A套：
vital critical/crucial a. 極其重要的
enduring lasting a. 持久的，耐久的
allege v. 声称
第一篇：
Personality traits
题材解读：
心理学题材相对于历史，生物等常见题材来说，出现的频率稍低。因而，适度了解一些心理学常识则能帮助同学们克服生词恐惧感。本篇讲的人格特征便属此例。了解相应知识，还能快速切入主题，是同学们在提高阅读能力之余需要积累的。
背景信息：
Big Five personality traits
In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality. The theory based on the Big Five factors is called the Five Factor Model (FFM). The Big Five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Acronyms commonly used to refer to the five traits collectively are OCEAN, NEOAC, or CANOE. Beneath each global factor, a cluster of correlated and more specific primary factors are found; for example, extraversion includes such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions.
The Big Five model is able to account for different traits in personality without overlapping. Empirical research has shown that the Big Five personality traits show consistency in interviews, self-descriptions and observations. Moreover, this five-factor structure seems to be found across a wide range of participants of different ages and of different cultures.
A summary of the factors of the Big Five and their constituent traits, such that they form the acronym OCEAN:
Openness to experience: (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience. Openness reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety a person has. It is also described as the extent to which a person is imaginative or independent, and depicts a personal preference for a variety of activities over a strict routine. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret the openness factor, which is sometimes called "intellect" rather than openness to experience.
Conscientiousness: (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). A tendency to be organized and dependable, show self-discipline, act dutifully, aim for achievement, and prefer planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
Extraversion: (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, assertiveness, sociability and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others, and talkativeness.
Agreeableness: (friendly/compassionate vs. analytical/detached). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. It is also a measure of one's trusting and helpful nature, and whether a person is generally well tempered or not.
Neuroticism: (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). The tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. Neuroticism also refers to the degree of emotional stability and impulse control and is sometimes referred to by its low pole, "emotional stability".
The Big Five Model was defined by several independent sets of researchers. These researchers began by studying known personality traits and then factor-analyzing hundreds of measures of these traits (in self-report and questionnaire data, peer ratings, and objective measures from experimental settings) in order to find the underlying factors of personality. The Big five personality traits was the model to comprehend the relationship between personality and academic behaviors.
The initial model was advanced by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal in 1961 but failed to reach an academic audience until the 1980s. In 1990, J.M. Digman advanced his five factor model of personality, which Lewis Goldberg extended to the highest level of organization. These five overarching domains have been found to contain and subsume most known personality traits and are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. These five factors provide a rich conceptual framework for integrating all the research findings and theory in personality psychology.
At least four sets of researchers have worked independently for decades on this problem and have identified generally the same Big Five factors: Tupes and Cristal were first, followed by Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute, Cattell at the University of Illinois, and Costa and McCrae at the National Institutes of Health. These four sets of researchers used somewhat different methods in finding the five traits, and thus each set of five factors has somewhat different names and definitions. However, all have been found to be highly inter-correlated and factor-analytically aligned.
Because the Big Five traits are broad and comprehensive, they are not nearly as powerful in predicting and explaining actual behavior as are the more numerous lower-level traits. Many studies have confirmed that in predicting actual behavior the more numerous facet or primary level traits are far more effective (e.g., Mershon & Gorsuch, 1988; Paunonon & Ashton, 2001).
