Many questions about estrogen’s effects remain to be elucidated, and investigations are seeking answers through ongoing laboratory and clinical studies.
As the defining epidemic of a modern age notable for overconsumption and excess, obesity is hard to beat. The increased availability of high-fat, high sugar foods, along with more sedentary lifestyles, has helped push the number of obese people worldwide to beyond 400 million, and the number of overweight to more than 1.6 billion. By 2015, those figures are likely to grow to 700 million and 2.3 billion respectively, according to the World Health Organization. Given the health implications—increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers—anything that helps people avoid piling on the pounds must be a good thing, right?Those who agree will no doubt welcome the growing success of researchers striving to develop “diet pills” that provide a technical fix for those incapable of losing weight at any other way. Last week a study published in The Lancet showed that tesofensine, which works by inducing a sense of fullness, is twice as effective as any other drug at enabling patients to lose weight.There is no question that advances such as this are good news for those with a strong genetic predisposition to obesity. But for the rest of us it is dangerous to see treatment as a more effective solution than prevention. There are several reasons for this. For a start, the traditional ways of maintaining a safe weight, such as limiting what you eat, increase consumption of fruit and vegetables and taking more exercise, are beneficial for our health in many ways.Second, overindulgence in fatty foods has implications for the entire planet. Consider the deleterious environmental effects of the rising demand for meat. As demonstrated in our special issue on economic growth, technological fixes will not compensate for excessive consumption.Third, interfering with the brain circuits that control the desire for food can have an impact on other aspects of a person's personality and their mental and physical health.We need two approaches: more research into the genetics of obesity to understand why some people are more susceptible, and greater efforts to help people avoid eating their way to an early death. Cynics will say we’ve tried education and it hasn’t worked. That is defeatist: getting people to change their behavior takes time and effort, held back as we are by our biological tendency to eat more than we need, and by the food industry ’ s ruthless opportunism in exploiting that.Drugs will be the saving of a few—as a last resort. But the global obesity problem is one of lifestyle, and the solution must be too.1.In the first paragraph all the figures surrounding obesity reflect （ ）.2.When it comes to the recently reported diet pills, the author would say that （ ）.3.Which of the following can be referred to as the environmental perspective of the author’s argument?4.The author argues that we make greater efforts to help people fight against （ ）.5.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of translations for 2 753 dishes and drinks to （ ）public opinions.
If you are catching a train, it is always （ ）better to be early even a fraction of a minute than too late.
Doctors are concerned with health of people from （ ）to the grave.
Stephanie Smith, a children's dance instructor, thought she has a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes. Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed from the waist down.Ms. Smith was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness causes by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday family party. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157: H7 since 1994. Yet tens of
