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In 1876 Tetteh Quarshie, a blacksmith, smuggled the first cocoa beans into Ghana,hidden beneath his box of tools. He is now celebrated as a national hero; his trees, planted in the hills outside Accra,are a tourist attraction. But did cocoa make him rich? “No,” says a guide. “He harvested for the first time, and then he died.”West Africans have been seeking fortunes in cocoa ever since. Like Mr Quarshie, they have been short of luck. Ghana and Ivory Coast produce about 60% of the world’s cocoa. Yet they mostly sell unprocessed beans. Their cocoa-export earnings are equivalent to less than a tenth of world chocolate sales. Power lies with a small group of trading firms and chocolate-makers in rich countries.“We send raw materials, they add value,”sighs Owusu Akoto,Ghana’s agriculture minister.Ghana and Ivory Coast are trying to claw up the value chain. Ghana is close to finalizing a $600m loan from the African Development Bank, some of which is expected to support cocoa processing. It is also seeking Chinese help to build a state-run processing plant. Observers see cocoa as a test-case for African industrialization. But it is not a very useful model. Cocoa is unlikely to bring much revenue or many jobs.Granted, there have been some successes. About 21% of the world"s cocoa is ground in Africa, up from 15% a decade ago. Ivory Coast grinds nearly a third of its beans and rivals the Netherlands as the world leader by volume. In Ghana’s Tema “free zone”,the smell of cocoa is in the air. One of several processors there ships cocoa butter, liquor and cake abroad,while selling chocolate at home. Customers cannot believe it is made in Ghana, chuckles Lloyd Ashiley, the plant manager.Most of the processing in the region is done by the same multinationals that were already grinding cocoa in Europe or elsewhere. In Ghana, firms in free zones get tax breaks.The government, which dominates the cocoa industry, gives a discount on smaller, “light-crop” beans to encourage local processing. But when the cheap beans run out, machines sitidle. Nearly half of capacity is unused.Gone are the days when George Cadbury built model villages for his British workers. A modem cocoa factory is a labyrinth of juddering metal, supervised from behind computer screens. The entire Ghanaian processing industry employs just a few thousand people. The capital investment required to create one job grinding cocoa in Ivory Coast could create over 300 jobs processing cashew nuts, said the World Bank in 2012.The biggest problem is geography. Most of the value in chocolate comes from marketing and branding. And it is a big step up from grinding to chocolate-making. Consumers are mostly in Europe or North America. Transporting chocolate through tropical climates is a logistical headache. Chocolate consumption in Africa is low.Some artisanal confectioners are breaking the mould. Instant Chocolate, an Ivorian firm,sells posh chocs in flavours including baobab and hibiscus. A Ghanaian brand named 57 Chocolate — for the year of the country’s independence — stamps its bars with the Adinkra symbols more commonly found on Ashanti fabrics. Kimberly Addison and Priscilla Addison, the sisters who founded it, hit upon the idea while living in chocoholic Switzerland. “Why not try to produce a chocolate brand that is uniquely African?” asks Kimberly. But these firms operate on a tiny scale. For wannabe chocolate-makers, alas, there is no golden ticket.
As digital technologies and automation have advanced,fears about workers" futures have increased. But, the end result does not have to be negative. The key is education.Already, robots are taking over a growing number of routine and repetitive tasks, putting workers in some sectors under serious pressure. In South Korea, which has the world’s highest density of industrial robots — 631 per 10,000 workers — manufacturing employment is declining, and youth unemployment is high. In the United States, the increased use of robots has, according to a 2017 study, hurt employment and wages.But while technological progress undoubtedly destroys jobs, it also creates them. The invention of motor vehicles largely wiped out jobs building or operating horse-drawn carriages, but generated millions more not just in automobile factories, but also in related sectors like road construction.The challenge today lies in the fact that the production and use of increasingly advanced technologies demand new, often higher-level skills, which cannot simply be picked up on the job. Given this, countries need to ensure that all of their residents have access to high-quality education and training programs that meet the needs of the labor market. The outcome of the race between technology and education will determine whether the opportunities presented by major innovations are seized, and whether the benefits of progress are widely shared.In a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 66% of executives surveyed were dissatisfied with the skill level of young employees, and 52% said a skills gap was an obstacle to their firm’s performance. Meanwhile, according to a survey,21% of workers reported feeling over-educated for their jobs.This suggests that formal education is teaching workers the wrong things, and that deep reform is essential to facilitate the development of digital knowledge and technical skills, as well as non-routine cognitive and non-cognitive (or “soft”) skills. This includes the “four Cs of twenty_first century learning”(critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication) — areas where humans retain a considerable advantage over artificially intelligent machines.The process must begin during primary education, because only with a strong foundation can people take full advantage of later education and training. And in the economy of the future,that training will never really end. Given rapid technological progress, improved opportunities for effective lifelong learning will be needed to enable workers to upgrade their skills continuously or learn new ones. At all levels of education, curricula should be made more flexible and responsive to changing technologies and market demands.One potential barrier to this approach is a dearth of well-trained teachers. Building a quality teaching force will require both monetary and non-monetary incentives for teachers and higher investment in their professional development.This includes ensuring that teachers have the tools they need to take full advantage of information and communication technology (ICT), which is not being used widely, despite its potential to ensure broad access to lifelong learning through formal and informal channels.ICT can also help to address shortages of qualified teachers and other educational resources by providing access across long distances, via online learning platforms. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare enables students around the world to reach some of the worlds foremost teachers.This points to the broader value of international cooperation. The education challenges raised by advancing technologies affect everyone, so countries should work together to address them, including through exchanges of students and teachers and construction and upgrading of ICT infrastructure.The artificial intelligence revolution will be hugely disruptive, but it will not make humans obsolete. With revamped education systems, we can ensure that technological progress makes all of our lives more hopeful,fulfilling, and prosperous.
