Following are a graph showing the current situation of smartphone penetration in the UK and an excerpt on the future trend of smartphones. Read them carefully and write a mini-report of about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the ideas in both materials; 2. comment on the possible influence of this trend on education. Graph [*] * Source: Internet Access Quarterly Update 2011, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), based on a research by Nielsen on 2, 500 British people, released January, 2012. ** Income refers to annual salary, lk=￡ 1, 000 Excerpt 2 Billion Consumers Worldwide to Get Smart(phones) by 2016 (www.emarketer.com/Article/2-Billion-Consumers-Worldwide-Smartphones-by-2016/1011694) The number of smartphone users worldwide will surpass 2 billion in 2016, according to new figures from eMarketer—after nearly getting there in 2015. Next year, there will be over 1.91 billion smartphone users across the globe, a figure that will increase another 12.6% to near 2.16 billion in 2016. For the first time, more than one-quarter of the global population will use smartphones in 2015, and by 2018, eMarketer estimates, over one-third of consumers worldwide, or more than 2.56 billion people, will do so. That 2018 figure also represents over half—51.7%—of all mobile phone users, meaning that feature phones will have finally become a minority in the telecommunications world. Inexpensive smartphones are opening new opportunities for marketing and commerce in emerging markets where many consumers previously had no access to the internet. Meanwhile, in mature, established markets, smartphones are quickly shifting the paradigm for consumer media usage and impressing the need for marketers to become more mobile-centric.

(L)= James Linklater (I)= Interviewer (I): Hello and welcome to our talk show today. In the next few minutes we’re going to be asking whether you’re after value for money when you’re shopping for fashion; or fashion that’s made with values. We’re all after a bargain on the high street. But how often do you stop to consider how some stores seem to stock low-cost/high fashion items quicker and more cheaply than others? Fulfilling our needs for fast fashion means increased production and competition in clothing made in countries with low-wage economies. For example, in a typical British high street there are plenty of bargains to be had. Handbags at ￡3.99, T-shirts for a fiver and shoes for under a tenner — all roughly equivalent to the price of an everyday meal. But how many of the people shopping in the high street have stopped to think about how it’s possible to sell clothes so cheaply? Is it because some companies are turning a blind eye to the exploitation in the countries where these items are made? Today, we are honored to invite James Linklater to our program. James is an expert on ethical shopping from the Ethical Consumer Research Association, who amongst other things produced the magazine ’Ethical Consumer’. James, just tell us what the Ethical Consumer Research Association is. (L): OK, well the Ethical Consumer Research Association exists to provide information for shoppers, letting them know what the companies are doing behind the brands that they see on the shelves. (I): So what makes an ethical shopper? (L): Very broadly speaking, people who are concerned about ethical issues want to know that the product they’re buying hasn’t been made at the expense of the people who are producing it, whether it’s in this country or abroad. They might also be concerned with other kinds of issues: whether the company is involved in armaments, or whether they’re donating money to certain political parties. And that as a shopper, you might not want to give your money to that party so therefore you might not want to buy a product from a company who is supporting a political party that you don’t agree with. This is the end of Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard. Question One What do all the consumers pursue on the high street? Question Two What is the reason for increased competition in clothing industry? Question Three Which of the following items is mentioned as the cheapest on the high street? Question Four What does the Ethical Consumer Research Association aim to? Question Five Which of the following does NOT make an ethical shopper? Fashion. Value. Bargain. Reputation.

