12英语阅读-经济学人《Economics》双语版-Not science fiction

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经济学原理英文版

经济学原理英文版Economics is the study of how individuals, businesses, and governments allocate resources to satisfy their wants and needs. It is a social science that seeks to understand the behavior of individuals and organizations in making choices about how to use scarce resources. The principles of economics are fundamental to understanding how the world works, and they can be applied to a wide range of real-world issues.One of the key principles of economics is the concept of scarcity. Scarcity refers to the limited nature of resources in the world. This means that there are not enough resources to produce everything that people want and need. As a result, individuals, businesses, and governments must make choices about how to allocate resources in the most efficient way.Another important principle of economics is the concept of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost refers to the value of the next best alternative that is given up when a choice is made. For example, if a student chooses to spend an hour studying for an exam rather than watching a movie, the opportunity cost of studying is the enjoyment that could have been gained from watching the movie. Understanding opportunity cost is crucial for making informed decisions about how to allocate resources.In addition to scarcity and opportunity cost, economics also examines how individuals and organizations make decisions at the margin. This means that they consider the additional benefits and costs of a decision, rather than just the total benefits and costs. For example, a business might consider whether it is worth it to produce one more unit of a product, taking into account the additional revenue and the additional costs of production.The study of economics also involves examining how markets work to allocate resources. Markets are systems that bring buyers and sellers together to exchange goods and services. The forces of supply and demand determine the prices of goods and services in a market, and these prices play a crucial role in allocating resources.Understanding how markets work is essential for understanding how the economy as a whole functions.Economics also explores the role of government in the economy. Governments play a key role in regulating markets, providing public goods and services, and redistributing income. The study of economics helps to understand the impact of government policies on the economy, and how these policies can be used to address issues such as inequality, unemployment, and inflation.In conclusion, the principles of economics are essential for understanding how individuals, businesses, and governments make decisions about how to allocate resources. By studying economics, we can gain insights into a wide range of real-world issues, and develop the analytical skills needed to make informed decisions in our personal and professional lives. Whether it is understanding the concept of scarcity, opportunity cost, or how markets work, the principles of economics provide a valuable framework for understanding the world around us.。

2021年《经济学人》杂志原版英文(整理完整版)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(6-7)欧阳光明（2021.03.07）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 withpublished 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 people are 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 asthey 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 for treating 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 DrugAdministration approved the therapy for depression that fails to respond to all conventional treatments, including drugs 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” f aulty 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. The changes 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's THE 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 immediatelyand 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 global warming 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”. For a re actor, 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 some extent and some newer onesare 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 slowed enough 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 seriously RUPERT 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 mediaconglomerate'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-warming gases (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 CompetitiveEnterprise Institute, with thedaft slogan “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life”. Besides, environmentalist critics say, some firmsare eng aged in superficial “greenwash” to boost the image of essentially climate-hurting businesses. Take BP, themost prominent corporate advocate of action on climate change, with its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign, highprofileinvestments in green energy, andev en 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 tank, not es 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 and opportunities—from regulatory compliance to insuringclients on flood plains. And although theseconcerns 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 of theseto 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 forgeneral 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 substances forlong-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: those 140,000screenings look like a lucrative market, although nobody knowswhether 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 liningof the lungs. According to Huang Song, one of Epithelix's researchers, the firm'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 animal experiments would be tochange the way that vaccines are tested, according to CoenraadHendriksen of the Netherlands Vaccine Institute. At themoment, 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 womenMEN 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, in Australia,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 morequickly identified 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 inwomen, 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 to getkilled 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 General Motors.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, asusual.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 nine times out of ten at firms retaining the plurality rule.Unfortunately for shareholders, their victories may prove illusory, as the successful resolutions were all“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 powerbutnow 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 up candidates 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 Americancompanies' 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 using these 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 and fashion 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 outs tanding. 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 raised securitising patent royalties from Zerit, an anti-HIV drug.It may be harder for investors to decide whether such deals are worth their while. They are, after all,highly complex and riskier than standard securitisations. The most obvious risk is that the investorscannot be sure that the assets will yield what borrowers promise: technology moves on, fashions changeand the demand for sugary snacks may collapse. Valuing intellectual property—an exercise based。