Risto Siilasmaa is the chairman of Nokia, which is today a very different and much smaller company than in 2008 when he joined its board as a non-executive director.When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Nokia at first seemed to view it as a niche competitor with a high price-tag that would capture only a small slice of the market. After all,Nokia’s phones appeared to have all the bells and whistles needed to succeed. Users could download music and listen to the radio; they could use their phones to take photos and videos; they could send and receive email; and even use maps.Mr Siilasmaa had a front-row seat for the drama that ensued when he first joined the firm, but he had very little real influence on the board decisions. As he explains, board members have limited access to limited quantities of important company information. With his software background, however, he quickly perceived the firm’s big problem. Its devices could rival the iPhone mechanically, but the operating system could not compete. Nokia’s Symbian system was cumbersome for users, who had to send confirmations whenever any function was added to the phone.Nokia also had a wide range of devices with different operating requirements,making it difficult for app developers to customise their offerings. Apple, by contrast, had only one platform and enjoyed the benefit of being able to design a system from scratch.Increasingly concerned about these problems, Mr Siilasmaa wrote a strategy document suggesting that the company should consider embracing the Android operating system for phones, which was rapidly gaining market share. He sent it straight to Nokia"s chairman, Jorma Ollila.Before becoming chairman,he had been Nokia’s chief executive from 1992 to 2006, the years of its rise to dominance. He did not seem to appreciate a non-executive director putting his oar in. Mr Siilasmaa tried again, this time sending his memo to the chief executive and other board members, but his concerns were never addressed in board meetings.Mr Ollila, now 68, has described Mr Siilasmaa’s claims as exaggerated or not true. But Nokia’s performance deteriorated sharply during his last years in charge,and nothing he did was able to stop it. The company did team up with Microsoft to launch a Windows-based phone, the Lumia. But by 2012, when Mr Ollila left the board, Nokia’s market value had fallen by 92% since Apple’s iPhone was launched and the firm was making a loss.Mr Siilasmaa came in as the new chairman when the company’s fortunes seemed to be at rock-bottom. Instead, the news got worse: the Lumia phone received good reviews but failed to gain market share.So Mr Siilasmaa acted. In 2013 Nokia sold the phone business to Microsoft and struck out in a different direction. Now Nokia offers “end-to-end” digital infrastructure, supplying network equipment and software to telecoms operators. It is profitable, but its share price has barely moved in the past five years and future success is dependent on a wave of spending on 5G telecoms networks, which may come slowly.Nokia was already a classic example of the perils of disruptive innovation for industry leaders. Mr Siilasmaa’s account underlines how little influence board members often have when faced with an entrenched management team. He insists that a boards role must be to challenge management. Bosses must have an attitude of “paranoid optimism”,always on the lookout for potential threats. Nokia’s story shows why.
