This year, Face book, the social media website announced that it would cooperate with several news organizations -- including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the BBC -- to place news stories directly into users' personal Face book webpage. Stories published using Face book Instant will load more quickly and keep the style of the original publisher, who will keep all the advertising income the stories earn -- at least for now. The deal shows how important social media has become to news organizations, and is a clear sign of how the world of news is changing -- and has been for a while. Many thought of it as the death of the newspaper, when Google News began in 2002. It had no human editor. Instead Google used, and still uses, a secret computer program that selects and displays news stories according to the reader's personal interests, More recently, Associated Press and Yahoo have been publishing computer-written articles. Both use special software to automatically produce stories about company financial results and sports reports -- areas where the quality of writing is felt to be of secondary importance to the accuracy of the data. I think we should be concerned about such developments. One concern is that Facebook, Google and other social media websites see journalism as a sideline , a way of putting people in front of advertisements. _ isn't their primary function -- so if it stops making them lots of money, they're likely to stop doing it. There's another concern that computer-written articles are not actually journalism at all, because what a human news team produces is actually quite complex. A well-written news story puts information in context, offers a voice to each side of an argument and brings the public new knowledge. Although economics and speed of delivery mean readers will probably choose a computer-written story over a carefully shaped article -- at least for daily news -- I don't think the computers will be writing any in-depth articles for a while yet. What is the main purpose of the article? A) To report on a new computer service offered by Facebook. B) To advise readers against reading computer-written news. C) To express concern about recent trends in online news. D) To describe the process of online news reporting.
C
We discuss the issue of when to help a patient die. Doctors of our generation are not newcomers to this question. Going back to my internship days, I can remember many patients in pain, sometimes in coma , with late, hopeless cancer. For many of them, we wrote an order for heavy medication--morphine by the clock. This was not talked about openly and little was written about it. It was essential, not controversial. The best way to bring the problem into focus is to describe two patients whom I cared for. The first, formerly a nurse, had an automobile accident. A few days later her lungs seemed to fill up; her heart developed dangerous rhythm disturbances. So there she was: in coma, on a breathing machine, her heartbeat maintained with an electrical device. One day after rounds, my secretary said the husband and son of the patient wanted to see me. They told me their wife and mother was obviously going to die; she was a nurse and had told her family that she never wanted this kind of terrible death, being maintained by machines. I told them that while I respected their view, there was nothing deadly about her situation. The kidney failure she had was just the kind for which the artificial kidney was most effective. While possibly a bit reassured, they were disappointed. Here was the head surgeon seemingly determined to keep everybody alive, no matter what. Within a few days the patient's pacemaker could be removed and she awoke from her coma. About six months later, the door of my office opened and in walked a gloriously fit woman. After some cheery words of appreciation, the father and son asked to speak to me alone. As soon as the door closed, both men became quite tearful. All that came out was, "We want you to know how wrong we were." The second patient was an 85-year-old lady whose hair caught fire while she was smoking. She arrived with a deep burn; I knew it would surely be deadly. As a remarkable coincidence there was a meeting for discussion going on at the time in medical ethics . The speaker asked... Through the two patients mentioned in the text, the author thinks that on the issue of helping a patient die, doctors need to be _ . A) cruel and cautious B) experienced and thoughtful C) pessimistic and determined D) considerate and optimistic
B
Q: If you dream of going to someplace warm to escape the cold winter weather, a trip to a recently discovered planet would certainly warm you right up. The planet, named OCLE-TR-56b, has temperatures of more than 3,000 degF. "This is the hottest planet we know about," says Dr. Dimitar Sasselov, a scientist who led the discovery team, "It is hot enough to have an iron fog and to rain hot iron droplets " The new planet is 30 times farther away than any planet discovered by scientists before. It is in the Milky Way but it is not in our solar system The new planet moves around a star much like our sun, however. Scientists discovered the planet by using a new planet-searching method, called"transit technique" They were able to catch sight of the planet when it moved in front of its star, causing the star's light to dim .Scientists compare the method to discovering the shadow of a bee flying in front of a searchlight 200 miles away. "We believe the door has been opened wide to go and discover planets like Earth," says Sasedlov. Which is the best title for the passage? A) New Planet-searching Technique B) New Distant Discovery C) Space Searching D) Dream Planet
A: B
(Q).
It is impossible not to make a mistake at some points in your life. We may as well accept that something will go wrong and we will be to blame. It is therefore sensible to work out some strategies for apologizing, and the best way to apologize is by letter. This way you can take care over every work you write-- which you can't do if you say sorry to someone in person. We all say or do something that we wish we hadn't said or done. You may say something that accidentally hurts someone, or you may provide a service which doesn't come up to the standards that a client or customer expected. You may feel that it was a genuine mistake which couldn't be avoided. Rather than dwell on the mistake, you should quickly try to remedy the problem. An effective letter of apology is an important part of that process. For the contents of the letter, just remember TABS--Timing, Action, Brevity, Sincerity. The timing of a letter of apology is essential--it must be sent as soon as possible. Any delay in our sending the letter will only compound the problem. In this case "Better late than never" is not the best motto! The longer you wait before you wait before writing a letter of apology, the more it will seem that you have been coerced into writing it. Although it is important to recognize what has gone before, it is also essential to detail the action you plan to take to rectify whatever it was you did wrong. Research has shown that some indication that you have thought about what future action you plan to take is always well received. A letter of apology should be brief and the word "sorry" should appear no more than twice. Indicate that you are aware using it a second time--"once again, I am so sorry for..." or "as I said earlier, I am really sorry about...". Finally, the tone of the letter has to be sincere. In fact, the combination of all the above factors will help in this respect. And don't think that letters are out of date in the email--oriented 21st century. An apology email can be worse than no apology at all! What kind of advice does the text suggest about apologizing? A) It's a good idea to write a letter of apology as soon as something has gone wrong. B) It's a good idea to send several emails to apologize. C) Write a long letter apologizing several times to make your point. D) Wait to see how they react to your letter before planning to do anything.
(A).
A