10英语阅读-经济学人《Economics》双语版-Ominous

经济学家》读译参考（第10篇）：禽流感——不祥之兆第10篇Feb 23rd 2006From The Economist print editionOminousFOR most of the past three years, the highly pathogenic bird fluk________①as H5N1 has been found mainly in Asia. Suddenly it has arrived in many countries in Europe, triggering widespread alarm. The detection of the virus in wild birds across Europe is certainly a cause for concern, particularly to Europe's poultry farmers▲, wh o are rightfully worried that the presence of the virus in wild birds will increase the risk to their flocks. However, in the m_________②of a European debate about the benefits of vaccinating chickens and whether or not poultry should be brought indoors, there is a danger that far more significant events elsewhere will be ★overlooked[1].In particular, most attention should be f________③on the fact that bird flu is now widespread in the poultry flocks of two nations in Africa—Egypt and Nigeria—and in India. And on the fact that, in Nigeria, the disease is continuing to spread despite great efforts undertaken by the government. An outbreak in Afghanistan also appears to be inevitable.Arguably, these matter much more than the (also inevitable) arrival of the disease in Europe▲. Poor countries with large rural populations are in a far weaker position to handle, and ★stamp out[2], outbreaks of bird flu in poultry, through both ★culling[3] and the prevention of the movement of animals in the surrounding areas. In Africa and India, chickens and ducks are far more likely to be found ★roaming[4] in people's backyards, where they can mingle with humans, other d________④ animals and wildlife, thus spreading the disease. In Europe, by c_______⑤, most poultry are kept in regulated commercial farms.The opening up of a new African front for the bird-flu virus▲ is a problem because eradication there will be tremendously difficult. There is a high risk that the disease will spread to other countries on the continent and it could easily become endemic—as it has in Asia. This offers the virus huge new scope to mutate▲ and become a disease that can pass between humans. The virus is certainly mutating—genetic changes have already affected its biological behaviour, although apparently not yet its transmission between humans. Experts are unsure as to how much, and what kind, of genetic changes would be required for the virus to become a globalhealth threat. N_____⑥ do they know how long this process might take. But to ★dwell o n[5] the increased risk of a pandemic of influenza is to miss a serious point about the direct risks posed by the loss of a large numbers of chickens and ducks across Africa. For some time, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has been warning that if avian flu gets out of c_______⑦ in Africa, it will have a devastating impact on the livelihoods of millions of people. Poultry is a vital source of protein. For example, it provides almost 50% of the protein in the diet of Egyptians. The spread of a disease that is highly lethal to poultry, and requires culling, could have a ★dire[6] nutritional impact, there as elsewhere▲. Africa would also have to contend with huge economic losses. People who ★scratch out[7] a living in poor African nations simply cannot a_______⑧to lose their chickens. Most of the world's poor live in rural areas and depend on agriculture. In Africa, rather a lot of these poor people depend heavily on their poultry. It is easy to see why some believe that bird flu could turn out to be primarily a development—rather than just a health—issue for the whole African continent.No game of chickenWhat can be done? It is clear that the movement and trade of poultry is making a big contribution to the spread of the virus. That trade needs tighter regulation, as does the movement of live birds from countries with H5N1 infections. In such places trade should be suspended u_______⑨ flocks have been cleaned up.In addition, Nigeria and surrounding countries need seriouspublic-education campaigns about the danger of contact with dead birds. When outbreaks o______⑩, governments should immediately offer realistic compensation to farmers for birds lost to disease and culling▲. Without this, poor farmers will be tempted to hide bird-flu outbreaks and continue to sell poultry that should be culled. Farming practices that mix poultry species in farms or live animal markets are a danger too, and must be addressed—although that might take longer. The effort would be helped if those in the poultry industry and governments in poultry-exporting nations would stop simply pointing to the risks posed by wild birds and start paying more attention to the movement of animals, products and people from infected to un-infected regions and countries.Unusually for a complex probl em with international ★ramifications[8], money is available to make a serious attempt at tackling it▲—$1.9 billion was pledged by the world's wealthier nations last month in Beijing. There is no excuse for delay, unless we want more dead people to followlots more dead ducks.☆★注释☆★[1]overlook vt.(1)俯瞰，俯视The house on the hill overlooks the village.从小山上的房子可以俯视村庄。

