全世界 糖尿病 (diabetes)患者共有3．66亿。中国有高达9200多万患者，居世界首位。也就是说，平均每10个成年人中就有一人被确诊患有这个慢性疾病。此外，还有1．48亿中国人处于 糖尿病前期 (pre-diabetic)。令人担心的是，这个数字预计会继续攀升。专家称生活方式上的一系列因素，如不健康的饮食、缺乏身体锻炼、抽烟以及酗酒都会增加罹患糖尿病的几率。除了上述的不良生活习惯外，日益增多的老龄化人口也是造成糖尿病患者数量上升的原因。

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Do Britain's Energy Firms Serve the Public Interest?[A] Capitalism is the best and worst of systems. Left to itself, it will embrace the new and uncompromisingly follow the logic of prices and profit, a revolutionary accelerator for necessary change. But it can only ever react to today's prices, which cannot capture what will happen tomorrow. So, left to itself, capitalism will neglect both the future and the cohesion of the society in which it trades.[B] What we know, especially after the financial crisis of 2008, is that we can't leave capitalism to itself. If we want it to work at its best, combining its doctrines with public and social objectives, there is no alternative but to design the markets in which it operates. We also need to try to add in wider obligations than the simple pursuit of economic logic. Otherwise, there lies disaster.[C] If this is now obvious in banking, it has just become so in energy. Since 2004, consumers' energy bills have nearly tripled, far more than the rise in energy prices. The energy companies demand returns nearly double those in mass retailing. This would be problematic at any time, but when wages in real terms have fallen by some 10% in five years it constitutes a crisis. John Major, pointing to the mass of citizens who now face a choice between eating or being warm—as he made the case for a high profits tax on energy companies—drove home the social reality. The energy market, as it currently operates, is maladaptive and illegitimate. There has to be changed.[D] The design of this market is now universally recognised as wrong, universally, that is, excepting the regulator and the government. The energy companies are able to disguise their cost structures because there is no general pool into which they are required to sell their energy—instead opaquely striking complex internal deals between their generating and supply arms. Yet this is an industry where production and consumption is 24/7 and whose production logic requires such energy pooling. The sector has informally agreed, without regulatory challenge, that it should seek a supply margin of 5%—twice that of retailing.[E] On top the industry also requires long-term price guarantees for investment in renewables and nuclear without any comparable return in lowering its target cost of capital. The national grid, similarly privately owned, balances its profit maximising aims with a need to ensure security of supply. And every commitment to decarbonise British energy supply by 2030 is passed on to the consumer, rich and poor alike, whatever their capacity to pay. It will also lead to negligible new investment unless backed by government guarantees and subsidies. It could scarcely be worse—and with so much energy capacity closing in the next two years constitutes a first-order national crisis.[F] The general direction of reform is clear. Energy companies should be required to sell their electricity into a pool whose price would become the base price for retail. This would remove the ability to mask the relationship between costs and prices: retail prices would fall as well as rise clearly and unambiguously as pool prices changed.[G] The grid, which delivers electricity and gas into our homes and is the guarantor that the lights won't go out, must be in public ownership, as is Network Rail in the rail industry. It should also be connected to a pan-European grid for additional security. Green commitments, or decisions to support developing renewables, should be paid out of general taxation to take the poll tax element out of energy bills, with the rich paying more than the poor for the public good. Because returns on investment take decades in the energy industry, despite what free market fundamentalists argue, the state has to assume financial responsibility of energy investment as it is doing with nuclear and renewables.[H] The British energy industry has gone from nationalisation to privatisation and back to government control in the space of 25 years. Although the energy industry is nominally in private hands, we have exactly the same approach of government picking winners and dictating investment plans that was followed with disastrous consequences from the Second World War to the mid 1980s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the consumer got unfair treatment because long-term investment plans and contracts promoted by the government required electricity companies to use expensive local coal.[I] The energy industry is, once again, controlled by the state. The same underlying drivers dictate policy in the new world of state control. It is not rational economic thinking and public-interested civil servants that determine policy, but interest groups. Going back 30 years, it was the coal industry—both management and unions—and the nuclear industry that dictated policy. Tony Benn said he had "never known such a well-organised scientific, industrial and technical lobby". Today, it is green pressure groups, EU parliamentarians and commissioners and, often, the energy industry itself that are loading burdens on to consumers. When the state controls the energy industry, whether through the back or the front door, it is vested interests (既得利益) that get their way and the consumer who pays.[J] So how did we get to where we are today? In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the industry was entirely privatised. It was recognised that there were natural monopoly elements and so prices in these areas were regulated. At the same time, the regulator was given a duty to promote competition. From 1998, all domestic energy consumers could switch supplier for the first time and then wholesale markets were liberalised, allowing energy companies to source the cheapest forms of energy. Arguably, this was the high water mark of the liberalisation of the industry.[K] Privatisation was a great success. Instead of investment policy being dictated by the impulses of government and interest groups, it became dictated by long-term commercial considerations. Sadly, the era of liberalised markets, rising efficiency and lower bills did not last long. Both the recent Labour governments and the coalition have pursued similar policies of intervention after intervention to send the energy industry almost back to where it started.[L] One issue that unites left and many on the paternalist right is that of energy security. We certainly need government intervention to keep the lights on and ensure that we are not over-dependent on energy from unstable countries. But it should also be noted that there is nothing more insecure than energy arising from a policy determined by vested interests without any concern for commercial considerations. Energy security will not be achieved by requiring energy companies to invest in expensive sources of supply and by making past investments redundant through regulation. It will also not be achieved by making the investment environment even more uncertain. Several companies all seeking the cheapest supplies from diverse sources will best serve the interests of energy security.[M] The UK once had an inefficient and expensive energy industry. After privatisation, costs fell as the industry served the consumer rather than the mining unions and pro-nuclear interests. Today, after a decade or more of increasing state control, we have an industry that serves vested interests rather than the consumer interest once again. Electricity prices before taxes are now 15% higher than the average of major developed nations. Electricity could be around 50% cheaper without government interventions. We must liberalise again and not complete the circle by returning to nationalisation.

