(Reuters) - A U.N. climate deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen at talks from December 7-18 may fall short of a legally binding(有约束力的) agreement. If Copenhagen fails to live up to hopes of a strong agreement to slow global warming, what are the reasons and who risks blame? The following are some of the candidates:

● Decline in economy distracted(分散) focus from climate change after the world agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 to work out a new U.N. agreement by December 2009. Rich nations have put billions of dollars into green growth as part of recovery packages but, when unemployment at home is high, find it hard to promise extra money for developing countries. The slowdown in industrial output means a brief fix -- greenhouse gas emissions(排放) are likely to fall by as much as 3 percent this year.

● Many delegates at U.N. talks have given up hope that the United States, the number two emitter after China, will agree legislation(立法, 法律) to limit carbon emissions before Copenhagen. The US is the only industrialized nation outside the Kyoto Protocol(京都协议书) for cutting greenhouse emissions until 2012. Many countries welcomed President Barack Obama's promises of doing more to fight climate change when he took office in January but hoped for swifter action.

● Developing nations accuse the rich of repeatedly failing to keep promises of more aid. Few developed countries live up to a target agreed by the U.N. General Assembly in 1970 to give 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product in development aid. Other plans, such as the Agenda 21 environmental development plan agreed in 1992, have fallen short.

● Most rich nations are promising cuts in greenhouse gas emissions well short of the 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, which are needed to avoid the worst of climate change. Overall cuts promised by developed nations total between 11 and 15 percent. Best offers by countries including Japan, the European Union, Australia and Norway would reach the range.

● More than 90 percent of the growth in emissions between now and 2030 is set to come from developing nations -- with almost 50 percent from China alone, U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said this week. "No country holds the fate of the earth more in its hands than China. Not one," he said. China and India say they are slowing the growth of emissions but raising living standards is more important. So burning more energy is unavoidable -- as industrialized nations have done for 200 years.

● 2008 was the 10th warmest year since records began in the mid-19th century. The warmest was 1998, when a strong El Nino event in the eastern Pacific disrupted(使混乱) weather worldwide. That has led some to argue that global warming is slowing even though the U.N.'s WMO(世界气象组织) says a long-term warming trend is unchanged.

● People have been slow in changing lifestyles to use less carbon. Simple choices like taking more public transport, using less heating or air conditioning, even changing light bulbs can help if millions of people act.(508)

Who's to blame if U.N. climate deal falls short?

Waste to Energy—JUST BURN IT!

WHY BURN WASTE?

    Waste-to-energy plants generate (产生) enough electricity to supply 2.4 million households in the US. But, providing electricity is not the major advantage of waste-to-energy plants. In fact, it costs more to generate electricity at a waste-to-energy plant than it does at a coal, nuclear, or hydropower plant. 

The major advantage of burning waste is that it considerably reduces the amount of trash going to landfills. The average American produces more than 1,600 pounds of waste a year. If all this waste were landfilled, it would take more than two cubic yards of landfill space. That’s the volume of a box three feet long, three feet wide, and six feet high. If that waste were burned, the ashes would fit into a box three feet long, three feet wide, but only nine inches high!

Some communities in the Northeast may be running out of land for new landfills. And, since most people don’t want landfills in their backyards, it has become more difficult to obtain permits to build new landfills. Taking the country as a whole, the United States has plenty of open space, of course, but it is expensive to transport garbage a long distance to put it into a landfill.

TO BURN OR NOT TO BURN?

 Some people are concerned that burning garbage may harm the environment. Like coal plants, waste-to-energy plants produce air pollution when the fuel is burned to produce steam or electricity. Burning garbage releases the chemicals and substances found in the waste. Some chemicals can be a threat to people, the environment, or both, if they are not properly controlled.

Some critics of waste-to-energy plants are afraid that burning waste will hamper (妨碍，阻碍) recycling programs. If everyone sends their trash to a waste-to-energy plant, they say, there will be little motive to recycle. Several states have considered or are considering banning waste-to-energy plants unless recycling programs are in place. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York City have delayed new waste-to-energy plants, hoping to increase the level of recycling first.

