parcel companies.The boom is global, especially now that more companies are outsourcing production. It is becoming increasingly common for products to be delivered direct from factory to consumer. In one evening just before Christmas, a record 225,000 international express packages were handled by UPS at a giant new air-cargo hub, opened by the American logistics firm at Cologne airport in Germany. “The internet has had a profound effect on our business,” says David Abney, UPS's international president. UPS now handles more than 14m packages worldwide every day.It is striking that postal firms—once seen as obsolete because of the emergence of the internet—are now finding salvation from it. People are paying more bills online and sending more e-mails instead of letters, but most post offices are making up for that thanks to e-commerce. After four years of profits, the United States Postal Service has cleared its $11 billion of debt.Firms such as Amazon and eBay have even helped make Britain's Royal Mail profitable. It needs to be: on January 1st, the Royal Mail lost its 350-year-old monopoly on carrying letters. It will face growing competition from rivals, such as Germany's Deutsche Post, which has expanded vigorously after partial privatisation and now owns DHL, another big international delivery company.Both post offices and express-delivery firms have developed a range of services to help ecommerce and eBay's traders—who listed a colossal 1.9 billion items for sale last year. Among the most popular services are tracking numbers, which allow people to follow the progress of their deliveries on the internet.A question of standardsMore suggestions of bad behaviour by tobacco companies. MaybeANOTHER round has just been fought in the battle between tobacco companies and those who regard them as spawn of the devil. In a paper just published in the Lancet, with the provocative title “Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity”, David Hammond, of Waterloo University in Canada and Neil Collishaw and Cynthia Callard, two members of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, a lobby group, criticise the behaviour of British American Tobacco (BAT). They say the firm considered manipulating some of its products in order to make them low-tar in the eyes of officialdom while they actually delivered high tar and nicotine levels to smokers.It was and is no secret, as BAT points out, that people smoke low-tar cigarettes differently from high-tar ones. The reason is that they want a decent dose of the nicotine which tobacco smoke contains. They therefore pull a larger volume of air through the cigarette when they draw on a low-tar rather than a high-tar variety. The extra volume makes up for the lower concentration of the drug.But a burning cigarette is a complex thing, and that extra volume has some unexpected consequences. In particular, a bigger draw is generally a faster draw. That pulls a higher proportion of the air inhaled through the burning tobacco, rather than through the paper sides of the cigarette. This, in turn, means more smoke per unit volume, and thus more tar and nicotine. The nature of the nicotine may change, too, with more of it being in a form that is easy for the body to absorb.According to Dr Hammond and his colleagues, a series of studies conducted by BAT's researchers between 1972 and 1994 quantified much of this. The standardised way of analysing cigarette smoke, as laid down by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which regulates everything from computer code to greenhouse gases, uses a machine to make 35-millilitre puffs, drawn for two seconds once a minute. The firm's researchers, by contrast, found that real smokers draw 50-70ml per puff, and do so twice a minute. Dr Hammonds's conclusion is drawn from the huge body of documents disgorged by the tobacco industry as part of various legal settlements that have taken place in the past few years, mainly as a result of disputes with the authorities in the United States.Dr Hammond suggests, however, the firm went beyond merely investigating how people smoked. A series of internal documents from the late 1970s and early 1980s shows that BAT at least thought about applying this knowledge to cigarette design.A research report from 1979 puts it thus: “There are three major design featur es which can be used either individually or in combination to manipulate delivery levels; filtration, paper permeability, and filter-tip ventilation.” A conference paper from 1983 says, “The challenge would be to reduce the mainstream nicotine determined by standard smoking-machine measurement while increasing the amount that would actually be absorbed by the smoker”. Another conference paper, from 1984, says: “We should strive to achieve this effect without appearing to have a cigarette that cheats the league table. Ideally it should appear to be no different from a normal cigarette...It should also be capable of delivering up to 100% more than its machine delivery.”Thanks to the banksCollege students learn more about market ratesA GOOD education may be priceless, but in America it is far from cheap—and it is not getting any cheaper. On February 1st Congress narrowly passed the Deficit Reduction Act, which aims to slim America's bulging budget deficit by, among other things, lopping $12.7 billion off the federal student-loan programme. Interest rates on student loans will rise while