In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fighters. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I"ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids" college background as a prize demonstrating how well we"ve raised them. But we can"t acknowledge that our obsession(痴迷)is more about us than them. So we"ve contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn"t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford. We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won"t be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria(歇斯底里)is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible— and mostly wrong. We haven"t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don"t systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures — professors" feedback and the number of essay exams — selective schools do slightly worse. By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates" lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2-4% for every 100-point increase in a school"s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke(偶然). A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools. Kids count more than their college. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it"s not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. The reason: so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college is not life only competition. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees of prestigious universities didn"t. So, parents lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that, other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints. What does Krueger study tell us
A. Getting into Ph.D. programs may be more competitive than getting into college.
B. Degrees of prestigious universities do not guarantee entry to graduate programs.
C. Graduates from prestigious universities do not care much about their GRE scores.
D. Connections built in prestigious universities may be sustained long after graduation.
Cells cannot remain alive outside certain limits of temperature, and much narrower limits mark the boundaries of effective functioning. Enzyme(酶)systems of mammals and birds are most efficient only within a narrow range around 37 °C; a departure of a few degrees from this value seriously impairs their functioning. Even though cells can survive wider fluctuations, the integrated actions of bodily systems are impaired. Other animals have a wider tolerance for changes of bodily temperature. For centuries it has been recognized that mammals and birds differ form other animals in the way they regulate body temperatures. Ways of characterizing the difference have become more accurate and meaningful over time, but popular terminology still reflects the old division into warm blooded and cold blooded species; warm blooded include mammals and birds, whereas all over creatures were considered cold blooded. As more species were studied, it became evident that this classification was inadequate. A fence lizard or a desert iguana usually has a body temperature only a degree or two below than of humans and so is not cold. Therefore the next distinction was made between animas that maintain a constant body temperature, called homotherms(同温动物), and those whose body temperature varies with their environment, called poikilotherms(变温动物). But this classification also proved inadequate, because among mammals there are many that vary their body temperatures during hibernation. Furthermore, many invertebrates(无脊椎动物)that live in the depths of the ocean never experience a change in the chill of the deep water, and their body temperatures remain constant. The current distinction is between animals whose body temperature is regulated chiefly by internal metabolic processes and those whose temperature is regulated by, and who get most of their heat from the environment. The former are called endotherms(恒温动物), and the latter are called ectotherms(外温动物). Most ectotherms do regulate their body temperature, and they do so mainly by locomoting to favorable sites or by changing their exposure to external sources of heat. Endotherms(mainly mammals and birds)also regulate their temperature by choosing favorable environment, but primarily they regulate their temperatures by making a variety of internal adjustments. According to the passage, the chief way in which ectotherms regulate their temperatur is by______.
A. seeking out appropriate locations
B. hibernating part of the year
C. staying in deep water
D. triggering certain metabolic processes
In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fighters. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I"ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids" college background as a prize demonstrating how well we"ve raised them. But we can"t acknowledge that our obsession(痴迷)is more about us than them. So we"ve contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn"t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford. We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won"t be enough prizes to go around. Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria(歇斯底里)is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible— and mostly wrong. We haven"t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don"t systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures — professors" feedback and the number of essay exams — selective schools do slightly worse. By some studies, selective schools do enhance their graduates" lifetime earnings. The gain is reckoned at 2-4% for every 100-point increase in a school"s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical fluke(偶然). A well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools. Kids count more than their college. Getting into Yale may signify intelligence, talent and ambition. But it"s not the only indicator and, paradoxically, its significance is declining. The reason: so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college is not life only competition. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph.D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees of prestigious universities didn"t. So, parents lighten up. The stakes have been vastly exaggerated up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a competitive society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for disappointment. One study found that, other things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappoints. Why do parents urge their children to apply to more school than ever
A. They want to increase their children chances of entering a prestigious college.
B. They hope their children can enter a university that offers attractive scholarships.
C. Their children will have a wider choice of which college to go to.
D. Elite universities now enroll fewer students than they used to.
This week some top scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, gave their vision of how the world will look in 2056, from gas-powered cars to extraordinary health advances, John Ingham reports on what the world"s finest minds believe our futures will be. For those of us lucky enough to live that long, 2056 will be a world of almost perpetual youth, where obesity is a remote memory and robots become our companions. We will be rubbing shoulders with aliens and colonizing outer space. Better still, our descendants might at last live in a world at peace with itself. Will we really, as today"s scientists claim, be able to live for ever or at least cheat the ageing process so that the average person lives to 150 Of course, all these predictions come with a scientific health warning. Harvard professor Steven Pinker says: "This is an invitation to look foolish, as with the predictions of domed cities and nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners that were made 50 years ago." Living longer Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute in North Carolina, believes failing organs will be repaired by injecting cells into the body. They will naturally to straight to the injury and help heal it. A system of injections without needles could also slow the ageing process by using the same process to "tune" cells. Bruce Lahn, professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, anticipates the ability to produce "unlimited supplies" of transplantable human organs without the needed a new organ, such as kidney, the surgeon would contact a commercial organ producer, give him the patient"s immuno-logical profile and would then be sent a kidney with the correct tissue type. These organs would be entirely composed of human cells, grown by introducing them into animal hosts, and allowing them to develop into and organ in place of the animal"s own. But Prof. Lahn believes that farmed brains would be "off limits". He says: "Very few people would want to have their brains replaced by someone else"s and we probably don"t want to put a human braining an animal body." Richard Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan, thinks scientist could develop "authentic anti-ageing drugs" by working out how cells in larger animals such as whales and human resist many forms of injuries. He says: "It"s is now routine, in laboratory mammals, to extend lifespan by about 40%. Turning on the same protective systems in people should, by 2056, create the first class of 100-year-olds who are as vigorous and productive as today"s people in their 60s." Spinal injuries Ellen Heber-Katz, a professor at the Wistar Institude in Philadelphia, foresees cures for injuries causing paralysis such as the one that afflicted Superman star Christopher Reeve. She says: "I believe that the day is not far off when we will be able to proscribe drugs that cause severed spinal cords to heal, hearts to regenerate and lost limbs to regrow." "People will come to expect that injured or diseased organs are meant to be repaired from within, in much the same way that we fix an appliance or automobile: by replacing the damaged part with a manufacturer-certified new part." She predicts that within 5 to 10 years fingers and toes will be regrown and limbs will start to be regrown a few years later. Repairs to the nervous system will start with optic nerves and, in time, the spinal cord. "Within 50 years whole body replacement will be routine," Prof. Heber-Katz adds. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor at the Wistar Institue in Philadelpia predicts that______.
A. human organs can be manufactured like appliances
B. people will be as strong and dynamic as supermen
C. human nerves can be replaced by optic fibers
D. lost fingers and limbs will be able to regrow