Beijing - The public has responded with vigorous support for an NPC deputy’s proposal to extend the
Spring Festival holiday from three days to 10.
More than 78 percent of about 27,600 respondents to a poll on www.people.com.cn <http://www.
/> voted in favor of the idea of Li Jing, who is also the mayor of Meishan city in South-west
China"s Sichuan province. Li said the lunar new year festival holiday was too short for family reunions,
especially fog the nation"s 220 million migrant workers.
With hundreds of millions of people on the move during such a short time span,the holiday puts great
stress on the public transport system and suppresses tourism, he added. He suggested the ho1iday be
extended and cover the three adjacent (毗连的) weekends, which means the public could take a total
of 16 days off and floating population could spend the Lantern Festival,which falls on the 15th day of the
lunar new year, with their families.
People would then have sufficient time to fully enjoy the traditional holiday with their families, Li said
during an interview with People"s Daily Online on Friday.
Most online voters agreed that extending the holiday will ease the burden on public transport and
strengthen family ties. "The Spring Festival is an occasion for family reunions and should be longer than
the National Day holiday," one responder said in an online post. "Every year, I wish I could spend
more time at home for the Spring Festival, but I always have to go back to work. I hope the NPC will
approve this proposal.
" Another online comment read: "Extending the Spring Festival holiday could prevent the annual
transportation crush, which has in recent years resembled an exodus (出走) of fleeing refugees (难民)"".
Most of the about 13 percent who opposed the idea citied difficulties readjusting to work after the
break. Some pointed out that office moral (士气) was generally low during the first week after the holiday. "After thesix-day holiday, many people come back to work feeling absent-minded," one respondent said. Some who opposed the extension suggested adding the Lantern Festival as an official holiday.
Another 10 percent said lawmakers should carefully study the impacts before they make any decisions
on holidays.
B. People could spend more money and this could promote consumption.
C. The lunar new year festival holiday was too short for family reunions.
D. The holiday puts great stress on the public transport system and suppresses tourism
B. The holiday would be from the first day of the lunar year.
C. He added the Lantern Festival as an independent official holiday.
D. The public could take a total of 16 days off including the Lantern Festival.
B. a drink made by pressing fruit and used as juice
C. a traffic accident resulting from traveling too fast
D. people"s eagerness to go home to meet their families
B. people would not earn much money.
C. It would have a bad effect on China"s economy.
D. people wouldn"t be in a good working stag after so long a holiday.
Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged(持续很久的)periods—even if you also
exercise regularly—could be bad for your health. And it doesn"t matter where the sitting takes place—at
the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV— just the overall number of hours it occurs.
Several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart
attack or even die.
In an editorial published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Elin Ekblom-Bak of
the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences suggested that authorities rethink how they define
physical activity to highlight the dangers of sitting.
While health officials have issued guidelines recommending minimum (最少的) amounts of physical
activity, they haven’t suggested people try to limit how much time they spend in a seated position.
"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained
that genes regulating (调节) the amount of glucose (葡萄糖) and fat in the body start to shut down.
Even for people who exercise, spending long periods of time sitting at a desk is still harmful. Tim
Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organization, said people who exercise every
day—but still spend a lot of time sitting—might get more benefit if that exercise were spread across the
day, rather than in a single bout (一回).
Still, in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years,
researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, whether or not they exercised.
"We don"t have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the
Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. "But it seems the
more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary (坐着的) behavior, the better."
Figures from a U.S. survey in 2003-2004 found Americans spend more than half their time sitting,
from working at their desks to sitting in cars.
Experts said more research is needed to figure out just how much sitting is dangerous, and what might
be possible to offset those effects.
"People should keep exercising because that has a lot of benefits," Ekblom-Bak said. "But when
they"re in the office, they should try to interrupt sitting as often as possible," she said.