subsidies fall.Family incomes, grant aid and federal loans have all failed to keep pace with the growth in the cost of tuition. “The funding gap between what students can afford and what higher education costs has got wider and wider,” says Claire Mezzanotte of Fitch, a ratings agency. Lenders are rushing to bridge the gap with “private” student loans—loans that are free of government subsidies and guarantees.Virtually non-existent ten years ago, private student loans in the 2004-05 school year amounted to $13.8 billion—a compound annual growth rate of almost 30%—and they are expected to double in the next three years. According to the College Board, an association of schools and colleges, private student loans now make up nearly 22% of the volume of federal student loans, up from a mere 5% in 1994-95.The growth shows little sign of slowing. Education costs continue to climb while pressure on Congress to pare down the budget deficit means federal aid will, at best, stay at current levels. Meanwhile, the number of students attending colleges and tradeschools is expected to soar as the children of post-war baby-boomers continue matriculating.Private student loans are popular with lenders because they are profitable. Lenders charge market rates for the loans (the rates on federal student loans are capped) before adding up-front fees, which can themselves be around 6-7% of the loan. Sallie Mae, a student-loan company and by far the biggest dispenser of private student loans, disclosed in its most recent report that the average spread on its private student lending was 4.75%, more than three times the 1.31% it made on its federally backed loans.All of this is good news when lenders are hungry for new areas of growth in the face of a cooling mortgage market. Private student loans, says Matthew Snowling of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, an investment bank, are probably “the fastest-growing segment of consumer finance—and by far the most profitable one—at a time when finding asset growth is challenging.” Last December J.P. Morgan, which already had a sizeable education-finance unit, snapped up Collegiate Funding Services, a Virginia-based provider of federal and private student loans. Companies from Bank of America to GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, have jumped in. Other consumer-finance companies, such as Capital One, are whispered to be eyeing the market.In the beginning...How life on Earth got going is still mysterious, but not for want of ideasNEVER make forecasts, especially about the future. Samuel Goldwyn's wise advice is well illustrated by a pair of scientific papers published in 1953. Both were thought by their authors to be milestones on the path to the secret of life, but only one has so far amounted to much, and it was not the one that caught the public imagination at the time.James Watson and Francis Crick, who wrote “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid”, have become as famous as rock stars for asking how life works and thereby starting a line of inquiry that led to the Human Genome Project. Stanley Miller, by contrast, though lauded by his peers, languishes in obscurity as far as the wider world is concerned. Yet when it appeared, “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions” was expected to begin a scientific process that would solve a problem in some ways more profound than how life works at the moment—namely how it got going in the first place on the surface of a sterile rock 150m km from a small, unregarded yellow star.Dr Miller was the first to address this question experimentally. Inspired by one of Charles Darwin's ideas, that the ingredients of life might have formed by chemical reactions in a “warm, little pond”, he mixed the gases then thought to have formed the atmosphere of the primitive Earth— methane, ammonia and hydrogen—in a flask half-full of boiling water, and passed electric sparks, mimicking lightning, through them for several days to see what would happen. What happened, as the name of the paper suggests, was amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The origin of life then seemed within grasp. But it has eluded researchers ever since. They are still looking, though, and this week several of them met at the Royal Society, in London, to review progress.The origin question is really three sub-questions. One is, where did the raw materials for life come from? That is what Dr Miller was asking. The second is, how did those raw materials spontaneously assemble themselves into the first object to which the term “alive” might reasonably be applied? The third is, how, having once come into existence, did it survive conditions in the early solar system?The first question was addressed by Patrick Thaddeus, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, and Max Bernstein, who works at the Ames laboratory, in California, part of America's space agency, NASA. As Dr Bernstein succinctly put it, the chemical raw materials for life, in the form of simple compounds that could then be assembled into more complex biomolecules, could come from above, below or beyond.Full to burstingRising levels of carbon dioxide will dump even more water into the oceansTHE lungs of the planet, namely green-leafed plants that breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, also put water vapour into the atmosphere. Just as people lose water through breathing (think of the misted mirror used to check for vital signs), so, too, do plants. The question is, what effect will rising concentrations of carbon dioxide have on this? The answer, published in this week's Nature by Nicola Gedney of Britain's Meteorological Office and her colleagues, would appear to be, less water in the atmosphere and more in the oceans.Measurements of the volume of water that rivers return to the oceans show that, around the world, rivers have become fuller over the past century. In theory, there are many reasons why this could be so, but some have already been discounted. Research has established, for example, that it is not, overall, raining—or snowing, hailing or sleeting—any more than it used to. But there are other possibilities. One concerns changes in land use, such as deforestation and urbanisation. The soil in rural areas soaks up the rain and trees breathe it back into the atmosphere, whereas the concrete in urban areas transfers rainwater into drains and hence into rivers. Another possibility is “solar dimming”, in which aerosol particles create a hazy atmosphere that holds less water. And then there is the direct effect of carbon dioxide on plant transpiration.Dr Gedney used a statistical technique called “optimal fingerprinting” or “detection and attribution” to identify which of these four factors matter. Her team carried out five simulations of river flow in the 20th century. In the first of these they allowed all four explanations to vary: rainfall, haze, atmospheric carbon dioxide and land use. They then held one of them constant in each of the next four simulations. By comparing the outcome of each of these with the first simulation, the team gained a sense of its part in the overall picture. So, for example, they inferred the role of land use by deducting the simulation in which it was fixed from the simulation in which it varied.As with any statistical analysis, the results are only as good as the model, the experimental design and the data. Dr Gedney and her colleagues acknowledge that their model does not fully take into account the use of water to irrigate crops—particularly important in Asia and Europe—nor the question of urban growth. They argue, however, that these aspects, taken together, would remove water from rivers, which makes their conclusion all the more striking. And it is this: fuller rivers cannot be explained by more rainfall or haze or changes in land use, but they can be explained by higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.The mechanism is straightforward. A plant breathes through small holes, called stomata, found in its leaves. Plants take in carbon dioxide, and when the atmosphere is relatively rich in this gas, less effort is needed. The stomata stay closed for longer, and less water is lost to the atmosphere. This means that the plant doesn't need to draw as much moisture from the soil. The unused water flows into rivers.The great tech buy-out boomWill the enthusiasm of private-equity firms for investing in technology and telecoms end in tears, again?PRIME COMPUTERS, Rhythm NetConnections and XO Communications—all names to drain the blood from the face of a private-equity investor. Or so it was until recently, when investing in technology and telecoms suddenly became all the rage for private-equity companies. These investment firms—labelled “locusts” by unfriendly Europeans—generally make their money by buying big controlling stakes in companies, improving their efficiency, and then selling them on.In the late 1980s, Prime Computers became private equity's first great “tech wreck”, humiliating investors who thought they understood the technology business and could nurture the firm back to health away from the shorttermist pressures of the public stockmarket. After Prime failed, private-equity firms spent the best part of a decade focusing solely on the old economy. Only in the late 1990s, when the new economy was all the rage, did they pluck up the courage to return to tech and telecoms—a decision some of the grandest names in the industry were soon to regret. Hicks, Muse, Furst and Tate (Rhythm NetConnections) and Forstmann Little (XO) have both been shadows of their old selves since losing fortunes on telecoms.Now, investing in technology and telecoms is once again one of the hottest areas in the super-heated privateequity market. The multi-billion-dollar question is: will this round of investment end any less horribly than the previous two?Last month TDC, a Danish phone company, was finally acquired after a bid of $15.3 billion by a consortium including European giants Permira Advisors and Apax Partners, and American veterans Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners. In the past five years, there has been private-equity involvement in about 40% of telecoms deals in Europe.On the other side of the Atlantic, the action has focused mainly on technology, rather than telecoms. Last summer, a consortium including Silver Lake Partners and KKR completed the biggest private-equity tech deal to date, buying SunGard Data Systems, a financial-technology firm, for $11.3 billion. Since then the deals have continued to flow. The $1.2 billion acquisition of Serena Software by Silver Lake is due to be completed by the end of March. Blackstone and others are said to be circling two IT outsourcing firms—Computer Sciences and ACS.There are reasons to hope that this time will be