单选题Most patients respond to the awareness that they have a terminal illness with the statement, "Oh no, this can"t happen to me. " After the first shock, numbness, and need to deny the reality of the situation, the patient begins to send out cues that he is ready to "talk about it". If we, at that point, need to deny the reality of the situation, the patient will often feel deserted, isolated, and lonely and unable to communicate with another human being what he needs so desperately to share. Most patients who have passed the stage will become angry as they ask the question, "Why me?" Many look at others in their environment and express envy, jealousy, anger, and rage toward those who are young, healthy, and full of life. These are the patients who make life difficult for nurses, physicians, social workers, clergymen, and members of their families. Without justification they criticize everyone. What we have to learn is that the stage in terminal illness is a blessing, not a cure. These patients are not angry at their families or at the members of the helping professions. Rather, they are angry at what these people represent; health and energy. Without being judgmental, we must allow these patients to express their anger and dismay. We must try to understand that the patients have to ask, "Why me?" and that there is no need on our part to answer this question concretely. Once a patient has ventilated his rage and his envy, then he can arrive at the bargaining stage. During this time, he" s usually able to say, "Yes, it is happening to me—but". The"but" usually includes a prayer to God; "If you give me one more year to live, I will be a good Christian. "

单选题"The Heart of the Matter", the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities, and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America. Regrettably, however, the report's failure to address the true nature of the crisis facing liberal education may cause more harm than good. In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identify actions that could be taken by "federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others" to "maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education. " In response, the American Academy formed the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the commission's 51 members are top-tier-university presidents, scholars, lawyers, judges, and business executives, as well as prominent figures from diplomacy, filmmaking, music and journalism. The goals identified in the report are generally admirable. Because representative government presupposes an informed citizenry, the report supports full literacy; stresses the study of history and government, particularly American history and American government; and encourages the use of new digital technologies. To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students' ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day. The report also advocates greater study of foreign languages, international affairs and the expansion of study abroad programs. Unfortunately, despite the report are general "The Heart of the Matter" never gets to the heart of the matter: the illiberal nature of liberal education at our leading colleges and universities. The commission ignores that for several decades America's colleges and universities have produced graduates who don' t know the content and character of liberal education and are thus deprived of its benefits. Sadly, the spirit of inquiry once at home on campus has been replaced by the use of the humanities and social sciences as vehicles for publicizing "progressive", or left-liberal propaganda. Today, professors routinely treat the progressive interpretation of history and progressive public policy as the proper subject of study while portraying conservative or classical liberal ideas—such as free markets and self-reliance—as falling outside the boundaries of routine, and sometimes legitimate, intellectual investigation. The MAS displays great enthusiasm for liberal education. Yet its report may well set back reform by obscuring the depth and breadth of the challenge that Congress asked it to illuminate.

单选题For three decades we've heard endlessly about the virtues of aerobic (increasing oxygen consumption) exercise. Medical authorities have praised running and jumping as the key to good health, and millions of Americans have taken to the treadmill to reap the rewards. But the story is changing. Everyone from the American Heart Association to the surgeon general's office has recently embraced strength training as a complement to aerobics. And as weight lifting has gone mainstream, so has the once obscure practice known as "Super Slow" training. Enthusiasts claim that by pumping iron at a snail's pace — making each "rep" (repeat) last 14 seconds instead of the usual 7 — you can safely place extraordinary demands on your muscles, and call forth an extraordinary response. Slow lifting may not be the only exercise you need, as some advocates believe, but the benefits are often dramatic. Almost anyone can handle this routine. The only requirements are complete focus and a tolerance for deep muscular burn. For each exercise — leg press, bench press, shoulder press and so on — you set the machine to provide only moderate resistance. But as you draw out each repeat, depriving yourself of impetus, the weight soon feels unbearable. Defying the impulse to stop, you kept going until you can't complete a repeat. Then you sustain your vain effort for 10 more seconds while the weight sinks gradually toward its cradle. Intense? Uncomfortable? Totally. But once you embrace muscle failure as the goal of the workout, it can become almost pleasure. The goal is not to burn calories while you're exercising but to make your body burn them all the time. Running a few miles may make you sweat, but it expends only 100 calories per mile, and it doesn't stimulate much bone or muscle development. Strength training doesn't burn many calories, either. But when you push a muscle to failure, you set off a pour of physiological changes. As the muscle recovers over several days, it will thicken — and the new muscle tissue will demand sustenance. By the time you add three pounds of muscle, your body requires an extra 9, 000 calories a month just to break even. Hold your diet steady and, very quickly, you are vaporizing body fat. One might have benefited from any strength-training program. But advocates insist the slow technique is safer and more effective than traditional methods.