16英语阅读-经济学人《Economics》双语版-Like pearls falling into a jade plate

Like pearls falling into a jade plate大珠小珠落玉盘WHEN Wu Man arrived in New Haven1, Connecticut, from Beijing in 1990 she spoke no English and ★gambled on[1] surviving with the help of her pipa, a traditional lute-like Chinese instrument. She has succeeded (A) （triumph）,working her way from New York's Chinatown to Carnegie Hall2, where she gives her debut recital on April 6th.The pipa is a sonorous, four-stringed, pear-shaped instrument held upright on the lap. Its strings used to be silk but are now steel, which resonates better. The fake fingernails on Ms Wu's right hand ★pluck[2] the strings, while her left hand fingers the ★frets[3]. （1）She produces an (B) (astonish) range of colours and moods from a 2,000-year-old instrument which produces a sound, observed a poet from the Tang dynasty, like “pearls falling into a jade plate”.Ms Wu is a ★virtuoso[4] interpreter of traditional music, creating (C) （haunt）exotic waves of sound with ★pi zzicatos and tremolos[5] (the plucking of one string with all five fingers consecutively). But (D) （evoke） of dropping pearls soon fade to Jimi Hendrix3. During her time in America, （2）Ms Wu has daringly expanded the pipa's range, playing jazz, bluegrass4 and Bollywood5 with eclectic instrumentalists—and inspiring (E) (number) works from prominent composers.The pipa can sound gently lyrical or(F) （aggress） modern, which is why, says Ms Wu, it attracts such composers as Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Tan Dun and Bright Sheng, all of whom have written for her. She was the first to partner the pipa with an endongo (an eight-stringed Ugandan instrument), an Appalachian banjo and a string quartet6. She was also, she says, the first to play jazz on the pipa.All this happened after she arrived in America. Young Chinese musicians are now ubiquitous in American and European conservatories, competitions and concert halls, but during China's cultural revolution the performance of Western music was greatly restricted. Traditional instruments, however, were(G) （courage）,and Ms Wu, born in 1964 in Hangzhou, began studying the pipa when she was nine.She entered the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music (where she heard Western music for the first time) and became the first (H) （receive）of a masters degree in the pipa. She was awarded a ★tenured[6] faculty position. But her curiosity about the West proved (I) （resist）. Colleagues who had emigrated to the United States warned her that there was no interest in Chinese traditional music, （3）but, undaunted, she packed seven instruments (including pipas, a zither and a dulcimer) and set off.During the first two difficult years she learnt English and cried a lot. She joined other Chinese musicians and began performing in New York's Chinatown,(J) （rehearse） in the basement of a dry-cleaner. （4）American musicians would approach her after concerts,(K) （fascination）.David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet said that the first time he heard her play was like the first time he heard Jascha Heifetz, a master violinist.Mr Harrington chose her to perform in the quartet's recent Bollywood-(L) （inspiration） recording because he wanted one person to create many different sounds. （5）Ms Wu, with her “large sonic vocabulary”, was uniquely qualified. She also attracted the attention of Yo Yo Ma, a cellist with whom she now frequently performs as a member of his Silk Road★Ensemble[7].Pipa players and audiences in China are also becoming more open minded; she caused(M) （exciting） when she performed in Beijing with the Kronos Quartet ten years ago. “That's my hope,” she says, “that （6）the next generation know there is another way for traditional instruments to survive.”[QUIZ]1. 用文中空白后括号内单词的适当（相关）形式填空（可以是动词、形容词及副词，注意时态、语态、比较级乃至派生词等），每空只填一词：如：WHEN Wu Man ________(arrival) in New Haven, Connecticut, from Beijing in 1990 she spoke no English.此空白处应填arrived.（欢迎就出题方式提出您的宝贵意见）2. 将文中划线部分翻译成英语：[NOTES](LONGMAN)[1]gamble v.以……为赌注，孤注一掷to do something that involves a lot of risk, and that will not succeed unless things happen the way you would like them togamble onThey're gambling on Johnson being fit for Saturday's game.gamble something on somethingPotter gambled everything on his new play being a hit.[2]pluck v.弹拨to pull the strings of a musical instrumentpluck atSomeone was plucking at the strings of an old guitar.[3]fret n.音品；安在某些弦乐器如吉他弹拨处的一个或多个隆起物one of the raised lines on the fretboard of a guitar etc[4] virtuoso plural virtuososn. 技术超群的表演者（尤指音乐）someone who is a very skilful performer, especially in music:violin virtuoso Stephane Grappelli—virtuoso adjective [only before noun]a virtuoso performancea virtuoso pianist[5] pizzicatos and tremolos拨奏曲和颤音[6]tenure[UC]享有终身教授的权利 the right to stay permanently in a teaching job: It's becoming increasingly difficult to acquire academic tenure. —tenured adjective:a tenured professora tenured position[7]ensemble <法>全体, [音]合唱曲, 全体演出者[TIPS & BACKGROUND]1. 纽黑文（New Haven）：美国康涅狄格州（Connecticut）南部城市，临长岛海湾，对外贸易港口。

