Useful Travel Apps
Traveladvisor
Every hotel, restaurant or tourist spot you wish to know about has likely been reviewed and rated here. These numerous, and at times very detailed, travellers' experiences offer handy tips and help avoid common mistakes. Lists like "Top Things to Do In..." ensure that you don't come back with any regrets.
Kayak
A comprehensive travel planner, this app lets you search for and book flight tickets, hotels and cars, and even assists in packing. Its predeparture to-do lists, tailored for general, business or romantic travel, ensure that all you need is your bag.
Tripit
If you're forever searching for all the confirmation emails for your trips, download this app, which merges all your travel details into one itinerary. You can access it from several devices, and it syncs with your phone calendar, too.
Loungebuddy
This app advises on the facilities and entry policies for airport lounges across the world, so in one click you can get away from the crowds.
Travel Diary
Similar to sending postcards to yourself, this app lets you make diary entries with text and images. You can also export all your entries to a word document: raw material for the travelogue in the making.
On September 9, senior Andre Samaraweera qualified as a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship. In the spring, Andre will find out if he has qualified for the finalist position. "Seeing my score on the PSAT was by far the most exciting because it felt pleasant to see all my hard work pay off," Andre said. "I was happy that I could qualify to get a scholarship because of my academic scores."
The National Merit Scholarship is one awarded to those who do well on the Preliminary SAT or the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation will grant around 7,600 students the scholarship after an intense filtering of about 1.6 million entries.
"The most difficult part of the PSAT was actually having to study," Andre said. "I had to force myself to actually study, because I knew if I didn't, I wouldn't do well and would probably not make as high of a score as I had."
Andre took the PSAT his junior year and got a 1450/1520 and missed three questions in English and made a perfect score on the math portion.
As a semifinalist he has already passed multiple stages in the selection process and now competes with only around 16,000 students for scholarships.
The first scholarship opportunities are single-payment scholarships worth $2,500; the second scholarship is a corporate sponsored one which is for finalists with career plans the sponsor wishes to encourage. Finally there is the college-sponsored scholarship which is where officials of each sponsor college select winners of their awards from finalists who have been accepted for admission.
"It's just a PSAT. The real SAT has a lot more impact on my future," Andre said. "It's not hard to know everything for the PSAT; the difficulty lies in applying everything perfectly."
Imagine the busy streets of New York City, an enormous place with millions of people. Every day, the streets are crowded with people going about their daily lives. Now imagine a small robot in the middle of all of those people. Most people would not even notice the ten-inch smiling robot, called a Tweenbot, rolling along the busy sidewalk. This strange machine may interest some people, while others would ignore it completely. A researcher interested in studying how helpful people really are uses such robots in her experiments.
The Tweenbots experiment is the idea and creation of Kacie Kinzer, which was to make a robot that could navigate the city and reach its destination only if it was aided by pedestrians. Tweenbots rely on the kindness of warm-hearted strangers. Made simply of cardboard, wheels, and a device to turn the wheels, the Tweenbots face many dangers on the city streets. They could be run over by cars or smashed by careless kids. Each of Kinzer's robots is fitted with a flag that displays instructions for the robot's destination. The only way these robots will reach their final point is if someone lends them a hand. Tweenbots are essentially a social experiment aimed at providing people a chance to show how caring they are.
On a daily basis, people in New York City are often in a hurry to get around. However, the Tweenbots, through their inability to look after themselves, took people out of their normal routines. The people who noticed the helpless little robots were actually interested in helping the Tweenbots find their way home. Tweenbots move at a constant speed and can only go in a straight line. If one was to get stuck, or was going in the wrong direction, it would be up to strangers to free it or turn it in the right direction. Surprisingly, no Tweenbot was lost or damaged, and each one arrived at its target in good condition. In fact, most people treated the robot in a gentle manner, and some even treated it as though it were a small living being.
Body mass index (BMI) has long been foundational in healthcare around the world. The simple equation (方程) of weight relative to height has been used to determine your risk for certain diseases. But researchers have been questioning the value of BMI in individual health assessment now.
BMI was never intended to measure individual health. It was developed in the early 1800s to study weight variations across entire population. "BMI is a rigid number based on old data," says Fatima Stanford, a professor at Harvard Medical School. And it's far from perfect in terms of the cutoffs (分界点) designed to indicate risk, she added.
A study estimated that more than 74 million American adults were miscategorized (被误分类) as unhealthy or healthy based on their BMI alone. Nearly half of people considered over weight and 29 percent categorized as obese were actually healthy. Thirty percent of those considered to be at a normal weight had heart issues.
Part of the problem is that BMI doesn't tell the difference between weight from fat and muscle. So bodybuilders and athletes with high muscle mass may be categorized as overweight or obese. And even among people who do have higher body fat, BMI doesn't tell physicians anything about how the fat is distributed —a key connection to disease risk.
Furthermore, BMI cutoffs are largely based on data from western populations, making it a problem to apply this measurement to the diverse American population. There's growing evidence that body composition varies from race to race. African Americans, for example, are likely to carry more fat around the hips than white Americans. A study showed that for black adults in the U.S., having a higher BMI (25 and over) did not carry the same risk of death as it did in white adults.
Regardless of the BMI category you fall into, it's important to find a healthcare provider who will look beyond that number to get a whole picture of your health. Because despite the view that people with a higher BMI have a greater risk for a number of diseases than thinner people, the research shows it's not that simple.
We've seen photographs that seem to show unbelievable images, thanks to photo editing software. But do you know you can create images that look impossible without any fancy software or computer effects?
