In the old days, children were familiar with birth and death as part of life. Now this is perhaps the first generation of American youngsters who have never been close by during of the birth a baby and have never experienced the death of a family member. Nowadays when people grow old, we often send them to nursing homes. When they get sick, we send them to a hospital, where children are forbidden to visit terminally in patients-- even when those patients are their parents. This deprives the dying patient of family members during the last few days of his life and it deprives the children of an experience of death, which is an important learning experience. Some of my colleagues and I once interviewed and followed about 500 terminally in order to find out what they could teach us and how we could be of more benefit, not just to them but to the members of their families as well. We were most impressed by the fact that even those patients who were not told of their serious illness were quite aware of its potential outcome. It is important for family members, and doctors and nurses to understand these patients' communication in order to truly understand their needs, fears and fantasies . Most of our patients welcomed another human being with whom they could talk openly, honestly, and frankly about their trouble. Many of them shared with us their great need to be informed, to be kept up - to - date on their medical condition and to be told when the end was near. We found out that patients who had been dealt with openly and frankly were better able to cope with the coming of detach and finally to reach a true stage of acceptance before death. The elders of today's Americans _ . A) are often absent when a family member is born or dying B) are unfamiliar with birth and death C) usually see the birth or death of a family member D) have often experienced the fear of death as part of life
C
Sales of electric bicycles, or e-bikes, a hot item in consumer green tech, are expected to grow by more than 50% in North America during 2013. Actor William Shatner, who is no stranger to futuristic tech, recently purchased two e-bikes for him and his wife. I've been shopping for an e-bike now for a few weeks, and I've had my eye on the folding electric bike. I've had folding bikes in the past and love the convenience of being able to throw my bike into my car. The e -bike market is ready to go mainstream in the U.S. The price for e-bikes has come down greatly in recent months. At one time, most e-bikes with good components and proper weight were in the $3,000range. Now you can find reasonable quality e-bikes in the $1,000range. With gas prices at all-time highs, e-bikes are an attractive, low-cost option to gas efficient vehicles. E-bike owners are finding that they are great for commuting to work, as traditional bikes can be a problem with office dress and sweat. People who use e-bikes range from commuters to casual cyclers who like a little help with hills and wind,to those who decided to save money on buying a motor bike.These are not for the serious road cycler or professional mountain biker. If you're considering all e--bike, it pays to do some research first.Cheaper e-bikes are going to be heavier and have less battery--power.Higher priced bikes will be made from lighter materials and have better batteries. Another consideration is local motor vehicle laws.For example,according to US federal law,as long as your electric bike is under 750 watts and does not go over 20 MPH then it is a bicycle and not a motor vehicle.Most consumer e--bikes in the $1,000 range don't fit the motorized vehicle description. Which of the following may not contribute to the e-bike's going mainstream? A) The price for e-bikes has come down greatly. B) E-bikes are much cheaper to use than gas vehicles. C) The local motor vehicle laws are not strict enough. D) Some folding e-bikes are convenient to put into a car.
A
Q: A new study suggests that sad music might actually arouse positive emotions. The finding helps to explain why people enjoy listening to sad music, say Ai Kawakami and her colleagues from Tokyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan. Ai Kawakami and her colleagues asked 44 volunteers, including both musicians and nonspecialists, to listen to two pieces of sad music and one piece of happy music. Each participant was required to use a set of keywords to rate both their perception of the music and their own emotional state. The sad pieces of music included Glinka's La Separation in F minor and Blumenfeld's Etude Sur Mer in G minor. The happy music piece was Granados's Allegro de Concierto in G major. To control the "happy" effect of major key, they also played the minor key pieces in major key, and vise versa. The researchers explained that sad music aroused contradictory emotions because the participants of the study tended to feel sad to be more tragic and less romantic than they felt themselves while listening to it. " In general, sad music causes sadness in listeners, and sadness is regarded as an unpleasant emotion. If sad music actually arouses only unpleasant emotion, we would not listen to it," the researchers wrote in the study. "Music that is believed as sad actually causes romantic emotion as well as sad emotion.And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music," added the researchers. Also, unlike sadness in daily life, sadness experienced through art actually feels pleasant, possibly because the latter does not cause an actual threat to our safety. This could help people to deal with their negative emotions in daily life, concluded the authors. "Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion aroused through daily life, sad music might be helpful... What is the main idea of this passage? A) People should listen to sad music. B) Happy music can make people sad. C) Sad music may actually cause positive emotions. D) Sad music is really bad to people.
A: C
C "Over the years the unthinkable has become thinkable and today we sense we are close to being able to alter human heredity ." These were the words of David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology,on December 1st,when he opened a threeday meeting in Washington to discuss the morality and use of human gene editing.Dr Baltimore is an old hand at these sorts of discussions,for he was also a participant in the Asilomar conference,in 1975,which brought scientists together to discuss a safe way of using the thennew technology of recombinant DNA,and whose recommendations influenced a generation of biotechnology researchers. Four decades on,the need for a similar sort of _ has arisen.The International Summit on Human Gene Editing has been held by the national scientific academies of three countries--America,Britain and China.They are particularly concerned about whether gene editing should be used to make heritable changes to the human germ line,something Dr Baltimore described as a deep and troubling question.Like those of Asilomar,the conclusions of this meeting will not be binding.But the hope is that,again like Asilomar,a mixture of common sense and peer pressure will create a world in which scientists are trusted to regulate themselves,rather than having politicians and civil servants do it for them.The meeting is being held against a backdrop of rapid scientific advance.Since 2012 research into a new,easytouse editing tool called CRISPRCas9 has blossomed.This technique involves a piece of RNA (a chemical messenger,which can be used to recognise a target section of DNA) and an enzyme called a nuclease that can snip unwanted genes out and paste new ones in. Public interest was aroused in April,when Chinese scientists announced they had edited genes in nonviable human embryos,and again in November when British researchers said they had successfully treated a oneyearold girl who had leukaemia ,using geneedited Tcells.Tcells are part of the immune system that attack,among other things,tumour... This passage is most probably a _ . A) science fiction B) scientific report C) conference summary D) commercial advertisement
B