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。

权威杂志《经济学人》英文原版(整理完全版)。(可打印修改)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(8-9)The mismeasure of womanMen and women think differently. But not that differentlyIN THE 1970s there was a fad for giving dolls to baby boys and fire-engines to baby girls. The idea was that differences in behaviour between the sexes were solely the result of upbringing: culture turned women into ironers, knitters and chatterboxes, and men into hammerers, drillers and silent types. Switching toys would put an end to sexual sorting. Today, it is clear why it did not. When boys and girls are born, they are already different, and they favour different toys from the beginning.That boys and girls—and men and women—are programmed by evolution to behave differently from one another is now widely accepted. Surely, no one today would think of doing what John Money, of Johns Hopkins University, did in 1967: amputating the genitalia of a boy who had suffered a botched circumcision, and advising the parents to bring him up as a girl. The experiment didn't work, and the consequences were tragic. But which of the differences between the sexes are “biological”, in the sense that they have been honed by evolution, and which are “cultural” or “environmental” and might more easily be altered by changed circumstances, is still fiercely debated.The sensitivity of the question was shown last year by a furore at Harvard University. Larry Summers, then Harvard's president, caused a storm when he suggested that innate ability could be an important reason why there were so few women in the top positions in mathematics, engineering and the physical sciences.Even as a proposition for discussion, this is unacceptable to some. But biological explanations of human behaviour are making a comeback as the generation of academics that feared them as a covert way of justifying eugenics, or of thwarting Marxist utopianism, is retiring. The success of neo-Darwinism has provided an intellectual underpinning for discussion about why some differences between the sexes might be innate. And new scanning techniques have enabled researchers to examine the brain's interior while it is working, showing that male and female brains do, at one level, operate differently. The results, however, do not always support past clichés about what the differences in question actually are.Differences in behaviour between the sexes must, in some way, be reflections of systematic differences between the brains of males and females. Such differences certainly exist, but drawing inferences from them is not as easy as it may appear.For a start, men's brains are about 9% larger than those of women. That used to be cited as evidence of men's supposedly greater intelligence. Actually, the difference is largely (and probably completely) explained by the fact that men are bigger than women. In recent years, more detailed examination has refined the picture. Female brains have a higher percentage of grey matter (the manifestation, en bloc, of the central bodies of nerve cells), and thus a lower percentage of white matter (the manifestation of the long, thin filaments that connect nerve cells together), than male brains. That, plus the fact that in some regions of the female brain, nerve cells are packed more densely than in men, means that the number of nerve cells in male and female brains maybe similar.Oddly, though, the main connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, which is known as the corpus callosum and is made of white matter, is proportionately smaller in men than women. This may explain why men use only one side of the brain to process some problems for which women employ both sides.These differences in structure and wiring do not appear to have any influence on intelligence as measured by IQ tests. It does, however, seem that the sexes carry out these tests in different ways. In one example, where men and women perform equally well in a test that asks them to work out whether nonsense words rhyme, brain scanning shows that women use areas on both the right and the left sides of the brain to accomplish the task. Men, by contrast, use only areas on the left side. There is also a correlation between mathematical reasoning and temporal-lobe activity in men—but none in women. More generally, men seem to rely more on their grey matter for their IQ, whereas women rely more on their white matter.American exceptionalismThe world's biggest insurance market is too splinteredKANSAS CITY, Missouri, is known more for its historical role as a cattle town than as a financial hub. But it is to this midwestern city, America's 26th largest, that regulators and insurance executives from around the globe head when they want to make sense of the world's largest—and one of its weirdest—insurance markets.For it is in Kansas City that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is housed. It oversees a market accounting for one-third of premiums written worldwide. Outside Kansas City, the market becomes a regulatory free-for-all. Each of America's 50 states, plus the District of Colombia, governs its insurance industry in its own way.In an increasingly global insurance market, America's state-based system is coming under strong pressure to reform. Insurance has changed dramatically since the NAIC was set up in 1871, with growing sophistication in underwriting and risk management. Premiums in America have ballooned to $1.1 trillion and market power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of big players (some of them foreign-owned) that are pushing for an overhaul of the state-based system. “It's an extremely expensive and Byzantine process,” says Bob Hartwig, an economist with the Insurance Information Institute, a research group.Though a fiercely political issue, congressional support for simplifying the system is gaining ground. Both houses of Congress are looking at proposals to change the state-based system. Big insurers favour a version that would implement an optional federal charter allowing them to bypass the state-bystate regulatory process if they choose. A similar system already exists for banks.Proponents of the changes see more efficiency, an ability to roll out products more quickly nationally and, ultimately, better offerings for consumers as a result. Yet some consumer groups favour state-based regulation. They believe it keeps premiums lower than they otherwise would be. Premiums as a percentage of gross output are lower in America than in several other countries.The political headwinds are strong: insurance commissioners are elected officials in some states (California, for instance) and appointed by the governor in others. The industry is also split: most of the country's 4,500 insurers are small, and many of them have close ties with state-based regulators, whose survival they support. But even these forces may eventually be overcome.Elsewhere in the industry in America, there are other calls for reform. In a backdoor form of protectionism, American reinsurance firms have long benefited from a regulation that requires foreign reinsurers writing cross-border business into America to post more collateral than they do. “If you operate outside the borders of the US, they don't trust you one inch,” laments Julian James, head of international business at Lloyd's of London, which writes 38% of its business in America.The collateral requirement was established because of worries about regulatory standards abroad, and the financial strength of global reinsurers. Today regulatory standards have been tightened in many foreign markets. A majority of America's reinsurance cover now comes from firms based abroad, including many that have set up offshore in Bermuda (for tax reasons) primarily to serve America.Too hot to