It has been a usual sight that the luxury liner Majestic Princess operated by Carnival Group, a global cruise company, sits charging at the Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal in Shanghai.Shore power can help ships reduce their emissions by moving away from using oil to generate energy. “Developing a shore power system for a green port is just one of the projects for eco-friendly shipping conducted by the China Merchants Group (CMG),” Fu Gangfeng,Director and Group President of CMG Ltd., a state-owned enterprise whose traditional business is shipping along the Yangtze River, told Xinhua News Agency.The shore power supply system has been in use for a year and has already contributed to 23,000 tons in reduced emissions. The Yangtze River, China’s longest waterway,is one of the busiest rivers in the world. In 2017, 2.5 billion tons of goods were delivered along this west-east water route, one of the reasons why the river has become known as a golden waterway.Compared with other methods, transportation via water has both advantages in cost and transport capacity, as well as green benefits, by saving power and reducing emissions. But the shipping lanes of the Yangtze have also caused serious environmental problems. According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, 60 percent of inland vessels are distributed in the low reaches of the Yangtze, most of which use marine fuel, a major source of pollution along the waterway. Moreover, pollution caused by industrial accidents, domestic sewage dumped by ships and heavy metal sediment from the bottom of vessels have also had a detrimental effect on the river’s ecosystem.In the Three Gorges area, diesel power generation emits around 10 tons of sulfides, 4,000 tons of carbon oxides and 3 tons of PM2.5 annually, posing a serious risk to the air qualityand ecological environment of the region. In 2017, there were 614 ships in the Three Gorges Dam area, with an average waiting time of 106 hours. During the overhaul of the ship locks in 2018, there were 1,084 ships waiting for an average duration of 202 hours. Accordingly, the supervision of activities and the entry standards for ships are hard to control, which increases the difficulty of maintaining orderly competition.During the process of improving the waterway, the concept of ecological protection is being implemented. Eco-friendly materials and structures are applied to minimize the impact on the environment in a bid to maintain a balance between regulation and protection. Building green ports is an essential and effective method of waterway regulation. In conclusion, high standards should be maintained when new ports are built and old ones are upgraded. By regulating, integrating and upgrading existing ports, the functions of the shoreline are strengthened. The use of cleaner energy in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is also of great significance for the green future of the Yangtze channel. According to Fu, in terms of drybulk cargo, 50 freighters with 8,000 to 10,000 tons of LNG fleet suitable for the Yangtze will be built in the future to replace the existing 50 percent of the ship5s capacity, optimize the ship structure and reduce pollution to the environment.
It sounds so promising. A network of dedicated cycle routes runs through a city,withair pumps to fix flat tires, footrests to lean on while taking breaks and trash cans that are specially angled, so you can throw in empty water bottles without stopping.Best of all, you can cycle on those routes for long distances without having to make way for cars and trucks at junctions and traffic lights, according to the official description of the Cycle Super Highways, which are under construction here as part of the Danish capital’s efforts to become carbon-neutral by 2025.Are they as good as they sound? These days it is hard to find a big city that doesn’t make grandiose claims to encourage cycling, and harder still to find one that fulfills them. Redesigning congested traffic systems to add bike lanes to overcrowded roads is fiendishly difficult, especially in historic cities with narrow cobbled streets like Copenhagen. But as its cycling program sounds so ambitious, I went there to try it.Maybe I’d be less cynical if I lived in Amsterdam,Cologne or any other city with decent cycling facilities. But as a Londoner,I’ve learned the hard way to be suspicious whenever politicians promise to do anything bike-friendly. London's mayor, Boris Johnson, is a keen cyclist,who issues policy papers with auspicious titles like “Cycling Revolution” and has continued his predecessor’s biking program by introducing a cycle-rental project and building new bike lanes.So far, so good. You may think, unless you have braved the potholes, parked trucks and construction debris that obstruct those lanes,many of which appear to have been designed by someone who has never seen a bicycle, let alone ridden one.Luckily for Copenhagen's cyclists, their system has been more thoughtfully designed. The capital is a compact, reasonably flat city which is naturally bike-friendly, and even its old cycle routes are wider and better maintained than London’s. More than a third of Copenhageners already bike to work or school, mainly on short journeys of an average of 5 kilometers, or 3 miles.The city's traffic planners hope to encourage people to cycle for longer distances creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks. The first one from the western suburb of Albertslund opened in April 2012, followed a year later by the second, from Farum, northwest of the city.What are the super highways like? Judging by my experience of the Farum route, they’re great. Impressive though the air pumps,footrests and angled trash cans are, the biggest thrill was pedaling through the “green waves” of uninterrupted green traffic lights, which have been programmed to prioritize cyclists over cars.It was also cheering to see bikers chatting while cycling two or three abreast in“conversation lanes”. Like most urban bikers,I usually value the practical benefits of cycling, as a speedy means of transport and convenient form of exercise,but the Farum route made itas pleasurable as zipping along empty country lanes. The planners hope the foil network will eventually encourage a 30-percent increase in cycling among Copenhagen^ commuters, which would be hugely beneficial in terms of reducing the city9s C02 emissions and health care costs.
