Board logo

标题: [推荐]BEE-Background Essay Everyday [打印本页]

作者: spry    时间: 2002-10-30 11:52     标题: African Americans In South

African Americans In South

       As a social and economic institution, slavery originated
in the times when humans began farming instead of hunting and
gathering. Slave labor became commonplace in ancient Greece and
Rome. Slaves were created through the capture of enemies, the
birth of children to slave parents, and means of punishment.

Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with
distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from
the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day
Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from
Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa. Slavery became of major
economic importance after the sixteenth century with the
European conquest of South and Central America. These slaves
had a great impact on the sugar and tobacco industries.

A triangular trade route was established with Europe for alcohol
and firearms in exchange for slaves. The slaves were then traded
with Americans for molasses and (later) cotton. In 1619 the first
black slave arrived in Virginia. The demands of European consumers
for New World crops and goods helped fuel the slave trade. A
strong family and community life helped sustain African Americans
in slavery. People often chose their own partners, lived under the
same roof, raised children together, and protected each other.
Brutal treatment at the hands of slaveholders, however, threatened
black family life. Enslaved women experienced sexual exploitation
at the hands of slaveholders and overseers. Bondspeople lived with
the constant fear of being sold away from their loved ones, with no
chance of reunion. Historians estimate that most bondspeople were
sold at least once in their lives. No event was more traumatic in
the lives of enslaved individuals than that of forcible separation
from their families. People sometimes fled when they heard of an
impending sale.

During the 17th and 18th century enslaved African Americans in
the Upper South mostly raised tobacco. In coastal South
Carolina and Georgia, they harvested indigo for dye and grew rice,
using agricultural expertise brought with them from Africa.
By the 1800s rice, sugar, and cotton became the South's leading
cash crops. The patenting of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793
made it possible for workers to gin separate the seeds from the
fiber some 600 to 700 pounds daily, or ten times more cotton than
permitted by hand. The Industrial Revolution, centered in Great
Britain, quadrupled the demand for cotton, which soon became
America's leading export. Planters' acute need for more cotton
workers helped expand southern slavery. By the Civil War, the
South exported more than a million tons of cotton annually to
Great Britain and the North. An area still called the “Black Belt”,
which stretched across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,
grew some 80 percent of the nation's crop. In parts of the “Black
Belt”, enslaved African Americans made up more than three-fourths
of the total population.

Even though slavery existed throughout the original thirteen
colonies, nearly all the northern states, inspired by American
independence, abolished slavery by 1804. As a matter of conscience
some southern slaveholders also freed their slaves or permitted them
to purchase their freedom. Until the early 1800s, many southern
states allowed these emancipations to legally take place. Although
the Federal Government outlawed the overseas slave trade in 1808,
the southern enslaved African American population continued to grow.
By 1860 some 4 million enslaved African Americans lived throughout
the South. Only Southern states believed slavery to be a major,
and essential, economic factor. Whether on a small farm or a
large plantation, most enslaved people were agricultural laborers.
They worked literally from sunrise to sunset in the fields or at
other jobs. Some bondspeople held specialized jobs as artisans,
skilled laborers, or factory workers. A smaller number worked as cooks, butlers, or maids. Slavery became an issue in the economic struggles
between Southern plantation owners and Northern industrialists in
the first half of the 19th century, a struggle that culminated in
the American Civil War. Despite the common perception to the
contrary, the war was not fought primarily on the slavery issue.

Abraham Lincoln, however, saw the political advantages of promising
freedom for Southern slaves, and the Emancipation Proclamation was
enacted in 1863. This was reinforced after the war by the 13th, 14th,
and 15th amendments to the US constitution (1865, 1868, and 1870),
which abolished slavery altogether and guaranteed citizenship and
civil rights to former slaves. Following the Civil War, Southern
states passed laws called "Black Codes". A Black Code was a law which
limited or restricted a certain activity or way of life for the African Americans. Mississippi banned interracial marriages with the threat
of certain death if the law was broken. Other codes restricted where
the Blacks could own land. All were attempts to keep the government
from giving the "forty acres of land" to former slaves. Since a
majority of the Southern population was made of Blacks, whites
feared they would eventually "take over". This led to the brutal
killings of many Blacks by the KKK and other white supremacist
groups. Blacks who tried to exercise power were either killed or
had some other form of physical action taken against them.

Although in 1880 voting booths were open to all, only some Whites
let Blacks vote, usually when this happened, they were watched
under the careful eye of a KKK leader. Sadly enough a Black trying
to pursue his right to vote was often met with death or loss of
income. According to the Ku Klux Klan, they stand for five "simple"
views. The first being "The White Race" being the Aryan race and
its Christian faith. The second, "America First" states that
"America comes first before any foreign or alien influence or
interest". "The Constitution" as they believe should be followed
exactly as written and intended, and is considered by their
group "the finest system of government ever conceived by man". The fourth, "Free Enterprise" was the end to high-finance exploitation.
And finally, "ositive Christianity" was the right of Americans
to practice their Christian faith, including but not limited to
prayer in school.

Preconceived notions are quite arguably the
most widely acknowledged form of racism today. Use of derogatory
terms, such as the quite offensive "n-word" and slang such as
"spook", "porch monkey", etc. are all terms people of all race's
use to refer to Blacks. Even situations can become unnecessarily
frightening because of preconceived notions we have been led to
believe about Blacks. For example, if a white woman has gotten
lost while driving and stumbles into a predominantly "black"
neighborhood, she would be more likely to panic and become
frightened then if she were lost in a neighborhood considered to
be predominantly "white". Fears and ideals such as these have been
instilled in our society for years, which leads to the occurrence
of racial hate. It is obvious that racism still exists in many
forms throughout our nation and throughout the world.
Example of this racism is present in almost every aspect of
society to this day. Although slavery was outlawed in our country
following the Civil War, African-Americans have never been able
to enjoy the freedom that Caucasians have, and probably never
will. Years and years of oppression have led to an
attitude of inferiority by the African Americans that will,
quite possibly, never fade. What humility to society in general
that this institution existed.
作者: spry    时间: 2002-10-31 01:45

Civil Rights Movement

               
Civil Rights Movement: 1890-1970

1890: The state of Mississippi adopts poll taxes and
literacy tests to discourage black voters.

1895: Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta
Exposition speech, which accepts segregation of the races.

1896: The Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson the
separate but equal treatment of the races is constitutional.

1900-1910

1900-1915: Over one thousand blacks are lynched in the
states of the former Confederacy.

1905: The Niagara Movement is founded by W.E.B. du Bois
and other black leaders to urge more direct action to
achieve black civil rights.

1910-1920

1910: National Urban League is founded to help the conditions
of urban African Americans.

1920-1930
1925: Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey is convicted
of mail fraud.

1928: For the first time in the 20th century an African
American is elected to Congress.

1930-1940
1931: Farrad Muhammad establishes in Detroit what will
become the Black Muslim Movement.

1933: The NAACP files -and loses- its firs suit against
segregation and discrimination in education.

1938: The Supreme Court orders the admission of a black
applicant to the University of Missouri Law School

1941: A. Philip Randoph threatens a massive march on
Washington unless the Roosevelt administration takes
measures to ensure black employment in defense industries;
Roosevelt agrees to establish Fair Employment Practices
Committee (FEPC).

1942: The congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is organized
in Chicago.

1943: Race riots in Detroit and Harlem cause black leaders
to ask their followers to be less demanding in asserting
their commitment to civil rights; A. Philip Randolph breaks
ranks to call for civil disobedience against Jim Crow schools
and railroads.

1946: The Supreme Court, in Morgan v. The Commonwealth of
Virginia, rules that state laws requiring racial segregation
on buses violates the Constitution when applied to interstate
passengers.

1947: Jackie Robinson breaks the color line in major league
baseball.

1947: To Secure These Rights, the report by the President’s
Committee on Civil Rights, is released; the commission,
appointed by President Harry S. Truman, recommends government
action to secure civil rights for all Americans.

1948: President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order
desegregating the armed services.


1950-1960

1950: The NAACP decides to make its legal strategy a full-scale
attack on educational segregation.

1954: First White Citizens Council meeting is held in Mississippi.

1954: School year begins with the integration of 150 formerly
segregated school districts in eight states; many other school
districts remain segregated.

1955: The Interstate Commerce Commission bans racial segregation
in all facilities and vehicles engaged in interstate transportation.

1955: Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat
to a white person; the action triggers a bus boycott in Montgomery,
Alabama, let by Martin Luther King Jr.

1956: The home of Martin Luther King Jr. is bombed.

1956: The Montgomery bus boycott ends after the city receives
U. S. Supreme Court order to desegregate city buses.

1957: Martin Luther King Jr. and a number of southern black
clergymen create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC).

1958: Ten thousand students hold a Youth March for Integrated
Schools in Washington, D.C.

1959: Sit-in campaigns by college students desegregate
eating facilities in St. Louis, Chicago, and Bloomington,
Indiana; the Tennessee Christian Leadership Conference holds
brief sit-ins in Nashville department stores.

1960-1970

1960: Twenty-five hundred students and community members in
Nashville, Tennessee, stage a march on city hall—the first
major demonstration of the civil rights movement—following
the bombing of the home of a black lawyer.

1960: John F. Kennedy is elected president by a narrow margin.

1961: Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy
hold a secret meeting at which King learns that the new
president will not push hard for new civil rights legislation.

1962: Ku Klux Klan dynamite blasts destroy four black churches
in Georgia towns.

1962: President Kennedy federalizes the National Guard and
sends several hundred federal marshals to Mississippi to
guarantee James Meredith’s admission to the University of
Mississippi Law School over the opposition of Governor Ross
Barnett and other whites; two people are killed in a campus riot.

1963: Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood enter the
University of Alabama despite a demonstration of resistance
by Governor George Wallace; in a nationally televised speech
President John F. Kennedy calls segregation morally wrong.

1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated; Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson assumes the presidency.

1964: President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which prohibits discrimination in most public accommodations,
authorizes the federal government to withhold funds from programs
practicing discrimination, and creates the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.

1964: Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1965: Malcolm X is assassinated while addressing a rally of his
followers in New York City; three black men are ultimately
convicted of the murder.

1965: Rioting in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles leads
to 35 deaths, 900 injuries, and over 3,500 arrests.
1966: Martin Luther King Jr. moves to Chicago to begin his first
civil rights campaign in a northern city.

1966: Martin Luther King Jr. leads an integrated march in Chicago
and is wounded when whites throw bottles and bricks at demonstrators.

1966: The Black Panther Party (BPP) is founded in Oakland,
California.

1966: James Meredith is shot by a sniper while on a one man
“march against fear” in Mississippi.

1967: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his first speech devoted
entirely to the war in Vietnam, which he calls ‘one of history’s
most cruel and senseless wars’; his position causes estrangement
with President Johnson and is criticized by the NAACP.

1967: Rioting at all-black Jackson State College in Mississippi
leads to one death and two serious injuries.

1967: Thurgood Marshall is the first black to be nominated to
serve on the Supreme Court.

1967: Rioting in the black ghetto of Newark, New Jersey, leaves 23
dead and 725 injured; rioting in Detroit leaves 43 dead and 324
injured; President Johnson appoints Governor Otto Kerner of
Illinios to head a commission to investigate recent urban riots.

1968: The Kerner Commission issues its report, warning that the
nation is ‘moving toward two societies, one black, one white—
separate and unequal.”

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. travels to Memphis, Tennessee, to
help settle a garbage worker strike.

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray
in Memphis, Tennessee, precipitating riots in more than one
hundred cities.

1968: Congress passes civil rights legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

1968: Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.’s successor as head
of the SCLC, leads Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C.

1969: The Supreme Court replaces its 1954 decision calling for
“all deliberate speed” in school desegregation by unanimously
ordering that all segregation in schools mush end “at once".



[此贴子已经被spry于2002-10-31 1:45:05编辑过]


作者: maryland    时间: 2002-10-31 13:01

Thanks a lot! I am just looking for similar information and eager to learn more about that, such as the relationship or contract between the Indians and the federal government of the US, how the Congress works in legislation. Will u help? [em23]
作者: spry    时间: 2002-10-31 20:05     标题: US Government

hi,maryland, hope this helps.


US Government


     The U.S. Government has three branches of government:
Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. These branches of
government have a mean of checks (constitutional) by the
other branches. Each has certain powers to check and
balances the other two branches. The good about these
checks is for that the other two branches don’t get to
powerful. When the constitution was first forming, the
checks and balances where first used. Each branch of
government is different.