handleDell's battery recall reveals the technology industry's vulnerabilitiesTHERE is the nail test, in which a team of engineers drives a large metal nail through a battery cell to see if it explodes. In another trial, laboratory technicians bake the batteries in an oven to simulate the effects of a digital device left in a closed car on a sweltering day—to check the reaction of the chemicals inside. On production runs, random batches of batteries are tested for temperature, efficiency, energy density and output.But the rigorous processes that go into making sophisticated, rechargeable batteries—the heart of billions of electronic gadgets around the world—were not enough. On August 14th Dell, a computer company, said it would replace 4.1m lithium-ion batteries made by Sony, a consumer-electronics firm, in laptop computers sold between 2004 and last month. A handful of customers had reported the batteries overheating, catching fire and even exploding—including one celebrated case at a conference this year in Japan, which was captured on film and passed around the internet. The cost to the two companies is expected to be between $200m and $400m.In some ways, Dell is a victim of its success. The company was a pioneer in turning the personal computer into a commodity, which meant squeezing suppliers to the last penny, using economies of scale by placing huge orders, and running efficient supply chains with little room for error. It all created a volatile environment in which mistakes can have grave effects.Since lithium-ion batteries were introduced in 1991, their capacity to overheat and burst into flame has been well known. Indeed, in 2004 America banned them as cargo on passenger planes, as a fire hazard. But the latest problems seem to have arisen because of the manufacturing process, which demands perfection. “If there is even a nano-sized particle of dust, a small metal shard or water condensation that gets into the battery cell, it can overheat and explode,” says Sara Bradford of Frost & Sullivan, a consultancy. As the energy needs of devices have grown rapidly, so have the demands on batteries.The computing industry's culture is also partly to blame. Firms have long tried to ship products as fast as they possibly can, and they may have set less store by quality. They used to mock the telecoms industry's ethos of “five-nines”—99.999% reliability—because it meant long product cycles. But now they are gradually accepting it as a benchmark. That is partly why Microsoft has taken so long to perfect its new operating system, Windows Vista.Compared with other product crises, from contaminated Coca-Cola in 1999 to Firestone's faulty tyres in 2000, Dell can be complimented for quickly taking charge of a hot situation. The firm says there were only six incidents of laptops overheating in America since December 2005—but the internet created a conflagration.Keeping the faithMixing religion and development raises soul-searching questionsWORLD Bank projects are usually free of words like “faith” and “soul.” Most of its missions speak the jargon of development: poverty reduction, aggregate growth and structural adjustments. But a small unit within the bank has been currying favour with religious groups, working to ease their suspicions and use their influence to further the bank's goals. In many developing countries, such groups have the best access to the people the bank is trying to help. The programme has existed for eight years, but this brainchild of the bank's previous president, James Wolfensohn, has spent the past year largely in limbo as his successor, Paul Wolfowitz, decides its future. Now, some religious leaders in the developing world are worried that the progress they have made with the bank may stall.That progress has not always been easy. The programme, named the Development Dialogue on Values and Ethics, faced controversy from the start. Just as religious groups have struggled to work with the bank, many people on the inside doubted if the bank should be delving into the divine. Critics argued that religion could be divisive and political. Some said religion clashes with the secular goals of modernisation.Although the bank does not lend directly to religious groups, it works with them to provide health, educational and other benefits, and receives direct input from those on the ground in poor countries. Katherine Marshall, director of the bank's faith unit, argues that such groups are in an ideal position to educate people, move resources and keep an eye on corruption. They are organised distribution systems in otherwise chaotic places. The programme has had success getting evangelical groups to fight malaria in Mozambique, improve microcredit and water distribution in India, and educate people about AIDS in Africa. “We started from very different viewpoints. The World Bank is looking at the survival of a country, we look at the survival of a patient,” says Leonardo Palombi, of the Community of Sant'Egidio, an Italian church group that works in Africa.Although the work continues, those involved in Mr Wolfensohn's former pet project now fret over its future. Some expect the faith unit to be transferred to an independent organisation also set up by Mr Wolfensohn, the World Faiths Development Dialogue, which will still maintain a link with the bank. Religious groups are hoping their voices will still be heard. “If we are going to make progress, faith institutions need to be involved. We believe religion has the ability to bring stability. It will be important for the bank to follow through,” says Agnes Abuom, of the World Council of Churches for Africa, based in Kenya.Like religious groups, large institutions such as the bank can resist change. Economists and development experts are sometimes slow to believe in new ideas. One positive by-product of the initiative is that religious groups once wary of the bank's intentions are less suspicious. Ultimately, as long as both economists and evangelists aim to help the poor attain a better life on earth, differences in opinion about the life hereafter do not matter much.Stand and deliverFor the first time since the epidemic began, money to fight AIDS is in plentiful supply. It isnow time to convert words into actionKEVIN DE COCK, the World Health Organisation's AIDS supremo, is not a man to mince his words. He reckons that he and his colleagues in the global AIDS establishment have between five and seven years to make a real dent in the problem. If they fail, the world's attention span will be exhausted, charitable donors and governments will turn to other matters and AIDS will be relegated in the public consciousness to being yet another intractable problem of the poor world about which little or nothing can be done.For now, though, the money is flowing. About $8.9 billion is expected to be available this year. And, regardless of Dr De Cock's long-term worries, that sum should rise over the next few years. Not surprisingly, a lot of people are eager to spend it.Many of those people—some 24,000 of them—have been meeting in Toronto at the 16th International AIDS Conference. An AIDS conference is unlike any other scientific meeting. In part, it is a jamboree in which people try to out-do each other in displays of cultural inclusiveness: the music of six continents resonates around the convention centre. In part, it is a lightning conductor that allows AIDS activists to make their discontent known to the world in a series of semi-official protests. It is also what other scientific meetings are, a forum for the presentation of papers with titles such as “Differing lymphocyte cytokine responses in HIV and Leishmania co-infection”. But mostly, it is a giant council of war. And at this one, the generals are trying to impose a complete change of military strategy.When AIDS was discovered, there