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1.VOA常速
【Bees Are Misunderstood, Experts say】
TEXT:Be nice to bees, advises Jeff Miller of DCHoneybees.com. Miller says you might not care as much for your dinner if they were not buzzing around your neighborhood.
“If we didn’t have pollinators the only kinds of foods we could eat would be wind-pollinated vegetables such as grasses, grains, grapes things of that nature,” he explains.
Miller's company sells beekeeping supplies. DCHoneybees.com partnered with the Walker Jones Elementary School to start a community garden - tended by students and local volunteers.
“Well, you can’t talk about urban farming without talking about pollinators any more than you could talk about urban farming without talking about water or sunlight,” notes Miller.
“A lot of the aspects of your life are impacted by the pollination services that honeybees provide,” adds researcher Heidi Wolff, who first surrounded herself with bees as a teenager 13 years ago. Now she studies them at George Washington University.
“Plants do not thrive without pollination. They cannot complete their life cycle without pollination. And bees provide that service,” she explains.
While many people worry about bee stings, both Miller and Wolff say that’s a big misunderstanding.
“These are not aggressive beings. They’re rather gentle," Miller insists. "We’ve been trying to prove that with our proximity here.”
Miller explains that after a bee stings a person, their stingers fall off and they die.
“It is a little bit of a kamikaze-type situation," he says, "yeah… the reality is: we haven’t had a stinging incident here [in the garden] anyway.”
Miller says bees don’t care too much about people in the first place.
“Bees are just focused on doing their own work. And they’re not really interested in being bothered by humans," he says. "They’re not interested in you. They’re just there to collect nectar and pollen and bring it back to the colony.”
Miller says it takes about $400 to start your own hive, but that each one yields about 45 kilograms of honey every year. However, Wolff cautions would-be amateur beekeepers to do some research first.
“You don’t just want to get a box of bees, throw it somewhere and just hope you figure it out," she says. "That’s when you get problems. That’s when your neighbors get scared. That’s when people get stung.”
Wolff adds that bees need all the positive press possible, and that irresponsible beekeepers do more harm than good to the pollination process
2.VOA慢速
【What Is the Relationship Between Age and Happiness?】
TEXT:This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Are people less happy or more happy the older they get? If you answered more happy, then you wereright, based on a study published two years ago. It found that people generally become happier andexperience less worry after age fifty. In fact, it found that by the age of eighty-five, people arehappier with their life than they were at eighteen.
The findings came from a Gallup survey of more than three hundred forty thousand adults in the United States in two thousand eight.
At that time, the people were between the ages of eighteen and eighty-five.
A group of retirees in Alta, Utah, enjoy skiing and happiness together in this file photo.
Arthur Stone in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York led the study. His team found that levels of stress were highest among adults between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five. Stress levels dropped sharply after people reached their fifties.
Happiness was highest among the youngest adults and those in their early seventies. But the people least likely to report feeling negative emotions were those in their seventies and eighties.
The survey also found that men and women have similar emotional patterns as they grow older. However, women at all ages reported more sadness, stress and worry than men did.
The researchers also considered possible influences like having young children, being unemployed or being single. But they found that influences like these did not affect the levels of happiness and well-being related to age.
So why would happiness increase with age? One theory is that, as people get older, they become more thankful for what they have and have better control of their emotions. They also spend less time thinking about bad experiences.
The findings appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Happiness is not the only thing that apparently improves with age. In a study published this year, people in their eighties reported the fewest problems with the quality of their sleep.
Researchers surveyed more than one hundred fifty thousand American adults. The study, led by Michael Grandner at the University of Pennsylvania, appeared in the journal Sleep.
The original goal was to confirm the popular belief that aging is connected with increased sleep problems. The survey did find an increase during middle age, especially in women. But except for that, people reported that they felt their sleep quality improved as they got older.
And that's the VOA Special English Health Report. To read and listen to more stories for people learning English, go to 51voa.com. I'm Jim Tedder.
參考譯文:這里是美國之音慢速英語健康報道。
人老后會不快樂還是更快樂？如果你說是更快樂，那么根據兩年前的一項研究，你就說對了。研究發現，人們55歲以后普遍更快樂，擔憂也會減少。事實上，研究還發現，到85歲時，人們會比18歲時還要快樂。
這一發現來自蓋洛普2008年對美國34萬成年人的調查，當時的人們年齡在18歲到85歲之間。
紐約州立大學石溪分校精神病學和行為科學系的Arthur Stone領導了這項研究，他的團隊發現，年齡在22歲到25歲的成年人承受的壓力最大。人到了55歲后壓力會急劇下降。
除成年和剛過70歲的人幸福感最高，但最不可能有負面情緒的是那些七八十歲的人。
調查還發現，男人和女人進入老年后的情感模式形似。然而，各個年齡的女人的悲傷、壓力和擔心都比男人多。
研究者考慮過可能的影響因素，諸如有小孩子、失業或單身。但他們發現，類似這類的因素不會年齡有關的幸福度。
那么為何年老后會更幸福呢？一個理論稱，人在年老后會對擁有的更加感激，能更好地控制情緒。花在思考糟糕經歷上的時間也減少了。
這項發現發表在《美國國家科學院院刊》上。
隨著年齡增長而改善了不只是幸福感，今年發表的一項研究表明，80多歲的人遇到的睡眠質量問題最少。
研究者調查了15多萬美國成年人，該研究由賓夕法尼亞州立大學的邁克爾·格蘭德納負責，發表在《睡眠》雜志上。
研究的最初目的是確認流行的一個說法，即睡眠問題增加與年齡有關。研究確實發現中年人睡眠問題增加，尤其是婦女。但除此之外，人們稱當年齡更大時睡眠質量會有所提高。
本VOA慢速譯文由可可英語sunny提供
