The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The     1     of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs,     2     the sea-level rise of several meters and abandon the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “long-term disaster”, which is now the best-case scenario. Four-degree warming will mean “short-term disaster”: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; the American Southwest largely     3    .

In the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of     4     a global framework to reduce carbon emissions — far closer than we’ve come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more     5    . The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way — nothing except ourselves.

Nearly everything we understand now about global warming was understood in 1979. Human beings have altered Earth’s atmosphere through the     6     burning of fossil fuels. At the start of the 1980s, scientists within the federal government predicted that     7     evidence of warming would appear on the global temperature record by the end of the decade, at which point it would be too late to avoid disaster. A report prepared by the National Academy of Sciences advised that “the carbon-dioxide issue should appear on the international     8     in a context that will maximize cooperation and minimize political controversy and division.” If the world had adopted the proposal widely supported at the end of the ‘80s, warming could have been held to less than 1.5degrees.

But they failed, even though the world’s leading oceanographer Henry Stommel and the Harvard planetary physicist Richard Goody, whose mere presence could inspire     9    , tried to warn humanity of what was coming. They risked their careers in a painful campaign to solve the problem, first in scientific reports, later through     10     avenues of political persuasion and finally with a strategy of public shaming. Their efforts were passionate and they failed. Now it is our turn.

Economics survive by continually responding to the world around them. This means employing new technologies or exploiting new international markets when     1     growth. Today, these global shifts — dramatic shocks to economies — occur more frequently, are more     2     and, in knowledge-based economies are more dependent on talent than ever. In countries where a workforce lacks the skills that are suddenly in     3    , we see a skills gap emerge. This leads to higher unemployment rates while vacancies increase and productivity and growth decline.

So how can economies     4    ? By adapting. However, unlike the macro-strategies of the last century, people — not just policy — must drive today’s adaptability. Employers and policymakers have long     5     the importance of a flexible workforce, but until now it has been difficult to isolate the human element — the willingness and ability of employees to seek out and find opportunities across multiple employers, locations and industries. Our new ability to measure it and analyse talent adaptability — and to start to understand what drives it — are crucial steps forward.

The     6     of a market to match supply and demand efficiently depends on the ability and willingness of employers and employees to adapt to changing circumstances and align (使一致) skills with available opportunities. If this alignment is less than perfect, a mismatch     7     and optimum productivity can’t be reached.

Adapt to Survive for the first time brings together the two most comprehensive sources of talent data in the world: the real-time behaviours drawn from LinkedIn’s 277 million members and employer information from PwC’s Saratoga database of people and performance metrics (指标) which covers more than 2,600 employers across the globe. This report sets a new benchmark for     8     a country’s ability to match talent with opportunity and the movement of people between industries — the Talent Adaptability Score. This score is given to 11 countries. For each country, we evaluate how the Score     9     economic performance. Our recommendations are organised around four groups:

● Individuals — Prove your adaptability.

● Employers — Seek out, nurture and reward talents who can adapt.

● Educators — Offer courses and job training that produce     10     people.

● Governments — Create a climate of adaptability.

The Language of Lying

“Sorry, my phone died.” “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” “I love you.”

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day, and we spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect them, from medieval torture devices to polygraphs, blood-pressure and breathing monitors, voice-stress     1     and eye trackers. But although such tools have worked under certain circumstances, most can be fooled with enough preparation, and none are considered reliable enough to even be admissible in court. But, what if the problem is not with the     2    , but the underlying assumption that lying brings about physiological changes? What if we took a more direct     3    , using communication science to analyze the lies themselves?

Psychologically speaking, we lie partly to paint a better picture of ourselves, connecting our fantasies to the person we wish we were rather than the person we are. But while our brain is busy dreaming, it’s letting plenty of signals     4     by. Our     5     mind only controls about 5% of our cognitive function, including communication while the other 95% occurs beyond our awareness. According to the literature on reality monitoring, stories based on imagined experiences are qualitatively different from those based on real experiences. This suggests that creating a false story about a personal topic takes work and results in a different pattern of language use.

A technology known as linguistic text analysis has helped to     6     three such common patterns in the subconscious language of deception.

First, liars mention themselves less when making     7     statements. They write or talk more about others, often using the third person to     8     themselves from their lie, which sounds more false: “Absolutely no party took place at this house,” or “Nobody hosted a party here.”

Second, liars tend to be more     9    , because on a subconscious level, they feel guilty about lying. For example, a liar might say something like, “Sorry, my stupid phone battery died. I hate that thing.”

