Jaramillo's students live in neighborhoods where fresh food and green space are not easy to
find and fast food restaurants outnumber grocery stores. “The kids literally come to school with
bags of snacks and large bottles of soft drinks,” she says. “They come to us thinking vegetables
are awful, dirt is awful, insects are awful.” Though some are initially scared of the insects and
turned off by the dirt, most are eager to try something new.
Urban Sprouts’ classes, at two middle schools and two high schools, include hands-on
experiments such as soil testing, flower-and-seed dissection, tastings of fresh or dried produce,
and work in the garden. Several times a year, students cook the vegetables they grow, and they
occasionally make salads for their entire schools.
Program evaluations show that kids eat more vegetables as a result of the classes. “We have
students who say they went home and talked to their parents and now they're eating
differently,” Jaramillo says.
She adds that the program's benefits go beyond nutrition. Some students get so interested
in gardening that they bring home seeds to start their own vegetable gardens. Besides, working in
the garden seems to have a calming effect on Jaramillo's special education students, many of
whom have emotional control issues. “They get outside,” she says, “and they feel successful.”
4. What do we know about Abby Jaramillo?
A. She used to be a health worker.
B. She grew up in a low-income family.
C. She owns a fast food restaurant.
D. She is an initiator of Urban Sprouts.
5. What was a problem facing Jaramillo at the start of the program?
A. The kids’ parents distrusted her.
B. Students had little time for her classes.
C. Some kids disliked garden work.
D. There was no space for school gardens.
6. Which of the following best describes the impact of the program?
A. Far-reaching. B. Predictable.
C. Short-lived. D. Unidentifiable.
7. What can be a suitable title for the text?
A. Rescuing School Gardens
B. Experiencing Country Life
C. Growing Vegetable Lovers
D. Changing Local Landscape
C
Myopia, or nearsightedness, is a common eye condition in which you can see objects near to
you clearly, but objects farther away are blurry. To see the farther clearly, you have the option of
wearing eyeglasses, or undergoing the more invasive refractive surgery (屈光手术).
But Japan’s Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings claims to have developed smart glasses that, if
worn just an hour per day, can cure myopia. It projects an image onto the wearers’ retina (视网膜)
to correct the refractive error that causes nearsightedness. Obviously, wearing the device 60 to 90
minutes a day corrects myopia.
So how does the technology developed by Kubota work exactly? Well, according to a
company press release from December of last year, the special glasses rely on micro-LEDS to
project virtual images on the visual field to make the retina active. Apparently, it can do that
without affecting the wearer’s daily activities.
Founded by Dr. Ryo Kubota, Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings is still testing the device,
known as Kubota Glasses, and trying to determine how long the effect lasts after the user wears
the device. And how much the ugly-looking glasses have to be worn for the correction to be
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