It is a surprising fact that the population aging is particularly rapid in developing countries. For example, it took France 115 years for the rate of older people to double from 7 percent to 14 percent. It is estimated to take China a mere 27 years to achieve this same increase.
What are the implications of these increased numbers of older folk? One of the biggest worries for governments is that the longer people live, the more likelihood there is for diseases and for disability. Attention is being paid to the need to keep people as healthy as possible, including during old age, to lessen the financial burden on the state.
Another significant problem is the need for the younger generations to understand and value the older people in their society. In some African countries, certainly in Asia, older people are respected and regarded as the ones with special knowledge. Yet traditions are fading away daily, which does not make sure the continued high regard of older people. As society changes, attitudes will change.
Much needs to be done to get rid of age discrimination in employment. Life-long learning programs need to be provided to enable older people to be active members in a country's development.
Social security policies need to be established to provide adequate income protection for older people. Both public and private schemes are vital in order to build a suitable safety net.
1. The rate of older people________.A.is bigger in developed countries than in developing countries |
B.is one-seventh of the population in developing countries |
C.will increase much faster in China than in France |
D.will be sixty percent in developing countries by 2020 |
A.The diseases and disability of older people. |
B.The longer life and good health of people. |
C.The loss of taxes on older people. |
D.The increasing respect for older people. |
A.Getting rid of age discrimination in employment. |
B.Supplying life-long learning programs to older people. |
C.Making sure adequate income protection for older people. |
D.Providing free health care for sick older people. |
A.governments have spent lots of time in solving the aging problem |
B.population aging is a hard problem, but it needs to be solved urgently |
C.people are too busy to solve the population aging problem |
D.much time and effort will be lost in solving the aging problem |
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【推荐1】COVID-19 shutdowns forced people out of work and pushed tens of millions into poverty worldwide. Governments tried hard to provide aid. It was easy in a small country, but difficult for a country with large population and vast rural areas.
Researchers have been finding ways to identify areas of wealth and poverty in satellite images. Through some satellite data and aerial images of one town or another, you can sort of tell whether it’s wealthy or not. Wealthier homes tend to have metal roofs while poor homes tend to have thatched roofs. Wealthier neighborhoods have paved roads and bigger plots of lands, more spaced out.
The researchers use the system to identify about 60,000 people to receive benefits. The advantage of the satellite imagery and phone data approach is that it’s extremely fast and very convenient.
A.It was opposite in a big country. |
B.How do they locate the neediest people? |
C.So there’s a lot of information in the images. |
D.Most importantly, it’s very cheap to carry out. |
E.Worse still, it’s not so economical as a house-to-house survey. |
F.However, in general, poorer people will just have feature phones. |
G.What the researchers did next was to target the neediest people in those regions. |
【推荐2】China’s population decline may be much faster than expected, with the number of people in the country halving within the next 45 years, a new study has warned. The prediction was based on the official birth rate of 1.3 children per woman last year- well below the figure of 2 needed to keep the number stable-and forecast a much more dramatic decline than previous estimates. China’s current population is over 1.4 billion and in 2019 the United Nations estimated that China would still have around 1.3 billion people by 2065.
Another estimate published in The Lancet by researchers with the University of Washington last year suggested the Chinese population would halve by 2100. But the new research, from Professor, Jiang Quanbao and colleagues with the institute for population and development studies at Xian Jiaotong University, warned that the country’s population decline may have been severely underestimated. The UNs projection, for instance, was based on the assumption that China's fertility rate would remain at above 1.7 children per woman. China had 12 million newborns last year, 25 percent lower than the UN’s estimate.
The Chinese authorities “need to pay close attention to the potential negative inertia of population growth and make a plan in advance,” wrote Jiang in the study published in the Journal of Xian University of Finance and Economics. The new birth rate, though unexpectedly low, was based on data from the latest census, which is believed to be the most accurate yet because it was collected entirely with the aid of digital devices for the first time and cross-checked with other government data sets. Though the census findings have only partially been disclosed to the public, the limited information already shed a new light on changes and future development trends in the Chinese population, according to the researchers.
The pandemic may have had an impact on childbirth last year- but Jiang and his colleagues said the chances that the birth rate would rebound were low. They said it was more likely that the total population would soon start a rapid decline due to the drop in the number of women of child-bearing age. “If the fertility rate drops to 1, in 29 years the population in our country will fall by half,” they said. According to the new census data, children make up about 17 per cent of the population, while the proportion of over-60s rose to over 18 per cent. The researchers said it was the first time that China had more seniors than young people.
