Laura encourages her two kids to make crafts and drawings from old bits of packaging. She began 1 her family's waste when she moved house and decided that she would leave all single-use 2 behind.
"It's cheaper and you know that the item will 3 being used instead of being set aside — so it's just perfect! Each of us play a big 4 in taking care of the environment. It's 5 to try to help rather than just keep complaining about the current situation."
Any glass container is 6 and repurposed for something else. This means that the family only send a piece of 7 to landfill every two weeks on average. She tries not to buy any plastic at all, but when she does, she will get it 8 washed and recycled.
The family also grow their own tomatoes, lettuce, and some other vegetables in the garden, and have orange trees outdoors. Laura has also 9 herself in a community of friends who 10 items with each other that they need, like furniture or plates.
She said, "We tried to use the minimum 11 and take over some toys and baby equipment from friends and relatives. If we really had to 12 anything, first we tried at the 13 market."
To help educate her kids, Laura takes them out on nature walks to the forest where they 14 rubbish as they go. "They enjoy this 15 , because they know it's better for the environment," she said.
Rachel Hore's fascinating novels move between the past and the present. Her latest The House on Bellevue Gardens is set in London now and in the early 1960s.
Best-selling author Rachel Hore's previous novels include The Glass Painter's Daughter, which was shortlisted(入围) for the 2010 Romantic Novel of the Year award, and A Gathering Storm, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Historical Novel of the Year award.
Here, she shares three books that made an impact on her life.
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf
Reading Orlando for the first time in my late teens gave me a wonderful sense of freedom and the possibilities that a life full of books can offer. Forever youngOrlando possesses "the strength of a man and a woman's grace".
He lives through four centuries and has many disguises; sometimes he even changes his gender.
It was an excellent literary work through history that excited and inspired me.
Flight Behaviour
by Barbara Kingsolver
I've read many of Barbara Kingsolver's novels, including her well-known The Poisonwood Bible, admiring how easily she writes about the power and beauty of the natural world, of which humanity is a dependent part.
I particularly love Flight Behaviour because she engages the reader easily with an ambitious subject for fiction — climate change.
Her story makes us all care about what we are doing to our world.
The Hawk in the Rain
by Ted Hughes
We were given The Thought Fox to read at school and I was so deeply impressed with its central image of the fox in the snow inspiring the poem that I spent that week's money on the book it appears in. I read and re-read it and was amazed!
I loved the writer's technique of description, as well as the energy, the violence and the sensuousness (敏感) of those poems.
Everyone should have their ‘discovery of poetry' moment, and mine was Ted Hughes.
When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First, he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse-like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
"Ecological design" is the name John gives to what he does. "Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor," he says. "You put organisms in new relationships and observe what's happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair."
Improvements to energy efficiency, such as LED lights, are seen by many authorities as a top priority for cutting carbon emissions. Yet a growing body of research suggests that a rebound effect could wipe out more than half of the savings from energy efficiency improvements, making the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change even harder to hit.
A team led by Paul Brockway at the University of Leeds, UK, looked at the existing 33 studies on the impact of the rebound effect. First comes the direct rebound: for instance, when someone buys a more efficient car, they may take advantage of that by driving it further. Then comes the indirect rebound: fuel savings leave the owner with more money to spend elsewhere in the economy, consuming energy.
Although the 33 studies used different methods to model the rebound effect, they produced very consistent estimates of its impact, leading the team to conclude that the effect wipes out, on average, 63 percent of the anticipated energy savings.
"We're not saying energy efficiency doesn't work. What we're saying is rebound needs to be taken more seriously," says Brockway.
The idea that increased efficiency may not deliver the hoped-for savings dates back to the Jevons paradox(悖论), named after the economist William Stanley Jevons, who, in 1865, observed that more efficient coal use led to more demand for coal.
If the rebound effect does prove to be as big as suggested, it means future global energy demand will be higher than expected and the world will need far more wind and solar power and carbon-capture technology than is currently being planned for.
But that doesn't mean nothing can be done to limit the rebound effect. One answer is to double down on energy efficiency and do twice as much to achieve the same effect.
Video calls are a common occurrence, but have you imagined being able to touch the person on the other end of the line? Scientists are making this a reality.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, have invented a soft skin stretch device (SSD), a haptic (触觉的) device that can recreate the sense of touch. Haptic technology mimics (模仿) the experience of touch by stimulating small areas of the skin in ways that are similar to what is felt in the real world, through force, vibration (震动) or motion.
Vibration is the most common haptic technology today and has been built into many electronic devices, such as one attached to the back of a trackpad (触控板) in laptops, which mimics a button clicking. However, haptic feedback with vibration becomes less sensitive when used continuously. The existing technology also has great difficulty recreating the sense of touch with objects in virtual environments or located remotely, according to Mai Thanh Thai, lead author of the study.
The new technology overcomes issues with existing haptic devices. The research team introduced a novel method to recreate the sense of touch through soft, artificial "muscles".