different. In telecoms, for instance, private-equity firms are mostly trying to buy established firms—often former national monopolists—that, while they might be threatened by internet telephony, have strong cash flow, physical assets and plenty of scope to improve the quality of management. These are the sorts of characteristicsprivate-equity investors thrive on. By contrast, the disastrous investments in the late 1990s were in new telecoms firms that were building their operations.In technology, private-equity interest has grown as the industry has matured, and cash-flow and profitability have become more predictable. Until recently, it has been the norm for tech firms to plough back all their profit and cashflow into investing in the business. They have carried no debt and paid no dividends. Now private-equity firms see the opportunity to pursue their classic strategy of buying firms by borrowing against cashflow, and then returning money to shareholders. Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake thinks the tech sector is now in a similar condition to the old economy in America in the early 1980s, which is when private equity first started to have an impact, by restructuring and consolidating many industries.How to live for everThe latest from the wacky world of anti-senescence therapyDEATH is a fact of life—at least it has been so far. Humans grow old. From early adulthood, performance starts to wane. Muscles become progressively weaker, cognition fails. But the point at which age turns to ill health and, ultimately, death is shifting—that is, people are remaining healthier for longer. And that raises the question of how death might be postponed, and whether it might be postponed indefinitely.Humans are certainly living longer. An American child born in 1970 could expect to live 70.8 years. By 2000, that had increased to 77 years. Moreover, an adult still alive at the age of 75 in 2002 could expect a further 11.5 years of life.Much of this change has been the result of improved nutrition and better medicine. But to experience a healthy old age also involves maintaining physical and mental function. Age-related non-pathological changes in the brain, muscles, joints, immune system, lungs and heart must be minimised. These changes are called “senescence”.Research shows that exercise can help to maintain physical function late in life and that exercising one's brain can limit the progression of senescence. Other work—on the effects of caloric restriction, consuming red wine and altering genes in yeast, mice and nematodes—has shown promise in slowing senescence.The approach advocated by Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge, in England, and presented at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is rather more radical. As an engineer, he favours intervening directly to repair the changes in the body that are caused by ageing. This is an approach he dubs “strategies for engineered negligible senescence”. In other words, if ageing humans can be patched up for 30 years, he argues, science will have developed sufficiently to make further repairs more effective, postponing death indefinitely.Dr de Grey's ideas, which are informed by literature surveys rather than experimental work, have been greeted with scorn by those working at developing such repair kits. Steven Austad, a gerontologist based at the University of Texas, warns that such therapies are many years away and may never arrive at all. There are also the side effects to consider. While mice kept onlow-calorie diets live longer than their fatter friends, the skinny mice are less fertile and are sometimes sterile. Humans wishing both to prolong their lives and to procreate might thus wish to wait until their child-bearing years were behind them before embarking on such a diet, although, by then, relatively more age-related damage will have accumulated.No one knows exactly why a low-calorie diet extends the life of mice, but some researchers think it is linked to the rate at which cells divide. There is a maximum number of times that a human cell can divide (roughly 50) before it dies. This is because the ends of chromosomes, structures called telomeres, shorten each time the cell divides. Eventually, there is not enough left for any further division.Cell biologists led by Judith Campisi at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California doubt that every cell has this dividing limit, and believe that it could be only those cells that have stopped dividing that cause ageing. They are devising an experiment to create a mouse in which senescent cells—those that no longer divide—are prevented from accumulating. They plan to activate a gene in the mouse that will selectively eliminate senescent cells. Such a mouse could demonstrate whether it is。

经济学人14

Federal Reserve（美国）联邦储备系统 alleviate[əˈliːvieɪt] vt. 减轻，缓和 scarcity[ˈskeəsəti] n. 不足；缺乏 revive [rɪˈvaɪv] vt. 使复兴；使苏醒；回想起 swap[swɒp] n. 交换，调换；交易 equivalent[ɪˈkwɪvələnt] adj.相等的；等价的
furnish[ˈfɜːnɪʃ] vt. 提供；供应 collateral[kəˈlætərəl] n. 抵押品，担保品 bond[bɒnd] n. 债券 issued[ˈɪʃu:d] v. 发布；（正式）发给
@红糖小饼干
The Bank of Mexico said it would begin dollar auctions. Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which does not have a Fed swap line, but does have almost $482bn of its own foreign-exchange reserves, offered $2bn to its banks. It received bids worth over $4.6bn, prompting it to offer another $2bn auction on March 23rd.