1. Which word can replace “decline”?A.Increase | B.Decrease | C.Improve | D.Focus |
A.The findings are inaccurate. |
B.The census is independent of other government data sets. |
C.Everybody can have easy access to the full contents. |
D.Digital devices played an important role in conducting the latest census. |
A.Positive | B.Indifferent | C.Concerned | D.Optimistic |
A.China faces serious population problems. |
B.China’s population problems are being overestimated. |
C.Women in China report low fertility desire. |
D.Polices are being carried out to encourage fertility desire. |
【推荐3】Why is the world’s population growing?
Statistics show that the average number of births per woman has fallen from 4.9 in the early 1960s to 2.5 nowadays. Furthermore, around 50% of the world’s population live in regions where the figure is now below the replacement level (i.e. 2.1 births per woman) and almost all developed nations are experiencing sub-replacement birth rate.
Russia is another country with population problems that could break its economic promise. Since 1992 the number of people dying has been bigger than that of those being born by a massive 50%. Indeed official figures suggest the country has shrunk by 5% since 1993 and people in Russia live a shorter life now than those in 1961.
A.Why is this occurring? |
B.How can the problem be solved? |
C.The answer is not what you might think. |
D.You might think that developing nations would make up the loss. |
E.One solution obviously to import foreign workers via immigration. |
F.A great decline in young work force is likely to occur in China for instance. |
G.In 2030, a sixth of the country's potential work force could be totally uneducated. |
【推荐1】Critics of higher education often complain that universities offer too many worthless degrees with little value in the workplace. Since top universities tend to produce higher-earning graduates than less selective institutions do, you might expect them to teach more practical courses. Yet data from Britain's department for education show the opposite. Undergraduate students at leading universities are more likely to study purely academic fields such as philosophy and classics, whereas those at less choosy ones tend to pick career-related topics such as business or nursing.
What could explain this seeming contradiction? One reason is that employers treat a degree from a top university as an indicator of intelligence. This means that students at top institutions can study bookish subjects and still get by financially. The average Cambridge graduate in a creative-arts subject - tho university's least profitable group of courses, including fields such as music - earns around £25, 000 ($32, 400) at age 26. Economics students from less well-known universities, such as Hull, make a similar amount.
Yet even though Oxbridge students can pretend to read "Ulysses" for years and still expect a decent salary, they end up paying a large opportunity cost by pursuing the arts. That is because employers reserve the highest starting wages for students who both attended a leading university and also studied a marketable subject. Cambridge creative-arts graduates earn £11, 000 more at age 26 than do those from Wrexham Glyndwr University, whose arts graduates are the lowest-earning in Britain. In contrast, Cambridge economics graduates make £44, 000 more than those from the University of Salford, where the economics course is the country's least profitable.
Many gifted arts students would struggle to deal with numbers. But for those who can manage both, the cost of sticking with the arts, in terms of future wages, is steep. Cambridge creative-arts students have A-level scores close to those of economics students at Warwick, but earn about half as much. That is equal to giving up an annual income worth £50, 000.
1. What do critics think of British higher education?A.There are not enough qualified university graduates. |
B.University should produce more higher-earning graduates. |
C.All universities degrees are of little value in the workplace. |
D.Universities should offer more practical education to their students. |
A.A Hull economics graduate. | B.An Oxford arts graduate. |
C.A Cambridge economics graduate. | D.A Salford arts graduate. |
A.Cambridge creative-arts students struggle to deal with numbers. |
B.Studying a "useless" field at Cambridge costs a fortune in future earnings. |
C.Economics students at Warwick can expect an annual income worth £25, 000. |
D.Economics students at Warwick have A-level scores close to Cambridge students. |
【推荐2】Countries around the globe are spending billions of dollars and lots of time on various space missions, whether to Mars or other planets much further away. Some people argue that we should stop wasting time and money exploring space. Instead, we should feed the world’s poor and find immediate solutions to other problems, such as pollution and fatal diseases (致命疾病). However, others feel this is a shallow view which fails to realise how exploring space helps us.
Firstly, exploring space has already made a difference in the fight against world hunger. It has directly resulted in the many satellites that now orbit Earth. A number of the satellites record data on land and weather patterns. Then the data is transmitted (传送) to scientists on Earth. After careful analysis, the scientists can provide useful recommendations and advice for farmers. As a result, space-based science has helped farming in its efforts to grow enough food to feed Earth’s increasing population.