Early in the film A Beautiful Mind, the mathematician John Nash is seen sitting in a Princeton courtyard, hunched over a playing board covered with small black and white pieces that look like pebbles. He was playing Go, an ancient Asian game. Frustration at losing that game inspired the real Nash to pursue the mathematics of game theory, research for which he eventually was awarded a Nobel Prize. In recent years, computer experts, particularly those specializing in artificial intelligence, have felt the same fascination and frustration. Programming other board games has been a relative snap. Even chess has succumbed to the power of the processor. Five years ago, a chess-playing computer called Deep Blue not only beat but thoroughly humbled Garry Kasparov, the world champion at that time. That is because chess, while highly complex, can be reduced to a matter of brute force computation. Go is different. Deceptively easy to learn, either for a computer or a human, it is a game of such depth and complexity that it can take years for a person to become a strong player. To date, no computer has been able to achieve a skill level beyond that of the casual player. The game is played on a board divided into a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. Black and white pieces called stones are placed one at a time on the grid’s intersections. The object is to acquire and defend territory by surrounding it with stones. Programmers working on Go see it as more accurate than chess in reflecting the ways the human mind works. The challenge of programming a computer to mimic that process goes to the core of artificial intelligence, which involves the study of learning and decision-making, strategic thinking, knowledge representation, pattern recognition and perhaps most intriguing, intuition. Along with intuition, pattern recognition is a large part of the game. While computers are good at crunching numbers, people are naturally good at matching patterns. Humans can recognize an acquaintance at a glance, even from the back. Daniel Bump, a mathematics professor at Stanford, works on a program called GNU Go in his spare time. “You can very quickly look at a chess game and see if there’s some major issue, “ he said. But to make a decision in Go, he said, players must learn to combine their pattern-matching abilities with the logic and knowledge they have accrued in years of playing. Part of the challenge has to do with processing speed. The typical chess program can evaluate about 300, 000 positions in a second, and Deep Blue was able to evaluate some 200 million positions in a second. By midgame, most Go programs can evaluate only a couple of dozen positions each second, said Anders Kierulf, who wrote a program called SmartGo. In the course of a chess game, a player has an average of 25 to 35 moves available. In Go, on the other hand, a player can choose from an average of 240 moves. A Go-playing computer would need about 30, 000 years to look as far ahead as Deep Blue can with chess in three seconds, said Michael Reiss, a computer scientist in London. But the obstacles go deeper than processing power. Not only do Go programs have trouble evaluating positions quickly; they have trouble evaluating them correctly. Nonetheless, the allure of computer Go increases as the difficulties it poses encourage programmers to advance basic work in artificial intelligence. For that reason, Fotland said, “writing a strong Go program will teach us more about making computers think like people than writing a strong chess program.“

For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342, 900 in 2008 from 526, 300 in 1980. The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, challenge the prevailing view of maternal mortality as an intractable problem that has defied every effort to solve it. “The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress, “ the journal’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote in a comment accompanying the article, published online on Monday. The study cited a number of reasons for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care; more education for women; and the increasing availability of “skilled attendants“ — people with some medical training — to help women give birth. Improvements in large countries like India and China helped to drive down the overall death rates. But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview. “I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict, “ he said. Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place. He said the meetings included one at the United Nations this week, and another to be held in Washington in June, where advocates hope to win support for more foreign aid for maternal health from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Other meetings of concern to the advocates are the Pacific Health Summit in June, and the United Nations General Assembly meeting in December. “People who have spent many years committed to the issue of maternal health were understandably worried that these figures could divert attention from an issue that they care passionately about, “ Dr. Horton said. “But my feeling is that they are misguided in their view that this would be damaging. My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it.“ He said the new study was based on more and better data, and more sophisticated statistical methods than were used in a previous analysis by a different research team that estimated more deaths, 535, 900 in 2005. The authors of the earlier analysis, published in The Lancet, in 2007, included researchers from Unicef, Harvard, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. The World Health Organization still reports about half a million maternal deaths a year, but is expected to issue new statistics of its own this year. The new report comes from the University of Washington and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and was paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A spokesman for Unicef said it had no comment on the new findings, and there was no response to messages that were left late Tuesday for W.H.O. officials. Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray, the director of the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and an author of the study, said, “There has been a perception of no progress.“ But, he said, “some of the policies and programs pursued may be having an effect.“ “It really is an important positive finding for global health, “ he said. Dr. Murray said no one had approached him directly about delaying the release of his findings; he heard about those efforts from The Lancet, and described them as “disappointing.“ He said, “We believe in the process of peer-reviewed science, and it’s the proper way to pursue these sorts of studies.“

PASSAGE ONE

PASSAGE THREE

浙江钱塘江河口的涌潮，自古蔚为天下奇观。它是大自然赋予的神奇景象。由于天体引力和地球离心作用，每逢农历初一至初五，十五至三十，天体引潮力特别强，易形成大潮；农历八月十八日的大潮尤为壮观。而杭州湾喇叭口的地形特殊，海湾水域广阔，但河口狭窄，加之河床泥沙阻挡，易使潮流能量集中，江潮迅速猛涨，流速加快，涌潮现象频频发生。钱江涌潮，一年四季，周而复始。全年共有120天的“观潮日”。每天有日、夜两潮，尤以秋潮为佳。每当大潮来时，开始远处呈现一条白线，声如闷雷。数分钟之后，白线向前推移；继而巨浪汹涌澎湃，如万马奔腾，潮声震天动地，真有翻江倒海之势，最高潮差达8．93米。钱塘江涌潮举世无双，其奇、其高可与亚马孙河媲美，被誉为“世界八大奇观”之一。

