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Extreme heat kills more people in an average year than any other weather-related hazard, including hurricanes and tornadoes. As climate change triggers more frequent and severe heat waves, the death toll is only going to grow-unless California takes aggressive action now to cool communities.
But advocates are deeply concerned that programs to prepare for extreme heat could get cut in the political fight over how to spend nearly $3.7 billion that state government has budgeted for climate resilience. Their fear is understandable. Heat waves have been overlooked and underfunded as a climate threat in California, compared with wildfires, coastal erosion and other more visually dramatic events. That cannot continue .
Heat is a silent killer. It exacerbates underlying health conditions, such as heart disease, respiratory disease and diabetes. It can be deadly for those who work outside. And it can worsen lung-damaging air pollution.
Yet extreme heat has gotten less attention as a climate threat because it's often treated as a temporary inconvenience, one that can be managed if people stay hydrated and remain inside with the air conditioning on. That advice highlights a very real problem: Extreme heat is not an equal-opportunity threat . It poses the gravest risk to disadvantaged communities, often in urban areas.
Low-income urban neighborhoods are most affected because they tend to have older housing without air conditioning, and their neighborhoods lack trees and parks, creating a “heat island” effect that traps heat and stays hotter longer, often into the night. That's a big problem. Heat puts an enormous strain on the body, worsened when people cannot cool down at night.
Environmental justice and public health groups have pushed the state government to dedicate more funding to manage extreme heat, particularly in these most vulnerable communities. That could include more money for planting trees, creating parks, replacing pavement with landscaped areas and other urban greening projects. The state could also provide funds to help communities switch to light-colored, “cool” pavement and roofs, and install bus shelters and other structures that provide shade.
Advocates also want the state government to be clearer about how the money is spent. For example, does it make sense to keep spending on temporary cooling centers that are barely used during heat waves? Should California communities come up with new ways to make sure people have access to convenient, comfortable and cool public spaces?
California has to make every dollar count. Even with a record $3.7-billion climate resilience budget, there's a long to-do list to help manage and mitigate the impacts of global warming. Still, the impacts of extreme heat are real and cannot be ignored or downplayed any longer.
[A] Extreme heat cannot continue.
[B] Advocates should stop panicking.
[C] Heat waves can no longer be ignored.
[D] Political fight over the budget should stop.
[A] the threat never appears at random
[B] the threat emerges all of a sudden
[C] the threat is everywhere around us
[D] the threat varies from place to place
[A] Low-income families are increasing across the state.
[B] Poor communities are most vulnerable to extreme heat.
[C] Environmentalists are worried about the cooling assistance.
[D] What the state government can do to fight extreme heat.
[A] demonstrate how terrible extreme heat would be
[B] explain why extreme heat cannot be overlooked
[C] show how California should expend the budget
[D] prove that California has made every dollar count
[A] It is impossible to eliminate the impacts of global warming.
[B] Priority should be given to poor communities in extreme heat.
[C] California is supposed to take the lead in tackling extreme heat.
[D] Building more temporary cooling centers should not be ignored.
While many journalists specialize in writing news or feature articles, Brooks Barnes does both. And for him, the main difference between the two isn't the word count, the number of interviews involved or how long he spends drafting it: “The writing process changes,” he says.
A news article is all about gathering the essential information and publishing quickly. Mr. Barnes begins working on a news article by making calls to sources, often contacts he has built up over more than 20 years of reporting. He says he jots down his most important questions before he calls a source, even if he's on a deadline and knows the conversation will only last a few minutes.
For a feature, Mr. Barnes said he will do around 10 interviews, not all of which may appear in the final article. If he's writing a profile, he aims to spend a few hours with his subject on a Friday or Saturday, when the person is more relaxed and available. As with news articles, he writes out his interview questions in advance, though he tries not to do too much research before meeting a profile subject for the first time so that he won't come into the interview with a preconceived idea of what the subject might say.
Mr. Barnes never outlines his news or feature articles, but instead works off his notes, which he'll consult as he's writing. He gathers all of his notes from his interviews and research, both typed and handwritten, and inputs the best quotes, facts and figures into a Microsoft Word document. Unlike a news article, a feature may involve several attempts at a compelling first few sentences-known as the lead-and lots of rewriting. “I've been known to focus on a lead for much longer than I should,” he said.
Structurally, a news article is much more straightforward than a feature: In a news article, the most important and timely information appears in the first few sentences, with the remaining facts generally provided in descending order of importance. In a feature, by contrast, the writer often delays the revelation of certain details in order to build suspense.
Generally, he can finish a news article in a couple of hours or less; a major feature can take upward of six months.
Another difference, Mr. Barnes said, is the voice that he interjects-or doesn't-into an article. A news article is usually devoid of personal flavor, while a feature can be saturated with it. He says he sometimes tries to “self-censor” his voice in a news article. In a feature, there is room for more lyrical description; Mr. Barnes is able to dwell on how a subject dresses, talks and reacts to his questions.
[A] the word count
[B] the writing process
[C] the number of interviews
[D] the writing time
[A] usually calls sources in secret
[B] would ask sources questions at random
[C] tends to do some preparation before contacting sources
[D] makes long conversations with sources
[A] He often places the most important information at the beginning.
[B] He would not write any outline.
[C] He usually does about 10 interviews.
[D] He would add his own views.