So, what’s the real story? Can recycling and burning waste coexist? At first glance, recycling and waste-to-energy seem to be at odds (不一致), but they can actually complement (弥补) each other. That’s because it makes good sense to recycle some materials, and better sense to burn others.

Let’s look at aluminum, for example. Aluminum mineral is so expensive to mine that recycling aluminum more than pays for itself. Burning it produces no energy. So clearly, aluminum is valuable to recycle and not useful to burn.  

Paper, on the other hand, can either be burned or recycled—it all depends on the price the used paper will bring.

Plastics are another matter. Because plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas, they are excellent sources of energy for waste-to-energy plants. This is especially true since plastics are not as easy to recycle as steel, aluminum, or paper. Plastics almost always have to be hand sorted and making a product from recycled plastics may cost more than making it from new materials. 

To burn or not to burn is not really the question. We should use both recycling and waste-to-energy as alternatives to landfilling.

Waste to Energy—JUST BURN IT!

请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文后表格的空格处填入最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格填1个单词。

The expo theme, "Better City, Better Life", highlights the new thinking, new technologies and new practices for achieving healthy and sustainable urban living. Guided by these concepts, the New Zealand Pavilion will follow the theme, "Cities of Nature, Living between Land and Sky".

The aim of the pavilion is to present a welcoming vision of a nation that is working hard to bring its cities into a sustainable balance with nature; a country in which natural beauty, the inspiration that it brings, and the lifestyles that it permits, can exist alongside and contribute to a modern and creative first world economy.

In its form and content the pavilion takes inspiration from the Maori creation story in which the god Tane separated his parents, the Sky and the Earth, to create space both for the natural world and for human beings.

The location

The pavilion will be located in one of the prime sites at the expo, close to the host country's pavilion and alongside the enormous theme pavilion. It will neighbor on the main walkway and will be seen by virtually every visitor to the expo.

The design

Designed and built by international project management company Coffey Projects, the distinctive wedge-shaped pavilion will have a projected capacity of 40,000 visitors per day. It will cover approximately 75 percent of a 2000- square-metre corner site, close to both the China Pavilion and the China Theme Pavilion, and beside the main elevated walkway.

Two of the visitor experience areas:

Cities of Nature

Experiencing Inside the wedge, visitors will walk along a winding ramp(斜坡) that gradually rises up, taking them through a "day in the life" of a New Zealand family in a composite New Zealand city in a natural setting: from the mountains to the sea, past farmlands and bush and back towards the mountains, through a beachhouse, a school classroom and an office building.

Garden and wild places walk

Visitors will exit the Cities of Nature experience near the top of the wedge, and will then walk back down towards the corridor area through a garden planted with New Zealand trees and flowers, and making use of sculptural elements, audio and lighting.

To tweet, or not to tweet?

A guide to the social networking/ microblogging service Tewitter

SINCE its creation in 2006, Twitter, the social networking service, has taken cyber space by storm. At first glance it might seem like Facebook, but Twitter is in a league of its own, connecting people with fast-paced updates. It has become a place for activities, celebrities, businesses and everyday people to let others know about videos, opinions, interesting news, advertisements-and, yes what they are eating for lunch.

The phenomenon includes a host of new vocabulary terms and concepts that every self-respecting Twitter-er should know. Here’s a quick course on Twitter.

       So you’ve finally been swept up by the techno-tide and gotten a Twitter account. But what to write? Who knew 140 characters could be so overwhelming?

Darren Rowse of the TwiTip blog(www.twitip.com) recommends a two- step tweeting process: figure out what your follows want, and then give it to them. Some combination of cool links, conversation- starting quotes or questions , retweets and photos works well, Rowse writes.

Keep in mind that Twitter doesn’t directly offer photo hosting. You will need to use a third-party site like TwitPic (www.twitip.com) to upload your photos. Other sites, like TwitVid (tweetdeck.com/beta) can be used to post videos.