PASSAGE FOUR

Following are a graph showing the current situation of smartphone penetration in the UK and an excerpt on the future trend of smartphones. Read them carefully and write a mini-report of about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the ideas in both materials; 2. comment on the possible influence of this trend on education. Graph [*] * Source: Internet Access Quarterly Update 2011, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), based on a research by Nielsen on 2, 500 British people, released January, 2012. ** Income refers to annual salary, lk=￡ 1, 000 Excerpt 2 Billion Consumers Worldwide to Get Smart(phones) by 2016 (www.emarketer.com/Article/2-Billion-Consumers-Worldwide-Smartphones-by-2016/1011694) The number of smartphone users worldwide will surpass 2 billion in 2016, according to new figures from eMarketer—after nearly getting there in 2015. Next year, there will be over 1.91 billion smartphone users across the globe, a figure that will increase another 12.6% to near 2.16 billion in 2016. For the first time, more than one-quarter of the global population will use smartphones in 2015, and by 2018, eMarketer estimates, over one-third of consumers worldwide, or more than 2.56 billion people, will do so. That 2018 figure also represents over half—51.7%—of all mobile phone users, meaning that feature phones will have finally become a minority in the telecommunications world. Inexpensive smartphones are opening new opportunities for marketing and commerce in emerging markets where many consumers previously had no access to the internet. Meanwhile, in mature, established markets, smartphones are quickly shifting the paradigm for consumer media usage and impressing the need for marketers to become more mobile-centric.