单选题English speakers pick up pitch in the right hemispheres of their brains, but speakers of certain other languages perceive it on the left as well. It all depends on what you want to learn from pitch, Donald Wong of the Indiana School of Medicine in Indianapolis told the meeting last week. Earlier studies have shown that when an English speaker hears pitch changes, the right prefrontal cortex leaps into action. This fits in with the idea that emotive nuances of language—which in English are often carried by the rise and fall of the voice — are perceived on the right. But in "tonal" languages like Thai, Mandarin and Swedish, pitch not only carries emotional information, but can also alter the meaning of a word. Wong and his colleagues suspected that a speaker of tonal language would register pitch in the left side of the brain — in particular Broca's area, which processes the linguistic content of language. To test this, the team asked English speakers and Thai speakers to listen to 80 pairs of Thai words, and tracked the blood flow in their brains using positron emission tomography. The volunteers had to decide whether the two words sounded the same, either by consonant or by tone. In some eases, the words had no intelligible meaning. None of the words was emotionally charged, so even when Thai speakers could understand them, there was no right-side activation. But sure enough the Thai speakers consistently lit up the left side of the brain, especially Broca's area, while the English speakers did not. The researchers are now planning to repeat the experiment with Thai speakers using whole sentences, complete with emotional information. "Both hemispheres will be engaged. " predicts Wong.

单选题In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sabotaged train. One of the looters, Chief Auda abu Tayi of the Howeitat clan, suddenly notices the camera and snatches it. "Am I in this?" he asks, before smashing it open. To the dismayed reporter, Lawrence explains, "He thinks these things will steal his virtue. He thinks you"re a kind of thief." As soon as colonizers and explorers began taking cameras into distant lands, stories began circulating about how indigenous peoples saw them as tools for black magic. The "ignorant natives" may have had a point. When photography first became available, scientists welcomed it as a more objective way of recording faraway societies than early travelers" exaggerated accounts. But in some ways, anthropological photographs reveal more about the culture that holds the camera than the one that stares back. Up into the 1950s and 1960s, many ethnographers sought "pure" pictures of "primitive" cultures, routinely deleting modern accoutrements such as clocks and Western dress. They paid men and women to re-enact rituals or to pose as members of war or hunting parties, often with little regard for veracity. Edward Curtis, the legendary photographer of North American Indians, for example, got one Makah man to pose as a whaler with a spear in 1915 — even though the Makah had not hunted whales in a generation. These photographs reinforced widely accepted stereotypes that indigenous cultures were isolated, primitive, and unchanging. For instance, National Geographic magazine"s photographs have taught millions of Americans about other cultures. As Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins point out in their 1993 book Reading National Geographic, the magazine since its founding in 1888 has kept a tradition of presenting beautiful photos that don"t challenge white, middle-class American conventions. While dark-skinned women can be shown without tops, for example, white women"s breasts are taboo. Photos that could unsettle or disturb, such as areas of the world torn asunder by war or famine, are discarded in favor of those that reassure to conform with the society"s stated pledge to present only "kindly" visions of foreign societies. The result, Lutz and Collins say, is the depiction of "an idealized and exotic world relatively free of pain or class conflict." Lutz actually likes National Geographic a lot. She read the magazine as a child, and its lush imagery influenced her eventual choice off anthropology as a career. She just thinks that as people look at the photographs of other cultures, they should be alert to the choice of composition and images.

