1 . Women are still underrepresented in top academic positions. One of the possible explanations for this is the increasing importance of obtaining research funding. Women are often less successful in this than men. Psychology researchers Dr. Romy van der Lee and professor Naomi Ellemers investigated whether this difference also occurs at the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and examined potential explanations.
The researchers were assigned by NWO to carry out this study as part of the broader evaluation of NWO’s procedures and its gender diversity policy. The aim was to gain more insight into the causes of the differences in awarding rates for male and female applicants for research funding. The analysis addressed an important “talent programme” of NWO, the Veni grant. “Whoever receives this grant has a greater chance of obtaining an important appointment at a university, ” says Naomi Ellemers.
Van der Lee and Ellemers investigated all the applications submitted by male and female researchers over a period of three years: a total of 2823 applications. Under the direction of NWO these applications were assessed by scientific committees consisting of men and women. The results demonstrate that the awarding rates for female applicants (14.9%) are systematically lower than those for male applicants (17.7%). “If we compare the proportion of women among the applicants with the proportion of women among those awarded funding, we see a loss of 4%,” said Ellemers.
The study reveals that women are less positively evaluated for their qualities as researcher than men are, “Interestingly the research proposals of women and men are evaluated equally positively. In other words, the reviewers see no difference in the quality of the proposals that men and women submit,” says Romy van der Lee.
In search for a possible cause for the differences in awarding rates and evaluations, the researchers also investigated the language use in the instructions and forms used to assess the quality of applications. This clearly revealed the occurrence of gendered language. The words that are used to indicate quality are frequently words that were established in previous research as referring mainly to the male gender stereotype (such as challenging and excellent). Romy van der Lee explains: “As a result, it appears that men more easily satisfy the assessment criteria, because these better fit the characteristics stereoty-pically associated with men.”
In response to the results of this research, NWO will devote more attention to the gender awareness of reviewers in its methods and procedures. It will also be investigated which changes to the assessment procedures and criteria can most strongly contribute to more equal chances for men and women to obtain research funding. This will include an examination of the language used by NWO. NWO chair Jos Engelens said, “The research has yielded valuable results and insights. Based on the recommendations made by the researchers we will therefore focus in the coming period on the development of evidence-based measures to reduce the difference in awarding rates.”
1. Van der Lee and Ellemers carried out the research to find out whether _________.A.women are less successful than men in top academic positions |
B.female applicants are at a disadvantage in getting research funding |
C.NOW’s procedures and gender diversity policy enhance fair play |
D.there are equal chances for men and women to be admitted to a university |
A.grant receivers were more likely to get appointments at universities |
B.men applicants for research funding outnumbered women applicants |
C.the research proposals of women are equally treated with those of men |
D.the reviewers have narrow, prejudiced conceptions of women candidates |
A.The words used in the instructions and forms. |
B.The reviewers’ preference to applications. |
C.The methods and procedures for evaluation. |
D.The vague and unclear assessment criteria. |
A.Eliminate possibilities for difference in awarding rates. |
B.Design a language examination for all the reviewers. |
C.Emphasize the importance of gender awareness. |
D.Improve the assessment procedures and criteria. |
2 . Transition. It’s a pleasant word and a calming concept. It means going surely and sweetly from somewhere present to somewhere future. Unless, that is, it is newspapers’ ‘transition’ to the
Just look at the latest print circulation figures. The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and many of the rest are down overall between 8% and 10% year-on-year, but their websites go ever higher.
All of that may well be true, depending on timing, geography and more.
One is the magazine world, both in the UK and in the US. It ought to be
As for news and current affairs magazines — which you’d expect to find in the eye of the digital storm — they had a 8.4% increase to report. In short, on both sides of the Atlantic, although some magazine areas went down, many showed rapid growth.