If you th ink the Twitter Web Site too complicated, try a Twiiter client—Tweetdeck(tweetdeck. Com/beta) and the Mac-only Tweetie(www. stebits. com)are popular, and both also are available as iPhone apps(应用程序).

Even without an iphone, you can update you Twitter on the go. After adding your phone number to your Twitter account, you can text updates to 40404(check Twitter’s Web site for numbers to use outside the United States)

But no matter how you tweet, remember that people can see what you post, and Twitter might not be the best place to complain about your boss, even if you make your Twitter private, your followers may not share your sense of discretion.

       Twitter is crowded with celebrith accounts. The famous , who once avoided the media in their private lives, are posting everything on Twitter for all the cyber world to see, gathering followers in the millions. Who’s leading the celebrity pack? TwitterCounter(www.twittercounter.com), a site that tracks the most popular Twitter users, lists Ashton Kuntcher and former fashion model, as the nost popular Twitter-er with, as of our publication date, 2,691,112 followers.

Title: To tweet, or not to tweet?

Could your cellphone give you cancer? Whether it could or not, some people are worrying about the possibility that phones, powerlines and wi-fi (路由器) could be responsible for a range of illnesses, from rashes to brain tumours.

For example, Camilla Rees, 48, a former investment banker in the US, moved out of her apartment in San Francisco because of the radiation coming from next door. Rees told the Los Angeles Times that when her neighbors moved in and installed a wi-fi router she lost her ability to think clearly. “I would wake up dizzy in the morning. I’d fall to the floor. I had to leave to escape that nightmare,” she said. Since then, she’s been on a campaign against low-level electromagnetic fields, or EMFs（低频电磁场）.

And she’s not alone. Millions of people say they suffer from headaches, depression, nausea and rashes when they’re too close to cellphones or other sources of EMFs.

Although the World Health Organization has officially declared that EMFs seem to pose little threat, governments are still concerned. In fact, last April, the European Parliament called for countries to take steps to reduce exposure to EMFs. The city of San Francisco and the state of Maine are currently considering requiring cancer-warning labels on cellphones.

If these fears are reasonable, then perhaps we should all be worried about the amount of time we spend talking on our phones or plugging into wi-fi hotpots.

Some say there is evidence to support the growing anxieties. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University at Albany, in New York, thinks there’s a greater than 95% chance that power lines can cause childhood leukemia. Also there’s a greater than 90% chance that cellphones can cause brain tumours.

But others believe these concerns are unreasonable paranoia (猜疑). Dr Martha Linet, the head of radiation epidemiology at the US National Cancer Institute, has looked at the same research as Carpenter but has reached a different conclusion. “I don’t support warning labels for cellphones,” said Linet. “We don't have the evidence that there’s much danger.”

Studies so far suggest a weak connection between EMFs and illness — so weak that it might not exist at all. A multinational investigation of cellphones and brain cancer, in 13 countries outside the US, has been underway for several years. It’s funded in part by the European Union, in part by a cellphone industry group.

According to Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland in the US, the magnetic waves aren’t nearly powerful enough to break apart DNA, which is how known threats, such as UV rays and X-rays, cause cancer.

Perhaps it’s just psychological. Some experts find that the electro-sensitivity syndrome seems to be similar to chemical sensitivity syndrome, which is a condition that’s considered to be psychological.

Whether EMFs are harmful or not, a break in the countryside, without the cellphone, would probably be good for all of us.

Stress is an uncomfortable feeling in the mind from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or anxious. Stress if often accompanied by physical symptoms, including twitching or trembling, muscle tension, headaches, sweating, dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, rapid or irregular heart rate, rapid breathing, fatigue, loss of temper, sleeping difficulties and nightmares, decreased concentration.

Stress is a normal part of life. In small quantities, stress is good – it can motivate you and help you be more productive. However, too much stress, or a strong response to stress, is harmful. It can cause general poor health as well as specific physical or depression. Persistent and never-ceasing stress often leads to anxiety and unhealthy behaviors like overeating and abuse of alcohol or drugs.

