{#blank#}1{#/blank#} The Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio did the study. It was published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. The study found a sixty-three percent increase in the number of people treated for rock climbing injuries in American hospitals.

    The study said forty thousand people were treated in emergency rooms. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} The ankle was the most common body part to be injured.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The average age was twenty-six. Fifty-six percent of the injuries were to people twenty to thirty-nine years old. Women made up twenty-nine percent of the injured population. That is more than that in past rock climbing studies.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} But many people think it is worth it. John Bachar said rock climbing felt like being on another planet. Dean Fidelman says it is a continual challenge and a beautiful form of movement. And, for Sarah Bowman, she has just started her way up the rocks.

    Dean Fidelman said that he believes a climber's ego(自我价值感) can be his worst enemy on a rock. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Like many other sports, rock climbing can be dangerous.

B. Climbers in the study were from ages two to seventy-four.

C. The most common injuries were broken bones and sprains in legs and feet.

D. They try to move as silently up the wall as they can.

E. A recent study shows a sharp increase in rock climbing injuries between 1990 and 2007.

F. There's no other sport where you're really going up and down.

G. He said rock climbing is a high risk sport in which many people overestimate their abilities and underestimate the rock.

How to Improve Your English

    One of the most important questions that every student asks is how to improve your English. There are probably as many answers to this question as there are people {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Let's begin with the three most important rules to help guide you. You'll find further ideas below.

Rule 1:{#blank#}2{#/blank#} 

    The most important rule to remember is that learning English is a process. It takes time, and it takes lots of patience! If you are patient, you will improve your English.

Rule 2:Make a Plan

    The most important thing to do is to create a plan and follow that plan.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Patience is key to improving your English, so go slowly and focus on your foals. You'll speak English well soon if you keep to the plan.

Rule 3:{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    It's absolutely necessary that learning English becomes a habit. In other words, you should work on your English every day. It's not necessary to study grammar every day. However, you should listen, watch read or speak English every day even if it's for a short period of time.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} When you truly understand and master these three rules, then you will find your English level is really great.

    The health of millions could be at risk because supplies of medicinal plants are being used up. These plants are used to make traditional medicine, including drugs to fight cancer. “The loss of medicinal plants is a quiet disaster,” says Sara Oldfield, secretary general of the NGO Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

    Most people worldwide rely on herbal (药草制的) medicines which are got mostly from wild plants. But some 15,000 of the 50,000 medicinal species are under threat of dying out, according to report from the international conservation group Plantlife. Shortages have been reported in China, India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda.

    Over-harvesting does the most harm, though pollution and competition from invasive species (入侵物种) and habitat destruction all contribute. Businessmen generally harvest medicinal plants, not caring about sustainability (可持续性),” the Plantlife report says, “damage is serious partly because they have no idea about it. but it is mainly because such collection is unorganized” Medicinal trees at risk include the Himalayan yew (紫衫) and the African cherry, which are used to treat some cancers.

    The solution, says the report's author, Alan Hamilton, is to encourage local people to protect these plants. Ten projects studied by Plantlife in India, Pakistan, China, Nepal, Uganda and Kenya showed this method can succeed. In Uganda, the project has kept a sustainable supply of low-cost cancer treatments, and in China a public-run medicinal plant project has been created for the first time.”

    “Improving health, earning an income and keeping cultural traditions are important in encouraging people to protect medicinal plants,” says Hamilton, “You have to pay attention to what people are interested in.”

    Ghillean Prance, the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, agrees that medicinal plants are in need of protection. “Not nearly enough is being done,” he told New Scientist. “We are destroying the very plants that are of most use to us.”

    Why should mankind explore space? Why should money, time and effort be spent exploring and researching something with so few apparent benefits? Why should resources be spent on space rather than on conditions and people on Earth? These are questions that, understandably, are very often asked.

    Perhaps the best answer lies in our genetic makeup as human beings. What drove our ancestors to move from the trees into the plains, and on into all possible areas and environments? The wider the spread of a species, the better its chance of survival. Perhaps the best reason for exploring space is this genetic tendency to expand wherever possible.

    Nearly every successful civilization has explored, because by doing so, any dangers in surrounding areas can be identified and prepared for. Without knowledge, we may be completely destroyed by the danger. With knowledge, we can lessen its effects.

