This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
How many calories we eat appears more important than what we eat when we eat too much. That was the finding of a new study that should be satisfying to anyone who counts calories for weight control.
More than one billion adults are overweight. The World Health Organization calls obesity a global epidemic. On Tuesday, government researchers reported the latest estimates for the United States. The good news: obesity rates have not increased much in recent years. The bad news: they have not decreased either. More than one-third of adults were obese in two thousand nine and two thousand ten.
Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows there are all kinds of conflicting diet plans. Some tell people not to eat carbohydrates. Others say not to eat fats. Still others say to eat more protein. Or to eat less protein.
Dr. George Bray at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana led the new study. He wanted to know if protein in food affects weight gain.
Twenty-five healthy adults were in the study. They were overfed by almost a thousand calories a day over an eight-week period. Calories in food are a measure of energy.
One of those in the study was Daniel Kuhn.
DANIEL KUHN: "I was eating a lot of real butter, for instance, real whipped cream and things of that nature that I don't normally indulge in."
The people followed diets with low, normal or high levels of protein. Normal was defined as fifteen percent of energy from protein.
Dr. Bray says all of them gained weight.
GEORGE BRAY: "Fat storage was exactly the same with all three levels of protein. It was the calories that they ate that affected the body fat that they stored."
The study found that those who ate a higher percentage of protein gained more lean body mass. The opposite happened on a low protein diet.
GEORGE BRAY: "If your protein intake's low, you'll actually lose body mass even though you're eating an excess amount of calories."
Dr. Bray tells his patients to weigh themselves regularly so they can know quickly if they gain weight.
His study on protein, calories and weight gain appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian at the Harvard School of Public Health studies the relationship between diet and conditions like heart disease and diabetes. He says keeping a healthy weight is not just about eating less, but also about what you eat.
DARIUSH MOZAFFARIAN: "We don't need to go down a list of 'avoid this, avoid that' -- become, you know, food police. It's really actually mostly foods that should be increased. It's fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, vegetable oils and nuts."
He says increasing these six foods by about one serving each day would reduce obesity and help slow the epidemic of obesity-related diseases.
And that's the VOA Special English Health Report. You can find a video about the study at https://www.doczj.com/doc/428465863.html,. I'm Faith Lapidus.
一.Scientists: Rising Sea Levels to Continue Scientists say sea levels are rising and will continue to do so into the future. Coastal communities around the world are already experiencing the impact of rising seas. Many cities and towns are taking steps to deal with this new reality. Photographers have taken pictures to document those efforts. Their photos are part of an exhibit called "Sink or Swim: Designing for a Sea Change." It can be seen at the Aquarium of the Pacific, in Long Beach, California. There, experts explain the causes of the rising seas and how people are trying to adapt to the changes. Disastrous storms and floods could be a new reality around the world. That is the opinion of oceanographer Jerry Schubel. He is president of the Aquarium of the Pacific. 二.Robots Ready to Work in Restaurants For many years, machines have been doing work that people once did, including some difficult jobs. Search and rescue operations in dangerous environments are often seen as the first areas that will employ high technology robots. But there is another area that may soon take jobs traditionally held by human beings: the restaurant industry. Teams from around the world competed in early June at the DARPA Robotic Challenge Finals in California. A team from South Korea and its robot, called DRC-Hubo, won first place in the competition. The second and third place finishers were from the United States. The robots were required to drive a vehicle, climb up steps and do mechanical work. Such activities are easy for humans to perform, but more difficult for machines. Not all of the competitors were successful. The failures showed how difficult it is to design effective walking machines.
From VOA Learning English, this is the Agriculture(农业的）Report. Climate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on coastal farms. As a result farmers are increasingly unable to use fields close to the sea. Scientists call this process "salinization（盐渍化）." The term（术语）comes from the word "saline" （生理盐水）-- which means a mixture of salt and water. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says salinization is reducing the world's irrigated lands by 1 to 2 percent every year. Irrigation is the process of supplying land with fresh water from other areas. As saline water cannot be used for irrigation, a farm in Netherlands has managed to grow healthy and tasty vegetables in soil irrigated with salt water. But a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water to grow healthy and tasty vegetables.
