第4-7题-水平测试

广东外语外贸大学公开学院辅导资料

高级英语试卷

分类汇总及答案

课程代码 00600

(第4-7题)

试卷一:

Read the following passage carefully and complete the succeeding four items: IV, V, VI, VII and VIII.

It used to be easy to be a professor. Y ou would read your professional journals, write your scientific papers, teach and give seminars. But universities are in transition and so, therefore, are their faculties. More and more emphasis is being placed on research rather than teaching. With the constriction of federal research funding and the influx of support from private industry, some see a transformation from university to research institute to industrial subsidiary. So when today’s professors hit the big time, they have to read their professional literature and Business Week, write scientific papers and patent applications, teach, give seminars and sit on the scientific advisory boards of various corporations.

This interaction among scientists, universities and industry is not new. But the decrease in government support for research, combined with the explosion of new biotechnology products, has intensified the relationship. It is more productive and more complicated.

At present, both the university administration and private industry must play a role in developing the scientific knowledge that germinates and grows in the academic environment. The university is usually responsible for obtaining patents and for licensing the rights for its professors’ inventions. The biotech company, having licensed the product, must provide the considerable financial backing required for its development and marketing.

In the best of all possible worlds, the inventors, the university administrators and the biotech executives work as a well-oiled machine that creates a beneficial product and generates capital to support the academic lab, the scientist, the university and the company shareholders. In the real world, however, each of these component parts has its own agenda. The goals may not entirely overlap; the priorities may be misaligned.

Nevertheless, advantages accrue to each of the parties when they come together. The scientist often receives significant personal financial rewards as well as funds for research.

Collaborations between academic and industrial labs serve to extend the capacity and output of each. The university receives overhead. The company obtains the rights for a potentially lucrative product. And the product, if it survives the obstacle course between the lab and the bedside, will move into clinical use in a much shorter time. But, a cynic might recall there is no such thing as a free lunch. What price is paid to achieve these benefits? The answer depends on who responds to the question.

The academic scientist finds herself taking a crash course in business and law. The demands of negotiating agreements and writing patents drain time and energy. Some research activities are redirected from basic science toward more immediately practical goals. The promise of continuing industrial support is seductive but inevitably tied to commercial products and the bottom line. The lab may find itself focused on an agenda set by the company. The basic research that sparked the initial effort may lie fallow. The spontaneity of scientific pursuit, so prized by those lucky enough to have investigator-initiated government research grants, may be restricted. The speed with which the professor can share data or new reagents may be slowed. The result in the worst scenario would be deleterious for the lab, harmful for science, bad for society.

Happily, such wholesale commanding of academic labs does not occur if the lab maintains support from several sources. The decreased availability of government and foundation funds, however, makes the worst-case scenario an ominous possibility.

For the university, there are other concerns. If a university stands to gain financially from the commercialization of one of the professor’s inventions, for example, the institution may hesitate, out of fear of conflict-of-interest issues, to participate in clinical trials of the product. Such a policy, however, may engender friction and frustration in the relationship between university administrators and faculty members. Distrust can be heightened if the negotiations with companies are handled by an official who represents the university and not the interests of the faculty.

Universities themselves have faced the frustration of licensing their inventions to biotech companies that have then sublicensed them to larger firms for enormous fees. Because these ―fees‖ can be disguised by a variety of account ing procedures, there is no way for the university (or the inventor) to participate in the profits of the sublicensing agreement. Thus, unless the invention becomes a product, the profits made by the biotech companies by ―flipping the contract‖ are not sha red by the university or the inventor.

Meanwhile the company writes the checks. Y et, of the three parties involved, it compromises the least in its time-honored modus operandi. It has obtained an idea or a product and will use it to benefit itself and the public good. In the process, of course, it must contend with the touchy issue of academic freedom while controlling access to information