was no treatment. Existing anti-viral drugs were tried but at best they delayed the inevitable, and at worst they failed completely. Prevention, then, was not merely better than cure, it was the only thing to talk about. Condoms were distributed. Posters were posted exhorting the advantages of safe sex. Television adverts were run that showed theconsequences of carelessness.Ten years ago, though, a new class of drugs known as protease inhibitors was developed. In combination with some of the older drugs, they produced what is now known as highly active anti-retroviral therapy or HAART. In most cases, HAART can prolong life indefinitely.That completely changed the picture. Once the AIDS activists had treated themselves, they began to lobby for the poor world to be treated, too. And, with much foot-dragging, that is now happening. About 1.6m people in low- and middle-income countries, 1m of them in sub-Saharan Africa, are now receiving anti-AIDS drugs routinely. The intention, announced at last year's G8 meeting in Scotland, is that the drugs should be available by 2010 to all who would benefit from them.However, those on drugs remain infected and require treatment indefinitely. To stop the epidemic requires a re-emphasis of prevention, and it is that which the organisers have been trying to do.Man, deconstructedThe DNA that may have driven the evolution of the human brainONE of the benefits of knowing the complete genetic sequences of humans and other animals is that it becomes possible to compare these blueprints. You can then work out what separates man from beast—genetically speaking, at least.The human brain sets man apart. About 2m years ago it began to grow in size, and today it is about three times larger than that of chimpanzees, man's closest relative. Human intelligence and behavioural complexity have far outstripped those of its simian cousins, so the human brain seems to have got more complex, as well as bigger. Yet no study has pinpointed the genetic changes that cause these differences between man and chimp.Now a group of scientists believe they have located some interesting stretches of DNA that may have been crucial in the evolution of the human brain. A team led by David Haussler of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in California, compared the human genome with that of mammals including other primates. They reported the results in Nature.The researchers looked at the non-human genomes first, seeking regions that had not changed much throughout evolutionary history. Regions that are untouched by normal random changes typically are important ones, and thus are conserved by evolution. Next the researchers found the equivalent regions in the human genome to see if any were very different between humans and chimps. Such a sudden change is a hallmark of a functional evolutionary shift.They found 49 regions they dubbed “human accelerated regions” (HARs) that have shown a rapid, recent evolution. Most of these regions are not genes as commonly understood. This is because they code for something other than the proteins that are expressed in human cells and that regulate biological processes. A number of the HARs are portions of DNA that are responsible for turning genes on and off.Intriguingly, the most rapidly changing region was HAR1, which has accumulated 18 genetic changes when only one would be expected to occur by chance. It codes for a bit of RNA (a molecule that usually acts as a template for translating DNA into protein) that, it is speculated, has some direct function in neuronal development.HAR1 is expressed before birth in the developing neocortex—the outer layer of the brain that seems to be involved in higher functions such as language, conscious thought and sensory perception. HAR1 is expressed in cells that are thought to have a vital role in directing migrating nerve cells in the developing brain. This happens at seven to 19 weeks of gestation, a crucial time when many of the nerve cells are establishing their functions.Without more research, the function of HAR1 remains mere speculation. But an intriguing facet of this work is that, until now, most researchers had focused their hunt for differences on the protein-coding stretches of the genome. That such a discovery has been made in what was regarded as the less interesting parts of the human genome is a presage of where exciting genomic finds may lie in the future.Keeping it realHow to make digital photography more trustworthyPHOTOGRAPHY often blurs the distinction between art and reality. Modern technology has made that blurring easier. In the digital darkroom photographers can manipulate images and threaten the integrity of endeavours that rely on them. Several journalists have been fired for such activity in recent months, including one from Reuters for faking pictures in Lebanon. Earlier this year, the investigation into Hwang Woo-suk showed the South Korean scientist had changed images purporting to show cloning. In an effort to reel in photography, camera-makers are making it more obvious when images have been altered.One way of doing this is to use image-authentication systems to reveal if someone has tampered with a picture. These usecomputer programs to generate a code from the very data that comprise the image. As the picture is captured, the code is attached to it. When the image is viewed, software determines the code for the image and compares it with the attached code. If the image has been altered, the codes will not match, revealing the doctoring.Another way favoured by manufacturers is to take a piece of data from the image and assign it a secret code. Once the image file is transferred to a computer, it is given the same code, which will change if it is edited. The codes will match if the image is authentic but will be inconsistent if tampering occurred.The algorithm is the weapon of choice for Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Digital images have natural statistical patterns in the intensity and texture of their pixels. These patterns change when the picture is manipulated. Dr Farid's algorithms detect these changes, and can tell if pixels have been duplicated or removed. They also try to detect if noise—the overexposed pixels within the image that create a grainy effect—was present at the time the photograph was taken or has been added later.However, forgers have become adept at printing and rescanning images, thus creating a new original. In such cases, analysing how three-dimensional elements interact is key. Long shadows at midday are a giveaway. Even the tiny reflections in the centre of a person's pupil tell you about the surrounding light source. So Dr Farid analyses shadows and lighting to see if subjects and surroundings are consistent.For its part, Adobe, the maker of Photoshop software, has improved its ability to record the changes made to an image by logging how and when each tool or filter was used. Photoshop was the program used by the journalist fired by Reuters; his handiwork left a pattern in the smoke he had added that was spotted by bloggers. Thus far the internet has proven an effective check on digital forgery. Although it allows potentially fake images to be disseminated widely, it also casts many more critical eyes upon them. Sometimes the best scrutiny is simply more people looking.Collateral damageWhy the war in Iraq is surprisingly bad news for America's defence firmsWHEN Boeing announced on August 18th that it planned to shut down production of the C-17, a huge military cargo plane, the news sent a shiver through the American defence industry. As it winds down its production line at Long Beach, California, over the next two years, Boeing will soon begin to notify suppliers that their services will no longer be needed. It had to call a halt, because orders from