单选题The great question that this paper will, but feebly, attempt to answer is, what is the creative process? Though much theory has accumulated, little is really known about the power that lies at the bottom of poetic creation. It is true that great poets and artists produce beauty by employing all the powers of personality and by fusing emotions, reason, and intuitions. But what is the magical synthesis that joins and arranges these complex parts into poetic unity? John L. Lowes, in his justly famous "The Road to Xanadu", developed one of the earliest and still generally acceptable answers to this tantalizing question. Imaginative creation, he concludes, is a complex process in which the conscious and unconscious minds jointly operate. "There is... the Deep Well with its chaos of fortuitously blending images; but there is likewise the Vision which sees shining in and through the chaos of the potential lines of Form, and with the Vision, the controlling Will, which gives to that potential beauty actuality." The Deep Well is the unconscious mind that is peopled with the facts, ideas, and feelings of the conscious activity. The imaginative vision, an unconscious activity, shines through the land of chaos, of lights and shadows, silently seeking pattern and form. Finally, the conscious mind again, through Will, captures and embodies the idea in the final work of art. In this way is unity born out of chaos. Though there can be no absolute certainty, there is general agreement that the periods in the development of a creative work parallel, to some extent, Lowes" theory of Well, Vision, Form, and Will. There are at least three stages in the creative process: preparation, inspiration, work. In a sense, the period of preparation is all of the writer"s life. It is the Deep Well. It is especially a period of concentration which gives the unconscious mind an opportunity to communicate with the conscious mind. When remembrances of things past reach the conscious level of the writer"s mind, he is ready to go on with the process. Part of this preparation involves learning a medium — learning a language, learning how to write, learning literary forms. It is important to mot here that form cannot be imposed upon the idea. Evidence, though sparse, shows that the idea gives birth to the form that can best convey it. It is the Vision, according to Lowes, which sees shining in and through the chaws of the potential lines of Form..."

单选题It is a wise father that knows his own child, but today a man can boost his paternal (fatherly) wisdom — or at least confirm that he's the kid's dad. All he needs to do is shell out $30 for a paternity testing kit (PTK) at his local drugstore—and another $120 to get the results. More than 60, 000 people have purchased the PTKs since they first become available without prescriptions last year, according to Doug Fogg, chief operating officer of Identigene, which makes the over-the-counter kits. More than two dozen companies sell DNA tests Directly to the public, ranging in price from a few hundred dollars to more than $2, 500. Among the most popular: paternity and kinship testing, which adopted children can use to find their biological relatives and families can use to track down kids put up for adoption. DNA testing is also the latest rage among many passionate genealogists — and supports businesses that offer to search for a family's geographic roots. Most tests require collecting cells by swabbing saliva in the mouth and sending it to the company for testing. All tests require a potential candidate with whom to compare DNA. But some observers are skeptical. "There is a kind of false precision being hawked by people claiming they are doing ancestry testing, " says Troy Duster, a New York University sociologist. He notes that each individual has many ancestors—numbering in the hundreds just a few centuries back. Yet most ancestry testing only considers a single lineage, either the Y chromosome inherited through men in a father's line or mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only from mothers. This DNA can reveal genetic information about only one or two ancestors, even though, for example, just three generations back people also have six other great-grandparents or, four generations back, 14 other great-great-grandparents. Critics also argue that commercial genetic testing is only as good as the reference collections to which a sample is compared. Databases used by some companies don't rely on data collected systematically but rather lump together information from different research projects. This means that a DNA database may have a lot of data from some regions and not others, so a person's test results may differ depending on the company that processes the results. In addition, the computer programs a company uses to estimate relationships may be patented and not subject to peer review or outside evaluation.

单选题I have just returned from Mexico, where I visited a factory making medical masks. Faced with fierce competition, the owner has cut his costs by outsourcing some of his production. Scores of people work for him in their homes, threading elastic into masks by hand. They are paid below the minimum wage, with no job security and no healthcare provision. Users of medical masks and other laboratory gear probably give little thought to where their equipment comes from. That needs to change. A significant proportion of these products are made in the developing world by low-paid people with inadequate labor rights. This leads to human misery on a tremendous scale. Take lab coats. Many are made in India, where most cotton farmers are paid an unfair price for their crops and factory employees work illegal hours for poor pay. One-fifth of the world's surgical instruments are made in northern Pakistan. When I visited a couple of a years ago I found most worker toiling 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for less than a dollar a day, exposed to noise, metal dust and toxic chemicals. Thousands of children, some as young as 7, work in the industry. To win international contracts, factory owners must offer rock-bottom prices, and consequently drive down wages and labor conditions as far as they can. We laboratory scientists in the developed world may unwittingly be encouraging this: we ask how much our equipment will cost, but which of us asks who made it and how much they were paid? This is no small matter. Science is supposed to benefit humanity, but because of the conditions under which their tools are made, many scientists may actually be causing harm. What can be done? A knee-jerk boycott of unethical goods is not the answer; it would just make things worse for workers in those manufacturing zones. What we need is to start asking suppliers to be transparent about where and how their products are manufactured and urge them to improve their manufacturing practices. It can be done. Many universities are committed to fair trade in the form of ethically sourced tea, coffee or bananas. That model should be extended to laboratory goods. There are signs that things are moving. Over the past few years I have worked with health services in the IK and in Sweden. Both have recently instituted ethical procurement practices. If science is truly going to help humanity, it needs to follow suit.