Slang in English Today we’ll discuss a common linguistic phenomenon in English— slang. The features of slang are listed as follows: I. Slang affects the English 【T1】_____. 【T1】______ A. New words added for social, scientific or artistic reasons B. Slang—the social new words troubling 【T2】______ 【T2】______ II. Slang is young people’s urge of say. A. Created by 【T3】______ 【T3】______ — Reason: 【T4】______ 【T4】______ — Result: looked down upon by adults considered unintelligent and 【T5】______ 【T5】______ B. The conservative view: lack of standard English due to 【T6】______ 【T6】______ C. Possible solution: use kids’ 【T7】______to help them learn standard 【T7】______ English. III. Slang is usually used by people of 【T8】______. 【T8】______ A. People who do not like slang are 【T9】______, and they do not 【T9】______ want to hear other ways of talking B. Much slang comes from 【T10】______. 【T10】______ IV. Slang equals change of language A. Change of a language is to fit the 【T11】____of society B. People who oppose slang and new dialects of English 【T11】______ — do not realize the way people speak 【T12】 _____time — prove themselves to be intolerant of change 【T12】______ C. Language will 【T13】______in the future — people talk via the Internet now 【T13】______ — the Internet has its own language — 【T14】______is not accepted by conservatives — it will probably appear in 【T15】______ 【T14】______ V. Conclusion: slang brings changes to language. 【T15】______Slang in English Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’ll discuss a common linguistic phenomenon in English—slang. For hundreds of years, English has been continuously changing. Words that were unacceptable 300 years ago are now commonplace. English has always had a trademark of being a comfortable language, the language of the common people. Change in the grammar and diction of a language is natural, and English is always confronted with changes. Among them are the use of slang, clipped word endings, and new dialects. Some conservatives do not like changes because they claim that standard English is a perfect language; they do not want to corrupt it. Others simply do not like change. So, let’s have a look at the features of slang in the English language. First, slang affects the vocabulary of English. American English, especially, is always adding new words to its vocabulary for social, scientific, or artistic reasons. The scientific and artistic words do not bother the public a lot, for they only concern a limited group of people. But the social, or slang words do trouble linguists, especially the conservative ones. They do fear that after slang continues to thrust new words to the English vocabulary, it will not remain pure and clean as standard English. Second, slang indicates young people’s urge of say in society. Slang is usually created by children or teens who seek social status. Since kids are the source of new slang, some adults look down on it with the assumption that kids are unintelligent and simply rebelling against established English grammar and diction. However, most of the adults did the same thing when they were children. Adults have been frowning on slang for generations. Some conservatives claim that the lack of standard English is due to an education deficiency. They explain that the reason some slang is created by kids in inner-city areas is that the kids drop out of school, because the kids are stupid, and therefore never learn standard English. In reality, the kids drop out of school because they are told that the way they speak is stupid. The conservatives are not willing to help the kids with “bad“ dialects. Perhaps this is because of a prejudice, sort of “once slang, always slang“ mentality. The conservatives should use the kids’ dialects to help the kids learn standard English. Third, slang is usually not used by people of high social status and this is another reason why conservatives look down upon slang. If they hear someone speaking in Jive, they will be angry because Jive is not the way that high class people speak. People who do not like slang are usually prejudiced as well. They do not want to hear other ways of talking because it deviates from the way they talk. Also, much slang comes from other languages, of which conservatives might also be prejudiced. The dialect that a person uses may make him comfortable, but this is not considered. If a language is not comfortable, why would you want to speak it? Fourth, slang equals change of language. As is known to all, language is a live thing that embraces any change to fit the paradigms of society. For example, in Shakespeare’s time, many contractions used today were considered poor English. Rarely could a person of high social status be found using “don’t“ in a sentence. Today, however, people may use contractions without fear of being scorned by society. This simply illustrates the same types of people who opposed contractions in the past are opposing slang and new dialects of English. They do not realize that the way they speak differs from the way that their predecessors spoke. People opposed to language change only defend their dialect, which will die out anyway, and prove their intolerance of change. Furthermore, language will be thought of differently in the future because new mediums of communication will be used, the largest one being the Internet. Today, many people are using the Internet to “talk“ to people all over the world. The Internet has its own language, which conservatives view as computer slang. No matter what diction or dialect you speak, you still have to type out an Internet message in standard Internet. There are words used specifically for the Internet, usually acronyms that are universally understood by the Netizens. Those acronyms could be called part of the cyber-slang, which is of course not accepted by conservatives, but who knows whether after several years, it will probably appear in standard dictionaries. Actually, conservatives have no reason to bother with whether a person’s dialect or diction will be understood in spoken language, because most communication will be typed, not spoken, in a neutral Internet language. However, is this change really as horrible as conservatives predict? Conservatives have one reason to oppose language progression: fear. Conservatives have a fear that the language they speak will not be the primary one. For this reason, they will put down slang and other dialects simply because slang and dialects are not standard English. As a matter of fact, standard English is just another dialect; however, and thinking one dialect greater than another is mere prejudice. If any change of language is prohibited, people would never be able to express themselves in new ways because there would never be any new words. Now, to sum up today’s lecture, we have reviewed some characteristics of slang in English. Since slang is often coined by the youth and usually used by people of low social status, conservatives cast scorn on it. However, slang indicates that language is rather a vital life that is full of changes and slang best fills in the role to bring vigorous changes to the English language. So, prejudice against it is groundless. OK, this brings us to the end of today’s lecture. Thank you for your attention.

(I): And is there any kind of rule of thumb? Is something that’s more expensive, for example, likely to be more ethical? (L): Unfortunately it isn’t always the case that the more expensive something is, the more ethical it is. We can buy very cheap products and it’s very likely that when products are cheap, something has suffered in order to get it to us. Whether it’s the person making it or the animals or the environment. Quality, however, is often a good indicator whether something, especially with clothes, has been made well. And unfortunately a lot of ethical products will cost more because they reflect the real cost of bringing that thing into the shops. So something that has been made in a factory where the workers have been paid a proper wage will cost you more to buy, simply because the people making it are getting paid enough to live on. (I): Do you have to be well off then to be an ethical shopper? (L): It really depends. You don’t have to be rich to be an ethical shopper. One way of thinking about ethical shopping is thinking about buying less. Sometimes we buy an awful lot more than we need. We buy more items of clothing than we need. So being an ethical shopper really means thinking a bit before you go and spend your money in the shops. Some things may cost a little bit more in the short-run, but be worth it in the long-run. If you are paying for quality, something will last you longer and then save you money. And sometimes you can buy things second-hand. There are a lot of charity shops on the high street to buy good clothes. Sometimes you can look a lot better than someone who’s just bought off the high street because you can have quite a unique look, and the quality that you find in most second-hand shops is really very good these days. So it’s about thinking before you shop. (I): Thanks James. Do you think your ideas are popular among the shoppers now? (L): I am afraid not. When people buy clothes they wouldn’t want to think of them being made in a sweat shop. But I suppose more start to think about shopping ethically. For example, more youngsters want an ethical buy, but their original thing for that might be that they like to wear clothes which are totally different from everyone else. So they would start shopping for vintage clothes. Obviously some of them would be second-hand. They might buy a lot of clothes from market stalls, from fashion students maybe. Anyhow, I am sure ethical shopping will be popular with consumers and one day, it might appear as appealing as the latest fashion. (I): It sounds good and I’ll certainly be doing my clothes shopping with a little bit more care in future. Thank you, James, for all the useful information and valuable advice you have given us. (L): My pleasure. This is the end of Part Two of the interview. Questions 6 to 10 are based on what you have just heard Question Six Which of the following is NOT likely to be sacrificed to cheap products? Question Seven Why are many ethical products more expensive? Question Eight How to become an ethical shopper? Question Nine What kind of clothes is the young’s favorite? Question Ten What is James’ attitude toward the future development of ethical shopping? The labor. The animals. The environment. The quality.

