Museum of the Moving Image (MMI) (Monday Closed)As the best museum in New York City and with a balance of hands-on(实际操作的)activities and information, it's the rare bird that can entertain and educate people of different ages. It's a perfect destination for a family trip of a couple of hours.
Pros-Excellent movie screenings. Easy subway access.
Cons-Difficult to reach by car.
New York Hall of Science (NYHS) (Monday Closed)Being New York City's only hands-on science and technology center, it is an interactive science museum targeting children. It has the most hands-on exhibits in an NYC museum, and it's a fun destination for five-year-olds and above. Older folks might take great interest in the NASA rockets outside the museum, but don't bother unless you have kids to keep you company.
Pros-Cool interactive science exhibits, the rockets.
Cons-Hard to reach by public transportation.
Queens County Farm Museum (QCFM) (Year-round 7 days a week)It is an actual farm in New York City and home to animals your kids can feed and a yard full of a climbing plant whose fruits can be made into wine. Good chance to meet sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and cows! The animals are mostly readily accessible to visitors. And the museum sells feed for young hands willing to get licked by sheep and goats.
Pros-Outdoor fun.
Cons-Expensive festivals, long bus ride, no subway.
Queens Museum of Art (QMA) (Monday and Tuesday Closed)Opened in 1972 to serve as a cultural center for the borough(行政区), it exhibits artworks by local and international artists. Its best exhibits are on the two World's Fairs, and of course, the Panorama of New York City, a giant, highly detailed diorama(透视画)of all five New York City boroughs.
Pros-The Panorama, great gift shop. Easy subway access.
Cons-Not much for kids.
When my teenaged son became seriously ill, terrible times for my family began. Our once-happy home became tense and depressed. My husband and I were exhausted under the great stress of caring for my son. It was as if we forgot how to communicate-we couldn't have a simple conversation without a fighting. Our marriage was on the point of breaking up.
One evening, my son and I were talking about gifts. I recalled my first Valentine's present from my husband, a kazoo. I was awkward when I received it because I couldn't get it to make a sound although I am a professional saxophone player. However hard I tried, it just never worked. The kazoo eventually got packed away and forgotten. But my son was interested and insisted on seeing it. After some trouble, I found it.
"You couldn't get a sound? What's so hard about it?" my husband asked, amazed. He took the kazoo and blew. Nothing happened. Surprised, he tried again. Still there was no sound. Frustrated, he tried again, only to produce a funny sound like an angry bumblebee trapped in the mouth of a bear. We burst into laughter. My son took a turn to play the kazoo. He did no better than us, causing more laughing.
Seeing his face light up, we felt as if the darkness had lifted and a ray of sunshine was let in. It was the best ten minutes of the past couple of years. The mood stayed light for the rest of the evening. It didn't solve anything. But this experience with the kazoo brought some change in our hearts that always reminds us that there are still things to laugh at and enjoy, and that we can still connect as a family.
Do you go to the gym to strengthen your body? Well, you may be missing out on training some vital muscles-the ones involved in breathing. New research shows that training these muscles each day can reduce high blood pressure and promote heart health.
"The muscles we use to breathe atrophy, just like the rest of our muscles, as we get older," explains Daniel Craighead, a physiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. To test what happens when these muscles are given a good workout, he and his colleagues enlisted healthy volunteers aged 18 to 82 to try a daily five-minute technique using a resistance-breathing training device called PowerBreathe. The device forces the patient to use their breathing muscles to push and pull air through it, making them stronger.
"We found that doing 30 breaths per day for six weeks lowers blood pressure by about 9mmHg (毫米汞柱)," Craighead says. And those reductions are about what could be expected with traditional exercise, he says-such as walking, running or cycling. The impact of a sustained 9mm Hg reduction is significant, says Michael Joyner, a physician at the Mayo Clinic who studies how the nervous system regulates blood pressure." That's the type of redaction you see with a blood pressure drug" Joyner says. Research has shown many common blood pressure medicines lead to about a 9 mmHg reduction. The reductions are higher when people combine multiple (多种的) medicines, but a 10 mmHg reduction relates to a 35% drop in the risk of stroke and a 25% drop in the risk of heart disease.