America's Defence Department had dried up and a trickle of export deals could not take their place. The company would not support the cost of running the production line for the C-17 (once one of its biggest-selling aircraft) on the off-chance that the Pentagon might change its mind and place further orders.The wider worry for the defence industry is that this could be the first of many big programmes to be shut down. A big part of the problem is that America is at war. The need to find an extra $100 billion a year to pay for operations in Iraq means there is pressure to make cuts in the defence budget, which has been provisionally set at $441 billion for the fiscal year beginning in October. American defence budgets involve a complicated dance starting with what the Pentagon wants, what the White House thinks it should get and, finally, what Congress allows it to get away with. Although the armed forces' extra spending on ammunition, fuel, provisions, medicines and accommodation in Iraq does not strictly come out of the same budget as new weapons, the heavy bill for fighting eventually leads to calls to save money on shiny new equipment.Earlier this month, for example, the Congressional Budget Office expressed “major concerns” about Future Combat Systems, a $165 billion project to upgrade all of the army's vehicles and communications networks. The scheme is the Pentagon's second-biggest development programme and is intended to give the soldiers on the ground access to real-time battlefield information from sources such as satellites and unmanned aircraft. But the programme was initially expected to cost about $82 billion, half the latest estimate, and critics are also worried about how well it will work and whether it will be delivered on time.Last week the army issued a glowing progress report on the project and insisted that Boeing and Science Applications International Corporation, the lead contractors, are on schedule. This was welcome news to defence contractors worried that the grandiose project might fall victim to pressure for budget cuts. Even so, the prospects for many other big weapons programmes are less rosy.The problem is not just the cost of the fighting in Iraq, but also its nature. The shift in the style of warfare, towards such “asymmetric” conflicts, means that there is now less demand for big-ticket weapons systems. Things were simpler in the cold war, when the Pentagon spent about $150 billion a year on new weapons. That fell to around $50 billion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. America's 15 main defence contractors reacted by consolidating into today's top five. When he became president, George Bush promised to increase defence spending, and he has done so: the procurement budget is back up to nearly $160 billion, despite thelack of a Soviet Union.As a result, the five main defence contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon—have had a wonderful five years. Since the terrorist attacks in September 2001, their sales have risen by around 10% a year. Last year their combined profits increased by 25% to almost $13 billion. Although most of the defence budget is spent on big weapons systems that are of little or no use in the fight against terrorists, the political climate after the attacks of September 11th 2001 made it impossible to oppose the administration's desire to increase defence spending. Besides, such spending means more jobs, often in areas where there is little other manufacturing.More media, less newsNewspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive orhigh-mindedTHE first thing to greet a visitor to the Oslo headquarters of Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, is its original, hand-operated printing press from 1856, now so clean and polished it looks more like a sculpture than a machine. Christian Schibsted, the firm's founder, bought it to print someone else's newspaper, but when the contract moved elsewhere he decided to start his own. Although Schibsted gives pride of place to its antique machinery, the company is in fact running away from its printed past as fast as it can. Having made a loss five years ago, Schibsted's activities on the internet contributed 35% of last year's operating profits.News of Schibsted's success online has spread far in the newspaper industry. Every year, says Sverre Munck, the executive vice-president of its international business, Schibsted has to turn away delegations of foreign newspaper bosses seeking to find out how the Norwegians have done it. “Otherwise we'd get several visits every month,” he says. The company has used its established newspaper brands to build websites that rank first and second in Scandinavia for visitors. It has also created new internet businesses such as Sesam, a search engine that competes with Google, and FINN.no, a portal for classified advertising. As a result, 2005 was the company's best ever for revenues and profits.Unfortunately for the newspaper industry, Schibsted is a rare exception. For most newspaper companies in the developed world, 2005 was miserable. They still earn almost all of their profits from print, which is in decline. As people look to the internet for news and young people turn away from papers, paid-for circulations are falling year after year. Papers are also losing their share of advertising spending. Classified advertising is quickly moving online. Jim Chisholm, of iMedia, a joint-venture consultancy with IFRA, a newspaper trade association, predicts that a quarter of print classified ads will be lost to digital media in the next ten years. Overall, says iMedia, newspapers claimed 36% of total global advertising in 1995 and 30% in 2005. It reckons they will lose another five percentage points by 2015.Even the most confident of newspaper bosses now agree that they will survive in the long term only if, like Schibsted, they can reinvent themselves on the internet and on other new-media platforms such as mobile phones and portable electronic devices. Most have been slow to grasp the changes affecting their industry—“remarkably, unaccountably complacent,” as Rupert Murdoch put it in a speech last year—but now they are making a big push to catch up. Internet advertising is growing rapidly for many and is beginning to offset some of the decline in print.Newspapers' complacency is perhaps not as remarkable as Mr Murdoch suggested. In many developed countries their owners have for decades enjoyed near monopolies, fat profit margins, and returns on capital above those of other industries. In the past, newspaper companies saw little need to experiment or to change and spent little or nothing on research and development.Changing connectionsFatherhood alters the structure of your brain—if you are a marmosetPARENTING has obvious effects on mothers, but fathers appear to be affected, too. A study published this week shows that fatherhood increases the nerve connections in the region of the brain that controls goal-driven behaviour—at least, it does in marmosets.Pregnancy and motherhood have long been known to bring about changes—many of them positive—to the female brain. Pregnant and nursing rats have a greater number of neural connections, particularly in the region of the brain that controls hormones and maternal behaviour. The brain changes coincide with improvements in spatial memory and speedier foraging skills, which might help a mother rat protect and feed her young.Just what effect parenting might have on the brains of fathers has remained an open question, however. Male rats sometimes eat their young rather than nurture them, which makes them a poor model for studying how fatherhood affects the brains of species that frown on infanticide. Marmoset fathers on the other hand are a model of paternal devotion. They carry their babies for more。

