You rent a house through an agency. The heating system has stopped working. You phoned the agency a week ago but it has still not been repaired.
Write a letter to the agency. In your letter 

·introduce yourself
·explain the situation
·say what action you would like the agency to take

Dear Mr Richarson

My name is Alexander Roy. I rent a house through your agency four month ago, the contract number is KD20070925. Unfortunately, the heating system of this house stopped working in Feb 9. The next day I phoned your agency to ask how to solve the problem, your employee promised that they would come to my house to repair it within 3 days, however 7 days have passed, and I haven’t seen any employee to come to my house for repairing it yet.

It turn out to be a big problem to me now since the temperature drops to 4 degee Celsius today. In fact, I have to move to my classmate’s apartment tonight, because no one can stand the cold here without the heating system.

It would be greatly appreciated if your employee could fix the heating system for me as soon as possible. I am looking forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely yours,

Alexander Roy

 

background music: Yanni---Until the last moment

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   At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier, we were infants and young children, and consequently more vulnerable; later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigour and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, and however well society, and our doctors, look after us. This decline in vigour with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually 'die of old age', and that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are heavy odds in favour of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some of us will die sooner, a few will live longer -- on into a ninth or tenth decade. But the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.
Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. We are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigour with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals, and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things 'wear out'. Most animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact run out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. But these are not analogous to what happens when man ages. A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. But a watch could never repair itself -- it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. We could, at one time, repair ourselves --well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power; an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again.

 

Background music: Yanni ---With an orchid

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If a nation is essentially disunited, it is left to the government to hold it together. This increases the expense of government, and reduces correspondingly the amount of economic resources that could be used for developing the country. And it should not be forgotten how small those resources are in a poor and backward country. Where the cost of government is high, resources for development are correspondingly low. This may be illustrated by comparing the position of a nation with that of a private business enterprise. An enterprise has to incur certain costs and expenses in order to stay in business. For our purposes, we are concerned only with one kind of cost -- the cost of managing and administering the business. Such administrative overheads in a business are analogous to the cost of government in a nation. The administrative overheads of a business are low to the extent that everyone working in the business can be trusted to behave in a way that best promotes the interests of the firm. If they can each be trusted to take such responsibilities. and to exercise such initiative as falls within their sphere, then administrative overheads will be low. It will be low because it will be necessary to have only one man looking after each job, then the business will require armies of administrators, checkers, and foremen and administrative overheads will rise correspondingly. As administrative overheads rise, so the earnings of the business after meeting he expense of administration, will fall; and the business will have less money to distribute as dividends or invest directly in its future progress and development.
It is precisely the same with a nation. To the extent that the people can be relied upon to behave in a loyal and responsible manner, the government does not require armies of police and civil servants to keep them in order. But if a nation is disunited, the government cannot be sure that the actions of the people will be in the interests of the nation; and it will have to watch, check, and control the people accordingly. A disunited nation therefore has to incur unduly high costs of government.

 

Medical Insight

Self-made Audio Programme 42

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Welcome to Medical Insight February 16, 2008. I’m Dr. Alex Roy.

Acute inflammation features the accumulation of neutrophils and a plasma exudates outside of blood vessels. In the pulmonary capillaries of uninfected lungs, these blood contents are normally separated from the alveolar air by less than 1 μm. The trapping of neutrophils in these capillaries, increases their quantity, forming a marginated pool of neutrophils that is ready to respond when needed. During pulmonary infection, neutrophils migrate out of the pulmonary capillaries and into the air spaces. After phagocytosis, neutrophils kill ingested microbes with reactive oxygen species, antimicrobial proteins, and degradative enzymes. Neutrophils extrude the neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) composed of a chromatin meshwork containing antimicrobial proteins, and these NETs ensnare and kill extracellular bacteria. The outcome of an acute lower respiratory tract infection depends on the virulence of the organism and the inflammatory response in the lung. When small numbers of low-virulence microbes are deposited in the lungs, an effective defense can be mounted by resident innate immune defenses, such as the mucociliary escalator, antimicrobial proteins in airway surface liquid, and alveolar macrophages. In contrast, numerous or more virulent microbes elicit an inflammatory response. Although this response serves to reinforce innate immunity and is essential to rid the lungs of microbes, it contributes directly to lung injury and abnormal pulmonary function.

