The Economist explains
TheEconomistexplains
TheEconomistexplainsThe Economist explainsWhy China is creating a new "World Bank" for AsiaNov 11th 2014, 23:50 by S.R. | SHANGHAITO THE alphabet soup of international development banks (ADB, AfDB, CAF, EBRD, IADB), add one more set of initials: AIIB, or for the uninitiated, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. On October 24th, representatives from 21 Asian nations (pictured above) signed an agreement to establish the AIIB, which, as its name suggests, will lend money to build roads, mobile phone towers and other forms of infrastructure in poorer parts of Asia. China spearheaded the bank and hopes to formally launch it by the end of next year. More money for critical projects might seem unambiguously good, but the AIIB has stoked controversy because Asia already has a multilateral lender, the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Why is China creating a new development bank for Asia?China’s official answer is that Asia has a massive infrastructure funding gap. The ADB has pegged the hole at some $8 trillion between 2010 and 2020. Existing institutions cannot hope to fill it: the ADB has a capital base (money both paid-in and pledged by member nations) of just over $160 billion and the World Bank has $223 billion. The AIIB will start with $50 billion in capital—hardly enough for what is needed but still a helpful boost. Moreover, while ADB and World Bank loans support everything from environmental protection to gender equality, the AIIB will concentrate its firepower on infrastructure. Officially at least, ADB and World Bank officials have extended a cautious welcome to the new China-led bank, saying they seeroom for collaboration.Behind the scenes, though, the Chinese initiative has set off a heated diplomatic battle. America has lobbied allies not to join the AIIB, while Jin Liqun, the Chinese official who will head the bank, has shuttled between countries to persuade them to sign up. At the bank’s inauguration ceremony, Australia, Indon esia and South Korea were conspicuously absent. In public, the concern cited by America and some of the hold-outs has been a lack of clarity about AIIB’s governance. Critics warn that the China-led bank may fail to live up to the environmental, labour and procurement standards that are essential to the mission of development lenders. However, China has insisted that AIIB will be rigorous in adopting the best practices of institutions such as the World Bank. Given that the bank will be placed under such a close microscope, there is good reason to believe China on this.But the real, unstated tension stems from a deeper shift: China will use the new bank to expand its influence at the expense of America and Japan, Asia's established powers. China’s decision to fund a new multilateral bank rather than give more to existing ones reflects its exasperation with the glacial pace of global economic governance reform. The same motivation lies behind the New Development Bank established by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Although China is the biggest economy in Asia, the ADB is dom inated by Japan; Japan’s voting share is more than twice China’s and the bank’s president has always been Japanese. Reforms to give China a little more say at the International Monetary Fund have been delayed for years, and even if they go through America will still retain far more power. China is, understandably, impatient for change. It is therefore takingmatters into its own hands.。
国际经贸高级英语精读1--3课课文翻译
Starting as low-income economies in the 1960s, a few economies in East Asia managed,in a few decades, to bridge all or nearly all of the income gap that separated them from the high-income economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).Meanwhile many other developing economies stagnated .What made the difference?One way to grow is by developing hitherto unexploited land.Another is to accumulate physical capital:roads, factories, telephone networks.A third is to expand the labor force and increase its education and training.But Hong Kong (China) and Singapore had almost no land.They did invest heavily in physical capital and in educating their populations,but so did many other economies.During the 1960s through the 1980s the Soviet Union accumulated more capital as a share of its gross domestic product (GDP) than did Hong Kong (China), the Republic of Korea, Singapore, or Taiwan (China).And it increased the education of its population in no trivial measure. Yet the Soviets generated far smaller increases in living standards during that period than did these four East Asian economies.Perhaps the difference was that the East Asian economies did not build, work, and grow harder so much as they built, worked, and gr ew smarter.Could knowledge, then, have been behind East Asia’s surge ?If so, the implications are enormous,for that would mean that knowledge is the key to development—that knowledge is development.How important was knowledge for East Asia’s growt h spurt ?This turned out not to be an easy question to answer.The many varieties of knowledge combine with its limited marketability to present a formidable challenge to anyone seeking to evaluate the effect of knowledge on economic growth.How, after all, does one put a price tag on and add up the various types of knowledge?What common denominator lets us sum the knowledge that firms use in their production processes; the knowledge that policymaking institutions use to formulate, monitor, and evaluate policies; the knowledge that people use in their economic transactions and social interactions?What is the contribution of books and journals, of R&D spending, of the stock of information and communications equipment, of the learning and know-how of scientists, engineers, and students? Compound ing the difficulty is the fact that many types of knowledge are accumulated and exchanged almost exclusively within networks, traditional groups, and professional associations.That makes it virtually impossible to put a value on such knowledge.Reflecting these difficulties in quantify ing knowledge,efforts to evaluate the aggregate impact of knowledge on growth have often proceeded indirectly, by postulat ing that knowledge explains the part of growth that cannot be explained by the accumulation of tangible and identifiable factors, such as labor or capital.The growth not accounted for by these factors of production—the residual in the calculation—is attributed to growth in their productivity, that is, using the other factors smarter, through knowledge.This residual is sometimes called the Solow residual, after the economist Robert M. Solow,who spearheaded the approach in the 1950s,and what it purports to measure is conventionally called total factor productivity (TFP) growth.Some also call the Solow residual a measure of our ignorance ,because it represents what we cannot account for. Indeed, we must be careful not to attribute all of TFP growth to knowledge,or there may be other factors lurking in the Solow residual.Many other things do contribute to growth—institutions are an example—but are not reflected in the contributions of the more measurable factors.Their effect is (so far) inextricably woven into TFP growth.In early TFP analyses,physical capital was modeled as the only country-specific factor that could be accumulated to better people’s lives.Technical progress and other intangible factors were said to be universal, equally available to all people in all countries,and thus could not explain growth differencesbetween countries.Their contributions to growth were lumped with the TFP growth numbers.Although this assumption was convenient, it quickly became obvious that physical capital was not the only factor whose accumulation drove economic growth. A study that analyzed variations in growth rates across a large number of countries showed that the accumulation of physical capital explained less than 30 percent of those variations.The rest—70 percent or more—was attributed directly or indirectly to the intangible factors that make up TFP growth (Table 1.1).Later attempts introduced human capital to better explain the causes of economic growth.A higher level of education in the population means that more people can learn to use better technology. Education was surely a key ingredient in the success of four of the fastest-growing East Asian economies: Hong Kong (China), the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China). Before their transformation from developing into industrializing economies, their school enrollment rates had been much higher than those of other developing