In recent years, Israeli consumers have grown more demanding as they’ve become wealthier and more worldly-wise. Foreign travel is a national passion; this summer alone, one in 10 citizens will go abroad. Exposed to higher standards of service elsewhere, Israelis are returning home expecting the same. American firms have also begun arriving in large numbers. Chains such as KFC, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut are setting a new a standard of customer service, using strict employee training and constant monitoring to ensure the friendliness of frontline Israel. "Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Let’s be nicer,’" says Itsik Cohen, director of a consulting firm. "Nothing happens without competition."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Privatization, or the threat of it, is a motivation as well. Monopolies (垄断者) that until recently have been free to take their customers for granted now fear what Michael Perry, a marketing professor, calls "the revengeful (报复的) consumer." When the government opened up competition with Bezaq, the phone company, its international branch lost 40 % of its market share, even while offering competitive rates. Says Perry, "People wanted revenge for all the years of bad service." The electric company, whose monopoly may be short-lived, has suddenly mopped requiring users to wait half a day for a repairman. Now, appointments are scheduled to the half-hour. The graceless El AI Airlines, which is already at auction (拍卖), has retrained its employees to emphasize service and is boasting about the results in an ad campaign with the slogan, "You can feel the change in the air." For the first time, praise outnumbers complaints on customer survey sheets.

style=text-align: justify;   I’m usually fairly skeptical about any research that concludes that people are either happier or unhappier or more or less certain of themselves than they were 50 years ago. While any of their statements might be true, they are practically impossible to prove scientifically. Still, I was stuck by a report which concluded that today’s children are significantly more anxious than children in the 1950s. In fact, the analysis showed, normal children aging 9 to 17 exhibit a higher level of anxiety today than children who were treated for mental illness 50 years ago.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Why are America’s kids, so stressed? The report cites two main causes: increasing physical isolation, brought on by high divorce rates and less involvement in community, among other things and a growing perception that the world is a more dangerous place.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Given that we can’t turn the clock back, adults can still do plenty to help the next generation cope. At the top of the list is nurturing (培育) a better appreciation of the limits of individualism. No child is an island. Strengthening social ties helps build communities and protect individuals against stress.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　To help kids build stronger connections with others you can pull the plug on TVs and computers. Your family will thank you later. They will have more time for face-to-face relationships, and they will get more sleep.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Limit the amount of virtual (虚拟的) violence your children are exposed to. It’s not just video games and movies; children see a lot of murder and crime on the local news.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Keep your expectations for your children reasonable. Many highly successful people, never attended Harvard or Yale.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Make exercise part of your daily routine. It will help you cope with your own anxieties and provide a good model for your kids. Sometimes anxiety is unavoidable. But it doesn’t have to ruin your life.

style=text-align: justify;    The decline in moral standards—which has long concerned social analysts—has at last captured the attention of average Americans. And Jean Bethke Elshtain, for one, is glad.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The fact the ordinary citizens are now starting to think seriously about the nation’s moral climate, says this ethics (伦理学) professor at the University of Chicago, is reason to hope that new ideas will come forward to improve it.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　But the challenge is not to be underestimated. Materialism and individualism in American society are the biggest obstacles. "The thought that ‘I’m in it for me’ has become deeply rooted in the national consciousness," Ms. Elshtain says. Some of this can be attributed to the disintegration of traditional communities, in which neighbors looked out for one another, she says. With today’s greater mobility and with so many couples working, those bends have been weakened, replaced by a greater emphasis on self.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　In a 1996 poll of Americans, loss of morality topped the list of the biggest problems facing the U.S. And Elshtain says the public is correct to sense that: Data show that Americans are struggling with problems unheard of in the 1950s, such as classroom violence and a high rate of births to unmarried mothers.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The desire for a higher moral standard is not a lament (挽歌) for some non-existent "golden age," Elshtain says, nor is it a wishful (一厢情愿的) longing for a time that denied opportunities to women and minorities. Most people, in fact, favor the lessening of prejudice.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Moral decline will not be reversed until people find ways to counter the materialism in society, she says. "Slowly, you recognize that the things that matter are those that can’t be bought."

style=text-align: justify;    A recent study, published in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver. Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone. By contrast, the risk of death for drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The authors also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p. m., and especially after midnight. With passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late-night accident.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage driver have less to do with "really stupid behavior" than with just a lack of driving experience. "The basic issue." He says, "is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate (使……缓解) the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night of passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies, about half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers, California is the strictest, with a novice (新手) driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20 (without the presence of an adult over 25) for the first six months.