单选题Here is a familiar version of the boy-meets-girl situation. A young man has at last plucked up courage to invite a dazzling young lady out to dinner. She has accepted his invitation and he is overjoyed. He is determined to take her to the best restaurant in town, even if it means that he will have to live on memories and hopes during the month to come. When they get to the restaurant, he discovers that this ethereal creature is on a diet. She mustn't eat this and she mustn't eat that. Oh, but of course, she doesn't want to spoil his enjoyment. Let him by all means eat as much fattening food as he wants: it's the surest way to an early grave. They spend a truly memorable evening together and never see each other again. What a miserable lot dieters are! You can always recognize them from the sour expression on their faces. They spend most of their time turning their noses up at food. They are forever consulting calorie charts; gazing at themselves in mirrors; and leaping on to weighing-machines in the bathroom. They spend a lifetime fighting a losing battle against spreading hips, protruding tummies and double chins. Some wage all-out war on FAT. Mere dieting is not enough. They exhaust themselves doing exercises, sweating in sauna baths, being pummeled and massaged by weird machines. The really wealthy diet-mongers pay vast sums for "health cures". For two weeks they can enter a nature clinic and be starved to death for a hundred guineas a week. Don't think it' s only the middle-aged who go in for these fads either. Many of these bright young things you see are suffering from chronic malnutrition: they are living on nothing but air, water and the goodwill of God. Dieters undertake to starve themselves of their own free will; so why are they so miserable? Well, for one thing, they're always hungry. You can't be hungry and happy at the same time. All the horrible concoctions they eat instead of food leave them permanently dissatisfied. Wonderfood is a complete food, the advertisement says. Just dissolve a teaspoonful in water. A complete food it may be, but not quite as complete as a juicy steak. And, of course, they're always miserable because they feel so guilty. Hunger just proves too much for them and in the end they lash out and devour five huge guilt-inducing cream cakes at a sitting. And who can blame them? At least three times a day they are exposed to temptation. What utter torture it is always watching others tucking into piles of mouth-watering food while you munch a water biscuit and sip unsweetened lemon juice! What's all this self-inflicted torture for? Saintly people deprive themselves of food to attain a state of grace. Unsaintly people do so to attain a state of misery. It will be a great day when all the dieters in the world abandon their slimming courses; when they hold out their plates and demand second helpings!

单选题Confronted with patient facing death, physicians may feel a sense of medical impotence and failure. Years of training and zeal to heal have focused on doing anything and everything to save the patient. Death is treated as the enemy. One might ask, "What use can I be if I cannot fix?" One may be tempted to withdraw. There may be no meaningful closure with a patient other than referral to home care or hospice. Feelings evoked by a patient"s dying are also antithetical(对立的)to the original "call" to medicine—the desire to make a difference in people" s lives and the alleviation of pain and suffering. Over time these inner directives may have been obscured by the rigors of a pressured practice, not to mention the climate of malpractice litigation(诉讼). This threat necessitates obsessive attention to the details of intervention options, possibly at the cost of considering the needs of the whole person at hand. So the moment when death raises its specter(恐惧)is a crossroads. Herein lies the opportunity for physicians to go beyond their conventional model of relating to patients. This is when the conventional therapeutic tools can be set aside in favor of the most powerful contribution of all: the physician " s caring itself. The only requirement is a willingness to extend conscious listening and basic humanity to the dying patient. The simple act of visitation, of presence, of taking the trouble to witness the patient"s process can be in itself a potent healing affirmation—a sacramental(圣礼的)gesture received by the dying person who may be feeling helpless, diminished, and fearful that they have little to offer others. The patient may also fear that he or she has failed. How meaningful it is to be told by my physicians that they are learning from me! I feel honored and joined by my physicians as we participate in these human, vulnerable, and mysterious moments at the end of my life. I and many dying persons would agree that beyond pain control, the three elements we most need are feeling cared about, being respected, and enjoining a sense of continuity, be it in relationships or in terms of spiritual awareness.