It began with some marshmallows(棉花软糖). In the 1960s Walter Mischel, a psychologist then working at Stanford University, started a series of experiments on young children. A child was left alone for 15 minutes with a marshmallow or similar treat, with the promise that, if it remained uneaten at the end of this period, a second would be added. Some of the children, who were aged four or five at the time, yielded to temptation before time was up. Others resisted, and held out for the reward. Dr. Mischel then followed the children's progress as they grew up. Those who had resisted, he found, did better at school than those who had given in. As adults they got better jobs, were less likely to use drugs and got into trouble with the law less frequently. Moreover, children's family circumstances suggested that impulsive behavior was as much learned as inherited. This suggested that it could be unlearned—improving the child in question's chances in life. Study after study has confirmed Dr. Mischel's insight. However, recent observations, however, raise the possibility that developing self-control is not always an unalloyed(纯粹的)good. Work published two years ago by Gene Brody of the University of Georgia, who looked at a group of young black Americans, showed that those who exhibited self-control as teenagers did indeed get the expected benefits. But if such self-controllers came from deprived backgrounds, they developed higher blood pressure, were more likely to be obese and had higher levels of stress hormones than their less-self-controlled peers. That correlation did not apply to people who started farther up the social ladder. Dr. Brody and his colleagues have followed this study with one that comes to an equally astonishing conclusion: for people born at the bottom of the social heap, self-control speeds up the process of ageing. Dr. Brody and his colleagues followed almost 300 black American teenagers of different backgrounds as they aged from 17 to 22. For the first few years the researchers assessed their volunteers' levels of self-control, and also looked for signs of depression, aggression and drug use. They assessed, too, those volunteers' socioeconomic backgrounds. But the last examination, when participants were 22 years old, was different. Then, the researchers took a blood sample, recorded the DNA-methylation(DNA甲基化)patterns of cells in it, and worked out how much these deviated from the pattern expected at that particular age. As the study shows, for people from high-status backgrounds, higher self-control meant lower cellular ages. For those whose background was low-status, the reverse was true. Dr. Brody's findings are both intriguing and worrying. The research into gene methylation suggests changing methylation patterns are a common response to changing circumstances as well as changing age, as the body's physiology struggles to keep up. Fortunately, people can change their circumstances in rational ways: the lesson of the marshmallows shows that. If Dr. Brody's result is confirmed, the challenge it poses will be to work out how to avoid the adverse effects of self-control.

