外报阅读2014-02
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Passage 1：Class in AmericaMobility, measuredAmerica is no less socially mobile than it was a generation agoFeb 1st 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC | From the print editionAMERICANS are deeply divided as to whether widening inequality is a problem, let alone what the government should do about it. Some are appalled that Bill Gates has so much money; others say good luck to him. But nearly everyone agrees that declining social mobility is a bad thing. Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech on January 28th dwelt on how America’s “ladders of opportunity” were failing (see article). Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, two leading Republicans, recently gave speeches decrying social immobility and demanding more effort to ensure poor people who work hard can better their lot.Just as the two sides have found something to agree on, however, a new study suggests the conventional wisdom may be wrong. Despite huge increases in inequality, America may be no less mobile a society than it was 40 years ago.The study, by a clutch of economists at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, is far bigger than any previous effort to measure social mobility. The economists crunch numbers from over 40m tax returns of people born between 1971 and 1993 (with all identifying information removed). They focus on mobility between generations and use several ways to measure it, including the correlation of parents’ and children’s income, and the odds that a child born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution will climb allthe way up to the top fifth.They find that none of these measures has changed much (see chart). In 1971 a child from the poorest fifth had an 8.4% chance of making it to the top quintile. For a child born in 1986 the odds were 9%. The study confirms previous findings that America’s social mobility is low compared with many European countries. (In Denmark, a poor child has twice as much chance of making it to the top quintile as in America.) But it challenges several smaller recent studies that concluded that America had become less socially mobile.This result has caused a huge stir, not least because it runs counter to public perceptions.A recent Gallup poll found that only 52% of Americans think there is plenty of opportunity for the average Joe to get ahead, down from 81% in 1998. It also jars with other circumstantial evidence. Several studies point to widening gaps between rich and poor in the kinds of factors you would expect to influence mobility, such as the quality of schoolsor parents’ investment of time and money in their children. Cross-country analyses also suggest there is an inverse relationship between income inequality and social mobility—a phenomenon that has become known as the “Great Gatsby” curve.What is going on? One possibility is that social stratification takes time to become entrenched. In a new book, Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, who tracks mobility over hundreds of years by following surnames, reaches far more pessimistic conclusions (see article). Another, sunnier, explanation is that even as income gaps have widened over the past 30 years, other barriers to mobility, such as discrimination against women and blacks, have fallen.Most likely, the answer lies in the nature of America’s inequality, whose main characteristic is the soaring share of overall income going to the top 1% (from 10% in 1980 to 22% in 2012). The correlation between vast wealth accruing to a tiny elite and the ability of people to move between the rest of the rungs of the income ladder may be small—at least for now.Whatever the explanation, it would be unwise to take much comfort from this study. For a start, since the gap between top and bottom has widened, the consequences of an accident of birth have become bigger. Second, if the gains of growth are going mostly to those at the top, that bodes ill for those whose skills are less in demand. Many economists worry that living standards for the non-elite will stagnate for a long time.Is your town a launchpad or a swamp?Third, although social mobility has not changed much over time, it varies widely from place to place. In a second paper, the economists crunch their tax statistics by region. They find that the probability of a child born into the poorest fifth of the population in San Jose, California making it to the top is 12.9%, not much lower than in Denmark. In Charlotte, North Carolina it is 4.4%, far lower than anywhere else in the rich world.This geographic prism also offers some pointers on what influences mobility. The economists found five factors that were correlated with differences in social mobility in different parts of America: residential segregation (whether by income or race); the quality of schooling; family structure (eg, how many children live with only one parent); “social capital” (such as taking part in community groups); and inequality (particularly income gaps among those outside the top 1%). Social mobility is higher in integrated places with good schools, strong families, lots of community spirit and smaller income gaps within the broad middle class. Not