题目内容
How to live to 100
A growing body of research suggests that chronic illness is not an inevitable consequence of aging, but more often the result of lifestyle. choices. "People used to say, 'who would want to be 1007TM says Dr. Thomas Peris, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and director of the New England Centenarian Study. "Now they're realizing it's an opportunity." High-tech medicine isn't likely to change the outlook dramatically; drugs and surgery can do only so much to sustain a body once it starts to fail. But there is no question we can lengthen our lives while shortening our deaths. The tools already exist, and they're within virtually everyone's reach.
Life expectancy in the United States has nearly doubled since a century ago —from 47 years to 76 years. And though centenarians are still rare, they now constitute the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. Their ranks have increased 16-fold over the past six decades —from 3,700 in 1940 to roughly 61,000 today. The Census Bureau projects that 1 in 9 baby boomers (9 million of the 80 million people born between 1946 and 1964) will survive into their late 90s, and that 1 in 26 (or 3 million) will reach 100. "A century ago, the odds of living that long were about one in 500." says Lynn Adler, founder of the National Centenarian Awareness Project and the author of "Centenarians: The Bonus Years." "that's how far we've come."
If decrepitude were an inevitable part of aging, these burgeoning numbers would spell trouble. But the evidence suggests that Americans are living better, as well as longer. The disability rate among people older than 65 has fallen steadily since the early 1980s, according to Duke University demographer Kenneth Manton, and a shrinking percentage of seniors are plagued by hypertension, arteriosclerosis and dementia. Moreover, researchers have found that the oldest of the old often enjoy better health than people in their 70s. The 79 centenarians in Perls's New England study have all lived independently through their early 90s, taking an average of just one medication. And when the time comes for these hearty souls to die, they don't linger. In a 1995 study, James Lubitz of the Health Care Financing Administration calculated that medical expenditures for the last two years of life —statistically the most expensive —average ＄ 22, 600 for people who die at 70, but just＄ 8,300 for those who make it past 100.
These insights have spawned a revolution in the science of aging. "Until recently, there was so much preoccupation with diseases that little work was done on the characteristics that permit people to do well." says Dr. John Rowe, the New York geriatrician who heads the MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Successful Aging. Research confirms the old saying that it pays to choose your parents well. But the way we age depends less on who we are than on how we live — what we eat, how much we exercise and how we employ our minds.
The author seems to suggest that ______.
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The first time I saw Stephen Leacock at close quarters he came swinging into a classroom in Moyse Hall, the serenely ugly old Arts Building of McGill University in Montreal. The room was packed with undergraduates like me who had come with huge curiosity to listen to their first lecture on political science by a man whose humorous writing had rocked the English-speaking world with laughter, but who was a campus character for very different reasons.
Leacock enjoyed a reputation for eccentricity and for an impish individualism that expressed itself in blunt speech on every subject. Naturally we looked him over carefully.
What we saw was a shock of graying hair crowning a rugged face that wore a friendly smile, emphasized by crinkles of mirth about the eyes. I remember thinking, "He could use a haircut." His necktie had slipped its moorings, and his tweedy suit looked slept-in. Across his vest his watch chain had come apart in the middle and had been put together with a safety pin. The effect was of a man who gave no thought to his appearance. But his manner was far too buoyant to suggest the absent-minded professor.
His apparel was topped by one of those loose, black gowns professors wore in those days, Leacock's had been acquired about the time he received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1903. Even though the garment was showing signs of wear in 1914, it was still one of the essential properties of his play-acting. At least a dozen times during every lecture it would slip off his shoulders and seize him by the crook of his elbows. Without pause in the flow of talk and motion — he was a walking lecturer —a great shrug of the shoulders would hoist the gown part way into place.
Leacock was tremendously proud of his Chicago Ph. D., but it was inescapably in character that he must spoof it. "The meaning of this degree," he quipped in a lecture, "is that the recipient has been examined for the last time in his life and pronounced full. After this, no new ideas can be imparted to him."
In similar vein, after returning from a holiday abroad he told his class, "I was sitting quietly in my cabin when a steward knocked and, after making sure I am called Doctor, asked if I would come and look at the stewardess's knee. I was off like a shot, but another fellow got there ahead of me. He was a Doctor of Divinity."
What came through to me, even in the first lecture, was Leacock's warmth and humanness. I knew I was listening to a man who loved young people and was determined to give them as much wisdom as he could. His teaching methods were unconventional. He couldn't resist the temptation to explore bypaths. In discussing the days of Queen Victoria, he mentioned Disraeli, and this set him off to talk about the man rather than the Prime Minister —his way of living, his quick mind, his dilettantism, his great love affair with his wife. The digression lifted the great statesman into a framework of his own and, when Leacock returned to the main line of his subject, the listener understood, in a way no textbook could inform. him, how such a man could bring off the coup which gave Britain control of the Suez Canal and made the Empire impregnable for decades to come.
The student were eager to see Leacock because he was ______.
A．whereB．which areC．with whichD．which they are
The author is inclined to think that a fifth level ______.
【B4】______ , in many parts of the world, man has not realized that the 【B5】______ of these services is the most important. In his eagerness to draw quick profit from the trees, he has cut them down in large 【B6】______ , only to find that 【B7】______ them he has lost the best friend he had.
Two 【B8】______ years ago a rich and powerful country cut down its trees to build warships 【B9】______ to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire, but without its trees, its soil became hard and poor. When the empire 【B10】______ to pieces, the home country found itself faced by floods and starvation.
【B11】______ a government realizes the importance of a plentiful supply of trees, it is difficult for it to persuade the villager to see this ,the villager wants wood to cook his food 【B12】______ ; and he can earn money by making charcoal or selling wood to the townsman. He is usually too lazy or too 【B13】______ to plant and look after new trees. So, 【B14】______ the government has a good system of control, or can educate the people, the forests slowly disappear.
This does not only mean that the villagers' sons and grandsons have 【B15】______ trees. The results are even more serious; for where there are trees their roots break the soil up allowing the rain to sink in and also bind the soil, thus preventing 【B16】______ washed away on the surface, causing floods and carrying 【B17】______ ground away 【B18】______ it the rich top-soil, in which crops grow so well. When all the top-soil is 【B19】______ , nothing remains 【B20】______ worthless desert.
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