    Exploration also allows minerals and other potential resources to be found. Even if we have no immediate need of them, they will perhaps be useful later. Resources may be more than physical possessions. Knowledge or techniques have been acquired through exploration. The techniques may have medical applications which can improve the length or quality of our lives. We have already benefited from other spin­offs including improvements in earthquake prediction, in satellites forweather forecasting and in communications systems. Even non­stick pans and mirrored sunglasses are by­products(副产品) of technological developments in the space industry!

    While many resources are spent on what seems a small return, the exploration of space allows creative, brave and intelligent members of our species to focus on what may serve to save us. While space may hold many wonders and explanations of how the universe was formed or how it works, it also holds dangers. The danger exists, but knowledge can help human beings to survive. Without the ability to reach out across space, the chance to save ourselves might not exist.

    While Earth is the only planet known to support life, surely the adaptive ability of humans would allow us to live on other planets. It is true that the lifestyle would be different, but human life and cultures have adapted in the past and surely could in the future.

    Measles (麻疹), which once killed 450 children each year and disabled even more, was nearly wiped out in the United States 14 years ago by the universal use of the MMR vaccine (疫苗). But the disease is making a comeback, caused by a growing anti-vaccine movement and misinformation that is spreading quickly. Already this year, 115 measles cases have been reported in the USA, compared with 189 for all of last year.

    The numbers might sound small, but they are the leading edge of a dangerous trend. When vaccination rates are very high, as they still are in the nation as a whole, everyone is protected. This is called "herd immunity", which protects the people who get hurt easily, including those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons, babies too young to get vaccinated and people on whom the vaccine doesn't work.

    But herd immunity works only when nearly the whole herd joins in. When some refuse vaccination and seek a free ride, immunity breaks down and everyone is in even bigger danger. That's exactly what is happening in small neighborhoods around the country from Orange County, California, where 22 measles cases were reported this month, to Brooklyn, N.Y., where a 17-year-old caused an outbreak last year.

    The resistance to vaccine has continued for decades, and it is driven by a real but very small risk. Those who refuse to take that risk selfishly make others suffer.

    Making things worse are state laws that make it too easy to opt out (决定不参加) of what are supposed to be required vaccines for all children entering kindergarten. Seventeen states allow parents to get an exemption (豁免), sometimes just by signing a paper saying they personally object to a vaccine.

    Now, several states are moving to tighten laws by adding new regulations for opting out. But no one does enough to limit exemptions. Parents ought to be able to opt out only for limited medical or religious reasons. But personal opinions? Not good enough. Everyone enjoys the life-saving benefits vaccines provide, but they'll exist only as long as everyone shares in the risks.

    Imagine you are opening your own company and want to hire a manager. You have two candidates and they are both capable and experienced, so who would you rather hire: Julia Watson or Shobha Bhattacharva? Chances are that you would prefer Watson, right? But why?

    "Easy names are evaluated as more familiar, less risky and less dangerous," Eryn Newman, a scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, told Scientific American. As a result, people with easier names are often assumed to be more trustworthy. This is what Newman and her teammates have found in their recent study.

    In the experiment, they picked 18 different foreign names, including difficult-to-pronounce ones like Yevgeni Dherzhinsky and easy names like Bodo Wallmeyer. They then attached each name with a statement such as "turtles are deaf" and "giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump" and asked volunteers whether they thought the claims were true.

    The results showed that claims connected to easier names were more often ranked as believable than those attributed to difficult names, regardless of what the truth really was. In fact, previous studies have already found that our judgments about products can be affected by their names. For example, we tend to think of a food additive (添加剂) with an easier name as safer and a stock with an easier name as more lucrative (利润丰厚的)，according to Medical Daily.

    But researchers pointed out that this effect can change depending on where someone comes from. For example, a native British man may find "Yevgeni Dherzhinsky" hard to pronounce while Russian people could say it without effort. Newman hopes that this finding can make us better see our biases (偏见). It's not just unfair to people that we make judgments based on gut feelings (直觉) rather than facts, and it can sometimes have serious consequences.

    For example, we may choose to believe certain eyewitnesses in court simply because their names sound more trustworthy even if they are actually lying. Or, we may let go of qualified job candidates due to their "difficult" names.

    Now, if you could make that decision again, would you still prefer Julia Watson to Shobha Bhattacharva?