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Forests give us shade, quiet and one of the harder challenges in the fight against climate change. Even as we humans count on forests to soak up a good share of the carbon dioxide we produce, we are threatening their ability to do so. The climate change we are hastening could one day leave us with forests that emit more carbon than they absorb.Thankfully, there is a way out of this trap—but it involves striking a subtle balance. Helping forests flourish as valuable “carbon sinks” long into the future may require reducing their capacity to sequester carbon now. California is leading the way, as it does on so many climate efforts, in figuring out the details.The state’s proposed Forest Carbon Plan aims to double efforts to thin out young trees and clear brush in parts of the forest, including by controlled burning. This temporarily lowers carbon―carrying capacity. But the remaining trees draw a greater share of the available moisture, so they grow and thrive, restoring the forest’s capacity to pull carbon from the air. Healthy trees are also better able to fend off bark beetles. The landscape is rendered less combustible. Even in the event of a fire, fewer trees are consumed.The need for such planning is increasingly urgent. Already, since 2010, drought and beetles have killed more than 100 million trees in California, most of them in 2016 alone, and wildfires have scorched hundreds of thousands of acres.California’s plan envisions treating 35,000 acres of forest a year by 2020, and 60,000 by 2030—financed from the proceeds of the state’s emissions-permit auctions. That’s only a small share of the total acreage that could benefit, an estimated half a million acres in all, so it will be important to prioritize areas at greatest risk of fire or drought.The strategy also aims to ensure that carbon in woody material removed from the forests is locked away in the form of solid lumber, burned as biofuel in vehicles that would otherwise run on fossil fuels, or used in compost or animal feed. New research on transportation biofuels is under way, and the state plans to encourage lumber production close to forest lands. In future the state proposes to take an inventory of its forests’ carbon-storing capacity every five years.State governments are well accustomed to managing forests, including those owned by the U.S. Forest Service, but traditionally they’ve focused on wildlife, watersheds and opportunities for recreation. Only recently have they come to see the vital part forests will have to play in storing carbon. California’s plan, which is expected to be finalized by the governor early next year, should serve as a model.1.By saying “one of the harder challenges,” the author implies that(  ).2.To maintain forests as valuable “carbon sinks,” we may need to (  ).  3.California’s Forest Carbon Plan endeavors to (  ).  4.What is essential to California’s plan according to Paragraph 5?5.The author’s attitude to California’s plan can best be described as(  ).

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On a recent sunny day, 13,000 chickens roam over Larry Brown’s 40 windswept acres in Shiner, Texas. Some rest in the shade of a parked car. Others drink water with the cows. This all seems random, but it’s by design, part of what the $6.1 billion U.S. egg industry bets will be its next big thing: climate-friendly eggs.These eggs, which are making their debut now on shelves for as much as $8 a dozen, are still labeled organic and animal-friendly, but they’re also from birds that live on farms using regenerative agriculture—special techniques to cultivate rich soils that can trap greenhouse gases. Such eggs could be marketed as helping to fight climate change.“I’m excited about our progress,” says Brown, who harvests eggs for Denver-based NestFresh Eggs and is adding more cover crops that draw worms and crickets for the chickens to eat. The birds’ waste then fertilizes fields. Such improvements “allow our hens to forage for higher-quality natural feed that will be good for the land, the hens, and the eggs that we supply to our customers.”The egg industry’s push is the first major test of whether animal products from regenerative farms can become the next premium offering. In barely more than a decade, organic eggs went from being dismissed as a niche product in natural foods stores to being sold at Walmart. More recently there were similar doubts about probiotics and plant-based meats, but both have exploded into major supermarket categories. If the sustainable-egg rollout is successful, it could open the floodgates for regenerative beef, broccoli, and beyond.Regenerative products could be a hard sell, because the concept is tough to define quickly, says Julie Stanton, associate professor of agricultural economics at Pennsylvania State University Brandywine. Such farming also brings minimal, if any, improvement to the food products (though some producers say their eggs have more protein).The industry is betting that the same consumers paying more for premium attributes such as free-range, non-GMO, and pasture-raised eggs will embrace sustainability. Surveys show that younger generations are more concerned about climate change, and some of the success of plant-based meat can be chalked up to shoppers wanting to signal their desire to protect the environment. Young adults “really care about the planet,” says John Brunnquell, president of Egg Innovations. “They are absolutely altering the food chain beyond what I think even they understand what they’re doing.”1. The climate-friendly eggs are produced ________.2. Larry Brown is excited about his progress in ________.3. The example of organic eggs is used in Paragraph 4 to suggest ________.4. It can be learned from the last paragraph that young people ________.5. John Brunnquell would disagree with Julie Stanton over regenerative product’s ________.

