经济学人英语文章

Richemont, the world’s second-biggest luxury firm, bets on digital Its offer to buy YNAP, a leader in online luxury sales, looks likely to be accepted Jan 25th 2018 | MILANA YOUTUBE video featuring a woman sporting a gold watch and driving a convertible, which has been viewed online nearly 5m times. A social-media “influencer” with more than 11m followers on Instagram posting photos of herself wearing the same timepiece. A limited flash sale of the watch on Net-a-Porter, a website. Purveyors of pricey jewellery and watches have been slow to embrace things digital. But last year’s social-media campaign to relaunch Panthère, a watch made by Cartier, a French jeweller, is evidence that they are waking up to the power of the online world. On January 22nd Richemont, a Swiss luxury conglomerate that counts Cartier among its brands, offered to buy the shares it does not already own in Yoox-Net-a-Porter group(YNAP), a leading luxury online retailer, for €2.7bn ($3.3bn). Although the deal still faces hurdles, it is likely to go ahead. convertible: able to be changed into another form 奢侈品行业开始拥抱互联网了，Richemont（历峰集团）要入股一个奢侈品网上零售专家，估计是要打开网上销售渠道 The days of double-digit growth in the luxury industry are gone—it grew by 5%, to €1.2trn, last year. Watches, in particular, have had a rough time. Chinese demand collapsed after an anti-corruption crackdown; inventory languished, unsold. Last year Richemont’s revenues dropped by 4%, to €10.6bn. But online sales of personal luxury goods have continued to rise: they now account for 9% of the total (see chart). Bain& Company, a consultancy, reckons that they will reach 25% by 2025. languish: for a long time without activity or progress in an unpleasant or unwanted situation 奢侈品行业每年两位数增长的好日子已经过去了，去年整个行业增长5%。特别是名表，由于中国需求量减少，销量下降库存堆积。但是网上业务有所增长！ Online sales of “hard luxury”, such as watches and jewellery, lag: they account for just 5% of digital revenues. But that is up from almost nothing a decade ago, and is predicted to reach between10% and 15% by 2025. And even if purchases are made in physical stores, buying decisions are increasingly made online: 68% of millennials’ luxury purchases are “digitally influenced”, according to EY, a consultancy. Small wonder that Richemont wants to expand its footprint online. Last year the group hired a chief technology officer, as part of a management restructuring which also did away with the role of CEO. It was an early investor in Net-a-Porter, which it merged in 2015 with Yoox, another e-commerce firm; it kept a 50% stake in YNAP, the resulting combination. The hope is that owning YNAP outright will allow Richemont to learn things about the online world that it could not with a stake alone. It would also increase the Swiss firm’s exposure to “soft luxury”, such as clothes and bags, a segment in which the firm has struggled, notes Melanie Floquet of JPMorgan Chase, a bank. 68% 千禧一代的奢侈品购买行为都受到网上的一些营销影响的，这就是为什么历峰集团开始扩展网上帝国版图 它购买YNAP的股权，就是为了了解网购世界及其行为 For YNAP itself, the deal promises added investment at a time of intensifying competition. Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton(LVMH) has launched its own online platform, 24 Sèvres. Farfetch, another luxury e-tailer, is planning to float. Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner at Bain, suggests that Amazon, an online giant, could eventually disrupt the luxury market, too. Not everybody is convinced a takeover of YNAP is needed. It is like buying an airline to go on holiday, says Luca Solca of Exane BNP Paribas, another bank. And the deal is not without risks. One is whether Federico Marchetti, YNAP’s boss, will indeed stay on once he has sold his 4% stake (he says he will). Ms Floquet also worries that the lack of a chief executive could lead to feuds within the management. 不是所有人都觉得并购YNAP是一个必须的动作，就好像想出去旅行了，要买下一个航空公司一样， 这很考验一个集团管理层的战略眼光，一个有远见的CEO能带领公司，在重要的关口走出关键的一步，使公司往好的方向发展 feud: a long and angry fight or quarrel between two people or two groups Such concerns do not seem to bother Johann Rupert, Richemont’s founder and chairman. In a statement on the offer he mentioned how, a century ago, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a famous aviator, complained to his friend, Louis Cartier, about the difficulty of checking his pocket watch while flying. Cartier listened, and—eureka!—the wristwatch was born. Full ownership of YNAP should, Mr Rupert seems to reckon, allow Richemont to listen to its customers, in person or not. 但历峰集团的创始人和主席，Johann Rupert，则对网上销售这个渠道特别有信心。 还举了一个例子反驳别人没远见： 一个世纪以前，alberto像cartier 抱怨，每次都口袋里拿出表来看很麻烦，当当！ 腕表就因此诞生了... 总结： 能不能抓住大势，能不能飞起来，就要看你的功力了 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Results Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L Mean Sentence Length: 15.30 Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.15 Word Count: 612 这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 适合英语专业大二的水平学习，是经济学人里普通难度 使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~

A revolution in healthcare is coming Welcome to Doctor You Feb 1st 2018NO WONDER they are called “patients”.When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests, baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some stoicism will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling over.This week three of the biggest names in American business—Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—announced a new venture to provide better, cheaper health care for their employees. A fundamental problem with today’s system is that patients lack knowledge and control. Access to data can bestow both. The internet already enables patients to seek online consultations when and where it suits them. You can take over-the-counter tests to analyse your blood, sequence your genome and check on the bacteria in your gut. Yet radical change demands a shift in emphasis, from providers to patients and from doctors to data. That shift is happening. Technologies such as the smartphone allow people to monitor their own health. The possibilities multiply when you add the crucial missing ingredients—access to your own medical records and the ability easily to share information with those you trust. That allows you to reduce inefficiencies in your own treatment and also to provide data to help train medical algorithms. You can enhance your own care and everyone else’s, too. jargon: the language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people stoicism: the quality or behavior of a person who accepts what happens without complaining or showing emotion 现在病人走进一家医院，都能预料到会是什么样的：仓促的医生，数不清的检测，看不懂的病例，涨不停的费用和无尽的等待... 