Certain drugs can lead to symptoms of stress due to side effects. Such drugs include caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and diet pills. A poor diet – for example, low levels of vitamin B 12 – can also contribute to stress or anxiety. Performance stress is related to specific situations, like taking a test or making a presentation in public. Posttraumatic stress develops after an unforgettably shocking event like war, physical attacks, or a natural disaster.

Any effective ways to cope with your stress or anxiety? One step is to make a list of what you think might be making you ‘stress out’: What do you worry about most? Is something constantly on your mind? Does anything in particular make you sad or depressed?

Then, find someone you believe in who will listen to you. Often, just talking to a friend or loved one is all that is needed to relieve anxiety. Most communities also have support groups and hotlines that can help. Social workers, psychologists, and other mental health professionals may be needed for therapy and medication (疗法和打坐).

Also, find healthy ways to deal with stress. For example, eat a well – balanced, healthy diet, don’t overeat, get enough sleep, exercise regularly, limit caffeine and alcohol. Don’t use nicotine, cocaine, or other recreational drugs. Learn and practice relaxation techniques like yoga and tai chi. Take breaks from work. Make sure to balance fun activities with your responsibilities. Spend time with people you enjoy. Find self – help books at your local library or bookstore.

Title: Stress

Romantic novelists rarely fail to include in their writings that special moment when two strangers look into each other's eyes across a crowded room and feel the tingle of desire. Now these writings have now been validated（证实）by science, for experts have discovered that eye-to-eye contact in fact leads to a burst of activity in the reward center of the brain.

Neuroscientists at University College London asked eight female and eight male volunteers to look at photos of the faces of 40 different people who were either looking at the camera or gazing to one side.

While the volunteers looked at the pictures, they were given a scan with functional magnetic resonance imaging（磁性共振成影仪器）, which measures increased blood flows to the various parts of the brain and thus provides a "map" of cerebral activity（大脑活动）.

The volunteers were then asked to rate the attractiveness of each face, and their score was matched against the scan.

The result: when volunteer had direct eye contact with the face, there was an increase of activity in the ventral striatum（腹面纹状体）, a central part of the brain that anticipates reward or pleasure. But if the eyes did not meet, there was no activity in that brain area at all. The activity increase occurred regardless of the gender of the face in direct eye contact.

However, there was a bigger-than-usual increase if the person giving the eye was found to be attractive. Activity in the ventral striatum surged. But if the cute person gazed to one side, the ventral striatum remained dormant, apparently disappointed that the stranger was clearly not interested.

Interestingly, the ventral striatum also perked up if a plug-ugly person gazed to one side, rather than looked at the volunteer right in the eyes.

When Carla Fisher and her husband announced plans to travel the globe with their young daughters for a year, some friends called them crazy.

    Seven years later, with wonderful memories and a book documenting their world travel, the Fishers now seem like global trailblazers (先驱者).

    “It’s really encouraging to hear that many other people want to educate their kids in that manner,” said Fisher.

Some parents are trying to raise knowledgeable and open-minded “world citizens”. Others want to give their children the skills they’ll need to compete globally.

“There is a huge amount of interest in spending time abroad at all stages of life and increasingly, as a family with children,” said Maya Frost, author of “The New Global Student…”. She knows American families in every corner of the globe who have made that choice.

    “There’s so much more to education than school,” said Tessa Hill, who recently returned to her Houston-area home, after driving her family across North and Central America and Europe in a motor home for 13 months. “World travel is an education in people, cultures, language, travel skills, street smarts and in how lucky we are to live in the United States.”

    When Hill and her husband began considering extended global travel, their middle child, Charles, 13, was surprised. “My first reaction was ‘well, are we really going to do this?’” Charles said. “But it did sound like great fun.”

    Charles said missing his friends was the hardest part. He stayed in touch via e-mail and made some new friends along the way, playing soccer with kids in France and learning about rugby from youths in Ireland.

“I’d definitely recommend this to other kids,” Charles said. “It was such a great opportunity to see different countries and learn geography a different way.”

To make re-entry smoother, most school officials prefer that families work out an educational plan before they leave town.

