When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies.Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modernday Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m 20 years later, even though the world’s population increased by 1.6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it ahost of interesting policy dilemmas.As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world’s biggest public-health issue today—the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organisation labelled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast.Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming (see survey) and new figures suggest that over the past year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century’s dining to excess. And, everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That’s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them. The author's attitude towards the problem of growing fat can be best described as().
A. worried.
B. indifferent.
C. objective.
D. pessimistic.
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Text 4As the twentieth century began, the importance of formal education in the United States increased. The frontier had mostly disappeared and by 1910 most Americans lived in towns and cities. Industrialization and the bureaucratization of economic life combined with a new emphasis upon credentials and expertise to make schooling increasingly important for economic and social mobility. Increasingly, too, schools were viewed as the most important means of integrating immigrants in to American society.The arrival of a great wave of southern and eastern European immigrants at the turn of the century coincided with and contributed to an enormous expansion of formal schooling. By 1920 schooling to age fourteen or beyond was compulsory in most states, and the school year was greatly lengthened. Kindergartens, vacation schools, extracurricular activities, and vocational education and counseling extended the influence of public schools over the lives of students, many of whom in the larger industrial cities were the children of immigrants. Classes for adult immigrants were sponsored by public schools, corporations, Unions, churches, and other agencies.Reformers early in the twentieth century suggested that education programs should suit the needs of specific populations. Immigrant women were one such population. Schools tried to educate young women so they could occupy productive places in the urban industrial economy, and one place many educators considered appropriate for women was the home.Although looking after the house and family was familiar to immigrant women. American education gave homemaking a new definition. In preindustrial economies, homemaking had meant the production as well as the consumption of goods, and it commonly included income-producing activities both inside and outside the home, in the highly industrialized early twentieth-century, United States. However, overproduction rather than scarcity was becoming a problem. Thus, the ideal American homemaker was viewed as a consumer rather than a producer. Schools trained women to be consumer homemakers cooking, shopping, decorating, and caring for children "efficiently" in their own homes, or if economic necessity demanded, as employees in the homes of others. Subsequent reforms have made these notions seem quite out-of-date. The phrase "coincided with" in the first sentence of Para. 2 is closest in meaning to ()
A. was influenced by
B. happened at the same time as
C. began to grow rapidly
D. ensured the success of
Text 3Under certain circumstances, the human body must cope with gases at greater-than-normal atmospheric pressure. For example, gas pressures increase rapidly during a dive made with scuba gear because the breathing equipment allows divers to stay underwater longer and dive deeper.The pressure exerted on the human body increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth in seawater, so that at 30 meters in seawater a diver is exposed to a pressure of about 4 atmospheres. The pressure of the gases being breathed must equal the external pressure applied to the body, otherwise breathing is very difficult. Therefore all of the gases in the air breathed by a scuba diver at 40 meters are present at five times their usual pressure. Nitrogen, which composes 80 per cent of the air we breathe, usually causes a balmy feeling of well-being at this pressure. At a depth of 5 atmospheres, nitrogen causes symptoms resembling alcohol intoxication, known as nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis apparently results from a direct effect on the brain of the large amounts of nitrogen cause under these pressurized helium does not exert a similar narcotic effect.As a scuba diver descends, the pressure of nitrogen in the lungs increases. Nitrogen then diffuses from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to body tissues. The reverse occurs when the diver surfaces; the nitrogen pressure in the lungs falls and the nitrogen diffuses from the tissues into the blood, and from the blood into the lungs. If the return to the surface is too rapid, nitrogen in the tissues and blood cannot diffuse out rapidly enough and nitrogen bubbles are formed. They can cause severe pains, particularly around the joints.Another complication may result if the breath is held during ascent. During ascent from a depth of 10 meters, the volume of air in the lungs will double because the air pressure at the surface is only half of what it was at 10 meters. This change in volume may cause the lungs to distend and even rupture. This condition is called air embolism. To avoid this event, a diver must ascend slowly, never at a rate exceeding the rise of the exhaled air bubbles, and must exhale during ascent. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following presents the greatest danger to diver()
A. Pressurized helium.
B. Nitrogen diffusion.
C. Nitrogen bubbles.
D. An air embolism.
At the beginning of the century, medical scientists made a surprising discovery: that we are (1) not just of flesh and blood but also of time. They were able to (2) that we all have an internal "body clock" which (3) the rise and fall of our body energies, making us different from one day to the (5) . These forces became known as biorhythms: they create the (5) in our everyday life.The (6) of an internal "body clock" should not be too surprising, (7) the lives of most living things are dominated by the 24-hour night-and-day cycle. The most obvious (8) of this cycle is the (9) we feel tired and fall asleep at night and become awake and (10) during the day. (11) the 24-hour rhythm is interrupted, most people experience unpleasant side effects.(12) , international aeroplane travelers often experience "jet lag" when traveling across time (13) . People who are not used to (14) work can find that lack of sleep affects their work performance.(15) the daily rhythm of sleeping and waking, we also have other rhythms which (16) .longer than one day and which influence wide areas of our lives. Most of us would agree that we feel good on (17) days and net so good on others. Sometimes we are (18) fingers and thumbs but on other days we have excellent coordination. There are times when we appear to be accident-prone, or when our temper seems to be on a short fuse. Isn’t it also strange (19) ideas seem to flow on some days but at other times are (20) nonexistent Musicians, painters and writers often talk about "dry spells". Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A,B,C or D on ANSWER SHEET Ⅰ.20()
A. last
B. move
C. live
D. survive
Text 2The more women and minorities make their way into the ranks of management, the more they seem to want to talk a bout things formerly judged to be best left unsaid. The newcomers also tend to see office matters with a fresh eye, in the process sometimes coming up with critical analyses of the forces that shape everyone’ s experience in the organization.Consider the novel views of Harvey Coleman of Atlanta on the subject of getting ahead.Coleman is black. He spent 11 years with IBM, half of them working in management department, and now serves as a consultant to the likes of AT & T, Coca Cola, Prudential, and Merch. Coleman says that based on what he’s seen at big companies, he weighs the different elements that make for long term career success as follows: performance counts a mere 10%; image 30%; and exposure, a full 60%.Coleman concludes that excellent job performance is so common these days that while doing your work well may win you pay increases, it won’t secure you the big promotion.He finds that advancement more often depends on how many people know you and your work, and how high up they are. Ridiculous beliefs Not too many people, especially many women and members of minority races who, like Coleman, feel that the scales have dropped from their eyes."Women and blacks in organizations work under false beliefs, "says Kaleel Jamison, a New York based management consultant who helps corporations deal with these issues. "They think that if you work hard, you’ 11 get ahead that someone in authority will reach down and give you a promotion." She added, "Most women and blacks are so frightened that people will think they’ve gotten ahead because of their sex or color that they play down their visibility." Her advice to those folks: learn the ways that white males have traditionally used to find their way into the spotlight. The reason why women and blacks play down their visibility is that they()
A. know that someone in authority will reach down and give them a promotion
B. don't want people to think that their promotions were due to sex or color
C. don't want to give people the impression that they work under false beliefs
D. believe they can get promoted by reason of their sex or color