"I think it's promising." Joyner says about the prospects of integrating strength training for the muscles used to breathe into preventive care. It could be beneficial for people who are unable to do traditional exercise, he says, and the simplicity is appealing, too, given people can easily use the device at home. However, the technique is not intended to replace exercise, he cautions, or to replace medication for people whose blood pressure is so high that they're at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke. Instead, Craighead says, "it would be a good additive intervention (干预) for people who are doing other healthy lifestyle approaches already."
If you have a high temperature or are recovering from a surgery, it is difficult to be fully focused at work. Sick days are meant to prevent people from hurting themselves, their co-workers, or customers on the job. However, working from home has changed this logic.
The work-from-home revolution has raised the bar for what counts as being sick. At the height of the pandemic, people worked from home even with some serious symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath or sickness. Many still have to.
Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University has been tracking work-from-home habits since before the Covid-19 popularized them. In a recent working paper, he presents the results of a randomized controlled trial at a large multinational company, where sick days fell by 12% for employees working from home compared to those coming in full time.
To be in bed not doing anything means discomfort both physically and mentally. Salaried workers, who are often evaluated on the basis of their attendance, find it hard to call in sick for a few days now that they don't need to worry about spreading germs in the office. For high-achievers, putting in the hours is not a chore but a way of life. As the economic recession(萧条) puts future job security into question, showing yourself to be useful becomes even more important.
Though all this is understandable, it is also troubling. Being even mildly sick can impair brain function. It is difficult to exercise proper judgment if one cannot focus on the task at hand. It is why people with lower oxygen concentration sometimes remove protective clothes atop Mount Everest some freeze to death. Firing off emails while feeling dizzy will put the body under further stress.
Soldiering on (硬挺) may make the employee both sicker and less productive for longer. Digital presenteeism (超时工作),for that is what such persisting amounts to, is in no one's interest.
Seventeen government departments released a guideline on Tuesday to boost(提高)the birth rate across the country.
All counties, cities and provinces are required to set up at least one government-funded maternity(产科医院)and child care institution(机构)to improve the welfare(福利)of pregnant women and newborn babies. Tailored campaigns to build more cheaper nursery services, such as day care and kindergartens, are being promoted.
Employers, schools, communities and social organizations are encouraged to offer child care services during the summer and winter vacations.
Workplaces are encouraged to have a flexible working system. Employers can discuss with employees ways of creating a flexible working mechanism(机制), such as a work-from-home system, to help employees solve difficulties in child care, The maternity leave system is being improved across the country, helping employees balance work and family, as well as promoting fair employment and career development.
to ensure the safety of the maternity fund. Unemployed women can enjoy maternity medical care by participating in basic medical insurance for urban and rural residents.
For example, cities are encouraged to raise the amount of housing loans with lower interest rates to those families.
A. including sending and picking up children from schools and taking care of sick and young children.
B. including losing temper while tutoring children with their homework.
C. The State will draw up a maternity insurance payment policy
D. Families without children will have stricter restrictions on house purchases.
E. Beneficial housing policies are being offered to families with more children.
F. Below are some of the specific measures.
G. More low-cost nursing services will also be provided.
My father never kept anything for emotional purposes-except once. I was the only one in my family who cared about baseball and I always1watching my heroes at Yankee Stadium. One winter, I wrote down a schedule for the summer dates and dreamed every night. To my surprise, one evening I saw my father 2 it before going out to work.
The following Sunday, he told me, "Let's put away some money into a 3each week, and maybe we can go to Yankee Stadium this summer. "I 4washed out a jar and5a label: YANKEE STADIUM FUND, 1960.