Third, liars tend to use longer sentence structure, inserting irrelevant but     10     sounding details in order to pad the lie. A President confronted with a scandal claimed: “I can say, categorically, that this investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very odd incident.”

Teaching and learning languages is a challenging endeavour at the best of times. It is easy for learners to feel     1    , thus keeping up learners’ motivation and confidence is one important role of language teachers. In the teaching and learning of writing this concern is even more important. Many teachers, researchers and learners agree that learning to write is the most difficult of all language skills. In addition to being difficult, writing lacks the     2     involved in speaking and listening. Therefore, many learners also find writing to be the least interesting skill. When we think of writing, we may imagine someone sitting alone at a desk     3     with their head down. Writing is seen as a solitary activity.

Language cannot be learnt without plenty of practice. According to Swain’s output hypothesis, when students produce language in speaking or writing they notice gaps in their current knowledge; for example, ideas or concepts for which they do not know the English vocabulary, and     4     which they are unable to perform because of gaps in their grammatical knowledge. After noticing such gaps, they find information about how to express such ideas in English. For example, they may search in their dictionary for appropriate words,     5     a grammar book, search online, or ask a question of a teacher. This contributes to breadth in learner’s knowledge of English.

Once they have found a(n)     6     word or grammatical form, they participate in hypothesis testing; they formulate language to communicate what they would like to communicate, making their best     7     at the appropriate form for the meaning they would like to convey. For example, they select the word in the dictionary that they believe     8     their intended meaning most closely, then they consider how the word is used within a sentence. They use this information to create language to express themselves. This contributes to a learner’s depth of knowledge.

Ideally, learners will receive     9     on the language they have produced. Whether or not they are successful in communicating their ideas at their first attempt, they may use the words or grammatical knowledge again in future language output. This continuing hypothesis testing about language leads the learner to     10     figuring out all aspects of the new language items, and those items are then added to the learner’s language repertoire.

What My Wife and I Talk about When We Talk about Love

My wife used to believe that romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world when she was a teenager. And the mark of true love is when two good-looking boys get in a physical fight over her. It’s even     1     that they both get injured but don’t end up going to hospital, not because she is worried about them but because it may cause her a lot of     2     and indirect responsibility. One day this will certainly happen to her, if she’s lucky. So you might understand her anger and frustration when I told her that if the other male competitor I have to “fight” with weighs more than 100 kilograms, I will simply hand her over to him without     3    , wish them a happy marriage and walk away with the feeling that tomorrow is another day.

Fortunately, we’ve both grown a lot older and grown out of expecting our life partner to “die” for us     4    . The older we get, the more honest, open and vulnerable we allow each other to be. One of the hardest things about getting older and being in love is knowing when something is just reality and when it’s too much hard work. Identifying what the calm, joyful but often challenging sensation of long-term love is and identifying what has just become totally intolerable is where we all have to really     5     our instincts.

Shared interests are one of the most overrated     6     factors when it comes to choosing a partner. Deciding that someone is a good person, or your soulmate, or made of exactly the same stuff as you just because you both love the music of Faye Wong is ridiculous. Having the same Agatha Christie collection or enjoying most of the movies directed by Richard Linklater will not help you     7     the various unexpected storms of life together.

A much more crucial factor in terms of finding a partner is how much you love their     8    . Since my son was born, I have experienced firsthand how overwhelming it is to be a working parent of a newborn. It has become even more apparent to me that the most important thing in a relationship is how well married couples work as a team. Couples need to be really, really good friends.

When you’re looking for love, and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have     9     to plenty of love already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and     10     you. It will hold you when you cry and celebrate when you smile. You can carry it with you and keep it as close to you as you can.

How Long Is a Second?

The length of a second depends on how you’re measuring it. There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute — so surely a second is 1/86400, of a day, right? Well, it turns out that     1     time isn’t that simple.

“The second was     2     based on the length of the day,” Peter Whibberley, a senior scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K., told Live Science. “People observed the sun passing overhead and started measuring its     3     using sundials (日晷). However, sundials have a few disadvantages. Aside from the obvious problem of not being able to read a sundial when the sun isn’t visible, relying on Earth’s daily turning is surprisingly inaccurate. “The turning is not precisely     4    ,” Whibberley said. “The Earth speeds up and slows down over time.” So how can we precisely measure time if using the length of a day is so unreliable?

In the 16^th century, people turned to technological solutions to this problem, and the first recognizable mechanical clocks began to     5    . The earliest mechanical clocks, which were designed to click at a specific frequency, averaged over the     6     of a year.

