【clover】106G ECO analysis by 九天揽月

九天揽月UID: 2737667

2010-01-27

Green.view

Gone but not forgotten

Details of how people killed off species in the past may have implications for whether they do so in the future

Jan 25th 2010 | From The Economist online

Between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago roughly half of the earth’s larger mammals (species that were sheep-sized or bigger) went extinct. The distribution of these extinctions in time and space suggests strongly that humans were responsible. Large mammals in Africa, which had evolved alongside humans for millions of years, were for the most part spared. The species which died out elsewhere—178 of them, possibly more—tended to do so at around the time that they first encountered modern humans coming forth out of Africa with pointy sticks, good throwing arms and large appetites. Ecologists have shown that wiping out big animals is surprisingly easy, since big animals reproduce slowly, which means that a small increase in the rate at which predators (one that preys, destroys, or devours,捕食者) pick them off can have a large effect on the population, especially if the predators prefer hunting juveniles （youth, 年幼的）. Hence the now widely accepted argument that humans come with original ecological sin built in.（central contention）

本文主要论证人类在早期原始动物灭绝中所扮演的犯罪角色，首段提出论点，并阐明背景。

As a large and recent extinction event this topic would be worth studying even if it did not have implications for how people think about themselves. When extinction is becoming commonplace, a better understanding of its mechanisms is prudent (discreet, 慎重的). Research in this area has recently been throwing up some surprising and intriguing（fascinating）complexities.(论据1，在北美有新的证据表明长毛象和马群与人类共存了更长的时间，因此它们的灭绝不排除有人类参与的因素。) In North America, new evidence suggests that both mammoths and horses co-existed with humans a lot longer than had previously been expected, suggesting the extinctions could not have been simple wham-bam-yummy-leg-of-lamb affairs. Evidence from bones and teeth has led to researchers accepting that mammoths and native horses last roamed America between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago, which fits nicely with humans turning up about 14,000 years ago. But saying when the last of a species roamed（wander, 漫游
） on the basis of bones is an error-prone（erring, 易错的） affair;
the chances that the last of a dying race will pass away in some sort of ready-made ossuary(藏尸骨的罐) are slim.

Science Photo Library

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in late December, （论据2，哥本哈根大学的Eske Willerslev及同事通过分析Alaska的冻土层发现特定基因而证明人类出现之后在该地仍有长毛象生活，从另一角度说明人类的影响。）Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues from various other places looked instead at DNA evidence from frozen sediments in Alaska. They argue that specific layers within these sediments can be reliably dated, and that DNA cannot easily have moved into these layers from older or younger ones; as a result, they can say with some conviction that there were still mammoths and horses roaming Alaska 10,500 years ago, well after humans got there. This is not to say humans did not cause the extinction—just that there was considerably more cohabitation beforehand.

Another recent paper points out that hunting and other environmental changes can interact with each other in complex ways. （论据3，Jacquelyn Gill与同事在Science上发表他们研究动物残余物的结果，阐述了人类到达之后美国东北部的地理环境改变对动物造成的影响。）In November Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin and her colleagues published in Science their studies of a dung fungus and other ecological markers（仪表） that provide insight into how the landscape of the north-eastern United States changed after people got there. They show that an initial collapse in the population of some large herbivores（食草动物） directly preceded an increase in the level of fire in the area. One possibility is that removing the big herbivores allowed woody plants that they previously kept under control to flourish, building up the fuel available for fires; those fires then reshaped the landscape, changing the distribution of plants to be found there, which may in turn have caused problems for herbivores who had been fine with the way things were. This offers a way for the hunting of one species, through a chain of ecological cause and effect, to spell bad news for another. Such effects could spread the ecological damage beyond the original prey at the same time as drawing out the actual extinction.

Elsewhere, though, what looked to some like a slow death has been redefined as a quick one. At a site in New South Wales called Cuddie Springs there have been claims that stone tools and the bones of large animals—giant wombats and the like—can be found side by side in sediments（沉积物） spanning 10,000 years of prehistory. （论据4，新的发现表明沉积物中动物牙齿的年龄比人类当时使用的武器时间更早，再次证明人类与原始动物共存的事实。） Now a new study by Rainer Grün of the Australian National University and colleagues in Quaternary Science Reviews brings that long and comparatively recent period of cohabitation into doubt, providing evidence from new dating techniques that the animal teeth in the sediments are older than the tools those teeth are found alongside. The idea, dear to some, that humans cohabited with Australia’s megafauna for 20,000 years or so is thus dealt a blow（给予打击）.