countries (Table 1.2).They had also emphasized advanced scientific and technical studies—as measured by their higher ratios of students in technical fields than in even some industrial countries—thus enhancing their capacity to import sophisticated technologies.Moreover, the importance of education for economic growth had long been recognized and established empirically .One study had found that growth in years of schooling explained about 25 percent of the increase in GDP per capita in the United States between 1929 and 1982.Adding education reduced the part of growth that could not be explained,thus shrinking the haystack in which TFP growth (and knowledge) remained hidden.Some analysts even concluded, perhaps too quickly,that physical and human capital, properly accounted for, explained all or virtually all of the East Asian economies’ rapid growth,leaving knowledge as a separate factor out of the picture.One re ason these analysts came up with low values for TFP growth is that they incorporated improvements in labor and equipment into their measurement of factor accumulation.So even their evidence of low TFP growth in East Asia does not refute the importance of closing knowledge gaps.Indeed, it shows that the fast-growing East Asian economies had a successful strategy to close knowledge gaps:by investing in the knowledge embodi ed in physical capital, and by investing in people and institutions to enhance the capability to absorb and use knowledge.Looking beyond East Asia,other growth accounting studies have examined larger samples of countries.Even when human capital is accounted for,the unexplained part of growth remains high.One such study, of 98 countries with an unweighted average growth rate of output per worker of 2.24 percent,found that 34 percent (0.76 percentage point) of that growth came from physical capital accumulation,20 percent (0.45 percentage point) from human capital accumulation,and as much as 46 percent (just over 1 percentage point) from TFP growth.Even more remains to be explained in variations in growth rates across countries. The same study found the combined role of human and physical capital to be as low as 9 percent, leaving the TFP residual at a staggering 91 percent.To take another example:Korea and Ghana had similarly low incomes per capita in the 1950s,but by 1991 Korea’s income per capita was more than seven times Ghana’s.Much of that gap remains unexplained even when human capital is taken into account .All these results are subject to measurement problems.For example, the measured stock of human capital may overstate the actual quantity used in producing goods and services.High rates of school enrollment or attainment (years completed) may not translate into higher rates of economic growthif the quality of education is poor, or if educated people are not employed at their potential because of distortion s in the labor market.Moreover, it is now evident that education without openness to innovation and knowledge will notlead to economic development.The people of the former Soviet Union, like the people of the OECD countries and East Asia, were highly educated, with nearly 100 percent literacy .And for an educated population it is possible,through foreign direct investment and other means,to acquire and use information about the latest production and management innovations in other countries.But the Soviet Union placed severe restrictions on foreign investment, foreign collaboration, and innovation.Its work force did not adapt and change as new information became available elsewhere in the world, and consequently its economy suffered a decline.(excerpted from World Development Report 1998/1999)一些东亚国家在20世纪60年代还是低收入国家，但是在短短的几十年之间，他们成功地弥补了其与经济合作与发展组织（OECD）中高收入国家之间的差距；与此同时，也有许多发展中国家的经济停滞不前。
中国为什么在亚洲创立新的“世界银行”
The Economist explainsWhy China is creating a new "World Bank" for Asia中国为什么在亚洲创立新的“世界银行”Nov 11th 2014, 23:50 by S.R. SHANGHAI TO THE alphabet soup of international development banks (ADB, AfDB, CAF, EBRD, IADB), add one more set of initials: AIIB, or for the uninitiated, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. On October 24th, representatives from 21 Asian nations (pictured above) signed an agreement to establish the AIIB, which, as its name suggests, will lend money to build roads, mobile phone towers and other forms of infrastructure in poorer parts of Asia. China spearheaded the bank and hopes to formally launch it by the end of next year. More money for critical projects might seem unambiguously good, but the AIIB has stoked controversy because Asia already has a multilateral lender, the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Why is China creating a new development bank for Asia?国际发展银行的缩略语（ADB亚洲发展银行，AfDB非洲发展银行，CAF拉美开发银行，EBRD欧洲复兴发展银行，IADB泛美开发银行）构成的字母汤中又多了一位新成员：AIIB亚洲基础设施投资银行。
周新老师讲解The Economist第十四期
周新老师讲解The Economist第十四期（2012年10月13日文章及视频中文讲解翻译）For richer, for poorerGrowing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton BeddoesIN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux of the Loire for inspiration, laid a railway to bring in limestone from Indiana and employed more than 1,000 labourers. Six years later “Biltmore” was completed. With 250 rooms spread over 175,000 square feet (16,000 square metres), the mansion was 300 times bigger than the average dwelling of its day. It had central heating, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, lifts and an intercom system at a time when most American homes had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing.A bit over a century later, America’s second Gilded Age has nothing quitelike the Vanderbilt extravag anza. Bill Gates’s home near Seattle is full of high-tech gizmos, but, at 66,000 square feet, it is a mere 30 times bigger than the average modern American home. Disparities in wealth are less visible in Americans’ everyday lives today than they were a cen tury ago. Even poor people have televisions, air conditioners and cars. But appearances deceive. The democratisation of living standards has masked a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years, on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, the first Gilded Age. Including capital gains, the share of national income going to the richest 1% of Americans has doubled since 1980, from 10% to 20%, roughly where it was a century ago. Even more striking, the share going to the top 0.01%—some 16,000 families with an average income of $24m—has quadrupled, from just over 1% to almost 5%. That is a bigger slice of the national pie than the top 0.01% received 100 years ago.This is an extraordinary development, and it is not confined to America. Many countries, including Britain, Canada, China, India and even egalitarian Sweden, have seen a rise in the share of national income taken by the top 1%. The numbers of the ultra-wealthy have soared around the globe. According to Forbes magazine’s rich list, America has some 421 billionaires, Russia 96, China 95 and India 48. The world’s richest man is a Mexican (Carlos Slim, worth some $69 billion). The world’s largest new house belongs to an Indian. Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey skyscraper in Mumbai occupies 400,000 square feet, making it 1,300 times bigger than the average shack in the slums that surround it.The concentration of wealth at the very top is part of a much broader rise in disparities all along the income distribution. The best-known way of measuring inequality is the Gini coefficient, named after an Italian statistician called Corrado Gini. It aggregates the gaps between people’s incomes into a single measure. If everyone in a group has thesame income, the Gini coefficient is 0; if all income goes to one person, it is 1.The level of inequality differs widely around the world. Emerging economies are more unequal than rich ones. Scandinavian countries have the smallest income disparities, with a Gini coefficient for disposable income of around 0.25. At the other end of the spectrum the world’s most unequal, such as South Africa, register Ginis of around 0.6. (Because of the way the scale is constructed, a modest-sounding difference in the Gini ratio implies a big difference in inequality.)Income gaps have also changed to varying degrees. America’s Gini for disposable income is up by almost 30% since 1980, to 0.39. Sweden’s is up by a quarter, to 0.24. China’s has risen by around 50% to 0.42 (and by some measures to 0.48). The biggest exception to the general upward trend is Latin America, long the world’s most unequal continent, where Gini coefficients have fallen sharply over the past ten years. But the majority of the people on the