Believe it or not, school uniforms are absolutely not only clothes for students. They stand for the culture or beauty appreciation standard of a country. Let's take a look at school uniforms in different nations.

    School Uniforms in England

    Style of English school uniforms is rather classic, simple and elegant. Boys wear conventional western-style clothes, regular leather shoes and must wear neckties. Girls also wear western-style clothes, regular leather shoes and must wear bow-ties. This classic clothing style unconsciously affects English students' temperament (气质) and also sense of beauty.

    School Uniforms in Korea

    Do you still remember the classic scenes in My Sassy Girl? If you've watched it, you will know how stylish Korean students' uniforms are. Boys wear nice white shirts and western-style trousers. Girls wear white shirts, lovely skirts of latest design and bow knots.

    School Uniforms in Malaysia

    Students in Malaysia obey rather strict rules. Girls' dresses must be long enough to cover the knees. Shirts must cover the elbows. Compared with Thai students, they are much more conservative.

    School Uniforms in Japan

    For students, school uniforms in Japan are not only symbols for schools, but also symbols for the current fashion trends, even affecting students when choosing a school. Japanese school uniforms for girls originate in sailor suits. So they are also called sailor suits or sailor uniforms. Cartoon elements are used on them. Japanese school uniforms for boys are classic dark-colored clothes with stand-up collars, similar to Chinese tunic suits.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    Most people have heard of Shakespeare and probably know something of the plays that he wrote. However，not everybody knows much about the life of this remarkable man，except perhaps that he was born in the market town of Stratford upon Avon and  that he married a woman called Anne Hathaway. We know nothing of his school life. We do not know，for example，how long it lasted，but we presume that he attended the local grammar school，where the principal subject taught was Latin.

    Nothing certain is known for what he did between the time he left school and his departure for London. According to a local legend，he was beaten and even put in prison for stealing rabbits and deer from the estate of a neighboring landowner，Sir Thomas Lucy. It is said that because of this he was forced to run away from his native place. A different legend says that he was apprenticed to a Stratford butcher，but did not like the life and for this reason decided to leave Stratford.

    Whatever caused him to leave the town of his birth，the world can be grateful that he did so. What is certain is that he set his foot on the road to fame when he arrived in London. It is said that at first he had no money or friends there，but that he earned a little by taking care of the horses of the gentlemen who attended the plays at the theatre. In_time ， as he became a familiar figure to the actors in the theatre，they stopped and spoke to him. They found his conversation so brilliant that finally he was invited to join their company.

    In the latter part of the 20th century, child labor remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. Studies carried out in 1979, the International Year of the Children, showed that more than 50 million children below the age of 15 were working in various jobs often under dangerous conditions. Many of these children live in underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Their living conditions are crude and their chances for education small. The poor income they bring in, however, is necessary for the survival of their families. Frequently, these families lack the basic necessities of life—adequate food, decent（得体的、合适的）clothing and shelter, and even water for bathing.

    In some countries industrialization has created working conditions for children that are comparable to the worst features of the 19th-century factories and mines. In India, for example, some 20,000 children work 16-hour days in match factories.

    Child-labor problems are not, of course, limited to developing nations. They occur wherever poverty exists in Europe and the United States. The most important efforts to eliminate（根除）child-labor abuses throughout the world come from the International Labor Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 and now a special agency of the United Nations. The organization has introduced several child-labor conventions（规定）among its members, including a minimum（最低）age of 16 years for admission to all work, a higher minimum age of specific types of employment, compulsory（强制的）medical examinations, and It depends on voluntary obedience（服从）of member nations.

    Exposing living tissue to subfreezing temperatures for long can cause permanent damage. Microscopic ice crystals (结晶体) cut cells and seize moisture (潮气), making donor organs unsuitable for transplantation. Thus, organs can be made cold for only a few hours ahead of a procedure. But a set of lasting new antifreeze compounds (化合物)—similar to those found in particularly hardy (耐寒的) animals—could lengthen organs' shelf life.