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It’s not difficult to set targets for staff. It is much harder,(1), to understand their negative consequences. Most work-related behaviors have multiple components.(2)one and the others become distorted.Travel on a London bus and you’ll(3)see how this works with drivers. Watch people get on and show their tickets. Are they carefully inspected? Never. Do people get on without paying? Of course! Are there inspectors to(4)that people have paid? Possibly, but very few. And people who run for the bus? They are(5). How about jumping lights? Buses do so almost as frequently as cyclists.Why? Because the target is(6). People complained that buses were late and infrequent.(7), the number of buses and bus lanes were increased, and drivers were(8)or punished according to the time they took. And drivers hit these targets. But they(9)hit cyclists. If the target was changed to(10), you would have more inspectors and more sensitive pricing. If the criterion changed to safety, you would get more(11)drivers who obeyed traffic laws. But both these criteria would be at the expense of time.There is another(12): people became immensely inventive in hitting targets. Have you(13)that you can leave on a flight an hour late but still arrive on time? Tailwinds? Of course not! Airlines have simply changed the time a(14)is meant to take. A one-hour flight is now billed as a two-hour flight.The(15)of the story is simple. Most jobs are multidimensional, with multiple criteria. Choose one criterion and you may well(16)others. Everything can be done faster and made cheaper, but there is a(17). Setting targets can and does have unforeseen negative consequences.This is not an argument against target-setting. But it is an argument for exploring consequences first. All good targets should have multiple criteria(18)critical factors such as time, money, quality and customer feedback. The trick is not only to(19)just one or even two dimensions of the objective, but also to understand how to help people better(20)the objective.

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“Reskilling” is something that sounds like a buzzword but is actually a requirement if we plan to have a future where a lot of would-be workers do not get left behind. We know we are moving into a period where the jobs in demand will change rapidly, as will the requirements of the jobs that remain. Research by the World Economic Forum finds that on average 42 per cent of the “core skills” within job roles will change by 2022. That is a very short timeline.The question of who should pay for reskilling is a thorny one. For individual companies, the temptation is always to let go of workers whose skills are no longer in demand and replace them with those whose skills are. That does not always happen. AT&T is often given as the gold standard of a company that decided to do a massive reskilling program rather than go with a fire-and-hire strategy. Other companies had also pledged to create their own plans. When the skills mismatch is in the broader economy, though, the focus usually turns to government to handle. Efforts in Canada and elsewhere have been arguably languid at best, and have given us a situation where we frequently hear of employers begging for workers, even at times and in regions where unemployment is high.With the pandemic, unemployment is very high indeed. In February, at 3.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent respectively, unemployment rates in Canada and United States were at generational lows and worker shortages were everywhere. As of May, those rates had spiked up to 13.3 per cent and 13.7 per cent, and although many worker shortages had disappeared, not all had done so. In the medical field, to take an obvious example, the pandemic meant that there were still clear shortages of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.Of course, it is not like you can take an unemployed waiter and train him to be a doctor in a few weeks. But even if you cannot close that gap, maybe you can close others, and doing so would be to the benefit of all concerned. That seems to be the case in Sweden: When forced to furlough 90 per cent of their cabin staff, Scandinavian Airlines decided to start up a short retraining program that reskilled the laid-off workers to support hospital staff. The effort was a collective one and involved other companies as well as a Swedish university.1. Research by the World Economic Forum suggests _____.2. AT&T is cited to show _____.3. Efforts to resolve the skills mismatch in Canada _____.4. We can learn from Paragraph 3 that there was _____.5. Scandinavian Airlines decided to _____.