@红糖小饼干
the Economist
经济学人 2020年
@红糖小饼干
@红糖小饼干
When america and its allies wanted to cheapen the dollar in 1985, their officials met in the Plaza Hotel in New York. When they sought to stabilise the currency two years later, they gathered in the Louvre Palace in Paris, conversing over turbot soufflé cardinale washed down with Puligny Montrachet, according to Funabashi Yoichi, a former journalist.

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2020 《经济学⼈》学习整理2020.2.111. compromised cloud system 受损的云端系统2. Coronavirus: a pandemic in the making? ⼤规模的流⾏病（正在发⽣的流⾏病）3. impose quarantine4. scale back 缩⼩；减弱5. S&P 500 标准普尔500指数（美国500家上司公司的股票指数）$US 30 道琼斯指数（65家上司公司）6. white-listed ⽩名单7. impede 阻⽌；阻碍8. sedition 暴动；煽动性语⾔或⾏为9. detention 扣留；拘留10. push cases for witnesses to sth11. impeachment trial 弹劾审判12. a central plank 核⼼产业13. shore up ⽀持；加固；⽀撑14. food stamps ⾷品救济券15. a green light to sth 开绿灯（have a green light 获批同意）16. annex vt./n. 附属；吞并17. embargo 禁令；禁⽌；禁运18. work havoc on sth 造成严重的破坏19. holocaust ⼤屠杀（纳粹）20. resurgent anti-semitism 复兴的反犹太主义21. populist 平民主义；平民论者22. Brexit Deal 英国脱欧协议23. drubbing n. 彻底击败24. absolve 宣告⽆罪；赦免25. allegation 陈述；主张26. interim 临时的27. abdomen 腹部；下腹28. hydroelectric ⽔利电⽓的 K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s3. to cap it all 更有甚者4. dock vi/n. 进⼊船坞 in the ～在受审5. maiden adj. ⾸次的；未婚的6. rebound 产⽣反作⽤7. moribund adj/n. 垂死的⼈；停滞不前的～ growth8. market capitalization 市值 9. plunge v/n. 陷⼊；投⼊；10. benchmark 标杆～ interest rate 基准利率11. quantitative easing 量化宽松（⽇本以长期的低利率向市场投放⼤量货币）12. like-for-like 销售额；同⽐销售额13. generic adj. 通⽤的；⼀般的14. bar sb／sth from 阻⽌15. overhaul 彻底⼤修；检查～ the oversight （疏忽；失察）16. hate speech 仇恨⾔论17. bullish 乐观的；看涨的（股市）18. bail-out 保释；优先股给公司股东作为红利的⾏为 19. surge 汹涌；奔放；⬆20. step down 辞职21. lingerie ⼥⼠贴⾝内⾐(Victoria’s Secret)22. trafﬁcker 商⼈；贩⼦23. lodestar 北极星；⽬标；指导⽅针24. administer ⽀配；管理；给予；执⾏25. recalibrate 重新校准25. Thatcherism 撒切尔主义（保守党内出现占统治地位的新右派）26. brew up 酿造27. the underpinning of sth 在...的基础上 underpin 加强… 的基础28. throw up 放弃；（匆忙）⽣产；呕吐29. ultra-liberal 极端⾃由的30. statist 中央集权主义31. parochial adj. 眼界狭⼩的；狭隘的32. sceptics 怀疑论者 K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y3. Beneath the … lies the discontent that springs from …4. cronyism 任⽤亲信；任⼈唯亲5. glossy adj. 