Legislative branch is made up of the Congress. The
Executive branch is the President and his staff. The
Judicial branch is made up of the Supreme Court and
other Federal courts. Legislative branch makes the
law, Executive branch carries out the law, and judicial
branch interprets the law. During time the system of
Checks and Balances were use over the years as it was
intended to do. Congress makes the laws, creates agencies
and programs, and appropriates funds to carry out the
laws and programs. They may override veto with two-thirds
vote, may remove the President through impeachment, and
the Senate approves treaties and presidential appointments.
The Executive branch appoints Supreme Court Justices and
other federal judges. The Judicial branch judges, appointed
for life, are free from executive control. They also have
the courts declare executive actions to be unconstitutional.

Clashes between each branch are hardly ever known. The system
of check-balance system operates all the time. Most of the
checks happen in the Capital. But some clashes can occur; The
President does veto some acts of Congress. On some occasion,
Congress has override one of the president vetoes. And some
rare occasion, the Senate does reject one of the president’s
appointees. And most direct confrontations are not common. The
three branches try to avoid them. The Checks-and-Balance
system makes compromise easy and necessary-and its part of
the democratic government.

In James Madison in his essay, The federalist No.51, uses
words to describe the main idea the uses of Checks and Balances
or in other words keeping the branches of government
“in their proper places.” An example, when the President
picks someone to serve in some important office in the
executive branch. Say the Secretary of State of the Director
of the F.B.I or the C.I.A, and the President is aware that
the Senate must confirm that appointment. In other words the
President picks someone who will very likely be approved
by the Senate. In similar was when Congress makes law. It
does so with a careful eye on the President’s veto power.
And the power of the courts to review its actions.

Checks-and-balances system has prevented “an unjust combination
of the majority.” It has not very often stalled a close working
relationship between the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches from time to time. The President and a majority in
both houses of Congress are especially true in good working
relationship. When the other party controls one or both houses,
conflicts play a larger than usual part in that relationship-
as they have in recent years. As part of the system of checks
and balances, court have the power of judicial review. The
power to decide whether what government does is in accord with
what the Constitution provides In other words the U.S. government
has used the system of checks and balances for many of years.
And it will be this way for many other years until someone
changes it. But I think that will come to mind.
作者: maryland    时间: 2002-10-31 21:11

Yea, it really works! To be honest, I met a RC about this issue in the exam, and it got me. Thanks again for your sincere help! [em26][em22]
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-1 05:49

Indian Tribe


    The Southwest Region Native American tribe that is discussed
in the following focuses on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian
Community. The Pima-Maricopa Indians have struggled and endured
a constant hardship of events in its background, history, and
location. Thomas Dobyns, the author of The Pima and Maricopa stated,”
they have suffered through their worst years at the hands of
ruthless investors and land grabbers, and the fight to undo the
damage will never end. Descendants of the region’s original
inhabitants are, however, gaining skills in law, business,
farming, and community organization that they are utilizing to
win back the water and land that was once theirs.”

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community is in-fact two
Indian tribes, made up of the Pima tribe and the Maricopa tribe.
According to the Gale Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes,
these two tribes joined together between 1740 and 1780 in a
federation and would be governed by a single tribal council,
although they would follow their own tribal traditions.
Although speaking distinctly different languages the Maricopa
and Pima have since dwelled in harmony. The Pima Indian tribe
is believed to be the ancient ancestors of the Hohokam. The
Hohokam were a farming tribe that mysteriously vanished centuries
ago. The Pima attributed their decline to the rapacity of foreign
tribes, who came in three bands, and killing or enslaving many
of their inhabitants destroying their pueblos, devastating their
fields, and killing or enslaving many of their inhabitants.
It is speculated the Hohokam people may have suffered from
plague and disease after physical contact with the Spaniards.
The ancient Hohokam villages can still be seen today at different archaeological sites in the southwest.

The Pima had abundance of water from the Gila River that gave
the Pima a distinct agricultural advantage over other Indian
communities. Therefore they had less need to wander in search
of wild foods and were able to live a settled life in villages
near the river. Pima translates to “Akimel O’Odham,” which
means river people. They developed irrigation systems that
channeled water to their fields; this promoted a more abundant
supply of food. They also benefited from the Spanish, whom
introduced them to wheat. Wheat being a winter crop allowed them
to double their productivity, this resulted in a surplus of
grains and allowed the Pima to engage in an increased amount
of trading and commerce. The Pima remained neutral during the
Mexican-American War, which took place from 1846 to 1848.
Shortly after the Mexican-American War the land the Pima dwelled
on became U.S. territory.

During the California gold rush of 1849 the tribe thrived on
agriculture, bartering food and livestock for guns and shovels
to U.S. troops and prospectors passing through. They also
protected them from Indian raids on the white-man. The Maricopa
joined the Pima, whose language they did not understand, for
mutual protection against their enemies. They were at war with
the Mohave and Yavapai Indians as late as 1857 near Maricopa
Wells, South Arizona. The result was 90 of the 93 Yuman warriors
gave their lives in battle, after this disaster for the Yumans
they never wandered further up the Gila River.

The years preceding 1871 were devastating for the tribe due to
a shortage of water from the Salt River attributable to the
recent non-Indian settlements. The Pima were unable to reclaim
their water rights, causing the failure of crops and before long
famine that would diminish the population of the tribe
significantly.

Today the Pima tribe resides in Southern Arizona
along the Gila and Salt rivers, near Phoenix, Arizona. The Spanish
estimated there were approximately 2,000-3,000 members of the
tribe in 1694, and a 1989 census showed a joint population of
about 16,800 members. Evidence shows that the Maricopa Indians
originated in Southern California. Prior to the fifteenth century
they dwelled near the shores of the Salton Sea, approximately
fifty miles east of San Diego. The Maricopa migrated east towards
the Colorado River basin. The Maricopa tribe lived among other
Yuman language speaking tribes. Living among other tribes caused
constant fighting because of the scarcity of available resources.
By the early 1600’s the Yuman speakers were divided on the lower
Colorado River Valley into three distinct groups. The Mohave had
settled in the Mohave River Valley northward along the Colorado.
The Quenchan had settled at the junction of the Gila and Colorado
Rivers. And the Cocomaricopa settled between the Mohave and
Quenchan tribes.

By the mid 1700’s the Maricopa were being victimized by both
the Mohave and the Quenchan. They were forced upstream with their
rancherios extending about 40 miles along the Gila from the mouth
of the Hassayampa to the Auguas Caliente. Later, that same decade,
they made their historic alliance with the Pimas for mutual
protection against their kindred. The Maricopa tribe was at war with
the Mohave and Yavapai Indians as late as 1857 near Maricopa Wells
in southern Arizona. The result was 90 of the 93 Yuman warriors
gave their lives in battle. After this disaster for the Yumans
they never wandered further up the Gila River. Two years later
the United States Congress created the Gila River Reservation
on which they still live today. In 1775 the Maricopa population
was estimated at 10,000, and only 200 in 1986.
作者: maryland    时间: 2002-11-1 23:08

建议本贴加"推荐"!![em26]
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-1 23:14     标题: [推荐]BEE-Background Essay Everyday

in this series, you can get some background information on various topics.


[此贴子已经被tongxun于2002-11-1 23:14:33编辑过]


作者: maryland    时间: 2002-11-1 23:27

呵呵,tongxun动作好快呀.还有个建议:每个版面的JJ总结建议用区别于其他帖子的字体或者其他形式醒目的标注出来,因为那是每版的最最精华所在的说.斑竹觉得如何? [em19]
作者: tongxun    时间: 2002-11-1 23:37

标题是不能改变字体和颜色的。要不然,我早用了。哈哈
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-2 12:12

Boston Tea Party

             The Boston Tea Party was the key-event for the
Revolutionary War. With this act, the colonists started the
violent part of the revolution. It was the first try of the
colonists, to rebel with violence against their own government.
The following events were created by the snowball effect.
There, all the colonists realized the first time, which they
were treated wrong by the British government. It was an
important step towards the independence dream, which was resting
in the head of each colonist. They all flew from their mother
country to start a new life in a new world, but the British
government didn't gine them the possibility by controlling them.

             The events leading to the Boston Tea Party began
already ten years before (1763), when the English won the
French-and-Indian War. The king of Britain passed taxes on the
colonies to make up for the loss of money because of the war.
He did it in a line of acts, called the Sugar Act (tax to
protect and secure the colonists) and the Stamp Act ( tax on
all licences, newspapers and business papers ). The colonists
reacted with protests against those acts, what made the British
Parliament to repeal the taxes within 5 months. Then they (the
government) passed taxes on lead, paint, paper and tea. These
acts were called the Townshed Duties, but the colonists called
them the "Insidious Acts". Mass meetings were held and people
tried to influence others not to buy English imported goods
anymore. In the end the parliament removed all the taxes except
for tea. Actually the colonists easily didn't want to accept,
to pay taxes to a government, they don't really belong to
anymore. Although this tax on the tea cost a colonial family just
pennies a year. Sam Adams, a kind of leader of the colonists,
figured out, that the tax could be raised or lowered by the
parliament at will. (Sam Adams: "The power to tax is the power
to destroy!" ).He also pointed out, that the colonists had no
representation in the Parliament, and that they can't be taxed
without having a representation in there, to care for their
interests and wills. However, most people drank tea smuggled
in from the Netherlands, so they didn't care very much whether
the parliament raises or lowers the taxes. When the East India
Tea company realized, that the colonists were drinking cheap,
smuggled tea, the Parliament gave them ( the company ) the
monopoly to export tea without paying duties. That way the tea
could be much cheaper than the holland tea, even with the taxes.
This act was called the Tea Act, which was of great importance
for the following Boston Tea Party.

             The colonists reacted to this act by holding
meetings to discuss it. Supporter of the revolution (just
to name some of them: John Adams, John Hancock, Dr. Joseph
Warren) wrote letters of protest to the government's officials,
but they didn't achieve anything. The tea ships arriving in
Boston still had to pay the full British tax.

             In September, 1773, a radical group of colonists
found out, that three East India tea cargo ships, laden full
with tea, were heading for Boston under full sail. They knew,
that if the ships got unloaded and the tax would be paid, it
would be a crushing defeat.

             The same radical group wanted to make the agents
of the East India Company resign from their job in front of a
big crowd, but this part didn't work. Over the following weeks
speeches in form of propaganda were made, to get all colonists
informed about the events. People even quitted drinking tea
(what they did for their whole life ) and started drinking
coffee.

             The actual event On November 18th, 1773, the ships
arrived. Pamphlets were posted to arrange a meeting between the
citizens and the governor ( Hutchison ), called the "Committee
of Correspondence". They wanted him to call the ships back to
Britain. When he didn't agree, a bunch of men, disguised as
Indians, went and stormed towards the harbor, planning to throw
the tea into the bay. They divided in three groups, each of them
with one leader. After they made the captain and his crew getting
down below, they grabbed all the boxes of tea, opened them and
threw them overboard. Even some members of the crew helped them
to destroy the tea. A big crowed was created in the harbor, some
of them even tried to steal some tea. Altogether they destroyed
340 chests. At 10:00 pm the event was over, and the streets of
Boston were empty again. The next day everybody was happy, and
plans were made, to public the important event in all colonies
of America.

                 The reactions of the British Government were
called the "Intolerable Acts". The Boston Harbor was closed by
4000 British soldiers, so that Boston couldn't get any food or
other important goods. But this act failed it's mission, because
the other colonists sent the Boston citizens food and other
life important goods. They also created a militia to protct
themselves of the British army. They also weren't allowed to
held any meetings in Boston anymore. These tries to get the
colonies under their control again were the last ones with a
view of success.
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-5 22:28     标题: Television Violence

Many shows include violence as a key factor to interest public
viewers. However, people may think television violence is one
of the many causes for everyday violence. Dr. Littner has
slightly disagreed with this theory and explained his reasoning.
Dr. Littner believes that television does not create the desire
for violence but supports the existing desire that cannot be
taken away. Personally, I agree with Dr. Littner’s opinion
because his reasoning is rational and logical. If a mature
teen were following a television program that included rape,
it would be very unlikely for him/her to go out and rape a
person. On the contrary, if an emotionally disturbed teenager
were following the same program, the chances would be more
likely for him/her to rape a person. The maturity of the
viewer, the way in which the violence is shown, and the age
of the viewer are all factors that affect violence caused by
television. If the viewer is very emotionally disturbed then
the more likely for the viewer to have difficulty controlling
his/her disturbed emotions. It may also be unsafe if the
violence is presented unrealistically and is purposely shown
to attract an audience. A mature adult may be angered and
insulted by inappropriate displays of violence. A normal
adolescent may not know how to handle violence and as a result
may be attracted to the violence. The television show, “Beavis
and Butthead”, which is an animated show with two boys playing
practical jokes for fun, shows the significance of the age of
the viewer. The jokes consist of dangerous results if taken
literally. For example, a few years ago, the show had the two
animated characters light a curtain on fire. About two weeks
later, the news announced that a young boy had lit his curtains
on fire, which led to an explosion. It was said by the news that
the show “Beavis and Butthead” had caused the young boy to do
so. This example explains exactly how the swayed audience of
violence can lead to destruction, being that the young boy was
too young to understand the consequences.