Each of us6to the jar weekly. However, we still hadn't gone to a game because my father had to work every Saturday. So one day, I7him of the remaining time, and then he8me, "Don't worry and we'll have a free Saturday."
On the morning of the last game, I was waiting hopelessly with no9of my father who had been to work when he suddenly appeared and yelled, "I got two 10!"
I could hardly 11 when we finally sat together, father and son, watching my New York Yankees. I sat cheering, but for my father, all I could see is a face12tiredness from working all week.
In 1963, my father died suddenly while working. In his bedroom, I noticed a 13ticket in his yellowish book, which read, October I, 1960, General Admission. My father, who14 nothing for emotional reasons, had decided to keep this, a(n) 15 of our afternoon together.
People are freer to travel as China's transport sector has fine-tuned (measure) to further smooth transportation and logistics from Wednesday to respond to the nation's optimized (优化的) COVID-19 containment measures.
When comes to traveling across regions and provinces, passengers are no longer required (present) negative results of nucleic acid tests or health codes at public transport venues, according to an optimized guideline issued by the Ministry of Transport on Wednesday. Travelers now going through (secure) checks can scan their identity card to enter the stations, same procedure used before the epidemic.
A traveler from Tianjin to the capital told Beijing Daily that her Beijing health code returned to normal on Wednesday, enabled her to buy a Tianjin-Beijing train ticket, "There were fewer passengers onboard (compare) with the days before the epidemic but I believe their numbers (recover) soon as more work and production have resumed already," she said.
Railway services to Beijing from many places such as Zhengzhou of Henan province and Hohhot of Inner Mongolia autonomous region were (temporary) canceled for fear of high infection risks, but they have resumed.
Up to now, nucleic acid test facilities (remove) at Beijing Fengtai railway station. More relaxed protocols have also been adopted at transport venues across the country.
1）参加中文学习班，掌握语音语调(四个声调)；
2）看中文节目、报纸和杂志，唱中文歌；
3）写中文日记；
4）背诵经典等。
注意：1）词数100左右；
2）可以适当添加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：语调 intonation；声调 tone；经典作品 classic
Dear Tom,
……
Yours,
Li Hua
One particular Thanksgiving, the weather was so beautiful that Mom decided to have dinner on our front lawn. Dad built a long table, and Mom and I rounded up every chair in the house. I did the place settings and made the centerpiece — my favorite job of the year.
My aunt arrived with Uncle Gordon. I watched him walk from the street up the lawn, tall with his blond hair shining in the sun. Another car had pulled up behind them, and Uncle Gordon waited for a slim man to join him. As they walked, he and Gordon chatted. Mom came out of the house and greeted my aunt. Then, with a surprised look, she said hello to Gordon and his friend.
"Who's this?"
Gordon smiled and told us the man's name. "A Canuck(法裔加拿大人) from Toronto, like me."
"Oh," Mom said uncertainly. "Well, welcome. Leslie, get another place setting and a chair." She turned to the stranger. "Please have a seat. We're going to eat in about half an hour. "I thought the man looked a little funny, but he smiled. "Why, thanks. Thanks a lot." I did as Mom asked and set a place at the table for the stranger. I put him next to Uncle Gordon so the two friends could recall home. And they did a lot of talking.
After dinner, the man approached my mother with a smile. "Thank you for including me in your Thanksgiving dinner, Joyce. It wasn't something I was expecting." Mom frowned, a little confused. "Of course," she said. "We're glad you could be here. Do you have Thanksgiving in Canada?"
"Ours is in October. We have turkey, though, just like you." He smiled. "But this is one of the best Thanksgivings I've had. I guess Americans and Canadians aren't that different, eh?" Then again, he said, "But I never expected this."
"Gordon's friend seems nice," Mom said to my aunt when we were alone in the kitchen.
注意：1）续写词数应为150左右;
2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
"Gordon's friend?" my aunt said. "He's not Gordon's friend. We don't know him."
……
"I was, actually, lost in the neighborhood," replied the stranger.