Each of the Big Five personality traits contains two separate, but correlated, aspects reflecting a level of personality below the broad domains but above the many facet scales that are also part of the Big Five. The aspects are labeled as follows: Volatility and Withdrawal for Neuroticism; Enthusiasm and Assertiveness for Extraversion; Intellect and Openness for Openness/Intellect; Industriousness and Orderliness for Conscientiousness; and Compassion and Politeness for Agreeableness.#p#副标题#e#
第二篇：
埃及变迁
题材解读：
古文明是被最多的反复考察的题材之一，往往还与农业，考古，。但由于历史类文章切入点不同会产生不同的行文方式，因此可能与考生预期不同。所以对于这类背景，应该去了解但不能过于依赖。
2013.2.2NA埃及尼罗河文明——疑似重复2013.5.26ML
第一个：关于埃及的尼罗河文明，提到公元前5000~3000年前，北非地区一片绿洲，后来气候突然变化了(有考点)，导致仅剩尼罗河流域的土地肥沃，有绿色植被，适于居住，所以人们都聚集到这个地区，形成古埃及文明。然后说为了造金字塔，需要强有力的社会统治结构，所以“嫡长子继承制”(primogeniture有考点)被法老们(Pharaoh)建立起来。此外，尼罗河上游(在南面)的阿斯旺水坝地区(有地图有考点)有用于建造金字塔的石料等东西，需要通过各种季风(春夏和秋冬不同，有考点)将运输船吹到下游(注意尼罗河的下游是在北面)。还有就是因为尼罗河流域周边都被撒哈拉沙漠包围，后来即使被什么其他文明入侵征服，但是文明一直都没有断掉，社会稳定(有考点)。
背景信息：
Prehistory and Ancient Egypt
Main articles: Prehistoric Egypt and Ancient Egypt
There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BC, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralised society.
By about 6000 BC, a Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley. During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BC.
The Great Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza, built during the Old Kingdom.
A unified kingdom was founded c. 3150 BC by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c. 2700–2200 BC., which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramids.
The First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years. Stronger Nile floods and stabilisation of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BC, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BC and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes.
The New Kingdom c. 1550–1070 BC began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and Assyrians, but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.
The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians in 343 BC after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle.
Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
The Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion at the Temple of Dendera.
Main articles: History of Ptolemaic Egypt and Egypt (Roman province)
The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern Syria in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a center of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.
The last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide following the burial of her lover Mark Antony who had died in her arms (from a self-inflicted stab wound), after Octavian had captured Alexandria and her mercenary forces had fled. The Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome. Nevertheless Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest.
Christianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century. Diocletian's reign marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.
------------------
Primogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn male child to inherit the family estate, in preference to siblings (compare to ultimogeniture). In the absence of children, inheritance passed to collateral relatives, usually males, in order of seniority of their lines of descent. The eligible descendants of deceased elder siblings take precedence over living younger siblings, such that inheritance is settled in the manner of a depth-first search.
The principle has applied in history to inheritance of real property (land) as well as inherited titles and offices, most notably monarchies, continuing until modified or abolished.
Variations on primogeniture modify the right of the firstborn son to the entirety of a family's inheritance (see appanage) or, in the West since World War II with the wider promotion of feminism, eliminate the preference for males over females. Most monarchies in Europe have eliminated male preference in succession: Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The United Kingdom passed legislation to establish gender-blind succession in 2013 but delayed implementation until the 15 other countries which share the same monarch effect similar changes in their succession laws.#p#副标题#e#
第三篇：
Electricity在美国的发展
背景解读：
通常单场考试会有文理题材上的差异，但本场考试三篇文章全是人文历史类。理工科的同学可能在解答时会相对吃力。因此，要对于时间顺序等逻辑性不清晰的文章进行大量练习。
背景信息：
A Brief History of Electricity
by Rosalie E. Leposky
In the history of electricity, no single defining moment exists. The way we produce, distribute, install, and use electricity and the devices it powers is the culmination of nearly 300 years of research and development.
Efforts to understand, capture, and tame electricity began in the 18th century. For the next 150 years, dozens of "natural scientists" in England, Europe, colonial America, and later the United States analyzed electricity in nature, but producing it outside of nature was another matter.
That didn't happen on any large scale until the late 19th century. Setting the stage for widespread commercial use of electricity were international researchers engaged in pure scientific research, and entrepreneurial businessmen who made their own major discoveries or produced, marketed, and sold products based on others' ideas.
Prominent contributors to today's electrically energized world (listed in alphabetical order) include:
* Andrè-Maire Ampére (1775-1836), a French physicist who developed the Systéme International d'Unités (SI).
* Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), inventor of the telephone. A mostly home-taught member of a Scottish family interested in issues of speech and deafness, Bell followed his father, Alexander Melville Bell, as a teacher of the deaf. In the 1870s, funded by the fathers of two of his students, Bell studied how electricity could transmit sound.
