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A. short B. flavor C. specifically D. impressive E. efficiently AB. emphasis AC. stuck AD. involved AE. consumed BC. impact BD. decline |
There's no cure or proven way to prevent dementia (痴呆), but a number of studies have said that following a Mediterranean diet may reduce the risk of developing the condition. The Mediterranean diet has a(n) list of science behind it. This way of eating can prevent cognitive (认知的) but also help the heart, reduces diabetes, prevent bone loss, encourage weight loss and more, studies have found.
A study published on March 8 revealed people who foods from the Mediterranean and brain-focused MIND diets had fewer of the typical signs of Alzheimer's. The MIND diet is for Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay.
The Mediterranean diet focuses on plant-based cooking. The majority of each meal should be fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans and seeds, along with a few nuts. There is a heavy on extra-virgin (特级初榨的) olive oil.
Meat can make a rare appearance and usually only to a dish. Instead, meals may include eggs, dairy and poultry, but in much smaller portions than in the traditional Western diet.
Participants who most closely to the diet were more likely to be female, have a BMI within the healthy range, have a higher educational level, and be more physically active than those with lower persistence in the diet.
David Curtis, an honorary professor at UCL Genetics Institute in London, who was not in the research, noted that the latest study was observational and did not uncover cause and effect. The finding could reflect a generally more healthy lifestyle, he said.
"It is not clear that such a diet itself reduces dementia risk, although it is reasonable that it might do so. It is important to note that the study concerns all forms of dementia, not Alzheimer's disease. In my opinion, if there is an effect of diet then it is more likely to be on cardiovascular (心血管的) health in general and hence to dementia due to disease of blood vessels rather than Alzheimer's disease."
February is an exciting month for our Courageous Kitchen(CK)! One of our founders, Dwight Turner will be speaking at the press conference this week. The event is hosted by the Thailand Authority of Tourism(TAT).
Here's a peek into TAT's interview with Dwight, where he discusses starting Courageous Kitchen, and 1 his personal passion for food with his mission to feed and educate more children in Bangkok.
How did you start CK and what is your 2?
Courageous Kitchen began because I was looking for a way to 3 in my free time, but I didn't know what to do. When a friend invited me to help teach English in a few poorer communities, I fell in love with it. Gradually I wanted to 4 more and more.
Later when I moved outside of the city center, we had space for a kitchen and I began to combine my two 5. Quickly we learned that the kitchen is a great classroom. Students who were shy about speaking English suddenly had 6, an application, and an urgency to speak in the kitchen. As their language skills improved, so did their 7.
Why do you use food as a medium to help you achieve your goals?
I love to eat and Bangkok is full of food and food enthusiasts. So it's a great way to get people's attention and bring them together for a 8. This is true even when it may seem like we don't have anything 9. We may speak a different language, have different skin color, but when we sit at the table together, we share and learn about each other.
What do you think of Thai food? What makes Thai cuisine outstanding to you?
I love Thai food because of the 10 of influences on the cuisine. There is such a significant Indian influence, the Chinese influence is probably the strongest, and there's an interesting impact from the hill tribes and neighboring countries in the region as well.
Why are you interested in helping society, and helping underprivileged kids in Bangkok?
As a Black American I was raised with a strong sense of social 11 that all people are valuable, and that all people should be treated equally. Until this becomes a(n) 12, we have a lot of work to do to create a better future for today's kids. That's true all over the world, but trying to solve global problems can seem 13. That's why it's best to start by being the change we want to see in our local communities.
As a nonprofit, what do you expect to get in return for you work?
As a nonprofit, my job is challenging but 14 every day. It's a challenge to captivate people's attention long enough to sympathize with people in need, and convince them to take action. 15, seeing students, who may have never been in a real restaurant before, imagining themselves as chefs, speaking English more confidently, and becoming leaders in their families is a pretty great reward.
For 38-year-old Justin Herald, the journey to wealth began one Sunday morning at a church in Sydney's northwest, when he was involved in a quarrel with a member of the church choir. "You have an attitude problem," she told him.
The accusation sparked something in him, and he borrowed $50 from his brother to have four T-shirts printed with the slogan: "I don't have an attitude problem; you have a perception problem."
"It was the best $50 I ever spent," laughs Herald. By the end of the morning, he had sold three of the four T-shirts. With the money he made, he had another six printed, then 12, then 24. "That first year the earning were $98,000," he says.
His business, Attitude Inc., is now a multi-million-dollar company with a wide range of products selling in 3,500 stores across Australia. His business was due to not just clever marketing - the public loved the slogan - but also he has to admit that in those days there was very little competition in his sector of the clothing industry, and he was in the right place at the right time.
The media spotlight also helped, with people paying attention to Herald's likeable personality and infections passion for his business: the night of one TV appearance, 187 stores rang to get his products into their stores.
Herald sold the business three years ago, by which time it was turning over $30 million a year, and now spends his time as a motivational speaker. His message: anyone can be financially successful if they set their mind to it. "You have to have a lot of stickability, because not everything is going to work the way you plan it."
Still living in Castle Hill with his wife and two children, Herald believes too many successful people become caught up in the trappings of wealth. "I have lived here since I left school at 16," he says. "In this area, you don't forget where you came from."
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In Factfulness, Professor Hans Roslingasks raises questions like ‘How many girls finish school?' and ‘What percentage of the world's population is poor?' It turns out that the majority of us get the answers to these questions completely wrong. Why does this happen? Factfulness sets out to explain why, showing that there are several human instincts that distort(扭曲)our perspective. This book focuses on our instinctive biases(偏见), offering practical advice to help us see the good as well as the bad in the world. |
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Are things getting worse every day? Is progress an impossible goal? In Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker looks at the big picture of human progress and finds good news. We are living longer, healthier, freer and happier lives. Pinker asks us to stop paying so much attention to negative headlines and news that declares the end of the world. Instead, he shows us some carefully selected data. In 75 surprising graphs, we see that safety, peace, knowledge and health are getting better all over the world. Economic inequality, he claims, is not really a problem, because it is not actually that important for human well-being. |
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For more than two hundred years those who hold negative thoughts have been winning the public debate. They tell us that things are getting worse. But as a matter of fact, life is getting better. Income, food availability and lifespan are rising; disease, violence and child| mortality are falling. Best-selling author Matt Ridley doesn't only explain how things are getting better; he gives us reasons why as well. He shows us how human culture evolves in a positive direction thanks to the exchange of ideas and specialization. This bold book looks at the entirety of human history-from the Stone Age to the 21st century—and changes the concept that it's all going downhill. |
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The majority of people believe that developing countries are in a terrible situation: suffering from incredible poverty and wars. The reality is that a great transformation is occurring. Over the past 20 years, more than 700 million people have increased their income and come out of poverty. This is happening across developing countries around the world. In his book The Great Surge, Stevens Radelet describes how all of this is happening and, more importantly, it shows us how we can speed up the process. |
From Smells to Soundtracks
When a young sawfly, a bee-like insect, is threatened by its attackers like ants, it emits a mixture of unpleasant smells to defend itself. These emissions can seriously annoy a potential enemy.
Scientists wanting to study these smelly compounds—to understand which aspects of them discourage attackers and why—face great challenges. Meetups between sawflies and ants in a lab are difficult to carry out. There are also a very limited quantity of the insects' emissions. On the side, Jean-Luc Boevé, a zoologist who studies insects, from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, is an amateur musician and composer. He decided to try a different way—the sound approach. "To be honest, I considered this project so unpractical myself that I set it aside," he said. It was months before Boevé and his partner, Rudi Giot, finally made a resolution to get started on it.
They chose 16 sawfly species' emissions to translate into sounds. First, they figured out which molecules (分子) were present in each smelly compound and in what amounts. Then they assigned various characteristics of those molecules matching properties of sound. For example, smaller molecules like a kind of acid found in vinegar, a sour-tasting liquid, evaporate (挥发) quickly, so Boevé and Giot assigned them sounds with higher pitch ( 音 高 ). Larger molecules were given lower-pitched sounds. In all, the scientists created individual audio descriptions for 20 molecules. Then they combined the sounds of each molecule present in a sawfly's smell to construct the insect's soundtrack. If a molecule was of higher proportion in an emission, they assigned it a higher volume. In such a case, the smaller a molecule is, the higher its pitch will be; and the higher the proportion of a molecule is, the higher its volume will be.
To test out the audio descriptions they created, Boevé and Giot examined people's reactions to the soundtracks and compared them to ants' reactions to the original smells. They played the 16 emission soundtracks and the 20 molecule sounds through speakers to about 50 study participants. Then the scientists measured how far people backed up to get to a "comfortable position" away from the noise. Most of the study volunteers told the researchers that the high pitch, as well as the high volume, was what made them withdraw. "Ants and volunteers moved away from a chemical and its matching soundtrack respectively," the researchers wrote.
Boevé said he hoped the process would give other zoologists a new way to compare sawflies' chemical defenses with those from other insects. It may also offer researchers clues about which molecules fight off enemies most.
A recent study published in the journal Science Advances has revealed that the United States ranks as high as third among countries contributing to coastal plastic pollution. The new research challenges the once-held assumption that the US is adequately "managing" its plastic waste. A previous study using 2010 data that did not account for plastic waste exports had ranked the US 20th, globally, in its contribution to ocean plastic pollution.
Using plastic waste generation (产生) data from 2016 — the latest available global numbers — scientists calculated that more than half of all plastics collected for recycling (1.99 million tons of 3.91 million tons collected) in the US were shipped abroad. Of this, 88% of exports went to countries struggling to effectively manage plastics; and between 15-25% was low-value or contaminated (受污染的). It means it was unrecyclable. Taking these factors into account, the researchers estimated that up to 1 million tons of US-generated plastic waste ended up polluting the environment beyond its own borders.
Using 2016 data, the paper also estimated that between 0.91 and 1.25 million tons of plastic waste generated in the US was either littered or illegally dumped into the environment domestically. Combined with waste exports, this means the US contributed up to 2.25 million tons of plastics into the environment. Of this, up to 1.5 million tons of plastics ended up in coastal environments. This ranks the US as high as third globally in contributing to coastal plastic pollution.
"The US generates the most plastic waste of any other country in the world, but rather than looking the problem in the eye, we have outsourced it to developing countries," said Nick Mallos, senior director of Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program and a co-author of the study. "The solution has to start at home. We need to create less, by cutting out unnecessary single-use plastics; we need to create better, by developing innovative new ways to package and deliver goods; and where plastics are inevitable, we need to greatly improve our recycling rates."
"Previous research has provided global values for plastic input into the environment and coastal areas, but detailed analyses like this one are important for individual countries to further assess their contributions," said Dr. Jenna Jambeck, Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia's College of Engineering and a co-author of the study. "In the case of the United States, it is critically important that we examine our own backyard and take responsibility for our global plastic footprint."
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. Women's college basketball never saw the scale of talent that sees today.
The extremely famous and successful stars leading Iowa and Louisiana State to the NCAA，women's basketball championship game on Sunday — a first for both teams — are two of (well-known)players in the country, with some of the most profitable marketing deals among college athletes. All four players are likely (be)household names well beyond college. They've already achieved a significant level of individual fame, and, they reach the WNBA. they are well prepared for long professional careers. They are the lucky few.
The opportunities in basketball for many female athletes peak at the Final Four. The spotlight is rarely brighter, and beyond the trophy (奖品) (await)Sunday's winner is the earning potential newly available to the excellent women. Players across the country lack the star power of Reese or Clark are still able to make money within their fan bases.
Each spring the WNBA faces a problem hundreds of women compete strongly for 144 spots in the world's most prestigious professional women's basketball league. Only 36 players are chosen.
Clark has continuous 41-point performances, and her semi-final win came against the tournament's odds-on (很可能发生的) favorite, South Carolina. Reese, (label) as the Bayou Barbie, has been a scoring and rebounding machine all season as Louisiana State drew record crowds even before the tournament.
Even with the sport setting records for game attendance and TV viewership, there remains a sky-high barrier for entry into the WNBA. , where there are just 12 teams. In last year's competition, just 17 players chosen (make)a team's opening day roster (候选名单).