What is the single most effective way to reduce greenhouse-gas emission? Go vegetarian? Replant the Amazon? Cycle to work? None of the above. The answer is: make air-conditioners radically better. On one calculation, replacing refrigerants that damage the atmosphere would reduce total greenhouse gases by the equivalent of 90bn tonnes of C02 by 2050. Making the units more energy-efficient could double that. By contrast, if half the worlds population were to give up meat, it would save 66bn tonnes of C02. Replanting two- thirds of degraded tropical forests would save 61bn tonnes. A one-third increase in global bicycle journeys would save just 2.3bn tonnes.Air-conditioning is one of the worlds great overlooked industries. Automobiles and air- conditioners were invented at roughly the same time, and both have had a huge impact on where people live and work. Unlike cars,though,air-conditioners have drawn little criticism for their social impact, emissions or energy efficiency. Most hot countries do not have rules to govern their energy use. There is not even a common English word for “coolth”(the opposite of warmth).Yet air-conditioning has done more than most things to benefit humankind. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore,called it “perhaps one of the signal inventions of history”. It has transformed productivity in the tropics and helped turn southern China into the workshop of the world. In Europe, its spread has pushed down heat-related deaths by a factor of ten since 2003, when 70,000 more people than usual, most of them elderly, died in a heatwave. For children, air-conditioned classrooms and dormitories are associated with better grades at school (see International section).Environmentalists who call air-conditioning “a luxury we cannot afford” have half a point, however. In the next ten years, as many air-conditioners will be installed around the world as were put in between 1902 (when air-conditioning was invented) and 2005. Until energy can be produced without carbon emissions, these extra machines will warm the world. At the moment, therefore, air-conditioners created a vicious cycle. The more the Earth warms, the more people need them. But the more there are, the warmer the world will be.Cutting the impact of cooling requires three things (beyond turning up the thermostat to make rooms less Arctic). First, air-conditioners must become much more efficient. The most energy-efficient models on the market today consume only about one-third as much electricity as average ones. Minimum energy-performance standards need to be raised, or introduced in countries that lack them altogether,to push the average unit’s performance closer to the standard of the best.Next, manufacturers should stop using damaging refrigerants. One category of these, hydrofluorocarbons, is over 1,000 times worse than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. And international deal to phase out these pollutants, called the Kigali Amendment, will come into force in 2019. Foot-draggers should ratify and implement it; America is one country that has not done so.Last, more could be done to design offices, malls and even cities so they do not need as many air-conditioners in the first place. More buildings should be built with overhanging roofs or balconies for shade, or with natural ventilation. Simply painting roofs white can help keep temperatures down. Better machines are necessary. But cooling as an overall system needs to be improved if air-conditioning is to fulfill its promise to make people healthier, wealthier and wiser, without too high an environmental cost. Providing indoor sanctuaries of air-conditioned comfort need not come at the expense of an overheating world.
For generations, coal has been the lifeblood of this mineral-rich stretch of eastern Utah.Mining families proudly recall all the years they toiled underground. Supply companies line the town streets. Above the road that winds toward the mines, a soot-smudged miner peers out from a billboard with the slogan “Coal = Jobs.” But recently, fear has settled in. The state"s oldest coal-fired power plant, tucked among the canyons near a town, is set to close, a result of new, stricter federal pollution regulations. As energy companies move away from coal toward cleaner, cheaper natural gas, people here have grown increasingly afraid that their community may soon slip away. Dozens of workers at the Carbon Power Plant have learned that they must retire early or seek other jobs. Local trucking and equipment outfits are preparing to take business elsewhere.“There are a lot of people worried,” said Kyle Davis, who has been employed at the plant since he was 18. Mr. Davis, 56, worked his way up from sweeping floors to managing operations at the plant, whose furnaces have been burning since 1954. t4I would have liked tobe here for another five years,” he said, “I’m too young to retire.”But the Rocky Mountain Power, the utility that operates the plant, has determined that itwould be too expensive to retrofit the aging plant to meet new federal standards on mercury emissions. The plant is scheduled to be shut by April 2015. t6We had been working for the better part of three years, testing compliance strategies,”said David Eskelsen, a spokesman for the utility. 6tNone of the ones we investigated really would produce the results that would meet the requirements.”For the last several years, coal plants have been shutting down across the country, driven by tougher environmental regulations, flattening electricity demand and a move by utilities toward natural gas. This month, the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority,the country’s largest public power utility,voted to shut eight coal-powered plants in Alabama and Kentucky, and partly replace them with gas-fired power. Since 2010, more than 150 coal plants have been closed or scheduled for retirement.The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the stricter emissions regulationsfor the plants will result in billions of dollars in related health savings and will have a sweeping impact on air quality. In recent weeks, the agency held 11 ""listening sessions95 around the country in advance of proposing additional rules for carbon dioxide emissions. “(Coal plants are the single largest source of dangerous carbon pollution in the UnitedStates,and we have ready alternatives like wind and solar to replace them,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club"s Beyond Coal Campaign, which wants to shut all of the nation’s coal plants.For many here, coal jobs are all they know. The industry united the area during hard times, too, especially during the dark days after nine men died in a 2007 mining accident some 35 miles down the highway. Virtually everyone around here knew the men, six of whom remain entombed in the mountainside. But there is quiet acknowledgment that this place will have to change — if not now, soon. Pete Palacios, who worked in the mines for 43 years, has seen coal roar and fade here. Now 86, his eyes grew cloudy as he recalled his first mining job. He was 12, and earned US$1 a day. “I’m retired, so I’ll be fine. But these young guys?” Pete Palacios said,his voice trailing off.