* Ferdinand Braum (1850-1918), a German physicist who shared a Nobel Prize with Guglielmo Marconi for contributions to the development of radiotelegraphy.
* Henry Cavendish (1731-1810), a reclusive, unpublished English scientist whose work was replicated several decades later by Ohm.
* Thomas Doolittle, a Connecticut mill worker who, in 1876, devised a way to make the first hard-drawn copper wire strong enough for use by the telegraphy industry, in place of iron wire. The young commercial electric and telephone industry quickly took advantage of the new wire.
* Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931), the most productive electrical explorer. He invented the electric light bulb and many other products that electricians use or install.
*Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), an American diplomat and natural philosopher, he proved that lightning and electricity were the same.
* Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), an Italian physician and physicist, his early discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic pile.
* Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), an Italian physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his invention of a system of radiotelegraphy.
* Georg Simon Ohm (1789-1854), a German physicist and the discoverer of Ohm's Law, which states that resistance equals the ratio of the potential difference to current.
* Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a Serbian-American inventor who discovered rotating magnetic fields. George Westinghouse purchased Tesla's patent rights.
* Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (1745-1827), an Italian physicist who invented the electric battery. The electrical unit "volt" is named for Volta.
* George Westinghouse (1846-1914), an able adapter of other people's research, purchased their patents and expanded on their work. His first patent was received for a train air brake. In 1869, he formed the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. Eventually, he held 360 patents and founded six companies. He lost control of his companies in the 1907 panic, but went on working for them for another three years.
The experiences of electricity's founding fathers parallel in many ways the electronic technology breakthroughs of the past half-century that have brought us a whirlwind of innovation in computer hardware, software, and Internet communications. Just as a wave of electrical inventions dramatically changed the world as the 20th century progressed, so can we anticipate a steadily escalating rate of innovation in these emerging electronic disciplines beyond the dawn of the 21st century.
Emergence of a profession
Edison, Westinghouse, and other inventors and builders of electrical equipment competed to show the wonders of their new inventions. In 1881, Lucien Gaulard of France and John Gibbs of England arranged the first successful alternating-current electrical demonstration in London.
Expositions and world's fairs became popular places to showcase new inventions involving electricity. Almost as soon as they moved from the drawing board to operational status, electrical devices and systems were on display, to the delight of admiring crowds throughout the United States, England, and Europe.
Electricians were hired to build and operate these installations. The first successful use of electricity at one of these events occurred at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Four years later, the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago used 10 times more electricity than the Paris Exposition. Says David E. Nye in Electrifying America (MIT Press, 1997):
"The Chicago fair employed 90,000 Sawyer-Mann incandescent lamps using alternating current, installed by Westinghouse for $5.25 each, and 5,000 arc lights installed by General Electric. To understand what these figures meant, consider that in 1890 there were only 68,000 arc lights and 900,000 incandescent lamps in the entire United States."
Columbian Exposition visitors could ride on or see electrified sites that included three cranes, elevators in some buildings, water fountains, an on-site railroad/streetcar system built by General Electric, and moving sidewalks.
Organizers of the electricity-themed 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., were challenged to improve on the Columbian Exposition.
Two of the Pan-American Exposition's buildings were dedicated to electricity. The 400-foot Electric Tower, studded with 40,000 lights; and the Electricity Building, with a display of electrical appliances.
Meanwhile, electricity had made an appearance at the annual expositions held from 1857 to the late 1890s in St. Louis, Mo., then the fourth-largest city in the United States. The St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Fair took place each summer at Fairgrounds Park on the city's north side, and each winter in the Exposition and Music Hall in downtown St. Louis.
Organizing the profession
Electricians meeting in conjunction with these expositions in St. Louis and Buffalo found enough in common to form the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA).
In the fall of 1890, experienced linemen and wiremen working on the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Fair met to share common professional experiences. A year later, on November 21, 1891, 10 electricians representing about 300 workmen in eight cities met and formed the IBEW. The group included three from St. Louis and one each from Chicago; Indianapolis and Evansville, Ind.; Duluth, Minn.; Toledo; Philadelphia; and Milwaukee.