[此贴子已经被spry于2002-11-5 22:28:57编辑过]


作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-5 22:40

IT Technology

             The successful company will be driven to increase
stakeholder value and profitability while creating a working
environment that encourages and nurtures the growth of personal
creativity and development as well as nurturing a sense of well-
being for all members of the organization. When dealing with the
forces that drive industry competition, a company can devise a
strategy that takes the offensive. This posture is designed to
do more than merely cope with the forces themselves; it is meant
to alter their causes. The IT professional's role in competitive
market intelligence The IT professional is increasingly being
called upon to be a sleuth in the quest for the competitive
market intelligence that is so necessary to support the
enterprise's overall business strategy. In today's fast-changing
marketplace, it is essential to monitor the techniques of similar
businesses, and IT is being called upon to fulfill that
functional need. IT must provide marketing with answers to vital
questions such as: 1. How are competitors getting business?
2. Where does the enterprise look for new customers? 3. How are
prospects targeted? 4. What services, products, and prices do
competitors offer? 5. What images do our competitors project,
and how does that compare to our image? The combined strength
of marketing and IT Enterprises have depended on marketing for
too long to provide competitive intelligence. It is crucial for
IT professionals to contribute their specialized expertise to
successfully adapt to the changing dynamics of the market arena.
Marketing cannot do the job without the cooperation, tools, and
willing support of the IT department. With the combined strength
of the two complementary functions, a winning competitive market
intelligence program is within the enterprise's reach. Useful
and sometimes surprising insights can be gained from exploring
the terrain of actual and potential competitors. Hardly an
academic exercise, sizing up the competition should become an
ongoing, regular, and systematic process of gathering, analyzing,
and acting upon relevant data, which will provide businesses with
two tangible benefits:  It will reveal the steps that
management must take to preempt competitive strikes. 

It will signal new market opportunities. Competitive monitoring
enables management to develop practical strategies and measure
the success of their actions. What you should know Simply
knowing who your competitors are is not enough; you should also
ferret out what their strategies and objectives are. You can
gauge their strengths and weaknesses by learning about their
products and services (current and new), pricing, features, and
the level of customer satisfaction. How are your products or
services positioned relative to the competition? Do your
customers and prospects see your service as having the highest
quality and still selling at the lower price? Is your product
viewed as the low-cost brand, the premium-priced brand, the old
standby, or the leader? After getting some comments, it may
still be neither possible nor desirable to change your service's
features. Instead, research could point out what to communicate
and how to communicate to your market. For example, you could
tell your marketing department what potential customers are
looking for and highlight the features that are valued by your
customers. Your information will enable the marketing people
to create materials that tell customers what they want to hear
and sell them what they want to buy. Differences can be subtle
but they really do matter. Are yesterday's customers and clients
being lured away by today's competition? Are they being tempted
by the competition's siren song? Are they saying yes to your
rival's lower fees or discounts? Are they buying new products or
services that your company has not even thought of offering? Who
will provide the answers? IT can, at the very least, provide
meaningful data to formulate the correct solutions. Potential
market threats While management understands the importance of
keeping an eye on the competition, some members of management
mistakenly believe that the marketing department alone has the
resources to do a proper job. This is simply not true. Much
valuable information exists in the database mines of the IT
function. The IT professional must do some of the digging in
those mines to find it. Most IT professionals are already in an
excellent position to obtain and use primary competitive
information and need only the encouragement or permission of
management. Frequently, IT has become the central repository for
this kind of competitive analysis information. However, using the
information can be a challenge when different departments within
the company engage in territorial squabbles, and the company is
forced to dilute valuable resources through unnecessary
duplications of effort. In such situations, management must educate
all departments to funnel customer and prospect data back to a
central IT point. Emphasize your strengths The benefits of a
competitive intelligence effort coordinated by the IT department
are: 1. Learning the enterprise's strengths and weaknesses.
2. Learning whom is and who is not buying.
3. Determining customers' and prospects' buying plans.
4. Anticipating rather than reacting to the market.
5. Taking the competition seriously.
They are not going to vanish. Equally important, but
occasionally overlooked, is that competitive research, if done
well, can give your company a refreshing appreciation of the
role of the IT function and a better understanding of your
company's own competitive strengths. You may discover, for
instance, that your firm's style or delivery is more appreciated
or valued by customers than management may have realized.
Knowing this facilitates your exploitation of those strengths.
Conclusion In conclusion, the awareness of these forces can help
a company stake out a position in its industry that is less
vulnerable to attack. Many factors determine the nature of
competition, including not only rivals, but also the economics
of particular industries, new entrants, the bargaining power of
customers and suppliers, and the threat of substitute services or
products. A strategic plan of action based on this might include:
positioning the company so that its capabilities provide the best
defense against the competitive forces; influencing the balance
of forces through strategic moves; and anticipating shifts in the
factors underlying competitive forces. Increasingly, corporations
are recognizing the strategic role of the operations function.
These organizations are discovering that a focus on customer needs
is effective only if the operations function is designed and
managed to meet those needs. From acquiring raw materials to
fabricating parts, to assembling products, to customer delivery,
a total systems perspective can enable them, in the ideal, to
fashion an operations function like the inner workings of a finely
tuned machine. Today that operation can be fine-tuned by using
modern information systems.
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-19 07:11

Gun Control

             Gun control is an action of the government that is supposed to reduce crime. Congress has passed many laws on this subject and there really has not been an effect. Gun control has been a controversial issue for years, but the citizens of the United States have a right to own guns and the Constitution states that. On the government's path to control guns they created the Brady Act. Handgun Control Incorporated is the major organization for lobbying, and introducing legislation on gun control. It is headed by Sarah Brady, wife of former White House Press Secretary James Brady. James Brady was shot during an attempt on President Reagan's life in 1981. Sarah is the one responsible for introducing this bill. This bill was supposed to stop criminals from obtaining guns. If an individual wants a firearm bad enough, chances are they will get one (Brennen and Polsby). All it does Is prevent honest people from being able to purchase guns. The person purchasing the gun has to wait for two week while the government performs a background check. The problem with this is it stops the average citizen from purchasing a gun on the whim, while it protects the common criminal. What if a burglar enters a house with full intention to maim or kill? The innocent victim can not get a gun to protect his family because he was arrested seven years ago for drunk driving (Larson). According to the General Accounting Office, in the first seventeen months of the law's existence only seven criminals were convicted for attempting to buy a handgun. Banning more and more guns may reduce gun violence, but it will not eliminate guns from society and will only lead to more and bigger problems. While continuing to take more freedom away from the American people. Gun control laws do not prevent little kids from using guns and harming people. Violent video games help children with their marksmanship and to get over their fear of shooting someone. Parents of three slain girls in the Heath School shootings are going after the manufacturers. They feel that violent video games are partially responsible for their children's death. They claim that the video game taught the shooter how to be an excellent marksman. The boy had never used a gun, but was skilled enough to hit eight moving targets in only eight shots (Prichard). Another fact that backs up the parent's belief is that of military training. Each year billions of dollars are spent to train police and the military how to shoot. Video simulation is the best way to help overcome the natural resistance that most people have about shooting someone. Studies show that people are extraordinary susceptible to programming. One main difference between military training and video games is that military instructions are constantly pausing the action and where the video game is in constant action (Blakemore). There is no direct relationship between the number of guns and the amount of crime in the United States. Between 1973 and 1992, the rate of gun ownership increased by forty-five percent while the homicide rate during that period fell by nearly ten percent. Even with the increasing number of guns in society the homicide rate decreased, highlighting that guns are not the root of the problem, people are. Guns do not kill people, people kill people. Guns do not work as self-protection against criminals. Guns are just as valuable to civilians as they are to police officers. As many as sixty-five lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. Every year potential victims kill between two thousand and three thousand criminals, and wound an additional nine thousand to seventeen thousand. Private citizens mistakenly kill innocent people only thirty times a year, compared to about three hundred and ten mistaken killings by police. Criminals succeed in taking a gun away from an armed victim less than one percent of the time. Gun control laws are needed to prevent the purchase of saturday night specials and assault weapons. Criminals generally prefer larger caliber and more expensive handguns (Brennen and Polsby). President Clinton proposed a restriction on armor piercing ammo. However, the FBI reported that sixty-eight percent of officers killed were not wearing a vest. Of those killed wearing a vest ninety-five percent were shot in unprotected areas. Many people like to use guns for recreation use. The NRA, National Rifle Association, even has its own hunting magazines. These magazines are the American Hunter and American Rifleman. Hunting is a great sport and with these new gun control laws it is harder and harder for good citizens to buy guns for recreation. Hunting is not only a sport but also a hobby. Target shooting is even part of the Olympics. Another thing people use guns for is target practice. This is mostly for personal safety. The better marksman you are the easier it is to protect yourself. Some people even like to shoot targets for fun. The government has no right to take away hobbies from the American people, especially if its not hurting anyone. The government keeps chipping away at our right as American citizens by imposing gun control legislation. There are several major anti-gun control groups. These groups include the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America (GOA). The National Rifle Association is a national group dedicated to the upholding of the Second Amendment of the Constitution. In their magazines, American Hunter and American Rifleman, they say, "The National Rifleman Association believes that every law-abiding citizen is entitled to the ownership and legal use of firearms." The National Rifleman Association does many things to help display their beliefs and persuades others to their beliefs. This association also has a strong influence on legislation, because it has many lobbyists and supporters in government. This group has many members in Congress, and former presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan are NRA members. The Gun Owners of America is another group that is against gun control. The Gun Owners of America preserves and defends the rights of gun owners through legislation. They publish books, articles, and videos on gun issues and how those issues affect people. They also conduct seminars for the press and Congress about issues on the Second Amendment, and gun issues. The GOA opposes bans on semiautomatic weapons, armor piercing ammunition, and handguns. The Second Amendment states that, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The functions of the militia as stated in Article 1, Section 8, clause 15 of the Constitution are to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. If we allow the government to regulate and ban the only effective method of defense the people have, then on that day this country will no longer be one ruled by the people and for the people, but instead one that has surrendered all its power to the government. With the apparent failure of gun laws one could agree that more is not the answer. Banning guns will not solve the crime problem it will only change the method. If guns are not available then another weapon will be used or an older gun. Simple laws will not stop a person who is determined to cause someone harm. This is why people should be allowed to own and carry guns. This allows them to protect themselves from those kinds of people. Proper education in school and other places to teach how to use a gun and to respect guns as a dangerous weapon is what is needed to reduce gun violence in the future. If we allow the government to ban guns the American people will be defenseless and powerless to stop the government from taking over or to stop an outside invasion if either were to occur. This country was born because the citizens were armed and could fight for themselves. How can we remove the very object that helped give our country its freedom?
作者: spry    时间: 2002-11-21 09:18     标题: ADAM SMITH AND JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.

ADAM SMITH AND JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.