光滑的（例如头发）；虚有其表的6. self-determination （民族）⾃决7. leach away from ／ steer away from 远离 leach 过滤8. bloc 集团 en ～总的来说9. exponentially 指数地 spread ～10. run away with 轻易获得11. upheaval 剧变；动乱 social ～／unrest12. put about 散布；使苦恼 put it about that13. take hold vi. 掌握；固定下来；掌控 + on sth14. recurrent adj. 经常发⽣的；复发性的15. lethal adj./n. 致命的（因⼦）16. palm civet 果⼦狸；狸猫 ferret badger 鼬獾17. wet market 传统市场／市集18. rudimentary 基本的19. seal off 封闭（the city）20. draconian ⾮常严峻的／严厉的21. ripple through 涉及 ripple 波纹；起波痕22. international body 国际组织23. come off 表现 China’s politicians ~ less well.24. spawn vt. 酿成；造成；产卵25. play down 贬低；减少26. take substantial toll 造成实质性的伤害27. dent n./ vt. 凹痕；削弱 a noticeable ~ on global economy28. heavy-handed 迟钝的；严厉的29. crop up 突然出现30. buy time 争取时间31. mutate 突变；转变32. encroach（on）侵犯；逐渐遍布33. swine ﬂu 猪流感34. gush vi. 滔滔不绝讲；喷涌35. shower vt. ⼤量给予K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y36. unveiling 公之于众的；揭露的37. hardliner 强硬派38. settlement building （以⾊列给犹太⼈设置的）定居点建筑39. whip up 煽动；激起40. perilous 危险的41. apartheid 种族隔离制度42. Oslo 挪威⾸都奥斯陆 2020.2.191. imperil 危害；危机2. haughty 傲慢的3. grubby 肮脏的～ game4. suck up to 拍马屁5. enigmatic = secretive 神秘的6. wager vi. 打赌 + on7. JPMorgan Chase 摩根⼤通公司8. laggard 落后者（lag）9. predicament 困境10. full-service ﬁrm 提供全⽅位服务的公司11. MDB = Malaysia Development Bank12. tangible equity 有形资产13. consolation 宽慰；慰藉14. ﬂailing 摇摇欲坠的～ banks15. macho culture 男性⽂化；⼤男⼦主义16. balance sheet 资产负债表17. matchmaking 牵线搭桥；做媒18. transgender adj./n. 变性的（⼈）19. dysphoria = depression 烦躁不安20. gender-reassignment surgery 变性⼿术21. sterility 不育；内容匮乏22. hysterectomy ⼦宫切除 hyster — womb / ectomy — cutting out23. reckless 鲁莽的；不顾后果的24. purport vt./n. 声称；意义；内涵25. unjustiﬁed 不正当的；未被证实其正确的25. smack 带有... 的味道；掌掴 fad 时尚；⼀时的狂热 smack of a fad 带有时尚的意味⼉26. solace 安慰（consolation）K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s熟词⽣义27. be sitting pretty 处境很好28. ﬂex one’s muscle 秀肌⾁；展⽰实⼒（作为警告）29. caught／stuck between a rock and a hard place 左右为难30. take sth in your stride 从容处理31. on the rocks 加冰不加⽔ 32. a case of dog eat dog 残酷⽆情的竞争33. cold/ hard cash 现⾦（美式／英式）34. keep sb up 使某⼈熬夜；开夜车35. show sb／learn／know the ropes 像某⼈展⽰/学会/知道如何做某事36. attitude 姿势 in an ～ of prayer 以祈祷的姿势37. have a head for 擅长做38. a counsel of perfection 听上去完美去难以实施的建议39. the breathless excitement ⽆⽐兴奋40. learner’s permit 实习（驾驶）执照41. break the back of 完成任务最重要的部分42. get one’s head down 睡觉；保持低调43. a smoke-ﬁlled room 少数⼈密谋决策的密室44. short-change vt. 