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Disability aids are vital to those who suffer problems with executing work with two hands. These are people who have been disabled due to some major sickness or some other problems. In order to help them carry on their work in the normal way, disability aids are manufactured. This helps them make their life a lot easier than what it would have been without these aids. The kind of disability aids that an individual might require depends on the person only. It is the problem that a person faces that decides the aids that he/she will use for carrying out their respective jobs. The following is the list of a few disability aids that come of significant use.
The first and foremost aid is the stocking aid, aiding the individuals suffering from the problem of bending down to reach the foot and wear their own socks. These stocking aids have a gutter(槽) that is made up of plastic material. These gutters are shaped in a certain way along with the attachment of cotton tapes in it. The sock is then put over the gutter. The foot is placed inside the gutter. The cotton tapes help in pulling the socks up the leg and subsequently the sock. In this manner, the sock is worn by a person who has problems wearing it by bending one’s back and reaching the foot.
There are openers that help the people who have problems with their hands or wrists to open bottles of ketchup, jam and other such bottles and jars that necessitates the use of hands and fingers.
The third type of disability aids that comes to our minds are lifts. Now what are lifts? Lifts are certain machines that help in lifting people from specific areas, such as a bathtub or a set of stairs. These lifts are of varied types and come for numerous applications. It is for the individual to decide the type that he/she requires to use.
For people, who have problems in balancing their upper bodies in a stable manner, there is something known as grab rails. These grab rails are installed for those who have mobility problems in their upper bodies. These rails come in varieties of shapes, sizes and angles. These grab rails are available to home users as well, in their different variations. One can purchase and fix one to their homes according to one’s specificities. These grab rails require the act of screwing and drilling in order to fix them to their appropriate place. The prices of these rails also vary according to the variation of their shapes and sizes.
A portable book holder is a much sought-after disability aid. It can be used by anybody for that matter, not just the disabled. These portable book holders are light-weight and can be easily moved about. These holders relieve the strains on one’s hands, necks and shoulders that might occur due to the handling of a book. The holders are provided with extended legs that help in placing the reading material at suitable distance.
Thus with the help of these disability aids, the old and disabled people can make their lives much more convenient and comfortable that would otherwise have been a cumbersome and complex one.
Disability Aids
Theme | Disability aids are important to people with disabilities1. from some major sickness or other problems. | |
Different2. of aids | Stocking aids | They can be used to help individuals whose bodies are not 3. enough to reach their feet to put on socks by themselves. |
Openers | They can be used to aid the disabled to open the bottles when the use of hands or wrists is a 4. . | |
Lifts | They can be used to lift people from specific areas. They come in 5. of types and are 6. numerously. | |
Grab rails | They can be used to keep their balance in a stable manner after proper 7. . | |
Book holders | They can be used to help with the8. of strains on one’s hands , necks and shoulders when reading. | |
9. | 10. these disability aids, the life of the old and disabled would become cumbersome and complex. | |
Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.
1.What characterizes the business school student population of today?
A. Greater diversity.
B. Intellectual maturity.
C. Exceptional diligence.
D. Higher ambition.
2.What is the author’s concern about current business school education?
A. It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations.
B. It will produce business leaders of a uniform style.
C. It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills.
D. It stresses competition rather than cooperation.
3.What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?
A. Age and educational background.
C. Attitude and approach to business.
B. Social and professional experience.
D. Ethnic origin and gender.
4.What does Mannaz say about the current management style?
A. It is eradicating the tough aspects of management.
B. It encourages male and female executives to work side by side.
C. It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model.
D. It is shifting towards more collaborative models.
1.The main aim of Environment Awareness Week is to _____.
A. educate the public on protecting the environment
B. discuss global warming and other environmental problems
C. explain ways for producing freshwater to save the environment
D. learn about renewable energy sources that protect the environment
2.The organizer of the event is _____.
A. Global Gaia Network
B. Clean Energy Agency
C. Green Earth Foundation
D. International Environment Fund
3.Which of the following statements is NOT true of the event? ________
A. It will last a week and the halls will be open 11 hours a day.
B. You can send an email to Mrs. Daisy Soh for more information.
C. Each hall charges the same amount of money as the other.
D. Lectures in Hall 1 will be given by university students.
Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are.
You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. “If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us,” Crabtree told The Guardian.
At the heart of Crabtree’s thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture, when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak condition gradually reduced.
This is not hard to understand. Most of the time, pressure is what keeps us going – you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework; the pressure of looking pretty prompts you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence – if we think less, we become less smart.
These mutations(变异) are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence, there are two or more mutations in each of us.
However, Crabtree’s theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed a more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing a tiger doesn’t necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means a lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays.
“You wouldn’t get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn’t exist,” Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. “But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation.”
1.What is Crabtree’s recent finding according to the article?
A. The Greeks from 1,000 BC could have been the smartest in human history.
B. Our ancient ancestors had no better surviving abilities than we do nowadays.
C. Humans have been getting steadily more intelligent since the invention of farming.
D. Mutations in genes that decide human intelligence have affected the development of intelligence.
2.According to Crabtree, ancient humans _______.
A. had much more genes that determine human intelligence
B. were forced to be smart due to natural selection pressures
C. relied more on group intelligence than individual intelligence
D. developed a diverse intelligence to adapt to the harsh realities
3.Some argue that Crabtree’s theory is false because they think _______.
A. people today are under much more pressure than early humans
B. it’s ridiculous to compare a hunter’s and a poet’s intelligence
C. modern education is far more advanced than ancient education
D. human intelligence nowadays is different from that of the distant past
4.What is Thomas Hills’ attitude toward Crabtree’s theory?