Adam Smith(1723-1790) and Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712-1770) each provide their own distinctive social thought. Smith, political economist and moral philosopher, is regarded as the father of modern economics. Rousseau, a Franco-Swiss social and political philosopher, combines enlightenment and semi-romantic themes in his work. Thus Smith’s work places emphasis on the relationship between economics and society, whereas, Rousseau focuses his attention on the social inequalities within society. Therefore, Smith and Rousseau, of the Scottish and Continental Enlightenment respectively, provide unique insights on their existing society. Adam Smith is one of the main figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith’s main concern was the establishment of the free market, as laid out in his work “The Wealth of Nations”(1776). In the “Wealth of Nations”, Smith is very critical of the division of labour. The emphasis falls equally on the economic and social consequences of the division of labour(Smith, 1998:26). Moreover, “What is significant about the contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to Sociology is the clear awareness that society constituted a process, the product of specific economic, social, and historical forces that could be identified and analyzed through methods of empirical science. Society was a category of historical investigation, the result of objective, material causes”(Smith, 1998:26). Smith believed that society would benefit from individuals who were self-interested in their own personal economic gains. Furthermore, Smith believed that the division of labour had a negative impact on society. He thus was very critical of the divison of labour. For Smith, “the man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding…He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion and becomes as stupid as it is possible for a human creature to become”(Lecture Notes, 2001:5). Smith clearly argues that the division of labour halted the growth and development of the people. If the people are unable to progress, Smith believes that society suffers as well. In essence, for the society to progress and development, the people must do so first. Therefore, the division of labour, in Smith’s perspective, conflicts with the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment thinking of individual progress and development. “For Adam Smith, the development of a commercial society produced a social structure divided into three classes, landowners, capitalists, and labourers, ‘the three great constituent orders of every civilized society’”(Smith, 1998:27). Thus, Smith’s ideal society would be of people would work for themselves. He was a strong advocate for free market and posed strong opposition to the feudal system. He, along with other Enilghtenment thinkers, believed that the State had no legitmate role in the free market. Smith’s defence of the free market was tied to the belief that state interference with the market benefits the rich and hurts the poor(Lecture Notes, 2001:5). Therefore, Adam Smith’s vision of an ideal society was one in which most people are involved in independent commodity production(Lecture Notes, 2001:5). Thus for society to develop and prosper as a whole, its individual members must serve their self-interests. Jean Jacques Rousseau’s work, in contrast to Smith’s, gives attention to the social inequalities within society created by social development. Rousseau believes the social development that the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers advocate, actually create a web of problems that previously did not exist. More specifically, his work concentrates on the articificial social inequalities. “The artifical refers to the specifically socially or conventional aspects of reality – the conditions of human life that are contrived or invented by human beings themselves”(Smith, 1998:10). This means that people themselves are responsible for creating the social inequalities that exist within society. “Rousseau’s contrast of the ‘noble savage’ with ‘civilized man’ illustrates this conception; the former exists in a state of nature that provides everything necessary to a free and happy existence, while the latter is enslaved by all sorts of artificial wants and desires”(Smith, 1998:10). Thus, this comparison that Rousseau uses illustrates clearly that social inequalities is a result of social development. The ‘noble savage’ as Rousseau refers to, is not bounded by the artificial social inequalities that contrain the ‘civilized man’. Rousseau’s critical view of society is based upon his theory that the social inequalities existing in society conflict with the laws of nature. “Rousseau declared that it is plainly contrary to the law of nature…that the priviledged few should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude are in want of the bare necessities of life”(Smith, 1998:10). These problems did not exist for the ‘noble savage’, however, the ‘civilized man’ lives in a society that creates and perpetuates social inequalities amongst its members. Rousseau states that, “society creates more compex needs and therefore a more complex humanity than that found in the state of nature”(Smith, 1998:16). Thus people are responsible for creating artificial differences among themselves. Adam Smith and Jean Jacques Rousseau view society from different perspectives. Smith concentrates his attention on economics and individual development, whereas, Rousseau discusses the consequences of social inequalities that have arisen from social development. Smith advocates self-interest as a means for the society to develop and prosper, and in contrast, Rousseau sees this self-interest and development as the cause for social inequalities. Inequalities, that Rousseau believes, naturally do not exist.
作者: iamf    时间: 2002-11-24 18:38

Bad News for Warts and Sores


New vaccines against two common sexually transmitted viruses may reduce their transmission rates significantly. Although larger trials have yet to be completed, the initial results--published 21 November in The New England Journal of Medicine--have thrilled infectious disease experts and doctors.

Human papilloma virus (HPV) causes genital warts and cervical cancer and infects about 20% of adult U.S. women. The new vaccine targets a version of the virus called HPV-16, which has been linked to 50% of cervical cancer cases and suspicious pap smears. Epidemiologist Laura Koutsky of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues injected a synthetic version of the virus's protein shell--which normally houses the virus's DNA--into 768 women. Another 765 women received a placebo injection. After 7 months, none of the vaccinated women had persistent infections of HPV, whereas 3.8% of the women in the placebo group did, indicating a remarkable 100% efficacy.

The second vaccine is for herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2). The sexually transmitted virus sometimes creates painful genital blisters, but 80% to 90% of the people who have it have no symptoms. The virus can be transmitted to babies if the mother is shedding virus during labor; left untreated, HSV kills about half of its newborn victims. Researchers have been attempting to make an HSV vaccine for more than 50 years, with no luck.

To create the new vaccine, researchers combined one of the proteins that make up the herpes virus shell with a compound that helps the immune system cells fight infections. About 73% of the women injected with this vaccine were protected from HSV-2. But to the researchers' surprise, the vaccine did not work in men. It also did not protect women who were already infected with HSV-1--the herpes virus that causes cold sores in up to 90% of adults. Even so, says lead author Lawrence Stanberry of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, over time the vaccine could stem the current rise in new infections, even in men, as the number of infected women decreased.

Larger studies are currently under way with both vaccines. Pathologist Christopher Crum of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston likens the HPV vaccine result to the discovery of the poliovirus vaccine. Likewise, infectious disease researcher Thomas Heineman at St. Louis University, Missouri, says the herpes vaccine "is exciting news. I had to read [the paper] twice to convince myself that this was as good as they say."

--MARY BECKMAN
作者: tongxun    时间: 2002-11-24 18:44

iamf :thanks!
作者: iamf    时间: 2002-11-24 19:00

Fewer Fires From the Sky


Asteroids don't have to strike Earth to wreak havoc. Building-size rocks can blow up overhead, unleashing shock waves that pummel the ground. However, don't lose sleep over this threat: A new study based on satellite images of small asteroid bursts in the atmosphere suggests that the most harmful explosions happen only about once a millennium--about four times less often than previously thought.

Bright burst. Small asteroids often explode overhead, such as this 1999 bolide over the Czech Republic in 1999, but damaging blasts are less common than expected.
CREDIT: P. SPURNY/ASTRONOMICAL INSTITUTE, ONDREJOV OBSERVATORY  

The most recent violent airburst struck in 1908 near the Tunguska River in Siberia. It was a weak asteroid, perhaps 50 meters wide, that never hit the ground. But the shock from its detonation flattened trees over hundreds of square kilometers. The blast's energy packed as much punch as 10 megatons of TNT; a similar event over an urban area today could kill millions of people. Earlier estimates from counts of asteroids and craters imply that a Tunguska-size airburst should happen somewhere on Earth every 200 to 300 years--a rare but not vanishingly small risk.

Images from government satellites have helped researchers refine that calculation. Meteor scientist Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, and his colleagues analyzed previously classified data from U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy satellites. These sentinels watch for nuclear tests, but they also catch hundreds of bolides--small asteroids that explode into fireballs.

Brown's team studied the light from 300 such airbursts in the last 8.5 years. The scientists converted the optical signals into an energy for each blast, calibrated by other data on sound waves and speeds for a dozen of the events. In the 21 November Nature, they report that a bolide equal to 5 kilotons of TNT blows up in the atmosphere about once per year. That's a spectacular show, but it's not big enough for a shock wave to hit the ground. As for the bigger, badder bolides, the team extrapolated between the energy ranges of the 300 airbursts and those of the far rarer impacts. Damaging 10-megaton explosions strike Earth's atmosphere just once per 1000 years, on average, they deduced.

That extrapolation is a convincing use of the best existing data, says planetary astronomer Robert Jedicke of the Spacewatch program at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "But variations in the impact rates are inevitable," he adds, because disrupted comets or collisions among asteroids can create more intense streams of objects. Brown agrees, noting that 8.5 years of data isn't nearly long enough to account for such episodes.

--ROBERT IRION
作者: iamf    时间: 2002-11-25 11:33

First Dogs an Asian Export


An analysis of genetic material from fossil dogs shows that canines in the Western Hemisphere have Asian ancestries. The new evidence suggests that when the first humans walked across the Bering Straits to North America 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, dogs were by their sides. In addition, other genetic comparisons between modern dogs point to East Asia as the initial site of domestication of man's best friend.

Evolutionary biologists have long debated where the first wolf-to-dogs transition occurred and whether a second such transition occurred in the New World. They are hampered by a sparse and confusing fossil record. So Jennifer Leonard, now an evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues turned to DNA preserved in fossil bones.

Working with Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, Leonard studied DNA from 37 dog bones found at pre-Columbian archaeological sites in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as 11 DNA samples from dog remains deposited in Alaska before the arrival of the first European settlers. The ancient DNA was just like modern Eurasian dog DNA, the team reports in the 22 November issue of Science, indicating that these ancient dogs were close kin to their Old World counterparts. The American gray wolf proved to be just a distant cousin. It appears that dogs accompanied humans into the New World?and sired New World canines, says David Hillis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas, Austin.

These Old World dogs first appeared in East Asia, most likely China, according to work by Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and his colleagues. Savolainen's DNA studies involved some 500 samples from modern dogs and about 40 from wolves. As they report in the same issue of Science, the DNA sequences were similar enough to suggest that the ancestors of all these animals came from the same place. He and his colleagues determined that dogs from East Asia had the most ancient pedigrees and were likely the source of the rest of the world's canines.

I was very excited to read these articles,says John Olsen, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. The evidence is bringing us closer to a resolution [of these questions].?
作者: iamf    时间: 2002-11-26 14:24

Sensing Love in the Air

  

Pheromones are nature's messengers of love: chemicals that help animals identify mates and get them in the mood for romance, even over long distances. But how pheromones act on the brain remains vague. Now, neuroscientists have directly spotted the first receptor to bind a known pheromone. This major step will help scientists dissect the molecular machinery involved in complex behaviors like courtship and aggression.


The mouse vomeronasal organ--a cavity tucked inside the nostrils--features a dense network of neurons that sense pheromones. These neurons are directly wired to brain areas driving sexual appetite, aggression, and stress, but they bypass those involved in voluntary actions. Earlier this year, researchers analyzing the sequenced mouse genome brought to light a family of 150 genes that might code for pheromone receptors. All the genes are expressed only in vomeronasal sensory neurons. Consistent with a role as pheromone sensor, each neuron expresses only one of these genes. But subsequent studies pointed to other functions for these genes, and their role as receptors remained unclear.

Now, neuroscientist Ivan Rodriguez and colleagues at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland have examined neurons that express a gene called V1rb2, one member of the putative pheromone receptor family. The team first engineered mice in which neurons with V1rb2 also gave off a green glow when exposed to certain wavelengths of light. Rodriguez and his team then used electrodes to measure the activity of the glowing neurons in response to about 20 known pheromones. The green cells revved up their activity when exposed to a particular pheromone found in mice urine. In contrast, neurons lacking V1rb2 didn't respond to this pheromone at all, the team reports online 18 November in Nature Neuroscience.

The findings fill an important gap, says neuroscientist Catherine Dulac of Harvard University: "It's an experiment that somebody had to do." But the really important question now, she says, is how pheromone signals go from the receptor into the neuron and affect processes in the brain that mediate behavior.

--CHRISTIAN HEUSS
作者: maryland    时间: 2002-12-3 18:56     标题: [转帖]GMAT阅读背景文章

再次感谢iamf!!我来贴一些以前的背景文章吧。[em23]

found one article:企业价值观(explicit value /hidden value)对决策者的影响。

阅读次数:672
shushu   2002-08-29 13:55:12
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Management extracts hidden corporate value at
GE, Dow, and Hughes Space and Communications
Two hundred years after Adam Smith recognized the potential role of manufacturing in industrial society, we have entered an era in which the wealth of nations depends on the creation, transformation, and capitalization of knowledge. Corporate knowledge has become a leading competitive factor—knowledge wrapped up in intellectual assets/intellectual property such as information, patents, trademarks, and copyrights and knowledge wrapped up in corporate management systems, customers, and human resources. But traditional models of accounting and management have often been criticized as not being sufficient to measure and report the current and potential value of companies whose primary assets fall into these categories.

A new management paradigm has emerged over the past five years that attempts to address this problem called intellectual capital management or ICM. ICM builds a new framework for thinking about what constitutes value in a company—a new framework for growing, extracting, and measuring corporate value that doesn’t necessarily rely on revenue flows or tangible assets as a basis for accounting.

Intellectual capital is a term/concept that applies to the missing value between book value and market value of the firm. This “missing value” can represent up to 75% of the market price of the company vis-?vis its hard assets. This phenomenon is due to the increasing role of knowledge (both tacit and explicit) in creating shareholder value and a broad recognition that corporate knowledge is power in industry, particularly when it comes to competing on the basis of speed to market. (Tacit knowledge is the experience and intellectual creativity and learning that rests with the human resources of the firm. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be codified into information and accessed and disseminated systematically.)

