Hundreds of thousands of years before China was to become the world's longest-running civilization, the prologue was enacted by means of the flicker of a carefully tended fire. Peking Man, a forebear of Homo sapiens, achieved a mastery of fire. We might call it the first Chinese invention. Not that he devised flint and steel, matches, or any other way of creating fire. Peking Man simply learned how to capture flame, perhaps from a forest fire, and keep it alight. He thus enjoyed two revolutionary luxuries: light and heat. Technologically and sociologically, it was a phenomenal breakthrough: with fire, communities could live year 'round in one cave, in which cooking and even smelting could be pursued. And so, by 600,000 b.c., about 50 km (31 miles) southwest of present-day Beijing, the ancestors of mankind were ready to settle down. Several hundred thousand years later, when Marco Polo reached the capital of China, he was astonished by a further development in fire technology. The Chinese, he announced, used black stones dug out of mountains as fuel. Europeans did not yet have a word for "coal," nor had they discovered a use for it. The First Dynasty The confluence of mythology and history in China took place around 4,000 years ago during what is referred to as the Xia (Hsia) Dynasty. This was still the Stone Age, but the people are thought to have made silk from thread produced by the worms they cultivated on the leaves of their mulberry trees. And written language (which evolved as early as 4,500 to 5,000 years ago) was already in use, originally by oracles and then by official scribesChina's first scholars. During the second of the quasi-legendary dynasties, the Shang (from about the 16th to 11th centuries b.c.), the Chinese developed an interest in art. Careful geometric designs as well as dragon and bird motifs adorned bowls and implements. And with the arrival of the Bronze Age, the Chinese created bronze vessels of such beauty and originality that, until modern times, archaeologists refused to believe they were cast 3,000 years ago. The Shang Dynasty gave rise to the concept of one Chinese nation under one government.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?

QUESTION: Who was the mastery of fire?

Critics say that is not nearly enough compared with other prescribers, such as M.D. psychiatrists or nurse practitioners who have at least six years' medical education and clinical experience. Neither Davison nor most other RxP opponents doubt the efficacy of medications. Their greatest objection is to the notion of turning psychology into a prescribing profession. In a field that has struggled long and hard to prove that mind, mood and behavior can be studied empirically, the past decade, Davison says, has seen "exciting developments" that demonstrate the validity of various psychotherapeutic interventions and the psychosocial-behavioral models on which they are based. "The timing is peculiar to abandon psychological science or to convert it to a medical science," explains Elaine M. Heiby of the University of Hawaii, who chairs a committee of the 1,000-member American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology that is concerned about the medicalization of psychology. "Making sure that practicing psychologists are giving patients interventions based on the best available psychological science should be the APA's priority," argues Emory University's Scott Lilienfeld, president of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP). More than any philosophical betrayal of psychology, RxP opponents fear that the movement will undermine the science they love. They believe that if prescriptive authority becomes the norm, biomedical requirements will inevitably seep into the psychology curriculum, at the expense of traditional psychological science and methodology. Lilienfeld feels that many clinical psychologists already receive inadequate training in fundamentals such as research design and evaluation. RxP opponents charge the APA with pushing its prescription-privileges agenda without adequately assessing support for it in the field. The 300-member SSCP is the only group within the APA to have taken a formal stance against prescription privileges. The APA has scheduled 30 minutes at its meeting in August for an RxP debate, but its leadership believes it already has an accurate sense of support for its RxP policy. "Except for this small vocal minority, we have just not gotten a lot of groundswell against this from members," says APA president Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford University. With prescription privileges now a reality in one state, some RxP opponents concede that it may be too late. This year four states besides New Mexico -- Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois and Tennessee -- have pending legislation for psychologist prescription privileges. Over the past decade, 14 state legislatures have considered such laws. Between 1991 and 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense psychopharmacology demonstration project involving two to four years' training produced 10 military psychologists who can write prescriptions.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?

QUESTION: Which APA president has scheduled 30 minutes at its meeting in August for an RxP debate?

One of the most dramatic changes in priorities proposed by the City Council would shift $25.6 million from funding for court-appointed lawyers to the Legal Aid Society. In a document released yesterday to justify its reordered priorities, the Council contended that Legal Aid can achieve greater economies of scale than lawyers appointed pursuant to Article 18-B of the County Law. The Council document also noted that "inexplicably" 18-B lawyers are handling 50 percent of the indigent criminal cases in New York City, even though their mandate is to handle only multi-defendant cases where the Legal Aid Society had a conflict. In past years, the City Council had consistently added $5.6 million to the $54.7 million proposed for the Legal Aid Society by former Mayor Giuliani, bringing the total to just a shade over $60 million. But this year for the first time, the Council is proposing shifting more than $20 million in funds earmarked by the Mayor for 18-B lawyers to the Legal Aid Society, which would increase its total funding to $80.4 million. That would reflect a jump in its current finding of about one-third. Meantime, the City Council proposed slashing the Mayor's allocation of $62.8 million for 18-B lawyers by 66 percent, to $21.4 million.
What question would one ask from this paragraph?

QUESTION:
By increasing current funding to the Legal Aid society by $25.6 million, how much is the Council increasing their funding?