中国高校外语教学刍议

长期以来,中国的外语教学都是把听、说、读、写等基本技能分隔成相对独立的板块来实施的.因此,就有了口语、听力、写作、泛读和精读等诸多课程.在外语教学中最终将采用集各种技能为一体的整体教学思路和方法.其使用和完善将极大地促进中国的外语教学.     

Skin Cancer and Inorganic Arsenic: Uncertainty-Status of Risk

The current U.S. EPA standard for inorganic arsenic in drinking water is 50 ppb (μg/L), dating to the National Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulation of 1976. The current EPA risk analysis predicts an increased lifetime skin cancer risk on the order of 3 or 4 per 1000 from chronic exposure at that concentration. Revision of the standard to only a few ppb, perhaps even less than 1 ppb, may be indicated by the EPA analysis to reduce the lifetime risk to an acceptable level. The cost to water utilities, and ultimately to their consumers, to conform to such a large reduction in the standard could easily reach several billion dollars, so it is particularly important to assess accurately the current risk and the risk reduction that would be achieved by a lower standard. This article addresses the major sources of uncertainty in the EPA analysis with respect to this objective. Specifically, it focuses on uncertainty and variability in the exposure estimates for the landmark study of Tseng and colleagues in Taiwan, analyzed using a reconstruction of the their exposure data. It is concluded that while the available dataset is suitable to establish the hazard of skin cancer, it is too highly summarized for reliable dose-response assessment. A new epidemiologic study is needed, designed for the requirements of dose-response assessment.     

The complexity of ignorance

We examine the kinds of mistakes that are frequently made when the general public is asked to identify political symbols from the past half century. A particularly striking phenomenon is inversion: the event is recalled backwards, so that Rosa Parks is remembered for having given up her seat on a bus to a white person. A second type of error occurs by linking a name to the wrong person, as when John Dean is identified as a movie actor (James Dean). Still another type of mistake involves a correct substantive categorization but with temporal displacement, for example, the Tet Offensive is said to have occurred during the Korean War. In each of these cases we are able to speculate about the social and psychological processes that have led to the misremembering. However, not every error is lodged in respondents: we initially treated as incorrect all answers that did not fit our own expectations; but we were soon forced to recognize that other frames of reference could be brought to the task and lay equal claim to the truth. Names are alphabetical and authorship is equal.     

On‐Shelf Availability,Retail Performance,and External Audits: A Field Experiment

A potential answer to retailer's shelf out‐of‐stocks (OOS), where the item is in the store but customers cannot find it, is to employ third‐party service providers to execute audits and corrections. However, given the nontrivial cost of executing external audits, it is still necessary to assess whether external audits are capable of reducing shelf‐OOS, whether they can be performed in an economical way, and whether the benefits from the audits translate into higher sales. In an effort to address these questions, we partnered with a product manufacturer and a retail service provider and conducted a field experiment in a national retailer's store set. We used transactional data to detect abnormal operations and respond to possible shelf‐OOS by sending auditors to correct empty shelves and incorrect inventory records. At the conclusion of the experiment, we found that Stock Keeping Units in the treatment group were less likely to have shelf‐OOS and inventory record inaccuracies, and that our intervention had a positive effect on sales. Furthermore, we found that the external audit initiative is economically viable since these improvements required low auditing efforts after a transitional period, and in steady state the cost of running the program is a small fraction of the benefits it generates. We discuss the limitations of our study and the implications of our findings for researchers and practitioners.     

Book Review: Children of Addiction: Research,Health, and Public Policy Issues. Edited by Hiram E. Fitzgerald,Barry M. Lester,and Barry S. Zuckerman. Routledge Falmer,London/NewYork, 2000

Sociological Practice -     

教育史学者的作用

从分析历史、教育和教育史学者三个概念入手,认为最好的教育史意味着尽可能综合、精确和公共地记录和阐释历史.教育史学者在教育学科本身以及在教师教育和培训中都能发挥重要作用.     

Guaranteed Renewability with Group Insurance

This paper investigates a multiple-period level premium insurance policy equilibrium in a model in which loss probabilities increase for a fixed time period for a set of persons buying insurance in a group. We show that a level-premium sequence which induces risk averse persons to become and remain members of the group exists. We also show that the availability of the Medicare program can prevent the emergence of optimal level-premium private group insurance, but that a system of bonuses for remaining in the group can permit optimality to be retained.     

How Pervasive Are Abuses in Fundraising Among Nonprofits?

This article explores selected fundraising information for charitable nonprofits, asking whether widespread abuses might exist in this sector. After examining the pervasiveness of fundraising and its relation to mission, we show that a few nonprofits raise a majority of sector charitable revenues, and we present the ratio of funds raised to funds spent on fundraising by mission categories. We find that 72 percent of charitable nonprofits do not report direct fundraising expenditures, 5 percent of the active fundraising nonprofits obtain 90 percent of total funds raised, mission is related to a nonprofit's ability to raise funds, the median nonprofit spends about 9.6 percent of total raised funds for fundraising, and only one in five nonprofits hires a professional fundraiser. At least in terms of the measures used in this report, widespread abuses are not obvious.     

聂耳的"新兴音乐"创作与30年代的中国革命

聂耳是20世纪中国著名的作曲家,他的创作对于理解20世纪中国艺术与音乐的发展及其走向政治化的历程十分重要。探讨聂耳关于艺术的角色及现实对于艺术与艺术家之重要性的见解,讨论他的音乐如何传达中国现代民族主义和革命精神,有助于理解中国的现代性与革命的共生关系。聂耳将不同的艺术观念综合一体,在吸收西方音乐技巧和创造中国新型革命艺术方面取得了成功。对聂耳进行研究可以为30年代中国左翼知识社群的意义和影响予以重估,他的创作———无论是题材还是风格———都代表着中国革命音乐的巅峰,并可为其后的几代歌曲作家充当样本。