Three large U.S. companies, Hughes Space and Communications (HSC), Dow Chemical, and General Electric, are focusing on managing, measuring, and reporting the intellectual capital and, as a result, benefiting from this relatively new approach to thinking about corporate value.

HSC: The Cost Efficiencies of Knowledge
“Unlike many companies, our knowledge management program is not a stand-alone thing and doesn’t have its own objectives—it only exists to support our strategic direction, and it’s focused on that,” says Arian Ward, former leader of Collaboration, Knowledge, and Learning, HSC.

Hughes Space and Communications, a subsidiary of Hughes Electronics, is the world’s largest producer of commercial communications satellites. Over the last five years one of the key competitive factors at HSC has been its ability to bring technological innovation to market while reducing design and development costs to a level that would allow it to expand its customer base. How does Hughes do it? By managing its intellectual capital.

A key challenge at HSC, for example, was to reengineer the design process to capture the tacit and explicit knowledge that had been previously hidden in knowledge silos. As HSC is a science and technology contract environment, this used to mean nonstandardized products and a high degree of specialization in product development and design. “Islands of knowledge” or knowledge silos had emerged within departments, programs, and customer groups. This condition created unnecessary repetition in product development, longer than necessary cycle times, and higher associated costs. HSC addressed the problems created by these islands of knowledge by dramatically reengineering its satellite development and design process into what it called the Integrated Satellite Factory. The Integrated Satellite Factory was built around Communities of Practice (CoPs)—an informal work group that shares a common purpose and a common set of practices, usually members of a specific profession or specialty who often work in different processes, departments, or functions.

Prior to developing the CoPs strategy, these work groups worked autonomously with different work practices, systems, and standards. By developing CoPs, HSC enabled business units, projects, and functions to share practices, standards, and sometimes people. HSC supports the CoPs by promoting knowledge-sharing processes such as collaborative conversations, providing collaborative technologies such as groupware and desktop video conferencing, and developing new support roles such as knowledge stewards, CoP facilitators, and boundary spanners.

The development of CoPs has improved the exchange of information at Hughes and has facilitated establishing an inventory of best practices. By utilizing best practice information and removing communication barriers that existed between groups, HSC eliminated some of the repetition involved in proj- ect development and design and thereby reduced costs and cycle times. As a result, customers that were once excluded from purchasing satellites due to high telecommunications market entry costs and long payback periods are now able to seek HSC solutions.

According to Arian Ward, “What was happening at HSC was that each program (satellite) was tailored to the specific customer. There was a lot of repetition of process and design that created cost and cycle time inefficiencies. By establishing mechanisms such as the CoPs and our intranet capabilities, we could eliminate some of the repetition. This, in turn, enabled us to reduce our costs and cycle times and, therefore, to offer satellite technology to a new class of customers that previously was unattainable to them due to high market entry costs and long payback periods.”

Dow: the Innovation Revolution
At Dow Chemical there’s a distinct relationship among the innovative capabilities of the organization, its ability to compete on the basis of productivity, and, ultimately, its prospect for long-run profitability. Fernand Kaufman, senior VP, New Business, noted that innovation helps achieve superior productivity and cost competitiveness. To him, “An innovative organization is the cornerstone of growth and profitability.”

The main mechanism for directing and monitoring Dow’s growth is the CEO Growth Forum. The Forum is made up of the seven most senior people in the company—the executive committee, the manufacturing VP, the R&D VP, and the VP, New Business. Members of the Forum support prototypes and new business models and explore potential vertical integration options and other initiatives focused on growth. They focus on growth opportunities that tend to be outside the normal operations of the company. These business opportunities may include totally new business models or products and processes that sit across two or three different lines of business (such as a foray into an automotive market that Dow serves from many different business units).

Dow has made extensive use of several organizational assessment tools to help guide its growth strategies. One such tool was the Staircase for Growth Model that essentially provided direction for expanding organizational competencies, technological capabilities, and customer reach over time.

Cost and Process Improvements
Since 1992, Dow Chemical has largely focused on improving productivity through process innovations and significant cost reductions. Dow set aggressive targets of achieving a 50% reduction in conversion costs; nonmaterials-related production costs; and achieving more stringent health, safety, and environmental targets than ever before including a 90% reduction in all emissions. Historically, Dow has been slower in bringing products to market than its competitors. In order to address this problem, it reengineered processes; eliminated layers of bureaucracy; and invested in communications, training, and education tools that would help eliminate knowledge silos.

For example, the Leadership Development Network is a company-wide two-day training session that the company has developed within the last five years in which 3,000 middle managers take instruction on new corporate programs/strategies and then communicate them to the rest of the organization. The program is a top-down initiative taught by 50 of Dow’s most senior level managers who themselves have attended a two-day session conducted by the CEO or other members of the executive office.

Customer Insight Tools and Management
According to Kaufman, because organizations are typically internally focused, investing in customer insight tools such as data warehouses and developing more formal processes for scanning the environment are critical to marketing, financial management, and corporate growth. Dow recently has made significant investments in information technology that integrates customer-based information with the organization’s financial accounting systems and its value-Based Management system. This system has enabled them to segment their markets in detail, giving them access to profitability figures by customer and providing them with information on customer value gain by product.

One of the main challenges, according to Kaufman, in managing customer information is to build a knowledge management system that can provide information in a codified, organized way yet allows it to be tracked back to the source. Dow also maintains an elaborate customer technical service system. Via a call center, technical problems get routed to an automated solution or to a company expert. Over the last three years this system has resulted in a cost saving of 30% on R&D costs. Finally, it has created a business intelligence group to scan the environment, to observe or predict changes in the applications of their products, to learn about the trends in the technologies surrounding these applications, and to understand where the market is headed.

GE: Best Practices in Organizational Learning
Prior to the installation of new CEO Jack Welch in 1981, GE was considered a very insular company. Today, GE has exhaustive processes for identifying best practices from outside the organization because of one of Welch’s legacies. For example, at the GE training center every class is challenged to go into companies around the world to uncover best practices and apply them to GE. According to Kerr, “We’re always creating these mechanisms and processes to remove barriers, transfer knowledge, and help people utilize knowledge.” His job, as chief learning officer, is to facilitate the move toward this “boundary-less organization” by communicating and integrating best practices within GE.

GE competes on its ability to meet changing market conditions quickly. Steve Kerr notes, “This involves a very multidimensional set of objectives, goals, tactics, tools, and methods that are geared toward making GE better at predicting and responding to markets.” In order to provide greater value to customers while minimizing the company’s exposure to risk, GE has become a prolific producer of customer information. In addition to customer insight tools such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews, many formal mechanisms have been implemented to enable GE to respond to individual customer demands as well as changing market conditions. GE also is committed to total quality management systems such as Six Sigma and has created corporate performance systems such as Dashboards and Scorecards for each of its major clients to ensure that quality and service are maintained.

Breaking ‘Knowledge Silos'
Clearly, corporations like Hughes, Dow Chemical, and GE have taken the management of knowledge, information, and corporate intelligence seriously. By developing communities of practice (CoPs), Hughes has integrated a potentially broad, and previously untapped, range of knowledge that rested within departments, customer groups, and human resource designations. The resulting cost efficiencies from improving the design flow has facilitated speed to market and opened up opportunities for developing new clients. At Dow Chemical, the CEO Growth Forum takes new venture propositions and assesses the potential to leverage them across the organization. Meanwhile, its Business Intelligence Group closely monitors changes in the customer, technology, market, and regulatory environment.

Corporate knowledge is further leveraged through elaborate information systems that codify explicit knowledge of customers. Ensuring that the knowledge source is identifiable and traceable continues to be one of the major challenges in building a knowledge management system. At GE, implementing best practices company-wide has been a primary knowledge management strategy. As in Hughes Space and Communications, organizational learning at GE has increased speed to market and helped to break down the traditional “knowledge silos” that plague large corporations.



找到一篇关于Episodic Memory的摘要


阅读次数:503
angel   2002-08-29 13:31:42

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

刚刚找到一篇关于Episodic Memory(片断记忆)的摘要,尽管很短,由于该题是高频考题,所以特此刊出,至少可以从中领会一下这一概念。
另外以往的机经很多都把该词误写为epidemic memory,在此特别更正,应该是Episodic Memory(片断记忆),以免被误导。

The question of whether any non-human species displays episodic memory is controversial. Associative accounts of animal learning recognize that behaviour can change in response to single events but this does not imply that animals need or are later able to recall representations of unique events at a different time and place. The lack of language is also relevant, being the usual medium for communicating about the world, but whether it is critical for the capacity to represent and recall events is a separate matter. One reason for suspecting that certain animals possess an episodic-like memory system is that a variety of learning and memory tasks have been developed that, even though they do not meet the strict criteria required for episodic memory, have an 'episodic-like' character. These include certain one-trial learning tasks, scene-specific discrimination learning, multiple reversal learning, delayed matching and non-matching tasks and, most recently, tasks demanding recollection of 'what, where and when' an event happened. Another reason is that the neuronal architecture of brain areas thought to be involved in episodic memory (including the hippocampal formation) are substantially similar in mammals and, arguably, all vertebrates. Third, our developing understanding of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity (which is a candidate neuronal mechanism for encoding memory traces) suggests that its expression reflects certain physiological characteristics that are ideal components of a neuronal episodic memory system. These include the apparently digital character of synaptic change at individual terminals and the variable persistence of potentiation accounted for by the synaptic tag hypothesis. A further value of studying episodic-like memory in animals is the opportunity it affords to model certain kinds of neurodegenerative disease that, in humans, affect episodic memory. An example is recent work on a transgenic mouse that over-expresses a mutation of human amyloid precursor protein (APP) that occurs in familial Alzheimer's disease, under the control of platelet derived (PD) growth factor promoter (the PDAPP mouse). A striking age- and amyloid plaque-related deficit is seen using a task in which the mice have to keep changing their memory representation of the world rather than learn a single fact.

Good luck to everyone!


关于暴龙是食腐动物还是食肉动物 de课外阅读

阅读次数:543
thousandlife 2002-08-29 13:51:20

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

关于暴龙tyrannosaurus是食腐动物scavenger还是食肉动物carnivore、predator
这几天总有人发现ets阅读的原文章,比如北欧海盗;昨天我在discovery上看到一个专题报道是关于暴龙的讨论,我留意到jj中的材料很少,可能是这篇文章较难或者比较多的名词不好记忆,所以在这里把discovery长达一个小时的节目总结一下,希望对阅读有用,也请考试中读过该文章的人出来指正。重申一下,这只是一点课外知识的补充,不要影响大家答题。

说长久以来人们一直把暴龙看成是凶猛的食肉动物,原因是早先一个学家主观地如是描绘恐龙,还说恐龙是直立行走、尾巴拖地。

片子主要介绍了一帮人在一个地方挖骨头,其带头人反驳了这一无证据的观点,同时提出了暴龙食腐动物的主张,且配以各方面的证据:

一、在三角龙头上的齿痕(jj上提到文中有)
这个学者拿一个三角龙的头骨,上面有很多小坑;众所周知,暴龙在所有恐龙中有最强大的牙齿,这些小坑正好能容下它们牙齿,证明是暴龙咬的,但不能说明是食肉动物还是食腐动物。但是有一块骨头上的坑可以说明是食腐动物,因为逻辑上讲暴龙必须先吃掉外面所有的肉和骨头才有可能碰到里面这块骨头,所以证明暴龙是
慢慢吃的食腐动物。

二、股骨径骨的比较
这两块腿上的骨头,当前者比后者长时,这种动物就善于奔跑。学家门有这种比例来判断一种动物奔跑的速度,发现暴龙的前者短,证明它门不善奔跑。

三、饶骨尺骨(我觉得这个最有说服力不过可能不会考)
暴龙的前肢上的两块骨头--就是小臂,短于肱骨--就是大臂,这说明它门的双手根本无法接触,它们用手也不能将猎物送至嘴边(太可怜了),甚至它们跌到了都很难靠四肢支撑再站起来。而公认的食肉动物,一种小的xx龙,它的前肢就很发达很长,且付赠利爪弯钩。

四、嗅觉
通过研究暴龙的头骨(不是周星驰的那个),学家发现恐龙的视觉神经很弱,这对于捕食是不利的;同时它的嗅觉神经很发达。接着他又对比了另一种食腐动物-xx鹫---这家伙可以发现25miles以外的肉味,它的嗅觉神经与暴龙的惊人的相似。再此验证了暴龙食腐。

五、丑陋的外表
大凡食腐动物都有丑陋的外表,如土狼、秃鹫,意在赶跑其他动物,而暴龙巨大丑陋。


再来一篇关于气候与动物灭绝(From 国家地理杂志)

阅读次数:478
smartom   2002-08-30 19:20:36

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

看了几百篇ETS的科技文章,发觉自己越来越喜欢看这些东东,大家有机会的话看看明珠台和国际台,国家地理频道之类的节目,长知识,还可以练听力。
The Sixth Extinction

Text by Virginia Morell
Photographs by Frans Lanting

The first orange rays of the sun are just beginning to touch the saw grass prairie of Everglades National Park in Florida when our helicopter pilot lifts off from a small airport nearby. He turns low over the park, skimming above the gray-green grasses and morning mist. Here and there small stands of pencil-thin native slash pine show dark green against the pale grasslands. But it’s the open marshy prairie that we seek, home to the endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow. Heading south, the pilot searches for a particular point on a transect map, then banks and flies due west. Twenty minutes later we’re on the ground. “Here’s your first spot,” he says over the radio to Stuart Pimm, the conservation biologist seated beside me in the back. In front another biologist, Sonny Bass, gives us the thumbs-up sign. Pimm and I, dressed in olive green flight suits and white helmets, jump into the wet marsh and run a short way from the helicopter.

