customers can return their empty containers. \industrial composting facility and they turn the containers into compost, which we then sell in our stores to people who buy it for their gardens,\Tuitele, communications director of Wild Oats. A European retailer has also been selling the new plastic products. IPER, a 21-store chain in Italy, has been using the packaging for a year and has expanded its use from deli departments to dairy and bakery areas. http://tr.hjenglish.com/
The new plastic has a few quirks, however. The biodegradable materials won't break down in regular landfills; they have to be taken to special industrial sites and treated like compost. Nor will they decompose in home compost bins: Temperatures there don't reach the required 284 degrees F. Yet the containers will melt if filled with hot food, or placed in the dishwasher or microwave. Cargill, an international agriculture corporation, and Dow Chemical, have a joint venture making one line of PLA. Within 10 years, says Cargill spokesman Michael O'Brian, the company expects to be making 1 billion pounds of corn-derived plastii:s each year. That would mean 10 percent of the nation's annual corn supply would be converted into plastics and fiber.
PLA can also be used as an altemative for molded foam products, electronic packaging, and cups. For instance, the Coca-Cola Company used 500,000 cups made from corn at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. And instead of creating a huge trash problem, the used cups were composted and turned into dirt.
What separates biodegradable plastics from their more long-lived cousins are polymers. Plastics based on natural plant polymers, derived from wheat or
corn starches, have molecules that are easily broken down by microbes; traditional plastics have polymer molecules too large and too tightly bonded together to be broken apart by decomposer organisms.
Most biodegradable plastics currently on the market are between two and 10 times more expensive than traditional plastics. Yet plastics constitute 9 percent of the 156 million tons of trash Americans generate each year, and many consumers would be willing to pay the extra costs for a replacement product that biodegrades. According to a recent survey from market research firm RoperASW, 51 percent of respondents would pay a premium of up to 10 percent for environmentally safer versions of plastic packaging.
1. What are the major differences between corn-based plastics and regular plastics?
2. The new plastic also has some unusual features. What are they?
3. Introduce briefly the major uses of com-based plastics and the significance of this invention.
Questions 4-6 http://tr.hjenglish.com/
Trends in psychotherapy have shifted dramatically in the past two decades. Most patients (and medical plans) have taken a pass on the long-term commitment to Freudian analysis, turning instead to shorter approaches. One therapy that has taken over--especially for depression--is a method called cognitive behavioral therapy.
CBT is based on the idea that all moods--and their disorders--originate in thoughts. The therapy aims to adjust attitudes by recognizing and refuting negative thoughts as they occur. For instance, some people react to a mistake or mishap by generalizing to \
get to a more accurate assessment of the event, like \effectiveness of this hugely popular treatment has been touted in a number of academic studies and general-interest books. Proponents say that it often works faster and can be more effective than traditional psychotherapy—or even antidepressants.
Except they may be wrong. Gordon Parker, head of the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and two researchers went over the results of every available effectiveness study that's: been done on CBT. Taken together, Parker argues in a recent issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the results really don't support the claims. Their conclusion: \has been oversold,\. \superiority over any other psychotherapy.\
CBT has snowballed in popularity not because the scientific evidence is compelling, Parker says, but because \so terribly logical.\, who is somewhat disappointed in his own findings, has recommended the therapy to many of his patients. Now, he speculates that any positive outcomes might have come not from CBT itself but simply from spending time with an empathetic therapist.
The review did contain one caveat: \who do very well with CBT.\studies tend to be done on heterogeneous groups, instead of subgroups of people with specific symptoms, he says. So it's not clear who is really benefiting. http://tr.hjenglish.com/
Taking issue. Not surprisingly, many fans disagree with Parker's conclusion. Andrew Butler, research coordinator for the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy
and Research in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., is critical of the methodology used in Parker's review. (The institute is named after Aaron Beck, the psychiatrist who came up with CBT in the 1960s.) Butler says that while some research flaws do exist, %using cognitive therapy are twice as likely to remain depression free a year later as clients who got better using antidepressant medication.\while the studies are imperfect, there is enough solid empirical evidence to justify CBT's reputation. Jacqueline Persons, director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy, says that the bottom line is that CBT does work: \to about why or how it works.\
Psychiatrist David Bums is the most well-known popularizer of CBT. His book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy has more than 4 million copies in print. He says: \ago.\\methodology, he says, there are several human variables that make valid testing difficult. For example, most studies have no way to control for a patient's motivation. Exercises and other \process in CBT. Some patients do the work, and some don't bother, and that could account in part for the mixed outcomes.
Nor do the studies take into account an individual therapist's skills and manner. As a consequence, it's hard to tell if a patient's success or failure is due to the therapeutic technique or the therapist. \with big reputations who have poor empathy and get terrible results, and we've
seen therapists who seem rather inept get incredible results,\Despite the fact, he adds, that \warm.\One published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that young, low-income Latin and African-American women on CBT did almost as well as they did on antidepressants. http://tr.hjenglish.com/ 4. What is CBT? What is the basic idea behind this therapy?
5. What is the view of Gordon Parker over CBT? What is Andrew Butler's reaction to Parker's review?
6. What can be learned from David Bums' book over the issue? Questions 7-10
Alabama chief justice Roy Moore has long displayed a reverence or obsession, depending on your point of view--for the Ten Commandments. The Scripture :has been a good calling card for Moore, gaining him notoriety far beyond the realm of circuit-court judges after he first decorated his courtroom in 1995 with a hand-carved rosewood plaque bearing God's laws. He prevailed over civil libertarians who sued for its removal, and rode his fame even further in 2000, when he was elected chief justice of Alabama's supreme court on the slogan \folk-hero status among Evangelicals and conservatives, last week he finally pushed the legal establishment too far when he ignored a federal court order to remove his largest monument to the Commandments, a 5,280-1b. granite carving known as Roy's Rock. Moore and some helpers had installed the sculpture in the rotunda of the state's judicial building during off-hours one night in 2001.
2004年高级口译笔试阅读部分真题