At about the same time, electrical contracting firms in Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica formed the United Electrical Contractors Association of New York State. This association invited electrical contracting firms from all over the United States to a meeting on July 17, 1901, at the New York State Building at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Forty-nine men came from 18 cities in eight states, including nine from St. Louis, two each from Detroit and Philadelphia, and one each from Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh. From this meeting, displaying the latest advances in electrical use, NECA emerged.
NECA's longtime members
Although some of the companies involved in NECA's formative years have gone into other lines of business and/or have been absorbed into other companies, a number of others remain active in the electrical-contracting business today. Century-old electrical-contracting firms with longtime NECA include:
* Hatzel & Buehler, Inc., of New York City was founded by John D. Hatzel and Joseph Buehler, master electricians at Thomas A. Edison's Pearl Street generating station, in 1884, to offer outside and inside wiring. J.D. Hatzel attended NECA's founding meeting and served as a NECA president. In the early 1930s, the grandfather of current Hatzel & Buehler president William A. Goeller purchased the firm from John Hatzel's estate.
* Herbert A. Holder Company, Inc., of Boston, was founded in 1892 by Herbert A. Holder Sr. "Holder is Boston's oldest union shop," says Michael Grable, vice president and general manager. For 80 years, it was located on Broad Street in the center of Boston's financial district." Herbert A. Holder Jr. inherited the company from his father. About 1970, Willard Bain, my father-in-law and a longtime Holder employee, asked to purchase the company." Today Willard's son, Paul W. Bain, serves as president and shares management responsibilities with Grable.
* Briner Electric Company of St. Louis opened when Charles J. Briner founded the company in 1895. In 1897, he and his brother, Fred E. Briner, formed a partnership-C.J. and F.E. Briner Electric Company. In 1902, the Briners formed a separate partnership that today would be called a joint venture with William Koeneman, John Casey, and William and Louis Nolker, creating Guarantee Electric Company for the specific purpose of working on the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. After the World's Fair, William Koeneman bought out his partners to gain control of Guarantee.
Briner Electric continued as a separate company, which the Briner family sold in 1962 to Thomas J. Fogarty and Paul Lyons. Briner Electric now is owned and operated by Fogarty's sons, T. Michael Fogarty, president; and his younger brother, John J. Fogarty, vice president.
* An employee, Fred J. Oertli, purchased Guarantee from the family of William Koeneman in 1946. Today his sons direct Guarantee, Fred G. "Junior" Oertli, as vice chairman, and his younger brother, Charles W. "Chuck" Oertli, chairman and chief executive officer.
* Jack Enright and Theodore H. Joseph founded E-J Electric Installation Co. of New York City, in 1899. Jack Enright died in 1913. Jac Mann became Joseph's partner; today members of Mann's family le ad the company. For more information on E-J Electric, see Electrical Contractor, June 1999.
* One early contracting firm lasted to celebrate its centennial but has since gone out of business. Henry Newgard & Co. of Chicago was founded in 1882. In an early advertisement, Newgard described its services as "installer of electric lights, speaking tubes, electric bells, burglar alarms, and gas lighting." The firm ceased operations in the mid-1990s.
Corporate Pioneers
Following is a representative sample of the oldest power companies and manufacturers of electrical supplies:
* Siemens AG, of Münich, Germany, was the first of several companies founded by Carl, Werner, and Wilhelm Siemens. The firm was established in 1847 as Siemens & Halske OHG. Today Siemens AG is an electrical-engineering and electronics company.
* General Cable Corporation, of Highland Heights, Ky., was incorporated in New Jersey in 1927. General Cable brought together the assets of several companies formed in the 19th century, including Phillips Wire and Safety Company and George Westinghouse's Standard Underground Cable Company. Companies that became part of General Cable supplied insulated cable in 1844 to Samuel Morse; wire to the Statue of Liberty in 1886 (and again in 1986), 145 miles of cable that contractors laid under New York City sidewalks in 1892, and 3,000-volt cable for Chicago's 1893 Columbia Exposition.