a bad agenda for politicians to push, if only they knew how.Passage 2:M-healthHealth and appinessThose pouring money into health-related mobile gadgets and apps believe they can work the miracle of making health care both better and cheaperFeb 1st 2014 | SAN DIEGO | From the print editionWHEN Kenneth Treleani was told last summer that he was suffering from high blood pressure, his doctor prescribed medicine to tackle the condition. He also made another recommendation: that Mr Treleani invest in a wireless wrist monitor that takes his blood pressure at various times during the day and sends the data wirelessly to an app on his smartphone, which dispatches the readings to his physician. Mr Treleani says the device (pictured), made by a startup called iHealth, has already saved him several visits to the doctor’s surgery.Portable blood-pressure monitors have been around for a while. But the idea of linking a tiny, wearable one to a smartphone and a software app is an example of how entrepreneurs are harnessing wireless technology to create innovative services. By letting doctors and carers monitor patients remotely, and by making it simpler to collect vast amounts of data on the effectiveness of treatments, the mobile-health industry, or m-health as it has become known, aims to drive down costs while improving results for patients.Many experiments are already under way in emerging markets, where new mobile devices and apps are helping relieve pressure on poorly financed and ill-equipped clinics and hospitals. But the biggest prize is America, which splashes out a breathtaking $2.8trillion each year on a health-care system riddled with inefficiencies. The prospect of revolutionising the way care is delivered there is inspiring entrepreneurs. Mercom Capital Group, a consulting firm, reckons that of the $2.2 billion venture capitalists put into health-care startups last year, mostly in America, $564m went to m-health businesses.The m-health market can be broken down into two broad categories. First, there are the apps and appliances used to monitor the wearer’s physical fitness. Firms such as Nike, Fitbit and Jawbone make wristbands and other wearable gadgets full of sensors that let people record their performance, and their calorie-burning, as they pound the pavement or sweat in the gym.Second, other apps and devices link patients with a medical condition to the health-care system. Last month Google said it was working on a contact lens containing a tiny wireless chip and sensors that would measure and transmit the glucose levels in a diabetic patient’s tears. In December Apple was granted an American patent on a means to incorporate a heartbeat sensor into its devices.Keeping an eye on glucose levelsThe fitness apps may help people to keep up their training regimes, and in time make the population healthier. But in the shorter term they will not have much effect on the health-care system. Nor may they make many investors rich. IMS Health, a research firm, says that of the 33,000-plus health-related apps on Google Play’s app store (the figure for Apple’s iTunes is over 43,000), just five of them—of which two are calorie-counters—account for 15% of all downloads.A growing posse of entrepreneurs think the big money is to be made in the second category, of apps and devices that seek to transform the way health care is delivered. Large companies spy an opportunity here too. Qualcomm, which sells wireless technologyand services, has set up an m-health division, Qualcomm Life, and built a technology platform to make it easy for m-health companies to combine data about things such as the medicines people take and the results of tests they run on themselves, so their doctors can get a more complete picture of their health.Among those firms with products already for sale, AliveCor makes a $199 gadget that attaches to a smartphone and lets patients take an electrocardiogram by placing two fingers on metal plates. It also sells a veterinary version for taking pets’ ECGs. The data are displayed in an app on the phone and can be reviewed (for a fee) by a cardiologist. CellScope, another startup, makes an otoscope—a device for looking inside the ear—that can be attached to an iPhone and an app that can send the images it takes to a physician.Last year Medtronic, a huge medical-devices company, splashed out $200m to buy Cardiocom, which combines telehealth services with wireless home gadgets, including scales for heart patients for whom sudden weight gain may be a dangerous symptom. In October Verizon, a mobile-telecoms operator, launched a platform to transmit data from home devices, such as glucose monitors, to the firm’s secure “cloud” of servers.As Don Jones of Qualcomm Life puts is, just as a car’s electronics tell a driver about its condition, so m-health devices and apps “give people dashboards, gauges and alarm signals” that make it easier for them and their doctors to track what is happening with their bodies. This may alert them to the need for action well before the patient’s condition deteriorates to the extent that he needs hospital treatment. Given that in America the average cost of a night’s stay in hospital is almost $4,300, there is scope for significant savings.Another obvious way to