【正文】 federal regulation, Nagaraj and his colleagues have two choices. They must either return to India, or find another job in a tight labor market and hope that the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) allow them to transfer their visa to the new pany. And the law doesn’t allow them to earn a paycheck until all the paperwork winds its way through the INS bureaucracy. “How am I going to survive without any job and without any ine?” Nagaraj wonders.Until recently, H1B visas were championed by Silicon Valley panies as the solution to the region’s shortage of programmers and engineers. First issued by the INS in 1992, they attract skilled workers from other countries, many of whom bring families with them, lay down roots and apply for the more permanent green cards. Through February 2000, more than 81,000 worker held such visas — but with the dot crash, many have been getting laid off. That’s causing mass consternation in . immigrant munities. The INS considers a worker “out of status” when he loses a job, which technically means that he must pack up and go home. But because of the scope of this year’s layoffs, the . government has recently backpedaled, issuing a confusing series of statements that suggest workers might be able to stay if they qualify for some exceptions and can find a new pany to sponsor their visa. But even those loopholes remain nebulous. The result is thousands of immigrants now face dimming career prospects in America, and the possibilities that they will be sent home. “They are in limbo. It is the greatest form of torture,” says Amar Veda of the Silicon Valleybased Immigrants Support Network.The crisis looks especially bad in light of all the heated visa rhetoric by Silicon Valley panies in the past few years. Last fall the industry won a big victory by getting Congress to approve an increase in the annual number of H1B visas. Now, with technology firms retrenching, demand for such workers is slowing. Valley heavyweights like Intel, Cisco and HewlettPackard have all announced thousands of layoffs this year, which include many H1B workers. The INS reported last month that only 16,000 new H1B workers came to the United States in February — down from 32,000 in February of last year.Last month, acknowledging the scope of the problem, the INS told H1B holders “not to panic,” and that there would be a grace period for laidoff workers before they had to leave the United States. INS spokeswomen Eyleen Schmidt promises that more specific guidance will e this month. “We are aware of the cutbacks,” she says. “We’re trying to be as generous as we can be within the confines of the existing law.”Part B Choice of Two Translations (二選一題) （30 points）Topic 1 (選題一)What Is the Force of Gravity?If you throw a ball up, it will e down again. What makes it e down? The ball es down because it is pulled or attracted towards the Earth. The Earth exerts a force of attraction on all objects. Objects that are nearer to the Earth are attracted to it with a greater force than those that are further away. This force of attraction is known as the force of gravity. The gravitational force acting on an object at the Earth’s surface is called the weight of the object.All the heavenly bodies in space like the moon, the planets and the stars also exert an attractive force on objects. The bigger and heavier a body is, the greater is its force of gravity. Thus, since the moon is a smaller body than Earth, the force it exerts on an object at its surface is less than that exerted by the Earth on the same object on the Earth’s surface. In fact, the moon’s gravitational force is only onesixth that of the Earth. This means that an object weighing 120 kilograms on Earth will only weigh 20 kilograms on the moon. Therefore on the moon you could lift weights which are six times heavier than the heaviest weight that you can lift on Earth.The Earth’s gravitational force or pull keeps us and everything else on Earth from floating away to space. To get out into space and travel to the moon or other planets we have to overe the Earth’s gravitational pull.Entry into SpaceHow can we overe the Earth’s gravitational pull? Scientists have been working on this for a long time. It is only recently that they have been able to build machines powerful enough to get out of the Earth’s gravitational pull. Such machines are called space rockets. Their great speed and power help them to escape from the Earth’s gravitational pull and go into space.RocketsThe powerful space rocket works along the same lines as a simple firework rocket. The firework rocket has a cylindrical body and a conical head. The body is packed with gunpowder which is the fuel. It is a mixture of chemicals that will burn rapidly to form hot gases.At the base or foot of the rocket there is an opening or nozzle. A fuse hangs out like a tail from the nozzle. A long stick attached along the body serves to direct the rocket before the fuse is lighted.When the gunpowder burns, hot gases rush out of the nozzle. The hot gases continue to rush out as long as the gunpowder burns. When these gases shoot downwards through the nozzle the rocket is pushed upwards. This is called jet propulsion. The simple experiment, shown in the picture, will help you to understand jet propulsion.Topic 2 （選題二）Basketball DiplomacyCHINA”S TALLEST SOLDIER never really expected to live the American Dream. But Wang Zhizhi, a 7foot1 basketball star from the People’s Liberation Army, is making history as the first Chinese player in the NBA. In his first three weeks in America the 23yearold rookie has already cashed his first big NBA check, preside over “Wang Zhizhi Day” in San Francisco and bee immortalized on his very own trading cards. He’s even played in five games with his new team, the Dallas Mavericks, scoring 24 points in just 38 minutes. Now the affable Lieutenant Wang is joining the Mavericks on their ride i