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We’re fairly good at judging people based on first impressions, thin slices of experience ranging from a glimpse of a photo to a five-minute interaction, and deliberation can be not only extraneous but intrusive. In one study of the ability she dubbed “thin slicing”, the late psychologist Nalini Ambady asked participants to watch silent 10-second video clips of professors and to rate the instructor’s overall effectiveness. Their ratings correlated strongly with students’ end-of-semester ratings. Another set of participants had to count backward from 1,000 by nines as they watched the clips, occupying their conscious working memory. Their ratings were just as accurate, demonstrating the intuitive nature of the social processing.Critically, another group was asked to spend a minute writing down reasons for their judgment, before giving the rating. Accuracy dropped dramatically. Ambady suspected that deliberation focused them on vivid but misleading cues, such as certain gestures or utterances, rather than letting the complex interplay of subtle signals form a holistic impression. She found similar interference when participants watched 15-second clips of pairs of people and judged whether they were strangers, friends, or dating partners.Other research shows we’re better at detecting deception and sexual orientation from thin slices when we rely on intuition instead of reflection. “It’s as if you’re driving a stick shift,” says Judith Hall, a psychologist at Northeastern University, “and if you start thinking about it too much, you can’t remember what you’re doing. But if you go on automatic pilot, you’re fine. Much of our social life is like that.”Thinking too much can also harm our ability to form preferences. College students’ ratings of strawberry jams and college courses aligned better with experts’ opinions when the students weren’t asked to analyze their rationale. And people made car-buying decisions that were both objectively better and more personally satisfying when asked to focus on their feelings rather than on details, but only if the decision was complex—when they had a lot of information to process.Intuition’s special powers are unleashed only in certain circumstances. In one study, participants completed a battery of eight tasks, including four that tapped reflective thinking (discerning rules, comprehending vocabulary) and four that tapped intuition and creativity (generating new products or figures of speech). Then they rated the degree to which they had used intuition (“gut feelings,” “hunches,” “my heart”). Use of their gut hurt their performance on the first four tasks, as expected, and helped them on the rest. Sometimes the heart is smarter than the head.1. Nalini Ambaby’s study deals with _____.2. In Ambaby’s study, rating accuracy dropped when participants _____.3. Judith Hall mentions driving to mention that _____.4. When you are making complex decisions, it is advisable to _____.5. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

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Directions: Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each numbered paragraphs (1-5). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.A. Stay calmB. Stay humbleC. Don’t make judgmentsD. Be realistic about the risksE. Decide whether to waitF. Ask permission to disagreeG. Identify a shared goalHow to Disagree with Someone More Powerful than YouYour boss proposes a new initiative you think won’t work. Your senior colleague outlines a project timeline you think is unrealistic. What do you say when you disagree with someone who has more power than you do? How do you decide whether it’s worth speaking up? And if you do, what exactly should you say? Here’s how to disagree with someone more powerful than you.1. _____You may decide it’s best to hold off on voicing your opinion. Maybe you haven’t finished thinking the problem through, the whole discussion was a surprise to you, or you want to get a clearer sense of what the group thinks. If you think other people are going to disagree too, you might want to gather your army first. People can contribute experience or information to your thinking—all the things that would make the disagreement stronger or more valid. It’s also a good idea to delay the conversation if you’re in a meeting or other public space. Discussing the issue in private will make the powerful person feel less threatened.2. _____Before you share your thoughts, think about what the powerful person cares about—it may be “the credibility” of their team or getting a project done on time. You’re more likely to be heard if you can connect your disagreement to a higher purpose. When you do speak up, don’t assume the link will be clear. You’ll want to state it overtly, contextualizing your statements so that you’re seen not as a disagreeable underling but as a colleague who’s trying to advance a shared goal. The discussion will then become more like a chess game than a boxing match.3. _____This step may sound overly deferential, but it’s a smart way to give the powerful person psychological safety and control. You can say something like, “I know we seem to be moving toward a first-quarter commitment here. I have reasons to think that won’t work. I’d like to lay out my reasoning. Would that be OK?” This gives the person a choice, allowing them to verbally opt in. And, assuming they say yes, it will make you feel more confident about voicing your disagreement.4. _____You might feel your heart racing or your face turning red, but do whatever you can to remain neutral in both your words and actions. When your body language communicates reluctance or anxiety, it undercuts the message. It sends a mixed message, and your counterpart gets to choose what to read. Deep breaths can help, as can speaking more slowly and deliberately. When we feel panicky we tend to talk louder and faster. Simply slowing the pace and talking in an even tone helps calm the other person down and does the same for you. It also makes you seem confident, even if you aren’t.5. _____Emphasize that you re offering your opinion, not gospel truth. It may be a well-informed, well-researched opinion, but it’s still an opinion, so talk tentatively and slightly understate your confidence. Instead of saying something like, “If we set an end-of-quarter deadline, we’ll never make it,” say, “This is just my opinion, but don’t see how we will make that deadline.” Having asserted your position (as a position, not as a fact) demonstrates equal curiosity about other views. Remind the person that this is your point of view, and then invite critique. Be open to hearing other opinions.