This article reviews current understanding of inflammatory responses in infected lungs, emphasizing recent advances and gaps in knowledge.

 

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write about the following topic:It is inevitable that as technology develops so traditional cultures must be lost. Technology and tradition are incompatible - you cannot have both together.
To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

 Why does the idea of “prevent traditional cultures from extinction” loom so large in the modern world? Surely because advanced technology is actually taking place around us and is becoming more and more manifest. It is inevitable that as technology develops so traditional cultures must be lost, just like an old leaf are replaced by a brand-new one.

   In the past, people used to communicate to another who are in another country by means of sending letters. However, with the invention of Internet, a great advance was made, for anyone  in the world could communicate with each other face-to-face as long as they have available internet condition no matter wherever they are, no matter whoever they are.

   The problem now facing humanity is: Although the technology has made extraordinary progress in making the world smaller and smaller, it is, as so often pointed out, “a two-edge weapon” which rewards human with its benefits, and means a disaster to traditional cultures, especially in those so called “old countries”, such as China, India, and Latin America. Countless traditional arts and crafts techics have already disappearing due to the lack of practical value, many of them are unique and priceless. In the conflict between the traditional cultures and the encroaching civilization, winner is always the latter, traditional cultures have to either compromise or be vanished. Because you cannot have both together, they are incompatible in the long run.

         Roy

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The Moon is likely to become the industrial hub of the Solar System, supplying the rocket fuels fro its ships, easily obtainable from the lunar rocks in the from of liquid oxygen. The reason lies in its gravity. Because the Moon has only an eightieth of the Earth's mass, it requires 97 per cent less energy to travel the quarter of a million miles from the Moon to Earth-orbit than the 200 mile-journey from Earth's surface into orbit!
This may sound fantastic, but it is easily calculated. To escape from the Earth in a rocket, one must travel at seven miles per second. The comparable speed from the Moon is only 1.5 miles per second. Because the gravity on the Moon's surface is only a sixth of Earth's， it takes much less energy to accelerate to that 1.5 miles per second than it does on Earth. Moon-dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial cousins.
Arthur C. Clark once suggested a revolutionary idea passes through three phases:
1 'It's impossible -- don't waste my time.'
2 'It's possible, but not worth doing.'
3 'I said it was a good idea all along.'
The idea of colonising Mars -- a world 160 times more distant time the Moon -- will move decisively from the second phase to the third, when a significant number of people are living permanently in space. Mars has an extraordinary fascination for would-be voyagers. America, Russia and Europe are filled with enthusiasts -- many of them serious and senior scientists -- who dream of sending people to it. Their aim is understandable. It is the one world in the Solar System that is most like the Earth. It is a world of red sandy deserts (hence its name -- the Red Planet), cloudless skies, savage sandstorms, chasms wider than the Grand Canyon and at least one mountain more than twice as tall as Everest. It seems ideal for settlement.

         The change of main modes of transport

 

The graph above clearly demonstrates that four main modes of transport (bus, car, bike, and foot ) have undergone an immense change in the European city from 1960 to 2000.

  In 1960, 15 years after the end of World WarⅡ, only 8% people travelled to and from work by car, 35% people by foot, 27% people by bike, and 20% people by bus. However, with economic booming in Europe during 1960 to 2000, this figure soared to 38% just in 40 years, and turned out to be the major transportation in the city.

  Meanwhile, the number of people who took bike and foot declined dramatically. In 2000, only 10% people went to work by foot, and less than 8% people chose bike as a daily transportation tool.

