New Science Books in Brief
Volume Control
By David Owen || $18. 23
"For a deaf child, having hearing parents can be a serious disadvantage," notes Owen in this sensitive study of hearing. He suffers from tinnitus. Combining the science with individual experiences, Owen discusses hearing aids, sign language, Thomas Edison and noise levels in US cities—all in absorbing detail.
Reality Ahead of Schedule
By Joel Levy || $29. 04
This picture-packed book tours scientific advances sparked by ideas in science fiction. For example, Levy shows how H. G. Wells? s 1903 story The Land Ironclads inspired Winston Churchill to promote the development of the military tank. The title comes from a definition of sci-fi by Sydney Mead, an industrial designer widely known for his designs for science-fiction films.
Jet Stream
By Tim Woollings || $32. 95
The jet stream was discovered in the 1920s. In this analysis of its complex influence on weather, Woollings relates how the Japanese used the jet stream to launch trans — Pacific balloons in 1944. Today, the jet stream is very likely to be threatened by another product of human activity: rising carbon dioxide emissions.
Adventures of a Computational Explorer
By Stephen Wolfram || $22. 46
Stephen Wolfram, designer of the technical-computing system Mathematica, offers good stories in this collection of biographical essays. For example, he recalls himself as a six-year-old spotting a bite taken out of the sun: a solar eclipse, something unknown to the other children.
The definition of community has evolved (升华)for me from childhood to the young adult I am now. My mom was born in America but both her parents were from the Bahamas. It was their culture to take care of the elderly and the sick. And my mom has taught me to be caring to those around us because we're all a part of the "community", an extension of family.
When I was 9 years old, my family moved to Cape Coral, Florida. Both mom and dad worked full-time, so they registered me to attend an after-school program at the Youth Center. Youth counselors (辅导员) would help me with my homework and play games with me and this was where my interest took root. Community service started with me giving back at the Youth Center.
Then illness struck at home. My grandmother had to have heart surgery and needed hospital treatment. This experience brought me to volunteer at Cape Coral Hospital. I asked if I could learn from the nurse how to give my grandma her medicine and it started here.
I loved being at Cape Coral Hospital. I would bring paperwork to other doctors, bring food to the patients, and make sure the patients were attended. I would help direct visitors to see patients. I would always tell what would cheer the patients up because I had built a relationship with them and their loved ones. I grew to feel the hospital was a part of my community.
After volunteering at the Youth Center and at the Hospital, I've learned that people become sort of an extended family when you care about them. Now I am more considerate of those close to me, neighbors and even strangers who share my resources.
As spring arrives, farmers around the world are making decisions about what crops to plant and how to manage them. In the U. S., farmers typically have big data to help make these decisions. These data have a clear upside. They make farms more productive. In the U.S., the past five years have seen a series of good harvests for both com and soybean. A big part is generated by effectively using data to produce more food from the same amount of land, seed and fertilizer.
In the poorer parts of the world, however, the picture is much different. Many farmers are guided only by their history with the land and their community's traditions. Their skills and knowledge are impressive, but they suffer from a poverty of data. They rely on technical advisors for advice from governments and academic centers who often have very little knowledge of the local area. For seeds and fertilizers and other materials used in the field, they rely on companies that lack data on how their products will perform in the local conditions.
About 10 years ago, East African officials and their development partners started to explore why so few smallholder dairy farmers made profits from growing demand from urban consumers. Surveys of farmers in the region suggested poor access to veterinary(禽畜的) care and breeding assistance. An effort to provide these services has helped farmers get more milk.
Data would matter little if farming was easy and the paths to productivity were obvious. But in reality, agriculture is a complex mix of many factors, including climate, biology, chemistry, physics, economics and culture—all of which vary from region to region. In this situation, good data is necessary.
Smile! It makes everyone in the room feel better because they, consciously or unconsciously, are smiling with you. Growing evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry (模仿)allows us to experience other people's feelings. If we can't mirror another person's face, it limits our ability to read and properly react to their expressions. A review of this emotional mirroring appears on February 11 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
In their paper, Paula Niedenthal and Adrienne Wood, social psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, describe how people in social situations copy others' facial expressions to create emotional responses in themselves. For example, if you're with a friend who looks sad, you might "try on" that sad face yourself without realizing you're doing so. In "trying on" your friend's expression, it helps you to recognize what they're feeling by connecting it with times in the past when you made that expression. Humans get this emotional meaning from facial expressions in a matter of only a few hundred milliseconds.
"You reflect on your emotional feelings and then you produce some sort of recognition judgment, and the most important thing that results in is that you take the appropriate action—you approach the person or you avoid the person," Niedenthal says. "Your own emotional reaction to the face changes your understanding of how you see the face in such a way that provides you with more information about what it means."
A person's ability to recognize and "share" others' emotions can be prevented when they can't mimic faces. This is a common complaint for people with motor diseases, like facial paralysis(瘫痪) from a stroke, or even due to nerve damage from plastic surgery. Niedenthal notes that the same would not be true for people who suffer from birth, because if you've never had the ability to mimic facial expressions, you will have developed another ways of interpreting emotions. Niedenthal next wants to explore what part in the brain is functioning to help with facial expression recognition. A better understanding of that part, she says, will give us a better idea of how to treat related disorders.