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With so much focus on children’s use of screens, it's easy for parents to forget about their own screen use. “Tech is designed to really suck on you in,” says Jenny Radesky in her study of digital play, "and digital products are there to promote maximal engagement. It makes it hard to disengage, and leads to a lot of bleed-over into the family routine.”Radesky has studied the use of mobile phones and tablets at mealtimes by giving mother-child pairs a food-testing exercise. She found that mothers who used devices during the exercise started 20 percent fewer verbal and 39 percent fewer nonverbal interactions with their children. During a separate observation, she saw that phones became a source of tension in the family. Parents would be looking at their emails while the children would be making excited bids for their attention.Infants are wired to look at parents’ faces to try to understand their world, and if those faces are blank and unresponsive—as they often are when absorbed in a device-it can be extremely disconcerting foe the children. Radesky cites the “still face experiment” devised by developmental psychologist Ed Tronick in the 1970s. In it, a mother is asked to interact with her child in a normal way before putting on a blank expression and not giving them any visual social feedback; The child becomes increasingly distressed as she tries to capture her mother’s attention. "Parents don't have to be exquisitely parents at all times, but there needs to be a balance and parents need to be responsive and sensitive to a child’s verbal or nonverbal expressions of an emotional need," says Radesky.On the other hand, Tronick himself is concerned that the worries about kids' use of screens are born out of an “oppressive ideology that demands that parents should always be interacting” with their children: “It’s based on a somewhat fantasized, very white, very upper-middle-class ideology that says if you’re failing to expose your child to 30,000 words you are neglecting them.” Tronick believes that just because a child isn’t learning from the screen doesn’t mean there’s no value to it-particularly if it gives parents time to have a shower, do housework or simply have a break from their child. Parents, he says, can get a lot out of using their devices to speak to a friend or get some work out of the way. This can make them feel happier, which lets then be more available to their child the rest of the time.1.According to Jenny Radesky, digital products are designed to(  ).2.Radesky’s food-testing exercise shows that mothers’ use of devices  (  ).  3.Radesky’s cites the “still face experiment” to show that  (  ).  4.The oppressive ideology mentioned by Tronick requires parents to (  ).  5.According to Tronick, kid’s use of screens may(  ).

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Why do people read negative Internet comments and do other things that will obviously be painful? Because humans have an inherent need to _1_ uncertainty, according to a recent study in Psychological Science. The new research reveals that the need to know is strong that people will _2_ to satisfy their curiosity even when it is clear the answer will _3_. In a series of experiments, behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago and the Wisconsin school of Business tested students’ willingness to _4_ themselves to unpleasant stimuli in an effort to satisfy curiosity. For one _5_, each participant was shown a pile of pens that the researcher claimed were from a previous experiment. The twist? Half of the pens would _6_ an electric shock when clicked. Twenty-seven students were told with pens were electrified; another twenty-seven were told only that some were electrified. _7_ left alone in the room. The students who did not know which ones would shock them clicked more pens and incurred more shocks than the students who knew that would _8_. Subsequent experiments reproduced this effect with other stimuli, _9_ the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard and photographs of disgusting insects. The drive to _10_ is deeply rooted in humans, much the same as the basic drives for _11_ or shelter, says Christopher Hsee of the University of Chicago. Curiosity is often considered a good instinct—it can _12_ new scientific advances, for instance—but sometimes such _13_ can backfire. The insight that curiosity can drive you to do 14 things is a profound one. Unhealthycuriosity is possible to _15_, however. In a final experiment, participants who were encouraged to _16_ how they would feel after viewing an unpleasant picture were less likely to _17_ to see such an image. These results suggest that imagining the _18_ of following through on one’s curiosity ahead of time can help determine _19_ it is worth the endeavor. “Thinking about long-term _20_ is key to reducing the possible negative effects of curiosity,” Hsee says. In other words, don’t read online comments.