（结论：揭示研究人类在早期动物灭绝中扮演角色的意义在于警示未来怎样处理人类与动物的共存的关系。）The evidence that humans were in some way responsible for these deaths remains strong. And to read a moral into that causation remains, for the most part, unhelpful. There has been some disquiet at the idea that the first people in the Americas and Australia, almost wiped out themselves by the imperial（帝国的） spread of Europeans over the past 500 years, might be turned by such evidence from victims into perpetrators（culprit, 犯罪者）, their claims to compassion and restitution（compensation, 补偿） thus diminished. To think less of the people who populated those landscapes of another age because of the unforeseen consequences of their actions would be foolish, just as it would be to take a history of human-associated extinctions as normalising, naturalising or even excusing the extinctions now going on and likely in the future. But if further understanding of these past extinctions—an understanding that explains the sometimes lengthy periods of cohabitation and the complex network of ecological knock-on effects that must have been involved—shows how similar disruptions might be avoided in the future, it would be hard not to see it, in some respects, as making good of an earlier ill.

银落UID: 2632560

SF支持~

桔子susanUID: 2754084

原来大家都读的这一篇
加油！加油！

chaliaUID: 2589767

LZ加油~!! 分析的条理很清楚哦.我学到了不少呢~

请问一下吖,倒数第二段的第一句话
Elsewhere, though, what looked to some like a slow death has been redefined as a quick one.
里面what looked to some like怎么理解的啊?我一直没想明白这句话的句型..

九天揽月UID: 2737667

这句话我大概这样理解的，不知道对不对，还望各位共同探讨:handshake：然而在其他地方，那些被指望像是一个缓慢的死亡已经重新定义为快速的灭绝。大家帮忙看看啊~~

九天揽月UID: 2737667

2010-1-28
Linguistics

Babelicious!(From Babel,巴别塔,意为语言思想混乱的,有词源)
Bigger languages are also simpler ones
Jan 25th 2010 | From The Economist online

WHY do some languages drip with（充满，往下滴，很形象）verb endings, declensions（词尾变化，格变化） that show how a noun is used, and other grammatical bits and pieces, while others rely on word order and context? The former category tends to include languages spoken by small groups in isolated settings like the Amazon or New Guinea. The latter include such languages as English and Mandarin. (设问句开头)

This fact has made scholars wonder if languages simplify as they spread. Researchers have wondered if second-language learning of such conquering languages（可借用）as English have led them to shed（卸下，红宝词汇）grammatical baggage. Many features of grammar are, in linguistic terms, “overspecified”—meaning redundant（superfluous,累赘的）. The “s” on the end of “the two boys” is overspecified, since “two” shows that more than one boy is concerned. So, the theory goes, as adults learn languages, with abilities that have withered（使减弱消失） compared to children’s native acquisition, the dispensable bits are dispensed with（连用dispense 和 dispensable, 比较有韵味）. But some linguists have simply assumed（猜测，红宝词汇） that all languages get simpler over time, or that few social factors correlate with complexity.（过渡比较自然）

As they describe in the Public Library of Science, Gary Lupyan of the University of Pennsylvania and Rick Dale of the University of Memphis set out to find some more solid evidence that expansion simplifies language. They took the 2,236 languages in the World Atlas of Language Structures and looked for correlations with the number of speakers of each language, the size of the area in which it is spoken, and the number of neighbouring languages. They looked for correlations with the languages’ inflectional morphology（抑扬语素）, meaning the mostly obligatory prefixes, suffixes and other parts packed into（包含在） individual words that carry specific meanings.

They found clear evidence that big, spreading languages have fewer of these features. They have fewer case-markings on nouns. Verbs are less likely to vary with person, place, time and so forth. Mandarin, for example, has no obligatory past tense at all; an extra word can come after the verb to indicate it happened in the past, or this can be left to context. By contrast, Yagua, spoken in Peru, has an obligatory five-way distinction. Past-tense verbs must show whether the event happened a few hours ago, a day before, a week to a month ago, and so on.

The number of speakers of each language correlated best with morphological complexity, better than the area the language is spread over or the number of neighbours. This makes sense（使有意义） because a language with a large population of speakers has probably already been learned by many non-natives in the past. A language with many neighbours today would be, by this rationale（基于此）, more likely to become simpler in the future, if the language spreads. Of course, languages in families share certain features, but Dr Lupyan and Dr Dale found that their results were significant even when language family and region were factored out（排除）.

This leaves the question of why languages would become complex at all. Dr Lupyan and Dr Dale offer several hypothesis（assumption, 推测）. One involves the different needs of child and adult learners. Complex morphology is especially hard for adults to learn, but it may help children, as the redundancy reduces the need for non-linguistic factors for understanding. (Las casas blancas tells a Spanish-speaking child three times that there are multiple white houses.) An alternative hypothesis is that complex morphology improves economy and clarity of expression, something that is desirable so long as it is not too difficult to learn. A final possibility is simply that smaller language groups more faithfully transmit the grammar to their children, overspecification and all, even if it has no use.

One thing is clear. Linguists have long known, despite the prejudices of those in rich societies, that “simple” people with primitive(原始的) technologies do not speak simple languages. By the definitions used here, the native languages of North America and South America are the most complicated in the world, while Europe’s are the simplest.