1．Three university students in Santiago,Chile have developed a phant-powerd device to charge their mobile phones.The three engineering students got the idea for the device while sitting in their school’s courtyard.Their invention is a small biological circuit they call E-Kaia.It captures the energy plants produce during photosynthesis.Aphant uses only a small part of the energy produced by that process,The rest goes into the soil.E-Kaia collects that energy.The device plugs into the ground and then into a mobile phone.The E-Kaia solved two problems for the engineering studnts,They needed an idea for a class project.They also needed an outlet to plug in their phones.One of the student inventors,CamilaRupcich,says the device charges the energy released from the plant into low-level power to charge phones.The E-Kaia is able to fully recharge a mobile phone in less than two hours.I’m Jonathan Evans. 2．University of Washington researchers say they used a laser to turn hot water into cool water. Five engineers from the university are the first in the 50-year history of the laser to refrigerate liquids under normal conditions with light beams. The group used a simple approach to the experiment. Lasers are known for producing hot temperatures. The University of Washington says they “essentially ran the laser phenomenon in reverse.” The discovery has a future in the computer and medical fields. Computer interiors could be cooled by lasers. In a medical laboratory, individual cells could be cooled to see how they react. “Few people have thought about how they could use this technology to solve problems because using lasers to refrigerate liquids hasn’t been possible before,” said researcher Peter Pauzauskie.The cool laser concept can also be used in manufacturing, telecommunications or national defense.The group has an interest in hearing from businesses or scientists who may have every day applications for the cool laser. The findings were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I’m Marsha James. 3．The United States is marking the 14th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. U.S. officials and many other Americans attended observances Friday to remember those killed and their loved ones. Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001 when hijackers used four passenger airplanes to carry out suicide attacks in the United States. In addition to the victims, the 19 hijackers also were killed. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his group claimed responsibility for the attacks. U.S. forces killed him in a surprise raid on his hiding place in Pakistan four years ago. Friday morning, President Barack Obama, his wife and White House workers observed a public moment of silence in Washington. They gathered on the White House grounds at 8:46. That was the exact time when a hijacked airplane struck the World Trade Center. In New York, families of the victims gathered for a ringing of bells and reading of the names of those killed in the terrorist attacks. Moments of silence were held at 8:46 and 9:03 in the morning, when a second hijacked plane also hit the World Trade Center. Near Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and other officials attended an observance at the Pentagon, the home of the Defense Department. They joined in remembering those killed when a hijacked airplane hit the Pentagon, killing 184 people. Earlier Friday, a large American flag was hung down the side of the Pentagon, where the passenger jet hit. There also was a moment of silence at 10:03 a.m. That was the time when a fourth hijacked plane crashed in western Pennsylvania. All 44 people on the plane were killed. Many Americans believe the hijackers had planned to attack a target in the nation’s
