第二篇 Communications Revolution
Cyberspace, data superhighway, multi-media—for those who have seen the future, the linking of computers, television and telephones will change our lives forever. Yet for all the talk of a forthcoming technological utopia little attention has been given to the implications of these developments for the poor. As with all new high technology, while the West concerns itself with the "how", the question of "for whom" is put aside once again.
Economists are only now realizing the full extent to which the communications revolution has affected the world economy, Information technology allows the extension of trade across geographical and industrial boundaries, and transnational corporations take full advantage of it. Terms of trade, exchange and interest rates and money movements are more important than the production of goods. The electronic economy made possible by information technology allows the haves to increase their control on global markets—with destructive impact on the have-nots.
For them the result is instability. Developing countries which rely on the production of a small range of goods for export are made to feel like small parts in the international economic machine. As "futures" are traded on computer screens, developing countries simply have less and less control of their destinies.
So what are the options for regaining control? One alternative is for developing countries to buy in the latest computers and telecommunications themselves—so-called "development communications" modernization. Yet this leads to long-term dependency and perhaps permanent constraints on developing countries' economies.
Communications technology is generally exported from the U.S., Europe or Japan l the patents, skills and ability to manufacture remain in the hands of a few industrialized countries. It is also expensive, and imported products and services must therefore be bought on credit—credit usually provided by the very countries whose companies stand to gain.
Furthermore, when new technology is introduced there is often too low a level of expertise to exploit it for native development. This means that while local elites, foreign communities and subsidiaries of transnational corporations may benefit, those whose lives depend on access to the information are denied by it. 第三篇 第三篇 Unpredictable Earthquake
Humans are forever forgetting that they can't control nature. Exactly 20 years ago, a Time magazine cover story announced that "scientists are on the verge of being able to predict the time, place and even the size of earthquakes." The people of quake-ravaged (被地震破坏的) Kobe learned last week how wrong that assertion was.
None of the methods conceived two decades ago has yet to discover a uniform wanting signal that preceded all quakes, let alone any sign that would tell whether the coming temblor (地震) is mild or a killer. Earthquake formation can be triggered by many factors, says Hiroo Kanamori, a seismologist (地震学家) at the California Institute of Technology. So, finding one all-purpose warning sign is impossible. One reason: Quakes tart deep in the earth, so scientists can't study them directly. If a quake precursor were found, it would still be impossible to ward humans in advance of all dangerous quakes. Places like Japan and California are riddle with hundreds, if not thousands, of minor faults.
Prediction would be less important if scientists could easily build structures to withstand tremors. While seismic engineering has improved dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years, every new quake reveals unexpected weakness in "quake-resistant" structures, says Terry Tullis, a geophysicist at Brown University. In Kobe, for example, a highway that opened only last year was damaged. In the Northridge earthquake, on the other hand, well-built structures generally did not collapse.
A recent report in Science adds yet more anxiety about life on the faulty lines. Researchers Fan computer simulations to see how quake resistant buildings would fall in a moderate size temblor, taking into account that much of a quake's energy travels in a large "pulse" of focused shaking. The results: both steel-frame buildings and buildings that sit on insulating rubber pads suffered severe damage.
More research will help experts design stronger structures and possibly find quake precursors. But it is still a certainty that the next earthquake will prove once again that every fault cannot be monitored and every highway cannot be completely quake-proofed. 第6部分：完形填空 Men Too May Suffer from Domestic Violence
Nearly three in 10 men have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner during their lifetimes according to one of the few studies to look 1 domestic violence and health among men.
"Many men actually do experience domestic violence, although we don't hear about it 2 ," Dr. Robert J. Reid of the University of Washington in Seattle, one of the study's authors, told Reuters Health. "They often don't tell 3 we don't ask. We want to get the message out to men who 4 experience domestic violence that they are not alone and there are resources available to 5 ".
The researchers asked study participants about physical abuse and non-physical 6 , such as threats that made them 7 for their safety, controlling behavior (for example, being told who they could associate with and where they could go) , and constant name-calling.
Among men 18 to 54 years old, 14.2 percent said they had experienced intimate partner 8 in the past five years, while 6.1 percent reported domestic violence in the previous year.
Rates were lower for men 55 and 9 , with 5.3 percent reporting violence in the past five years and 2.4 percent having experienced it in the past 12 months.
Overall, 30.5 percent of men younger than 55 and 26.5 percent of older men said they had been victims of 10 violence at some point in their lives. About haft of the violence the men 11 was physical.
However, the physical violence men reported wasn't as 12 suffered by women in a previous study; 20 percent to 40 percent of the men rated it as severe, compared to 61 percent of 13 .
Men who reported experiencing domestic violence had more emotional and mental health problems 14 those who had not, especially older men, the 15 found. 
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