For 40 years the sight of thousands of youngsters striding across the open moorland has been as much an annual fixture as spring itself. But the 2,400 school pupils who join the grueling Dartmoor Ten Tors Challenge next Saturday may be among the last to take part in the May tradition. The trek faces growing criticism from environmentalists who fear that the presence of so many walkers on one weekend threatens the survival of some of Dartmoor's internationally rare bird species. The Ten Tors Challenge takes place in the middle of the breeding season, when the slightest disturbance can jeopardize birds' chances of reproducing successfully. Experts at the RSPB and the Dartmoor National Park Authority fear that the walkers could frighten birds and even crush eggs. They are now calling for the event to be moved to the autumn, when the breeding season is over and chicks should be well established. Organisers of the event, which is led by about 400 Territorial Army volunteers, say moving it would be impractical for several reasons and would mean pupils could not train properly for the 55-mile trek. Dartmoor is home to 10 rare species of ground-nesting birds, including golden plovers, dunlins and lapwings. In some cases, species are either down to their last two pairs on the moor or are facing a nationwide decline. Emma Parkin, South-west spokeswoman for the PASPB, took part in the challenge as a schoolgirl. She said the society had no objections to the event itself but simply wanted it moved to another time of year. 'It is a wonderful activity for the children who take part but, having thousands of people walking past in one weekend when birds are breeding is hardly ideal,' she said. 'We would prefer it to take place after the breeding and nesting season is over. There is a risk of destruction and disturbance. If the walkers put a foot in the wrong place they can crush the eggs and if there is sufficient disturbance the birds might abandon the nest.' Helen Booker, an RSPB upland conservation officer, said there was no research into the scale of the damage but there was little doubt the walk was detrimental. 'If people are tramping past continually it can harm the chances of successful nesting. There is also the fear of direct trampling of eggs.' A spokesman for the Dartmoor National Park Authority said the breeding season on the moor lasted from early March to mid-July, and the Ten Tors Challenge created the potential for disturbance for March, when participants start training. To move the event to the autumn was difficult because children would be on holiday during the training period. There was a possibility that some schools in the Southwest move to a four-term year in 2004, 'but until then any change was unlikely. The authority last surveyed bird life on Dartmoor two year ago and if the next survey showed any further decline, it would increase pressure to move the Challenge,' he said. Major Mike Pether, secretary of the army committee that organises the Challenge, said the event could be moved if there was the popular will. 'The Ten Tors has been running for 42 years and it has always been at this time of the year. It is almost in tablets of stone but that's not to say we won't consider moving if there is a consensus in favour. However, although the RSPB would like it moved, 75 per cent of the people who take part want it to stay as it is,' he said. Major Pether said the trek could not be moved to earlier in the year because it would conflict with the lambing season, most of the children were on holiday in the summer, and the winter weather was too harsh. Datmoor National Park occupies some 54 sq km of hills topped by granite outcrops known as 'Tors' with the highest Tor-capped hill reaching 621m. The valleys and dips between the hills are often sites of bogs to snare the unwary hiker. The moor has long been used by the British Army as a training and firing range. The origin of the event stretches back to 1959 when three Army officers exercising on the moor thought it would provide a challenge for civilians as well as soldiers. In the first year 203 youngsters took up the challenges. Since then teams, depending on age and ability, face hikes of 35, 45 or 55 miles between 10 nominated Tors over two days. They are expected to carry everything they need to survive.

Passage Three The age at which young children begin to make moral discriminations about harmful actions committed against themselves or others has been the focus of recent research into the moral development of children. Until recently, child psychologists supported pioneer developmentalist Jean Piaget in his hypothesis that because of their immaturity, children under age seven do not take into account the intentions of a person committing accidental or deliberate harm, but rather simply assign punishment for transgressions on the basis of the magnitude of the negative consequences causeD. According to Piaget, children under age seven occupy the first stage of moral development, which is characterized by moral absolutism (rules made by authorities must be obeyed) and imminent justice (if rules are broken, punishment will be meted out). Until young children mature, their moral judgments are based entirely on the effect rather than the cause of a transgression. However, in recent research, Keasey found that six-year-old children not only distinguish between accidental and intentional harm, but also judge intentional harm as naughtier, regardless of the amount of damage produced. Both of these findings seem to indicate that children, at an earlier age than Piaget claimed, advance into the second stage of moral development, moral autonomy, in which they accept social rules but view them as more arbitrary than do children in the first stage. Keasey's research raises two key questions for developmental psychologists about children under age seven: do they recognize justifications for harmful actions, and do they make distinctions between harmfulacts that are preventable and those acts that have unforeseen harmful consequences? Studies indicate that justifications excusing harmful actions might include public duty, serf-defense, and provocation. For example, Nesdale and Rule concluded that children were capable of considering whether or not an aggressor's action was justified by public duty: five year olds reacted very differently to 'Bonnie wrecks Arm's pretend house' depending on whether Bonnie did it 'so somebody won't fall over it' or because Bonnie wanted 'to make Ann feel bad'. Thus, a child of five begins to understand that certain harmful actions, though intentional, can be justified; the constraints of moral absolutism no longer solely guide their judgments. Psychologists have determined that during kindergarten children learn to make subtle distinctions involving harm. Darley observed that among acts involving unintentional harm, six-year-old children just entering kindergarten could not differentiate between foreseeable, and thus preventable, harm and unforeseeable harm for which the perpetrator cannot be blamed. Seven months later, however, Darley found that these same children could make both distinctions, thus demonstrating that they had become morally autonomous.