You can discover a
So if sales in that area have fallen so little, perhaps the
Already 360 US papers—including most of the biggest and best — have built paywalls around their products. However, the best way of attracting a paying readership appears to be a deal that offers the print copy and digital access as some kind of
Of course this huge difference isn’t
A.publishing | B.online | C.ideal | D.unknown |
A.On the other hand | B.After all | C.To begin with | D.For instance |
A.stop | B.exist | C.emerge | D.fit |
A.regulated | B.advancing | C.collapsing | D.minimized |
A.solid | B.simple | C.creative | D.changeable |
A.cultural | B.common | C.scientific | D.similar |
A.later | B.harder | C.clearer | D.slower |
A.all | B.neither | C.both | D.either |
A.service | B.system | C.crisis | D.figure |
A.right | B.vague | C.designed | D.mixed |
A.made up | B.told apart | C.took over | D.held on |
A.joint | B.mysterious | C.modern | D.complex |
A.In other words | B.On the contrary | C.What’s more | D.Even so |
A.new | B.sad | C.big | D.good |
A.spared | B.updated | C.noticed | D.edited |
3 . At the top of a hill called Mount Lee in Los Angeles on the west coast of the USA is a very famous sign, recognizable to people around the world. My job is to look after this sign.
In the 1940s, TV started to become popular and some Hollywood film studios closed, but then TV companies moved in and took them over. Modern Hollywood was born.
I am responsible for maintaining and protecting the sign.
Now we have motion-detectors and cameras. Everything goes via the internet to a dedicated surveillance(监控)team watching various structures around the city. Even so, people still try to climb over the barrier, mostly innocent tourists surprised that you can’t walk right up to the sign. But they can get a closer look on one of my regular tours.
A.The letters in the sign weren’t straight and still aren’t. |
B.I have been working there for nearly 30 years. |
C.People call up with the most ridiculous ideas. |
D.It says Hollywood and that’s of course the place where films have been made for over a hundred years. |
E.We used to have real problems. |
F.Payment must be made for those ideas for commercial purposes. |
4 . You’re running late for work and you can’t find your keys: What’s really annoying is that in your search, you pick up and move them without realizing. This may be because the brain systems involved in the task are working at different speeds, with the system responsible for perception(感知)unable to keep pace.
So says Grayden Solman and his colleagues at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. To investigate how we search, Solman’s team created a simple computer-based task that involved searching through a pile of colored shapes on a computer screen. Volunteers were instructed to find a specific shapes as quickly as possible, while the computer monitored their actions.“Between 10 and 20 percent of the time, they would miss the object,”says Solman, even though they picked it up.“We thought that was remarkably often.”
To find out why, the team developed a number of further experiments. To check whether volunteers were just forgetting their target, they gave a new group a list of items to memorize before the search task, which they had to recall afterwards.
The idea was to fill each volunteer’s“memory load”,so that they were unable to hold any other information in their short-term memory. Although this was expected to have a negative effect on their performance at the search task, the extra load made no difference to the percentage of mistakes volunteers made.
To check that the volunteers were paying enough attention to the items they were moving, Solman’s team created another task involving a pile of cards marked with shapes that only became visible while the card was being moved. Again, they were surprised to see the same level of error, says Solman. Finally, the team analyzed participants’ mouse movements as they were carrying out a similar search task. They discovered that volunteers’ movements were slower after they had moved and missed their target.
Solman’s team propose that the system in the brain that deals with movement is running too quickly for the visual system to keep up. While you are searching around a messy house to find your keys, you might not be giving your visual system enough time to work out what each object is. Since time can be costly, sacrificing accuracy on occasion for speed might be beneficial overall, Solman thinks.
The slowing of mouse movements suggests that at some level the volunteers were aware that they had missed their target, a theory that is backed up by other studies that show people tend to slow down their actions after they have made a mistake, even if they don’t consciously realize the mistake.
