评论
打印
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.
参考译文:这里是美国之音慢速英语健康报道。
人老后会不快乐还是更快乐？如果你说是更快乐，那么根据两年前的一项研究，你就说对了。研究发现，人们55岁以后普遍更快乐，担忧也会减少。事实上，研究还发现，到85岁时，人们会比18岁时还要快乐。
这一发现来自盖洛普2008年对美国34万成年人的调查，当时的人们年龄在18岁到85岁之间。
纽约州立大学石溪分校精神病学和行为科学系的Arthur Stone领导了这项研究，他的团队发现，年龄在22岁到25岁的成年人承受的压力最大。人到了55岁后压力会急剧下降。
除成年和刚过70岁的人幸福感最高，但最不可能有负面情绪的是那些七八十岁的人。
调查还发现，男人和女人进入老年后的情感模式形似。然而，各个年龄的女人的悲伤、压力和担心都比男人多。
研究者考虑过可能的影响因素，诸如有小孩子、失业或单身。但他们发现，类似这类的因素不会年龄有关的幸福度。
那么为何年老后会更幸福呢？一个理论称，人在年老后会对拥有的更加感激，能更好地控制情绪。花在思考糟糕经历上的时间也减少了。
这项发现发表在《美国国家科学院院刊》上。
随着年龄增长而改善了不只是幸福感，今年发表的一项研究表明，80多岁的人遇到的睡眠质量问题最少。
研究者调查了15多万美国成年人，该研究由宾夕法尼亚州立大学的迈克尔·格兰德纳负责，发表在《睡眠》杂志上。
研究的最初目的是确认流行的一个说法，即睡眠问题增加与年龄有关。研究确实发现中年人睡眠问题增加，尤其是妇女。但除此之外，人们称当年龄更大时睡眠质量会有所提高。
本VOA慢速译文由可可英语sunny提供