use the technology to avert health crises is by checking that patients are taking their medicines. Propeller Health sells a device that fits on top of asthma inhalers, to monitor their use. Proteus Digital Health, which raised $63m last year, is testing an ingestible sensor that is taken at the same time as prescribed medication. The device, which relies on stomach fluids to complete a circuit to power it, transmits information to a smartphone so doctors and carers can track when a patient takes pills.Again, the goal is to save money while improving health. The average annual cost of, say, treating sufferers from high blood pressure who fail to take their medicines is nearly $4,000 more than the cost of treating those who pop their pills reliably.If such products live up to their promise, a side-effect may be that there is less need for medical technicians—an example of a wave of technology-related job losses that some economists expect. The development of machine intelligence, another hot area for investment (see article), may eventually mean there is less need for doctors or specialists to analyse test results.One snag is that techies’ enthusiasm for such innovation is colliding with the health-care industry’s conservatism. Doctors in America have been paid for delivering more care, so products that might lead to fewer billable patient visits are viewed with suspicion. This ischanging gradually as insurers switch towards rewarding hospitals for providing a better quality of care instead of simply paying them for the quantity delivered. But there is a long way to go in making the medical profession take an interest in cost-saving: a study last month in Health Affairs, a journal, found that few American surgeons had any idea of the cost of the devices, such as replacement hip joints, they implant in patients.Encouraging iPochondriaInsurers may have cause to worry that, instead of reducing doctors’workloads, the spread of m-health devices and apps may only encourage hypochondria: surgeries may be flooded with the “worried well”, fussing over every slightly anomalous reading. That may keep the medical profession nicely busy, but will not curb the ever-rising cost of health care.So, to win over doctors, hospital managers and insurers, m-health firms will need to gather evidence to support their claims of cost-cutting and improved patient outcomes. Such evidence is still surprisingly scarce, says Robert Kaplan of the National Institutes of Health, a government agency. Stephen Kraus of Bessemer Venture Partners, which has examined hundreds of m-health startups, says many firms are blithely assuming that all you have to do is “appify” health care and the world will change.Makers of more sophisticated m-health products, aimed at doctors, clinics and hospitals rather than patients, will have to build a sales force like that of a pharmaceuticals company, says Bob Kocher of Venrock, another venture-capital firm. That will take time and lots of money.Some m-health products may have to win approval from America’s Food and Drug Administration. Most firms were pleased by a plan the FDA published last year that said it would regulate only those m-health products that do the work of a traditional medical device—an ECG, say, but not a pedometer. But applying for approval is still burdensome. And the FDA has not finished drawing up its rules: m-health firms are waiting for a framework on the use of information technology in health care from the FDA and two other agencies. Despite such obstacles, optimists such as Peter Tippett of Verizon see health care undergoing the mobile transformation that banking and other industries have already been through.Andrew Thompson, Proteus’s boss, hopes that the sensors and software his firm is developing will form the dominant “platform”for m-health in the way that Facebook dominates social networking and lets other firms build apps that run on it. But it is likely to face stiff opposition. Mr Kocher thinks giants like Google and Apple may seek to build m-health platforms too.Apple filed its patent for a “seamlessly embedded heart-rate monitor” after looking for ways to replace passwords with biometric methods—in this case, an ECG—to authenticate users. It may think carefully before entering a business as heavily regulated as medical devices. But it has made no secret of its interest in selling wearable gadgets packed with sensors; and if consumers prove as keen on m-health as investors currentlyare, it will surely want to satisfy them.Firms that aspire to make serious money in m-health will need plenty of patience and deep pockets. But they may be able to rely on an army of technophile patients who lobby their doctors to incorporate the new devices and apps in their treatment programmes. Mr Treleani is one of them: “I’d be suspicious of medical practices that aren’t moving forward with these new technologies,” he says.Passage 3：English purismJohnson: What might have beenJan 28th 2014, 12:19 by R.L.G. | BERLINTHE English poet William Barnes (pictured) is no household name. But that is almost a shame, because he represented a strand that we don’t otherwise see much of: English purism. Imagining what would have happened if he had been more influential makes for an