1. What conclusion has Solman drawn from the first task?A.More volunteers are needed to confirm the findings. |
B.It happens very often that people miss what they intend to find. |
C.Computers make negative effects on how people perform at the task. |
D.Targets tend to be forgotten after people search for 10 minutes or more. |
A.Cards marked with shapes may become a source of distraction. |
B.Fewer errors will be made if people are forbidden to move cards. |
C.People may be absent-minded even when they are moving something. |
D.Volunteers prefer to use a mouse to control the objects on the computer screen. |
A.Mistakes will cause people to reduce the speed. |
B.Our visual system can’t keep up with the brain system. |
C.The faster people move, the more mistakes they will make. |
D.People’s actions are independent of the mistakes they make. |
A.Better memory, worse search |
B.Accuracy speaks louder than speed |
C.Hurry up, or you will make mistakes |
D.Slow down your search to find your keys |
5 . A hundred years ago, the largest city in the world was London, with a population of 6.5 million. Today it is beaten by Tokyo. With barely a quarter the population of London a century ago, the Tokyo metropolitan area has since
This
The
Planners and architects now agree that to improve the social and environmental condition of cities the top
A.added | B.mushroomed | C.responded | D.adapted |
A.out-of-date | B.rural-to-urban | C.close-to-bottom | D.on-the-site |
A.cities | B.migration | C.poverty | D.communities |
A.increase | B.advantage | C.management | D.distribution |
A.criticism | B.comments | C.demands | D.impressions |
A.Promoting | B.Relating | C.Returning | D.Introducing |
A.disappear | B.decrease | C.exist | D.occur |
A.Generally | B.Naturally | C.Previously | D.Fortunately |
A.rely on | B.set aside | C.result in | D.look into |
A.self-driving cars | B.public transport | C.green buildings | D.eco-friendly packaging |
A.changing | B.arranging | C.separating | D.forcing |
A.concern | B.secret | C.reform | D.priority |
A.enough | B.possible | C.common | D.scarce |
A.emphasize | B.minimize | C.neglect | D.consider |
A.eagerly for | B.far from | C.close to | D.ignorantly of |
A. associated B. dominant C. frequent D. implications E. inferiority F. interpreted G. physically H. predicted I. potentially J. seconds K. vitality |
Most people do not realize that dreams take up about 25% of the night’s sleep, and each dream period lasts from five to 20 minutes. These is no doubt that dreams play an important role in our lives. If they can be correctly
Dream 1: I can see their laughing faces. laughing at me. But they aren’t as smart. If they were, they’d be up here flying with me!
This dream has both positive and negative
Dream 2: I’m moving fast now, but it’s still behind me. Doesn’t matter how fast I go, I still can’t escape.
Although this is a traditional symbol of health and
Dream 3: I’m sweating and my heart is beating. I’m trapped, trapped in my own bed.
This symbol is
A. established B. present C. compared D. light E. annoyingly F. distinct G. beneficial H. well-being I. experiences J. devote K. striking |
Honey Bees Remember Happy and Sad Times
While the brains of honey bees are tiny, the insects are capable of some surprisingly advanced thinking. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society has now cast new
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that honey bees can remember positive and negative
Scientists have long known that vertebrates — animals with tail bones — like ourselves are capable of sorting memories of pleasure and pain in
“We found that bees
In the study, the researchers looked at regions of the honey bee brain that’s
“These findings can help us better understand ‘biological embedding (嵌入),’ or how social information ‘gets under skin’ to affect the behavior,’ he said. “Biological embedding is an important issue in understanding health and
Furthermore, because the type of memory that the researchers documented is
Major trends that may affect education systems
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which promotes policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world, has been looking at the future of global education. Its head of education, Andreas Schleicher, has been talking about some major international trends affecting education systems around the world.
One trend is the widening gap between rich and poor. In OECD countries, the richest 10% have incomes 10 times greater than the poorest 10%. This inequality is a challenge for schools who want to offer equal and fair access to education for everyone.
Another trend is the rising wealth in Asia. It’s suggested that a large rise in the middle-classes in countries like India will increase demand for university places. Andreas Schleicher asks the question “What values will these newly wealthy consumers want from their schools?”
Increasing migration will also have an impact on education systems. Mobility results in more culturally diverse students eager to learn and develop good life for themselves. But that can be challenge, too, as Andreas Schleicher asks: “How should schools support pupils arriving from around the world? Will schools have a bigger role in teaching about shared values?”
Funding pressure is another issue: as our demand and expectation for education rises and more people go to university, who’s going to pay for it all? The rise in dependency on technology is another concern. What should students learn when many of their talents can be reproduced by machines? And how reliant should we be on learning from the internet?