九天揽月UID: 2737667

好的adj:Babelicious, conquering, redundant, dispensable, alternative, primitive
好的verbs:drip with, shed, wither, assume, pack into, make sense, factor out
好的nouns:hypothesis
好的短语及句子：by this rationale，the dispensable bits are dispensed with
结构分析：设问开头（少数人说的语言构词累赘、语法复杂，多数人说的语言反而简洁明了）+比较论证（论证一：语言是否流传越广变得越简单；论证二：语言的复杂程度取决于说的人数而非流传地域的广度；论证三：语言为什么要变复杂，一是照顾儿童与成人的不同需要，二是为了表述清楚）+总结（抛开偏见来看，技术越落后的地区语言越复杂，先进的地区更简单）

九天揽月UID: 2737667

1.好词好句摘抄
2.分析行文结构以及逻辑推理技巧
3.挖掘可以作为自己文章里example的事例，观点，人物
4.通篇再阅读，提高自己的阅读能力和速度

2010-01-29
A special report on social networking

A world of connections
Online social networks are changing the way people communicate, work and play, and mostly for the better, says Martin Giles (interviewed here)
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration(图解) by Ian Whadcock

THE annual meeting（年会）of the World Economic Forum in Davos（达沃斯论坛）, currently in progress,
is famous for making connections among the global great and good. But when the delegates（representatives, 代表） go home again, getting even a few of them together in a room becomes difficult. To allow the leaders to keep talking, the forum’s organizers last year launched（establish, 发起） a pilot（试验的） version（版本） of a secure（safe, 安全的）online service（一个安全的在线服务试验版） where members can post mini-biographies（简短个人自传）
and other information, and create links with other users to form collaborative (cooperative, 合作的) working groups. Dubbed（???被称为???） the World Electronic Community, or WELCOM, the forum’s exclusive（inner, 内部的） online network has only about 5,000 members.
首段介绍为了使参加达沃斯论坛的高层们在休会期间也能继续发表意见，世界经济论坛建立了网上论坛供讨论。

But if any service deserves（merit, 值得） such a grand title it is surely Facebook, which celebrates（庆祝）its sixth birthday next month and is now the second most popular site on the internet after Google. The globe’s largest online social network boasts（brag, 夸口）over 350m users—which, were it a nation, would make（虚拟语气的倒装用法） Facebook the world’s third most populous（人口稠密的）after China and India. That is not the only striking（impressive, 引人注目的）statistic（统计）associated（related, 过去分词作形容词，相关的） with the business. Its users now post over（显示） 55m updates（更新） a day on the site and share more than 3.5 billion pieces of content with one another every week. As it has grown like Topsy, the site has also expanded（extended, 扩大） way beyond its American roots: today some 70% of its audience is outside the United States.
简洁Facebook的规模之大，使用人数之多是全球最大的社交网络。

Although Facebook is the world’s biggest social network, there are a number of other globetrotting(traveling widely, 全球性的) sites, such as MySpace, which concentrates（focus, 集中） on music and entertainment; LinkedIn, which targets（aim, 面向） career-minded professionals; and Twitter, a networking service that lets members send out short, 140-character messages called “tweets（帖子）”.（列举其他全球性网络，动词避免了重复） All of these appear in a ranking of the world’s most popular networks（名列全球最受欢迎的网络） by total monthly web visits (see chart 1), which also includes Orkut, a Google-owned service that is heavily（修饰used） used in India and Brazil, and QQ, which is big in China. On top of（except, 除……之外） these there are other big national community sites such as Skyrock in France, VKontakte in Russia, and Cyworld in South Korea, as well as numerous (众多的) smaller social networks that appeal to（attract,吸引） specific interests such as Muxlim, aimed at the world’s Muslims（穆斯林）, and Research GATE, which connects scientists and researchers.
本段主要介绍基于其他不同人群的全球社交网络。

Going public
All this shows just how far online communities have come.（总结上两段） Until the mid-1990s they were largely ghettos（寡居区） for geeks（性格古怪的人） who hid behind online aliases（化名，别名）. Thanks to easy-to-use interfaces（交流） and fine-grained（fine，高质量的？？？）privacy controls, social networks have been transformed into vast public spaces where millions of people now feel comfortable using their real identities（身份） online. ComScore, a market-research firm, reckons（consider, 认为） that last October big social-networking sites received over 800m visitors. “The social networks’ greatest achievement has been to bring humanity into a place that was once cold and technological,” says Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group, a consulting（咨询） firm.
社交网络便于使用、隐私得到保障的优点促进了使用人数的增加，也使网络本身更人性化。

Their other great achievement has been to turn themselves into superb（splendid, 卓越的） tools for mass communication（大众传播）.
（主题句，社交网络的其他成就使其成为卓越的大众传播工具）Simply by updating a personal page on Facebook or sending out a tweet, users can let their network of friends—and sometimes the world—know what is happening in their lives. Moreover, they can send out videos, pictures and lots of other content with just a few clicks of a mouse. “This represents a dramatic（striking, 惊人的） and permanent（lasting, 持久的） upgrade（improvement，
提高） in people’s ability to communicate with one another,” says Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley（硅谷） veteran（expert, 老手，专家） who has invested in Facebook, Twitter and Ning, an American firm that hosts almost 2m social networks for clients（客户）.