Secondly, space exploration has already promoted technological improvements that benefit us all. High-end products around the world are made to a higher standard now because of advanced technology which was first created to meet the requirements for space exploration. For example, space technologies have helped the research and development of different types of new material. They have also helped companies make better heart monitors and other machines that doctors regularly use. Today, space technologies are widely used in all kinds of industries, and everyday products such as GPS, memory foam pillows (记忆棉枕头), and smartphone cameras are changing our lives.
Finally, sending astronauts into space has helped people to think about the world’s problems and even to find ways to solve them. Seeing pictures of our planet as an island in a black sea made people realise that our planet’s resources are limited. In order to provide for such a rapidly increasing population, scientists are trying to find other planets that could one day be our new home. The greatest attention at present is on Mars because it is closer to Earth. In the future, humans may live on both planets.
In closing, exploring space provides the world with many different benefits. Therefore, it should continue so as to provide new and better solutions to people’s short-term and long-term problems.
1. In writing Paragraph 1, the author aims to ________.A.propose a definition | B.make a comparison |
C.reach a conclusion | D.present an argument |
A.They can collect information of the land and weather changes. |
B.They can provide useful recommendations for farmers. |
C.They can fight against world hunger directly. |
D.They can analyze the data and make suggestions. |
A.Space exploration no longer requires high-end products. |
B.High-end products cannot meet the needs of space exploration. |
C.Our daily life has benefited from the development of space technology. |
D.The development of new material is a must for space exploration. |
A.Space exploration has changed the way our planet works. |
B.Space exploration helps to discover and solve Earth’s problems. |
C.In the future, all humans may have to move to Mars. |
D.Resource shortage and population growth are already serious problems. |
A.To provide guidance on how to carry out space exploration. |
B.To stress the need of promoting technology. |
C.To state the importance of exploring space. |
D.To suggest a way of meeting the requirements for space exploration. |
【推荐3】Self-driving cars are just around the corner. Such vehicles will make getting from one place to another safer and less stressful. They also could cut down on traffic, reduce pollution and limit accidents. But how should driverless cars handle emergencies (突发情况)? People disagree on the answer. And that might put the brakes on this technology, a new study concludes.
To understand the challenge, imagine a car that suddenly meets some pedestrians in the road. Even with braking, it’s too late to avoid a crash. So the car’s artificial intelligence must decide whether to swerve (急转弯). To save the pedestrians, should the car swerve off the road or swerve into oncoming traffic? What if such options would likely kill the car’s passengers?
Researchers used online surveys to study people’s attitudes about such situations with driverless cars. Survey participants mostly agreed that driverless cars should be designed to protect the most people. That included swerving into walls (or otherwise sacrificing their passengers) to save a larger number of pedestrians. But there is a hitch (困境). Those same surveyed people want to ride in cars that protect passengers at all costs — even if the pedestrians would now end up dying. Jean Bonnefon is a psychologist at the Toulouse School of Economics in France. He and his colleagues reported their findings in Science.
“Autonomous cars can completely change transportation”, says study coauthor Iyad Rahwan. But, he adds, this new technology creates a moral dilemma (道德两难) that could slow its acceptance.
Makers of driverless cars are in a tough spot, Bonnefon’s group warns. Most buyers would want their car to be programmed to protect them in preference to other people. However, regulations might one day instruct that cars must act for the greater good. That would mean saving the most people. But the scientists think rules like this could drive away buyers. If so, all the potential benefits of driverless cars would be lost.
Compromises might be possible, Kurt Gray says. He is a psychologist at the University of North Carolina. He thinks that even if all driverless cars are programmed to protect their passengers in emergencies, traffic accidents will decrease. Those vehicles might be dangerous to pedestrians on rare occasions. But they “won’t speed, won’t drive drunk and won’t text while driving, which would be a win for society.”
1. The underlined word “challenge” in paragraph 2 refers to ________.A.people’s negative attitudes towards self-driving cars |
B.how self-driving cars reduce traffic accidents |
C.the technical problems that self-driving cars have |
D.how self-driving cars handle emergencies |
A.self-driving cars’ artificial intelligence needs improvement |
B.the busy traffic may be a problem for self-driving cars |
C.people are in a moral dilemma about driverless cars |
D.self-driving cars should be designed to protect drivers |
A.Regulations are in favour of drivers. |
B.Most people dislike self-driving cars now. |
C.Self-driving car makers are in a difficult situation. |
D.The potential benefits of driverless cars are ignored. |
A.Favorable. | B.Doubtful. |
C.Critical. | D.Disapproving. |