These are just some of the issues the OECD is highlighting. But they remain irrelevant for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest children who don’t even have access to school places or receive such low-quality education that they leave without the most basic literacy or numeracy.
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9 . Thanks to Top Gear, a British television show for motoring enthusiasts that is now a global brand, a former WWⅡ airfield called Dunsfold has become one of the best-known testing tracks in the world. On October 15, however, instead of booming to the roar of supercars driven by the show’s racing driver, it witnessed the sight of what appeared to be the cableless trailer of an articulated lorry (铰接式卡车) running almost silently around the course at over 80kph.
The Pod, as this vehicle is known, was made by Einride, Swedish firm founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, an engineer who used to work for Volvo. Mr. Falck thinks that the technology of vehicle autonomy, long experimental, has now evolved sufficiently for driverless goods vehicles to begin earning their livings properly. Some Pods are already in trials for real jobs: running between warehouses, dragging logs from forests and delivering goods for Lidl, a supermarket group.
Pods use the same technology of cameras, radar, lidar (the optical equivalent of radar) and satellite-positioning as other competitors in the field, but they differ from those others in the way their maker tries to deal with the regulatory concerns which prevent fully autonomous vehicles from being let loose on public roads. Einride’s approach, at least at the moment, is to avoid these by avoiding the roads in question. Instead, the Pod’s first version operates on designated routes within the limits of enclosed, private areas such as ports and industrial parks. Here, Pods act like bigger and smarter versions of the delivery robots which already run around some factories—though by having the ability to carry 16 tons and with room on board for 15 industrial pallets’ worth of goods, they are indeed quite a lot bigger.
The second difference from most other attempts at vehicle autonomy is Einride’s approach to the word “autonomy.” Some makers take the idea literally, and aim to keep humans out of the decision-making process entirely. Others, often prompted by traffic regulations, arrange things so that a normally passive human occupant can take the controls if necessary. Pods represent a third way. They always have a human to keep an eye on what is happening and to take over the driving for a difficult operation or if something goes wrong. But this human operates remotely.
Having the driver sitting back at headquarters rather than in the vehicle itself is departure from convention, but not a huge one. Aerial drones are usually controlled in this way. The dramatic step is that Mr. Falck believes you do not need a remote driver for each Pod. Einride already uses one person to control two Pods, but plans eventually for a single driver to look after ten.
1. What purpose does the first paragraph mainly serve?A.To inform readers about a popular racing show. |
B.To explain the significance of the Dunsfold track. |
C.To introduce a much-sought-after global brand. |
D.To offer a glimpse of the main subject of the passage. |
A.they can be used in many different real job settings |
B.they use advanced satellite-positioning technology |
C.their maker is not seeking to put them on public roads |
D.they are actually meant to be smart and big delivery robots |
A.The carrying capacity of Pods has yet to be fully exploited. |
B.Aerial drones are usually operated remotely from headquarters. |
C.Low-performance self-driving vehicles have a human standby. |
D.No remote driver will be needed in the future for each Pod. |
A.A British TV show advertises a newly-developed self-driving vehicle. |
B.A new lorry being tested approaches autonomous driving differently. |
C.A remote handler plays a crucial role in future autonomous driving. |
D.A driverless lorry is being tested on a famous track. |
Ancient Whale Skeleton Holds Clues to Climate Change
A whale skeleton thought to be up to 5000 years old has been discovered, almost perfectly preserved, by researchers in Thailand.
The skeleton, believed
The bones will be carbon dated to identify their age, but it is thought that they are
Bryde’s whales are still found in Thailand’s waters,
The remains, which were found about 12 kilometres inland, will help scientists understand the evolution of the species, and track
Marcus Chua, of the National University of Singapore, said the discovery adds to evidence of “relatively large sea level changes around 6000 years to 3000 years ago in the Gulf of Thailand, where the shoreline was up to tens of kilometres inland in comparison to the present coast.”
Previously, only marine deposits
Such evidence is highly relevant, given that the climate crisis is contributing to rising sea levels. “This
The discovery will also help deepen researchers’ understanding of the Bryde’s whale, and other marine life. Alongside the skeleton, researchers found preserved items including shark teeth and shells. “Scientists could also study the deposits