Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women, now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic social changes in women's economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of women's work. The employment of young women in textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young, single women as domestics. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as an apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880's created a new class of "dead-end" jobs, thenceforth considered "women's work". The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.
Women's work bas changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the Industrial Revolution: the segregation of occupations by gender, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women's household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home.
It can be inferred from the passage that, before the Industrial Revolution, most women worked in ______.
A. textile mills
B. private households
C. offices
D. schools
In the days before Diana became accustomed to daily hairdressers, high fashion and expertly applied makeup, she looked her best when she was wearing her least. No frilly blouses concealed her elegant neck, carefully cut skirts her long legs, or bulky sweaters her wellrounded figure. She was young and not fully aware of just how attractive she could be. But if she wanted to impress a young man, any young man, she always made it a point to go swimming or sailing or, at the very least, play a game of tennis.
When Prince Charles saw her aboard Britannia at Cowes in the late summer of 1980, he wasn't however particularly interested. She belonged to his younger brother Andrew's set, and had come aboard, not at Charles's invitation, but with Lady Sarah Armstrong Jones, his cousin and sixteen years his junior.
Diana was three years older than Sarah, but still almost a generation away. And besides, Charles had his mind on other things most particularly the breakup of his romance with the beautiful but self-willed Anna Wallace. There was also the fact that if he noticed Diana in anything more than passing, he thought about her as the sister of one of his former girlfriends —Lady Sarah Spencer —who had recently married (he hadn't attended), and whatever others might have been plotting he most certainly was not thinking of renewing his romantic links with the Spencer girls.
But if Charles was not instantly enchanted by the fresh, gambolling nineteen-year-old who spent some days aboard the Royal Yacht, his staff were. "She was so unassuming and so natural," one recalls. And in the manner of all servants, particularly ones who are in the employ of the bachelor Prince, they inevitably started speculating amongst themselves if she was the one for what they called "the job".
So, it seems, did Diana. At the age of sixteen she had jokingly told a friend that She was "out to get" Charles. But that may have been just romantic fantasizing on the part of a young girl whose main eating was the soapy romances penned by her stepgrandmother, the redoubtable Barbara Cartland. The Prince's late valet, Stephen Barry, insisted however: "She went after the Prince with single-minded determination. She wanted him —and she got him!"
She had, of course, met him many times before in the years of her childhood spent as a near-neighbour of the Windsors at Sandringham when Charles used to pop his head round the nursery door where she was having tea with Andrew and Edward, or during a shooting party on Sandringham Estate where at the age of sixteen she was reintroduced to him by her sister Sarah. More recently she had encountered him at polo. But then he had always been busy or with a girlfriend in tow. This time he was alone.
She made sure Charles was watching when she bravely followed his example and went windsurfing in the choppy and not-too-warm waters of the Solent. Naturally flirtations, she made sure he noticed her long slim legs and trim figure. And he could not fail but start to take an interest —if only a comparative one —in the beautiful younger sister of a former girlfriend.
Accounts of this first meeting vary. Some claim that it is where the famous romance began. Others insist that his interest was but a mild one, that with Anna still in mind, the timing was wrong and be simply regarded her as a new and pretty addition to his surprisingly limited circle of friends.
But she had certainly impressed him enough for him to invite her up to Balmoral shortly afterwards. Diana accepted with alacrity.
To impress a young man, Diana might choose to play a game of tennis, because ______.
A. she was a highly skilled tennis player
B. she looked attractive in her tennis outfit
C. she preferred tennis to swimming
D. her hair-style. was fashionably designed
It has been known for many decades that the appearance of sunspots is roughly periodic, with an average cycle of eleven years. Moreover, the incidence of solar flares and the flux of solar cosmic rays, ultraviolet radiation, and X-radiation all vary directly with the sunspot cycle. But after more than a century of investigation, the relation of these and other phenomena, known collectively as the solar-activity cycle, to terrestrial weather and climate remains unclear. For example, the sunspot cycle and the allied magneticpolarity cycle have been linked to periodicities discerned in records of such variables as rainfall, temperature, and winds. Invariably, however, the relation is weak, and commonly of dubious statistical significance.
Effects of solar variability over longer terms have also been sought. The absence of recorded sunspot activity in the notes kept by European observers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has led some scholars to postulate a brief cessation of sunspot activity at that time (a period called the Maunder minimum). The Maunder minimum has been linked to a span of unusual cold in Europe extending from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. The reality of the Maunder minimum has yet to be established, however, especially since the records that Chinese naked-eye observers of solar activity made at that time appear to contradict it. Scientists have also sought evidence of long-term solar periodicities by examining indirect climatological data, such as fossil records of the thickness of ancient tree rings. These studies, however, failed to link unequivocally terrestrial climate and the solar-activity cycle, or even to confirm the cycle's past existence.
If consistent and reliable geological or archaeological evidence tracing the solar-activity cycle in the distant past could be found, it might also resolve an important issue in solar physics, how to model solar activity. Currently, there are two models of solar activity. The first supposes that the Sun's internal motions (caused by rotation and convection) interact with its large-scale magnetic field to produce a dynamo, a device in which mechanical energy is converted into the energy of a magnetic field. In short, the Sun's large-scale magnetic field is taken to be self-sustaining, so that the solar-activity cycle it drives would be maintained with little overall change for perhaps billions of years. The alternative explanation supposes that the Sun's large-scale magnetic field is a remnant of the field the Sun acquired when it formed, and is not sustained against decay. In this model, the solar mechanism dependent on the Sun's magnetic field runs down more quickly. Thus, the characteristics of the solar-activity cycle could be expected to change over a long period of time. Modern solar observations span too short a time to reveal whether present cyclical solar activity is a long-lived feature of the Sun, or merely a transient phenomenon.
The author focuses primarily on ______.
A. two competing scientific models concerning the sun's magnetic field
B. an overview of some recent scientific developments in solar physics
C. the reasons why a problem in solar physics has not yet been solved
D. the difficulties involved in linking terrestrial climate with solar activity
听力原文: Pope John Paul in a visit to Germany is trying to ease the historic division between Catholics and Protestants by saying both groups share blame for the 16th century schism led by Martin Luther. VOA's Karl King reports while praising four German church figures for their opposition to Nazism, the Pope pulled back from prepared remarks defending the church's role during the Hitler regime. Church official has no explanation for the Pope's decision to omit remarks from a prepared speech he delivered at an open-air mass outside the northwestern city of Patagon. The remarks which were in the text delivered to, reporters before the event defended the church's role during the Nazi time and claimed the church played a broad role in resistance to Hitler. Analysts who were watching the Pope's visit say the remarks he dropped from his mass had appeared to contradict his own bishops in Germany who said the church did not do enough to resist the Nazi regime. On Sunday, the Pope travels to Berlin where he will beatify a priest who died in jail after giving sermons against the presecution of the Jews and another who was sent to a concentration camp for expressing regret that Hitler did not die in an assassination attempt. Analysts say the Pope's 3day visit is aimed at shoring up support in Germany Where there has been some descent to authority in Rome. More than one million Catholics in Germany signed a petition last year asking the Pope to relax his opposition to birth-control. So far Pontiff has shown no sign of giving in to the demand.
In a visit to Germany, Pope John Paul said ______ is responsible for the 16th century schism led by Martin Luther.
A. both the Catholics and Protestants
B. the Catholics
C. the Protestants
D. neither of the two