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New Discoveries of Public TransportA)A new study conducted for the World Bank by Murdoch University's Institute for Science and Technology Policy(ISTP)has demonstrated that public transport is more efficient than cars. The study compared the proportion of wealth poured into transport by thirty-seven cities around the world. This included both the public and private costs of building, maintaining and using a transport system.B)The study found that the Western Australian city of Perth is a good example of a city with minimal public transport. As a result, 17% of its wealth went into transport costs. Some European and Asian cities, on the other hand, spent as little as 5%. Professor Peter Newman, ISTP Director, pointed out that these more efficient cities were able to put the difference into attracting industry and jobs or creating a better place to live.C)According to Professor Newman, the larger Australian city of Melbourne is a rather unusual city in this sort of comparison. He describes it as two cities: "A European city surrounded by a car-dependent one". Melbourne's large tram network has made car use in the inner city much lower, but the outer suburbs have the same car-based structure as most other Australian cities. The explosion in demand for accommodation in the inner suburbs of Melbourne suggests a recent change in many people' s preferences as to where they live.D)Newman says this is a new, broader way of considering public transport issues. In the past, the case for public transport has been made on the basis of environmental and social justice considerations rather than economics. Newman, however, believes the study demonstrates that "the auto-dependent city model is inefficient and grossly inadequate in economic as well as environ-mental terms".E)Bicycle use was not included in the study but Newman noted that the two most "bicycle friendly" cities considered—Amsterdam and Copenhagen—were very efficient, even though their public transport systems were—"reasonable but not special".F)It is common for supporters of road networks to reject the models of cities with good public transport by arguing that such systems would not work in their particular city. One objection is climate. Some people say their city could not make more use of public transport because it is either too hot or too cold. Newman rejects this, pointing out that public transport has been successful in both Toronto and Singapore and, in fact, he has checked the use of cars against climate and found "zero correlation".G)When it comes to other physical features, road lobbies are on stronger ground. For example, Newman accepts it would be hard for a city as hilly as Auckland to develop a really good rail network. However, he points out that both Hong Kong and Zurich have managed to make a success of their rail systems, heavy and light respectively, though there are few cities in the world as hilly.H)In fact, Newman believes the main reason for adopting one sort of transport over another is politics: "The more democratic the process, the more public transport is favoured." He considers Portland, Oregon, a perfect example of this. Some years ago, federal money was granted to build a new road. However, local pressure groups forced a referendum over whether to spend the money on light rail instead. The rail proposal won and the railway worked spectacularly well. In the years that have followed, more and more rail systems have been put in, dramatically changing the nature of the city. Newman notes that Portland has about the same population as Perth and had a similar population density at the time.I)In the UK, travel times to work had been stable for at least six centuries, with people avoiding situations that required them to spend more than half an hour travelling to work. Trains and cars initially allowed people to live at greater distances without taking longer to reach their destination. However, public infrastructure did not keep pace with urban sprawl, causing massive congestion problems which now make commuting times far higher.J)There is a widespread belief that increasing wealth encourages people to live farther out where cars are the only viable transport. The example of European cities refutes that. They are often wealthier than their American counterparts but have not generated the same level of car use. In Stockholm, car use has actually fallen in recent years as the city has become larger and wealthier. A new study makes this point even more starkly. Developing cities in Asia, such as Jakarta and Bangkok, make more use of the car than wealthy Asian cities such as Tokyo and Singapore. In cities that developed later, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank discouraged the building of public transport and people have been forced to rely on cars— creating the massive traffic jams that characterize those cities.K)Newman believes one of the best studies on how cities built for cars might be converted to rail use is The Urban Village report, which used Melbourne as an example. It found that pushing everyone into the city centre was not the best approach. Instead, the proposal advocated the creation of urban villages at hundreds of sites, mostly around railway stations. L)It was once assumed that improvements in telecommunications would lead to more dispersal in the population as people were no longer forced into cities. However, the ISTP team' s research demonstrates that the population and job density of cities rose or remained constant in the 1980s after decades of decline. The explanation for this seems to be that it is valuable to place people working in related fields together. "The new world will largely depend on human creativity, and creativity flourishes where people come together face-to-face."

