4 . This Is How Scandinavia Got Great

Almost everybody admires the Nordic model. Countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland have high economic productivity, high social equality, high social trust and high levels of personal happiness.

Nordic nations were ethnically homogeneous(同质的) in 1800, when they were dirt poor. Their economic growth took off just after 1870, way before their welfare states were established.     1    

The 19th-century Nordic elites did something we haven’t been able to do in our country recently. They realized that if their countries were to prosper they had to create truly successful “folk schools” for the least educated among them. They realized that they were going to have to make lifelong learning a part of the natural fabric of society.

    2     The German word they used to describe their approach, bildung, doesn’t even have an English equivalent. It means the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person. It was based on the idea that if people were going to be able to handle and contribute to an emerging industrial society, they would need more complex inner lives.

Today, Americans often think of schooling as the transmission of specialized skill sets — the student can read, do math and recite the facts of biology.     3     It is devised to help them understand complex systems and see the relations between things — between self and society, between a community of relationships in a family and a town.

The Nordic educators worked hard to cultivate each student’s sense of connection to the nation. Before the 19th century, most Europeans identified themselves in local and not national terms.     4     The idea was to create in the mind of the student a sense of wider circles of belonging — from family to town to nation — and an eagerness to assume shared responsibility for the whole.

That educational push seems to have had a lasting influence on the culture. Whether in Stockholm or Minneapolis, Scandinavians have a tendency to joke about the way their sense of responsibility is always nagging at them. They have the lowest rates of corruption in the world. They have a distinctive sense of the relationship between personal freedom and communal responsibility.

Seniority in Promotion Is Not a Wise Business Practice

It's not always an easy decision for companies when it comes to filling managerial spots. In the past promoting an employee has been popularly handled by means of basic analysis of the employees' past performance nod seniority, In some cases, the individual's performance has been considered more important while in others the amount of time they have been with the company has been the deciding factor. Nevertheless, seniority is a standard that has never been left out, However, in the contemporary business world, the importance of seniority in promotion is being destroyed as a growing number of companies look outside of their organizations when trying to fill top managerial spots.

Unlike experienced employees who have been with the company for a long time, new people are mare likely generate creative ideas. In rapidly changing markets, innovative and creative talents are sought by many companies in order to adapt to the market. To meet their needs, companies have more to gain by selecting outside employees since they are more willing to try new techniques and less afraid of breaking tradition when introducing new ideas. Thus, rather than promoting existing employees, it might be a wiser management decision to bring in outside talent.

An additional advantage to this new system is that it prevents employees from feeling that they only need to wait for their seniority to provide them with a promotion. Simply put no matter how long they have been with the company, employees have to contribute diligently to the organization if they want to move up the career ladder, As soon as people realize that the company could just as easily bring in a new person, employees will stop judging themselves against each other because they are no longer competing against their colleagues but everyone in the entire industry. As a result, they will begin to show more effort to bring the level of their work up to what they imagine is a much higher standard.

7 . Social Integration — Welcoming the Newcomers

Social integration is the process through which minority groups interact, come together or are incorporated within a community, Increased social integration helps reduce conflict and tension in society, and it can help the new migrants feel more connected to their new community. How do different groups remain relatively cohesive in society?

A few countries around the world have adopted integrated frameworks for their economic, social, political and cultural policies with regard to accepting these migrants into the local society.     1    . This is to allow them to achieve their full potential in life. There are still ongoing efforts to integrate different cultures and races, and the governments have encouraged their immigrants to take an active part in social, cultural, economic and political activities.

Integration takes place in neighbourhoods. work places, schools and public places where people from diverse backgrounds spend most of their time.     2     Especially among the younger children, being in the same class as their foreign counterparts will teach the local children the meaning of tolerance and empathy. Participation in sports, community engagement and volunteer work are also other possible ways that eliminate discrimination and other forms of intolerance. From participating in arts programmes to being parent volunteers in schools, these platforms provide opportunities for people to interact and work towards a common cause. Sports programmes have also been used to encourage social integration. In fact, sport can strengthen social networks and promote non - violence and respect. In these ways, meaningful relationships among those of different ages, racial groups or faiths are built on the basis of common interests.

    3     still, countries have also acknowledged that human movement across borders cannot be stopped. Instead, it should be better managed so that migration is safe, legal and beneficial for everyone.     4     Indeed, the government and local communities play a key role in integrating these newcomers and empowering them to contribute to their new communities, while maintaining their identities.

8 . This era of “Industry 4. 0” is being driven by the same technological advances that enable the capabilities of the smartphones in our pockets. It is a mix of low-cost and high-power computers, high-speed communication and artificial intelligence. This will produce smarter robots with better sensing and communication abilities that can _________ different tasks, and even adjust their work to meet demand without the input of humans.

In the manufacturing industry, where robots have arguably made the most headway of any division, this will mean a(n) _________ shift from centralized to decentralized cooperative production. _________ robots focused on single, fixed, high - speed operations and required a highly skilled human workforce to operate and maintain them. Industry 4. 0 machines are flexible, cooperative and can operate more independently which _________ removes the need for a highly skilled workforce.