And people are making copious（plentiful, 大量的） use of that ability. Nielsen, a market-research firm, reckons that since February 2009 they have been spending more time on social-networking sites than on e-mail, and the lead is getting bigger. Measured by hours spent on them per social-network user, the most avid（eager, 贪婪的） online networkers are in Australia, followed by those in Britain and Italy (see chart 2). Last October Americans spent just under six hours surfing social networks, almost three times as much as（三倍于） in the same month in 2007. And it isn’t just youngsters（juvenile, 年轻人） who are friending（make friends with, 名词活用为动词） and poking（search, 寻找） one another（强调句）—Facebook-speak for making connections and saying hi to your pals（friends, 口语化）. People of all ages are joining the networks in ever greater numbers.
使用社交网络的人各年龄段都有。

Social-networking sites’ impressive growth has attracted much attention because the sites have made people’s personal relationships more visible（可见的） and quantifiable（quantitative, 可以量化的） than ever before. They have also become important vehicles for news and channels of influence. Twitter regularly scores headlines with its real-time updates on events like the Mumbai terrorist attacks and on the activities of its high-profile（高调的，高层的/low-profile,低调的）users, who include rap stars, writers and royalty. And both Twitter and Facebook played a starring（important） role in the online campaign strategy that helped sweep Barack Obama to victory in the presidential race.
社交网络的惊人发展吸引了各种阶层的人参与。

Delivery time（交货时间）
But like Mr Obama, social networks have also generated great expectations along the way on which they must now deliver. They need to prove to the world that they are here to stay. They must demonstrate（prove, 证明） that they are capable of generating the returns that justify the lofty（superior, 极高的） valuations investors have given them. And they need to do all this while also reassuring（assure, 使安心） users that their privacy will not be violated（offend, 侵犯）in the pursuit of profit.
现在是社交网络的交货时间（意为社交网络必须向投资者保证他们的利润及向用户保证他们的隐私不被非法利用）

In the business world there has also been much hype（大肆宣传） around something called “Enterprise 2.0”, a term coined（create, 创造新词语） to describe efforts to bring technologies such as social networks and blogs into the workplace. Fans claim that new social-networking offerings now being developed for the corporate world will create huge benefits for businesses. Among those being touted（label, 标榜） are services such as Yammer, which produces a corporate version of Twitter, and Chatter, a social-networking service that has been developed by Salesforce.com.
社交网络需要引进技术进入商务世界。

To sceptics（怀疑论者） all this talk of twittering, yammering and chattering smacks of（evoke, 激起） another internet bubble（泡沫）in the making.（主题句，怀疑论者认为这些叽叽喳喳的说法可能引起又一场网络泡沫？？？） They argue that even a huge social network such as Facebook will struggle to make money because fickle（capricious，善变的） networkers will not stay in one place for long, pointing to the example of MySpace, which was once all the rage(fashion, 流行） but has now become a shadow of its former self. Last year the site, which is owned by News Corp, installed（使就职） a new boss and fired 45% of its staff as part of a plan to revive（复苏） its fortunes. Critics（评论家） also say that the networks’ advertising-driven business model is flawed（imperfect，
有缺陷的）.

Within companies there is plenty of doubt about the benefits of online social networking in the office.（公司内部怀疑在办公室使用在线社交网络是否有益。） A survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by Robert Half Technology, a recruitment firm（招聘公司）, found that only one-tenth of them gave employees full access to such networks during the day, and that many were blocking（屏蔽） Facebook and Twitter altogether. The executives’ biggest concern was that social networking would lead to social notworking, with employees using the sites to chat with friends instead of doing their jobs. Some bosses also fretted（worry,担忧） that the sites would be used to leak（disclose, 泄漏）sensitive corporate information.

This special report will examine these issues in detail.（总结） It will argue that social networks are more robust（strong, 坚固的） than their critics think, though not every site will prosper（flourish, 繁荣）, and that social-networking technologies are creating considerable（appreciable, 可观的） benefits for the businesses that embrace（accept, 接受） them, whatever their size. Lastly, it will contend（argue, 争辩） that this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of global interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations（novelty, 新事物） around the world faster than ever before.

九天揽月UID: 2737667

好的Verbs:launch, deserve, celebrate,boast, post over,update, expand, concentrate, target, appeal to, reckon, demonstrate, reassure, violate, coin to, tout, smack of, install, revive, block, fret, prosper, contend
好的adj:pilot, exclusive, striking, globetrotting, numerous, superb, dramatic, permanent, copious, high-profile, starring, lofty, fickle, flawed, robust, considerable
好的nouns: illustration, annual meeting, delegate, version, tweet, geek, mass communication, veteran, youngster, sceptic, bubble, critic, innovation
好的短语及句子：be famous for, on top of, were it... would...(虚拟语气的倒装用法)
好的例子：Facebook,  the World Economic Forum in Davos, MySpace,LinkedIn, Google, Silicon Valley
全文总结：本文是一篇关于社交网络的特别报道，从达沃斯论坛建立网上服务入手，主要介绍了目前全球最受欢迎的几家大型社交网络，并阐述了它们流行的原因及面临的挑战，并将继续详细报道存在争论的几个主要问题：社交网络的存在是否稳定，社交网络技术能否为商业带来利润，能否会开启社交沟通的新纪元。