For a moment this seems almost like a scene from Apocalypse Now. The helicopter’s blades whip the air, bending the grasses in a wide swath all around and obliterating every sound except the wap-wap-wap of its rotors. As it peels away, ferrying Bass to the next site a kilometer away, Pimm removes his helmet and turns to me. “Welcome,” he says, his voice rising above the fading roar of the helicopter, “to the front lines of saving biodiversity.”

An avuncular researcher from the University of Tennessee, Pimm is not merely being theatrical. Based on his and his colleagues’ calculations, some 50 percent of the world’s flora and fauna could be on a path to extinction within a hundred years. And everything is affected: fish, birds, insects, plants, and mammals. By Pimm’s count 11 percent of birds, or 1,100 species out of the world’s nearly 10,000, are on the edge of extinction; it’s doubtful that the majority of these 1,100 will live much beyond the end of the next century. The picture is not pretty for plants either. A team of respected botanists recently reported that one in eight plants is at risk of becoming extinct. “It’s not just species on islands or in rain forests or just birds or big charismatic mammals,” says Pimm. “It’s everything and it’s everywhere. It’s here in this national park. It is a worldwide epidemic of extinctions.”

Such a rate of extinction has occurred only five times since complex life emerged, and each time it was caused by a catastrophic natural disaster. For instance, geologists have found evidence that a meteorite crashed into Earth 65 million years ago, leading to the demise of the dinosaurs. That was the most recent major extinction. Today the Earth is again in extinction’s grip—but the cause has changed. The sixth extinction is not happening because of some external force. It is happening because of us, Homo sapiens, an “exterminator species,” as one scientist has characterized humankind. The collective actions of humans—developing and paving over the landscape, clear-cutting forests, polluting rivers and streams, altering the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer, and populating nearly every place imaginable—are bringing an end to the lives of creatures across the Earth. “I think we must ask ourselves if this is really what we want to do to God’s creation,” says Pimm. “To drive it to extinction? Because extinction really is irreversible; species that go extinct are lost forever. This is not like Jurassic Park. We can’t bring them back.”

In Pimm’s eyes people should be stewards of their neighboring species. That’s why he’s here at dawn in the Everglades, fighting to save the life of a little brown-and-white songbird with a smattering of gold feathers above its eyes.

Found only in this park, Big Cypress National Preserve, and nearby areas, the Cape Sable sparrow was once fairly common in the Everglades’ hundred square miles [160.9 square kilometers] of prairie lands, which lie adjacent to its better known “river of grass.” In 1992 the sparrow’s population registered a healthy 6,400 individuals. By 1995 the sparrow’s numbers had taken a nosedive: Its population dropped by 60 percent to 2,600. “It was clearly on its way out,” says Pimm, turning to set his helmet on the ground. “And to me that was unconscionable. In a national park of this size [the Everglades encompasses 1.5 million acres] (.6075 million hectares) and in the richest country in the world, species shouldn’t be going extinct because of our actions. These areas, after all, were set up for their protection.”

Raising his binoculars, Pimm surveys the surrounding grasses, then cups his ear to listen for the sparrow’s call. “Ahhh, there’s one. Do you hear it? Listen for a chit-chit-tweeeee,” he says, imitating the bird’s short, quick notes and insect-like buzz. We stand silently, and a few moments later the call comes again, clear and brazen in the still morning air. “That’s the male defending his territory; the birds have just started nesting, and so this is the best time to get a count of their population.” Through our binoculars we spot this throaty male, perched at the end of a swaying grass stalk, his beak open, singing to the sky.

Throughout the three-month nesting period Pimm and Bass make these counts, flying a different line of their transect map each dawn and stopping at sites spaced precisely a kilometer (0.6 mile) apart to look and listen for the birds. The resulting data give them not only a count of the number of eligible males but also a map of where the birds prefer to build their nests. And that, in turn, has revealed what is harming them: Too much water. “The birds start nesting in the middle of April,” Pimm says. “They weave the grasses together to form a bowl about three inches [76.2 millimeters] off the ground.”

Because they nest so close to the ground, there can’t be any standing water if they’re to raise a brood successfully. But water throughout and around the Everglades is managed and controlled by two agencies, the South Florida Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers. Water, which naturally would have flowed throughout the park, is held in reservoirs, channeled in dikes, and, above all, prevented from spilling into bordering farms and the suburbs of Greater Miami. To water managers, say Pimm and Bass, the drying western prairies of the Everglades in the spring look like an excellent place to dump excess water, which is what happened for several years beginning in 1993. While this protected some homes and roads, it has proved a disaster for the sparrow and, the biologists suspect, for other species, including many wading birds, such as egrets and herons whose nesting patterns have also been disrupted. “We’re losing the sparrow and probably other species just because of water management decisions,” says Bass on the flight back to the airport.

“Admittedly, it is a big problem managing the water here, especially in stormy years. But all it takes is holding off a couple of months, as the agencies did last year, to let the birds nest and rear their young. It’s a matter of making the right decision.”

If the Cape Sable sparrow’s nesting grounds are not flooded, Pimm and Bass think their population will begin to increase.

For other species, though, no decision will change their fate; they are simply doomed to disappear from Earth.

In London, at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, two horticulturists lead the way through a greenhouse, stopping to point out plants, from shrubs to spindly trees, that no longer exist in the wild. Kew researchers hope eventually to return some to their homelands. But for others the greenhouse is the end of the line.

“Now that poor thing, an Encephalartos woodii, hasn’t had sex in about a hundred years,” says Stefan Czeladzinski, a horticulturist-in-training, referring to one of the trees. “It’s one of our living dead.” The plant, about five feet [1.5 meters] tall with leathery leaves, is from Natal in South Africa. It is a dioecious species, meaning that its individuals are either male or female. In this case the plant is a male, and no females are known to exist. “Botanists have combed Natal looking for one, but they’ve never found it,” says Czeladzinski. This survivor comes from cuttings from the last wild plant, which was moved to a botanical garden decades ago. All E. woodii plants alive today, including the lonely Kew specimen, are clones of that wild male; they are genetically identical and will never reproduce naturally unless a female is found.

And it’s not just the Encephalartos that has been lost. Most of the native flora of many islands is extinct, beaten out by species that settlers introduced from Europe more than 300 years ago. “In some islands the habitats were already destroyed by the time the first botanists arrived,” says Michael Maunder, a tall, dark-haired conservation biologist at Kew who specializes in the recovery of critically endangered plants. “We’ve managed to piece the flora together by reading travelers’ diaries, collecting pollen from soil samples, and having bits of wood identified. But we only have a shadow of an idea of what was once there.”

Because the species on islands are often endemics—meaning that they are found nowhere else in the world—their populations are typically small and consequently more prone to extinction. When a foreign plant is introduced—for example, the Chinese guava tree that blankets much of Mauritius, an island off Madagascar—it can become a weed that ends all others.

Kew Gardens and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation have launched a project basically to weed the island of Mauritius. On the wall of his office Maunder has a large photo of an area known as the Black River Gorge, which retains remnants of Mauritius’s original forest. These plots, some a mere acre[0.41 hectare] in size, are caged in chain-link fences to keep out the deer and pigs, also introduced from Europe. Outside, as if biding its time, grows a thick, tangled mat of similarly introduced guava and privet.

“The plots are weeded every year,” Maunder says. “We can keep these small plots of natives going, but how do we extend them? Can we ever fully restore Mauritius?” Maunder only shakes his head.

Throughout the islands of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, the tale is much the same: extinctions being driven by species introduced by European explorers a few hundred years ago. But there was an even earlier round of extinctions in these and other places as humans moved out of Africa and into new lands. In Australia the arrival of the first people 50,000 to 60,000 years ago may have led to the demise of that island continent’s megafauna, which included 20 species of giant kangaroos, the marsupial lion, and diprotodons—herbivorous marsupials that resembled cow-size rodents.

“I’ve no doubt that people hunted them to extinction,” says Tim Flannery, a mammalogist at the Australian Museum in Sydney, who has investigated his country’s extinctions, past and present. “It’s the same story in New Guinea and New Zealand. There you can still find some of the evidence, such as piles of bones from the giant moas [large, flightless birds] that the Maori killed until there were no more.”

“The same thing happened here,” says Dolores Piperno, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, giving a quick smile and a sigh almost simultaneously. “Let me show you something.” She walks briskly across the tile floor of her office and riffles through a row of files. From one she pulls out a large chart and unfolds it on her desk. It’s a graph of plant fossils collected from sediments taken from a lake in central Panama, and it spans a period from 14,000 years ago to the present.

Fourteen thousand years ago the diversity of trees and plants was relatively modest, reflecting the tail end of the last ice age in the tropics. But by 11,000 years ago, as Panama began to warm up, the variety of flora increased dramatically. Piperno traces this burst of plant life with her forefinger as the graph makes an upward spike, but then the line takes a sudden downward plunge, as if tracking the collapse of the stock market in 1929. “That,” she says, tapping the graph, “is when people began practicing slash-and-burn agriculture here, about 7,000 years ago. That’s what people can do to a forest with a stone ax and fire. It shows that the idea of the noble savage—that people in the past in simpler societies lived in harmony with the natural world—isn’t true. We humans have short-term goals. That’s what makes saving species and conserving the environment for the long term so hard. We want results now.”

But that short-term outlook can also work against people by eliminating potentially useful species. “We have not yet identified all the plants on Earth,” says Sir Ghillean Prance, the director of Kew Gardens, “and we’re losing them, I’m afraid, faster than we can catalog them.” Because so many of our most effective medicines, from aspirin to morphine, come from plants, Prance worries that in losing the flora of the world, we’re also losing the possibility of finding new drugs and chemicals.

“Every time we lose a species, we lose an option for the future,” he says. “We lose a potential cure for AIDS or a virus-resistant crop. So we must somehow stop losing species, not just for the sake of our planet but for our own selfish needs and uses.” The Cape Sable sparrow, of course, is not likely to lead to a cure for cancer or to any other earthshaking discovery. Nor are most species around us. What would it matter if this little bird, or any of the 1,100 others on Pimm’s list, becomes extinct? That thought crosses my mind one morning while joining his team of bird banders in the Everglades.

To trap the sparrows, the team watches the males to identify each individual’s nesting territory. The banders then set up a mist net nearby and play a tape recording of another male’s song, fooling the resident male into thinking a rival has arrived to court his mate. That kind of cheeky behavior elicits an immediate response from the male in this territory. He swoops in low over the grass, stops for a few seconds atop a single blade to sing his own territorial song, and then flies determinedly into the net, where he thinks his competitor is lurking.

Two banders rush forward to catch him. They weigh and measure him and gently fasten two yellow bands onto his left leg. “Would you like to let him go?” asks Dave Okines, the chief bander. He shows me how to hold the sparrow’s legs between my first and second fingers, so that he sits upright on the top of my hand. For a brief moment, I keep him there, feeling his warmth, admiring the bright gold of his eyebrow feathers. Then I open my hand and he’s gone in a flash, and I allow myself the thought that the sixth extinction is not inevitable. If humans are the cause, they can also be the solution.

