throw the empty bottle in the recycling bin.makes you feel pretty good about yourself, right?
It shouldn"t. Even when the bottles are recycled, there are all kinds of otherconsequences of
swallowing bottled water, says Melissa Peffers, the air-quality program manager for
Environmental Defense.
The containers are often filled in foraway lands, then shipped from abroad,and stored in
refrigerators at your local store. Compare that with the influence on environment of turning
on your tap ,filling a glass,and drinking up!
Anyone who is choosing bottled water for health reasons ismisguided,says Peffers,"Most
bottled water is just tap water." And what comes out of your tap is carefully monitored to
follow the strictrules. Consider another fact that bottled water is surprisingly expensive.
especially when compared with the altemative,which is almost free ,andit is astonishing that
America"s desire for bottled water seems impassibleto satisfy,reaching nearly 30 billion
bottles a year.
"My parents" generation never had bottled water, "saysIsabelle Silverman,an
Environinental Defense legal adviser. She hasmade a commitment to going bottle free."You
don"t need to fetch ithome from the store,and it"s cheaper, " she adds
Bottled water"s role as a status symbol needs to change,Pefferspoints out. So when a waiter
at an expensive restaurant offers"Andwhat"s your drink?"that"s no reason to forget your
conviction(信念). "Don"t be afraid to say,"I"ll have tap." Say it loud enoughthat the other
tables nearby can hear you,"Peffers says,"And thenspend that money on a dessert. "
B. shouldn"t feel good about drinkinl an expensive brand H2O
C. shouldn"t be content with just recycling empty bottles
D. shouldn"t be satisfied with drinking only bottled water
B. more likely to be polluted
C. healthier than bottled water
D. less convenient than bottled water
B. abandoning bottled water
C. recycling used water bottles
D. providing free water containers
B. To advise them to save the money for one more dessert.
C. To remind them to be aware of their social status.
D. To persuade them to speak confidently in public.
likely to suffer from colds, according to a new study. " It"spossiblethatbeingupbeathelpsthe
bodyfight illnesses", says Sheldon Cohen, the study"s lead researcher from Camegie Mellon
University( CMU) in Pittsburgh.
In a previous study,Cohen and his colleagues put cold-causing viruses into the noses
of 334 healthy adults. People who tended to be cheerful and lively were least likely to
develop sniffles, coughs , and other cold symptoms. People who showed positive feelings
were also less likely to mention symptoms to their doctors , even whenmedical tests
detected those symptoms.
Those findings were interesting, but they didn"t prove that a person"s attitude affects
whether he or she gets sick. Instead,it was still possible that a person"s underlying
personality is what matters.Evidence suggests, for instance, that certain people are
naturally more likely to be outgoing and optimistic , with high self-esteem and a sense
of control over life. This would mean that who we are, not how we feel, ultimately
decides our chances of catching colds.
To figure out which mattered more ( personality or emotions) , the CMU team
interviewed 193 healthy adults. The researchers talked to each person over the phone
every evening for 2 weeks. At the end of the interviewing period, people got nose drops
that contained either cold or flu viruses. Then, each person stayed in an isolated room
for 5 0r 6 days. The results showed that everyone in the study was equally likely to get
infected. Their symptoms, however, differed depending on the types of emotions that
they had reported over the previous 2 weeks. Among those who reported good moods
and had been infected with the flu virus, for example,28 percent developed coughs and
stuffy noses. On the other hand, those symptoms struck 41 percent of people who had
been less upbeat.
B. An Interesting Way to Beat Colds
C. Be Outgoing and Optimistic to Fight Colds
D. What Matters More, Personality or Emotions?
B. developed cold symptoms more slowly
C. were less likely to have cold symptoms detected
D. were less likely to feel cold symptoms
C. Emotions.D. Attitudes.
B. something that results in cold
C. signs that something exists , especially something bad
D. changes in your body or mind that show that you are not healthy
When one person gains weight , their close friends oftenfollow. Researchers have just
offered evidence in a study that says obesity (肥胖) appears to spread through social ties.
But the findings might also offer hope.
If friends help make obesity acceptable , then they might also be influential in losing the
fat.The researchers note that support groups are already an effective tool in dealing with
other socially influenced problems , likealcoholism (酗酒 ) .
The findings appeared in the New EngLand Journal of Medicine. The researchers used
information collected from 12, 000 people. It was collected between 1972 and 2003 as
part of the Framingham Heart Study.
The information was highly detailed. There was even contact information(联络信息 )
for close friends of the people in the study.
The researchers examined more than 40 , 000 social ties. They found a person"s
chances of becoming severely overweight increased by 50% if a friend had become
obese.
A sister or brother of a person who became obese had a 40% increased chance of
becoming obese. The risk for a wife or husband was a little less than that.
Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School was a lead researcher in the study.