B. How To Avoid Sitting Too Much
C. Not Sitting Too Much While Working
D. More And More People Sit Too Much
B. those who often sit too much are sure to grow fat or suffer from a heart attack
C. you had better not sit for more than four hours in a single bout
D. regular exercise is effective to get rid of the side effect of sitting too much
B. It increases glucose and fat in the body.
C. It causes the genes to fail to balance the glucose and fat in the body.
D. It makes a person unable to exercise long enough in a day.
B. achieve
C. ignore
D. avoid
for a second day on Tuesday as residents trying to clean up the weekend storm that shocked the area
with two feet of snow.
Another big winter storm was expected to hit the U.S. mid-Atlantic on Tuesday and last through
Wednesday, the National Weather Service forecast on Monday. Projected snowfall is ranged from
10 to 20 inches, it said. The new storm was expected to hit other big cities along the East Coast,
including Baltimore and Philadelphia, which is still extending into New Jersey and New York. It would
pile on to the 32 inches of snow that fell in suburban Washington in the biggest snowfall to hit the city
in decades.
The Office of Personnel Management announced on Monday evening that Federal Government
Offices in the Washington area would be closed on Tuesday. Emergency employees were expected
to report for work in time, but non-emergency employees were excused. The Federal Government
was closed on Monday, though President Barack Obama still held meetings at the White House.
Schools and most businesses in the region also were shut.
In the county, about 80,000 people lost power on Saturday, and some customers still had no
electricity or heat on Monday. Many schools said classes would be canceled through Tuesday, even
before the latest storm warning.
On Monday, winter sunshine bathed the nation"s capital and the surrounding region, where people
dug out their driveways and sidewalks to finally start to clear streets in some residential neighborhoods.
Bus service on Monday was limited to just a small number of routes in the Washington, D.C.
Cold and snow blanketed much of the central United States this winter, slowing weight gain in cattle
and pigs, delaying livestock(牲畜)sales, and increasing feed costs for producers.
The new storm might also hit the Northeast, the nation"s largest market for heating fuel. The weekend
blast largely bypassed that region.
B. Weather Closes Government Offices a Second Day
C. A Big Snowstorm on the Way to America
D. More Cities Govered by Snow in America
B. estimated
C. melting
D. planned
B. a big snow hit the capital region on Monday
C. Washington was stricken by a big snow last weekend
D. Federal Government Agencies will have a holiday on Wednesday
B. the snowstorm will hit more big cities along the West Coast
C. the snowstorm will make 80,000 people live in darkness
D. Washington hasn"t suffered such a big snow for scores of years
to the whole body, researchers reported on Monday.
The study,published in the Archives of Dermatology,shows that smoking affects the skin all over
the body-even skin protected from the sun.
"We examined non-facial skin that was protected from the sun,and found that the total number of
packs of cigarettes smoked per day and the total. years a person has smoked were linked with the
amount of skin damage a person experienced," Dr. Yolanda Helfrich of the University of Michigan,who
led the study,said in a statement.
"In participants older than 65 years,smokers had significantly more fine wrinkling than nonsmokers.
Similar findings were seen in participants aged 45 to 65 years. "Helfrich"s team added in their report.
The researchers tested 82 people,smokers and nonsmokers,taking pictures of the inner right atms.
They ranged,in age from 22 to 91 and half were smokers. Independent judges decided how wrinkled
each person"s skin was.
When skin is exposed to sunlight,notably the face,it becomes coarse(粗糙的). Wrinkled and
discolored with a pale yellow tint,Helfrich"s team wrote.
Several previous studies have found that cigarette smoking conduces to premature(过早的)skin
aging as measured by facial wrinkles,the study said,but tittle has been done to measure the aging of skin
not exposed to light.
The report did not discuss die mechanism involved but previous research has found that cigarette
smoke,among other things,causes blood vessels(血管)beneath the skin to constrict (紧缩),reducing
blood supply to the skin.
Smoking can also damage the connective tissue that supports both die skin and the internal organs.