银落UID: 2632560

Dubbed 被称为

To sceptics all this talk of twittering, yammering and chattering smacks of another internet bubble in the making.（主题句，怀疑论者认为这些叽叽喳喳的说法可能引起又一场网络泡沫？？？）

smack of是“有点像，带有。。味道”的意思
对于怀疑论者来说，这些说法听起来，似乎又有一场新的网络泡沫正在积蓄中。

九天揽月UID: 2737667

谢谢银落组长~~:)这下明白了

九天揽月UID: 2737667

2010-01-30

A special report on the art market

Suspended animation

temporary suspension of the vital functions (as in persons nearly drowned), 暂时搁浅

The art market has suffered from the recession（withdrawal, 经济衰退）, but globalisation（全球化） should help it recover, say Fiammetta Rocco (interviewed here) and Sarah Thornton

Nov 26th 2009 | From The Economist print edition

THE longest bull run（股市活跃期） in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, at Sotheby’s in London on September 15th 2008 (see picture). All but（almost） two pieces sold, fetching(sell for, 售得) more than £70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last hurrah（excitement）. As the auctioneer(拍卖商) called out bids
（叫出价）, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers,
filed for bankruptcy（申请破产）.

The world art market had already been losing momentum（impetus, 刺激） for a while after rising vertiginously（changeable） since 2003. At its peak（acme, 最高点） in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates（create） interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous (tremendous) egos, greed, passion and controversy(dispute) in a way matched by few other industries.

In the weeks and months that followed Mr Hirst’s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable (unstylish), especially in New York, where the bail-out(以优先股发给股东作为红利之行为???) of the banks coincided with(concur) the loss of thousands of jobs and the financial demise(金融消亡???) of many art-buying investors. In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms. Sales of contemporary (modern) art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated(过热的) sector（part）—for Chinese contemporary art—they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world’s two biggest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees(guarantor, 担保人) to clients who had placed works for sale with them.

The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists（印象派画家） at the end of 1989, a move that started the most serious contraction（萎缩） in the market since the second world war. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more volatile. But Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, says: “I’m pretty confident we’re at the bottom.”

What makes this slump（slack） different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market, whereas in the early 1990s, when interest rates were high, there was no demand even though many collectors wanted to sell. Christie’s revenues (total income) in the first half of 2009 were still higher than in the first half of 2006. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce—still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.

The best that can be said about the market at the moment is that it is holding its breath. But this special report will argue that it will bounce back(get over, 回升，卷土重来), and that the key to its recovery lies in globalisation. The supply of the best works of art will always be limited, but in the longer run（长远来看） demand is bound to（必定） rise as wealth is spreading ever more widely across the globe.

The World Wealth Report, published by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, charts the spending habits of the rich the world over. It includes art as one of a range of luxury items they like to buy. According to the report, in 2007 there were over 10m people with investible assets of $1m or more. Last year that number dropped to 8.6m and many rich people scaled back（reduce） their “investments of passion”—yachts(游艇), jets（喷气式飞机）, cars, jewellery and so on. But the proportion of all luxury spending that went on art increased as investors looked for assets that would hold their value in the longer term.

The regional spread of buyers also changed significantly as some parts of the world became relatively richer. During the boom（a rapid increase） the number of wealthy people in Russia, India, China and the Middle East rose rapidly. In 2003 Sotheby’s biggest buyers—those who purchased lots costing at least $500,000—came from 36 countries. By 2007 they were spread over 58 countries and their total number had tripled (to make three times as great or as many).

That upward (ascending) trend is still continuing, and many of the new buyers take a particular interest in the art of their own place and time. Last year China overtook(catch up with) France as the world’s third-biggest art market after America and Britain (see chart 1), and some 25% by value of the 100,000-plus works of art sold by Christie’s went to buyers from Russia, Asia and the Middle East.

Auction records remain dominated by Impressionist and modern works (see table 2), but the biggest expansion in recent years has been in contemporary art. Prices of older works keep going up as more people have money to spend, but few such works become available because both collectors and museums tend to hold on to what they have. Old Master paintings, for example, have stuck at (stick at, 坚持)around 5% of both Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales for many years. By contrast, contemporary art, which in the early 1990s accounted for less than 10% of Sotheby’s revenues, grew to nearly 30% of greatly increased revenues by last year. Dealers and auction houses now sell more post-war（战后） and contemporary art than anything else. This report will concentrate on that part of the market, which accounts for about half the world’s art trade and most of the excitement.

Part of the extra demand has come from a large increase in the number of museums. Over the past 25 years more than 100 have been built, not only in America and Europe but also in the sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf and the fast-growing cities in Asia; sometimes in partnership with Western institutions, such as the Guggenheim or the Louvre, sometimes on their own. Many of these institutions have made their mark by buying contemporary art.