interesting thought experiment.Any language in contact with other languages borrows words. And English has always been, of course, a master borrower. A west Germanic language brought over with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, it first took a lot of Norse from invading Vikings, then even more French from the Norman conquerors of 1066. When the English later themselves became conquerors, they promiscuously took on words from languages all around the world. And as science and medicine advanced, English writers took to coining words from Greek and Latin roots.Barnes, who wrote poems in his Dorset dialect, didn’t like this. He thought the English showed no self-respect when they reached to classical languages to make learned words. He deplored the loss of old Anglo-Saxon words like inwit, earthtillage and bodeword, replaced by conscience, agriculture and commandment. And where terms had to be coined for new things, Barnes wanted them to be created from Anglo-Saxon roots: he recommended sun-print as a calque for the Greek-derived photograph (“light-writing”).Johnson knows of none of Barnes's coinages that made their way into the lexicon. But what if they existed? What would English look like? A speaker of German or the otherGerman languages doesn’t have to speculate. An English-native speaker of German, Dutch, Danish or Icelandic is confronted daily by words that are incredibly concrete and earthy. If translated into English, depending on the subject, they are sometimes even mildly shocking.Begin with the German words that seem amusingly over-literal to an Anglophone. The vacuum cleaner is a Staubsauger ("dust-sucker"), the television a Fernseher (a "far-seer") and gloves are Handschuhe ("hand-shoes")—all the typical subject of giggles for a first-year student of the language. But as the learner gets more advanced, things get really striking.Children come into the world still attached to the Mutterkuchen, or “mother-cake”, though this German word is being replaced by Plazenta. The first sniffles in Germany will result in your getting something at the chemist’s to dry up your Schleimhaut—your “slime skin”, or mucous membranes. If problems reside lower down, they might affect your Zwölffingerdarm, or “twelve-finger intestine”. If you’re sure you don’t have one of those, you do: the duodenum is the same thing, only named via Latin (because it is about twelve finger-breadths wide). Every adult, even in sexually open northern Europe, grows Schamhaar(“shame hair”) in the region of the Schambein (“shame bone”), which we know as pubic hair and the pubic bone. And finally, the less said of Brustwarzen (“breast-warts”), the better: German, like other Germanic languages, uses the same word for warts and nipples.It’s not all shocking, though. The Germanic languages are often poetic in a way that might bring to mind the kennings (like “whale-road” for sea) of "Beowulf". A midwife in Danish is a jordmor or “earth mother”. The same person in Icelandic is a ljósmóðir or a “light mother”,chosen in a national contest as the prettiest word in the language. (Geirvarta, or “nipple”, was the ugliest.) Who could fail to be charmed by the sommerfugl or “summer-bird”, Danish for “butterfly”? I suspect many Jewish readers happily shared a recent Slate article about the origin of Jewish surnames, because it revealed how pretty many of them are: Morgenthau, Rosenzweig and Kirschbaum, behind their rough Germanic look, are nothing less than “morning dew”, “rose branch” and “cherry tree” in German.All these transparent, sometimes hyper-literal words might make English’s Germanic cousins seem direct to a fault. (Breast-warts, indeed.) But English is actually the odd one out, in having jettisoned so much of its native vocabulary to borrow from classical languages. English isn’t unique this way; Hindi gets highfalutin words from Sanskrit, and Persian from Arabic, for example. But the default thing for a language to do is to build big words from its own native roots.Borrowing is normal, but it seems almost a shame that English admixed so much. To get a sense of what it would look like had the Battle of Hastings gone the other way, a few writers have tried purging their English. See, for example, a humorous attempt by Poul Anderson to explain atomic theory, or “Uncleftish Beholding”, using only Anglo-Saxon roots and words. (Hydrogen, for example, is waterstuff—just as it is Wasserstoff in外报阅读2014-02期modern German.)Leaving a language alone to borrow and change as its users see fit is usually the best idea. Speakers themselves, rather than official language academies, are best at deciding what to import and what to coin from native roots. Germans adopted Fernseher for “television”, but have mostly rejected Fernsprecher (“far-speaker”) in favour of Telefon. Who is to say that they’re wrong? But academies can guide the process by making suggestions for native words; in a country like Iceland, they are successful, since Icelanders are fiercely proud of the language and prefer native-built words. No language is an island, but Icelandic comes close.English is the opposite: a global language for hundreds of years now, and a mongrel for a thousand. Flexible, growing, always being renewed, but never again to be “pure”.11。