VOA常速英语听力2012年11月合辑（文本）： Experts-Not-Hopeful-About-Doha-Climate-Conference Al Pessin November 19, 2012 LONDON — When representatives from around the world meet in Doha, Qatar, November 26 through December 7, they may feel a new sense of urgency to address their assigned topic, climate change. Experts are not very hopeful, however, about the meeting. For decades, talk of climate change has evoked images of melting ice and stranded polar bears. But it is not just about the polar bears any more. Experts say warming temp eratures and rising oceans are cont ributing to the creation of larger, more destructive storms. At the London offices of the environmental group Greenpeace, chief policy adviser Ruth Davis said as more people experience climate change effects, policy changes become more likely. “More and more people ar e becoming subjects of the impacts of climate change. And it is really important that governments going into Doha recognize that and take that in with them, so they have a sense of urgency and focus,” said Davis. Climate disasters not only affect those who lose their homes, but also impact crop yields, food prices, insurance rates, public health and many other issues. The director of the Climate Change Institute at London’s Imperial College, Brian Hoskins, said the key to generating support for policy changes may be when those events h appen more often, and more severely, in influential countries. “There is a tendency to think that disasters might happen in Bangladesh, but they would not happen in New Orleans or New York. But they have happened in New Orleans and New York. We see that however advanced we think we are in terms of development, we are still very dependent on the environment,” said Hoskins. Greenpeace's Davis said leaders need to recognize the costs of inaction, and also the ben efits of promoting alternative ways to produce energy, that do not contribute to global warming - methods like solar, wind and geothermal power generation. “It would take a decade, maybe longer, to be able to shift the situation. But it would not take so long to be able to get to a place where we began to deploy those technologies on an enormous scale," she said. "Then, once we have started, actually
This week, we look back on a few of the big economic stories of twenty eleven. The debt crisis in Europe spread from it’s started in Greece and Ireland last year. Portugal needed a financial rescue of over 100 dollars in this spring. And Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi lost support because of his country’s debt troubles. Greek debt continued to hurt European banks. As a result, European finance officials have called for tighter financial cooperation and new rules. Steve Jobs brought the world the iPhone, iPod and iPad. He stepped down in August because of health problems. He helped make Apple into one of the world's most valuable companies. Steve Jobs died in October at the age of fifty-six. Protests for political freedom swept North Africa and the Middle East in the Arab Spring. But protests over budget cuts and jobs were heard around the world . In the United States, activists in hundreds of cities protested economic inequality and joblessness. Protestors were angry that banks got rescued with taxpayers ’ money during the fnancial crisis nearly four years ago. But many Americans continue to face hardship. 本周我们来回顾一下2011年发生的一些经济大事。 始于去年的欧洲债务危机从希腊和爱尔兰开始蔓延。 今年春天，葡萄牙急需1 0 0 0 亿美元的金融救助。意大利总理西尔维尔·贝卢斯科尼也因为国家债务问题失去了民众支持。 欧洲银行深受希腊债务危机影响。因此，欧盟官员呼吁建立更加牢固的金融合作体系，并提出了新规则。 史蒂夫·乔布斯给世界带来了i P h o n e 、i P o d 和i P a d 。今年8 月，