经济学人_精品文章中英对照

1.Whopper to go至尊汉堡，打包带走Will Burger King be gobbled up by private equity?汉堡王是否会被私人股本吞并？Sep 2nd 2010 | NEW YORKSHARES in Burger King (BK) soared on September 1st on reports that the fast-food company was talking to several private-equity firms interested in buying it. How much beef was behind these stories was unclear. But lately the company famous for the slogan “Have It Your Way” has certainly not been having it its own way. There may be arguments about whether BK or McDonald’s serves the best fries, but there is no doubt which is more popular with stockmarket investors: the maker of the Big Mac has supersized its lead in the past two years.有报道披露，快餐企业汉堡王（BK）正在与数个有收购意向的私人股本接洽，9月1日，汉堡王的股值随之飙升。

这些报道究竟有多少真材实料不得而知。

汉堡王的著名口号是“我选我味”，但如今显然它身不由己，心中五味杂陈。

汉堡王和麦当劳哪家薯条最好吃，食客们一直争论不休，但股票投资人更喜欢哪家股票，却一目了然：过去两年里，巨无霸麦当劳一直在扩大自己的优势。

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经济学家》读译参考（第12篇）:并非科幻小说——《直觉》畅销书书评From The Economist print edition[size=4][b]Not science fictionTHE recent stem-cell scandal in South Korea may have made front-page news across the world, but（1）few readers are likely to bet that a literary novel set in a laboratory and based on scientific research might end up being a ★page-turner[1]. Readers of “Intuition”, however, will battle with themselves over whether to savour Allegra Goodman's exquisite★filleting[2] of character, as the scientists are themselves dissected like their experimental mice, or to rush ★headlong[3] to find out what h________① next.In an under-funded Harvard laboratory, the ★dogged[4], unglamorous★slog[5] towards finding a cure for cancer is u_______② way. Suddenly one research assistant's experiment ★bears [6]fruit. After mice infected with human breast-cancer cells are injected with Cliff's R-7 virus, their tumours melt away in 60% of the population. But are Cliff's results too good to be true? （2）The question of whether the R-7 results were★fiddled[7] powers the remainder of the book.Ms Goodman follows the good novelist's ★credo[8] that plot ★proceeds from[9] character; and （3）she follows the good scientist's credo that objective truth is inexorably ★coloured[10] by whoever ★stands[11] to lose or gain by it. All the researchers in “Intuition” are sympathetic, and they are all ★screwed up[12]. Sandy, co-director of the lab, is a ★charismatic[13] dynamo[14], but too enamoured with worldly glory. His brilliant, shy partner Marion has ★impeccable[15] research standards, but is undermined by chronic self-doubt. By contrast, Cliff is ★glibly[16] over-c_________③. Robin, R-7's ★whistle-blower[17] (also Cliff's former girlfriend), is a natural scientist, but her determination to uncover fraud may be driven by romantic disappointment. Robin is heeding her intuition, and “young researchers had their intuition ★tamped down[18] lest, like the ★sorcerer's[19] apprentice, they flood the lab with their conceits.”What a relief to find a novel that does not take place in the literary salons of London or New York. （4）Ms Goodman manages fully to inhabit another profession's world. Her characters so live and breathe on the page that they could get up and m_______④you a cup of coffee while you finish another chapter. （5）Her writing is rich, so rich it would be easy tomiss how skilful is the prose itself. Exciting and, for most, exotic as well, “Intuition” is a ★stunning[20] achieve ment.参考译文（TRANSLATED BY CHENJILONG）并非科幻小说韩国最近发生的干细胞丑闻或许已成为世界各地的头条新闻，不过几乎没有读者会相信，一本以实验室为背景、基于科学研究的小说到头来竟然让他们爱不释手。

然而，读过《直觉》这本书的人心里很矛盾，小说里的科学家如同他们用作实验的小鼠一样被深刻剖析，因而读者们不知道是仔细品味一下阿列格拉•古德曼入木三分的人物描写呢，还是急于弄清接下来会发生什么事情。

在哈佛大学一个资金不足的实验室里，科学家们为了找到一种治疗癌症的方法，正默默无闻、坚持不懈地辛勤工作。

突然，助理研究员克里夫的实验结出了果实。

他用R7病毒注射染有人乳腺癌细胞的小鼠后，60%小鼠的肿瘤消散了。

可是，克里夫如此完美的研究结果是真实的吗？R7结果有没有被虚报？这一疑问让本书随后的内容更加扣人心弦。

古德曼夫人延续了优秀小说家所提倡的“情节因人物而生”，也承继了优秀科学家所奉行的“任何人都不能歪曲客观事实”。

《直觉》中的所有研究人员表面上一团和气，暗地里却都勾心斗角。

实验室副主管桑迪很有人格魅力，一心扑在工作上，但虚荣心太强。

他的搭档马里昂才华横溢，少言寡语，工作标准极高，但因为长期缺乏自信而萎靡不振。

相比之下，克里夫却有些圆滑世故和自命不凡。

揭发R7秘密的罗宾（克里夫前女友）则是一位朴实的科学家，不过她决心揭露骗局可能多少出于对爱情的失望。

她重视直觉，而且，“年青研究者悄悄地抑制了他们的直觉力量，生怕会像刚学巫术的人一样，让实验室充斥着自负和虚夸。

”能看到一本不是描写伦敦抑或纽约文学沙龙的小说，真是一件让人舒心的事。

古德曼夫人完全立足于另一种职业领域，刻画的人物栩栩如生，呼之欲出，甚至能在你每读完一个章节的时候为你泡上一杯咖啡。

古德曼著作颇丰，因此人们往往忽视了她的写作技巧。

《直觉》一书动人心魄，而且对大多数人而言还颇具异国情调，实在令人为之侧目。

NOTES[1]page-turner n.【非正式用语】让人一页一页不停往下翻的书；引人入胜的书(一本非常有趣的、令人兴奋或悬念四起的书，通常是指小说)：“The book isa page-turner”(Frank Conroy)“这本书真是让人爱不释手”(弗兰克•康罗伊)[2]fillet v.切取（鱼、肉）净肉；切（鱼肉）成片[3]headlong adj.&adv.=headfirst 头先向前的；轻举妄动地，匆匆忙忙地：He’s gone headfirst into trouble.他轻率地陷入麻烦中。

[4]dogged adj.顽强的，坚忍不拔的：She was not very clever, but by doggedefforts she learnt a good deal at school.她不怎么聪明，但努力不懈，在学校学到了很多东西。

[5]slog n.艰苦工作（之期间）：I always found school difficult: it was a hard slog.我总觉得求学不易，读书是一桩苦事。

[6]bear v.产（作物、水果）：The young apple tree is bearing this year for the first time.这棵苹果幼树今年首度结了果。

[7]fiddle v.虚报：to fiddle one’s income tax虚报所得税[8]credo n.信仰，信条：a credo of socialist principles社会主义的信条[9]proceed from （无被动）由……造成，产生自……[10]colour vt.使（人，事件）带特殊的效果或感受；影响：Personal feelings coloured his judgement.个人的感情影响了他的判断。

|a highly-coloured account of his difficulties大加渲染地描述他的种种困难[11]stand v. to be in a position to gain or lose有（得失之）机会；势将（得或失）：If this new law is passed, we stand to lose our tax advantage.如果这项新法律通过，我们势将失去我们在税赋方面享受的利益。

[Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English] stand to do something: to be likely to do or have something: stand to gain/lose/win/makeWhat do firms think they stand to gain by merging?After the oil spill, thousands of fishermen stand to lose their livelihoods.[12]screw up v.（常被动）（俚语）搞得乱七八糟；搅乱：Things are screwed up, as usual.事情跟平常一样糟。