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The world-famous Belgian has arrived in Britain with his equally famous dog for a five-month stay—nearly 70 years after his first visit. Tintin, the eternally youthful reporter who only was ever known to file one story in all his adventures, is celebrating his 75th birthday this year with a new exhibition at London's National Maritime Museum. Tintin at Sea is a collection of original drawings by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi—more commonly known as Herge which was the French-speaking pronunciation of his reversed initial RG— and some of the artifacts and models that inspired him. "Herge had a lifelong fascination with the sea and was above all a person who insisted on detail," the museum's director Roy Clare told reporters at a preview of the exhibition which opens to the public on Wednesday and runs to September 5. Tintin, with his trademark quiff and plus-four trousers, traveled all over the world on adventures that took him and his white terrier known as Snowy in English and Milou in French from Tibet to America and Iceland to Africa. Books of his adventures have been translated into 60 languages and have sold 200 million copies since the comic strip character first saw the light of day in 1929. Although the stories took Tintin and his irascible companion Captain Haddock as far as the moon, the sea is a recurring theme, in stories such as The Crab with the Golden Claws, Red Rackham's Treasure and The Secrets of the Unicorn. Herge, who only traveled widely after the success of his creation, was a self-taught artist. He stayed in Belgium through World War Two and was accused and cleared of collaboration immediately afterwards, although he suffered a period of being an exile as a result. He was also accused of racism in some of Tintin's earlier adventures. The reporter only once travelled to Britain, in the story The Black Isle, published in 1938. "Here you have four famous Belgians," Joren Vandeweyer, the country's cultural attache(大使随员)to Britain, told reporters. "Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and of course Herge himself, back after 66 years."

Some marriages seem to collapse so suddenly that you'd need a crystal ball to predict their demise(灭亡). In other cases, though, the seeds of marital【C1】______are not only easier to see but they may be planted even before the honeymoon bills come【C2】______According to UCLA psychologist Thomas Bradbury, Ph. D., the way a newlywed【C3】______when his or her spouse is facing a personal problem is a surprisingly good window into their marital future. Bradbury and Lauri Pasch, Ph. D., invited 57 couples, all married less than six months, to discuss a difficulty that each partner was having. While some couples proved to be superstars at providing emotional support, others were【C4】______inept(笨拙的). Two years later, nine of the couples had already【C5】______and five other marriages were intact but hanging by a thread. These 14 couples, it turned out, had been far less likely to provide support to one another as newlyweds than the other 43 couples whose marriages were【C6】______Bradbury thinks a couple's【C7】______to help each other through tough times is what often blossoms into full-fledged marital discord—and【C8】______divorce. All of which suggests an obvious antidote to the sky-high divorce rate: if couples can learn how to provide emotional support before they marry, they【C9】______a better chance of staying together. The trouble, Bradbury says, is that couples who go for premarital【C10】______—where they can learn such skills—tend to be the ones with a lesser risk for marital problems in the first place. A)thriving B)comments C)inability D)regretfully E)committing F)dissolution G)stand H)intends I)due J)reacts K)ultimately L)durable M)split N)regularly O)counseling

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黄金周 (the Golden Week)是指连续7天的全国性假期。1999年，中国开始推行黄金周政策。从那以后，黄金周通过鼓励人们旅游和消费，丰富了人们的日常生活，促进了社会经济的发展。然而不可否认，黄金周带来的问题也日益明显：交通拥堵、旅游景点人满为患以及物价上涨。2012年，中国政府宣布重大节假日期间全国高速公路免收通行费，其中就包括春节和国庆两个7天假期，这一政策从某种程度上又导致了出行车辆和人数的增加。

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快递服务呈现多元化(diversification)趋势，国有、民营和外资快递公司共存，相互竞争。

避暑山庄原为清代皇帝避暑和从事各种政治活动的场所，见证了清朝二百多年的繁荣与衰败。