听VOA学英语经验谈 如何能够有效的提高英语听力一直以来都是英语学习者当中普遍的问题。笔者根据我的一些学习经验来谈谈我对于如何提高英语听力这个问题的理解。 我认为英语听力的提高可以通过泛听与精听两种方式来练习。泛听可以通过给自己营造英语环境的方式加强对语言的敏感度，但精听却是提高听力非常有效的方法。其中收听VOA就是最好的一种方法。 通过一段时间的尝试，笔者总结出以下一套行之有效的方法： 1. 听三遍，并试着做笔记（note-taking）。 2. 根据笔记复述新闻（retelling）。 3. 订正(correction)。 4. 大声朗读三遍。（reading） 5. 再次复述(retelling)。 6. 背诵（reciting）。 7. 听新闻3—5遍。(listening) 下面是注意事项及具体的操作方法： 首先，要清楚自己是处于英语学习的哪一阶段。这一点是非常重要的。因为，只用选择听力难度适中的听力素材（即听一遍之后能理解大概70%）才会收到做大的效果。一般而言，英语基础差的学生适合听VOA慢速英语（SPECIAL ENGLISH），有大学英文基础的学生适合听VOA常速英语（STANDARD ENGLISH）。 其次，选择有对应文字材料的新闻来听。大家可以很容易在市面上买到，或者上网下载。做好准备工作，就可以开始了： 在第一步骤中，特别要求纪录的是专有名词，即人名、地名、书名、电影名等，以及时间、日期。在做笔记时，应多使用首字母大写。如New York →NY, Beijing →BJ等。 第二步是很有效的练习口语的方法。现在很多人都会把口语与听力分开练习，其实在任何一种语言学习中，“听说是不分家的”。如果能够把两者结合起来练习，会取得事半功倍的效果。这也是美国英语的教学理念之一。 第三步必不可少。一般的情况下，依据个人的口语水平，应该能复述60—80%的内容。这时订正是非常重要的。最好用红笔在文字资料上标出没有听出来的和听错了的。然后一定找出错误的原因。原因无外乎三点：1.对熟悉的单词不能及时反应；2.原文速度太快；3.出现陌生的词汇。如果是第一点，说明平时学得并不扎实，而且很少张嘴。解决办法：平常注意多张嘴，多读，多说。如果是第二点，可以通过提高口语速度来解决。第三点是最容易解决的，只要注意每次注意积累生词并背熟即可。此步骤可帮助了解自己听力的薄弱之处，做到有的放矢。 在经过细致的订正工作后，可大声朗读三遍。之后，不要借助任何资料，再次复述新闻。（强力推荐复述时闭上眼睛。）如学有余力的同学，可进行背诵。最后再来听3—5遍新闻。这时应该能听懂95%以上。
2016年6月大学英语四级听力VOA慢速英语练习题（第二十二套） 2016年6月大学英语四级听力VOA慢速英语练习题（第二十二套） Apps to Help Students Do Their Best Work Evernote Application software for computers or mobile devices can do a lot of things for students of all ages. Apps?can help students get better organized, study for tests and prepare research papers. In other words, they can help the user do his or her very best work. Apps can help any users, even those who are not students, get more organized and improve their work. Whether or not you are a student, here are some apps worth considering. Quizlet Quizlet is a study aid app. It is filled with?flash cards?on many subjects to study. Use the cards that come with the app or create your own. Quizlet has links to subjects like: Arts & Literature Languages & Vocabulary Math & Science History & Geography Standardized Tests Professional & Careers The app has a mix of text, images and audio recordings, includingpronunciation?of words in different languages. Quizlet has games to play and tests to take. Cards are available on the app even when you are not connected to the Internet. Quizlet is available as a free app from Apple’s iTunes store. Quizlet for iPhone and iPad Quizlet for Android devices You can learn more at the Quizlet website. EasyBib Sometimes the most difficult part of writing a research paper is creating thebibliography. A bibliography lists all of the publications and other sources used in your research. Getting just the right?citations?to appear in the correct?format?can be difficult and take a lot of time. The EasyBib app can make creating a bibliography easier. The app can help organize the information and find citations for books, websites and more. EasyBib users can simply?scan?the barcode on a book with a mobile phone camera to get the information they need. You can also search for documentation in the app if the book is unavailable at the time. The app offers over 7,000 different citation formats, including the commonly used Modern Language Association, or MLA, style. Users can change the way in which the information is organized and stored within the app. Users can email information from EasyBib to others or to send it to a home
2016年6月六级听力VOA常速英语练习（第三套） 2016年6月六级听力VOA常速英语练习（第三套） BERLIN— German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing mounting political pressure over the number of migrants arriving in her country — with regional authorities demanding that Berlin provide more resources to cope with the crisis. More than 1.1 million migrants are being resettled across Germany. At a meeting Thursday with Chancellor Merkel, the leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states demanded a doubling of financial aid and support for housing and schools. Hannelore Kraft is president of the North Rhine-Westphalia region. "I and other regional leaders cannot see any great progress against the mountain of asylum applications, which continues to grow," said Kraft. "German citizens are worried, partly because we don’t really know who is here." On Thursday, Chancellor Merkel struck a deal with her governing coalition partners that would facilitate deportations and restrict the rights of migrants to bring their families to Germany. "The government