* Pacific Gas and Electric Co., based in San Francisco, Calif. PG&E is the result of mergers involving dozens of companies, including a number that started selling gas. As electricity became available, they sold it, too. In 1852, Peter and James Donahue founded San Francisco Gas Company, the city's first gas supplier. Oakland Gas Light, founded by John A. Britton in 1855, established a small electrical plant in 1877 and changed its name to Oakland Gas and Light Company. In June of 1879, George H. Roe formed California Electric Light Company, the first exclusively electric firm in the PG&E family of companies.
* In 1901, Britton and Roe's companies merged to form California Gas and Electric Corporation. In 1890, with the backing of J.P. Morgan, Edison started studying expansion into California. Roe went to New York and purchased the right to use Edison's patents within a 100-miles radius of San Francisco.
* Westinghouse Electric Company, one of 56 companies (including Rockwell International) founded by George Westinghouse. In 1885, Westinghouse imported a Gaulard-Gibbs transformer from England and an AC generator from Siemens Brothers, the English subsidiary of Siemens AG. He and his engineers modified this equipment and proved the economic value of his alternating-current concept over Edison's direct-current system. As an experiment, Westinghouse electrified the small village of Barrington, Mass., for two weeks in 1886.
*Westinghouse subsequently grew to become one of the world's largest companies, but it has suffered financial embarrassment and many divestitures. The firm's three remaining divisions are Westinghouse Electric Co., which provides products and services for the nuclear-power industry; The Westinghouse Government Service Co., a United States Defense Department subcontractor; and The Westinghouse Government Environmental Service Company, based in Monroeville, Pa.
* Thomas A. Edison and a number of investors founded General Electric Light Bulb Company/Edison General Electric Company in 1887, to promote and sell electric light bulbs. In 1892, the assets of General Electric Light Bulb and other Edison companies were acquired for the newly incorporated General Electric Company. GE has made and sold many products using one or more of Edison's 1,093 American patents. "More than half of Edison's patents related to electricity," says Dr. Robert A. Rosenberg, director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "Besides the electric light bulb, Edison worked on photography (in 1877), the phonograph, the telegraph, and telephone." General Electric Company's corporate headquarters today is in Fairfield, Conn.
* Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company, founded in St. Louis in 1890 by Alexander and Charles Meston with the financial support of attorney and entrepreneur John Wesley Emerson. Still based in St. Louis, Emerson has 60 divisions and over 100,000 employees.
* Cutler-Hammer, founded in 1893 by Chicago inventor and business man Harry H. Cutler to manufacture manual starter boxes. The company now is part of Eaton Corporation of Cleveland.
For More Information:
Laurence Davis, NECA: Fifty Years of Progress 1901-1951. Washington D.C.: Rufus H. Darby Printing Co., Inc., 1951. Hard to find; made available thanks to David A. Roll, chapter manager, Western New York NECA.
Davis Dyer and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank. Emerson Electric Co. A Century of Manufacturing 1890-1990. St. Louis: Emerson Electric Co., 1989.
Robert Friedel, Paul Israel, and Bernard S. Finn. Edison Electric Light Bulb. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Out of print.
Paul Israel. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. A paperback version is scheduled for publication in the spring of 2000. This well-researched book, based on the Edison papers, tells how Edison created devices we use and take for granted every day, and how Edison the entrepreneur tried to manufacture and market his brainchildren.
David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meeting of a New Technology, 1890-1940. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997. An explanation of how electricity changed all aspects of American life.
Grace Palladino. Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision. Washington D.C: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 1991.
St. Louis Electrical Board. A 'Century Plus' of Electrical Progress. A good example of the importance of keeping records from which a detailed community-based business history can be published, this book contains information on the history of the electrical industry that is not readily available elsewhere.
Electrical Contractor wants to know if your organization is now or soon will be 100 or 150 years old. Please telephone NECA at (301) 215-4516 or e-mail us at nww@necanet.org.
