Historic Sites in Paris
Paris is a city full of sites of different times and architectural styles. Here are some of these famous spots that are essential to understand the city's complicated past.
Eiffel Tower
Presented as part of the 1889 World Exposition in Paris, the Eiffel Tower has become the city's most famous attraction. It is accessible on Line 6 or Line 8 of the Paris Metro by Bir-Hakeim or Trocadéro stations. If possible, avoid visiting this spot at peak hours（10: 00 a. m. - 5: 00 p. m.）or on weekends, so you can make the most of your visit to enjoy the views from the top. The best moments are right after it first opens on weekdays.
Notre-Dame Cathedral
Dating back to the 12th century, the Notre-Dame Cathedral has long towered alongside the banks of the Seine River, With its complicated Gothic（哥特式的）architectural details, it represents Parisian religion and architecture. Unfortunately, a fire broke out on April 15, 2019, destroying part of it. Visitors are not allowed to enter now.
Louvre Museum
Louvre Museum is one of the most famous art museums in the world where you can witness the city's rich painting history from the medieval（中世纪的）period to the present. It is easily accessible on Line 1 from the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre station. It is closed on Tuesdays as well as January 1, May 1, and December 25 each year.
Arc de Triomphe
The Arc de Triomphe serves as a national symbol of France, which was built by Napoleon I in celebration of the victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. Take Line 1, 2, or 6 to Charles de Gaulle-Etoile station and you will see the Arc de Triomphe. Visitors can purchase tickets for a tour to the top to enjoy the views of the city.
When I picked up The Woks of Life, a cookbook written by the Leung family, I was very excited. Inside there are mom-and-dad approved recipes with stories and photos — even a timeline — of the family's history.
"We call our cookbook culinary genealogy（烹饪家谱）. We wanted the book to be our family's stories told through food, rather than just characteristic recipes, " said Sarah Leung, who co-wrote the book during the pandemic（流行病）with her parents and younger sister. "We grew up in a food-obsessed（着迷的）family. Honestly, I've developed a quarter of these recipes myself, " Sarah added. "Over time, we'll accomplish our goal: All family members are competent Chinese cooks. "
The cookbook features dishes which might be made in a Chinese American home as well as in Chinese American takeout restaurants. "Home-style cooking and restaurant-style cooking have equal importance, but they are different, " Sarah said, adding that the family also discussed how to be respectful of each point. "I hope the recipes will appeal to Chinese Americans, like my family, and also those less familiar with Chinese cooking. "
Part of their cookbook has also been posted on their website attracting millions of faithful followers. The success of the cookbook is that it honors tradition as well as reflects modern interpretations, making it a mixture of the old and the new. It also offers building blocks for home cooks who want to learn to cook Chinese food.
I started my exploration with the Kung Pao Chicken, a popular dish and also my favorite. Joyfully, the dish I made tasted like it was supposed to be. It really built up my confidence. Surely, as you can imagine, I have also set up my goal to be expert in Chinese cooking.
The cookbook is promoting Chinese cooking to become the domain of home cooks in the United States. For too long, Chinese cooking has been a cuisine that many people are used to only eating out.
A relationship between the amount of adult speech children are exposed to and the concentration of myelin, a substance in the brain, has been found, researchers say.
"I think the take-home message is, absolutely talking to your kids. It's literally shaping the structure of the brain, " says the lead author, Prof. John P. Spencer of the University of East Anglia.
The team find, for the 30-month-olds, larger amounts of adult speech are associated with higher quantities of myelin in language-related pathways in the brain; however, for the 6-month-olds, it goes the opposite way.
While the latter（后者）is unexpected, Spencer points out one possible factor: the brain's stage of development.
"When babies are six months old, they experience massive growth of new nerve cells, " he says. "So the input comes in and may help extend the period of brain growth. " "While at 30 months, the brain starts to cut back some of the cell growth, and form specific connections. That's where myelin comes in. So now the input starts to help structure the myelin, " he adds.
The researchers conclude adult speech is significant for both age groups and that the more adult speech children go through, the more sensitive they will be to language. The next step for them is to figure out whether the 6-month-old babies showing that negative connection will surely turn into 30-month-old kids who show positive relationship.
Dr. Saloni Krishnan, Reader in cognitive neuroscience（认知神经科学）at Royal Holloway, University of London, who is not involved in the work, however, notes individual differences in language ability are linked to genetics. "Children who are exposed to more language at home and have higher myelination will also have inherited genes（经遗传获得的基因）from parents who are more excellent in languages, " she said. "No final conclusion could be made before this potential genetic effect are tested. And yet there being currently no standard around the amount of input children should receive, caregivers should not necessarily feel pressure to talk more to their children. "
Noisy family? Loud construction right outside your window? A new flexible loudspeaker could help you rest easily. It could turn your walls into noise-canceling systems.