    Scientists at the University of Warwick in England were inspired by proteins in some species of Arctic fish, wood frogs and other organisms that prevent blood from freezing, allowing them to flourish in extreme cold. Previous research had shown these natural antifreeze molecules (分子) could preserve rat hearts at -1.3 degrees Celsius for up to 24 hours. But these proteins are expensive to extract (提取) and highly poisonous to some species. “For a long time everyone assumed you had to make synthetic (人造的) alternatives that looked exactly like antifreeze proteins to solve this problem, ”says Matthew Gibson, a chemist at Warwick who co-authored the new research. “But we found that you can design new molecules that function like antifreeze proteins but do not necessarily look like them.”

    Most natural antifreeze molecules have a mixture of regions that either attract or repel water. Scientists do not know exactly how this process prevents ice crystal formation, but Gibson thinks it might throw water molecules into push-pull chaos that prevents them from tuning into ice. To copy this mechanism, he and his colleagues synthesized spiral-shaped molecules that were mostly water-repellent—but had iron atoms at their centers that made them hydrophilic, or water-loving. The resulting compounds were surprisingly effective at stopping ice crystals from forming. Some were also harmless to the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, indicating they might be safe for other animals.

    “These compounds are really cool because they are not proteins—they are other types of molecules that nonetheless can do at least part of what natural antifreeze proteins do, ”says Clara do Amaral, a biologist at Mount St. Joseph University, who was not involved in the research. Gibson's antifreeze compounds will still need to be tested in humans, however, and may be only part of a solution. “We don't have the whole picture yet,”do Amaral adds. “It's not just one magical compound that helps freeze-tolerant organisms survive. It's a whole suite of adaptations.

    It was a cold winter. The wind blew all night and the snow was blinding. When morning came, my three children and I got up and made our way to the windows. As we looked out the window, we saw that the henhouse was gone. Our three hens had been blown away.

    I looked at the emptiness outside. Then I saw all three chickens sat around the edge of a white bucket. How was this violent wind not blowing them into the field beyond? I quickly pulled on long snow pants and heavy winter coat, wrapped a scarf and stuck my feet into very large boots .

    I shouted at the wind as it blew. I was alone, save for my children. They stared out the window into the vast white sea of snow, their eyes peeled for any sign of movement. Outside I heard the sound of my boots as I walked against the wind.

    The snow circling around me, I steadily made my way to the soft cluck-cluck-cluck sound my hens always made. When I reached them, I saw that their little feet were holding on to the edge of the bucket, heads bent forward and away from the wind. I gently lifted each hen and put it carefully into the warm inside. Then I began the freezing walk back to the small shed directly behind our house. One by one I laid my chickens on the cold floor, and they began to cluck softly.

    As I shut the shed doors, my eyes went directly to the window where my children were watching. They jumped up and down cheering, and so did I! I wasn't some dragon slayer (屠龙者) from a fairy tale. I was simply a mom, but the look on my children's faces told me that they thought I was a hero mom.

    Chinese researchers say they have come up with a simple way to find out a person's biological age —how much the body has aged physically – through a urine (尿) test.

    Their findings will help researchers conduct numbers of ageing studies and even predict a person's risk of age-related diseases, according to a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience.

    Another paper by researchers at the Beijing Hospital and the West China Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said on Tuesday that people aged at different rates due to changes in their genetic make-up and their environment.

    Chronological age – which is based on one's birth date —was not an exact measure of biological age so a more exact method was needed, the team said.

    Ageing is driven by the lifelong gradual accumulation(积累) of a broad variety of molecular (分子) faults in the body's cells. The team said they had identified a matter 8-oxoGsn that indicated increases in oxidative (氧化性) damage in urine as people's bodies aged.

    Cai Jianping, a co-author at the Beijing Hospital, said: “As we age, we suffer increasing oxidative damage and so the levels of oxidative matters increase in our body.” The team tested the levels of 8-oxoGsn in urine samples from 1,228 Chinese people aged two to 90 and concluded the marker helped accurately determine the stage of biological ageing in adults.

    They had previously found that 8-oxoGsn levels also increased with age in the urine of animals such as mice.

    The team has also developed a rapid analysis technique called ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography(层析法), which can process up to 10 urine samples an hour, according to the study.