About This Author
Rosalie E. Leposky
LEPOSKY is a freelance writer based in Miami.#p#副标题#e#
B套：
第一篇：
shaker basket讲一个地方的人做东西不注重decoration，而是注重用途，因为他们与外界isolated，所以和外界不一样。那个地方的人尤其篮子做的特别好，基本都是在做篮子的市场一起做，有很多种用途。有的可防止潮湿，有的加了个东西还能在冰上用，减小stress。后来篮子也被improve了，因为有各地区交流。
相关背景：
About Shaker Baskets and Basketry
What is a SHAKER basket?
The Shakers learned basketry partly from the Algonquin Indians who were also trading partners. Although both men and women were involved, because basketry didn't require male support to keep it going, it thrived longer than the other industries when males failed to join the order in sufficient numbers. The Shakers took the simple basket and elevated it to an art form which in turn generated a large dollar income for the community.
The raw materials existed on their own properties and the Shakers owned land in the Adirondacks which continued to provide ash after the local supply dwindled. The bark of the black ash (Fraxinus Nigra) was pulled off with a bark spud, a stout curved blade and wooden handle. The sharpened blade, which reflects the shape of the log, helped peel the bark off. The bark was used to produce tannin for the tanning industry, which was operated by the Shakers into the second half of the 19th century. The Shakers always attempted to dovetail industries and make wide use of interrelated technologies.
After removing the bark, the splints were prepared. Native Algonquins prepared splints by hand using a wooden club to pound the annual growth rings off. Once the Shakers harnessed running water to supply power, they built a triphammer to beat the logs and loosen ash strips. This hammer was also used by the blacksmith to pound out metal and to break flax. A simple machine - a device pulled up a weighted head to a specified height, than a release mechanism dropped this weight or hammer on the log. It was a great labour saving device that efficiently produced large quantities of splints.
Perhaps the most important element in Shaker basketry was the use of wooden moulds or forms of almost unlimited varieties. This allowed the Shakers to produce baskets in commercial quantities. The Sisters produced most of the baskets, while the Brothers provided support in the preparation of the raw materials, the manufacture of the basket handles and other woodworking processes, thus guaranteeing efficient production and high output. The wooden mould, of which there were dozens attest to the variety of styles and heights of baskets produced. A simple change in handle style and a new basket was born.
Sales indicated to the Shakers, consumer preference for the smaller "fancy" baskets. They responded to the need and decided to let the worldly producers make the bigger and plainer items. The smaller fancy baskets didn't deplete their ash supplies as rapidly and the hexagonal "cheese baskets" or "curd baskets" took small amounts of splint. All of these smaller baskets requird less masculine labour support and given the fact the male population was shrinking, this became an important factor in their choice of manufacture.#p#副标题#e#
第二篇：
版本一：
恐龙有两种hatch的方式，一个是在nest里下蛋，总之不好确定，因为fossil。。后来两个实验，都证明了是在nest里。又讨论了可以和其他动物对比，和bird，发现是一个祖先，所以发展特征也差不多。
版本二：
有一篇讲恐龙的两种保护宝宝行为。一种是生前行为如筑巢，另一种是生后的如喂养。M恐龙巢里有小宝宝，故推断有第一种，但后面一种就不好说了，后一种m的巢距离一定，所以可能孵蛋，小龙牙上有痕迹可能喂养。
相关背景：
Reproductive biology
Three eggs, bluish with black speckling, sit atop a layer of white mollusk shells pieces, surrounded by sandy ground and small bits of bluish stone.
Nest of a plover (Charadrius).
All dinosaurs lay amniotic eggs with hard shells made mostly of calcium carbonate. Eggs are usually laid in a nest. Most species create somewhat elaborate nests, which can be cups, domes, plates, beds scrapes, mounds, or burrows. Some species of modern bird have no nests; the cliff-nesting Common Guillemot lays its eggs on bare rock, and male Emperor Penguins keep eggs between their body and feet. Primitive birds and many non-avialan dinosaurs often lay eggs in communal nests, with males primarily incubating the eggs. While modern birds have only one functional oviduct and lay one egg at a time, more primitive birds and dinosaurs had two oviducts, like crocodiles. Some non-avialan dinosaurs, such as Troodon, exhibited iterative laying, where the adult might lay a pair of eggs every one or two days, and then ensured simultaneous hatching by delaying brooding until all eggs were laid.
