题目内容
One of the least appreciated but most remarkable developments of the past 60 years is the extraordinary growth of American agriculture. Farming now accounts for about one tenth of the gross domestic product yet employs less than 1 percent of all workers. It has accomplished this feat through exceptionally high growth in productivity, which has kept prices of food low and therebycontributed to rising standards of living. Furthermore, the exportable surplus has kept the trade deficit from reaching unsupportable levels. Agriculture not only has one of the highest rates of productivity growth of all industries, but this growth appears to have accelerated during the past two decades. Over the period 1948 to 2004, total farm production went up by 166 percent. The land used for farming dropped by one quarter over the 56-year period, and investment in heavy farm equipment and other capital expenditures decreased by 12 percent. Several developments drove these changes, beginning with the replacement of the remaining horses by tractors immediately after World War II and with the expanding use of fertilizers and pesticides. Later came the adoption of hybrid seeds, genetic engineering of plants and improved livestock breeding.A key element was the U.S. Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) extension service. Operating through land-grant universities and other organizations, it educated farmers on biotechnology, pest management and conservation. For many years, critics have claimed that modern agriculture is not sustainable, one of the major assertions being that it encourages erosion, which will eventually wash away most of the topsoil Lost topsoil, the argument goes, is virtually irreplaceable because it takes up to 300 years for one inch of soil to form. But a detailed study of two large areas, the Southern Piedmont and the Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills, showed that based on 1982 data, soil loss has dropped sharply from the very high rates of the 1930s. The study attributed the decrease in soil erosion to the USDA, which urged farmers after World War Ⅱ to adopt conservation practices such as strip cropping, whereby alternating rows are planted, and leaving plant residues in the fields year-round to inhibit water runoff. Despite being a robust contributor to the U.S. economy, modem agriculture is not without a dark side. Runoff of fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones degrade the environment and can upset the local ecology. If not grown properly, genetically modified crops could spread their DNA to conventional species. The growth of American agriculture has been mainly stimulated by _____.
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在引入外资的同时，中资保险公司纷纷加快了改革的步伐，2003年以来，______三家公司相继在境外上市，实现了我国保险业境外上市零的突破。
Anecdotal evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link. As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, WilliamMaddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so. A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a petrol station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach a deadlock because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal. To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity. Merely travelling abroad, however, was not enough. You do have to live there. Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway. In the last sentence of Paragraph 5, the author means that_____.
One of the least appreciated but most remarkable developments of the past 60 years is the extraordinary growth of American agriculture. Farming now accounts for about one tenth of the gross domestic product yet employs less than 1 percent of all workers. It has accomplished this feat through exceptionally high growth in productivity, which has kept prices of food low and therebycontributed to rising standards of living. Furthermore, the exportable surplus has kept the trade deficit from reaching unsupportable levels. Agriculture not only has one of the highest rates of productivity growth of all industries, but this growth appears to have accelerated during the past two decades. Over the period 1948 to 2004, total farm production went up by 166 percent. The land used for farming dropped by one quarter over the 56-year period, and investment in heavy farm equipment and other capital expenditures decreased by 12 percent. Several developments drove these changes, beginning with the replacement of the remaining horses by tractors immediately after World War II and with the expanding use of fertilizers and pesticides. Later came the adoption of hybrid seeds, genetic engineering of plants and improved livestock breeding.A key element was the U.S. Department of Agriculture"s (USDA) extension service. Operating through land-grant universities and other organizations, it educated farmers on biotechnology, pest management and conservation. For many years, critics have claimed that modern agriculture is not sustainable, one of the major assertions being that it encourages erosion, which will eventually wash away most of the topsoil Lost topsoil, the argument goes, is virtually irreplaceable because it takes up to 300 years for one inch of soil to form. But a detailed study of two large areas, the Southern Piedmont and the Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills, showed that based on 1982 data, soil loss has dropped sharply from the very high rates of the 1930s. The study attributed the decrease in soil erosion to the USDA, which urged farmers after World War Ⅱ to adopt conservation practices such as strip cropping, whereby alternating rows are planted, and leaving plant residues in the fields year-round to inhibit water runoff. Despite being a robust contributor to the U.S. economy, modem agriculture is not without a dark side. Runoff of fertilizers, antibiotics and hormones degrade the environment and can upset the local ecology. If not grown properly, genetically modified crops could spread their DNA to conventional species. Modern agriculture is criticized as unsustainable because _____.
______，我国保险业加入世贸组织的过渡期已结束，标志着我国保险业进入全面对外开放的新时期。至此，外资财产保险公司可以经营除法定保险业务以外的全部非寿险业务，寿险经营领域也进一步对外开放。
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