In May 1989, space shuttle “Atlantis” released in outer space the space probe “Megallan”, which is now on her 15-month and one-billion-kilometer flight to Venus. A new phase in space exploration has begun.
    The planet Venus is only slightly smaller than Earth; it is the only other object in the solar system, in fact, that even comes close to the earth’s size.  Venus has a similar density, so it is probably made of approximately the same stuff, and it has an atmosphere, complete with clouds. It is also the closest planet to earth, and thus the most similar in distance from the sun. In short, Venus seems to justify its longheld nickname of “earth’s twin.”
    The surface temperature of Venus reaches some 900°F. Added to that is an atmospheric pressure about 90 times Earth’s. High overhead in the carbon dioxide (CO₂) that passed for air is a layer of clouds, perhaps 10 to 20 miles thick, whose little drops consist mostly of sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄). Water is all but nonexistent.
    Born with so many fundamental similarities to earth, how did Venus get to be so radically different? It is not just an academic matter. For all its extremes, Venus is a valuable laboratory for researchers studying the weather and climate of earth. It has no earth’s oceans, so the heat transport and other mechanisms are greatly simplified. In addition, the planet Venus takes 243 earth-days to turn once on its axis, so incoming heat from the sun is added and distributed at a more leisurely, observable pace.

    Tourists were surprised to see a woman driving a huge orange tractor down one of Rome’s main avenues.  Italy’s political leaders and some of its male union chiefs are said to have been even  more puzzled to see that the tractor was followed by about 200, 000 women in a parading procession that took more than three hours to snake through central Rome.
    Shouting slogans, waving flags and dancing to drumbeats, the women had come to the capital from all over Italy to demonstrate for “a job for each of us, a different type of job, and a society without violence”. So far, action to improve women’s opportunities in employment has been the province of collective industrial bargaining. “But there is a growing awareness that this is not enough,” says a researcher on female labor at the government-funded Institute for the Development of Professional Training for Workers.
    Women, who constitute 52 per cent of Italy’s population, today represent only 35 per cent    of Italy’s total work-force and 33 per cent of the total number of Italians with jobs. However, their presence in the workplace is growing. The employment of women is expanding considerably in services, next to the public administration and commerce as their principal workplace. Official statistics also show that women have also made significant strides in self—employment. More and more women are going into business for themselves. Many young women are turning to business because of the growing overall unemployment. It is also a fact that today many prejudices have disappeared, so that banks and other financial institutes make judgements on purely business considerations without caring if it is a man or a woman.
    Such changes are occurring in the professions too. The number of women doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers and university professors increased two to threefold. Some of the changes are immediately visible. For example, women have appeared on the scene for the first time as state police, railway workers and street cleaners.
    However, the present situation is far from satisfactory though some progress has been made. A breakthrough in equal opportunities for women is now demanded.

    The old idea that talented children, “burn themselves out” in the early years, and, therefore, are subjected to failure and at worst, mental illness is unfounded. As a matter of fact, the outstanding thing that happens to bright kids is that they are very likely to grow into bright adults.
    To find this out, 1,500 gifted persons were followed up to their thirty-fifth year with these results:
    On adult intelligence tests, they scored as high as they had as children. They were, as a group, in good health, physically and mentally. 84 per cent of their group were married and seemed content with their lives.
About 70 per cent had graduated from college, though only 30 percent had graduated with honors. A few had even dropped out, but nearly half of these had returned to graduate.
    Of the men, 80 percent were in one of the professions or in business management or semiprofessional jobs. The women who had remained single had office, business, or professional occupations.
    The group had published 90 books and l, 500 articles in scientific, scholarly, and literary magazines and had collected more than 100 patents.
    In a material way they did not do badly either. Average income was considerably higher among the gifted people, especially the men, than for the country as a whole, despite their    comparative youth.
    In fact, far from being strange, most of the gifted were turning their early promise into practical reality.

    No one knows for sure what the world would be like in the year 2001. Many books have been written (1)__________ the future. But the 19th-century French novelist Jules Verne may be called a futurologist in the fullest (2)__________ of the word. In his fantastic novels “A Trip to the Moon” and “80 Days Around the World”, he described with detail the aeroplane and even the helicopter. These novels still have a great attraction (3)__________ young readers of today because of their bold imagination and scientific accuracy.
    Below is a description of what our life will be in the year 2001 as predicted by a (4)__________ writer.
    In 2001, in the home, cookers will be set so that you can cook a complete meal at the touch of a switch. Television will provide information on prices at the (5)__________ shops as well as news and entertainment. Videophones will bring pictures as well as (6)__________ to telephone conversations.
    Machines will control temperature, lighting, entertainment, security alarms, laundry and gardening.
    Lighting will provide decoration as well as wallpaper.
    At work, robots will take (7)__________ most jobs in the manufacturing industries. Working hours will fall to under 5 hours a week. Holidays will get longer; six weeks will be the normal annual holiday. Men and women will retire at the same age.
    Our leisure will be different too. The home will become the center of entertainment through the television and electronic games. More people will eat out in restaurants (8)__________ they do today; also they will have a much wider variety of food available. There will be a change of taste towards a more savoury-flavored menu. New synthetic foods will form a (9)__________ part of people’s diets.
    Foreign travel will (10)__________; winter holidays will become more popular than summer ones. Also non-stop flights from Britain to Australia and New Zealand will be easily available and much cheaper. Education will become increasingly more important than ever before.

“We have won (A) a (B) great victory on (C) our enemy (D),” the captain said.

There are many valuable services (A) which the public are willing to pay for (B), but which does not bring (C) a return in money (D) to the community.

“I considered it (A) a honor (B) to be invited to address (C) the meeting of world―famous (D) scientists,” said Professor Leacock.

    People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behaviors are formed. It is not easy to explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and  another is competitive.
    Social scientists are, of course, extremely interested in these types of questions. (1) They want to explain why we possess certain characteristics and exhibit certain behaviors. There are no clear answers yet, but two distinct schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might expect, the two approaches are very different from each other. The controversy is often conveniently referred to as “nature vs. nurture”.
    (2) Those who support the “nature” side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behavior patterns are largely determined by biological factors. (3) That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behavior is central to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory maintains that our behavior is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our instincts.
    Those who support the “nurture” theory, that is, they advocate education, are often called behaviorists. They claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behavior is almost completely shaped by their surroundings. (4) The behaviorists maintain that, like machines, humans respond to environmental stimuli as the basis of their behavior.
    Let us examine the different explanations about one human characteristic, intelligence, offered by the two theories. (5) Supporters of the “nature” theory insist that we are born with a certain capacity for learning that is biologically determined.” Needless to say. They don’t believe that factors in the environment have much influence on what is basically a predetermined characteristic. On the other hand, behaviorists argue that our intelligence levels are the product of our experiences. (6) Behaviorists suggest that the child who is raised in an environment where there are many stimuli which develop his or her capacity for appropriate responses will experience greater intellectual development.
    The social and political implications of these two theories are profound. (7) In the United States, blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some “nature” proponents to conclude that blacks are biologically inferior to whites. (8) Behaviorists, in contrast, say that differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often deprived of many of the educational and other environmental advantages that whites enjoy.
    Most people think neither of these theories can yet fully explain human behavior.