Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are. You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. "If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us," Crabtree told The Guardian. At the heart of Crabtree's thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture, when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak condition gradually reduced. This is not hard to understand. Most of the time, pressure is what keeps us going - you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework; the pressure of looking pretty prompts you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence - if we think less, we become less smart. These mutations are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence , there are two or more mutations in each of us. However, Crabtree's theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed a more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing a tiger doesn't necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means a lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays. "You wouldn't get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn't exist," Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. "But now we have people of his... What is Thomas Hills' attitude toward Crabtree's theory? A) Supportive B) Unfavorable C) Worried D) Confused
B
With smart phones taking the world by Storm, a phone that can only send and receive voice calls and text messages may seem like a relic from a bygone age. Yet in East Africa,simple phones like these are changing the face of the economy, thanks to the mobile money services that are spreading across the region. Using the text-messaging function built into the GSM system used by most cell phone networks, these services allow people without a bank account or credit card to use their phone as an electronic wallet that can be used to store. send or receive cash. It works like this: you pay cash to your local agent who then tops up your mobile money account using a secure form of text messaging. That money can be transferred to another person by sending a message to their cell phone account. For some the system is a lifeline. "If I didn't have my mobile phone. I would be very poor, "says Neyasse Neemur, a mother of four children who lives in northern Kenya. "Now I can sell fish." Neemur took up fishing in July last year, but making money from it was a little tricky, especially as Turkana people do not usually eat fish. A truck from Ethiopia to Tanzania passes through her village once a week, and she arranged to have the driver transport the fish several hundred kilometres south to market in Kisumu, where her s sell the fish. "I get the money transfer immediately." says Neemur. "Then I can pay for my children to go to school and for vegetables and beans," she adds, "so I don't need to eat fish." According to the Central Bank of Kenya, payments worth around l billion Kenyan shillings($13 million)per day were transferred through Kenya's mobile money systems in 2009, equaling the country's credit card transactions . The bank expects mobile money transfers to overtake credit cards in 2011. What can we learn about the simple phones in East Africa? A) They might help the local people apply for a bank account. B) They will replace the banks completely in the near future. C) They provide a safe means for the locals to do business. D) They can do nothing except send and receive calls or messages.
C
Q: It was on the early afternoon of a mid-October day in 2012. Bismark Mensah, who came to America several months ago, was collecting carts outside a Walmart in Federal Way. It was a part-time job for him. He earned $9.05 an hour in charge of getting carts out of the parking lot. He was used to finding stuff in carts that customers had somehow forgotten -- keys, credit cards, wallets. And he turned them into a customer service. But a particular item stood out. It was a white envelope with a clear window in the middle, and there was a lot of cash in it, around $20,000. Mensah turned them into customer services. Because of what he did that afternoon, Mensah is now the winner of Walmart's national 2013 "Integrity in Action Award". Bismark Mensah says that since the story ran, he has become the model the youth in Ghana (his native country). He is now employed full-time at the Federal Way Walmart, earning $10.95 an hour, up from the $9.05 an hour he earned working part-time. Mensah, 33, no longer collects carts and such. He is in the backroom, dealing with inventory . "I want to learn everything about operating a store like Walmart store," he says. He plans to return to Ghana to run some shops owned by his family. He also plans to go to college and earn a degree in business administration. What's Mensah's future plan? A) To teach in college. B) To run his own shops. C) To earn a degree in arts. D) To work in a big factory.
A: B
Q: It seems like every year brings a new outbreak of sickness.Recent research tells us how diseases spread, from person to person.And it also gives us an idea how we can spread something better than diseases. An author called Malcom Gladwell recently published a book explaining how the process works.We usually think of an epidemic as a force of nature that rolls over anyone in its way.In fact, it starts with a single person or very few people.These people travel around and infect small groups in different places.When enough of these groups are infected, then the disease suddenly seems to be everywhere.Gladwell also found that the process of infection was not just limited to disease? It also affects the world of ideas. The process can be seen in books and fashion.So called _ are not pushed towards the public.They spread through hundreds of small reading groups until the day when everybody you know seems to have a copy.A group of young people may decide to wear an item of clothing simply because no one else is wearing it.Designers who monitor street fashion then pick up the idea and spread it.Finally everyone is wearing it. New York is often described as an unfriendly place.People are too busy looking after business to look after each other.In the early 1990s, one unknown person decided to perform at least one kind act a day.This caught on with his or her friends.The newspapers noticed the trend .New York became full of people smiling and carrying each other's bags. The success of trends like this fits in with other social phenomena .One is the 80/20 rule.This was invented by economists who noticed that in any situation 20 percent of the people did 80 percent of the work.Another is the "bystander problem".Psychologists noticed that in accidents where a large number of people were around, no one stepped forward to help.Each person supposed that someone else would do something.When there were less people present, more of them decided to offer help. What all this proves is... The writer's main purpose is to tell us _ . A) how diseases spread B) how ideas are formed C) how popularity takes place D) what diseases and ideas have in common
A: C