planet live in countries where incomedisparities are bigger than they were a generation ago.That does not mean the world as a whole has become more unequal. Global inequality—the income gaps between all people on the planet—has begun to fall as poorer countries catch up with richer ones. Two French economists, François Bourguignon and Christian Morrisson, have calculated a “global Gini” that measures the scale of income disparities among everyone in the world. Their index shows that global inequality rose in the 19th and 20th centuries because richer economies, on average, grew faster than poorer ones. Recently that pattern has reversed and global inequality has started to fall even as inequality within many countries has risen. By that measure, the planet as a whole is becoming a fairer place. But in a world of nation states it is inequality within countries that has political salience, and this special report will focus on that.From U to NThe widening of income gaps is a reversal of the pattern in much of the20th century, when inequality narrowed in many countries. That narrowing seemed so inevitable that Simon Kuznets, a Belarusian-born Harvard economist, in 1955 famously described the relationship between inequality and prosperity as an upside-down U. According to the “Kuznets curve”, inequality rises in the early stages of industrialisation as people leave the land, become more productive and earn more in factories. Once industrialisation is complete and better-educated citizens demand redistribution from their government, it declines again.Until 1980 this prediction appeared to have been vindicated. But the past 30 years have put paid to the Kuznets curve, at least in advanced economies. These days the inverted U has turned into something closer to an italicised N, with the final stroke pointing menacingly upwards. Although inequality has been on the rise for three decades, its political prominence is newer. During the go-go years before the financial crisis, growing disparities were hardly at the top of politicians’ to-do list. One reason was that asset bubbles and cheap credit eased life for everyone. Financiers were growing fabulously wealthy in the early 2000s, but others could also borrow ever more against the value of their home.That changed after the crash. The bank rescues shone a spotlight on the unfairness of a system in which affluent bankers were bailed out whereas ordinary folk lost their houses and jobs. And in today’s sluggish economies, more inequality often means that people at the bottom and even in the middle of the income distribution are falling behind not just in relative but also in absolute terms.The Occupy Wall Street campaign proved incoherent and ephemeral, but inequality and fairness have moved right up the political agenda. America’s presidential election is largely being fought over questions such as whether taxes should rise at the top, and how big a role government should play in he lping the rest. In Europe France’s new president,François Hollande, wants a top income-tax rate of 75%. New surcharges on the richest are part of austerity programmes in Portugal and Spain. （原文节选）讲解视频/v_show/id_XNDY4NDE5NTky.html。
英文字母的读音是怎么来的
英文字母的读音是怎么来的投稿 @ 2018.12.26 , 21:12译者：Shin (NC-BY)来源：/the-economist-explains/2017/11/14/how-the-letters-of-the-alphabet-got-their-names和其他语言中的字母发音相比，英文字母的发音看上去似乎没有什么规律可循。
就好比字母E的发音，在tea中是发字母ee的音，而在egg中却发另一种完全不同的音。
另一些字母则更加让人头大，因为它们的发音似乎和字母本身没有丝毫联系！那么，英语中的字母本身发音到底是如何变成今天这个德行的呢？我们先从元音字母来讲。
在中世纪的英语中，元音无非是ah，ay(may中的发音)，ee，oh和oo(tool中的发音)这五个长元音。
但在十四世纪至十五世纪的元音大推移(Great Vowel Shift)中，英语中的这些长元音便有了变化，这也使英语的元音变得和欧洲其他语言不同。
ay (A), ee(E), aye(I), oh(O)这四个我们现在熟知的元音随即诞生了。
U 在此时仍被读作oo。
但在十六世纪初时，U的读音变成了我们现在所读的yoo。
至于Y，它的起源更加扑朔迷离。
牛津字典中也没有关于wy或Y的读音起源的确切记载，但人们相信wy的读音大约有500年的历史了。
与元音相比辅音的读音就显得更有规律一些。
英语辅音的读法采用了拉丁语发音方式的一种变形。
塞音(爆破音)字母(例如B，D，P和T)，在原本促音的后面加上了ee的元音。
而擦音(与塞音不同，擦音送气并持续一段时间)字母(例如F，L，M，N，S和X)在原本的促音前加了一个e的音(同egg中的发音)。
当然，其中也有一些例外。
比如C 和G，他们既有擦音的发音(例如cent和gin)也有塞音(例如cat和gut)的发音。
但就字母读音来讲，它们被读作see和gee是因为在拉丁语中C和G只有塞音。
B和D的读音也是同样的道理。
TheEconomist《经济学人》常用词汇总结我眼泪都流出来了太珍.
两种变量系统地相互联系在一起的程度。
307、Cost ，average 平均成本等于总成本（参见 "总成本" ， cost ，total ）除以产出的单位数。
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结 我眼泪都流出来了 太珍The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结 我眼泪都流出来了 太珍贵了 !! 16 小时前 301、Consumption function 消费函数 总消费与个人可支配收人（ PDI ） 认为会对消费产生影响。
的数值对应关系。
总财富和其他变量也常被 302、Consumption-possibility line 消费可能线 见预算线（ budget line ）。
303、Cooperative equilibrium合作性均衡 博弈论中，指各方协调行动，以求共同的支付（ joint pay － offs ）最优化的 策略而达到的结果。
304、Corporate income tax 公司所得税对公司年净收入课征的税收。
305、Corporation 公司 现代资本主义经济中企业组织的主要形式。
它是由个人或其他公司所拥有的 企业，具有与个人一样的购买、销售和签订合同的权利。
公司和对公司负 责任" 的所有人二者，在法律上是不同的概念。
"有限306、Correlation相关308、Cost ，average fixed 平均固定成本等于固定成本除以产出的单位数。
309、Cost，average variable 平均可变成本等于可变成本（参见" 可变成本" ，cost ，variable ）除以产出的单位数。
310、Cost ，fixed 固定成本一企业在某时段即使在产量为零时也会发生的成本。
总固定成本由诸如利息支出、抵押支出、管理者费用等契约性开支所组成。
311、Cost ，marginal 边际成本多生产1 单位产品所增加的成本（或总成本的增加额），或少生产1 单位产品总成本的减少额。
The Economist
《The Economist》——考研特刊Questioning the Hawthorne effect质疑”Hawtorne(霍桑)”效应Light work 照明的作用Being watched may not affect behaviour, after all总之，被盯着也许并不会影响人的行为WHEN America’s National Research Council sent two engineers to supervise a series of industrial experiments at a large telephone-parts factory called the Hawthorne Plant near Chicago in 1924, it hoped they would learn how shop-floor lighting affected workers’ productivity. Instead,the studies ended up giving their name to the “Hawthorne effect”, the extremely influential idea that the very act of being experimented upon changes subjects’ behaviour.在1924 年，当派出两名工程师到一个芝加哥附近的大型电话机部件生产厂商——Hawthorne工厂——来指导一系列产业试验时，美国国家研究委员会（NRC）曾希他们能够搞清楚工厂照明是如何对工人生产力产生影响的。
这些研究以一个被他们命名为"Hawthorne" 效应的结论结束，这个在当时十分具有影响力的结论告诉我们，仅仅是被实验就足以使实验客体的行为发生改变。
The idea arose because of the perplexing behaviour of the women who assembled relays and wound coils of wire in the Hawthorne plant. According to accounts of the experiments, their hourly output rose when lighting was increased, but also when it was dimmed. It did not matter what was done; so long as something was changed, productivity rose. An awareness that they were being experimented upon seemed to be enough to alter workers’ behaviour by itself.此结论是从那些组装继电器和盘绕电线圈的产业妇女令人疑惑的行为中得出的。
The Economist explains
The Economist explainsWhy the EU is heading for a showdownTHE European Parliament election results are in and members (MEPs) of the 2014-2019 cohort are ready to take their seats in Brussels and Strasbourg. The next step is for the governments of the EU’s 28 member states to divvy up the union's top jobs, most notably the presidency of the European Commission, its executive arm. Usually, that is the difficult bit: the choice of Commission president is part of a wider bargain including the top economic portfolios on the Commission, the presidencies of the Eurogroup and the European Council, and the job of High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Finding a permutation of appointments that ensures fair representation of different areas of Europe, countries of different sizes and major political groups makes this process a bit like solving a Rubik's cube. Once this bargain is struck, the final stage is relatively simple (at least, it has been in the past): the choice of Commission president goes before the new MEPs for anup-down vote. This time, however, the Parliament looks more likely to foot-stamp than to rubber-stamp. What has happened to make the assem bly a thorn in the side of Europe’s governments?An obvious answer is that lots of anti-EU and anti-establishment candidates did well in last week’s election. According to Open Europe, a London-based think-tank, such insurgents now hold a record 229 of the total 751 seats. But they do not hold the majority, and represent a multifarious jumble of parties ranging from neo-Nazis to the hard left and from moderate Eurosceptics to outright opponents of the EU. Together, the four largest groups (the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens) have 588 seats; that is more than enough to approve—or block—a proposed Commission president. Instead, another long-term trend explains the coming barney: as popular disengagement from the EU has grown, so too has the authority and self-confidence of the Parliament. The stronger it gets, optimists assert, the better the EU can win back the trust of voters. The latest move in this direction came with the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force in December 2009. This requires governments to take the will of the Parliament into account when selecting a Commission president. Seizing the opportunity to increase their influence, most