For large-scale manufacturers, Industry 4. 0 means their robots will be able to sense their environment and communicate in an industrial network that can be run and _________ remotely. Each machine will produce large amounts of data that can be _________ studied using what is known as “big data” analysis. This will help _________ ways to improve operating performance and production quality across the whole plat, for example by better predicting when repairing is needed and automatically _________ it.

For _________ manufacturing businesses, Industry 4. 0 will make it cheaper and easier to use robots. It will create machines that can be rearranged to perform __________ jobs and adjusted to work on a more diverse product range and different production volumes. This part is already beginning to benefit from robots designed to cooperate with human workers and analyse their own work to look for __________.

While these machines are getting smarter, they are still not as smart as us. Today's industrial artificial intelligence operates at a __________ level, which gives the appearance of human intelligence exhibited by machines, but designed by humans.

What's coming next is known as “deep learning”. Similar to big data analysis, it involves processing large quantities of data in real time to __________ what is the best action to take, The __________ is that the machine learns from the data so it can improve its decision making. A perfect example of deep learning was __________   by Google's Alpha Go software, which taught itself to beat the world's greatest Go players.

9 . Zelda Fitzgerald, as is revealed by numerous personal books and letters, wore many labels in her life. She was “the original flapper girl” and “the spirit of the Jazz Age.” Married to the celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Gireat Giatsby), she was by turns his muse and the woman who ruined his life. In her later years she was “Crazy Zelda”.

Accurate as all these descriptions may be, they do not tell the whole story. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she was noted for her beauty and high spirits in dancing. In July 1918, at a country club dance, Fitzgerald was hooked immediately by the beautiful and charming 18-year-old Zelda who out-shined(使逊色)other beauties with her distinguished ballet. A light affection evolved into a lengthy long-distance pursuit of weekly letters, with Fitzgerald aware of her uncommitted dating of other men. He courted her after his discharge from the Army in February 1919, but Zelda had doubts. Her fiance wasn't rich and there was no guarantee he’d ever be famous. His short stories didn’t sell. His apartment was a dump. Zelda gave back the ring. Hoping to fix the “no money” part of his problem. Fitzgerald quit the job and started to rewrite novels for success and money so that he could win back his girl. Finally, he made it! On March 20, 1920, his novel This Side of Paradise got published and Zelda agreed to marry him.

However, their marriage was troubled by wild drinking, fighting, infidelity(不忠实)and bitter recriminations. Emest Hemingway, whom Zelda disliked, blamed her for Scot’s declining literary output, though she has also been portrayed as the victim of an overbearing husbano Actually. Zelda was also creative, pursuing both dancing and writing. Some scholars have portrayed Zelda as a creative talent ignored by the patriarchal(男权的)society of the day. Her inspiration was even drawn by her husband in literary creation-Scott used their relationship as material in his novels, even borrowing episodes from Zelda’s diary and applying them into his fictional writings. She detested(讨厌)her husband’s practice: “Mr. Fitzgerald-I believe that is how he spells his name-seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.” To seek an artistic identity of her own value, as she put it “I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist.”

Nevertheless her unique personality was starting to seem more unbalanced than charming. The couple-like the rest of the nation-was living on borrowed time. In October 1929 the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression. Six months later, Zelda suffered her first nervous breakdown. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia（精神分裂), she was increasingly confined to specialist clinics, and since then has departed with her husband. Zelda died later in a fire at her hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, putting an end to her flamboyant(绚丽夺目的)life. A young woman, especially one in the 1920s, who was against traditional dress and behavior.

10 . Nothing seems more inevitable than aging and death-not even taxes. Every plant, animal and person you have ever seen will _______ die. But some recent research suggests that aging as we know it may not be inevitable. Indeed, as our _______ of it grows, aging can be seen not as an unchangeable reality from which there is no escape, but as the product of biological processes that we may be able to _______ someday.

We already know that some animals do not seem to age. Many cold-water ocean fish and some amphibians（两栖动物）never _______ a fixed size: they continue to grow bigger, to be able to reproduce and to live until something kills them. What these creatures seem to be telling us is that something in their _______ —and possibly in ours——controls the pace of aging, _______ that aging is not the fate of every living thing.

Throughout the history of life on earth, one of the most common difficulties that animals and their cells） have faced has been a lack of food. About 70 years ago, scientists discovered that when animals are forced to live on 30 to 40 percent fewer calories than they would _______ eat, something unusual happens; they become _______ to most age-related diseases --cancer, heart disease, diabetes —and live 30-50 percent longer. Restricting calories _______ aging. But what are the ________ genes that preserve vitality and starve off diseases?

About 15 years ago, armed with powerful new molecular-research technique, a few scientists began to ________ these genetic phenomena. They have discovered that a gene called Sir2—which is present in all animals, including humans —is ________ for the health benefits of calorie restriction perhaps by repairing our DNA. But if we had to restrict our calorie intake ________ 30 to 40 percent would it be of any practical use? Few of us would be capable of restricting our diets so severely that we were constantly ________. Whether or not it made life longer, it would surely make life ________ longer.