    In 1993, New York state ordered stores to charge a deposit on beverage(饮料) containers. Within a year, consumers had returned millions of aluminum cans and glass and plastic bottles. Plenty of companies were eager to accept the aluminum and glass as raw materials for new products. But because few could figure out what to do with the plastic, much of it wound up buried in landfills(垃圾填埋场). The problem was not limited to New York. Unfortunately, there were too few uses for second-hand plastic.
   Today, one out of five plastic soda bottles is recycled(回收利用) in the United States. The reason for the change is that now there are dozens of companies across the country buying discarded plastic soda bottles and turning hem into fence posts, paint brushes, etc.
   As the New York experience shows, recycling involves more than simply separating valuable materials from the rest of the rubbish. A discard remains a discard until somebody figures out how to give it a second life—and until economic arrangements exist to give that second life value. Without adequate markets to absorb materials collected for recycling, throwaways actually depress prices for used materials. Shrinking landfill space, and rising costs for buying and burying rubbish are forcing local governments to look more closely at recycling. In many areas, the East Coast especially; recycling is already the least expensive waste-management option. For every ton of waste recycled, a city avoids paying for its disposal, which in parts of New York, amounts to saving people for more than $100 per ton. Recycling also stimulates the local economy by creating jobs and trims the pollution control and energy costs of industry that make recycled products by giving them a more refined raw material.

    Humanity uses a little less than half the water available worldwide. Yet occurrences of shortages and droughts(干旱)are causing famine and distress in some areas, and industrial and agricultural by-products are polluting water supplies. Since the world’s population is expected to double in the next 50 years, many experts think we are on the edge of a widespread water crisis.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　But that doesn’t have to be the outcome. Water shortages do not have to trouble the world—if we start valuing water more than we have in the past. Just as we began to appreciate petroleum more after the 1970s oil crises, today we must start looking at water from a fresh economic perspective. We can no longer afford to consider water a virtually free resource of which we can use as much as we like in any way we want.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Instead, for all uses except the domestic demand of the poor, governments should price water to reflect its actual value. This means charging a fee for the water itself as well as for the supply costs.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Governments should also protect this resource by providing water m more economically and environmentally sound ways. For example, often the cheapest way to provide irrigation(灌溉)water in the dry tropics is through stroll-scale projects, such as gathering rainfall in depressions (凹地)and pumping it to nearby cropland.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　No matter what steps governments take to provide water more efficiently, they must change their institutional and legal approaches to water sue. Rather than spread control among hundreds or even thousands of local, regional, and national agencies that watch various aspects of water use, countries should set up central authorities to coordinate water policy.

style=text-align: justify;    While still in its early stages, welfare reform has already been judged a great success in many states—at least in getting people off welfare. It’s estimated that more than 2 million people have left the, rolls since 1994.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　In the past four years, welfare rolls in Athens Country have been cut in half. But 70 percent of the people who left in the past two years took jobs that paid less than $ 6 an hour. The result.. The Athens County poverty rate still remains at more than 30 percent—twice the national average.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　For advocates(代言人)for the poor, that’s an indication much more needs to be done.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　"More people are getting jobs, but it’s not making their lives any better," says Kathy Lairn, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Priorities in Washington.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　A center analysis of US Census data nationwide found that between 1995 and 1996—a greater percentage of single, female-headed households were earning money on their own, but that average income for these households actually went down.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　But for many, the fact that poor people are able to support themselves almost as well without government aid as they did with it is in itself a huge victory.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　"Welfare was a poison. It was a toxin(毒素)that was poisoning the family," says Robert Rector, a welfare-reform policy analyst. "The reform is changing the moral climate in low-income communities. It’s beginning to rebuild the work ethic(道德观), which is much more important."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Mr. Rector and others argued that once "the habit of dependency is cracked", then the country can made other policy changes aimed at improving living standards.

    Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(保护区)(ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush certainly thinks so. He has argued that tapping ANWR’s oil would help ease California’s electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the country’s energy independence. But no one knows for sure how much crude oil lies buried beneath the frozen earth，with the last government survey，conducted in l998，projecting output anywhere from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The oil industry goes with the high end of the range，which could equal as much as 10％ of U. S. consumption for as long as six years. By pumping more than l million barrels a day from the reserve for the next two to three decades，lobbyists claim，the nation could cut back on imports equivalent to all shipments to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Sounds good. An oil boom would also mean a multibillion-dollar windfall(意外之财)in tax revenues，royalties(开采权使用费)and leasing fees for Alaska and the Federal Government. Best of all，advocates of drilling say，damage to the environment would be insignificant. “We’ve never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice，”say Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Not so fast，say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates the National Resources Defends Council says there may be no more than 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain of ANWR，a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease America’s energy problems. And consumers would wait up to a decade to gain any benefits，because drilling could begin only after much bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review. As for ANWR’ s impact on the California power crisis，environmentalists point out that oil is responsible for only 1％of the Golden State’s electricity output—and just 3％of the nation’s.

    It came as something of a surprise when Diana. Princess of Wales, made a trip to Angola in 1997, to support the Red Cross’s campaign for a total ban all anti-personnel landmines. Within hours of arriving in Angola, television screens around the world were filled with images of her comforting victims injured in explosions caused by landmines. "I knew the statistics," she said. "But putting a face to those figures brought the reality home to me; like when I met Sandra, a 13-year-old girl who had lost her leg, and people like her."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The Princess concluded with a simple message: "we must stop landmines".
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　And she used every opportunity during her visit to repeat this message.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　But, back in London, her views were not shared by some members of the British government, which refused to support a ban on these weapons. Angry politicians launched an attack on the Princess in the press. They described her as "very ill-informed" and a "lose cannon"(乱放炮的人).
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The Princess responded by brushing aside the Criticisms: "This is a distraction(干扰) we do not need. All I’ m trying to do is help."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　Opposition parties, the media and the public immediately voiced their Support for the Princess. To make matters worse for the government, it soon emerged that Princess’s trip had been approved by the Foreign Office, and that she was in fact very well-informed about both the situation in Angola and the British government’s policy regarding landmines. The result was a severe embarrassment for the government.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　To try and limit the damage, the Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkidnd claimed that the Princess’s views on landmines were not very different from government policy, and that it was "working towards" a worldwide ban. The Defense Secretary, Michael Portillo, claimed the matter was "a misinterpretation or misunderstanding."
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　For the Princess, the trip to this war-torn country was an excellent opportunity to use her popularity to Show the world how much destruction and suffering landmines can cause. She said that the experience had also given her the chance to get closer to people and their problems.

    Some pessimistic experts feel that the automobile is bound to fall into disuse. They see a day in the not too-distant future when all autos will be abandoned and allowed to rust. Other authorities, however, think the auto is here to say. They hold that the car will remain a leading means of urban travel in the foreseeable future.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The motorcar will undoubtedly change significantly over the next 30 years. It should become smaller, safer, and more economical, and should not be powered by the gasoline engine. The car of the future should he far more pollution-free than present types. Regardless of its power source, the auto in the future will still be the main problem in urban traffic congestion (拥挤). One proposed solution to this problem is the automated highway system.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　When the auto enters the highway system, a retractable (可伸缩的) arm will drop from the auto and make contact with a rail, which is similar to those powering subway trains electrically. Once attached to the rail, the car will become electrically powered from the system, and control of the vehicle will pass to a central computer. The computer will then monitor all of the car’s movements.
style=margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 宋体; font-size: 14px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);/　　The driver will use a telephone to dial instructions about his destination into the system. The computer will calculate’ the best route, and reserve space for the car all the way to, the correct exit from the highway. The driver will then he free to relax and wait for the buzzer (蜂鸣器) that will warn him of his coming exit It is estimated that an automated highway will be able to handle 10,000 vehicles per hour, compares with the 1,500 to 2,000 vehicles that can be carried by a present day highway.

可采用直肠测温的患者是