单选题Among all the malignancies, lung cancer is the biggest killer; more than 100 000 Americans die of the disease. Giving up smoking is one of obvious ways to reduce the risk, but another answer may lie in the kitchen. According to a new report, even heavy smokers may be protected from developing lung cancer by eating a daily portion of carrots, spinach or any other vegetable or fruit containing a form of vitamin A called carotene. The finding, published in THE LANCET, is part of a long-range investigation of diet and disease. Since 1957, some American researchers have monitored the dietary habits and medical histories of 2 000 middle-aged men employed by the Western Electric Co. in Chicago. Led by Dr. Richard Shekelle of St. Luke's Medical Center, the researchers recently began to sort out the links between the subjects' dietary patterns and cancer. Other studies of animals and humans have suggested that vitamin A offer some protection against lung cancer. The correlation seemed logical, explains Shekelle, since vitamin A is essential for the growth of the epithelial tissue that lines the airways of the lungs. Vegetables: But the earlier research did not distinguish between the two different forms of the vitamin. "Preformed" vitamin A, known as retinol, is found mainly in liver and dairy products like milk, cheese, butter and eggs. But vitamin A is also made in the body from carotene, which is abundant in a variety of vegetables and fruits, including carrots, spinach, squash, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and apples. In the study, Shekelle and his colleagues found little correlation between the incidence of lung cancer and the consumption of foods containing preformed vitamin A. But when they examined the data on carotene intake, they discovered a significant relationship. Among the 488 men who had the lowest level of carotene consumption, there were 14 cases of lung cancer, in a group of the same size that ate the most carotene, only two cases developed. The apparent protective effect of carotene held up even for long-time smokers—but to a lesser degree. Further studies will be necessary before the link between lung cancer and carotene can be firmly established. In the meantime, researchers warn against taking large numbers of vitamin A pills, because the tablets contain a form of the chemical that can be extremely toxic in high doses. Instead, they advise a well-balanced diet that includes goods rich in carotene. For a smoker, a half-cup of carrots every day might possibly make the difference between life and death.

单选题If you are reading this article, antibiotics have probably saved your life—and not once but several times. A rotten tooth, a knee operation, a brush with pneumonia; any number of minor infections that never turned nasty. You may not remember taking the pills, so unremarkable have these one-time wonder drugs become. Modern medicine relies on antibiotics — not just to cure diseases, but to augment the success of surgery, childbirth and cancer treatments. Yet now health authorities are warning, in uncharacteristically apocalyptic terms, that the era of antibiotics is about to end. In some ways, bacteria are continually evolving to resist the drugs. But in the past we've always developed new ones that killed them again. Not this time. Infections that once succumbed to everyday antibiotics now require last-resort drugs with unpleasant side effects. Others have become so difficult to treat that they kill some 25, 000 Europeans yearly. And some bacteria now resist every known antibiotic. Regular readers will know why: New Scientist has reported warnings about this for years. We have misused antibiotics appallingly, handing them out to humans like medicinal candy and feeding them to livestock by the tonne, mostly not for health reasons but to make meat cheaper. Now antibiotic-resistant bacteria can be found all over the world — not just in medical facilities, but everywhere from muddy puddles in India to the snows of Antarctica (南极洲) . How did we reach this point without viable successors to today's increasingly ineffectual drugs? The answer lies not in evolution but economics. Over the past 20 years, nearly every major pharmaceutical company has abandoned antibiotics. Companies must make money, and there isn't much in short-term drugs that should be used sparingly. So researchers have discovered promising candidates, but can't reach into the deep pockets needed to develop them. This can be fixed. As we report this week, regulatory agencies, worried medical bodies and Big Pharma are finally hatching ways to remedy this market failure. Delinking profits from the volume of drug sold (by adjusting patent rights, say, or offering prizes for innovation) has worked for other drugs, and should work for antibiotics — although there may be a worryingly long wait before they reach the market. One day, though, these will fall to resistance too. Ultimately, we need, evolution-proof cures for bacterial infection: treatments that stop bacteria from causing disease, but don't otherwise inconvenience the little blighters. When resisting drugs confers no selective advantage, drugs will stop breeding resistance. Researchers have a couple of candidates for such treatment. But they fear regulators will drag their feet over such radical approaches. That, too, can be fixed. We must not neglect development of the sustainable medicine we need, the way we have neglected simple antibiotic R&D. If we do, one day another top doctor will be telling us that the drugs no longer work—and there really will be no help on the way.

