Back in the 1870s, Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galeton wanted to define the face of a criminal. He assembled photographs of men convicted of heinous crimes and made a composite by lining them up on a single photographic plate. The surprise: everybody liked the villain, including Galton himself. He reasoned that the villainous irregularities he supposed belonged to criminal faces had disappeared in the averaging process. In the next century, scientists began to show reliably that faces combined digitally on computers were likable—more so than the individual faces from which they were composed. Although people clearly admire the long legs of Brazilian model Ana Hickmann or Dolly Parton’s breasts, in general humans like averages.
Researchers confirmed that humans judge real faces by their differences or similarities from a norm. But they also found that the norm can change quickly: When researchers showed 164 people sets of 100 computer-generated faces
A. people prefer average faces to those with conspicuous features
B. sometimes evil persons have more attractive appearance
C. it is hard to distinguish between criminals and ordinary people
D. the result of trying to read faces is a shock to average people
In pursuit of a new source of profit, many of the entities that call themselves banks have strayed far from the business of taking and safeguarding the public’s deposits and running the payment system. Competition has forced banks to range so far, in so many directions and at such a lick that, perhaps for the first time since the days of Shylock, it is necessary to stop to ask quite what is a bank.
The gales of change will leave many banks looking different in form and substance from a decade ago. Banking is traditionally thought of as one business, not least of all by bankers. Yet, as Mr. Thomas Steiner of Mckinsey, a management consultancy, points out, it comprises around 150 different lines of business. There is little that is special about many of them. In future, plenty of these activities will be done by others, either instead of or as well as by banks. On the other side of the coin, many of the things
A. sources
B. entities
C. hanks
D. companies
Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species" is credited with sparking evolution’s revolution in scientific thought, but many observers had pondered evolution before him. It was understanding the idea’s significance and selling it to the public that made Darwin great, according to the Arnold Arboretum’s new director.
William Friedman, the Arnold Professor of Organism and Evolutionary Biology who took over as arboretum director Jan. 1, has studied Darwin’s writings as well as those of his predecessors and contemporaries. While Darwin is widely credited as the father of evolution, Friedman said the "historical sketch" that Darwin attached to later printings of his masterpiece was intended to mollify those who demanded credit for their own earlier ideas.
The historical sketch grew with each subsequent printing, Friedman told an audience Monday (Jan. 10), until, by the 6th edition, 34 authors were mentioned in it. Schol
A. a much larger book
B. a 400-page book
C. scientific terms
D. plain language
我来回答:
