We might like to think we're not influenced by other people, but a new study into the group-buying mechanisms（机制） - like those used on coupon（优惠券） sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial - reveals that telling buyers who come later to the offer how many have already signed up increases the number of purchasers.
Researchers at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management wanted to understand why group buying sites that have entered the market recently have enjoyed greater success than those operating a decade ago, such as Mercata and MobShop.
Earlier attempts typically left potential buyers waiting for days before confirming whether or not they had got the offer they had signed up for.
“We think one of the reasons group-buying has been successful recently is because of the short time horizon,” says Rotman Professor Ming Hu, who co-wrote the study with Professor Mengze Shi and PhD student Jiahua Wu. “It allows for a herding effect.”
Another reason is the use of an information structure that discloses to later arrivals how many have already signed onto the deal.
Researchers looked at two ways of designing the purchasing mechanism for a group buy:a simultaneous mechanism, where no one knows how many buyers have come before them, and asequential（连续的） mechanism, where a second group of buyers has the advantage of knowing the size of the first group.
The researchers' analytical（分析的） model shows the most successful mechanism is the sequential one because it eliminates uncertainty for those coming later to the deal, and improves the confidence of those who sign on early, as they're able to track the numbers of those who come after them.
“That boosts confidence,” says Professor Hu, who teaches operations management. Deals for "luxury" services, versus everyday items, work better in a group buy scenario（方案） because they offer consumers a greater benefit.
【小题1】It can be learned from the text that ______.

Everybody is happy as his pay rises. Yet pleasure at your own can disappear if you learn that a fellow worker has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he is known as being lazy, you might even be quite cross. Such behavior is regarded as “all too human”, with the underlying belief that other animals would not be able to have this finely developed sense of sadness. But a study by Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well.
The researchers studied the behaviors of some kind of female brown monkeys. They look smart. They are good-natured, co-operative creatures, and they share their food happily. Above all, like female human beings, they tend to pay much closer attention to the value of “goods and services” than males.
Such characteristics make them perfect subjects for Doctor Brosnan’s study. The researchers spent two years teaching their monkeys to exchange tokens (奖券) for food. Normally, the monkeys were happy enough to exchange pieces of rock for pieces of cucumber. However, when two monkeys were placed in separate and connected rooms, so that each other could observe what the other is getting in return for its rock, they became quite different.
In the world of monkeys，grapes are excellent goods (and much preferable to cucumbers). So when one monkey was handed a grape in exchange for her token, the second was not willing to hand hers over for a mere piece of cucumber. And if one received a grape without having to provide her token in exchange at all, the other either shook her own token at the researcher, or refused to accept the cucumber. Indeed, the mere presence of a grape in the other room (without an actual monkey to eat it) was enough to bring about dissatisfaction in a female monkey.
The researches suggest that these monkeys, like humans, are guided by social senses. In the wild, they are co-operative and group-living. Such co-operation is likely to be firm only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of anger when unfairly treated, it seems, are not the nature of human beings alone. Refusing a smaller reward completely makes these feelings clear to other animals of the group. However, whether such a sense of fairness developed independently in monkeys and humans, or whether it comes from the common roots that they had 35 million years ago, is, as yet, an unanswered question.
【小题1】According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?