of the main parliamentary groups designated one of their candidates a "Spitzenkandidat" (German for "top candidate"). By voting for a member party of a certain group, the thinking went, voters could give their man (and, in all cases but the Greens, it was a man) a mandate that governments could not refuse.So Brussels is now bracing itself for an almighty bout of arm-wrestling. On the one side are the parliamentarians, particularly the Spitzenkandidaten themselves. Ignoring the will of the people, they argue, would be a travesty for European democracy. Neither Jean-Claude Juncker, whose centre-right European People’s Party came first, nor Martin Schulz, his centre-left counterpart, commands a majority of seats. But both are vigorously asserting their claims to the presidency and cobbling together possible coalitions in the new Parliament. On the other side are the governments, and particularly the British one. David Cameron finds both the idea of Spitzenkandidaten, and the politics of the two frontrunners, unpalatably federalist. Angela Merkel, the German premier, has tentatively backed Mr Juncker, while leaving the door open to non-Spitzenkandidaten alternatives more acceptable to the likes of Mr Cameron. Ms Merkel, Mr Cameron and the 26 other heads of state are meeting for dinner on May 27th to discuss their next steps.How this arm-wrestling goes will answer some weighty questions about the state of contemporary European politics. How much influence does Britain—edging towards the exit door, especially after the result of the election—still wield in Brussels? Does the Parliament now have the ability to strong-arm the governments? Can an effective, centrist "grand coalition" be forged, capable of out-voting the growing extremes of left and right? Can the divergent interests and priorities of euro zone "ins" and "outs" still be reconciled? The new Commission, and its president, are expected to be in place by the autumn. A hot, scratchy summer awaits.。
《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版2009年12月
全国气候：政治搭台，科学唱戏Climate change 气候变化heated debate 激辩Nov 26th 2009From The Economist print editionWhy political orthodoxy must not silence scientific argument为何有了政治说法，还应有科学的辩论？Illustration by Claudio Munoz“WHAT is truth?” That was Pontius Pilate’s answer to Jesus’s assertion that “Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” It sounds suspiciously like the modern argument over climate change.“真理是什么？”耶稣说完“相信真理的人都能听到我”之后，彼拉多随即如此问道。
听起来耳熟？在当代，气候变化引起的争辩就与此有相似之处。
A majority of the world’s climate sc ientists have convinced themselves, and also a lot of laymen, some of whom have political power, that the Earth’s climate is changing; that the change, from humanity’s point of view, is for the worse; and that the cause is human activity, in the form of excessive emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.国际上，大多数气候科学家不但说服了自己，也说服了很多门外汉（其中包括一些有政治影响力的人）--地球的气候正在改变；这种改变，从人道主义角度来看，是消极的；这种改变的始作俑者是人类，是他们通过排放超量的诸如二氧化碳的温室气体而造成的。
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结
1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性（Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
TheEconomist-2014-8-23-WhatChinawants-中英对译
China中国What China wants中国想要什么After a bad couple of centuries, China is itching to regain its place in the world. How should America respond?经历了两个世纪的磨难后，中国正心痒痒想恢复其世界地位。
美国应该怎样回应？Aug 23rd 2014 | From the print edition1 AN ALARMING assumption is taking hold in some quarters of both Beijing and Washington, DC. Within a few years, China’s economy will overtake America’s in size (on a purchasing-power basis, it is already on the cusp of doing so). Its armed forces, though still dwarfed by those of the United States, are growing fast in strength; in any war in East Asia, they would have the home advantage. Thus, some people have concluded, rivalry between China and America has become inevitable and will be followed by confrontation—even conflict.在北京和华盛顿的一些地方一种骇人的猜测盛行。
几年之内，中国经济总量将超过美国（经济总量是根据购买力计算的，中国正处于赶超美国的转折点）；尽管不敌美国，但中国军队实力正在迅速增强，在任何东亚战争中都会拥有主场优势。
The_Economist整理版(《经济学人》原版英文,有4000词汇即可,练习阅读绝好资料)
Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(2-3)Moving marketsShifts in trading patterns are making technology ever more importantAN INVESTOR presses a button, sending 1,000 small “buy” orders to a stock exchange. The exchange's computer system instantly kicks in, but a split second later, 99% of the orders are cancelled. Having found the best price, the investor makes his trade discreetly, leaving no visible trace on the market—all in less time than it takes to blink. His stealth strategy remains intact.Events like this happen many times a day, as floods of orders from active hedge funds and “algorithmic” traders—who use automated programs to buy and sell—rush through the information-technology systems of the world's exchanges. The average transaction size on leading stock exchanges has fallen from about 2,000 shares in the mid-1990s to fewer than 400 today, although total trading volume has soared. But exchanges' systems have to cope with more than just a growing onslaught of “buy” and “sell” messages. Customers want to trade in more complicated ways, combining different types of assets on different exchanges at once. Then, as always, there is regulation. All this is pushing technology further to the fore.Recent embarrassments at the Tokyo Stock Exchange have illustrated what can happen when systems fail to keep up with the times. In just the past few months, the importance of technology has been plain in mergers (those of the New York Stock Exchange and Archipelago, and NASDAQ and INET); collaborations (the decision by the New York Board of Trade to use the Chicago Board of Trade's trading platform); and the creation of off-exchange trading networks (including one unveiled recently by Citigroup).Technology is hardly a new element in financial markets: the advent of electronic trading in the 1980s (first in Europe, later in America) helped to globalise financial markets and drove up trading volumes. But having slowed after the dotcom bubble it is now demanding ever more of exchanges' and intermediaries' attention. Investors can now deal more easily with exchanges or each other, bypassing traditional routes. As customers' demands and bargaining power have increased, so the exchanges have had to ramp up their own systems. “Technology created the monster that has to be ad dressed by more technology,” says Leslie Sutphen of Calyon Financial, a big futures broker.Aite Group, a research firm, reckons that in America alone the securities and investment industry spent $26.4 billion last year on IT (see chart), and may spend $30 billion in 2008. Sell-side firms spend most: J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley each splashed out more than $2 billion in 2004, while asset-management firms such as State Street Global Advisors, Barclays Global Investors and Fidelity Investments spent between $250m and $350m apiece. With brokerage fees for trades whittled down, many have concluded that better technology is one way to cut trading costs and keep customers.Testing all enginesGlobal growth is looking less lopsided than for many yearsLARR Y SUMMERS, a Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, once said that “the world economy is flying on one engine” to describe its excessive reliance on American demand. Now growth seems to be becoming more even at last: Europe and Japan are revving up, as are most emerging economies. As a result, if (or when) the American engine stalls, the global aeroplane will not necessarily crash.For the time being, America's monetary policymakers think that their economy is still running pretty well. This week, as Alan Greenspan handed over the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve to Ben Bernanke, the Fed marked the end of Mr Greenspan's18-year reign by raising interest rates for the 14th consecutive meeting, to 4.5%. The central bankers also gave Mr Bernanke more flexibi lity by softening their policy statement: they said that further tightening “may be needed”rather than “is likely to be needed”, as before.Most analysts expect the Fed to raise rates once or twice more, although the economy slowed sharply in late 2005. Real GDP growth fell to an annual rate of only 1.1% in the fourth quarter, the lowest for three years. Economists were quick to ascribe this disappointing number to special factors, such as Hurricane Katrina and a steep fall in car sales—the consequence of generous incentives that had encouraged buyers to bring purchases forward to the third quarter. The consensus has it that growth will bounce back to an annual rate of over 4% in the first quarter and stay strong thereafter.This sounds too optimistic. A rebound is indeed likely in this quarter, but the rest of the year could prove disappointing, as a weakening housing market starts to weigh on consumer spending. In December sales of existing homes fell markedly and the stock of unsold homes surged. Economists at Goldman Sachs calculate that, after adjusting for seasonal patterns, the median home price has fallen by almost 4% since October. Experience from Britain and Australia shows that even a soft landing for house prices can cause an acute slowdown in consumer spending.American consumers have been the main engine not just of their own economy but of the whole world's. If that engine fails, will the global economy nose-dive? A few years ago, the answer would probably have been yes. But the global economy may now be less vulnerable. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Jim O'Neill, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, argued convincingly that a slowdown in America need not lead to a significant global loss of power.Start with Japan, where industrial output jumped by an annual rate of 11% in the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs has raised its GDP growth forecast for that quarter (the official number is due on February 17th) to an annualized 4.2%. That would pushyear-on-year growth to 3.9%, well ahead of America's 3.1%. The bank predicts average GDP growth in Japan this year of 2.7%. It thinks strong demand within Asia will partly offset an American slowdown.Japan's labour market is also strengthening. In December the ratio of vacancies to job applicants rose to its highest since 1992 (see chart 1). It is easier to find a job now than at any time since the bubble burst in the early 1990s. Stronger hiring by firms is also pushing up wages after years of decline. Workers are enjoying the biggest rise in bonuses for over a d ecade.Pass the parcelOnline shoppers give parcels firms a new lease of lifeTHINGS must be going well in the parcels business. At $2.5m for a 30-second TV commercial during last weekend's Super Bowl, an ad from FedEx was the one many Americans found the most entertaining. It showed a caveman trying to use a pterodactyl for an express delivery, only to watch it be gobbled up on take-off by a tyrannosaur. What did the world do before FedEx, the ad inquired? It might have asked what on earth FedEx did before the arrival of online retailers, which would themselves be sunk without today's fast and efficient delivery firms.Consumers and companies continue to flock in droves to the internet to buy and sell things. FedEx reported its busiest period ever last December, when it handled almost 9m packages in a single day. Online retailers also set new records in America. Excluding travel, some $82 billion was spent last year buying things over the internet, 24% more than in 2004, according to comScore Networks, which tracks consumer behaviour. Online sales of clothing, computer software, toys, and home and garden products were all up by more than 30%. And most of this stuff was either posted or delivered by parcel companies.The boom is global, especially now that more companies are outsourcing production. It is becoming increasingly common for products to be delivered direct from factory to consumer. In one evening just before Christmas, a record 225,000 international express packages were handled by UPS at a giant new air-cargo hub, opened by the American logistics firm at Cologne airport in Germany. “The internet has had a profound effect on our business,” says David Abney, UPS's international president. UPS now handles more than 14m packages worldwide every day.It is striking that postal firms—once seen as obsolete because of the emergence of the internet—are now finding salvation from it. People are paying more bills online and sending more e-mails instead of letters, but most post offices are making up for that thanks to e-commerce. After four years of profits, the United States Postal Service has cleared its $11 billion of debt.Firms such as Amazon and eBay have even helped make Britain's Royal Mail profitable. It needs to be: on January 1st, the Royal Mail lost its 350-year-old monopoly on carrying letters. It will face growing competition from rivals, such as Germany's Deutsche Post, which has expanded vigorously after partial privatisation and now owns DHL, another big international delivery company.Both post offices and express-delivery firms have developed a range of services to help ecommerce and eBay's traders—who listed a colossal 1.9 billion items for sale last year. Among the most popular services are tracking numbers, which allow people to follow the progress of their deliveries on the internet.A question of standardsMore suggestions of bad behaviour by tobacco companies. MaybeANOTHER round has just been fought in the battle between tobacco companies and those who regard them as spawn of the devil. In a paper just published in the Lancet, with the provocative title “Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity”, David Hammond, of Waterloo University in Canada and Neil Collishaw and Cynthia Callard, two members of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, a lobby group, criticise the behaviour of British American Tobacco (BAT). They say the firm considered manipulating some of its products in order to make them low-tar in the eyes of officialdom while they actually delivered high tar and nicotine levels to smokers.It was and is no secret, as BAT points out, that people smoke low-tar cigarettes differently from high-tar ones. The reason is that they want a decent dose of the nicotine which tobacco smoke contains. They therefore pull a larger volume of air through the cigarette when they draw on a low-tar rather than a high-tar variety. The extra volume makes up for the lower concentration of the drug.But a burning cigarette is a complex thing, and that extra volume has some unexpected consequences. In particular, a bigger draw is generally a faster draw. That pulls a higher proportion of the air inhaled through the burning tobacco, rather than through the paper sides of the cigarette. This, in turn, means more smoke per unit volume, and thus more tar and nicotine. The nature of the nicotine may change, too, with more of it being in a form that is easy for the body to absorb.According to Dr Hammond and his colleagues, a series of studies conducted by BAT's researchers between 1972 and 1994 quantified much of this. The standardised way of analysing cigarette smoke, as laid down by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which regulates everything from computer code to greenhouse gases, uses a machine to make 35-millilitre puffs, drawn for two seconds once a minute. The firm's researchers, by contrast, found that real smokers draw 50-70ml per puff, and do so twice a minute. Dr Hammonds's conclusion is drawn from the huge body of documents disgorged by the tobacco industry as part of various legal settlements that have taken place in the past few years, mainly as a result of disputes with the authorities in the United States.Dr Hammond suggests, however, the firm went beyond merely investigating how people smoked. A series of internal documents from the late 1970s and early 1980s shows that BAT at least thought about applying this knowledge to cigarette design.A research report from 1979 puts it thus: “There are three major design featur es which can be used either individually or in combination to manipulate delivery levels; filtration, paper permeability, and filter-tip ventilation.” A conference paper from 1983 says, “The challenge would be to reduce the mainstream nicotine determined by standard smoking-machine measurement while increasing the amount that would actually be absorbed by the smoker”. Another conference paper, from 1984, says: “We should strive to achieve this effect without appearing to have a cigarette that cheats the league table. Ideally it should appear to be no different from a normal cigarette...It should also be capable of delivering up to 100% more than its machine delivery.”Thanks to the banksCollege students learn more about market ratesA GOOD education may be priceless, but in America it is far from cheap—and it is not getting any cheaper. On February 1st Congress narrowly passed the Deficit Reduction Act, which aims to slim America's bulging budget deficit by, among other things, lopping $12.7 billion off the federal student-loan programme. Interest rates on student loans will rise while subsidies fall.Family incomes, grant aid and federal loans have all failed to keep pace with