一百年来,南京大学历经沧桑,校名屡经更迭,校址也一再搬迁,但学校诚朴坚毅、自强不息的传统精神和严谨求实、勤奋创新的校风在一代又一代南大人身上传承延续,发扬光大。正是这种优良的传统和校风,将南京大学扎根于中国和世界文明的沃土,形成了南大深厚的文化底蕴,塑造了南大人诚恳朴实、坚毅自强的品格,使学校在百年办学过程中始终保持青春活力,各项事业不断发展壮大。“诚朴”是南大传统精神中最本色的东西,“诚朴”是诚恳朴实的意思,其中 “诚”是核心,是根本。做学问要“诚朴”,就是要有实事求是的科学精神,严谨、勤奋的治学态度,只有这样,才能获得真才实学,才能担负振兴中华的重任。“雄伟”是雄壮而伟大的意思,为人、为学要有远大志向,立志“做得大事”, 要有崇高的责任感、使命感,将个人奋斗的目标与国家的发展、人类的进步紧密结合起来。
敦煌行·丝绸之路国际旅游节自2011年开始在甘肃举办,是全国唯一以丝绸之路命名的常设性旅游节会,现己成为服务丝路沿线国家和地区文化旅游交流合作的重要国际性平台。几届旅游节的成功举办,达到了以节促游、以节聚力、以节提位、以节造势、以节促建、以节促管,助推建设旅游强省的目的。甘肃省位于中国西北部,闻名于世的丝绸之路在甘肃境内东西绵延长达1600公里,占其全程近四分之一,被誉为丝路古道的黄金路段。因丰富的历史文化和自然景观,甘肃省己成为深受世界旅游者喜爱、具有巨大潜力的国际旅游目的地。其中甘肃丝绸之路旅游线,因沿途璀燦的历史文化遗迹和丰富的旅游资源,被原中国国家旅游局列为中国最知名的12条精品旅游线路之首。敦煌行·丝绸之路国际旅游节将进一步促进丝绸之路国家旅游业界的合作与发展。敦煌行·丝绸之路国际旅游节为期1个月,旅游节期间还分别在全省14个市州举办多项系列活动。热忱欢迎海内外朋友莅临盛会,感知交响丝路,畅游如意甘肃。
19世纪末,德国地理学家斐迪南·冯·里希霍芬(FerdinandvonRichthofen)首次提出了 “丝绸之路”的名称。在整个人类文明史上,迄今为止,还没有一种以具体日用物品命名的事物,会在长达一个世纪的时间里,在东西方引起如此广泛而深远的影响。然而重新审视这条道路在文明史上的表现,丝绸贸易并非是其唯一内容,并且这一名称也无法准确概括当时东西方文明交融的全部内容。就我们今天所能了解的情形看,除了丝绸之外,当时通过这条道路交流的还有各种香料、纸张、瓷器等。这些在今天看来十分普通的物品,在当时却代表了某一文明形态的最高成就。除这些物品之外,宗教思想和文化观念,也通过这条道路不断得以传播。由此可见,“丝绸之路”并不能完全概括这条道路的丰富文化内涵。丝绸的运输也不仅仅纯粹是一种物品的交流,而是有着深刻的文化意蕴。事实上,绵长的丝绸之路,由于其独特的地理位置和环境,华夏文明史上每一次文明的迁徙与文化的传播,都在这里留下了鲜明的印记与积淀。