"Our three-way directional skin stretch device, built into the fingertips of the wearable haptic glove we also created, is like wearing a second skin — it's soft, stretchable and mimics the sense of touch — and will enable new forms of haptic communication to enhance everyday activities, " said Thanh Nho Do, senior author of the study.
It works like this: Imagine you are at home and you call your friend who is in Australia. You wear a haptic glove with the SSDs and your friend also wears a glove with integrated (集成的) 3D force sensors. If your friend picks up an object, it will physically press against your friend's fingers. And his/her glove with 3D force sensors will measure these interactions. The force signals can be sent to your glove so your device will generate the same 3D forces, making you experience the same sense of touch as your friend.
The haptic devices could be applied in various scenarios, allowing users to feel objects inside a virtual world or at a distance. This could be especially beneficial during such times like the COVID-19 pandemic when people rely on video calls to stay connected with loved ones. Or it could be used in medical practices. Doctors can feel a patient's organ tissues with surgical tools without touching them.
Choosing a career is one of those important decisions that can change the course of your life.Ample information and self-examination can help you choose a satisfying career that you will enjoy for years to come. If you feel confused about picking a career, you're not alone. We're here to help!
Evaluate your work style. The right career for you will be suited to your work style. Do you need the discipline of a structured work environment to do your best?There are, of course, other factors that affect your job performance. But, your natural work style plays a big role.
Identify your skills. Every career requires a different skill set. Sales managers need great leadership skills, and teachers need to be able to communicate effectively with both students and parents.List every talent and skill you have, even if it doesn't seem like it will help you get a job.
What do you want out of a career? Do you want to help other people? Do you want to travel? How much money do you want to make? Of course, what you want to achieve often changes over time, and things that were once extremely important become less so.
Remember that things can change. There are a million "Best Careers" lists out there that will say you should have a certain career because you will make a certain amount of money with it. There might be a lot of demand for a job now, but what about in 10years? Don't choose a job just because it's number one on a list somewhere. Things can change over time, and the job that was once number one might end up not even making the list a few years from now.
A. Determine your goals.
B. It deserves considerable time and reflection.
C. Take some time to figure out what you're good at.
D. Ask questions about the advantages and disadvantages of the job.
E. Or do you like setting your own schedule and work independently?
F. However, there's no way to totally guarantee job security and stability.
G. Are you willing and able to put in that time and the money that comes with it?
Singing is one of those universal actions that everyone can do for fun, regardless of how they sound. According to recent studies (conduct) at Goethe University Frankfurt, singing can be actually helpful to your immune system. The study focused a group of people who sang in a professional choir and discovered that the amount of proteins in the blood that function as antibodies(抗体) was (obvious) higher after singing, so people involved in music could be less likely (get) sick.
Singing actually is the perfect physical exercise for people who are injured, disabled or elderly. Not only (do) singing help increase your lung capacity, but it helps stimulate circulation. This can lead to better results when people hit the gym thanks to the person's increased aerobic(有氧的) capacity and newfound physical or mental strength.
The simple truth is that singing makes you happy. It releases endorphins(内啡肽), a chemical reduces pain and makes you feel (happy) and less stressed. People who sing, especially in choirs and on the stage are known to have better social skills and be loss lonely. (stand) on the stage and performing can be tough, when you do it in a group, it can help improve your sense of self as well as increase your (confident).
注意：
(1)词数80左右;
(2)可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
(3)开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数
Dear Tom,
I have known your ideas about exploring space.
Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
The easy way out isn't always easiest. I learned that lesson when I decided to treat my father to a special meal. I glanced through the cookbook and chose a menu which included homemade bread. Knowing the bread would take time, I started on it as soon as he left for work.
As I was not experienced in cooking, I thought if a dozen was good, two dozen would be better, so I doubled everything. As Dad loved oranges, I also opened a can of orange and poured it all into the bowl. Soon there was sticky dough (面团) covered with ugly yellowish marks. Realizing I had been defeated, I put the dough in the rubbish bin outside so I wouldn't have to face him laughing at my work.
I went on preparing the rest of the meal, and, when Dad got home, we sat down to Cornish chicken with rice. He tried to enjoy the meal but seemed disturbed. Twice he got up and went outside, saying he thought he heard a noise. The third time he left, I went to the windows to see what he was doing.
Looking out, I saw Dad standing about three feet from the rubbish bin, holding the lid up with a stick and looking into the container. When I came out of the house, he dropped the stick and explained that there was something alive in the rubbish bin. Picking up the stick again, he held the lid up enough for me to see. I felt cold. But I stepped closer and looked harder.
Without doubt it was my work. The hot sun had caused the dough to double in size and the. fermenting yeast (酵母) made the surface shake and sigh as though it were breathing. I had to admit what the "living thing" was and why it was there. I don't know who was more embarrassed by the whole thing, Dad or me.
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。
My dad tapped me gently on the shoulder, and we went inside.
At a party three months later, everyone wanted to try my bread.