Considering how jazz is transcribed in Chinese (jueshi), you may be misled into assuming that it is an aristocratic cultural form. Nothing could be further from the truth. It originated among black Americans at the end of the 19th century, at a time when they occupied the very bottom of the American social heap. So how has something that was created by a once downtrodden and despised minority acquired a central place in today’s American culture? Mr. Darrell A Jenks, director of the American Center for Educational Exchange, and also a drummer in the jazz band Window, analyses the phenomenon for us here. Jazz: the soul of America. Perhaps the essence of America is that you could never get two Americans to agree on just what that might be. After thinking about it for a while, we might chuckle and say, “Hmm, seems like being American is a bit more complicated than we thought.“ Certainly things like individualism, success (the “American Dream“), innovation and tolerance stand out. But these things come together because of our ability to work with one another and find common purpose no matter how diverse we might be. Some, like African-American writer Ralph Ellison, believe that jazz captures the essence of America. For good reason, for in jazz all of the characteristics I mentioned above come together. The solos are a celebration of individual brilliance that can’t take place without the group efforts of the rhythm section. Beyond that, though, jazz has a connection to the essence of America in a much more fundamental way. It is an expression of the African roots of American culture, a musical medium that exemplifies the culture of the Africans whose culture came to dominate much of what is American. That’s right, in many respects America’s roots are in Africa. Read Ralph Ellison’s perceptive description of the transformation of separate African and European cultures at the hands of the slaves: “...the dancing of those slaves who, looking through the windows of a plantation manor house from the yard, imitated the steps so gravely performed by the masters within and then added to them their own special flair, burlesquing the white folks and then going on to force the steps into a choreography uniquely their own. The whites, looking out at the activity in the yard, thought that they were being flattered by imitation and were amused by the incongruity of tattered blacks dancing courtly steps, while missing completely the fact that before their eyes a European cultural form was becoming Americanized, undergoing a metamorphosis through the mocking activity of a people partially sprung from Africa.“ (Ralph Ellison, Living with Music, pp 83-4). Jazz brought together elements from Africa and Europe, fusing them into a new culture, an expression unique to the Americans. Out of this fusion came an idea that we Americans believe central to our identity: tolerance. Both cultures represented in Ellison’s passage eventually came to realize each other’s value. Americans acknowledge that diversity is our strength. We learn every day that other cultures and peoples may make valuable contributions to our way of life. Jazz music is the embodiment of this ideal, combining elements from African and European cultures into a distinctly American music. Jazz reflects two contradictory facets of American life. On the one hand it is a team effort, where every musician is completely immersed in what the group does together, listening to each of the other players and building on their contributions to create a musical whole. On the other hand, the band features a soloist who is an individual at the extreme, a genius like Charlie Parker who explores musical territory where no one has ever gone before. In the same sense, American life is also a combination of teamwork and individualism, a combination of individual brilliance with the ability to work with others. We hope that many Chinese friends can bring their own unique contributions to our music, adding their own culture to our American heritage. As Ralph Ellison said of the US, “We have the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and we have jazz.“

