Excessive Demands on Young PeopleBeing able to multitask is hailed by most people as a welcome skill, but not according to a recent study which claims that young people between the ages of eight and eighteen of the so-called Generation M are spending a considerable amount of their time in fruitless efforts as they multitask. It argues that, in fact, these young people are frittering away as much as half of their time again as they would if they performed the very same tasks one after the other.Some young people are juggling an ever larger number of electronic devices as they study. At the same time that they are working, young adults are also surfing on the Internet, or sending out emails to their friends, and/or answering the telephone and listening to music on their iPods or on another computer. As some new device comes along, it is also added to the list rather than replacing one of the existing devices.Other research has indicated that this multitasking is even affecting the Way families themselves function as young people are too wrapped up in their own isolated worlds to interact with the other people around them. They can no longer greet family members when they enter the house nor can they eat at the family table.All this electronic wizardry is supposedly also seriously affecting young people"s performance at university and in the workplace. When asked about their perception of the impact of modern gadgets on their performance of tasks, the overwhelming majority of young people gave a favorable response.The response from the academic and business worlds was not quite as positive. The former feel that multitasking with electronic gadgets by children affects later development of study skills, resulting in a decline in the quality of writing, for example, because of the lack of concentration on task completion. They feel that many undergraduates now urgently need remedial help with study skills. Similarly, employers feel that young people entering the workforce need to be taught all over again, as they have become deskilled.While all this may be true, it must be borne in mind that more and more is expected of young people nowadays; in fact, too much. Praise rather than criticism is due in respect of the way today"s youth are able to cope despite what the older generation throw at them. With the advent of new gadgets, what will happen to Generation M"s present e-devices
A. They make way for the latest and greatest and are retired by the young people.
B. They are put away temporarily but stay in rotation for their owners to choose from.
C. They become part of the ever increasing collection of novelties.
D. They are either sold or traded so that their owners can update their toys and hobbies.
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The Northern LightsThe sun is stormy and has its own kind of weather. It is so hot and active that even the Sun"s gravity cannot hold its atmosphere in check! Energy flows away from the Sun toward the Earth in a stream of electrified particles that move at speeds around a million miles per hour. These particles are called plasma, and the stream of plasma coming from the Sun is called the solar wind. The more active the Sun, the stronger the solar wind.The solar wind constantly streams toward the Earth, but don"t worry because a protective magnetic field surrounds our planet. The same magnetic field that makes your compass point north also steers the particles from the Sun to the north and south poles. The charged particles become trapped in magnetic belts around the Earth. When a large blast of solar wind crashes into the Earth"s magnetic field, the magnetic field first gets squeezed and then the magnetic field lines break and reconnect.The breaking and reconnecting of the magnetic field lines can cause atomic particles called electrons trapped in the belts to fall into the Earth"s atmosphere at the poles. As the electrons fall into the Earth, they collide with gas molecules in the atmosphere, creating flashes of light in the sky. Each atmospheric gas glows a different color. Oxygen and nitrogen glows red and green and nitrogen glows violet-purple. As these various colors glow and dance in the night sky, they create the Northern Lights and the Southern Lights.Watching auroras is fun and exciting, but normally you can only see them in places far north like Alaska and Canada. The movement of the aurora across the sky is usually slow enough to easily follow with your eyes but they can also pulsate, flicker, or even move like waves. During solar maximum, auroras are seen as far south as Florida, even Mexico!Auroras often seem to be very close to the ground, but the lowest aurora is still about 100 kilometers above the ground, a distance much higher than clouds are formed or airplanes can fly. A typical aurora band can be thousands of kilometers long, a few hundred kilometers high, but only a few hundred meters thick.We hope you are able to travel to far-north places like the Arctic Circle and see the Northern Lights at least once during your lifetime. We know you will never forget it! The Earth is quite safe with a magnetic field surrounding it to protect it from the attack by the solar wind.