[A] are more straightforward
[B] lack personal flavor
[C] have fixed structures
[D] attract readers with suspense
[A] Prolific and unstrained.
[B] Professional and focused.
[C] Objective and dispassionate.
[D] Diligent and self-disciplined.
On July 3, 2021, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover captured astonishing panoramic photos of the Red Planet's unique landscape on Mount Sharp. The images, later assembled into a tour-like video, reveal that Curiosity had cruised into a region consisting of salty sulfates. The varying layers on Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, may help researchers uncover how Mars became the arid environment it is today, reports Mike Wall for Space.com.
NASA stitched together 129 individual images taken with the rover's Mast Camera to create 360-degree panoramic vistas that showcase Mars' landscape history, according to Gizmodo's Alyse Stanley. NASA also color-balanced the photos to display how Mars would look if it had similar light conditions to those on Earth.
Since landing on the Red Planet in August 2012, Curiosity has explored the Gale Crater for nine years to see if Mars had the right conditions to support microbial life at some point in its history. The rover has observed sediment patterns that suggest the Gale Crater housed a lake and stream system billions of years ago. In 2014, Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp and, since then, has been climbing the five-mile-tall mountain and exploring its rounded hills for clues as to how the lake system dried up, Space.com reports.
“The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened,” says Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a statement.
Sulfates form in drier conditions, so NASA researchers suspect that this area on Mount Sharp may explain how Mars' climate changed over time, Space.com reports. Around July on Earth, Mars experiences winter, so the planet's signature red, hazy dust settled enough for Curiosity to snap clear views of the Gale Crater's floor and the 16-mile trek it took to get to where it is now, Gizmodo reports.
Curiosity's power source was designed to last for a minimum of 14 Earth years, so it has plenty of time to keep exploring Mount Sharp and other areas. Next year, Curiosity will explore other Martian features, like the Rafael Navarro Mountain, and revisit the Greenheugh Pediment, according to Gizmodo.
[A] a panoramic view of the Earth
[B] the life of NASA's researchers
[C] the rover has reached a sulfate zone
[D] how Mars has become an arid place
[A] building a field laboratory on Mars
[B] making a thorough survey of Mars' land
[C] laying the foundation to emigrate to Mars
[D] seeing if Mars could support life historically
[A] has frozen earth beneath its sediment
[B] once had a lake and stream system
[C] has been intruded by other planet aliens
[D] has undergone a hug explosion in history
[A] has the same winter time as the Earth
[B] is similar to the Earth in geography
[C] provides terrible rover cruising conditions
[D] has clear sky for Curiosity to take photos
[A] Cruise other parts of Mars.
[B] Revisit the Rafael Navarro Mountain.
[C] Return to the Earth half a year later.
[D] Refuel itself by absorbing solar energy.
I am not against antidepressants, as many are-I have been on them myself since childhood, and am not sure I would still be alive were it not for the 60 mg of Fluoxetine I take daily. But antidepressants are not a cure-all for mental illness, any more than painkillers are a cure-all for broken limbs. If ibuprofen was all the NHS (National Health Service) provided every time a child broke his arm, there would, quite rightly, be an outcry.
But the equivalent happens every day in mental health services : children are packed off with a prescription and a vague promise of some proper counselling sometime in the future. God help you if you become an adult while waiting to be seen by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)—you will be spat back out to start the whole process again.
Some will see the rise in child mental health issues as more evidence of snowflake society, but they are missing the point quite spectacularly. According to Mental Health First Aid England, 75 per cent of mental illness starts before the age of 18. If treated properly, these children can go on to live reasonably happy, healthy adult lives. When not treated at all, mental illness tends to spiral out of control-and if you don't pay for the treatment in childhood, you can almost guarantee you will be paying for it later on, be it in terms of unemployment, criminal justice, or old-fashioned physical health problems.
And once you have been on antidepressants for some time, it is very hard to come off them. I know because I've tried, most recently last month. My doctor agreed that my circumstances at 40 were very different to my circumstances at 17, when my obsessive compulsive disorder made it almost impossible to leave the house. She suggested lowering the dose. I lasted four days before the sleeplessness and mood swings made me realise it just wasn't worth the effort.
You'll have to pardon my language here, but it depresses me that since the Nineties, almost nothing has progressed in terms of our approach to children's mental health. A Daily Telegraph report this week revealed that 1.5 million children will need mental health treatment in the wake of lockdowns. And yet there is no emergency package for CAMHS, just our mental health minister, Nadine Dorries, gaslighting those referred to the service, by saying that it should be kept only for “those who have serious, lifetime, mental illness”. As opposed to the frivolous, fleeting type that Dorries seems to believe most kids have.
[A] simply useless and meaningless
[B] a cure-all for depression
[C] not a root remedy for mental health issues
[D] a great loss to the NHS
[A] Children are unable to see a psychological therapist from NHS.
[B] Children are often prescribed ibuprofen when they are depressed.
[C] Children with depression will be cured by themselves as they grow up.
[D] Children fail to receive prompt and thorough treatment for depression.
[A] She is probably still suffering from depression.
[B] She got her limbs broken in a terrible accident.
[C] She used to be a psychological counselor.
[D] She hopes to be a volunteer for CAMHS.
[A] admiration
[B] sympathy
[C] disapproval
[D] indifference
[A] How to get rid of antidepressants.
[B] How to make CAMHS reformed.
[C] How to address depression in children and adolescents.
[D] How to ease public outcry over NHS.