The common Chinese greeting of "Ni chi le ma?" may soon be replaced by a new greeting: "Have you cleaned your plate?" Over the Spring Festival holiday there was a big effort to get people to curb their habit of ordering too much food in restaurants because a lot of that food ended up being wasted. Holiday eaters were urged to "clean their plates" and were asked to take leftover food home in "doggy bags." The impetus behind the campaign was the startling government statistic that over 200 billion yuan is spent every year on food that ends up in the garbage bin. And in the midst of all this waste, statistics show that 128 million people are living below the poverty line and going hungry. The "clean your plate" campaign is part of a worldwide effort to stop precious food from being wasted. The United Nations estimates that $1trillion (yes, that's a very big number) worth of food is wasted each year. Most of that is lost during food production and transportation, but a significant percentage is attributed to waste by consumers. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has launched a campaign called "Think. Eat. Save." to make people aware of the problem. Chinese actress Fan Bingbing is an ambassador for UNEP and she encouraged people to upload pictures of their "clean plates" to show their support for the program. Thousands of people responded and demonstrated that they had a clear conscience to go along with their full stomachs. Xi Jinping, the incoming Chinese president, is also urging people to be less wasteful and he told Party members to cut back on extravagant holiday banquets and to be more careful when spending the people's money. For some, though, Xi Jinping's and Fan Bingbing's admonitions don't go far enough. Yuan Longping, an agricultural scientist, caused a stir by saying that wasting food should be treated as a crime. (Jail time for leftover chicken feet!?) If not a crime, wasting food is certainly a sin and it goes against what Xi Jinping calls, "the Chinese tradition of being diligent and... Which statement is NOT TRUE according to the passage? A) Over 200 billion yuan is wasted every year on food around China. B) It's quite common for Chinese people to order more food than they need in restaurants. C) It's universally acknowledged that wasting food is a crime. D) Fan did something to promote people's awareness of saving food.
C
If you're like most kids, you've probably made more than a few paper airplanes in your day. But how many kids can say their paper airplanes have been built life-size and then flown? At least one: 12-year-old Arturo Veldenegro of Tucson, Arizona, who won the Pima Air& Space Museum's first annual Great Paper Airplane Project Fly-Off in March 2012. " The purpose of the competition is to inspire and draw kids' interest in science and flight," says Tim Vimmerstedt, director of the museum. About 150 kids entered the competition. The young designers learned about how airplanes fly and then set to work designing their own planes. Arturo designed and built his airplane. When hen was finished, he took his plane to the flight area and let it fly, outdistancing the other competitors in all age groups. At last, Arturo's airplane flew the farthest---more than 75 feet! As the winner, Arturo got to meet with a team of engineers, which took his design and made a bigger one. The new paper airplane might have been the largest one ever built! Arturo named his large paper airplane Arturo's Desert Eagle. Later a helicopter tried to lift the paper airplane over the Arizona desert, but it was unsuccessful. Engineers worked for eight hours to repair it for a second try. This time, the helicopter managed to raise it to 2700 feet and then set the plane free. Arturo watched as his plane flew through the sky at speeds of up to 98 miles per hour for 10 seconds before falling to pieces. "I felt happy but sad," Arturo says, " It flew really well, but it was sad to see it destroyed." But that wasn't the end of Arturo's Desert Eagle. The Pima Air & Space Museum collected the pieces of the broken plane and put them on show to inspire other young engineers to reach for the sky. What do we know about the paper airplane Arturo built? A) It flew the highest B) It flew for 20 minutes C) It flew more than 75 feet D) it took him eight hours to build
C
Q: School is a place that is familiar to everyone. Let's find out what American students do in school. An official dance party is held about twice a year in high schools in the United States. When the final football game is over for the season there is a homecoming party. Sometimes, students select a king from among the football players, and a queen from among the girls. Every student can attend and have fun with the help of their teachers. Sometimes, students, called bookworms, to the surprise of the other students, come to the party in a beautiful dress. The most exciting party that students can go to would have to be a dance party. Students attend it in dresses similar to those of Hollywood stars and the atmosphere is comparable to an Oscar Award party. Since such a party is for seniors, students usually stay up the night trying to enjoy their last year in high school. In American schools, instead of the teachers going to different rooms, students have their own class schedules and go to different classrooms. When a student is away from school, they must have an explanation for being away along with the signature of a parent. The signed paper is then handed in to the school office. High school drop outs and students being expelled are not that uncommon in the States. High absences without excuses are one of the reasons why students are expelled from school. American students also enjoy a number of activities out of school like cheerleading , student government and a host of different sports. According to the passage, American students in school _ . A) study in the same classroom B) have the same class with each other C) attend different classes in different places D) wait for their teachers in their class
A: C
If you are sitting down listening to what I'm going to say, stand up. Move your legs. Touch your toes, if you can. Do anything but sit. If you cut down on the time you spend sitting, you might live longer. New research shows that sitting less than three hours a day might extend your life by two years. Just the opposite, says Peter Katzmarzyk. He is a scientist at the University of Louisiana in the southern United States. He says that sitting is _ in our lives. "We sit while we're eating; we sit in the car; we sit while we watch TV. Many of us sit for many hours at work. " But, he adds, that does not make sitting good for us. The human body is designed to move. But modern lifestyles and office jobs rarely give us the chance to move around. Exercise is important. So is not sitting. "We can't throw away physical activity. It's extremely important. We have 60 years of research showing us that. Even if you exercise for 30 minutes a day, what goes on in the other 23-and-a-half hours a day is also very important." Mr. Katzmarzyk and his co-workers are part of a new generation of researchers studying how sitting all day affects length of life. This is a relatively new area of study--studies that have assessed the relationship between sitting and mortality or television viewing and mortality. Making uses of the few studies available to them, they found that cutting television time to less than two hours a day could add one-point four years to life. New desk designs are helping Change is already coming to some offices, especially in the design of desks. A "standing desk" lets people stand while they work. Another new design is called the "treadmill desk." A treadmill is an exercise machine that lets you walk in one place. That's one of the strategies that many companies are using now. Some companies may equip their employees with a "standing desk" or a "treadmill desk". Other companies may not buy one for everybody, but they'll have a bank of these desks where people can go for an hour a day and answer their emails or... The word "ubiquitous " (in Para. 3) means " _ ". A) common B) normal C) individual D) specific
A