Over the same period the number of wealthy private collectors has also increased many times over, and so has their diversity. The record price for one of Andy Warhol’s giant faces of Chairman Mao was $17.4m, paid by Joseph Lau, a Hong Kong property developer. It was the first major Warhol to go to the Far East. A month later the Qatar royal family bought a Hirst pill cabinet, entitled “Lullaby Spring”, for £9.7m, the first major Hirst bound for the Middle East. Everyone wants an iconic work（标志性的作品）, which helps explain the global demand for artists such as Warhol, Jeff Koons and Mr Hirst—and the eye-watering prices（惨不忍睹的，难以接受的） such work can command.

Masters of the art universe

Straddling all areas of the art market（横跨技术市场所有领域的???） is a handful of individuals who have emerged as the key figures in the art world in recent years. Chief among them is François Pinault, a luxury-goods billionaire who is also a noted collector of contemporary art and the owner of Christie’s. Philippe Ségalot, his French-born adviser, was behind one of the biggest deals involving a single work of art, the private sale of Warhol’s 1963 painting, “Eight Elvises”, to an anonymous (匿名的) buyer for over $100m.

Mr Ségalot is also believed to be advising the royal family of Qatar, which in the past two years has spent large sums buying modern art at auction, including record-breaking（破纪录的） works by Mark Rothko and Mr Hirst. Steven Cohen, an American hedge-fund billionaire, also owns works by Warhol, Mr Hirst and Mr Koons. Mr Cohen used to be a sizeable（big） shareholder of Sotheby’s and is still an important provider of liquidity(流动资金) to art buyers.

The popularity of blockbuster(magnate, 巨头，大鳄) art exhibitions and the emergence of buyers with a different cultural history have helped change tastes. Artists such as Edvard Munch and Vasily Kandinsky rose sharply after solo shows（个人展） in London and New York. Alexei von Jawlensky and Emil Nolde were regarded as specialist interests until Russian collectors began seeking them out. Zhao Wuji used to be just another Chinese painter-in-exile; now he is recognised as an Abstract Expressionist master influenced by Paul Klee and praised by both Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso.

九天揽月UID: 2737667

How to sell it

One of the biggest changes since the market last peaked in 1989 has been the expansion of the auction houses and the change in the nature of the dealer business. Twenty years ago auction houses sold to dealers, and dealers sold to private customers. Today many collectors are advised by auctioneers, both at sales and privately.

Rising costs brought trouble to many old-fashioned fine-art dealer emporiums. In London Christopher Gibbs has sold his stock and Partridge is in administration. In Paris Galerie Segoura has closed, as has Salvatore Romano in Florence. Many dealers now prefer to take art works on consignment（for payment by the consignee after sale，寄售）, matching sellers to buyers for a commission rather than investing in stocks of art.

About half the market’s business, reckons Ms McAndrew of Arts Economics, is conducted at public auctions, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s taking the lion’s share. Smaller houses include Drouot in Paris, Bonhams, which is based in London but has several offices abroad, and Doyle in New York. The other half is generated by private dealers and galleries that are notoriously（众所周知地） secretive. One of the biggest private deals in recent years came to light only because the details were disclosed in an American court following the Bernard Madoff scandal. Last July ten paintings by Rothko and two sculptures by Alberto Giacometti were sold by a New York financier to help repay Mr Madoff’s investors. A mystery buyer spent $310m on the works. Two dealers earned $37.5m in fees.

By comparison with that private world, Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction business looks like a model of transparency（透明）. Although buyers and sellers are rarely named, the auction price is public. Yet even here there are dark corners. The leading auctioneers offer inducements such as guaranteed prices to persuade sellers to part with their treasures, and generous terms of payment for buyers.

One thing that differentiates（distinguish, 区别于） the two auction houses is their ownership structure. Sotheby’s is a quoted company（上市公司） whereas Christie’s, once listed, was taken private in 1999 by its current owner, Mr Pinault. Christie’s business has since expanded hugely, partly thanks to Mr Pinault’s pivotal（crucial, 关键的）position in the international art world. Even though the company can pick and choose what information it wants to reveal, it has in fact become more open over the past ten years.

Sotheby’s, for its part, is still smarting（suffer） from the public beating it received in America nearly a decade ago when its chairman, Alfred Taubman, and its chief executive, Diana Brooks, were found guilty of conspiring(contrive, 共谋) with Christie’s to fix commissions. Mr Taubman served ten months of a one-year prison sentence; Mrs Brooks was given six months’ house arrest, a $350,000 fine and 1,000 hours of community service. No one was charged at Christie’s, which had blown the whistle on the commission-fixing. Sotheby’s lives in fear of the regulators and discloses only as much financial information as it has to.