D
The Weekly Telegraph is Britain’s global newspaper, the home-grown quality newspaper that delivers the best of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph to the British around the world and adds its special articles, features and reports designed to be of real value to foreign readers．Telegraph.co.uk/expat, the website, increases the value of the newspaper, thus creating a complete expatriate（国外的）support system, both online and offline．
Order a gift subscription（订阅）for a friend or relation overseas this Christmas and they will begin to recognise what a useful investment your subscription represents, and you’ll receive a FREE bottle of 10-year-old Tawny Port to enjoy at home in the UK．
Subscriptions will start early January 2010．Port can only be delivered to a UK address and receivers must be over 18 years of age．
For more details or for 6-month subscriptions, please contact our subscriptions department on Tel +44 （0） 1622 335080 or email weeklytelegraphsubs@telegraph.co.uk Office hours: 09:00-17:00 GMT）．
Please contact weeklytelegraphsubs@telegraph.co.uk with any questions regarding your subscription．
Your money back if you are not satisfied
Our “no quibble” money-back policy means that we guarantee to return the money for your subscription in full if you are not satisfied with the first four issues．
YOUR PAYMENT
Select a zone of payment．Price is for 52 issues．
United Kingdom                           105.00 GBP （Great Britain Pound）
USA                                     125.00 GBP
Canada/ Australia/ New Zealand               108.00 GBP
Zambia/ Zimbabwe /Tanzania                 85.00 GBP
South Africa                               80.00 GBP
Middle East/ Europe/ Rest of the world          80.00 GBP
71．The Weekly Telegraph in the advertisement is mainly intended for ______．
A．the British at home and abroad         B．the British in the UK
C．the foreigners in Britain         D．English learners across the globe
72．If you want to receive a free bottle of 10-year-old Tawny Port, you must ______．
a．live in the United Kingdom
b．have an overseas friend who is over 18
c．order a subscription of the Weekly Telegraph
d．offer your friend or relation’s address overseas
A．a, b           B．c, d         C．a, c      D．b, c
73．What do we know about the Weekly Telegraph from the passage?
A．The content of it can’t be read online．
B．One can subscribe to it 24 hours a day．
C．Your money can partly come back if you’re not satisfied
D．The prices for different countries are probably different．
74．To order a 6-month subscription for a friend in Tanzania, you should ______．
A．contact the subscriptions department
B．subscribe to the Daily Telegraph for a year
C．tell your friend to visit telegraph.co.uk/expat
D．pay 85.00 GBP
75．Which of the following statements is true based on the text?
A．Telegraph．co．uk/ expat receives support from online readers only．
B．Subscriptions of the paper can be made starting from January 2010．
C．Telegraph．co．uk/expat mainly solve your subscription problems．
D．US and Middle East readers can enjoy equal price for 52 issues．

Are you the type of person who always says“yes”？I’ve come to learn that it is very im-portant to learn to say NO！It’s okay. People are still going to like you. They may even respect you more because they know you are honest.
I，m not saying to say“no" to someone who really needs your help. I’m talking about re-fusing that meeting that you really do not want to attend or that birthday party that you don’t want to be a guest at.
Think for a moment how you feel when you say YES to something that you really don’t want to do. If you’re like I once was，you can’t sleep at night and you think about it too much. It weighs on your mind. You try to find ways out. Whatever you’re saying to yourself，if you really wanted to go，you wouldn’t have all of these thoughts.
So，why not just say NO from the beginning? Maybe you feel like if you don’t show up at the meeting（by the way，it is not one you must attend) your boss isn’t going to like you or your co-workers won’t respect you. Maybe you feel as if your mom，dad or sisters won’t love you as much if you don’t do everything for them that they ask every occasion.
If these people are your true friends，family members，or a good boss，they will like or love you the same no matter what. People treat you the way you teach them to，and if you’re some-one who always says“yes" then that’s what they，re expecting.
You need to do what is right for you. Of course we do have real obligations in life to ful-fill，but we do not have to do everything others want us to do.
【小题1】Which of the following statements would the writer agree with？

We might like to think we're not influenced by other people, but a new study into the group-buying mechanisms（机制） - like those used on coupon（优惠券） sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial - reveals that telling buyers who come later to the offer how many have already signed up increases the number of purchasers.

Researchers at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management wanted to understand why group buying sites that have entered the market recently have enjoyed greater success than those operating a decade ago, such as Mercata and MobShop.

Earlier attempts typically left potential buyers waiting for days before confirming whether or not they had got the offer they had signed up for.

“We think one of the reasons group-buying has been successful recently is because of the short time horizon,” says Rotman Professor Ming Hu, who co-wrote the study with Professor Mengze Shi and PhD student Jiahua Wu. “It allows for a herding effect.”

Another reason is the use of an information structure that discloses to later arrivals how many have already signed onto the deal.

Researchers looked at two ways of designing the purchasing mechanism for a group buy:a simultaneous mechanism, where no one knows how many buyers have come before them, and asequential（连续的） mechanism, where a second group of buyers has the advantage of knowing the size of the first group.

The researchers' analytical（分析的） model shows the most successful mechanism is the sequential one because it eliminates uncertainty for those coming later to the deal, and improves the confidence of those who sign on early, as they're able to track the numbers of those who come after them.

“That boosts confidence,” says Professor Hu, who teaches operations management. Deals for "luxury" services, versus everyday items, work better in a group buy scenario（方案） because they offer consumers a greater benefit.

1.It can be learned from the text that ______.

2.The underlined word “eliminates” in paragraph 7 probably means“______”.

3.What can be the best title for the passage?