“It sounds out-of-date, but it really opens up your mind and your eyes to the world,” said Robbin Goodman, 17, a senior student who spent his junior year skateboarding across Beijing, China, when he wasn’t studying Chinese history and other core subjects.

Had he not already taken a school-sponsored spring break trip with his mom to China in 2007, Robbin said he probably would not have been able to convince his parents to let him go alone for a year. “I knew I would learn Chinese and all that, but my goal was to have a great time,” Robbin said. 

“The biggest problem for those seriously considering going abroad is dealing with those who are against the idea,” said Frost.

“They gain the ability to take risks and to have confidence in themselves,” said Liz Pearlstein, founder of a global education consulting firm. “When we came home from London, my daughter, who had been painfully shy before we left, said ‘Mom, now I know there’s nothing I can’t do.’”

No one knows exactly how many American families are choosing the global education path,

but global education consultants say a growing number of parents are traveling for a year or more with their children.

When you do business online, remember one of the most important factors in online success is list building. No matter what goals you’re seeking with your online activities, building a good contact list is vital for a successful outcome. List building plays a major role in developing good relationships with your site’s customers, and visitors. It can be used to get more sales for your site or business. For these reasons contact building should be high on your list when you’re marketing or promoting on the web. Fortunately, list building is an easy process that any site or webmaster can quickly set up as long as you understand two simple elements. To be really successful, your list building must combine these two key elements. Without these you will probably find building your contact list difficult and slow going. So it is worth your while to fully understand these two factors in your list building.  

Value－It should offer important information, quality content, special deals / discounts, and more importantly, it should offer a valuable relationship or connection to an expert in the subject area of the list. 

Subscribers (订户) must benefit from joining your list. If you’re building a list, just write down all the benefits someone would receive from joining your site or list, including receiving important information, getting special valuable content, receiving special deals / discounts, getting training videos and getting timely announcements or news. Don’t forget there may also be a psychological reason for joining your list－many people like being part of a group or membership site. It’s human nature. Everybody likes to feel included. 

Free whatever you offer－make sure it is Free. The quickest way to build any list is to give away free valuable content, information, videos, reports, e-books, discounts, prizes... everybody loves a free gift. Just make them an offer they can’t refuse. This has more to do with the nature of your gift and the kind of contacts you’re building－giving away free buying guides on how to purchase real estate, fast cars, LCD TVs, laptops... will definitely attract the right “buying customer”. If you’re into selling, you just have to adjust your marketing to combine the free element correctly. In addition, giving away something free is the first step in starting an ongoing relationship with your subscribers. It gets the ball rolling.

Fairview Elementary School, Modesto, California, with some 1,000 students from kindergarten through sixth grade (about 80 percent of them Latino), has long suffering from discipline problems, poor test scores, and a near total lack of parental involvement. The difficulties aren't surprising given that many of the parents -- immigrants who work on farms or in factories -- speak little or no English.

    Since 2002, Fairview Elementary School has been a First Amendment School, one of 97 developed across the country by the First Amendment Center. The idea behind the five-year-old program: To keep America strong, children must be trained to respect many points of view, weigh complex issues, and understand the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution(宪法) .As students learn good citizenship, the theory goes, they'll develop the skills and attitude to do well academically.

    Fairview students enjoy "freedoms" other kids might envy (they voted to abolish school uniforms, for example). But the children don't just exercise rights. They also accept such responsibilities as speaking up during class discussions, and keeping the school clean and safe (Fairview is rated the cleanest of 33 schools in its district). In one departure from tradition, there's no hand-raising in class. "Instead," says teacher Deborah Supnet, "we teach them to listen for when the other child stops talking," Call it an exercise in respect.

     Last year, the number of students evaluated advanced in math increased, from 15 to 30 percent. And Fairview graduates in their first middle-school mid-term exam averaged B grades; 96 percent passed all subjects. Particularly encouraging to Principal Rob Williams, the school now has an active parents' group, Parents With a Voice. One of those parents, Laura Malagon, praises the program for convincing her to play a more active role in her children's school life.