In the decade since the scandal both auction houses have concentrated on expansion. Sotheby’s was the first auctioneer to become interested in Russia and remains bigger there than its rival（competitor）. Christie’s, which has long been especially strong in the Far East, has put a lot of effort into China. Foreigners are not allowed to own auction houses there, but Christie’s has got around(persuade, 说服) that by signing a licensing agreement with a leading Chinese auctioneer. Both houses have their eye on the Middle East. Christie’s holds regular auctions in Dubai, of which its art and jewellery sales are the most successful. Sotheby’s has opened an office in Qatar which is important for its relationship with the Qatar royal family, one of its biggest clients.

The response of both auction houses to the current slump has been broadly similar: staff cuts（裁员）, unpaid leave（无薪假期）, a squeeze on salaries, slashed marketing（削减营销） and travel budgets, and an edict（布告，法令） that the glossy（虚有其表的） auction catalogues, which in the boom cost each of them £25m a year to produce, were no longer to be handed out like chocolate drops.

With a hugely expanded international client base, it was only a matter of time before both auctioneers started to muscle（影响） in on areas that had previously（先前） been the preserve of private dealers, matching buyers and sellers and selling new art rather than items（商品） that had already been in the market. Sotheby’s proved to be much the more ruthless（merciless, 无情的） of the two. All the lots in Mr Hirst’s September 2008 sale, for example, had been consigned to Sotheby’s directly from the artist’s workshop, which shocked dealers who had not previously thought of the auction houses as direct competitors.

In 2006 Sotheby’s paid $56.5m for Noortman Master Paintings, a leading dealer in Old Masters. Less than a year later Christie’s bought Haunch of Venison, another high-profile dealer set up in 2002, whose founders included a former director of Christie’s contemporary-art department. Noortman gave Sotheby’s an entry（access） into the Maastricht Art Fair, the pre-eminent(outstanding, 卓越的) dealers’ fest, and Haunch of Venison helped make Christie’s Mr Pinault the biggest art trader in the market. Both galleries operate independently of the auction houses, but the relationships are close.

All things to all men（面面俱圆）

Both auction houses have also put a lot of effort into advising buyers on how to improve their collections. As Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s European president, says, “We’re much more than an auction house now.” The recession has made many collectors nervous about offering their treasures at auction, so they are selling them privately. In 2007 Christie’s chalked up private sales of $542m and Sotheby’s of $730m, which means the two auction houses are now among the world’s biggest private dealers. Both often get calls like the one Sotheby’s recently took from a Moscow collector with $2m to spend on an “optimistic” Chagall oil, “not too feminine” and no more than a metre in height. “We put out the word and immediately received several offers from our offices in London, Geneva and New York,” says Mikhail Kamensky, the firm’s head of CIS business.

In 2007 private deals accounted for 8.7% of Christie’s business. Mr Pylkkanen expects that figure to go up to 20% of its revenue within three years. That should put the wind up（使人害怕） private dealers.

九天揽月UID: 2737667

好的词组：
Suspended animation 暂时搁浅
bull run 股市活跃期
call out bids 叫出价
file for bankruptcy 申请破产
hold one's breath 屏住呼吸
bounce back 卷土重来
in the long run/term 长远来看
be bound to 必定
scale back 减少
hold on/ stick to 坚持
on consignment 寄售
by comparison 对比
quoted company 上市公司
get round 说服
staff cuts 裁员
unpaid leave 无薪假期
put the wind up 使人害怕
好的句子：all things to all men. 面面俱圆
好的adj:
vertiginous 变动的
enormous 巨大的
over-heated 过热的
iconic 标志性的
eye-watering 惨不忍睹的，难以接受的
record-breaking 破纪录的
sizeable 相当大的
notorious 臭名昭著的，众所周知的
pivotal 中枢的，关键的
glossy 浮华的，虚有其表的
pre-eminent 卓越的

九天揽月UID: 2737667

2010-01-31

Economics focus

Worth a hill of soyabeans

（价值连城的大豆）

How the internet can make agricultural markets in the developing world more efficient

Internet 怎样使发展中国家的农业市场更有效益

Jan 7th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

Illustration by Jac Depczyk

WHEN the internet took off（take off, commence）
in the mid-1990s, it was often claimed that it would improve price transparency, cut out middlemen(消除中间商) and make markets more efficient. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence（传闻证据） for this, just as there is for similar claims about mobile phones. Empirical data（经验数据） on the impact of these new technologies increasingly support the thesis.

首先提出主题：网络的崛起将会和手机一样提高价格的透明度，削减中间商，使市场更有效，并将由大量的经验数据得到证明。

Macroeconomic（宏观经济） studies suggest that the internet and mobile phones boost（increase） growth. The effect is bigger in developing countries than developed ones, due to the paucity (dearth, 缺乏) of existing communications infrastructure（基础设施）. The effect also seems to be bigger for the internet than for mobile phones. In a study published in 2009, Christine Zhen-Wei Qiang of the World Bank found that an increase of ten percentage points in mobile-phone adoption（采用） increased growth in GDP per person by 0.8 percentage points in a developing country, and by 0.6 percentage points in a developed one. For dial-up internet access（拨号上网）, the figures were 1.1 percentage points and 0.75 percentage points respectively; for broadband internet（宽带网）, 1.4 percentage points and 1.2 percentage points.