the growth in the cost of tuition. “The funding gap between what students can afford and what higher education costs has got wider and wider,” says Claire Mezzanotte of Fitch, a ratings agency. Lenders are rushing to bridge the gap with “private” student loans—loans that are free of government subsidies and guarantees.Virtually non-existent ten years ago, private student loans in the 2004-05 school year amounted to $13.8 billion—a compound annual growth rate of almost 30%—and they are expected to double in the next three years. According to the College Board, an association of schools and colleges, private student loans now make up nearly 22% of the volume of federal student loans, up from a mere 5% in 1994-95.The growth shows little sign of slowing. Education costs continue to climb while pressure on Congress to pare down the budget deficit means federal aid will, at best, stay at current levels. Meanwhile, the number of students attending colleges and tradeschools is expected to soar as the children of post-war baby-boomers continue matriculating.Private student loans are popular with lenders because they are profitable. Lenders charge market rates for the loans (the rates on federal student loans are capped) before adding up-front fees, which can themselves be around 6-7% of the loan. Sallie Mae, a student-loan company and by far the biggest dispenser of private student loans, disclosed in its most recent report that the average spread on its private student lending was 4.75%, more than three times the 1.31% it made on its federally backed loans.All of this is good news when lenders are hungry for new areas of growth in the face of a cooling mortgage market. Private student loans, says Matthew Snowling of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, an investment bank, are probably “the fastest-growing segment of consumer finance—and by far the most profitable one—at a time when finding asset growth is challenging.” Last December J.P. Morgan, which already had a sizeable education-finance unit, snapped up Collegiate Funding Services, a Virginia-based provider of federal and private student loans. Companies from Bank of America to GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, have jumped in. Other consumer-finance companies, such as Capital One, are whispered to be eyeing the market.In the beginning...How life on Earth got going is still mysterious, but not for want of ideasNEVER make forecasts, especially about the future. Samuel Goldwyn's wise advice is well illustrated by a pair of scientific papers published in 1953. Both were thought by their authors to be milestones on the path to the secret of life, but only one has so far amounted to much, and it was not the one that caught the public imagination at the time.James Watson and Francis Crick, who wrote “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid”, have become as famous as rock stars for asking how life works and thereby starting a line of inquiry that led to the Human Genome Project. Stanley Miller, by contrast, though lauded by his peers, languishes in obscurity as far as the wider world is concerned. Yet when it appeared, “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions” was expected to begin a scientific process that would solve a problem in some ways more profound than how life works at the moment—namely how it got going in the first place on the surface of a sterile rock 150m km from a small, unregarded yellow star.Dr Miller was the first to address this question experimentally. Inspired by one of Charles Darwin's ideas, that the ingredients of life might have formed by chemical reactions in a “warm, little pond”, he mixed the gases then thought to have formed the atmosphere of the primitive Earth— methane, ammonia and hydrogen—in a flask half-full of boiling water, and passed electric sparks, mimicking lightning, through them for several days to see what would happen. What happened, as the name of the paper suggests, was amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The origin of life then seemed within grasp. But it has eluded researchers ever since. They are still looking, though, and this week several of them met at the Royal Society, in London, to review progress.The origin question is really three sub-questions. One is, where did the raw materials for life come from? That is what Dr Miller was asking. The second is, how did those raw materials spontaneously assemble themselves into the first object to which the term “alive” might reasonably be applied? The third is, how, having once come into existence, did it survive conditions in the early solar system?The first question was addressed by Patrick Thaddeus, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, and Max Bernstein, who works at the Ames laboratory, in California, part of America's space agency, NASA. As Dr Bernstein succinctly put it, the chemical raw materials for life, in the form of simple compounds that could then be assembled into more complex biomolecules, could come from above, below or beyond.Full to burstingRising levels of carbon dioxide will dump even more water into the oceansTHE lungs of the planet, namely green-leafed plants that breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, also put water vapour into the atmosphere. Just as people lose water through breathing (think of the misted mirror used to check for vital signs), so, too, do plants. The question is, what effect will rising concentrations of carbon dioxide have on this? The answer, published in this week's Nature by Nicola Gedney of Britain's Meteorological Office and her colleagues, would appear to be, less water in the atmosphere and more in the oceans.Measurements of the volume of water that rivers return to the oceans show that, around the world, rivers have become fuller over the past century. In theory, there are many reasons why this could be so, but some have already been discounted. Research has established, for example, that it is not, overall, raining—or snowing, hailing or sleeting—any more than it used to. But there are other possibilities. One concerns changes in land use, such as deforestation and urbanisation. The soil in rural areas soaks up the rain and trees breathe it back into the atmosphere, whereas the concrete in urban areas transfers rainwater into drains and hence into rivers. Another possibility is “solar dimming”, in which aerosol particles create a hazy atmosphere that holds less water. And then there is the direct effect of carbon dioxide on plant transpiration.Dr Gedney used a statistical technique called “optimal fingerprinting” or “detection and attribution” to identify which of these four factors matter. Her team carried out five simulations of river flow in the 20th century. In the first of these they allowed all four explanations to vary: rainfall, haze, atmospheric carbon dioxide and land use. They then held one of them constant in each of the next four simulations. By comparing the outcome of each of these with the first simulation, the team gained a sense of its part in the overall picture. So, for example, they inferred the role of land use by deducting the simulation in which it was fixed from the simulation in which it varied.As with any statistical analysis, the results are only as good as the model, the experimental design and the data. Dr Gedney and her colleagues acknowledge that their model does not fully take into account the use of water to irrigate crops—particularly important in Asia and Europe—nor the question of urban growth. They argue, however, that these aspects, taken together, would remove water from rivers, which makes their conclusion all the more striking. And it is this: fuller rivers cannot be explained by more rainfall or haze or changes in land use, but they can be explained by higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.The mechanism is straightforward. A plant breathes through small holes, called stomata, found in its leaves. Plants take in carbon dioxide, and when the atmosphere is relatively rich in this gas, less effort is needed. The stomata stay closed for longer, and less water is lost to the atmosphere. This means that the plant doesn't need to draw as much moisture from the soil. The unused water flows into rivers.The great tech buy-out boomWill the enthusiasm of private-equity firms for investing in technology and telecoms end in tears, again?PRIME COMPUTERS, Rhythm NetConnections and XO Communications—all names to drain the blood from the face of a private-equity investor. Or so it was until recently, when investing in technology and telecoms suddenly became all the rage for private-equity