By around 1940, quartz crystal clocks (石英钟) had become the new gold standard. However, problems arose, and this was where atomic clocks came in. “Atoms exist only in particular energy states and can only change from one state to another by     7     or giving out a fixed amount of energy,” Whibberley explained. “That energy     8     to a precise frequency, so you can use that frequency as a reference for time keeping.” The astronomical second continued to vary. Every few years, scientists must add a second to allow Earth’s slowing turning to keep up with atomic time.

In fact, scientists are discussing whether it’s time to redefine the second again. But while several important questions still need to be answered before this     9    , it’s clear that the strictly correct definition of a second is     10     to change.

Urban Trees Are Threatened by Climate Change

By 2050, about three-quarters of the species will be at risk as a result of climate change, a study has found. Cities around the world may need to start planting different types of trees and shrubs that can     1     warmer and drier conditions.

“By ‘at risk’, we mean these species might be     2     stressful climatic conditions,” says Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez at Western Sydney University in Australia. “Those trees are likely to die.”

City trees have many benefits, from making urban spaces look beautiful and providing a refuge for wildlife to keeping places up to 12°C cooler than they would otherwise be in summer. Losing tree     3     would lead to cities becoming even hotter as the planet heats up.

To     4     the threat, Esperon Rodriguez and his colleagues used database called the Global Urban Tree Inventory to work out the conditions required by 3100 tree and shrub species currently grown in 164 cities worldwide. The researchers then looked at how these conditions would be affected by climate change under medium-emissions scenario known as RCP 6.0.

By 2050, 76 per cent of these species will be at risk from rising     5     temperatures and 70 percent from decreasing rainfall, the team concludes.

The study doesn’t take account of       6     urban growth, which could warm cities even faster. Nor does it take account of greater weather     7     caused by climate change, or the effects of pests and diseases. Warmer conditions are allowing more pests, such as bark beetles, to survive winters as well as to reproduce faster in summer, greatly increasing their     8    .

“Our     9     have scientific basis,” says Esperon-Rodriguez. There are some things that can be done to help trees survive. The best strategy is to choose tough species when     10     trees or planting new ones, the team concludes.

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box.   Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Communication — a thing of the past?

We all think we communicate all the time, and that’s true. There’s also non-verbal communication you could add into the mix — everything we’re saying when we’re not saying anything. But there’s a(n)     1     between saying things to people, or liking and sharing a post on social media, and communication. I’m quite well connected — there’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, email, iEverything, but sometimes communication starts to feel like a chore. Check this blog post, read that article someone shared,     2     back to someone else, and answer their questions… Sometimes I feel like a cross between Siri and a mad juggler. Nothing seems to go in and I’m always mixing people up — asking someone how their band is going when they can’t play an instrument or how the job search is going when someone’s just written to say how depressed they are that they can’t find a job.

So it was quite a(n)     3     to spend New Year in the Highlands in Scotland with no phone signal, no internet and no ‘communication’ at all, apart from with the people I was with. Suddenly all the pressure to communicate disappeared. All of our conversations became slower, more inverted and far more interesting. We were a group of 12, a(n)     4     of couples and friends, only one of whom I was at university with, so I was meeting a bunch of new people for the first time. Our conversations veered towards the banal and the humdrum in that we often discussed our plans for the day and what we were going to cook in the evening, but often they went a lot farther and a lot deeper. Tucked up on the leather sofas,     5     dinner, we dissected Brexit and one person even changed their     6     entirely! We shared ideas and theories, plots of books and plays and city trips we’d been on, described family troubles and gave advice, listened to work scenarios and offered pointers, and we had to talk and sketch and use words more than ever before, because you couldn’t say, ‘It’s a great film, you should google it later.’ Some of us even had sore throats from talking so much! In such a short     7     of time, due to the proximity of sharing interconnected cottages and verbal communication, I felt much closer to the new people I’d met and been speaking with than some other people I communicate with in my normal life.

I don’t think our common, current methods of communication come close to being in a small house with lots of people and having to communicate     8    . The brevity of Twitter, the showiness of Facebook, all these aspects contribute to a shallow form of communication that doesn’t challenge you to     9     your feelings and motives enough. ‘Liking’ something is an instant response but what does it really say about your opinion of something? It’s a(n)     10     response to millions of other people, whereas you and your thoughts are unique. If we’re not careful, perhaps we might forget how to communicate on a deeper lever.