文章作者的微信公众号：北美考试终结者

之前北美考试终结者推出了2016.5北美和亚洲的作文题目，2016.5月亚洲和北美的考试分析，今天给大家提供的是亚洲的阅读原文（Passage 4~5）。

Passage 4: Passage 1 is adapted from Addressto the YoungMen’s Lyceum by Abraha

m Lincoln, 1838. Passage 2 is adapted fromResistance to CivilGovernment by David

Thoreau.

Passage1

Letevery American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity,swear bythe blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular,the lawsof the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As thepatriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration ofIndependence,so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every Americanpledge hislife, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man rememberthat toviolate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tearthe character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for thelaws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattleson herlap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let itbewritten in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preachedfromthe pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts ofjustice.And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; andlet theold and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of allsexesand tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon itsaltars. Whileever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even,verygenerally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort,andfruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom. When I sopressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understoodas sayingthere are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for theredress ofwhich, no legal provisions have been made.--I mean to say no suchthing. But Ido mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should berepealed assoon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sakeof example,they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. Ifsucharise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possibledelay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with. Thereisno grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any casethatarises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of twopositionsis necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, andtherefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it iswrong, andtherefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neithercase, isthe interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, orexcusable.

Passage2

Unjustlawsexist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amendthem, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them atonce? Mengenerally, under such a government as this, think that they ought towait untilthey have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, ifthey should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is thefault of the government itself that the remedy is worse thantheevil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipateandprovide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does itcryand resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to beonthe alert to point out its faults, and do better than it wouldhavethem? Why does it always crucify Christ, andexcommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce WashingtonandFranklin rebels?

Onewouldthink, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was theonlyoffence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned itsdefinite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has nopropertyrefuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put inprison fora period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by thediscretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninetytimesnine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

Ifthein justice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government,letit go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has aspring, or a pulley,or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you mayconsider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil;but if it is ofsuch a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injusticeto another,then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction tostop themachine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lendmyself tothe wrong which I condemn.

Asforadopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, Iknownot of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone.Ihave other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly tomakethis a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A manhasnot every thing to do, but something; and because be cannotdo everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It isnot my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more thanit is theirs to petition me; and, ifthey should not hear my petition, whatshould I do then? But in this case theState has provided no way: its veryConstitution is the evil. This may seem tobe harsh and stubborn andunconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and considerationthe only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it.So is all change for thebetter, like birth and death which convulse the body.

I donot hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should atonceeffectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from thegovernment of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majorityofone, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that itisenough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one.Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority ofonealready.

Passage 5: This passage is adapted from WhatTechis Next for the Solar Industry by Kevin Bullis originallypublished inMIT Technology Review June 21, 2013.

Solarpanelinstallations continue to grow quickly, but the solar panelmanufacturingindustry is in the doldrums because supply far exceeds demand (see“Why We NeedMore Solar Companies to Fail”). The poor market may be slowinginnovation, but advances continue; judging by the mood this week at the IEEE PhotovoltaicSpecialists Conference in Tampa, Florida, people in the industryremainoptimistic about its long-term prospects.

Thetechnology that’s surprised almost everyone is conventional crystallinesilicon.A few years ago, silicon solar panels cost $4 per watt, and MartinGreen,professor at the University of New South Wales and one of the leadingsiliconsolar panel researchers, declared that they’d never go below $1 a watt.“Nowit’s down to something like 50 cents of watt, and there’s talk of hitting36 centsper watt,” he says.

TheU.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of reaching less than $1 a watt—not just for the solarpanels, but for complete, installedsystems—by 2020 (see “Why Solar Installations Cost Morein the U.S.than in Germany”). Green thinks the solar industry will hit thattarget evensooner than that. If so, that would bring the direct cost of solarpower to sixcents per kilowatt-hour, which is cheaper than the average costexpected forpower from new natural gas power plants. (The total cost of solarpower, which includes the cost to utilities to compensate for itsintermittency, would be higher, though precisely how much higher will depend onhow much solar power ison the grid, and other factors.)

Allparts ofthe silicon solar panel industry have been looking for ways to cutcosts andimprove the power output of solar panels, and that’s led to steadycostreductions. Green points to something as mundane as the pastes usedtoscreen-print some of the features on solar panels. Green’s lab built asolarcell in the 1990s that set a record efficiency for silicon solar cells—a record that stands tothis day. To achieve that record, hehad to use expensive lithographytechniques to make fine wires for collectingcurrent from the solar cell. Butgradual improvements have made it possible touse screen printing to produceever-finer lines. Recent research suggests thatscreen-printing techniques canproduce lines as thin as 30 micrometers—about the width of the lines Green used for his recordsolarcells, but at costs far lower than his lithography techniques.

Greensaysthis and other techniques will make it cheap and practical to replicatethedesigns of his record solar cell on production lines. Some companieshavedeveloped manufacturing techniques for the front metal contacts.Implementingthe design of the back electrical contacts is harder, but heexpects companiesto roll that out next.

Meanwhile,researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have made flexiblesolar cells on a new type of glass from Corning called Willow Glass, whichisthin and can be rolled up. The type of solar cell they made is the onlycurrentchallenger to silicon in terms of large-scale production—thin-film cadmiumtelluride (see “First Solar Shines as theSolar Industry Falters”). Flexible solar cells could lower the cost ofinstalling solar cells, making solar powercheaper.

One ofGreen’sformer students and colleagues, Jianhua Zhao, cofounder of solarpanelmanufacturer China Sunergy, announced this week that he is building apilotmanufacturing line for a two-sided solar cell that can absorb light fromboththe front and back. The basic idea, which isn’t new, is that during somepartsof the day, sunlight falls on the land between rows of solar panels in asolarpower plant. That light reflects onto the back of the panels and couldbeharvested to increase the power output. This works particularly well whenthesolar panels are built on sand, which is highly reflective. Where aone-sidedsolar panel might generate 340 watts, a two-sided one might generateup to 400watts. He expects the panels to generate 10 to 20 percent moreelectricity overthe course of a year.

Suchsolarpanels could be mounted vertically, like a fence, so that one sidecollectssunlight in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. That wouldmake itpossible to install the solar panels on very little land—they could serve asnoise barriers along highways, forexample. Such an arrangement could also bevaluable in dusty areas. Many partsof the Middle East might seem to be goodplaces for solar panels, since they geta lot of sunlight, but frequent duststorms decrease the power output. Verticalpanels wouldn’t accumulate as much dust, which could help make such systemseconomical.

Evenlonger-term,Green is betting on silicon, aiming to take advantage of the hugereductions incost already seen with the technology. He hopes to greatly increase theefficiency of silicon solar panels by combining silicon with oneor two othersemiconductors, each selected to efficiently convert a part of thesolarspectrum that silicon doesn’t convert efficiently. Adding one semiconductorcould boost efficiencies from the 20 to 25 percent range toaround 40 percent.Adding another could make efficiencies as high as 50 percent feasible, whichwould cut in half the number of solar panels needed for a giveninstallation.The challenge is to produce good connections between these semiconductors,something made challenging by the arrangement of silicon atomsin crystallinesilicon.

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