companies. These investment firms—labelled “locusts” by unfriendly Europeans—generally make their money by buying big controlling stakes in companies, improving their efficiency, and then selling them on.In the late 1980s, Prime Computers became private equity's first great “tech wreck”, humiliating investors who thought they understood the technology business and could nurture the firm back to health away from the shorttermist pressures of the public stockmarket. After Prime failed, private-equity firms spent the best part of a decade focusing solely on the old economy. Only in the late 1990s, when the new economy was all the rage, did they pluck up the courage to return to tech and telecoms—a decision some of the grandest names in the industry were soon to regret. Hicks, Muse, Furst and Tate (Rhythm NetConnections) and Forstmann Little (XO) have both been shadows of their old selves since losing fortunes on telecoms.Now, investing in technology and telecoms is once again one of the hottest areas in the super-heated privateequity market. The multi-billion-dollar question is: will this round of investment end any less horribly than the previous two?Last month TDC, a Danish phone company, was finally acquired after a bid of $15.3 billion by a consortium including European giants Permira Advisors and Apax Partners, and American veterans Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners. In the past five years, there has been private-equity involvement in about 40% of telecoms deals in Europe.On the other side of the Atlantic, the action has focused mainly on technology, rather than telecoms. Last summer, a consortium including Silver Lake Partners and KKR completed the biggest private-equity tech deal to date, buying SunGard Data Systems, a financial-technology firm, for $11.3 billion. Since then the deals have continued to flow. The $1.2 billion acquisition of Serena Software by Silver Lake is due to be completed by the end of March. Blackstone and others are said to be circling two IT outsourcing firms—Computer Sciences and ACS.There are reasons to hope that this time will be different. In telecoms, for instance, private-equity firms are mostly trying to buy established firms—often former national monopolists—that, while they might be threatened by internet telephony, have strong cash flow, physical assets and plenty of scope to improve the quality of management. These are the sorts of characteristicsprivate-equity investors thrive on. By contrast, the disastrous investments in the late 1990s were in new telecoms firms that were building their operations.In technology, private-equity interest has grown as the industry has matured, and cash-flow and profitability have become more predictable. Until recently, it has been the norm for tech firms to plough back all their profit and cashflow into investing in the business. They have carried no debt and paid no dividends. Now private-equity firms see the opportunity to pursue their classic strategy of buying firms by borrowing against cashflow, and then returning money to shareholders. Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake thinks the tech sector is now in a similar condition to the old economy in America in the early 1980s, which is when private equity first started to have an impact, by restructuring and consolidating many industries.How to live for everThe latest from the wacky world of anti-senescence therapyDEATH is a fact of life—at least it has been so far. Humans grow old. From early adulthood, performance starts to wane. Muscles become progressively weaker, cognition fails. But the point at which age turns to ill health and, ultimately, death is shifting—that is, people are remaining healthier for longer. And that raises the question of how death might be postponed, and whether it might be postponed indefinitely.Humans are certainly living longer. An American child born in 1970 could expect to live 70.8 years. By 2000, that had increased to 77 years. Moreover, an adult still alive at the age of 75 in 2002 could expect a further 11.5 years of life.Much of this change has been the result of improved nutrition and better medicine. But to experience a healthy old age also involves maintaining physical and mental function. Age-related non-pathological changes in the brain, muscles, joints, immune system, lungs and heart must be minimised. These changes are called “senescence”.Research shows that exercise can help to maintain physical function late in life and that exercising one's brain can limit the progression of senescence. Other work—on the effects of caloric restriction, consuming red wine and altering genes in yeast, mice and nematodes—has shown promise in slowing senescence.The approach advocated by Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge, in England, and presented at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is rather more radical. As an engineer, he favours intervening directly to repair the changes in the body that are caused by ageing. This is an approach he dubs “strategies for engineered negligible senescence”. In other words, if ageing humans can be patched up for 30 years, he argues, science will have developed sufficiently to make further repairs more effective, postponing death indefinitely.Dr de Grey's ideas, which are informed by literature surveys rather than experimental work, have been greeted with scorn by those working at developing such repair kits. Steven Austad, a gerontologist based at the University of Texas, warns that such therapies are many years away and may never arrive at all. There are also the side effects to consider. While mice kept onlow-calorie diets live longer than their fatter friends, the skinny mice are less fertile and are sometimes sterile. Humans wishing both to prolong their lives and to procreate might thus wish to wait until their child-bearing years were behind them before embarking on such a diet, although, by then, relatively more age-related damage will have accumulated.No one knows exactly why a low-calorie diet extends the life of mice, but some researchers think it is linked to the rate at which cells divide. There is a maximum number of times that a human cell can divide (roughly 50) before it dies. This is because the ends of chromosomes, structures called telomeres, shorten each time the cell divides. Eventually, there is not enough left for any further division.Cell biologists led by Judith Campisi at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California doubt that every cell has this dividing limit, and believe that it could be only those cells that have stopped dividing that cause ageing. They are devising an experiment to create a mouse in which senescent cells—those that no longer divide—are prevented from accumulating. They plan to activate a gene in the mouse that will selectively eliminate senescent cells. Such a mouse could demonstrate whether it is。
2024年考研英语一试题及答案：英语一Text 1(21-25题)
2024年考研英语一试题及答案：英语一Text 1（21-25题）业务课名称：英语考生须知：1.答案必须写在答题纸上，写在其他纸上无效。
2.答题时必须使用蓝、黑色墨水笔或圆珠笔做答，用其他答题不给分，不得使用涂改液。
英语一Text 1Nearly 2,000 years ago, as the Romans began to pull out of Scotland, they left behind a curious treasure: 10 tons of nails, nearly a million of them. The nail hoard was discovered in 1960 in a four-meter-deep pit covered by two meters of gravel.Why had the Romans buried a million nails? The likely explanation is that the withdrawal was rushed, and they didn't want the local Caledonians getting their hands on 10 tons of weapons-grade iron. The Romans buried the nails so deep that they would not be discovered for almost two millennia.Later civilizations would value the skilled blacksmith's labor in a nail even more thanthe raw material. As Roma Agrawal explains in her new delightful book "Nuts and Bolts," early 17th-century Virginians would sometimes burn down their homes if they were planning to relocate. This was an attempt to recover the valuable nails, which could be reused after sifting the ashes.The price of nails fell by 90% between the late 1700s and mid-1900s, as economist Daniel Sidel points out in a research paper. According to Sidel, although the falling price of nails was driven partly by cheaper iron and cheaper energy, most of the credit goes to nail manufacturers who simply found more efficient ways to turn steel into nails.Nails themselves have changed over the years, but Sidel studied them because they haven't changed much.21、Romans buried the nails probably for the sake ofA) saving them for future useB) keeping them from rustingC) letting them grow in valueD) hiding them from locals22、The example of early 17th-century Virginians is used toA) highlight the thriftiness of early American colonistsB) illustrate the high status of blacksmiths in that periodC) contrast the attitudes of different civilizations toward nailsD) show the preciousness of nail-making technology at that time23、What played the major role in lowering the price of nails after the late 1700s?A) Increased productivityB) Wider use of new energiesC) Fierce market competitionD) Reduced cost of raw material24、It can be learned from Paragraph 5 that nailsA) have undergone many technological improvementsB) have remained basically the same since Roman timesC) are less studied than other everyday productsD) are one of the world's most significant inventions25、Which of the following best summarizes the last two paragraphs?A) Cheap technologies bring about revolutionary change.B) Technological innovation is integral to economic success.C) Technology defines people's understanding of the world.D) Sophisticated technology developed from small inventions.21-25题目答案DDABA。