Return to top

We hope you enjoyed this story. You can join the Society in the NGS Store. Society membership includes 12 issues of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC every year.


********************************************************************

anan28:《又找到一篇火星上有生命的文章,很像JJ! 》(8.24)
site:
http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/lpi/meteorites/alhnpap.html
JJ里提到的人名及AHL8400这个东东都有!大家好好看看!
————————————————————————————————
我自己看了一下,确实很长,讲了很多科学家的观点,每一篇后面都附上作者自己的评述(语气像极了GMAT的CR和AWA的八股味!呵呵)。。如果时间不够的同志们只看下面的文章就可以了。

Schopf J.W. (1999) Breakthrough Discoveries. Ch. 5 (p. 91-117) in Evolution! Facts and Fallacies (ed. J.W. Schopf) Academic Press, NY.
The author recalls his experiences leading up to the NASA press conference at which D.S. McKay and colleagues announced their claim of evidence for ancient martian life in ALH 84001. The validity of the claim and its evidence are discussed in the context of two failed extraordinary claims in paleontology.
The course of science is littered with claims of extraordinary breakthroughs and insights. Correct claims are well-chronicled, and often led to Nobel prizes. Failed claims reveal a rarely-seen side of science: error, faith, despair, and sometimes redemption. Dr. Schopf considers three extraordinary claims: the fossil of a purported man drowned in the Noachian deluge; hoax fossils of birds, stars, spiderwebs, the name of God in Hebrew, etc., perpetrated upon a German paleontologist; and evidence for fossil life in meteorite ALH 84001.

In 1725, Dr. J.J. Scheutzer discovered fossil bones in limestone from Baden (Germany), and interpreted them as a human skeleton, from a man drowned in the Noachian flood. His discovery was hailed as scientific proof of the Bible, although many scholars harbored doubts. After Scheutzer's death, and the conquest of his home Holland by France in 1810, Georges Cuvier was granted permission to "clean" the specimen. Cuvier confirmed his suspicions (based on published drawings) that the skeleton actually came from a large salamander.

Also in 1725, Professor J. Beringer of Würzburg (Germany) dug up a collection of rocks with incised and relief depictions of animals (bees, scorpions, lizards, aphids, spiderwebs, a honeycomb, a bird with eggs), flowers, stars, a smiling sun, and the name of God in Hebrew. Professor Beringer quickly published a treatise on these marvelous rocks, but soon realized that he had been hoaxed. He requested a judicial hearing, where two rival academics were implicated. Beringer was exonerated, and continued his distinguished career.

In 1996, Dr. D. McKay and colleagues at the Johnson Space Center announced at a press conference that they had uncovered evidence, in a meteorite, for life in Mars' distant past. Their first line of evidence was the presence of carbonate, sulfide and oxide minerals together in the rock. McKay et al. suggested that the association of these minerals could be related to life, but the association does not prove life. Second, McKay's group found minute crystals of magnetic iron oxide, which are strikingly similar to those found in some Earth bacteria. Yet these particles cannot be distinguished from similar magnetic grains formed without life. The third line of evidence was the presence of organic chemical compounds associated with the carbonate minerals, yet the specific organic compounds discovered can form readily without any intervention from life. Finally, McKay and colleagues presented images of "features resembling terrestrial microorganisms..." as possibly being fossils of martian microorganisms.

The "features resembling terrestrial microorganisms..." are actually similar in shape only, not in size. They are up to 30 x 130 nm (billionths of a meter) long. This is about 1/200 the volume of the smallest known terrestrial organism, which is a parasite: it is too small to contain all the biochemistry needed for life as we know it. If we assume that the martian organism had a cell wall ~ 6 nm thick, its volume is 1/2000 that of the smallest known Earth organism.

The question of life in ALH 84001 cannot be answered definitively with the available data. Dr. Schopf draws three lessons from the stories of extraordinary scientific claims: that "headlines win," that scientists are human, and that science is self-correcting -- faulty conclusions will eventually be found out.

This chapter is not a peer-reviewed scientific document, but gives a fascinating historical account of the ALH 84001 controversy. Dr. Schopf was the designated skeptic at the first NASA press conference on ALH 84001, the curmudgeon who found the flaws in the theory McKay built. Particularly intriguing is Schopf's story of his first meeting with McKay's group -- by his account, they had tentatively identified carbonate pancakes in ALH 84001 as whole fossil foraminifera.

This chapter was adapted from a longer work by Dr. Schopf, Cradle of Life, to be published in 1999 by Princeton University Press.

**********************************************************************

anan28: 《找到一篇文章关于VINLAND map真伪的,与真题很像。可以试试!》(8.14)
在网上好不容易才搜到的,特贴于此。
http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/96_05/vinland_map.html
比较长,耐心点读,权当练阅读。
__________________________________________________________________

Tales of the "Un-Fake"
The reputation of a map donated to the Beinecke Library and later suspected of being a fraud has been rehabilitated, but the process highlights the problems of proving a document's authenticity beyond a doubt.

May 1996
by Jennifer Kaylin

It was the fall of 1965, and a small group of Yale scholars could barely contain their elation. After months of secrecy, they had just announced receipt of an extraordinary gift, a wrinkled piece of parchment known as the Vinland Map. Hailed as the "cartographic discovery of the century," the document was said to prove that Leif Ericson, and not Christopher Columbus, was the true discoverer of America. James Tanis, the University Librarian at the time, called the Vinland Map "the most exciting single acquisition of the Yale Library in modern times, exceeding in significance even Yale's Gutenberg Bible and Bay Psalm Book"; Alexander O. Vietor, Yale's curator of maps, declared it "the greatest treasure of the Yale Map collection." To coincide with the announcement, Yale University Press triumphantly published a book, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation.

But elation soon turned to mortification. Skeptical of the process used to authenticate the Vinland Map, several scholars called for more sophisticated testing, and in 1972, an investigation by an independent laboratory forced the University to concede that the Vinland Map "may be a forgery," subjecting Yale to one of the more embarrassing public humiliations in its history.

One would think that an apparent gaffe of this magnitude would have put an end to the saga of the Vinland Map, but last year, yet another group of scientists presented new evidence suggesting that the map was indeed a genuine pre-Columbian document. This finding prompted Yale University Press to publish a revised edition of its original book. The handsome volume arrived in bookstores this February, but not without an introduction conceding that doubts about the map might never be entirely eliminated.

Even the map's most ardent supporters had been shaken by the on-again-off-again authentication saga, but they were hardly alone. In an era of rapidly changing technology, when frauds abound and even government mints can stay only a step or two ahead of counterfeiters, the people who make decisions about what is real and what is fake are under enormous pressure. That pressure grows even more intense when the object in question has a potential for historic and monetary value. If scholars and scientists using the latest equipment could study the Vinland Map for almost 40 years and still not reach a unanimous conclusion on its authenticity, what does that say about the chances that the genuineness of any artifact can be verified with certainty?

The journey that led to the rehabilitation of the Vinland Map began in 1957, when a New Haven rare-book dealer named Lawrence Witten bought the document for $3,600 from an Italian book seller. To the untrained eye, the map could not have been less impressive. Drawn on a sheet of parchment about the size of a place mat, it had become brownish and rippled with age. There were none of those colorful renderings of mythic sea monsters or the decorative calligraphy one associates with early maps -- just a faded and imprecise wavy black outline of several large land masses.

Nevertheless, Witten stopped by the Yale Library to show his acquisition to Alexander Vietor and Thomas E. Marston, the curator of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Both were impressed by the document, in which they recognized a remarkably accurate representation of Greenland. But next to that was a large area labeled "Vinlanda Insula." The scholars concluded that the "island" was actually the coastline of North America. Even more intriguing, a Latin inscription in the upper left corner described how Leif Ericson and Bjarni Herjolfson had sailed from Greenland and discovered the new land, which they named Vinland. The scholars concluded that the map had been drawn about 50 years before Columbus's voyage by an unknown European cartographer using since-lost records left by Viking explorers, and that the discovery itself would have been made about 500 years before Columbus.

Historians had long been aware of Norse sagas about pre-Columbian voyages to North America, but efforts to find any cartographic evidence of these excursions had failed. Suddenly, it appeared to Vietor and Marston, the proof had dropped into their laps.

Alerted to the find, an anonymous donor (who was later identified as Paul Mellon '29, one of Yale's most durably generous benefactors), purchased the map for $1 million and turned it over to the Beinecke.

Even then, however, the Yale scholars were not without their reservations. Unaccountably, the map had been bound during the 19th century with a medieval manuscript called the Tartar Relation, which related the findings of a 13th-century expedition into Asia to the land of the Tartars. The problem was that the map and the Relation didn't seem to have anything in common except that they were bound together. To further muddle things, the binding was relatively new, and a cluster of worm holes in the map didn't match the worm holes in the Relation. Until these disparities could be adequately explained, the authenticity of the map would have to remain suspect.

But in 1958, an amazing stroke of luck seemed to provide the answer. Marston invited Witten over to inspect the bindings of some rare books he'd recently bought from a London company. As Witten leafed through one of the books -- a medieval encyclopedia called Speculum Historialia -- he noticed that it was made up of an odd combination of parchment and paper pages. Recalling the same feature in the Tartar Relation, he compared the water marks and found that they were the same. He then found that a worm hole on the first page of the Relation exactly matched up with one on the last page of the encyclopedia. Three pairs of worm holes on the map aligned exactly with those on the first page of the encyclopedia. It was therefore clear that the map, the Tartar Relation, and the encyclopedia had once all been parts of the same book -- and that evidence contained in the encyclopedia could now be used to authenticate the map.

Eight years of arduous research followed, culminating in the publication of the Press's lavish book, which described in detail the scholarly and scientific scrutiny to which the map had been subjected. Chester Kerr, who was then the director of the press, has vivid memories of that time. "We planned to publish the book in the spring," recalls Kerr, "but there was a delay in getting the proofs read, which meant it couldn't come out until June. I didn't want it to get lost in the summer, light-reading season, so we decided to wait until the fall." Kerr and the other major players thought it would be timely to release the book on October 9, Leif Ericson's birthday, but they decided to wait until the following Monday to accommodate everyone's schedules. "That was where I made my great mistake, because that turned out to be Columbus Day," Kerr recalls. "I was always accused of doing this deliberately to discredit Columbus in favor of Leif Ericson, but the truth is that it was a complete accident."

Angered by what appeared to be an insult to a large population of Italian-Americans, public figures across the country scrambled to register their indignation. Jimmy Durante quipped that although he was not "poissonally" acquainted with Columbus, he knew that when the explorer arrived in America, he "played only to Indians -- there were no Norwegians in the audience!" John Lindsay '44, '48LLB, a congressman who was then a candidate for mayor of New York (where Italian-American voters far outnumbered Norse-Americans), declared that "to say Columbus didn't discover America is as absurd as saying DiMaggio doesn't know anything about baseball or that Toscanini and Caruso weren't great musicians." It wasn't long before the popular press took up the story, and the combined notoriety helped turn the book into a best-seller.

"It was an amazing time," recalls Anna Glen Vietor, the widow of Alexander Vietor. "My husband was flooded with phone calls from people asking him why he hated Columbus. Then there were the cartoons: Indians sitting in a circle raising their glasses, saying 'Skoal' as the Santa Maria pulled up to the shore -- things like that. If it hadn't been played up by the media the way it was, it would have been a perfectly good scientific affair."

But the Columbus Day brouhaha wasn't the only upheaval the map encountered. At a 1966 conference convened by the Smithsonian Institution to discuss the map, lingering doubts about its authenticity prompted Yale to commission an independent laboratory to reexamine the map. Walter C. McCrone, a Chicago microscopist and expert on air pollution, removed 29 particles of vellum and ink from the map. His X-ray analysis showed that the particles consisted of anatase, a crystalline form of titanium dioxide that is rare in nature -- and was not commercially available as a white pigment until 1920. Devastated, but facing what appeared to be incontrovertible scientific evidence, Yale conceded that the map might be a fake.

As horrifying as this episode was for Yale scholars, they might have taken comfort in the knowledge that they were in good company. History is littered with examples of suspected and confirmed forgeries, not to mention revisionist discoveries. Experts are still debating the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, the cloth supposedly used to wrap the body of Christ after he was taken down from the cross and which is said to bear his image. More recently, a statue that stood unnoticed for years in the lobby of a stately New York City home designed by Stanford White for the Payne Whitney family has been reassessed by at least one reputable scholar as a work by Michelangelo.