He says there is a direct causal relationship (因果关系) betweena persongetting fatand
being followed in weight gain by a friend.
The study found that the sex of the friends was also an influence. In same-sex
friendship, a person had a 71%increased risk of becoming obese. Men had a 44%
increased risk of becoming obese after weight gainin a brother. In sisters ,it was 67% .
The researchers also considered the effect of where people lived in relation to each
other. James Fowler of the University of California,was the other lead expert. He says
a friend who lives a few hundred kilometers away has as much influence as one in the
same neighhorhood. He says the study demonstrates the need to consider that a major
part of people"s health is tied to their social connections.
Both researchers say their research shows that obesity is not just a private medical
issue , but a public health problem.
B. Friends might also play a part in losing weight.
C. One might have positive influence on one"s friend.
D. Friendship may have little to do with one"s health.
B. Social problems like alcoholism are easy to deal with.
C. Friends usually don"t follow each other to lose weight.
D. One might influence others on their social behavior.
B. 40%
C. 67%
D. 71%
B. one"s health has nothing to do with friends
C. social connections have effects on one"s life
D. a friend living faraway has the same influence as one"s neighbor
B. friends living closer have greater influence on one"s health
C. social relationship is closely connected with people"s health
D. people"s physical condition is subject to social connections
Starving polar bears are eating one another in the Arctic. Flowers are blooming
(盛开) too soon and die. The ice caps are melting so fast that rising water levels will
threaten coastal towns along Florida within several decades. These are just a few
examples of the terrible consequences of climate change discovered by a new research
in Nature that paints a dark portrait of what a warming world will look like in the years
to come.
The researchers analyzed 829 abnormal phenomena-including melting glaciers
(冰川)-along with nearly 30, 000 changes in plants and animals.and found that about
90% of them are in sync
(同步) with scientists" predictions about how global warming will change the planet.
"In the past three decades, average global temperatures have risen about 0. 60C
and are projected to jump by about l.7℃ by the end of the century," says Cynthia
Rosenzweig, who leads the Climate Impacts Group at NASA"s Goddard Institute
for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York. " We"ve already seen that
a relatively low amount of warming, "she says , " can result in a broad range of changes. "
The unnatural warming caused by man-made greenhouse gases , especially carbon
dioxide produced by cars and coal-powered plants, brings trouble for entire ecosystems.
In North America alone, scientists have identified 89species of plants . such as the
American holly , which have flowered earlier in the spring. In Spain , apple trees bloom
35 days ahead of schedule. in response to the higher temperatures. Other wildlife ,
liketheinsects that use certain plants for food and the birds that feed on the insects, must
then move forward their seasonal stirrings and mating patterns to survive.
To try to follow this time shift.some birds such as robins.the classic symbol of
winter"sthaw , are returning toColorado fromtheir migrations some two weeks earlier
than in years past. All these changes can throw a food chain in disorder, some bird
species that arrive before the insects reappear may starve to death.
"Around the world, plants and animals "are waking up to an earlier alarm clock than
they used to, "says "rerry Root, a biologist from Stanford University.
to_____.
B. present the results of a recent research
C. indicate the earth is now in great danger
D. call readers" attention to the new research
B. global warming has changed all the plants and animals
C. melting glaciers have caused the worst side effects
D. scientists made wrong predictions about the future of earth
B. Because certain trees bloom a month ahead of time.
C. Because they need to follow some insects for food.
D. Because the plants they use to hunt food bloom late.
B. They used to come back when spring came.
C. They used to predict the change of weather.
D. They usually migrate when seasons change.
B. Humans Are Causing the World to Heat Up
C. The Terrible Consequences of Climate Change
D. Global Warming Is Changing Nature"s Clock
cancer, intelligence Such news stories may lead us to believe our lives are being revolutionized by
genetic discoveries. We may be close to changing and getting rid of mental illness, for example and
identify the causes of crime, personality, and other basic human weaknesses.
But these hopes, it turns out, are based on faulty assumptions about genes and behavior.
In many cases, people are motivated to accept research claims by the hope of finding solutions
for frightening problems, like breast cancer. Accepting genetic causes for their characteristics can
relieve guilt about behavior they want to change but can"t. Efforts made to fight against them, at
growing expense, have made little or no visible progress. The public wants to hear that science can
help.
Meanwhile, genetic claims are being made for many ordinary and abnormal behaviors, from
addiction to shyness and even to political views and divorce . If who we are is determined from
pregnancy, then our efforts to change or to influence our children may be useless. There may also
be no basis for insisting that people behave themselves and obey laws. Thus, the revolution in thinking
about genes has great consequences for how we view ourselves as human beings.
Most claims linking emotional disorders and behaviors to genes are statistical in nature. The
research finds are insufficient for deciding that alcoholism or manic-depression (躁狂抑郁症患者)
is inherited. In the late 1980s, genes for manic-depression were identified by teams of geneticists. The
claims have now been definitively proved wrong.