The economist赏析帖(1998-2009)75
1998-2009[2009.08.06] The sun also rises 日升如故，阴霾潜伏 (1)[2009.08.06] Knotting the purse-strings 捂紧钱袋子 (4)[2009.01.22] How to play chicken and lose 如何玩火自焚 (5)[2006.10.05]The search for talent寻找人才 (10)[2006.08.24] Who killed the newspaper? (13)[2006.08.21] Water, water everywhere? (16)[2006.08.10] But did they buy their own furniture? (18)[2006.08.03] Something new新气象 (21)[2006.07.27] The future of globalisation全球化前景 (22)[2006.06.21] A warm embrace (25)[2006.04.06] The state is looking after you 国家在照管你 (27)[2006.02.09] Pass the parcel (30)[2006.02.09] [Global Agenda] Food firms and fat-fighters (32)[2005.12.01] Hey, big-spender 嘿，大把花钱的人 (36)[2006.01.26]'Tis the season 一年之计在于春 (38)[2006.01.12] Pets in China: Friend or food? 朋友还是食物？ (39)[2005.12.20] Churches as businesses: Jesus, CEO 教会就是生意 (40)[2004.10.21] Girl power (47)[2004.08.19] A great wall of waste 用垃圾铸造我们新的长城 (49)[2004.05.06] This round is mine 这回该我了 (57)[2004.01.29] Jammed 杯水车薪 (58)[2004.01.15] A grand but costly vision宏伟但昂贵的规划 (60)[2003.12.18] The nanny state (64)[2003.12.11]The shape of things to come未来的体型 (66)[2003.10.23]The right to know 知情权 (69)[2003.05.03]Hot and cold running money (71)[2009.08.06] The sun also rises 日升如故，阴霾潜伏Signs of economic cheer经济复苏的前奏The sun also rises日升如故，阴霾潜伏Aug 6th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DCFrom The Economist print editionThe economy may be pulling out of recession but unemployment is still surprisingly high. Celebrations should be delayed虽然经济渐别衰退，但是面对居高不下的失业率，要想庆祝还为时尚早WHEN Barack Obama visited Elkhart, Indiana, in early February, a few weeks after his inauguration, it was a sombre affair. In the previous 12 months the area‟s unemployment rate had more than tripled to 18.3 %. The president pleaded for the passage of a massive fiscal sti mulus, insisting that “doing nothing is not an option.” By the time he returned to Elkhart on August 5th he was quite a bit sunnier. Local factories are “coming back to life”, he proclaimed. A few days earlier he had declared the economy to have done “measurably better” than expected.今年二月初，就职数周后的奥巴马总统来到印第安纳州小城埃尔克哈特（Elkhart，位于美国印第安纳州北部，埃尔克哈特县县治），对其进行考察。
经济管理学及财务知识分析人双语版
The business of polo马球业Cloney ponies克隆赛马How technology could transform an ancient sport技术如何改变一项古老运动Jan 5th 2013 | BUENOS AIRES | from the print editionIMAGINE a football match pitting 11 clones of Wayne Rooney against 11 more clones of the same spud-faced Manchester United striker. Even avid Wayne-watchers might find it a bit dull. But polo fans may one day be treated to something similar. No one is proposing to clone the stallions who wield the mallets, of course. But the stallions they sit on are another matter. Outstanding polo horses are hard to find and horribly expensive. Each world-class rider may have dozens, the best of which may cost more than $200,000 each.设想一场足球比赛，11位韦恩•鲁尼（Wayne Rooney）的克隆人对阵另外11位与这位曼联前锋长着同一张土豆脸的克隆人，就算韦恩的狂热观众也会觉得有点无趣。
但有朝一日，马球迷会遇到类似的事。
当然，无人建议克隆那些挥动长柄球棍、像种马一般健美的男子。
不过，他们胯下的种马则另当别论了。
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结
1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性（Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结
1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性（Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
The Economist 《经济学人》常用词汇总结
1、绝对优势（Absolute advantage）如果一个国家用一单位资源生产的某种产品比另一个国家多，那么，这个国家在这种产品的生产上与另一国相比就具有绝对优势。
2、逆向选择（Adverse choice）在此状况下，保险公司发现它们的客户中有太大的一部分来自高风险群体。
3、选择成本（Alternative cost）如果以最好的另一种方式使用的某种资源，它所能生产的价值就是选择成本，也可以称之为机会成本。
4、需求的弧弹性（Arc elasticity of demand）如果P1和Q1分别是价格和需求量的初始值，P2 和Q2 为第二组值，那么，弧弹性就等于-（Q1-Q2）（P1＋P2）/（P1-P2）（Q1＋Q2）5、非对称的信息（Asymmetric information）在某些市场中，每个参与者拥有的信息并不相同。
例如，在旧车市场上，有关旧车质量的信息，卖者通常要比潜在的买者知道得多。
6、平均成本（Average cost）平均成本是总成本除以产量。
也称为平均总成本。
7、平均固定成本( Average fixed cost）平均固定成本是总固定成本除以产量。
8、平均产品（Average product）平均产品是总产量除以投入品的数量。
9、平均可变成本（Average variable cost）平均可变成本是总可变成本除以产量。
10、投资的β(Beta）β度量的是与投资相联的不可分散的风险。
对于一种股票而言，它表示所有现行股票的收益发生变化时，一种股票的收益会如何敏感地变化。
11、债券收益(Bond yield）债券收益是债券所获得的利率。
12、收支平衡图（Break－even chart）收支平衡图表示一种产品所出售的总数量改变时总收益和总成本是如何变化的。
收支平衡点是为避免损失而必须卖出的最小数量。
13、预算线(Budget line）预算线表示消费者所能购买的商品X和商品Y的数量的全部组合。
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The Economist explains
Why China is creating a new "World Bank" for Asia
Nov 11th 2014, 23:50 by S.R. | SHANGHAI
TO THE alphabet soup of international development banks (ADB, AfDB, CAF, EBRD, IADB), add one more set of initials: AIIB, or for the uninitiated, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. On October 24th, representatives from 21 Asian nations (pictured above) signed an agreement to establish the AIIB, which, as its name suggests, will lend money to build roads, mobile phone towers and other forms of infrastructure in poorer parts of Asia. China spearheaded the bank and hopes to formally launch it by the end of next year. More money for critical projects might seem unambiguously good, but the AIIB has stoked controversy because Asia already has a multilateral lender, the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Why is China creating a new development bank for Asia?
China’s official answer is that Asia has a massive infrastructure funding gap. The ADB has pegged the hole at some $8 trillion between 2010 and 2020. Existing institutions cannot hope to fill it: the ADB has a capital base (money both paid-in and pledged by member nations) of just over $160 billion and the World Bank has $223 billion. The AIIB will start with $50 billion in capital—hardly enough for what is needed but still a helpful boost. Moreover, while ADB and World Bank loans support everything from environmental protection to gender equality, the AIIB will concentrate its firepower on infrastructure. Officially at least, ADB and World Bank officials have extended a cautious welcome to the new China-led bank, saying they see room for collaboration.
Behind the scenes, though, the Chinese initiative has set off a heated diplomatic battle. America has lobbied allies not to join the AIIB, while Jin Liqun, the Chinese official who will head the bank, has shuttled between countries to persuade them to sign up. At the bank’s inauguration ceremony, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea were conspicuously absent. In public, the concern cited by America and some of the hold-outs has been a lack of clarity about AIIB’s governance. Critics warn that the China-led bank may fail to live up to the environmental, labour and procurement standards that are essential to the mission of development lenders. However, China has insisted that AIIB will be rigorous in adopting the best practices of institutions such as the World Bank. Given that the bank will be placed under such a close microscope, there is good reason to believe China on this.
But the real, unstated tension stems from a deeper shift: China will use the new bank to expand its influence at the expense of America and Japan, Asia's established powers. China’s decision to fund a new multilateral bank rather than give more to existing ones reflects its exasperation with the glacial pace of global economic governance reform. The same motivation lies behind the New Development Bank established by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Although China is the biggest economy in Asia, the ADB is dom inated by Japan; Japan’s voting share is more than twice China’s and the bank’s president has always been Japanese. Reforms to give China a little more say at the International Monetary Fund have been delayed for years, and even if they go through America will still retain far more power. China is, understandably, impatient for change. It is therefore taking matters into its own hands.。