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During the game, the morale of the athletes is extremely important. strategy luck confidence attitude
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Concrete is a durable, watertight, and incombustible material that is, moreover, inexpensive to make. in addition more or less however consequently
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What a juicy morsel it is? tidbit savory gossip steak
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Mountingevidence indicates that acid rain is damaging historic sites in Boston and Philadelphia. Hanging Tentative Increasing Irrefutable
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The nocturnal habits and mournful cries of owls have made them objects of superstition for some people. strange secret frightful sorrowful
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The English first attempted to settle in Maine at the mouth of the Kennebec River in 1607. edge of elbow in entrance to source of
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Neighboring states often sign trade agreements with one another. Peaceful Friendly Adjacent Developing
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Parachutes are not a new invention. a valuable a lucky a recent an unknown
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Cactus plants have spines that prevent animals from nibbling them. ruining reaching climbing gnawing
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There are notices to the contrary, a great deal of technical writing is at best awkward and at worst actually unclear. denials laws attempts ideas
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The students will be notified regarding the college entrance examination. condoned deformed emulated informed
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Even before modern notions of friction, it was known that greased surfaces move over one another more easily than dry ones. concepts tricks benefits techniques
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Because poultry is as nutritious as beef and lower in fat, many people are beginning to include more chicken in the diets. delicious filling common nourishing
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One of the responsibilities of the Coast Guard is to make sure that all ships obediently follow traffic rules in busy harbors. skillfully safely dutifully currently
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In the United States there are more people who are obese today than twenty years ago. gainfully employed upwardly mobile excessively overweight privately educated
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Changes in Museums
Museums have changed. They are no longer places that one “should“ visit, they are places to enjoy and learn.
At a science museum in Ontario, Canada, you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity passes through your body. At the Metropolitan (大城市的) Museum of Art in New York City, you can look at the seventeenth century instruments while listening to their music. At New York’s American Museum of Natural History recently, you can help make a bone-by- bone reproduction of the museum’s dinosaur(恐龙), a beast that lived 200 million years ago.
More and more museum directors are realizing that people learn best when they can somehow become part of what they are seeing. In many science museums, for example, there are no guided tours. The visitor is encouraged to touch, listen, operate, and experiment so as to discover scientific principles for himself. The purpose is not only to provide fun but also to help people feel at home in the world of science. The theory is that people who do not understand science will probably fear it, and those who fear science will not use it to best advantage.
One cause of all these changes is the increase in wealth and leisure time. Another cause is the rising percentage of young people in the population. Many of these young people are college students or college graduates. Leon F. Twiggs, a young black professor of art once said, “They see things in a new and different way. They are not satisfied to stand and look at works of art; they want art they can participate(参加) in. “The same is true of science and history.
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DVD for Rent
1．A pay-for -play system for video DVD (digital versatile disc) will emerge by summer as an alternative, and possibly a competitor, to the DVD format currently available.
2．The new system called Digital Video Express (Divx),operates like a DVD player, except for the specially coded discs. These will cost $ 5 for initial viewing over a 48-hour period and can be viewed again for additional fees and even purchased for unlimited viewing.
3．Divx combines the service of a video rental store with the operation of a pay-per-view TV channel. Unlike a rented videotape, though, the Divx disc needn’t he returned. The 48-hour viewing period doesn’t begin until the disc is first played. Customers can retain the disc for replay in the future at an additional fee, or simply discard it. (Divx plans a collection and recycling programme.)
4．Subsequent plays, or the purchase of unlimited-viewing rights, are billed to the customer’s Divx account and charged to a credit card. The player’s built-in memory keeps track of all Divx plays, and relays this information by toll-free phone modern to the Divx record-keeping centre. Each Divx disc and player has a unique identification code, so the system knows which discs have been played and where—something that may raise concerns over privacy.
5．Some Divx discs could be converted for unlimited play at a price likely to be lower than buying a conventional DVD. Others, called Divx Gold, would be sold from the beginning for unlimited play without further charge. Although conventional DVDs will run in a Divx players, conventional DVD player will lack the decoding and communications ability to play Divx discs. Divx players will be offered by Panasonic, RCA and Zenith.
6．About 100 discs will be available initially from Disney, Dreamworks, Paramount, and Universal, growing to 500 titles within a year. Most of these will be released in the 4:3 pan-and- scan mode rather than in the 16:9 letterbox format. Other filmmakers have yet to adopt the Divx system. Which is owned by retailer Circuit City, the 350-store electronics chain that bankrolled its development.