Genetic data on the major mental illnesses make it clear that they can"t be reduced to purely genetic
causes. According to Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., Americans born before 1905 had a 1 percent rate
of depression by age 75. Among Americans born a half century later, 6 percent become depressed
by age 24! Similarly, while the average age at which manic-depression first appears was 32 in the mid
1960s, its average beginning today is 19. Only social factors can produce such large shifts in rate and
age of beginning of mental disorders in a few decades.
Scientists actively debate whether disorders like alcoholism are more or less biologically driven.
If they are mainly biological-rather than psychological, social, and cultural-then there may be a genetic
basis for them. In 1990,Kenneth Blum, Ph.D., of the University of Texas, and Ernest Noble, M.D.,
of the University of California, Los Angeles, found a certain gene in 70 percent of a group of alcoholics,
but in only 20 percent of a non-alcoholic group. But in 1993 Joel Gelernter, M.D., of Yale and his
colleagues surveyed all the studies that examined this gene and alcoholism. Different from Blum and
Noble"s research, the results were that 18 percent of non-alcoholics, 18 percent of problem drinkers,
and 18 percent of severe alcoholics all had the gene. As for Blum and Noble"s work, a more reasonable
model is that genes may affect how people experience alcohol. Perhaps some people"s nerves are more
activated by alcohol. But although genes can influence reactions to alcohol, they cannot explain why
some people continue drinking to the point of destroying their lives.
Therefore, claims that our genes cause our problems, our misbehavior, even our personalities are
more a mirror of our culture"s attitudes than a window for human understanding and change.
B. changed
C. misunderstood
D. disturbed
B. We are close to finding solutions to human weaknesses.
C. The public wants scientists to help fight against illnesses.
D. Americans became depressed at an early age for genetic causes.
B. We may think of who we are differently
C. We can change our children"s behavior
D. We need to make greater efforts to behave ourselves
B. Genes can explain why people drink too much.
C. Perhaps drinking is more rewarding for alcoholics.
D. There was no link between gene and alcoholism.
B. Nature and Education
C. Here"s the Myth of Genes
D. Genetic Discoveries
researchers.
Their study found that theobromine , found in cocoa, was nearlv a third more effective in stopping
coughs than codeine,which was considered the best cough medicine at present.
The Imperial College London researchers who published their resulcs online said the discovery could
lead to more effective cough treatment. "While coughing is not necessarily harmful it can have a major
effect on the quality of life,and this discoverv could be a huge step forward in treating this problem. " said
Professor Peter Barnes.
Ten healthy volunteers were given theobromine,codeine or a placebo, a pill that contains no medicine,
during the experiment. Neither the volunteers nor the researchers knew who received which pill. The
researchers then measured levels of capsaicin,which is used in research to cause coughing and as a sign
of how well the medicines arc stopping coughs.
The team found that . when the volunteers were given theobromine , the capsaicin needed to produce a cough was around a third higher than in the placebo group. When they were given codeine they needed
only slightly higher levels of capsaicin to cause a cough compared with the placebo.
The researchers said that theobromine worked by keeping down a nerve activity , which causes
coughing. They also found that unlike some standard cough treatments, theobromine caused no side
effects such as sleepiness.
B. can be harmful to people"s health
C. cannot be separated from chocolate
D. can be a more effective cure for coughs
B. Codeine.
C. Capsaicin.
D. Placebo.
B. were divided into three groups
C. received standard treatments
D. suffered little side effects
B. Chocolate May Cure Coughs
C. Cough Treatment:A Hard Case
D. Theobromine Can Cause Coughs
- 1如图,AB∥CD,EF∥GH,下列结论中不正确的是 [ ]A.∠1=∠4B.∠1=∠2C.∠3+∠5=180°D
- 2阅读下面的文章,完成下列各题。请不要遗址公园化 冯骥才说到遗址,便会想起那年埃及考察。埃及大地到处是公元前数千年的历
- 3下表是用不同材料制成的导线在20Ω时的电阻值,仔细分析表中数据,回答下列问题:注:L为导线的长度,s为导线的横截面积.(
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- 1在强酸性无色透明溶液中,下列各组离子能大量共存的是( )。A.Fe3+、K+、Cl-、NO3-B.Ag+、Na+、N
- 2Did your father tell you ______?A.when he travelled to Hong
- 3镁--H2O2酸性电池采用海水作电解质(加入一定量酸),下列说法正确的是 [ ]A.电池总反应为:Mg+H2O2
- 4阅读下面的文段,完成下面的题。 ……嗟乎!一人之心,千万人之心也。秦爱纷奢,人亦念其家。奈何取之尽锱铢,用之如泥沙?使
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