单选题Most people would be impressed by the high quality of medicine available to most Americans. There is a lot of specialization, a great deal of attention to the individual, a vast amount of advanced technical equipment, and intense effort not to make mistakes because of the financial risk which doctors and hospitals must face in the courts if they handle things badly. But the Americans are in a mess. The problem is the way in which health care is organized and financed. Contrary to public belief, it is not just a free competition system. To the private system has been joined a large public system, because private care was simply not looking after the less fortunate and the elderly. But even with this huge public part of the system, which this year will eat up 84. 5 billion dollars— more than 10 percent of the U. S. budget—large numbers of Americans are left out. These include about half the 11 million unemployed and those who fail to meet the strict limits on income fixed by a government trying to make savings where it can. The basic problem, however, is that there is no central control over the health system. There is no limit to what doctors and hospitals charge for their services. Other than what the public is able to pay. The number of doctors has shot up and prices have climbed. When faced with toothache, a sick child, or a heart attack, all the unfortunate person concerned can do is pay up. Two-thirds of the population are covered by medical insurance. Doctors charge as much as they want knowing that the insurance company will pay the bill. The medical profession has as a result become America's new big businessmen. The average income of doctors has now reached $100, 000 a year. With such vast incomes the talk in the doctor's surgery is as likely to be about the doctor's latest financial deal, as about whether the minor operation he is recommending at several thousand dollars is entirely necessary. The rising cost of medicine in the U. S. A. is among the most worrying problem facing the country. In 1981 the country's health cost climbed 15. 9 percent—about twice as fast as prices in general.

单选题In a sense, the new protectionism is not protectionism at all, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. The old protectionism referred only to trade restricting and trade expanding devices, such as the tariff or export subsidy. The new protectionism is much broader than this: it includes interventions into foreign trade but is not limited to them. The new protectionism, in fact, refers to how the whole of government intervention into the private economy affects international trade. The emphasis on trade is still there, thus came the term "protection". But what is new is the realization that virtually all government activities can affect international economic relations. The emergence of the new protectionism in the Western world reflects the victory of the interventionist, or welfare economy over the market economy. Jab Tumiler writes, "The old protectionism...coexisted, without any apparent intellectual difficulty with the acceptance of the market as a national as well as an international economic distribution mechanism — indeed, protectionists as well as(if not more than)free traders stood for laissez faire(放任政策). Now, as in the 1930s, protectionism is an expression of a profound skepticism as to the ability of the market to distribute resources and incomes to societies satisfaction." It is precisely this profound skepticism of the market economy that is responsible for the protectionism. In a market economy, economic change of various colors implies redistribution of resources and incomes. The same opinion in many communities apparently is that such redistributions often are not proper. Therefore, the government intervenes to bring about a more desired result. The victory of the welfare state is almost complete in northern Europe. In Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, government intervention in almost all aspects of economic and social life is considered normal. In Great Britain this is only somewhat less true. Government traditionally has played a very active role in economic life in France and continued to do so. Only West Germany dares to go against the tide towards excessive interventionism in Western Europe. It also happens to be the most successful Western European economy. The welfare state has made significant progress in the United States as well as in Western Europe. Social security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, and rent control are by now traditional welfare state elements on the American scene.