More common are forgeries that were ultimately exposed. Euripides, Themistocles, and Socrates are just three ancient writers whose letters and works were forged. In the late 18th century, William Henry Ireland claimed to have discovered unknown manuscripts by Shakespeare, going so far as to create a new "Shakespeare" play, Vortigern and Rowena. In 1928, the Atlantic Monthly published a series of articles based on what turned out to be forged love letters from Abraham Lincoln to Ann Rutledge. The "diaries" of Benito Mussolini even fooled his son, Vittorio, and the forging of Howard Hughes's autobiography by Clifford Irving was only exposed when the reclusive billionaire emerged from seclusion to denounce its authenticity.

One of the more spectacular American forgery cases involved a con artist named Mark Hofmann, who sought to rewrite Mormon theology by creating bogus documents that included the so-called "White Salamander Letter," which described the finding of the "gold plates" on which Mormonism is founded. But perhaps the most dramatic forgery attempt of modern times occurred in 1983 with the appearance of 62 diaries supposedly written by Adolf Hitler. The West German photo weekly Stern paid $3.8 million before discovering its error, and Newsweek magazine was left red-faced after it devoted a cover story to what turned out to be total fabrications.

These examples, of course, all involve forgeries that were eventually exposed; the case of the Vinland Map differs in that it could well be authentic. This makes its story all the more intriguing, and the detective work of the scholars assigned to unravel the mystery that much more difficult.

When investigating a document like the Vinland Map, experts use a combination of science and scholarship, drawing on historical evidence as well as physical data. Improved technology -- high-powered microscopes, ultraviolet light, micronometers, X-rays, and cyclotrons are but some of the tools -- now enables scientists to expose fraudulent artifacts with greater ease, but a thorough knowledge of the culture in which the item was supposedly produced is also essential. For example, scholars were immediately suspicious of a notebook that was purportedly the diary of Jack the Ripper because it contained phrases inconsistent with Victorian prose. The simple fact that the diary was written in the sort of scrapbook usually used for mounting postcards and photographs rather than recording personal histories added to the doubts, which were eventually confirmed.

Jacqueline Olin of the Smithsonian Institution's Conservation Analytical Laboratory says teamwork is often critical to authenticating an artifact. Just as an assortment of health-care specialists will work together to diagnose a disease and develop a course of treatment, experts representing a range of different fields will join forces to analyze a questionable document. In his book, Forging History, Kenneth W. Rendell writes that the "authentication of historical letters and documents uses an analytic approach that can be illustrated and proven. It is true that an initial element that many call 'intuition' does play an important part in any examination of questioned documents; but what is frequently called intuition is a simultaneous observation of combinations of facts reflected against the mental images stored during decades of experience, giving an indication of whether the document in question meets the general criteria of genuine documents of the period and circumstances." Rendell adds that "knowing the psychology of forgers is almost as important as knowing how to analyze handwriting."

The case for and against the Vinland Map has always hinged on the scientific evidence, but the ways in which that evidence is gathered and evaluated are constantly changing. McCrone's technical data, gathered in the early 1970s, seemed at the time to be definitive. As time passed, however, a challenge to the original results became all but inevitable. When it happened -- at the behest of a group of supporters who remained unwavering in their belief that the map was authentic -- no one was sure what the result would be. But in 1985, the pro-Map forces got the news they had been hoping for. Physicists at the University of California at Davis had uncovered new evidence that contradicted McCrone's findings and tipped the scale back toward the view that the document was genuine.

Using a powerful cyclotron to fire a beam of protons through the map, the UCD team had generated X-rays from which all elements present in the ink and parchment could be identified and quantified. Thomas A. Cahill, who headed the project, reported that the ink contained only trace amounts of titanium, amounts consistent with other medieval documents he had studied. "We tested 150 parchment documents from that period, and the findings were similar," he says.

Another McCrone finding that had hurt the map's claim to authenticity was that the anatase appeared in the form of crystals, rather than in the irregular chunks and shards that are found in nature. Cahill acknowledges the point, but argues that the condition is likely to be the result of modern contamination rather than a modern forgery. "Such particles could be easily pressed into the map during handling," he says. "This is in fact almost impossible to avoid." As for McCrone's contention that the anatase was used to make the map's yellow lines, Cahill says experiments proved it was not present in sufficient quantities to produce visible marks.

McCrone, who has also tested the Shroud of Turin and is convinced that it is a forgery, stands by his position that the Vinland Map is "a modern production." In a dramatic gesture emphasizing just how heated the argument has become, McCrone showed up, uninvited, at a symposium held at Yale on February 10 to discuss the map. McCrone remained silent throughout, but when the symposium ended he handed out a copy of the report he said he would have submitted had he been asked. It was titled: "The Vinland Map, Still a 20th-Century Fake." Among McCrone's supporters is Kenneth M. Towe, a senior research geologist at the National Museum of Natural History. "Cahill's instrument can find an element like titanium dioxide, but not a mineral, such as anatase," Towe says. "It's like having an instrument capable of detecting carbon but not being able to tell whether it's graphite or a diamond."

How can reputable scientists and scholars reach such contradictory conclusions? If authenticating an artifact were an objective science, devoid of the capriciousness of human emotions and free from the vagaries of interpretation, consensus might be easier to reach. But bias, ego, emotion, even wishful thinking -- in short, the human factor -- are very much a part of the equation. "eople think that scientists, with their white lab coats, are not subject to human frailties," says Wilcomb Washburn, director of the American Studies Program at the Smithsonian Institution. "But human emotions do affect their considerations of the truth."

The probing is not over yet. The results of a carbon-14 dating test performed on the map are expected later this year.

It would be an understatement to say that the Vinland Map has been subjected to an unprecedented amount of controversy and study. It has aroused the passions of both scientists and historians, who remain divided over its authenticity, and even its advocates are forced to hedge their bets. Back in 1965, when the first Vinland Map book was published, Alexander Vietor wrote that it was designed to be a "preliminary worka springboard for further investigation." More than 30 years later, Washburn remains similarly circumspect. In the book's second edition, he writes that while the dispute over the map's authenticity may never be resolved, it "can now be said to have reached a new stage." Those who have been charging forgery "must now assume a defensive role and respond to those previously on the defensive."

Given such lingering doubts, it might seem surprising that Yale University Press would release a second edition of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, which stops just short of declaring the map genuine. Despite the risk of another catastrophe of credibility, Press Director John Ryden says he had no qualms about publishing the revised work. "To the extent possible, the people involved have been vindicated," he says. "All the apparently damning evidence was overturned, which led us to conclude that the map had received a bum rap." Ryden also knows that scholars and scientists are limited in what they can do to authenticate a historic artifact. "You can never prove authenticity; you can only disprove it," he says, adding philosophically, "secretly, I feel that to leave a little bit of mystery is probably a good thing."


美国华人移民法

Chinese-American Men,
between 1890 and 1910(?)
History of the American West, 1860-1920
After the Civil War, immigrants again began to stream to the United States. Between 1870 and 1900, nearly 12 million immigrants arrived--more foreign-born people than had come to the country in the preceding 70 years. During the 1870s and 1880s, the majority came from Germany, Ireland, and England--the principal source of immigration before the Civil War. Even so, a relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, when federal law stopped their immigration.
While the majority of immigrants came to settle in the United States permanently, many worked for a time and returned home with whatever savings they had set aside from their work. The majority of Chinese immigrants, for example, were single men who worked for a while and returned home. At first, they were attracted to North America by the gold rush in California. Many prospected for gold on their own or labored for other miners. Soon, many opened their own businesses such as restaurants, laundries, and other personal service concerns. After the gold rush, Chinese immigrants worked as agricultural laborers, on railroad construction crews throughout the West, and in low-paying industrial jobs.

With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, other immigrants and European Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. With economic competition came dislike and even racial suspicion and hatred. Such feelings were accompanied by anti-Chinese riots and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result of this pressure was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century. As the following documents suggest, there were many opinions about this issue.
作者: fredgs    时间: 2002-12-16 08:48

Does it matter if it smells? Olfactory stimuli as advertising executional cues

Despite the limited empirical evidence about the effectiveness of olfactory cues in advertising, firms are increasingly using such cues in their advertisements. The authors examine the effects of olfactory cues that are used as a novelty, as opposed to a product sample, on consumer attitudes. The results show that the addition of a more congruent scratch-and-sniff panel to an advertisement improves neither attitude toward the ad nor attitude toward the brand. Further, the addition of a poorer-fitting scent actually lowers attitudes among individuals who are more motivated to process. Those results appear to be a function of the mood evoked by the scented advertisement and of the scent's perceived pleasantness in the advertising context.

Executional cues have been the focus of much advertising research. Visual cues (pictures) and aural cues (music) have been studied extensively, yet virtually no attention has been paid to the influence of olfactory cues in advertising despite the growing trend among advertisers to use scents in ads. Scents often have been used in advertisements for products in which scent is a primary attribute (e.g., perfumes, room fresheners) and, when used in that context, are a form of sampling. However, scents have also been used for products for which scent has been considered largely irrelevant. For instance, Tanqueray gin ran a pine-scented ad in USA Today, Rolls Royce advertised its cars in Architectural Digest using leather-scented strips, and the State of Utah used floral- and spice-scented panels in a four-page tourism ad. Though such uses may be intended simply as novelties, research suggests that odors can influence mood state (Baron 1990; Ehrlichman and Bastone 1992; Knasko 1992) and affect judgment (Baron 1990; Bone and Jantrania 1992; Spangenberg, Crowley and Henderson 1996). Therefore, the use of scents in advertising warrants attention.

Odors differ in several ways from the pictures and sounds more familiar to advertising researchers. Compared to visual and aural cues, odors are difficult to recognize, are relatively difficult to label, may produce false alarms and create placebo effects. Schab (1991), in a review of the literature, concluded that the ability to attach a name to a particular odor is so limited that individuals, on average, can identify only 40% to 50% of odors in a battery of common odors. Additionally, consumer ability to detect and recognize odors is influenced by surrounding cues (Davis 1981). For example, a consumer is more likely to recognize a lemon scent when the scent is contained in a yellow liquid than when it is contained in a red liquid. Third, false alarms, perceiving an odor when in reality no odor is present, are relatively common (Engen 1972). Finally, researchers have shown that both emotional and physical states can be affected just by believing an odor is present. The odorant itself need not be present (Knasko, Gilbert, and Sabini 1990). That finding suggests placebo effects.

Despite the difficulties, olfactory cues hold appeal to advertisers working in an already cluttered environment. Olfactory responses are primarily autonomic, affecting a person physiologically before affecting cognition. Odors stimulate the limbic system, the part of the brain responsible for emotional responses. Thus, olfaction represents a different path to the consumer than is afforded by other types of cues.

We examined a consumer-controlled odor delivery system (scratch-and-sniff panels) as opposed to ambient systems to (1) explore the usefulness of olfactory stimuli as an executional cue in influencing attitude toward the ad (Aad) and attitude toward the brand (Ab), (2) determine whether those effects are moderated by motivation to process and cue fit, and (3) examine the mediators of processes that may underlie olfactory cue effects (i.e., mood, hedonic transfer of scent pleasantness, and cognitions).

Mediators: Why Odors May Influence Attitudes

More than 60 years ago, Laird (1932) found evidence that olfactory cues could affect consumer judgments. His investigation showed that women's judgments about hosiery quality were influenced significantly by the addition of an unrelated scent. More recently, Bone and Jantrania (1992) found that odors that "fit" the product (such as lemon scent for a household cleaning solution) improved product evaluations. Additionally, using a simulated retailing environment, Spangenberg, Crowley, and Henderson (1996) found that store evaluations, and one of three different product evaluations, were improved when a "non-offensive" ambient odor was present. The ability to affect consumer judgments may be a function of several possible mediators: mood, hedonic transfer of perceived pleasantness, and cognition.
作者: oddyuibe    时间: 2003-3-12 19:43

谢谢,
很有帮助。

你的icon挺有意思的
祝你健步走进理想的商学院~
作者: watergate    时间: 2004-12-2 23:54

逛了这么久,忽然发现还有这么好的东西,谢谢前辈了!
作者: 小菜花    时间: 2007-12-9 19:42

many  thanks !!!!!!!!
作者: 阿趁心观    时间: 2012-10-7 05:48

说得不错,有收获,顶一下











菊領風騷 余弦定理 here-i-am  through  http://www.soku.com.tw/
作者: weaoao    时间: 2013-8-8 14:13

好文。




欢迎光临 国际顶尖MBA申请交流平台--TOPWAY MBA (http://forum.topway.org/) Powered by Discuz! 7.2