Blue skies were finally visible in the capital on Thursday after the region suffered fromseven straight days of intense pollution, sending consumers out in droves to buy pollution masks. in droves:陆陆续续,成群结队 Although Thursday’s weather brought a colle…

Air pollution from coal combustion likely cut life expectancy in parts of China by more than five years during the 1990s, a study has found, adding weight to increasing public demands for Beijing to clean up the environment. Lifespan:寿命 combustion:燃烧…

Air Pollution Is Doing More Than Just Slowly Killing Us In the future, the authorities might need to consider checking the levels of the air pollution in the area. They would possibly need to deploy resources to areas where the air pollution levels a…

Introduction For this first programming assignment you will write three functions that are meant to interact with dataset that accompanies this assignment. The dataset is contained in a zip file specdata.zip that you can download from the Coursera we…

Overseas tourists continued to shun Beijing through 2013. shun:避开,避免,回避 Amid rising pollution and a strengthening yuan, the capital city saw its tourist numbers drop to 4.20 million visits from January to November from 5.01 million visits in 2012, ac…

. Indoor Air pollution 室内空气污染 ① Priscilla Ouchida's "energy-efficient"house turned out to be a horrible dream.When she and her engineer husband married,they built a $100,000,three bedroom home in California.Tightly sealed to prevent air leaks,th…

China's appetite for coal, once seemingly unlimited, is starting to wane, and the effects are rippling far from the Middle Kingdom. wane:衰落,退潮,衰减 ripple:波纹,涟漪 With the world's second-largest economy, China in recent years has been driving demand for…

Hong Kong's rapacious consumption and waste production is straining its natural resources and could leave the city vulnerable to global price swings and supply shortages, the World Wide Fund for Nature warns. The organization's latest report notes Ho…

Air Pollution Since the 1940s, southern California has had a reputation for smog. 自20世纪40年代以来,南加利福尼亚一直以雾霾文明. Things are not as had as they noce were, but according to the American Lung Association, Los angeles is still worst city in the United States…

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 people aboard, lost contact early Saturday with the airline shortly into the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Government and airline officials said they weren't ready to speculate about what caused the Boe…

For most people, summer involves numerous daily shifts between scorching outdoor heat and frosty air-conditioned interiors. But does exposing the body to extreme temperature swings make people sick? Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold C…

"I used to think I was this made man," says entrepreneur Glenn Kelman. "That's what they tell you after you take a company public." In 1996 Mr. Kelman co-founded Plumtree, a business-software firm that went public in 2002. After that,…

Apple Inc. 's answer to the increasingly cutthroat tablet-computer market: more product choices and free software. cutthroat:残酷的,剧烈的,凶手 At an event here Tuesday, Apple showed off a new full-size tablet--now called iPad Air--that is thinner and slimme…

In Dapu, a rain-drenched rural outpost in the heart of China's grain basket, a farmer grows crops that she wouldn't dare to eat. A state-backed chemicals factory next to her farm dumps wastewater directly into the local irrigation pond, she says, and…

Billions of dollars are flowing into online advertising. But marketers also are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud. rampant:猖獗的,狂暴的 About 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and pro…

China has tried your form of government and found it wanting. That was the message delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping during an expansive address at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, this week that capped off his first visit to Western…

The appointment of India-born Satya Nadella as Microsoft Corp.'s CEO has caused a bit of a stir in China, where people are questioning why Indians but not Chinese are getting top jobs in the U.S. Language and familiarity with Western culture are the…

Buying real estate involves weighing a lot of factors: location, price . . . smell? Some condo developers are betting that the best way to a buyer's heart is through the nose. The latest sales tools are signature scents designed to enhance a buyer's…

Anyone who has felt like the odd duck of the group can take heart from new research from Harvard Business School that says sticking out in distinct ways can lend you an air of presence or influence. Standing out in certain circumstances, like wearing…

Mistrust between U.S. and Malaysian air-accident investigators has hampered a multinational probe into the jetliner that went missing three weeks ago, people familiar with the investigation said, with no clear leads emerging about who or what was res…

[Confident girls are often called the other B-word, and it can keep them from reaching their full potential, write Sheryl Sandberg and Anna Maria Chavez.] Sheryl: When my brother and sister describe our childhood, they will say that I never actually…

Chinese author Lao Ma has a simple approach to his short stories: In the face of life, everything is funny. Mr. Lao, the pen name of Renmin University of China professor Ma Junjie, says there are plenty of laughable things in daily life that fuel his…

When her husband died of cancer 10 years ago, Becky Aikman says she experienced grief and adapted to her loss -- but not in the way some people seemed to expect. proactive:有前瞻性的,主动地 About a year after his death, when Ms. Aikman felt it was time to st…

Next to have their jobs automated: airport-security screeners? Aviation and government authorities are starting to use machines in lieu of people to verify the identities of fliers by scanning their faces, irises or fingerprints. Dozens of airports i…

When marriage therapist Sharon Gilchrest O'Neill met with new clients recently, she asked them why they were seeking therapy. The couple told her they'd spent years arguing over finances and recently had their worst-ever blowup. The husband complaine…

As we continue examining this season’s DVR success stories in The Blacklist and Sleepy Hollow it makes one wonder, just what other shows caused networks to change the way they think about how their audience watches television? 24 (2001) Jack Bauer is…

The Wolff family of Paramus, N.J., was eyeing the gathering clouds and debating whether to cancel a planned park trip when 6-year-old Leora piped up with an idea: 'Let's call Grandma. Her knees always know when it's going to rain!' Leora's grandmothe…

Chinese investors have been snapping up real estate in the world's most important cities this year. While it's easy to dismiss rich foreign buyers as the dumb money in any market, these investors are taking a sensible approach. Real-Estate:不动产,房地产 sn…

We spend a full five hours and 16 minutes a day in front of a screen, and that's without even turning on a television. So says a statistic from eMarketer, a research firm that focuses on digital media and marketing. It says that for the first time we…

Jason Swett still cringes when he remembers the party in Atlanta 10 years ago, where, drink in hand, he tried 'to impress the local Southern belles,' he says, by talking -- nonstop. cringe: 畏缩,奉承 belle:美女 He told the six or so people he'd just met th…