单选题In the early 1960s Wilt Chamberlain was one of only three players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) listed at over seven feet. If he had played last season, however, he would have been one of 42. The bodies playing major professional sports have changed dramatically over the years, and managers have been more than willing to adjust team uniforms to fit the growing numbers of bigger, longer frames. The trend in sports, though, may be obscuring an unrecognized reality: Americans have generally stopped growing. Though typically about two inches taller now than 140 years ago, today's people especially those born to families who have lived in the U. S. for many generations-apparently reached their limit in the early 1960s. And they aren't likely to get any taller. "In the general population today, at this genetic, environmental level, we've pretty much gone as far as we can go, " says anthropologist William Cameron Chumlea of Wright State University. In the case of NBA players, their increase in height appears to result from the increasingly common practice of recruiting players from all over the world. Growth, which rarely continues beyond the age of 20, demands calories and nutrients-notably, protein-to feed expanding tissues. At the start of the 20th century, under-nutrition and childhood infections got in the way. But as diet and health improved, children and adolescents have, on average, increased in height by about an inch and a half every 20 years, a pattern known as the secular trend in height. Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, average height-5'9" for men, 5'4" for women-hasn't really changed since 1960. Genetically speaking, there are advantages to avoiding substantial height. During childbirth, larger babies have more difficulty passing through the birth canal. Moreover, even though humans have been upright for millions of years, our feet and back continue to struggle with bipedal posture and cannot easily withstand repeated strain imposed by oversize limbs. "There are some real constraints that are set by the genetic architecture of the individual organism, " says anthropologist William Leonard of Northwestern University. Genetic maximums can change, but don't expect this to happen soon. Claire C. Gordon, senior anthropologist at the Army Research Center in Natick, Mass. , ensures that 90 percent of the uniforms and workstations fit recruits without alteration. She says that, unlike those for basketball, the length of military uniforms has not changed for some time. And if you need to predict human height in the near future to design a piece of equipment, Gordon says that by and large, "you could use today's data and feel fairly confident. "

单选题Less meat and dairy in our diets could help reduce agricultural greenhouse gases by as much as 80% by 2055, according to a recent study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The researchers created global land-use model to project likely outcomes given different scenarios involving consumer dietary trends and changes in agriculture production methods. The models take into consideration population growth, the world economy, and other factors. The researchers found that, if meat and dairy consumption patterns remain constant of increase, the associated global agricultural omissions will increase significantly. On the other hand, a 25% reduction over the next 40 years would help bring levels to where they were around 1995. Methane and nitrous oxide in particular could be reduced if less meat and dairy is produced and consumed. These gases are caused largely by livestock waste and synthetic fertilizers. Around two-thirds of nitrous-oxide emissions come from agriculture—and most of that as a result of either raising animals or producing the feed used to raise them. Consumers' food choices, combined with what one PIK researcher terms "technical mitigation options on the producers side" could make an enormous impact on these emissions. While not nearly as much methane or nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, both are significantly more potent and they form substantial pieces of the greenhouse gas pie. Both of these gases trap heat and radiation in the atmosphere much more effectively than does carbon dioxide. The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency cites methane as being "21 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time period. " Nitrous oxide is more than 300 times more effective than CO 2 . While the PIK study doesn't detail exactly which consumer choices and eating habits can help reverse the trend, it seems clear that less is more when it comes to consuming meat and dairy products.

单选题Infertility is normally seen as a private matter. If a couple are infertile and wish they are not, that is sad. But there is understandable resistance in many countries to the idea that treatments intended to deal with this sadness—known collectively as assisted reproductive technologies, or ARTs—should be paid for out of public funds. Such funds are scarce, and infertility is not a life-threatening condition. However, two papers presented to the "State of the ART" conference held earlier this month in Lyon argue that in Europe, at least, there may be a public interest in promoting ARTs after all. The low fertility rate in many of that continent's more developed countries means their populations are ageing and shrinking. If governments want to change this, ARTs—most significantly in-vitro fertilization (IVF)— could offer at least part of a way to do so. As the conference heard, IVF does seem to be keeping up the numbers in at least one country. Tina Jensen of the University of Southern Denmark has just finished a study of more than 700 000 Danish women. She found that young women in Denmark have a significantly lower natural conception rate than in past decades. That is partly, but not entirely, because they are having their children later in life. The rest of the cause is unknown, though reduced sperm quality in men may be a factor. Whatever the cause, she also found that the effect has been almost completely compensated for by an increasing use of ARTs. Denmark ' s native population is more or less stable but some 3.9% of babies born there in 2003 were the result of IVF The comparable figure for another northern European country, Britain, was 1.5%. Without IVF, then, the number of Danes would be shrinking fast. That it is not may have something to do with the fact that in Denmark the taxpayer will cover up to six cycles of IVF treatment. In Britain, by contrast, couples are supposed to be entitled to three cycles. In practice, many of the local trusts that dish the money out do not pay for any cycles at all. Jonathan Grant, the head of the Cambridge branch of the Rand Corporation (an American think-tank) , believes this is shortsighted. His paper showed that if Britain supported IVF at the Danish level then its birth rate would probably increase by about 10 000 a year. The cost of offering six cycles to couples (and doing so in practice, rather than just in theory) would be an extra ￡250 m-430 m a year. That is not trivial, but Dr. Grant reckons it is cheaper than other ways of boosting the birth rate. Some countries, for example, have tried to bribe women into having more children by increasing child benefits. According to this calculations, raising such benefits costs between ￡50 000 and ￡100 000 a year for each additional birth procured. Ten thousand extra births each year would thus cost between ￡500 m and ￡1 billion. There are, of course, some disadvantages to promoting IVF In particular, women who use it tend to be older than those who conceive naturally, and that can lead to congenital problems in their children. But if the countries of Europe do wish to keep their populations up, making IVF more widely available might be a good way of doing so.

