My kids tell me that I am "so 20th century", which troubles me. A person likes to feel that he is "with it", as we used to say in the 20th century. So I have been thinking how I might change myself into a true 21st-century man. Clearly, in my advanced state of age I would be foolish to attempt some wild leap into the contemporary fashion. And anyway, my distinctive taste attracts much favourable comment. But if my clothing is too characteristic to change, perhaps I should do something about my lifestyle. So last week I took myself to the NEC for the Smart Home Show which is "the exhibition dedicated to all the latest trends in smart home technology". It was a shock. How could I have lived for half a century without a fingerprint-operated front door ("Never lock yourself out of your home again!") Or vacuum cleaners that suck dust straight into a dustbin, via a system of pipes in your house walls (MI you have to do is rebuild your entire home.) Or automatic garden sprinklers which are so smart that they turn themselves off when it starts to rain Of course, you could just look out of the window, observe that it’s raining and turn them off yourself, but that would be so 20th century. Besides, those were just the simpler things. For the true smart-home owner, a plasma (等离子) TV fireplace is a must. At first glance it’s just an electric fire with a mantelpiece, but press your remote and a giant TV screen rises from the mantelpiece. "Thieves won’t even know it’s there," a spokesman claimed. Just as well. At £5,280, it would be a pity to have it broken. But the real revolution has happened in the bathroom. Never again need you feel cut off from world events as you go about your washing. Forget the mirrors that turn into TV screens. They’re old hat. The buzz in bathrooms now is all about heated towel-racks that turn into TVs. Enough! I was convinced: I want a smart home. There’s only one problem: The cost. You are looking at £18,000 to £25,000 for an average home. Hmm. I won’t be entering the 21st century just yet, then. What does the author think of buying the smart home products
A. He was interested, but found them too expensive.
B. He was fascinated, and determined to buy them.
C. He wasn’t attracted, and wouldn’t buy them.
D. He wasn’t sure, so he would rather wait and see.
Is it possible to be both fat and fit--not just fit enough to exercise, but fit enough to live as long as someone a lot lighter Not according to a 2004 study from the Harvard School of Public Health which looked at 115,000 nurses aged between 30 and 55. Compared with women who were both thin and active, obese (overweight) but active women had a mortality rate that was 91% higher. Though far better than the inactive obese (142% higher), they were still worse off than the inactive lean (5% higher). A similar picture emerged in 2008 after researchers examined 39,000 women with an average age of 54. Compared with active women of normal weight, the active but overweight were 54% more likely to develop heart disease. That’s settled, then. Or is it Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina, describes the official focus on obesity as an "obsession ... and it’s not grounded in solid data". Blair’s most fascinating study, in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007, took 2,600 people aged 60 and above, of various degrees of fatness, and tested their fitness on the exercise device, rather than asking them to quantify it themselves. This is an unusually rigorous approach, he claims, since many rival surveys ask participants to assess their own fitness, or ignore it as a factor altogether. "There is an ’association’ between obesity and fitness," he agrees, "but it is not perfect. As you progress towards overweight, the percentage of individuals who are fit does go down. But here’s a shock: among class Ⅱ obese individuals [with a body mass index between 35 and 39.9], about 40% or 45% are still fit. You simply cannot tell by looking whether someone is fit or not. When we look at these mortality rates in fat people who are fit, we see that the harmful effect of fat just disappears: their death rate during the next decade is half that of the normal weight people who are unfit." One day--probably about a hundred years from now--this fat-but-fit question will be answered without the shadow of a doubt. In the meantime, is there anything that all the experts agree on Oh yes: however much your body weighs, you’ll live longer if you move it around a bit. It can be learned that the 2008 research ______.
A. posed a challenge to the 2004 study
B. confirmed the findings of the 2004 study
C. solved the problems left behind by the 2004 study
D. had a different way of thinking from the 2004 study
Rubbish dumps throughout the industrial world are nearly full, heralding a crisis for city authorities as they look at alternative ways of dealing with the global garbage crisis. That problem is peculiar to fast-moving, wealthy societies, which increasingly demand more packaged goods. In New York State alone, residents have doubled their demand for packaged goods in the past thirty years. And the situation is not expected to ease, not least because of social trends. As more women transfer their production and management skills to commercial enterprises, demand for convenience products in the home continues to grow, says a report published by the Washington-based World Watch Institute. The only solution for a nation which now spends more on wrapping food than it pays farmers to produce it, is recycling on a grand scale for commercial as well as conservation reasons. The Institute wants multi-layered dustbins to be distributed to households, and people to be obliged to separate their waste into four categories: organic, glass and metals; paper; plastics and miscellaneous. It also believes it can only be a matter of time before such bins have to be made compulsory. Cynthia Pollock, the author of the report, entitled "Mining Urban Wastes: The Potential for Recycling", points out that "consumers and policy makers are just beginning to realize that there is not real ’away’ for throwaway". Pollock believes that recycling is the only alternative. "Although household wastes are usually thrown out with little regard for their remaining value, a list of the world’s discards would reveal a wealth of materials." And it is not just food; "Simply recovering the print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would leave 75,000 trees standing and reduce the energy used per ton of paper by up to three-quarters." Which of the following words is closest in meaning to "miscellaneous" in paragraph 4
A. wood
B. porcelain
C. liquid
D. farraginous
If the universality of immersion-style language programs, emergency test prep classes, tired college kids is any indication, cramming (临时抱佛脚) is a wildly popular study strategy. Professors frown upon it yet conspire by squeezing vast topics like "Evolution" or "World history 1914 to present" into the last week of a course. So is cramming effective or not A new study by UC-San Diego psychologists confirms what you may suspect deep down: The answer is no. Hurried memorization is a hopeless approach for retaining information. But it’s not all bad news. The team offers a precise formula for better study habits, and it doesn’t necessarily need dogged discipline and routine. To arrive at their prescription, the scientists tested the "spacing effect" on long-term memory. In other words, they wanted to know how the time gap between study sessions influences the ability to remember material on test day. They asked 1,354 volunteers to memorize 32 trivial facts, such as "Who invented snow golf." (Rudyard Kipling) and "What European nation consumes the most spicy Mexican food" (Norway). Participants reviewed the answers anywhere from several minutes to several months after first learning them, and then were tested up to a year later. The findings Students perform better when they space their study sessions rather than when they try to cram everything into their heads during one sitting. But for those who must cram, timing is everything. According to the researchers, if you have only one date on which to study, choose a day that’s closer to when you first learned the material than when you take the test--but not too close. For instance, if you have a French lesson on Monday and a quiz the following Monday, you should study on Wednesday for maximum retention. Tuesday is too early and Sunday is too late. If you want to remember something for a year, wait about a month to review what you learned. Hal Pashler, one of the lead authors, suspects that most crammers don’t realize the error of their ways. "Even in the scientific community, cram-type summer courses on new research methods are extremely popular," he told me in an email. And I have never heard people who take these courses even notice the fact that they are a perfect prescription for rapid forgetting." By mentioning the science community, Hal Pashler means to say that ______.
A. people are not fully aware of the problems with cramming
B. science people should take the lead in giving up cramming
C. forgetting is one of the major negative effects of cramming
D. it is important to develop better study habits than cramming