Playing with perspective
One of the easiest tricks is called forced perspective. The person in front will look large, and the person farther away will look very small. The person in front can hold out their hand as if they were holding something, and the person in back is being held in the front person's hand. You can also do this trick with objects like the sun or a full moon.
Flying superheroes
How can you take a photograph of a friend so that they seem to be flying superheroes? Have your friend dress up in a superhero costume, especially one with a cape (斗篷). You can pose them outside against the open sky, and have another friend hold the cape out so it looks like they're flying. Position yourself low and take the photo looking slightly upward so the ground isn't visible. After you take the photo, you can cut it,
Other tricks
You can have several of your friends lie flat on a solid-colored sheet so they're arranged to look like they're piled in a human pyramid. If you take the photo in the moment when they are off the ground, you can cut it so they look like they're floating. Have a friend draw funny eyeballs on the back of their hand and then hold their hand across their real eyes for a funny face photo.
The only rule is not to do anything risky and to have fun.
A. so the hand holding the cape out isn't visible.
B. so your friends look like they are trapped inside.
C. You can create your own trick photos by exploring other ways to use all these tricks.
D. You can also take a photo of your friend jumping up into the air.
E. Here are some easy tricks that can create images fooling your eyes.
F. The other method is to take a sheet, lay it flat on the ground, and decorate it with buildings.
G. To do this, you set up a camera shot with someone close to the camera and someone farther away.
We have a small wooden board suspended on a tree in our back garden to feed some of the parrots and squirrels that populate our neighbourhood.
They visit in the morning and evening to see if we have 1 any leftover rice or fruit, and loud noises can be heard if the 2 is empty.
The squirrels are usually the quietest of the creatures that visit, while the parrots are the bossiest. Sometimes, one of the squirrels will 3 in a flowerpot that hangs from the tree. He looks 4 standing on his hind legs, holding up a lump (块) of 5 as big as himself and eating it, his mouth working at great speed. The parrots, however, never let the poor squirrels eat to his heart's 6, often peck (啄) at him and 7 him away.
One day in July last year, something quite 8 happened. A parrot went for the usual 9, but the squirrel, 10 backing away, 11 his head towards the parrot in defence. The parrot gave in 12, and quickly moved to the opposite end of the board before the two of them 13 the feast. The little squirrel 14 that nobody can mess with him and to this day he 15 to stand up to those bossy parrots.
Ronni Abergel of Copenhagen has always been curious the lives of other people. In 2000, with his brother and friends, he launched the Human Library, (fill) it with "human books" — volunteers recruited from often-stigmatized backgrounds (for example, they may have been labeled as homeless, ADHD, Muslim, or obese). "I wanted to create a safe place it was okay to ask other people questions," Abergel says.
The first Human Library (hold) at a music festival, and the concept caught on. More than 85 countries now have human libraries, often in actual libraries. People can browse the catalogue and check out a "human book" for 30 minutes. "It's chance to see what it's like to walk in their shoes, and to dispel fear," says Abergel, adding that the organization trains applicants (ensure) they'll be open-minded and genuine.
In 2020, the Human Library went online for the first time. Weekly virtual sessions are available and are (typical) fully booked with participants from around the world. Abergel says it takes a special kind of person to volunteer as a human book, opening (they) up to whatever is asked. has rewards, too. "This forum allows them to explain themselves," says Abergel. "Who doesn't want to be understood if for most of your life you (misunderstand)?"
"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist sees opportunity in every difficult."
—Winston Churchill
内容包括：1）你对该名言的理解;
2）结合生活实例;
3）你对该名言的感悟。
注意：1）写作词数应为80词左右(名言不计入总词数);
2）请在答题卡的相应位置作答。
My great-grandmother Eileen is fierce, loyal and strong and a bit of a legend in her own lifetime, which now stretches to 92 years. I should add that we're not allowed to call her Gran, because she says it makes her feel old.
That summer, I lost my job and felt hopeless. One day, I paid a visit to her. She picked up a box which she placed on the coffee table. "There you go," she said. "You do know what you're doing with these things, don't you?"
It was a new phone. Her current mobile was pretty ancient. I was amazed it was still going.
"Yes," I said.
"Good. That's why I ask you. You young people know more about such things than us oldies. You can take it home with you and get it all set up," she went on. "Then, when you bring it back, you can show me how to use my new phone, such as getting on the internet, sending e-mails and so on." She smiled so sweetly that I felt a surge of love for her.
I grabbed the box and stood up. Setting up the phone would be easy. It was teaching her how to use it that may prove challenging.
The following day I headed back to my great-grandmother's with the phone. "Here's your phone. It's all ready to use."
For the next hour, I was busy setting up her passcode and fingerprint recognition, which she said was like something out of James Bond.
She chose a picture for her screen and it was all going so well until I tried to show her how to swipe (滑动屏幕). "What do you mean, swipe?" she asked. She was 92, I reminded myself. This had been tiring for her.
She pressed at the up arrow and got angry when nothing happened. When I finally got her to swipe, she didn't put the right amount of pressure on and the menu slipped away. After what seemed like hours, she threw the phone across the room and it landed on the sofa. "Take it away!" she howled. "I want my old phone back!"
I picked up the phone and was about to leave to give her time to cool down when I realized I didn't want to go home when she was angry and upset.
注意：1）续写词数应为150左右；
2）请在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1
"Come on, Eileen. One more try." I said.
Paragraph 2
I was not feeling so hopeless any more now.
