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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 U.S. Department of Agriculture played an important role in agricultural developments by _____.
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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. Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky adopted statistical controls to _____.
When I begin planning to move to Auckland to study, my mother was worried about a lack of jobs and cultural differences. Ignoring these 1 , I got there in July 2010. 2 I arrived, I realized the importance of getting a job 3 my living experience. Determined to do this 4 , I spent several weeks going door-to-door for a job, but found 5 response (回应).One afternoon, I walked into a building to ask 6 there were any job opportunities. The people there advised me not to continue my job search in that 7 . As I was about to 8 , a man who had been listening approached me and asked me to wait outside 9 . Nearly ten minutes later, he 10 . He asked me about my plans and encouraged me to stay 11 . Then he offered to take me to Royal Oak to 12 a job.I was a little surprised, but had a 13 feeling about him. Along the way, I realized that I had 14 resumes. Seeing this, the man 15 at his business partner"s office to make me fifteen 16 copies. He also gave me some 17 on dressing and speaking. I handed out my resumes and went home feeling very 18 . The following day, I received a 19 from a store in Royal Oak offering me a job.It seems that the world always 20 to you when you need it. And this time, it was a complete stranger who turned out to be a real blessing. 4（）
I suppose that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention, and especially if it"s given from the heart. When people are talking, there"s no need to do anything but receive them. Listen to what they"re saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don"t value ourselves or our love enough to know this. It has taken me a long time to believe in the power of simple saying "I"m so sorry." when someone is in pain.One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story, people often interrupted to tell her that they once had something just like that happening to her. Subtly, her pain became a story about them. Eventually she stopped talking to most people. We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know we care.I have ever learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old clays I used to reach for the handkerchiefs, until I realized that passing a person a handkerchief may be just another way to shut him down, to take them out of their experience of sadness. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.This simple thing has not been that easy to learn. It certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young. I thought people listened only because they were too shy to speak or did not know the answer. But now I know that a loving silence often has far more power to heal than the kindest words. Which of the following might be the author"s opinion about communication（）
Louis Armstrong sang, "When you"re smiling, the whole world smiles with you." Romantics everywhere may be surprised to learn that psychological research has proven this sentiment to be true—merely seeing a smile (or a frown, for that matter) will activate the muscles in our face that make that expression, even if we are unaware of it. Now, according to a new study inPsychological Science, simply reading certain words may also have the same effect. Psychologists Francesco Foroni from VU University Amsterdam and Gun R.Semin from the University of Utrecht conducted two experiments to see if emotion language has an influence on facial muscle activity. In the first experiment, a group of students read a series of emotion verbs (e.g., "to smile," "to cry") and adjectives (e.g., "funny," "frustrating") on a monitor, while the activity of their zygomatic major (the muscle responsible for smiles) and corrugator supercilii (which causes frowns) muscles were measured. The results showed that reading action verbs activated the corresponding muscles. For example, "to laugh" resulted in activation of the zygomatic major muscle, but did not cause any response in the muscles responsible for frowning. Interestingly, when presented with the emotion adjectives like "funny" or "frustrating" the volunteers demonstrated much lower muscle activation compared to their reactions to emotion verbs. The researchers note that muscle activity is "induced in the reader when reading verbs representing facial expressions of emotion." Can this natural bodily reaction affect our judgments In another experiment, volunteers watched a series of cartoons and were unconsciously shown emotion verbs and adjectives after each one. They were then asked to rate how funny they thought the cartoons were. Half of the participants held a pen with their lips, to prevent them from smiling, while the remaining participants did not have their muscle movement blocked. The results reveal that even when emotion verbs are presented unconsciously, they are able to influence judgment—volunteers found cartoons to be funnier when they were preceded by smiling verbs than if they were preceded by frowning-related verbs. However, this effect only occurred in the volunteers who were able to smile—volunteers who had muscle movement blocked did not show this relationship between emotion verbs and how funny they judged the cartoons as being.The results of these experiments reveal that simply reading emotion verbs activates specific facial muscles and can influence judgments we make. The researchers note these findings suggest that "language is not merely symbolic, but also somatic," and they conclude that "these experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research." What can we infer from the text
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