少找零钱；对... 不公平2020.2.201. denote 表⽰；指⽰（⽤符号）2. give substance to 把…具体化／实质化3. menace n. 威胁；恐吓4. adorn vt.装饰；使⽣⾊5. MPS Microprocessor System6. anti-intellectualism 反智主义（对知识/知识分⼦的怀疑态度）7. catchphrase 醒⽬的⼴告⽤语；标语（政治中）8. plug the gap 填补空缺9. wind at one’s back 背后有动⼒10. landmine n. 地雷11. mismanage 对...管理不善12. medicalization 药物治疗13. nominal adj. 名义上的14. leisure ﬁrms 娱乐公司K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s15. opiate adj. 鸦⽚的；安眠的；vt. 使缓和16. MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging 核磁共振成像 17. acronym ⾸字母缩略词18. hard-nosed adj. 顽固的；不屈不挠的；不讲情⾯的19. blunder vi./n. 犯错误 20. foul n. 犯规；缠绕；adv.不正当地21. sharpen one’s pencil 审价削减22. spat n.⼜⾓；击掌；vi. 争吵23. commend vt. 推荐；称赞；表扬24. trenchant adj. 简明的；锐利的25. faeces n.粪便26. threshold n. 门槛；开始 on the ～ of 在...的开始27. pus 脓 28. yuck n. 讨厌的东西熟词⽣义29. play it cool 故意装作⽆所谓30. play hardball 采取强硬⽅式31. play for time 故意拖延时间32. pit your wits against sth 与... ⽃智 33. take it／things one day at a time 得过且过；做⼀天和尚撞⼀天钟34. make like 装出…的样⼦35. above oneself 狂妄⾃⼤36. dead to the world 熟睡37. shake in your shoes ⾮常害怕；胆战⼼惊38. false alarm 假警报；虚惊39. cut corners 做事⾛捷径40. under the gun 承受很⼤的压⼒41. show sb the door 下逐客令42. loaded ⾮常富有的43. go through the roof 价格飞涨44. as good as gold ⾮常乖；规规矩矩45. chicken out of sth／of doing sth 因为害怕⽽放弃；临阵退缩K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s2020.2.211. malignant 恶性的；致命的2. contend 为… 做⽃争3. edible adj./n. 可吃的；⾷品4. discern 辨别；了解5. segregate 隔离；使分开6. from all quarters 来⾃四⾯⼋⽅；彼此呼应7. allege 宣布；声称8. intimation 暗⽰～ email9. chorister 唱诗班男童 10. unaccompanied treble ⽆伴奏的三重唱11. in keeping with 按照12. chapel 礼堂13. hit-and-miss ⽋考虑的；时好时坏的14. be up to the mark 合乎标准15. secretariat 秘书处16. have the presence (of mind) to do sth 有决⼼做某事17. referendum n. 公平投票表决18. once-in-a-generation opportunity 千载难逢的机会19. at loggerheads with 与...发⽣争执 loggerhead 傻⼦20. retaliate 报复21. punitive adj. 惩罚性的22. crooning n. 低唱23. in poor shape 状态不好24. Suez crisis 第⼆次中东战争（以、英、法先后攻打埃及，夺取苏伊⼠运河，被美、苏联、联合国击退）25. tug 拖；拽26. lopsided adj. 不平衡的；倾向⼀⽅的27. quip n/v. 嘲讽28. fret n. 苦恼29. proponent n. 提倡者30. wield inﬂuence on ⾏使作⽤31. a pretty pass 困境32. fraternal 兄弟的33. kindred 同类的34. play Athen’s to America’s Rome 英国之于美国 = 雅典之于罗马35. play out 结束；破产K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s36. valedictory adj. 告别的37. fraught adj. 