wants those with the prospect of remaining to be integrated, but those who have no prospect of remaining should return," said Merkel. Germany anticipates the migrant influx could cost the state an extra $3.7 billion in extra social benefits during 2016. It’s hoped German language classes will speed the migrants' entry into the labor market and cut the benefits bill. It’s uncertain there’ll be enough jobs, says the head of integration for the Berlin regional senate, Andreas Germershausen. “There is some capacity that can be absorbed," said Germershausen. "There is also a need for specific fields of the labor market. However, on the lower end of the labor market, there is, of course, the danger of competition." German lawmakers fear a second wave of migrants as family members attempt to join those already in Germany. Figures from the United Nations show a sharp increase
VOA等英语广播的听力技巧有哪些 VOA等英语广播的听力技巧有哪些 例如： OilministersoftheOrganizationofPetroleumExportingCountri eswillboldanemergencymeetingFridaytodiscuss What：Anemergencymeetingvailbeheld When：Friday Who：OilMinistersOftheOrganizationofPetroleumEx—poringCountries (2)扩大词汇量，熟记新闻报道中的常用词汇 ①普通词汇。尽管新闻报道所使用的词汇量很大，但是语言的基本词汇是稳定的。如VOA广播中的specialEnglish(特别节目)的新 闻报告中常用词汇约1500个，这的重复率在报道中是很高的，如cease-fire，presidentialeleation等政治性词汇，financebankinggroup等经济词汇以aceshuttle，robot等科技词汇。而新闻英语中的特有用语就更具稳定性。若能掌握这些词汇， 再加上一些听力技巧，基本听懂新闻报道就不是件难事了。 ②专有词汇。新闻报道是有关世界范围的最新消息，因在报道中常涉及许多人名、地名、国名。除此之外，新闻报道中还常常出现 一些河流、山脉及名胜古迹等专有名词熟悉这些专有名词可使听者 更快更准确地了解所听的新 (3)掌握一定数量的缩略语(acronym) 由于新闻报道时间的限制，不少机构的名称常采用其缩略形式，即由该名称中数个词的首字母的大写形式组成，如：PLO是thePalestineLiberationOrganization的缩写形式。需要注意的是，
No.1 This is the VOA Special English Education Report. A program in the eastern United States invites young people into a prison to try to scare them away from prison. The goal is to teach them to avoid bad choices and bad influences that could put them behind bars for life. Students can take a tour of the prison, in school groups or by themselves. At the end, the young people sit down for a discussion with some of the inmates. The program is called Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy, or PATT. It takes place at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Hagerstown, a medium-security prison for men. Sal Mauriello is a case specialist there. SAL MAURIELLO: "We have a group of eleven inmates who are in the PATT program. They tell the youth what they went through as a child, what their crimes consist of. They try to teach them about peer pressure. They try to teach them about bad choices." The Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy program also includes an essay-writing contest. Tomi Dare is a seventeen-year-old student at Hagerstown Community College. She saw an announcement for the contest on her college website. To enter, students had to write about peer pressure and why they do not do drugs. The prize: five hundred dollars for school. In her essay, Ms. Dare wrote about her own experience growing up as an African-American girl interested in sports. T OMI DARE: "Drugs and alcohol not only slow a person down, it doesn't make you feel like you are a winner. It doesn't make you feel like you are the best. As an athlete, I'm 6-2 [188 centimeters], so I feel that I should be above peer pressure because I'm bigger than everybody that I’m around. "So I was talking about that and I was talking about how I consider myself a queen. And if I’m royalty, I need to not put substances in my body. Drugs and alcohol are not what a queen should be taking." The scholarship is presented by the Prisoners Against Teen Tragedy program. Prison spokesman Mark Vernarelli says most teens who visit come to understand what even one bad decision can mean. MARK VERNARELLI: "A lot of men and women serving life in prison in the state of Maryland didn't pull a trigger or plunge a knife into anybody. They were accessories to a crime. They