B. coarse
C. rough
D. discolored
B. encourage
C. prevent
D. stop
B. the kind and characteristics of skin
C. how long a person smokes
D. how long skin is under sunlight
B. it can make you feel tired
C. it can make skin come off
D. it can make blood run faster
B. advise people how to protect skin
C. warn people not to smoke again
D. introduce a new way of avoid skin aging
child psychologist.It is one of several "emotional agents" Borbolla has invented that are being
recognized in Mexico City as capable of gaining access to the inner lives of children.
Dulas, like all of these characters, has big eyes and radio antennas(天线). The characters
collectively go by the name Antenas because they all have antennas and come from a planet called
Antenopolis. Dulas knows nothing about life on earth, not even what a mother or father is. Wearing
rabbit slippers in hospital, he doesn"t like to talk with adults-so children can trust his companionship.
Over the past five years, Borbolla"s characters have been used to assist 2,000 children from 3 to
14 years old, and have been employed in three Mexico City hospitals and a center for disabilities in
another city, Morelia.
Researchers have been using puppets(木偶) to help children express and process their feelings for
decades. But Borbolla, who has been working with children for 30 years, has taken this kind of work
a step further.
The children meet the characters in a room, without adults present; doctors monitor with cameras.
They have to handle the information carefully. One principle of the work is that a doctor must not make
it known that he knows something that was said to an Antenas character privately. This preserves the
trust of the child"s relationship with the character.
Borbolla originally got the idea to use a drawing of a cartoon character to communicate with
children when she was working as a school psychologist in the 1980s. Years later, in private practice,
she worked with a puppet maker to develop a software version.She spent six years improving the tool.
"The psychologists I spoke with said the tool creates an environment of trust and understanding that
enables them to understand children"s issues more quickly than they imagined possible," said Borbolla.
To date, Antenas hasn"t been carefully studied, and Borbolla is working with researchers to examine
its effect. "I see how powerful it is," she told me. "It can be used to get into the souls of children."
B. was developed by a Mexican child
C. likes chatting with doctors and patients
D. is a cartoon character created by a psychologist
B. developed Antenas all on her own
C. spent sixteen years improving Antenas
D. started to create Antenas in the 1990s
B. their doctors have to stay with them
C. the characters will handle the information
D. doctors" involvement should be kept secret from them
B. it is expensive to use Antenas
C. Antenas is helpful to children
D. it is difficult to control Antenas
be minor heats of synchronized swimming (花样游泳) have received an unexpected change to the
men"s 100m final because of an embarrassing ticketing mistake.
The London 2012 Organizing Committee (Locog) confirmed on Wednesday that an error in its
ticket selling had led to four synchronized swimming competitions being oversold by 10, 000 tickets.
Locog and its ticket agent spent the Christmas period contacting ticket holders and offering them
alternatives that included the tickets they had applied for but unsuccessful. The changes need no additional cost. It has also offered to return any discrepancy (差额) if the new tickets cost less than the originals. Locog said the replacement tickets would come from a number of unsold seats across the Olympic
Games and that it was doing all it could to make up the error to the fans who bought tickets.
Locog said the error occurred in the summer, between the first and second round of ticket sales,
when a member of staff made a mistake, entering “20,000” into the computer rather than the correct
figure of 10,000 remaining tickets. The error was discovered when Locog checked the number of tickets
that had been sold against the final seating numbers, and began contacting ticket holders before Christmas.
Thousands of ticket holders have already struck lucky, changing to tickets for major events including
swimming and athletics finals, and in around 200 cases the hottest of all, the men’s 100m final. Locog said
the decision to award 100m final tickets was made because one of the synchronized swimming
competitions was on the same afternoon as the event, August 5.
B. will not enjoy the synchronized swimming events
C. will have to change their tickets to other games
D. have applied for tickets to the men’s 100m final
B. allowed the holders to apply for another ticket
C. would charge the discrepancy for changing the tickets
D. offered to change the tickets without any extra cost
B. the ticketing mistake
C. the Olympic Games
D. the additional cost
B. 10,000.
C. 20,000.
D. 30,000.
B. Thousands of ticket holders refused to change their tickets.
C. The men’s 100m final will take place on August 5, 2012.
D. The number of tickets for synchronized swimming is 10,000.
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