If you've been feeling a lot sleepy in your daily life, here are some tips to picking up your energy levels. But first, you should make sure if you're experiencing some serious illnesses. , keep these tips in mind.
The first recommendation is to exercise. Although it may seem difficult to work out when you're tired, it turns out that physical activity can actually give you more energy. The second thing to work on is to go to sleep early enough to get a full night's sleep, preferably so that you wake up naturally without the need for your alarm. . Thus, another useful tip is to take a nap during the afternoon. Naps can restore your mind and body without taking up too much time, regaining your energy and raising working efficiency. The best length of time for a nap is about 20 minutes. Shorter, and you won't get much out of it. .
. Drinking plenty of water and fluids throughout the day is one important way to stay energized, since dehydration (脱水) leaves us in low sprits. Some experts say that eating smaller meals more often throughout the day can help maintain energy and balance blood sugar levels. Be aware also that people who are overweight are more likely to experience tiredness easily. , reducing extra weight could help you gain more energy.
A. If you're overweight
B. If you feel uncomfortable
C. As you know, it is quite a good habit
D. However, this goal is hard to achieve in practice
E. longer, and you may find it harder to sleep at night
F. If you're otherwise healthy but just need some extra energy
G. Other ways to increase energy involve our diet and consumption
My journey to isolation (隔离) was somewhat accidental.
I saw an advertisement for a job as a leader for an expedition (探险) to Antarctica-and I have to1it was the penguin in the ad that2my attention. The ad noted that they were looking for someone to lead a3of expeditioners in one of the most4and isolated places on the planet. I took part in an5and then got a job that I knew I would regret if I didn't6it. Leading 18 strangers for a full year-through months of darkness and with no7from the freezing cold —--I learned some8lessons.
After the journey, I wrote two best-selling books and became a motivational speaker. Being in isolation meant I had to do lots of self9.I kept a10, and every day I would think11of how I had operated as a leader. That discipline of12myself taught me how to tell right from wrong.
I often think back to13I saw the picture of the penguin that14me to look at the ad for the job. It's a moment that15my life completely.
Different places have different climates. A desert, for example, ( refer) to as a dry climate because little water falls during the year. In polar regions, however, rising global temperatures (associate) with climate change mean that ice sheets and glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate from season to season. This contributes to sea level rise in ( difference) regions of the planet. Together with expanding ocean waters due to rising temperatures, the rise in sea level has begun to damage coastlines a result of increasing flooding.
The cause of current climate change is largely human activities, like burning fossil fuels, include natural gas, oil, and coal. Burning these materials ( release) greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the sun's rays inside the atmosphere, (cause) the Earth's average temperature to rise. The warming of the planet impacts local and ( region ) climates. Throughout the Earth's history, climate has ( continual )changed. When occurring naturally, this is slow process that has taken place over hundreds or thousands of years. The human influenced climate change that is happening now is occurring at a much faster rate.
1）表示感谢；
2）你的收获；
3）你的期望。
注意：1）写作词数应为80左右；
2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。发言稿的开头已经给出。
Good morning, everyone in Hogwarts high school.
When I was little, I lived in a house with a beautiful garden full of all kinds of flowers, and roses were the most beautiful of them. There was nothing I enjoyed more than sitting in the garden with my mother as she read stories to me. When I was in primary school and old enough to read, I enjoyed reading stories aloud to her.
I will never forget one day when I was in the third grade. I had been picked to be the princess in the school play, and for weeks my mother had rehearsed (排练) my lines so hard with me. But no matter how easily I acted at home, as soon as I stepped onstage, every word disappeared from my head. Finally, my teacher took me aside. She explained that she had written a narrator's (旁白、解说员)part to the play, and asked me to change roles. Her word, kindly expressed, still hurt, especially when I saw my part go to another girl.
I didn't tell my mother what had happened when I went home after school that day. But she sensed my pain. Instead of suggesting we practice my lines, she asked if I wanted to take a walk in the garden.
It was May and roses were blossoming and, under the trees, we could also see yellow dandelions (蒲公英) in the grass, as if a painter had painted our garden with red, yellow and green. I watched my mother casually bend down by one dandelion. "I think I'm going to dig up all these weeds," she said, pulling it up by its roots. "From now on, we'll have only roses in this garden."
"But I like dandelions," I protested. "All flowers are beautiful —— even dandelions."
My mother looked at me seriously. "Yes, every flower is beautiful in its own way, isn't it?" She asked thoughtfully. I nodded, pleased that I had won her over. "And that is true of people too," she added. "Not everyone can be a princess, but there is no shame in that." Relieved that she had guessed my pain, I started to cry as I told her what had happened. She listened and smiled reassuringly.
注意：
1）续写词数应 
150左右；
2）请按如下格式作答
"But you will be a beautiful narrator," she said,…
After the play, I took home the flower. …