单选题Exercise is good for people, but most people really know very little about how to exercise properly. So when you try, you may run into trouble. Many people【C1】______that when specific muscles are exercised, the fat in the neighbouring area is "burned up". Yet the【C2】______is that exercise burns fat from all over the body. Studies show muscles which are not【C3】______lose their strength very quickly. To regain it needs 48 to 72 hours and exercise every other day will keep a normal level of physical strength. To【C4】______weight you should always "work up a good sweat" when exercising. No sweating only【C5】______body temperature to prevent over heating. This is nothing but water loss. 【C6】______you replace the liquid, you replace the weight. Walking is the best and easy-to-do exercise. It helps the circulation of blood throughout the body, and has a direct【C7】______on your overall feeling of health. Experience says that 20 minutes' exercise a day is minimum amount. 【C8】______your breathing doesn't return to normal state within minutes after you finish【C9】______. you've done【C10】______.

单选题Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, after heart disease. In the past, it was often considered a death sentence. But many patients now live longer【C1】______of improvements in discovery and treatment. Researchers say death【C2】______in the United States from all cancers combined have fallen for thirty years. Survival rates have increased for most of the top fifteen cancers in both men and women, and for cancers in【C3】______. The National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the number of cancer survivors. A cancer survivor is defined【C4】______anyone who has been found to have cancer. This would include current patients. The study covered the period from 1971 to 2001. The researchers found there are three【C5】______as many cancer survivors today as there were thirty years ago. In 1971, the United States had about three million cancer survivors. Today there are about ten million. The study also found that 64% of adults with cancer can expect to still be【C6】______in five years. Thirty years ago, the five-year survival rate was 50%. The government wants to【C7】______the five-year survival rate to 70% by 2010. The risk of cancer increases with age. The report says the majority of survivors are 65 years and older. But it says medical improvements have also helped children with cancer live【C8】______longer. Researchers say 80% of children with cancer will survive at least five years after the discovery. About 75% will survive at【C9】______ten years. In the 1970s, the five-year survival rate for children was about 50%. In the 1960s, most children did not survive cancer. Researchers say they expect more improvements in cancer treatment in the future. In fact, they say traditional cancer-prevention programs are not enough anymore. They say public health programs should also aim to support the【C10】______numbers of cancer survivors and their families.

单选题Some problems can be readily identified simply by looking around. These problems concern the pollution of our environment by technology as a result of sudden upsets in the physical, economic and social balance. The most obvious of these are the general pollution of our physical environment and the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources. Not so obvious as these, but just as painfully significant to some, are the disappearing and changing of jobs which overnight often create large groups of jobless citizens. Can technology be used to undo what it has done, replace what it has destroyed or substitute for what it has caused to disappear? No one knows. Many wonder whether or not all of the sources of pollution have yet been identified, whether or not they are being arrested and whether or not they will be prevented from recurring. Another set of problems relates to what technological advancement has done to the quality of life. An improved social life has not been unfortunately, either the goal or the chief beneficiary of technological change. Rather, any improvements that have occurred have been more accidental than intended. Too much has happened too fast. The changes demanded of marriage and family relationships remain largely unexamined. It is often a matter of "put up or shut up", and a person has to adapt his lifestyle to ever-changing conditions with little time for choice. The "no-move-no-advancement" type is an example of one such problem. Many people are coming to think that the reward is simply not worthy of the struggle, and they are taking jobs with less responsibility and lower pay.