When laying eggs, females grow a special type of bone between the hard outer bone and the marrow of their limbs. This medullary bone, which is rich in calcium, is used to make eggshells. A discovery of features in a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton provided evidence of medullary bone in extinct dinosaurs and, for the first time, allowed paleontologists to establish the sex of a fossil dinosaur specimen. Further research has found medullary bone in the carnosaur Allosaurus and the ornithopod Tenontosaurus. Because the line of dinosaurs that includes Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus diverged from the line that led to Tenontosaurus very early in the evolution of dinosaurs, this suggests that the production of medullary tissue is a general characteristic of all dinosaurs.
Fossilized egg of the oviraptorid Citipati, American Museum of Natural History
Another widespread trait among modern birds is parental care for young after hatching. Jack Horner's 1978 discovery of a Maiasaura ("good mother lizard") nesting ground in Montana demonstrated that parental care continued long after birth among ornithopods, suggesting this behavior might also have been common to all dinosaurs. There is evidence that other non-theropod dinosaurs, like Patagonian titanosaurian sauropods (1997 discovery), also nested in large groups. A specimen of the Mongolian oviraptorid Citipati osmolskae was discovered in a chicken-like brooding position in 1993, which indicates that they had begun using an insulating layer of feathers to keep the eggs warm. Parental care being a trait common to all dinosaurs is supported by other finds. For example, a dinosaur embryo (pertaining to the prosauropod Massospondylus) was found without teeth, indicating that some parental care was required to feed the young dinosaurs. Trackways have also confirmed parental behavior among ornithopods from the Isle of Skye in northwestern Scotland. Nests and eggs have been found for most major groups of dinosaurs, and it appears likely that all dinosaurs cared for their young to some extent either before or shortly after hatching.
Physiology
Main article: Physiology of dinosaurs
Comparison between the air sacs of an abelisaur and a bird
Because both modern crocodilians and birds have four-chambered hearts (albeit modified in crocodilians), it is likely that this is a trait shared by all archosaurs, including all dinosaurs. While all modern birds have high metabolisms and are "warm blooded" (endothermic), a vigorous debate has been ongoing since the 1960s regarding how far back in the dinosaur lineage this trait extends. Scientists disagree as to whether non-avian dinosaurs were endothermic, ectothermic, or some combination of both.
After non-avian dinosaurs were discovered, paleontologists first posited that they were ectothermic. This supposed "cold-bloodedness" was used to imply that the ancient dinosaurs were relatively slow, sluggish organisms, even though many modern reptiles are fast and light-footed despite relying on external sources of heat to regulate their body temperature. The idea of dinosaurs as ectothermic and sluggish remained a prevalent view until Robert T. "Bob" Bakker, an early proponent of dinosaur endothermy, published an influential paper on the topic in 1968.
Modern evidence indicates that even non-avian dinosaurs and birds thrived in cooler temperate climates, and that at least some early species must have regulated their body temperature by internal biological means (aided by the animals' bulk in large species and feathers or other body coverings in smaller species). Evidence of endothermy in Mesozoic dinosaurs includes the discovery of polar dinosaurs in Australia and Antarctica as well as analysis of blood-vessel structures within fossil bones that are typical of endotherms. Scientific debate continues regarding the specific ways in which dinosaur temperature regulation evolved.
In the saurischian dinosaurs, higher metabolisms were supported by the evolution of the avian respiratory system, characterized by an extensive system of air sacs that extended the lungs and invaded many of the bones in the skeleton, making them hollow. Early avian-style respiratory systems with air sacs may have been capable of sustaining higher activity levels than mammals of similar size and build could sustain. In addition to providing a very efficient supply of oxygen, the rapid airflow would have been an effective cooling mechanism, which is essential for animals that are active but too large to get rid of all the excess heat through their skin.