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Five ways to make conversation with anyoneConversations are links, which means when you have a conversation with a new person, a link gets formed and every conversation you have after that moment will strengthen the link. You meet new people every day: the grocery worker, the cab driver, new people at work or the security guard at the door. Simply starting a conversation with them will form a link. Here are five simple ways that you can make the fit move and start a conversation with strangers.1.                                               Suppose you are in a room with someone you don't know and something within you says “I want to talk with this person”-this is something that mostly happens with all of us. You wanted to say something-the first word-but it just won't come out, it feels like it is stuck somewhere. I know the feeling and here is my advice: just get it out. Just think: what is the worst that could happen? They won't talk with you? Well, they are not talking you now! I truly believe that once you get that first word out everything will just flow. I truly believe that once you get that first word out everything else will just flow. So keep it simple "hi", "hey" or "hello"-do the best you can to gather all of the enthusiasm and energy you can, put on a big smile and say "hi".2.                                               It's a problem all of us face; you have limited time with the person that you want to talk with and you want to make this talk memorable. Honestly, if we got stuck in the rut of “hi”, “hello”, “how are you?” and “what's going on?”, you will fail to give the initial jolt to the conversation that can make it so memorable.So don't be afraid to ask more personal questions. Trust me, you'll be surprised to see how much people are willing to share if you just ask.3.                                                When you meet a person for the first time, make an effort to find the things which you and that person have in common so that you can build the conversation from that point. When you start conversation from there and then move outwards, you'll find all of a sudden that the conversation becomes a lot easier.4.                                                     Imagine you are pouring your heart out to someone and they are just busy on their phone, and if you ask for their attention you get the response “I can multitask”. So when someone tries to communicate with you, just be in that communication wholeheartedly. Make eye contact. Trust me, eye contact is where all the magic happens. When you make eye contact, you can feel the conversation.5.                                               You all came into a conversation where you first met the person, but after some time you may have met again and have forgotten their name. Isn't that awkward! So, remember the little details of the people you met or you talked with; perhaps the places they have been to, the places they want to go, the things they like, the things they hate-whatever you talk about. When you remember such things you can automatically become investor in their well being. So they feel a responsibility to you to keep that relationship going.That's it. Five amazing ways that you can make conversation with almost anyone. Every person is a really good book to read, or to have a conversation with!

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When Microsoft bought task management app Wunderlist and mobile calendar Sunrise in 2015, it picked up two newcomers that were attracting considerable buzz in Silicon Valley. Microsoft’s own Office dominates the market for “productivity” software, but the start-ups represented a new wave of technology designed from the ground up for the smart phone world.Both apps, however, were later scrapped, after Microsoft said it had used their best features in its own products. Their teams of engineers stayed on, making them two of the many “acquit-hires”that the biggest companies have used to feed their insatiable hunger for tech talent.To Microsoft’s critics, the fates of Wunderlist and Sunrise are examples of a remorseless drive by Big Tech to chew up any innovative companies that lie in their.path. “They bought the seedlings and closed them down,” complained Paul Arnold, a partner at San Francisco-based Switch Ventures, putting paid to businesses that might one day turn into competitors. Microsoft declined to comment.Like other start-up investors, Mr Arnold’ s own business often depends on selling start-ups to larger tech companies, though he admits to mixed feelings about the result:“I think these things are good for me, if I put my selfish hat on. But are they good for the American economy? I don’t know.”The US Federal Trade Commission says it wants to find the answer to that question. This week, it asked the five most valuable US tech companies for information about their many small acquisitions over the past decade. Although only a research project at this stage, the request has raised the prospect of regulators wading into early-stage tech markets that until now have been beyond their reach.Given their combined market value of more than $5.5tn, rifling through such small deals—many of them much less prominent than Wunderlist and Sunrise—might seem beside the point. Between them, the five companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google,Amazon and Facebook) have spent an average of only $3.4bn a year on sub-$1bn acquisitions over the past five years—a drop in the ocean compared with their massive financial reserves, and the more than $130bn of venture capital that was invested in the US last year.However, critics say that the big companies use such deals to buy their most threatening potential competitors before their businesses have a chance to gain momentum, in some cases as part of a “buy and kill”. tactic to simply close them down.1.What is true about Wunderlist and sunrise after their acquisitions(  ).2. Microsoft’s critics believe that the big tech companies tend to (  ) . 3.PaulArnold is concerned that small acquisitions might( ).4.The US Federal Trade Commission intend to( ).5.For the five biggest tech companies, their small acquisition have( ).

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