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 100?" says Dr. Thomas Perls, 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 ______.
A. the aged should not go to the nursing home
B. we can lengthen our lives through high-tech medicine
C. centenarians die faster than those who are younger
D. the ever-growing Segment of centenarians has caused concern
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文: School Education
Interviewer: Janet, as a teacher, can you give us some idea on how the English school system works?
Janet: Urn, well, first of all most children start school at the age of five and they can't leave school until the age of sixteen. Um... they will go to primary school from the age of five until eleven ... um, and previously they used to take an eleven plus examination which would then determine whether they would go to a grammar school or alternatively a secondary school. But now we have a.. a new system where children aren't divided off at the age of eleven, instead, they could take the exams at the age of sixteen.
Interviewer: Do you think that's a ... an improvement to the system?
Janet: Well,... um, theoretically.., it's supposed to be much better because it gives.., it stops separating children at the age of eleven and gives them a better chance, and in fact what usually happens is that those children who wouldn't ... er who would have gone to a grammar school tend to be at the top end of the comprehensive system, and those that would have gone to secondary modern school find themselves at the lower levels of the school.
Interviewer: Do you think that the present school system is an efficient way of educating children?
Janet: Urn... well if you, if you accept that, you know, there have to be schools, it seems to work fairly efficiently. Of course one of our great problems in England is that we have very large classes and .. urn, it would be very nice if we could reduce that by at least half instead of there being forty children in a class, there are only twenty., um and so that each child gets more individual attention so that their own particular needs just aren't passed over.
Interviewer: Do you think the.., subjects that er... children study today are adapted to present-day society.9
Janet: It would be very good if... er, more children at school had the opportunity of learning about the society they live in... in economic terms and in social terms, so that they are much more aware of the problems that we face today. But I also think that education isn't only something that has to be.. has to be relevant.., um, I think education can be just a... a gradual extension of oneself, and I don't think it's um... important for subjects to be seen only in terms of how useful they are when you leave school.., but how much you enjoy them and how much they mean to you.
Interviewer: What about games.., er and drama and things like that?
Janet: Well, the students have about an hour and a half of games a week, and for about an hour a week they have a class called social studies, which urn.., provide them ... er with some basic information or knowledge about what life will be after they leave school.., and they will do a drama in this class. They also study something about ecology, sociology et cetera... It's not an "O" level class, it's just for.., er experience.
Interviewer: Janet, do you.., really think, that your students gain a lot from their education?
Janet: I think they gain a certain amount of necessary knowledge, yes, but I think it should be broader. I think more emphasis should be put on broadening their knowledge instead of studying towards passing an exam, or reading towards writing a paper.
Interviewer: Er... do you have any specific way in which you think.., time at school could be improved?
Janet: Yes, I think there
A. were at the age of 16
B. failed the eleven plus exam
C. did well in the eleven plus exam
D. were not qualified for secondary school