Vibrations in the ground are a poorly understood but probably widespread means of communication between animals. It seems unlikely that these animals could have detected seismic “pre-shocks“ that were missed by the sensitive vibration-detecting equipment that clutters the world’s earthquake laboratories. But it is possible. And the fact that many animal species behave strangely before other natural events such as storms, and that they have the ability to detect others of their species at distances which the familiar human senses could not manage, is well established. Such observations have led some to suggest that these animals have a kind of extra-sensory perception. What is more likely, though, is that they have an extra sense — a form of perception that people lack. The best guess is that they can feel and understand vibrations that are transmitted through the ground. Almost all the research done into animal signalling has been on sight, hearing and smell, because these are senses that people possess. Humans have no sense organs designed specifically to detect terrestrial vibrations. But, according to researchers who have been meeting in Chicago at a symposium of the society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, this anthropocentric approach has meant that interactions via vibrations of the ground (a means of communication known as seismic signalling) have been almost entirely over-looked. These researchers believe that such signals are far more common than biologists had realized — and that they could explain a lot of otherwise inexplicable features of animal behaviour. Until recently, the only large mammal known to produce seismic signals was the elephant seal, a species whose notoriously aggressive bulls slug it out on beaches around the world for possession of harems of females. But Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell of Stanford University, who is one of the speakers at the symposium, suspects that a number of large terrestrial mammals, including rhinos, lions and elephants also use vibration as a means of communication. At any rate they produce loud noises that are transmitted through both the ground and the air — and that can travel farther in the first than in the second. Elephants, according to Dr. O’Connell-Rodwell, can transmit signals through the ground this way for distances of as much as 50km when they trumpet, make mock charges or stomp their feet. A seismic sense could help to explain certain types of elephant behaviour. One is an apparent ability to detect thunderstorms well beyond the range that the sound of a storm can carry. Another is the foot-lifting that many elephants display prior to the arrival of another herd. Rather than scanning the horizon with their ears, elephants tend to freeze their posture and raise and lower a single foot. This probably helps them to work out from which direction the vibrations are traveling — rather as a person might stick a finger first in one ear and then in the other to work out the direction that a sound is coming from. In the past decade many insects, spiders, scorpions, amphibians, reptiles and rodents, as well as large mammals, have been shown to use vibrations for purposes as diverse as territorial defense, mate location and prey detection. Lions, for example, have vibration detectors in their paws and probably use them in the same way as scorpions use their vibration detectors — to locate meals. Dr. Hill herself spent years trying to work out how prairie mole crickets, a highly territorial species of burrowing insect, manage to space themselves out underground. After many failed attempts to provoke a reaction by playing recordings of cricket song to them, she realized that they were actually more interested in her own footfalls than in the airborne music of their fellow crickets. This suggests that it is the seismic component of the song that the insects are picking up and using to distribute themselves. Whether any of this really has implications for such things as earthquake prediction is, of course, highly speculative. But it is a salutary reminder that the limitations of human senses can cause even competent scientists to overlook obvious lines of enquiry. Absence of evidence, it should always be remembered, is not evidence of absence.

PASSAGE TWO

The more I reflect on the 23 impressive years since the signing of the Montreal Protocol, the more I realize what far-reaching lessons holds for the global environmental 【S1】______ agreements of today. As we close the door on the first decade of the 21st century, the environmental crisis that we face today require 【S2】______ action beyond even the scale of the world’s response to the ozone-depletion emergency in the late 20th century. As we all know, the ozone layer is a thin layer in the atmosphere that sits about 10-50 km above the Earth. It absorbs most of the harmful ultraviolet radiation to the 【S3】______ sun. The discovery of an ozone “hole“ in 1985 shocked the world and two years ago the Montreal Protocol was signed. 【S4】______ Today, almost every country in the world has ratified the agreement. Along with this year’s International Ozone Day, which was on Sept 16, it is worth recalled that the Montreal 【S5】______ Protocol is not simply a bilateral global accord designed to 【S6】______ eradicate ozone-depleting substances. In a unique way, the Montreal Protocol brought the global community altogether to find a way to move forward. 【S7】______ Everyone agreed that what happens to the ozone due to the release of chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFC) — which used in 【S8】______ aerosols, refrigerators and are still used in air conditioners — was completely linked to what happens to life on Earth. The industrial world later provided the incremental financial and 【S9】______ technical assistance to developing countries to implement out the agreement. 【S10】______