Like other reptiles, dinosaurs are primarily uricotelic, that is, their kidneys extract nitrogenous wastes from their bloodstream and excrete it as uric acid instead of urea or ammonia via the ureters into the intestine. In most living species, uric acid is excreted along with feces as a semisolid waste. However, at least some modern birds (such as hummingbirds) can be facultatively ammonotelic, excreting most of the nitrogenous wastes as ammonia. They also excrete creatine, rather than creatinine like mammals. This material, as well as the output of the intestines, emerges from the cloaca. In addition, many species regurgitate pellets, and fossil pellets that may have come from dinosaurs are known from as long ago as the Cretaceous period.
Origin of birds
Main article: Origin of birds
The possibility that dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds was first suggested in 1868 by Thomas Henry Huxley. After the work of Gerhard Heilmann in the early 20th century, the theory of birds as dinosaur descendants was abandoned in favor of the idea of their being descendants of generalized thecodonts, with the key piece of evidence being the supposed lack of clavicles in dinosaurs. However, as later discoveries showed, clavicles (or a single fused wishbone, which derived from separate clavicles) were not actually absent; they had been found as early as 1924 in Oviraptor, but misidentified as an interclavicle. In the 1970s, John Ostrom revived the dinosaur–bird theory, which gained momentum in the coming decades with the advent of cladistic analysis, and a great increase in the discovery of small theropods and early birds. Of particular note have been the fossils of the Yixian Formation, where a variety of theropods and early birds have been found, often with feathers of some type. Birds share over a hundred distinct anatomical features with theropod dinosaurs, which are now generally accepted to have been their closest ancient relatives. They are most closely allied with maniraptoran coelurosaurs. A minority of scientists, most notably Alan Feduccia and Larry Martin, have proposed other evolutionary paths, including revised versions of Heilmann's basal archosaur proposal, or that maniraptoran theropods are the ancestors of birds but themselves are not dinosaurs, only convergent with dinosaurs.
Feathers
Main article: Feathered dinosaurs
The famous Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica
Feathers are one of the most recognizable characteristics of modern birds, and a trait that was shared by all other dinosaur groups. Based on the current distribution of fossil evidence, it appears that feathers were an ancestral dinosaurian trait, though one that may have been selectively lost in some species. Direct fossil evidence of feathers or feather-like structures has been discovered in a diverse array of species in many non-avian dinosaur groups, both among saurischians and ornithischians. Simple, branched, feather-like structures are known from heterodontosaurids, primitive neornithischians and theropods, and primitive ceratopsians. Evidence for true, vaned feathers similar to the flight feathers of modern birds has been found only in the theropod subgroup Maniraptora, which includes oviraptorosaurs, troodontids, dromaeosaurids, and birds. Feather-like structures known as pycnofibres have also been found in pterosaurs, suggesting the possibility that feather-like filaments may have been common in the bird lineage and evolved before the appearance of dinosaurs themselves.
Archaeopteryx was the first fossil found which revealed a potential connection between dinosaurs and birds. It is considered a transitional fossil, in that it displays features of both groups. Brought to light just two years after Darwin's seminal The Origin of Species, its discovery spurred the nascent debate between proponents of evolutionary biology and creationism. This early bird is so dinosaur-like that, without a clear impression of feathers in the surrounding rock, at least one specimen was mistaken for Compsognathus. Since the 1990s, a number of additional feathered dinosaurs have been found, providing even stronger evidence of the close relationship between dinosaurs and modern birds. Most of these specimens were unearthed in the lagerstätte of the Yixian Formation, Liaoning, northeastern China, which was part of an island continent during the Cretaceous. Though feathers have been found in only a few locations, it is possible that non-avian dinosaurs elsewhere in the world were also feathered. The lack of widespread fossil evidence for feathered non-avian dinosaurs may be because delicate features like skin and feathers are not often preserved by fossilization and thus are absent from the fossil record.
The description of feathered dinosaurs has not been without controversy; perhaps the most vocal critics have been Alan Feduccia and Theagarten Lingham-Soliar, who have proposed that some purported feather-like fossils are the result of the decomposition of collagenous fiber that underlaid the dinosaurs' skin, and that maniraptoran dinosaurs with vaned feathers were not actually dinosaurs, but convergent with dinosaurs. However, their views have for the most part not been accepted by other researchers, to the point that the question of the scientific nature of Feduccia's proposals has been raised.
Skeleton