   What’s worth paying attention to is, the bus which is a conventional transport mode still has its attraction. The percentage of people who chose bus as their first choice of transport mode in 1980 and 2000is 27% and 18% respectively, which only fluctuated a little bit during 40 years.

   To sum up, according to this graph, we can see the car played a major role in the 4 modes of transport used to and from work in this European city in 2000.

 

                                                    Roy 

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Lesson 34 Adolescence
First listen and then answer the following question.
What do adolescents respect in parents?
Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents. Such loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part to their parents about the place or people they visit. Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.
Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child. If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment, they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.
The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust. What the child cannot forgive is the parent's refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.
Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude; in fact they did nothing of the kind, but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt. Today we tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent. It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.

 

Medical Insight

Self-made Audio Programme 41

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Welcome to Medical Insight February 11, 2008. I’m Dr. Alex Roy.A 26-year-old man presented with a 1-month history of persistent cough productive of white sputum, which was occasionally tinged with blood. He reported mild pleuritic chest pain, his cough had been treated with azithromycin阿奇霉素 with no resolution of his symptoms. Five years before this presentation, the patient had been treated for a right-sided spontaneous pneumothorax. Three years before presentation, he was found to have a spontaneous left renal-artery dissection with renal infarction. On present examination, the patient appeared comfortable and was in no acute distress. He had generalized joint hypermobility involving both small and large joints. A chest X-ray revealed a left lower-lobe cavity with an air–liquid level, small left-sided apical pneumothorax, and left hydrothorax. Chest CT revealed  subcentimeter nodules亚厘米节结 with surrounding haziness. The patient received 14 days of intravenous ampicillin–sulbactam to treat a presumed lung abscess. 17 weeks later, the patient presented with massive hemoptysis咯血. In this case, both the discussant and the clinical team did what experienced diagnosticians often do when confronted with a patient whose illness does not lend itself to a simple diagnosis: try to find the connection between the present illness and past abnormalities.

 

背景音乐---Yanni " I love you perfect"

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Education is one of the key words of our time. A man without an education, many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances, deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. Convinced of the importance of education, modern states 'invest' in institutions of learning to get back 'interest' in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, punctuated by textbooks -- those purchasable wells of wisdom-what would civilization be like without its benefits?
So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and defendants, marriages and births -- but our spiritual outlook would be different. We would lay less stress on 'facts and figures' and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow-citizens. If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of 'college' imaginable. Among tribal people all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all; it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life.
It is the ideal condition of the 'equal start' which only our most progressive forms of modern education try to regain. In primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. There are no 'illiterates' -- if the term can be applied to peoples without a script -- while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, in France in 1806, and in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of 'civilized' nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the 'happy few' during the past centuries.
Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. All are entitled to an equal start. There is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. There, a child grows up under the ever-present attention of his parent; therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no 'juvenile delinquency'. No necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, and no father is confronted with his inability to 'buy' an education for his child.

 

 

 

Self-made Audio Programme 40

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Welcome to Medical Insight February 2, 2008. I’m Dr. Alex Roy.

A 33-year-old pregnant woman was admitted to the hospital at 30.7 weeks’ gestation because of swelling of the left breast, shortness of breath, and tachycardia. The swelling of the left breast had developed at 26.1 weeks’ gestation and did not improve with antibiotic treatment. Ultrasonography and mammography showed enlargement of the left breast with increased density and no masses. A biopsy was performed. Shortness of breath developed, and CT of the chest disclosed a large mediastinal mass. A confluent anterior mediastinal mass, as seen in this patient, must be distinguished from a paratracheal mass (resulting from enlargement of the paratracheal lymph nodes) and from a posterior — all of which have different probable causes. Lymphomas are the most likely cause of an anterior mediastinal mass. When lymphoma is discovered during the third trimester, as in this case, there are at least three options:

1)      immediate delivery of the fetus, delaying all therapy until after delivery;

2)      treatment with corticosteroids until delivery, followed by definitive therapy after delivery;

3)      initiating definitive therapy during pregnancy.