A. Right
B. Wrong
C. Not mentioned
Photos Big Business NowPhotos that you might have found down the back of your sofa are now big business! In 2005, the American artist Richard Prince"s photograph of a photographer, Untitled (Cow- boy), was sold for $1,248,000.Prince is certainly not the only contemporary artist to have worked with so-called "found photographs"—a loose term given to everything from discarded(丢弃的) prints discovered in a junk shop to old advertisements or amateur photographs from a stranger"s family album.The German artist Joachim Schmid, who believes "basically everything is worth looking at", has gathered discarded photographs, postcards and newspaper images since 1982. In his on-going project, Archiv, he groups photographs of family life according to themes: people with dogs; teams; new cars; dinner with the family; and so on.Like Schmid, the editors of several self-published art magazines also champion (捍卫) found photographs. One of them, called simply Found, was born on one snowy night in Chicago, when Davy Rothbard returned to his car to find under his wiper (雨刷) an angry note intended for someone else: "Why"s your car HERE at HER place" The note became the starting point for Rothbard"s addictive publication, which features found photographs sent in by readers, such as poster discovered in our drawer.The whole found-photograph phenomenon has raised some questions. Perhaps one of the most difficult is: can these images really be considered as art And if so, whose art Yet found photographs produced by artists, such Richard Prince, may riding his horse hurriedly to meet someone Or how did Prince create this photograph It"s anyone"s guess. In addition, as we imagine the back-story to the people in the found photographs artists, like Schmid, have collated (整理), we also turn toward to our own photographic albums. Why is memory so important to us Why do we all seek to freeze in time the faces of our children, our parents, our lovers, and ourselves Will they mean anything to anyone after we"ve goneIn the absence of established facts, the vast collections of found photographs give our minds an opportunity to wander freely. That, above all, is why they are so fascinating. According to the passage, Joachim Schmid ______.
A. is fond of collecting family life photographs
B. found a complaining not under his car wiper
C. is working for several self-published magazines
D. wondered at the artistic nature of found photographs
Excessive Demands on Young PeopleBeing able to multitask is hailed by most people as a welcome skill, but not according to a recent study which claims that young people between the ages of eight and eighteen of the so-called Generation M are spending a considerable amount of their time in fruitless efforts as they multitask. It argues that, in fact, these young people are frittering away as much as half of their time again as they would if they performed the very same tasks one after the other.Some young people are juggling an ever larger number of electronic devices as they study. At the same time that they are working, young adults are also surfing on the Internet, or sending out emails to their friends, and/or answering the telephone and listening to music on their iPods or on another computer. As some new device comes along, it is also added to the list rather than replacing one of the existing devices.Other research has indicated that this multitasking is even affecting the Way families themselves function as young people are too wrapped up in their own isolated worlds to interact with the other people around them. They can no longer greet family members when they enter the house nor can they eat at the family table.All this electronic wizardry is supposedly also seriously affecting young people"s performance at university and in the workplace. When asked about their perception of the impact of modern gadgets on their performance of tasks, the overwhelming majority of young people gave a favorable response.The response from the academic and business worlds was not quite as positive. The former feel that multitasking with electronic gadgets by children affects later development of study skills, resulting in a decline in the quality of writing, for example, because of the lack of concentration on task completion. They feel that many undergraduates now urgently need remedial help with study skills. Similarly, employers feel that young people entering the workforce need to be taught all over again, as they have become deskilled.While all this may be true, it must be borne in mind that more and more is expected of young people nowadays; in fact, too much. Praise rather than criticism is due in respect of the way today"s youth are able to cope despite what the older generation throw at them. How will multitasking affect Generation M adversely
A. It makes them feel lonely and pitiful.
B. It makes them aloof and elusive to family and friends.
C. It makes them selfish and possessive.
D. It makes them impolite and ungrateful.
Excessive Demands on Young PeopleBeing able to multitask is hailed by most people as a welcome skill, but not according to a recent study which claims that young people between the ages of eight and eighteen of the so-called Generation M are spending a considerable amount of their time in fruitless efforts as they multitask. It argues that, in fact, these young people are frittering away as much as half of their time again as they would if they performed the very same tasks one after the other.Some young people are juggling an ever larger number of electronic devices as they study. At the same time that they are working, young adults are also surfing on the Internet, or sending out emails to their friends, and/or answering the telephone and listening to music on their iPods or on another computer. As some new device comes along, it is also added to the list rather than replacing one of the existing devices.Other research has indicated that this multitasking is even affecting the Way families themselves function as young people are too wrapped up in their own isolated worlds to interact with the other people around them. They can no longer greet family members when they enter the house nor can they eat at the family table.All this electronic wizardry is supposedly also seriously affecting young people"s performance at university and in the workplace. When asked about their perception of the impact of modern gadgets on their performance of tasks, the overwhelming majority of young people gave a favorable response.The response from the academic and business worlds was not quite as positive. The former feel that multitasking with electronic gadgets by children affects later development of study skills, resulting in a decline in the quality of writing, for example, because of the lack of concentration on task completion. They feel that many undergraduates now urgently need remedial help with study skills. Similarly, employers feel that young people entering the workforce need to be taught all over again, as they have become deskilled.While all this may be true, it must be borne in mind that more and more is expected of young people nowadays; in fact, too much. Praise rather than criticism is due in respect of the way today"s youth are able to cope despite what the older generation throw at them. According to a recent study, what is probably true about the multitasking Generation M
A. They are highly commended for being so effective and efficient.
B. They waste more time than they should save, contrary to common assumptions.
C. They should prioritize and focus on the most important tasks on hand.
D. They need to improve their organizational skills so as to complete all their tasks.