病人的问题就是他们不清楚状况和缺乏对自己病情的控制 所以亚马逊和JPMorgan还有Berkshire Hathaway 成立了一个新的公司，为他们的员工提供更好更廉价的医疗 The doctor will be you now Medical data may not seem like the type of kindling to spark a revolution. But the flow of information is likely to bear fruit in several ways. One is better diagnosis. Someone worried about their heart can now buy a watch strap containing a medical-grade monitor that will detect arrhythmias. Apps are vying to see if they can diagnose everything from skin cancer and concussion to Parkinson’s disease. Research is under way to see whether sweat can be analysed for molecular biomarkers without the need for an invasive blood test. Some think that changes in how quickly a person swipes a phone’s touchscreen might signal the onset of cognitive problems. A second benefit lies in the management of complex diseases. Diabetes apps can change the way patients cope, by monitoring blood-glucose levels and food intake, potentially reducing long-run harm such as blindness and gangrene. Akili Interactive, a startup, plans to seek regulatory approval for a video game designed to stimulate an area of the brain implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (see article). 医疗数据可能不会带来一个伟大的变革，但是会有非常多的好处，这四段分别讲了四个有用的地方，看经济学人重要的是看清楚文章的逻辑！ 第一个好处是：更好地诊断 第二个好处是：管理复杂的疾病 Patients can also improve the efficiency of their care. Although health records are increasingly electronic, they are often still trapped in silos. Many contain data that machines cannot read. This can lead to delays in treatment, or worse. Many of the 250,000 deaths in America attributable to medical error each year can be traced to poorly co-ordinated care. With data at their fingertips, common standards to enable sharing and a strong incentive to get things right, patients are more likely to spot errors. On January 24th Apple laid out its plans to ask organisations to let patients use their smartphones to download their own medical records (see article). A final benefit of putting patients in charge stems from the generation and aggregation of their data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being trained by a unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to identify cancerous tissues and retinal damage. As patients’data stream from smartphones and “wearables”, they will teach AIs to do ever more. Future AIs could, for instance, provide automated medical diagnosis from a description of your symptoms, spot behavioural traits that suggest you are depressed or identify if you are at special risk of cardiac disease. The aggregation of data will also make it easier for you to find other people with similar diseases and to see how they responded to various treatments. 第三个好处是提高医疗效率 第四个好处是病人掌控自己的数据整合等 讲完了好处接下来讲坏处... An Apple a day As with all new technologies, pitfalls accompany the promise. Hucksters will launch apps that do not work. But with regulators demanding oversight of apps that present risks to patients, users will harm only their wallets. Not everyone will want to take active control of their own health care; plenty will want the professionals to manage everything.Fine. Data can be pored over by those who are interested, while those who are not can opt to share data automatically with trusted providers. The benefits of new technologies often flow disproportionately to the rich. Those fears are mitigated by the incentives that employers, governments and insurers have to invest in cost-efficient preventive care for all. Alphabet has recently launched a firm called Cityblock Health, for example, which plans to trawl through patients’ data to provide better care for low-income city dwellers, many of them covered by Medicaid, an insurance programme for poorer Americans. pitfall: a danger or problem that is hidden or not obvious at first pore over: to read or study something very carefully trawl: to search through something in order to find someone or something 很多先进的技术都是益了富人，因此这需要纳税人，政府和保险公司一起想出保障到所有人的医疗制度 Google在这方面有做出了努力，成立了一各公司Cityblock Health，为低收入人群提供更好的医疗！（真心觉得googlers 是为了人类进步而发展的公司...) Other risks are harder to deal with.Greater transparency may encourage the hale and hearty not to take out health insurance. They may even make it harder for the unwell to find cover. Regulations can slow that process—by requiring insurers to ignore genetic data, for example—but not stop it. Security is another worry. The more patient data are analysed in the cloud or shared with different firms, the greater the potential threat of hacking or misuse. Almost a quarter of all data breaches in America happen in health care. Health firms should face stringent penalties if they are slapdash about security, but it is naive to expect that breaches will never happen. Will the benefits of making data more widely available outweigh such risks? The signs are that they will. Plenty of countries are now opening up their medical records, but few have gone as far as Sweden. It aims to give all its citizens electronic access to their medical records by 2020; over a third of Swedes have already set up accounts. Studies show that patients with such access have a better understanding of their illnesses, and that their treatment is more successful. Trials in America and Canada have produced not just happier patients but lower costs, as clinicians fielded fewer inquiries. That should be no surprise. No one has a greater interest in your health than you do. Trust in Doctor You. hale: healthy and strong, usually used in the phrase hale and hearty  一个坏处就是让那些身体情况良好的人不会再买保险，而让那些身体不好的人很难买到保险；还有分享的数据越多，就越有可能发生数据泄露和被黑客黑的可能 stringent: very strict or severe slapdash: quick and careless 那分享这些医疗数据到底是不是利大于弊还是弊大于利？种种迹象标明是 利大于弊的！ 总结：科技改变生活，本文是这期经济学人杂志的封面文章 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Results Lexile®Measure: 1100L - 1200L Mean Sentence Length: 16.04 Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.16 Word Count: 1030 这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1200L， 适合英语专业大二的水平学习，是经济学人里比较简单的使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！ 点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~