从宏观经济学研究的角度比较得出：网络比移动电话对提高经济增长作用更大，且发展中国家比发达国家更明显。引用世界银行研究的具体数据加以证明。

Critics of such analyses contend that it is difficult to tell whether the adoption of new technologies is promoting growth, or vice versa. Researchers have responded by examining detailed microeconomic（微观经济，个体经济） data to show how the spread of technology directly affects the prices of particular goods.

然而，评论家却怀疑引进新技术能否促进经济增长。研究者们于是以个体经济为例阐述技术的普及怎样影响特定商品的售价。

By examining historical data for the price of fish as mobile-phone coverage（覆盖范围） was extended down the coast of Kerala in southern India between 1997 and 2001, for example, Robert Jensen of Harvard University showed that access to mobile phones made markets much more efficient, eliminating（消除） wasted catches and thereby bringing down consumer prices by 4% and increasing fishermen’s profits by 8%. Similarly, Jenny Aker of the University of California at Berkeley analysed grain markets in Niger to see how the phasing-in（同步） of mobile-phone coverage between 2001 and 2006 affected prices. She found that it reduced price variations（变动） between one market and another by at least 6.4%, and more in remote and hard-to-reach markets. With transaction（交易） costs cut（独立结构）, prices for consumers were lower and profits for traders higher.

本段主要阐述移动电话的普及对市场的影响。

In a forthcoming（approaching） paper*, Aparajita Goyal of the World Bank has carried out a corresponding study for the internet by examining how the gradual introduction of internet kiosks(网络站) providing price information affected the market for soyabeans in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Farmers in the region sell their soyabeans to intermediaries（中间人） in open auctions at government-regulated wholesale markets（批发市场） called mandis（大市场）, a system that was set up in order to protect farmers from unscrupulous（不择手段的）
buyers. The intermediaries then sell on the produce to food-processing companies. The problem with this approach for the farmers is that the traders have a far better idea about the prices prevailing（普遍的，流行的） in different markets and being offered by processing companies. With only a few traders at each mandi, they can easily collude to（串通） ensure that they pay less than the fair market price; they can then boost their profits by selling on the beans at a higher price.

一份未出炉的世界银行报告研究了网络站的使用对印度大豆销售的影响。

ITC Limited, an Indian company that is one of the largest buyers of soyabeans, felt it was paying over the odds（出高价）, but was unable to monitor the traders closely. Starting in October 2000 it began to introduce a network of internet kiosks, called e-choupal（电子集市）, in villages in Madhya Pradesh. (Choupal means “village gathering place” in Hindi.) By the end of 2004 a total of 1,704 kiosks had been set up, each of which served its host village and four others within a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius. The kiosks displayed the minimum and maximum price paid for soyabeans at 60 mandis, updated once a day, along with agricultural information and weather forecasts. ITC also posted the price it was prepared to pay for soyabeans of a particular quality bought direct from farmers at 45 “hubs” (mostly in the same towns as mandis). By setting up the kiosks, ITC enabled farmers to check that the prices being offered at their local mandi were in line with prices elsewhere. It also gave them the option to sell direct.

印度一家收购大豆的公司引入一套电子集市网络系统加强了大豆的价格监督。

Bean there, done that（豆在别处，交易完成）

To evaluate the impact all of this had on prices, Ms Goyal used historical data from mandis and the locations and installation dates of the kiosks. She found that the presence of kiosks in a district was associated with an instant and persistent（lasting） increase of 1.7% in the average price paid at mandis in that district. As expected, the availability of price information increased the level of competition between the traders, raising prices and reducing the variation in prices between nearby mandis(现在分词表伴随). Farmers’ profits increased by 33%, and the cultivation of soyabeans increased by an average of 19% in districts with kiosks. And by buying some produce direct, ITC reduced its costs, which paid for the kiosks.

Ms Goyal利用历史数据评估该系统的可靠性，发现该系统的使用使农民、公司均能获利，且降低了成本。

All this supports the anecdotal evidence that the internet can indeed make agricultural markets more efficient, just as mobile phones can. But whereas the expansion of mobile-phone access is now rapid and commercially self-sustaining（独立的）—even very poor farmers can benefit from having a phone, and find the money to buy one—the same is not true of the internet. Its use requires a higher degree of literacy（文化）, for one thing（首先）, and computers cost more than handsets. The e-choupal approach, in which a company pays for the kiosks, offers one model; another is for entrepreneurs（公司） to resell（转售） access to the internet from village kiosks, which is how mobile phones first caught on. Ms Qiang’s figures suggest that in the long run, the internet could have an even greater impact on economic growth than mobile phones did. But that will depend upon finding sustainable（可持续的） business models to encourage its spread in the poorest parts of the world.

上述均支持文章开头的主题，即使用网络能使农业市场更有效。与移动电话相比，网络的成本较高，普及较难，但其影响会更为深远。