A. Supportive B. Unfavorable
C. Worried D. Confused.
Hi, everybody. Over the past couple months, most of the political headlines you’ve read have probably been about the government shutdown and the launch of the Affordable Care Act. And I know that many of you have rightly never been more frustrated with Washington.
But if you look beyond those headlines, there are some good things happening in our economy. And that’s been my top priority since the day I walked into the Oval Office.
After decades in which the middle class was working harder and harder just to keep up, and a punishing recession that made it worse, we made the tough choices required not just to recover from crisis, but to rebuild on a new foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth.
Five years later, we have fought our way back. Our businesses have created 7.8 million new jobs in the past 44 months. Another 200,000 Americans went back to work last month.
The American auto industry has come roaring back with more than 350,000 new jobs – jobs churning out and selling the high-tech, fuel-efficient cars the world wants to buy. And they’re leading the charge in a manufacturing sector that has added jobs for the first time since the 1990s – a big reason why our businesses sell more goods and services “Made in America” than ever before.
We decided to reverse our addiction to foreign oil. And today, we generate more renewable energy than ever, more natural gas than anybody, and for the first time in nearly 20 years, America now produces more oil than we buy from other countries.
We decided to fix a broken health care system. And even though the rollout of the marketplace where you can buy affordable plans has been rough, so far, about 500,000 Americans are poised to gain health coverage starting January 1st. And by the way, health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years.
And one more thing: since I took office, we’ve cut our deficits by more than half. And that makes it easier to invest in the things that create jobs – education, research, and infrastructure.
Imagine how much farther along we could be if both parties were working together. Think about what we could do if a reckless few didn’t hold the economy hostage every few months, or waste time on dozens of votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act rather than try to help us fix it.
In the weeks ahead, I’ll keep talking about my plan to build a better bargain for the middle class. Good jobs. A good education. A chance to buy a home, save, and retire. And yes, the financial security of affordable health care. And I’ll look for any willing partners who want to help.
Because of your hard work and tough sacrifices over the past five years, we’re pointed in the right direction. But we’ve got more work to do to keep moving that way. And as long as I’m President, I’ll keep doing everything I can to create jobs, grow the economy, and make sure that everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead. Thanks, and have a great weekend.
1.Which of the following is not the reason for people’s frustration with the government?
A. The government shut down
B. Unemployment rate
C. The addiction to foreign oil
D. The launch of the Affordable Care Act
2.Why does the president mention more goods and services “Made in America”?
A. To show that American goods and services are very popular.
B. To indicate that American people should be dependent on themselves.
C. To show that the employment rate has been increased.
D. To show that American auto industry enjoys high technology.
3.What’s the meaning of the underlined word “repeal”?
A. To abolish B. To protect
C. To strengthen D. To weaken
4.According to the speech, which of the following can be implied?
A. American people have every reason to feel frustrated with the government.
B. Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years.
C. The president feels sorry that the economy is not moving in the right direction.
D. Some government officials don’t agree with the president on the medical care system.
Could the Internet be totally free and should it be? Should the Internet be regulated? The recent disorder in the Arab world ____ by a disputed video damaging the image of Prophet Muhammad shows the United States, which is busy ____ global Internet freedom, has paid a huge price ____ the lives of its diplomats。
In an unregulated Internet world, cheating, violence or rumors can ____ serious consequences. Many countries across the world are periodically suffering from “rumors” ____ by the Internet and social media.
The US-led West always promotes Internet freedom and ____ any regulation as investigation, but it should think twice if it calculates the heavy price that has been and has to be paid for “____”. Moreover, ____ the Internet in the West ____ to be free, with no obvious ____ and no limited sites, isn’t the structure of the main pages already hand-controlled, with selected press agencies and ____ occupying clearly dominating positions?
The Internet has helped fight injustice, ____ corruption in places so far apart as Indonesia, India and Latin America. But the Internet could be extremely ____ as well. Various racist or separatist organizations are using their Internet sites to fan ____. Those who are spreading hate are frequently using the Internet as their tool. No country can ____ to make the Internet absolutely free.
The question is how to keep free flow of information ____ while protecting children from unhealthy works, common citizens from ____ rumors and countries from unfair and damaging propaganda (宣传) attacks. And who sets the limits?
The ____ is that there will never be a perfect system. Every country will have to ____ its own system, based on its culture, social ____ and the degree of danger it’s facing.
1.A. led B. caused C. damaged D. attacked
2.A. helping B. processing C. promoting D. improving
3.A. for B. at C. with D. off
4.A. bring B. reach C. fetch D. take
5.A. spread B. exposed C. delivered D. passed
6.A. supports B. follows C. opposes D. dislikes
7.A. free B. accessible C. available D. healthy
8.A. as if B. even if C. so that D. in that
9.A. happens B. intends C. offers D. appears
10.A. interruption B. interference C. defense D. preference
11.A. programs B. substances C. channels D. sources
12.A. uncover B. strike C. prevent D. avoid
13.A. beneficial B. useful C. sensitive D. destructive
14.A. expressions B. impressions C. passions D. affections
15.A. refuse B. afford C. fail D. attempt
16.A. unpolluted B. unskilled C. unoccupied D. uninterrupted
17.A. evil B. meaningful C. untrue D. effective
18.A. importance B. conclusion C. description D. possibility
19.A. develop B. invent C. change D. study
20.A. trends B. structure C. surroundings D. factors