充满的；担忧的38. chummy 合得来的39. smite 打到；神魂颠倒的40. as much as anything else 同样重要的是41. tandem adv.协同地； n. 双⼈⾃⾏车42. come to the fore 崭露头⾓43. defray ⽀付 44. arsenal 军⽕库45. formulation 公式；阐述2020.2.231. inﬂammation 炎症2. thyroid function 甲状腺功能3. phytoestrogen/ˌfa ɪto’ɛstrəd ʒən/ 植物雌激素4. pigmentation n. 染⾊,着⾊,⾊素沉着5. pasteurized (⽜奶等)巴⽒消毒的6. be tasked with 被指派去做7. haemolymph (⽆脊椎动物的)⾎淋巴8. vein n.⾎管；岩脉；纹理；[动]翅脉；[植]叶脉；性情9. pike n. (昔⽇⼠兵⽤的)⽭; 梭鱼, 狗鱼10. thunk n. 铮;铛,锵 —— 拟声词11. limbo n. 监狱；[宗]地狱的边境；放置丢弃物的场所；处于中间的或不定的状态12. roam v/n. 漫游；漫步13. tampon 卫⽣棉塞14. weighty 重⼤的；严重的15. exchequer n. (英国)财政部16. riposte n. 机敏的回答17. proxy n. 代表权；代理权；代理⼈18. regulatory divergence 监管分歧19. compliance check 依法检查；⼀致性检查20. codify vt. 把… 编成法典21. snarl up 使纠缠22. nimbly 敏捷地；机敏地23. derivate 衍⽣物24. ﬁnetech 制造技术K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s25. mutagenesis 突变形成26. de facto ban 实际上存在的禁令27. ﬁddle with 玩弄；摆弄28. take a stance on 表明⽴场29. rile 使恼怒30. the green movement 绿⾊运动31. toe 触碰 32. seamless adj. ⽆缝合线的；⽆缝的；⽆伤痕的2020.2.27 1. a strong card 有势⼒的⼈2. pesky 烦⼈的；讨⼈厌的3. predate 提早⽇期；居先；捕猎4. entail 使…成为必要5. litigation 打官司；诉讼6. unfetter 释放；使⾃由7. polarisation 极化；分化8. trade away 卖掉9. castrate 阉割；删掉重要部分10. paucity 少量；不⾜2020.2.281. now-defunct adj. 现已停业的2. incumbent 在职的；义不容辞的3. emphatic 加强语⽓的；着重的4. abstain 放弃；避免5. xenophobic 恐惧外国⼈的6. intercom 对讲机；内置通话装置7. maﬁa ⿊⼿党8. invincibility ⽆敌；绝对不败9. dismal 凄凉的；抑郁的10. disarray ⽆秩序；杂乱11. all the more so 更是如此12. in coalition with 与...联盟13. stopgap 临时代替者；临时应急措施K a n g k a n g ’s D a i l y P r og r e s s14. The lower house 下议院15. assort 交往，协调；把…分级16. compact 合同；紧凑的17. a wild card ⾏为不可测的⼈18. sit tight 挺直坐着,固执⼰见；潜伏着19. hyperactive 极度活跃的 20. publicity-hungry 喜爱曝光的21. not to be sneezed at 值得认真对待；不可轻视22. put your shoulder to the wheel 着⼿⼤⼲起来；全⼒以赴23. pull your wight 尽本分；尽职责24. wear the pants 起指挥的作⽤25. hit-and-run 突袭后迅速撤离26. take the cake／biscuit 空前惊⼈；极其讨厌27. cute as the dickens 可爱极了28. strike it rich 发⼤财29. You throw a peach to me, I give you a white jade for friendship 投我以⽊桃，报之以琼瑶30. high-ﬂown 浮夸的；故弄⽞虚的31. look to your laurels ⼩⼼翼翼地保持成就／优势32. put out feelers 试探33. driven 发奋图强的34. snowbird 到温暖地区过冬的⼈35. ﬁve o’clock shadow 早上刮脸下午又长胡渣⼉？？？36. half-and-half 咖啡伴侣；两种事物各半的37. keep open house 好客 keep a good house 待客周到38. a ﬁrm hand 铁腕；严格纪律39. pant for／after sb／sth 渴望40. Next to them I feel like a fraud. 与他们相⽐，我感觉⾃⼰是滥竽充数。