2010年的第二篇文章选自于08年2月26号的《经济周刊》。这篇文章有关法律学，谈到了支付方式的专利权，专利权受到威胁以及专利权申请的法律重重障碍。

　　原文如下：

　　A Pending Threat to Patents

　　A case before an appeals court could make it harder to win legal protection for business methods by Michael Orey

　　Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon.com (AMZN) received one for its "one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch (MER) got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box。

　　Now the nation's top patent court appears poised to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Feb. 15 said it would use a case pending before it to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known, is "a very big deal," says Dennis D. Crouch, a patent professor at the University of Missouri School of Law. It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents."

　　EXPLOSION IN FILINGS

　　Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the Federal Circuit itself that ushered in such patents with its 1998 decision in the so-called State Street Bank (STT) case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by nascent Internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, more established companies raced to add such patents to their portfolios, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM (IBM) noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents, despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment firms armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice。

　　The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal Circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its State Street Bank ruling。

　　The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example, the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal Circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court," says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School。

　　第三篇文章是传播学的文章，这篇文章节选于07年2月份的《哈佛经济评价》(Harvard Business Review)，讲述了究竟是什么样的人影响了社会潮流的研究，主要提供了两种观点，一种是影响力主宰潮流，另外是大众主宰潮流，文章的结构形式和我们以前考过的结构类型非常相似。

　　原文如下：

　　The Accidental Influentials

　　In his best-selling book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that “social epidemics” are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well connected. The idea is intuitively compelling – we think we see it happening all the time – but it doesn’t explain how ideas actually spread。

　　The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the “two-step flow of communication”： Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else.Marketers have embraced the twostep flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those select people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends。

　　In recent work, however, my colleague Peter Dodds and I have found that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don’t seem to be required at all。

　　Our argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey – whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence – even the most influential members of a population simply don’t interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these noncelebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example, the cascade of change won’t propagate very far or affect many people。

　　Building on this basic truth about interpersonal influence,Dodds and I studied the dynamics of social contagion by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people’s ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. Our work shows that the principal requirement for what we call “global cascades”– the widespread propagation of influence through networks – is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor.Regardless of how influential an individual is locally, he or she can exert global influence only if this critical mass is available to propagate a chain reaction.   

　　第四篇文章属于经济类，节选于09年4月份的《经济学人》(The Economist)，文章的结构形式和我们以前考过的结构类型相似。

　　原文如下：

　　Messenger, Shot

　　Accounting rules are under attack. Standard-setters should defend them. Politicians and banks should back off。

　　Economist Staff - The Economist

　　April 10, 2009

　　In public, bankers have been blaming themselves for their troubles. Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone else: the accounting standard-setters. Their rules, moan the banks, have forced them to report enormous losses, and it's just not fair. These rules say they must value some assets at the price a third party would pay, not the price managers and regulators would like them to fetch. Unfortunately, banks' lobbying now seems to be working. The details may be arcane, but the independence of standard-setters, essential to the proper functioning of capital markets, is being compromised. And, unless banks carry toxic assets at prices that attract buyers, reviving the banking system will be difficult。

　　On April 2nd, after a bruising encounter with Congress, America's Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rushed through rule changes. These gave banks more freedom to use models to value illiquid assets and more flexibility in recognising losses on long-term assets in their income statements. Bob Herz, the FASB's chairman, decried those who "impugn our motives". Yet bank shares rose and the changes enhance what one lobbying group politely calls "the use of judgment by management"。

　　European ministers instantly demanded that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) do likewise. The IASB says it does not want to be "piecemeal", but the pressure to fold when it completes its overhaul of rules later this year is strong. On April 1st Charlie McCreevy, a European commissioner, warned the IASB that it did "not live in a political vacuum" but "in the real world" and that Europe could yet develop different rules。

　　It was banks that were on the wrong planet, with accounts that vastly overvalued assets. Today they argue that market prices overstate losses, because they largely reflect the temporary illiquidity of markets, not the likely extent of bad debts. The truth will not be known for years. But banks' shares trade below their book value, suggesting that investors are sceptical. And dead markets partly reflect the paralysis of banks which will not sell assets for fear of booking losses, yet are reluctant to buy all those supposed bargains。

　　To get the system working again, losses must be recognised and dealt with. Japan's procrastination prolonged its crisis. America's new plan to buy up toxic assets will not work unless banks mark assets to levels which buyers find attractive. Successful markets require independent and even combative standard-setters. The FASB and IASB have been exactly that, cleaning up rules on stock options and pensions, for example, against hostility from special interests. But by appeasing critics now they are inviting pressure to make more concessions。

　　To reveal, but not to regulate

　　Standard-setters should defuse the argument by making clear that their job is not to regulate banks but to force them to reveal information. The banks, their capital-adequacy regulators and politicians seem to dream of a single, grown-up version of the truth, which enhances financial stability. Investors and accountants, however, think all valuations are subjective, doubt managers' motives and judge that market prices are the least-bad option. They are right. A bank's solvency is a matter of judgment for its regulators and for investors, not whatever a piece of paper signed by its auditors says it is. Accounts can inform that decision, but not make it。

　　Banks' regulators have to take responsibility. If they want to remove the mechanical link between drops in market prices and capital shortfalls at banks, they should take the accounts that standard-setters create for investors and adjust them when they calculate capital. They already do this to some degree. But the banks' campaign to change the rules is making inevitable a split between two sets of accounts, one for regulators and another for investors. The FASB and IASB can help regulators to create whatever balance-sheet they want. But in doing so they must not compromise their duty to investors。

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