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Whether Is Reintroduction of the Death Penalty Necessary?
In the USA, 85% of the population over the age of 21 approve of the death penalty. In the many states which still have the death penalty, some use the electric chair, which can take up 20 minutes to kill, while others use gas or lethal injection.
The first of these was the case of Ruth Ellis who was hanged for shooting her lover in what was generally regarded as a crime passion. The second was hanged for murders which, it was later proved, had been committed by someone else.
The pro-hanging lobby (赞成极刑的活动集团) uses four main arguments to support its call for the reintroduction of capital punishment. First there is the deterrence theory, which argues that potential murders would think twice before committing the act if they knew that they might die if they were caught. The armed bank robber might, likewise, go back to being unarmed.
The other two arguments are more suspect. The idea of retribution demands that criminals should get what they deserve: if a murderer intentionally set out to commit a crime, he should accept the consequences. Retribution, which is just another word for revenge, is supported by the religious doctrine of an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.
The arguments against the death penalty are largely humanitarian (人道主义的). But there are also statistical reasons for opposing it: the deterrence figures do not add up. In Britain, 1903 was the record year for execution and yet in 1904 the number of murders actually rose. There was a similar occurrence in 1946 and 1947. If the deterrence theory were correct, the rate should have fallen.
The other reasons to oppose the death penalty are largely a matter of individual conscience and belief. One is that murder is murder and that the state has no more right to take a life than the individual. The other is that Christianity advises forgiveness, not revenge.
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Nuclear Power and Its Danger
Nuclear power’s danger to health, safety, and even life itself can be summed up in one word: radiation.
Nuclear radiation has a certain mystery, about it, partly because it cannot be detected by human senses. It can’t be seen or heard, or touched, or tasted, even though it may be all around us. There are other things like that. For example, radio waves are all around us but we can’t detect them, sense them, without a radio receiver. Similarly, we can’t sense radioactivity without a radiation detector. But unlike common radio waves, nuclear radiation is not harmless to human beings and other living things.
At very high levels, radiation can kill an animal or human being outright by killing masses of cells in vital organs. But even the lowest level of radiation can do serious damage. There is no level of radiation that is completely safe. If the radiation does not hit anything important, the damage may not be significant. This is the case when only a few cells are hit, and if they are killed outright. Your body will replace the dead cells with healthy ones. But if the few cells are only damaged, and if they reproduce themselves, you may be in trouble. They reproduce themselves in a deformed way. They can grow into cancer. Sometimes this does not show up for many years.
This is another reason for some of the mystery about nuclear radiation. Serious damage can be done without the victim being aware at the time that damage has occurred. A person can be irradiated and feel fine, then die of cancer five, ten, or twenty years later as a result. Or a child can be born weak or liable to serious illness as result of radiation absorbed by its grandparents.
Radiation can hurt us. We must know the truth.
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Famous American Foods
What, besides children, connects mothers around the world and across the seas of time? It’s chicken soup, one prominent American food expert says.
From Russian villages to Africa and Asia, chicken soup has been the remedy for those weak in body and spirit. Mothers passed their knowledge on to ancient writers of Greece, China and Rome, and even 12th century philosopher and physician Moses Maimonides extolled (赞美)its virtues.
Among the ancients, Aristotle thought poultry should stand in higher estimation than four-legged animals because the air is less dense than the earth. Chickens got another boost (吹捧)in the Book of Genesis, where it is written that birds and fish were created on the fifth day, a day before four-legged animals.
But according to Mimi Sheraton, who has spent much of the past three years exploring the world of chicken soup, much of the reason for chicken’s real or imagined curative (治愈的)powers comes from its color.
Her new book, “The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup“, looks at the beloved and mysterious brew, with dozens of recipes from around the world. Throughout the ages, she said, “There has been a lot of feeling that white-colored foods are easier to eat for the weak woman and the ill“.
In addition, “soups, or anything for that matter eaten with a spoon“ are considered “comfort foods“ Sheraton said. “I love soup and love making soup and as I was collecting recipes I began to see this as an international dish. It has a universal mystique as something curative, a strength builder,“ Sheraton said from her New York home.
Her book treats the oldest remedy as if it was brand new.
The National Broiler Council, the trade group representing the chicken industry, reported that 51 percent of the people it surveyed said they bought chicken because it was healthier, 50 percent said it was versatile, 41 percent said it was economical and 46 percent said it was low in fat.