What a sad sight, with all the shops ______ and the people gone.

网恋

Our football coach has worked hard to ______ a team spirit into the players.

transliteration

We watched carefully ______ the house.

desertification

One of the wrong notions about science is that many scientific discoveries have come about ______.

wet blanket

With some men dressing down and some other men flaunting their looks, it is really hard to tell they are gay or ______. .

Much as ______, I couldn't lend him the money because I simply didn't have that much spare cash.

SAARC

按揭贷款

When she ______, her mother was sitting by her bed.

bigamy

On New Year's Day, 50,000 inmates in Kenyan jails went without lunch. This was not some mass hunger strike to highlight poor living conditions. It was an extraordinary humanitarian gesture: the money that would have been spent on their lunches went to the charity Food Aid to help feed an estimated 3.5 million Kenyans who, because of a severe drought, are threatened with starvation. The drought is big news in Africa, affecting huge areas of east Africa and the Horn. If you are reading this in the west, however, you may not be aware of it—the media is not interested in old stories. Even if you do know about the drought, you may not be aware that it is devastating one group of people disproportionately: the pastoralists. There are 20 million nomadic or semi- nomadic herders in this region, and they are fast becoming some of the poorest people in the continent. Their plight encapsulates Africa's perennial problem with drought and famine. How so? It comes down to the reluctance of governments, aid agencies and foreign lenders to support the herders' traditional way of life. Instead they have tended to try to turn them into commercial ranchers or agriculturalists, even though it has been demonstrated time and again that pastoralists are well adapted to their harsh environments, and that moving livestock according to the seasons or climatic changes makes their methods far more viable than agriculture in sub-Saharan drylands. Furthermore, African pastoralist systems are often more productive, in terms of protein and cash per hectare, than Australian, American and other African ranches in similar climatic conditions. They make a substantial contribution to their countries' national economies. In Kenya, for example, the turnover of the pastoralist sector is worth $800 million per year. In countries such as Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Ethiopia, hides from pastoralists' herds make up over 10 percent of export earnings. Despite this productivity, pastoralists still starve and their animals perish when drought hits. One reason is that only a trickle of the profits goes to the herders themselves; the lion's share is pocketed by traders. This is partly because the herders only sell much of their stock during times of drought and famine, when they need the cash to buy food, and the terms of trade in this situation never work in their favour. Another reason is the lack of investment in herding areas. Funding bodies such as the World Bank and-USAID tried to address some of the problems in the 1960s, investing millions of dollars in commercial beef and dairy production. It didn't work. Firstly, no one bothered to consult the pastoralists about what they wanted. Secondly, rearing livestock took precedence over human progress. The policies and strategies of international development agencies more or less mirrored the thinking of their colonial predecessors. They were based on two false assumptions: that pastoralism is primitive and inefficient, which led to numerous failed schemes aimed at converting herders to modern ranching models; and that Africa's drylands can support commercial ranching. They cannot. Most of Africa's herders live in areas with unpredictable weather systems that are totally unsuited to commercial ranching. What the pastoralists need is support for their traditional lifestyle. Over the past few years, funders and policy-makers have been starting to get the message. One example is intervention by governments to ensure that pastoralists get fair prices for their cattle when they sell them in times of drought, so that they can afford to buy fodder for their remaining livestock and cereals to keep themselves and their families alive (the problem in African famines is not so much a lack of food as a lack of money to buy it). Another example is a drought early-warning system run by the Kenyan government and the World Bank that has helped avert livestock deaths. This is all promising, but more needs to be done. Some African governments still favour forcing pastoralists to settle. They should heed the latest scientific research demonstrating the productivity of traditional cattle-herding. Ultimately, sustainable rural development in pastoralist areas will depend on increasing trade, so one thing going for them is the growing demand for livestock products: there will likely be an additional 2 billion consumers worldwide by 2020, the vast majority in developing countries. To ensure that pastoralists benefit, it will be crucial to give them a greater say in local policies. Other key tasks include giving a greater say to women, who play critical roles in livestock production. The rich world should pay proper attention to the plight of the pastoralists. Leaving them dependent on foreign food aid is unsustainable and will lead to more resentment, conflict, environmental degradation and malnutrition. It is in the rich world's interests to help out.

She ______ thousands of dollars from the charity while appearing to be its best fundraiser.

It is not ______ much the language as the background that makes the book difficult to understand.

The old lady has developed a ______ cough which cannot be cured completely in as hort time.