The new loudspeaker is about as thick as a few sheets of paper. It's lightweight and flexible enough to stick to most surfaces to control noise much easier, notes Jinchi Han, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Lots of dome-shaped（圆顶状的）microstructures are in the centre of the new speaker. Han's team sandwiches their new material between two plastic sheets to protect the domes. "The bottom layer lifts up the small domes so that they can vibrate（震动）freely, and the upper protective layer is thicker than the domes that are secured in the middle of the layers, " he explains. "So if you touch the surface, you don't need to worry about damaging these small structures. "
Han points out large area of the new material could make controlling noise much easier.
Each dome works as a tiny speaker. The domes can generate sound waves all together, in groups or individually. Wallpapering your bedroom with this material would create speakers all around you. Those same speakers could then dampen or cancel unwanted sound. "If you desire, you could turn any space into a quiet zone where you could sleep or study with barely any noise, " Han says. He also sees applications in cars, airplanes, apartments or wherever unwanted noise is a problem.
Large versions could be the next step for this super-thin speakers, says Lori Beckstead, a sound artist.
"The new speakers are so thin and light that they could be placed in spaces where traditional loudspeakers might have been impractical, " Beckstead adds. She notes that adding noise-canceling technology to loud spaces from restaurants to noisy industrial plants would be fantastic.
When students get home, they usually sit down at the table and pull out their homework. Piles of papers rise all the way to the ceiling. American students should get less homework on a daily basis.
Loads of homework can cause stress in a student and lead to health issues in the body and mind. Stress causes lack of sleep, slipping grades, tiredness, unhealthy eating habits, depression, and so on. Nervous breakdowns can make completing homework much more of a struggle and also effect the health and life of a student.
The recommended amount is 10 minutes times the grade level. So first grade gets 10 minutes; second grade gets 20 minutes; third grade gets 30 minutes, and so on, but kids are doing much more than that. Twenty three percent of 13-year-olds do more than 2 hours a night. There is no academic benefit for high school students after 2 hours and there are no academic benefits for middle school students after 1 and a half hours.
Doing homework all night can take away a student's free time and sleep. Always doing homework can lead to less time for sports and after-school activities. Worse still, hanging out with friends is decreased, so that means there is less socializing. Staying up late and doing homework takes away a student's time to sleep. Not enough sleep can leave students tired, and at school they might focus less or fall asleep during class.
Shouldn't students get less homework so that they can be happy and have more time with family and friends? If teachers and parents tried to reduce the amount of homework, there would be a decrease in stress and anxiety and an increase in happiness!
A. Lack of sleep can cause great stress.
B. The more the students do, the less they get out of doing it.
C. Administrators, teachers, and parents need to address this issue.
D. Family time is also decreased, which can add more family conflict.
E Homework-related anxiety and stress can affect school work negatively.
F. Kids are doing more than the recommended amount with no academic benefits.
G. Anyway, too much homework can cause quite a few physical and mental problems.
A mistake made six years ago has turned into a holiday tradition. A grandmother who mistakenly 1 a stranger to attend the family's Thanksgiving dinner in 2016 ended up making a 2 , and now the pair have 3 the holiday together every year since. This year is no exception.
In 2016, Wanda Dench tried to text her grandson about the family's Thanksgiving dinner plans, but she 4 added a stranger to the message. Jamal Hinton was on the receiving end of the holiday text and jokingly accepted her 5 .
"You're not my grandma, " Hinton wrote back, including a selfie to 6 he was not the grandson Dench thought she was texting. "Can I still get a plate though? "
Dench ever the 7 grandmother, replied, "Of course you can. That's what Grandmas do... 8 everyone. " Hinton posted about the funny mix-up and it went viral（疯传）. And on Thanksgiving day, he 9 drove from Tempe, Arizona to Mesa to 10 the Dench family for the holiday. And every year since, Hinton and Dench have got together for the holiday.
In 2020, he informed followers of some sad news — Dench's husband, Lonnie, had died from COVID-19. So last Thanksgiving, 11 Lonnie, the family held a small, pared-down（精简的）12 the day after the holiday to keep the 13 alive.
This year, Hinton tweeted, "We are all set for year 6! ", 14 a screenshot of their text exchange as usual. Dench's name is saved in his phone as "Grandma Wanda". The story of 15 went viral again — spreading some holiday cheer on social media.
Being shy is something that affects lots of people, and it typically starts in childhood. As expert for the Baby Annabell Ask The Experts campaign, people have asked me if (have) a shy personality is something we are born with or if it's something we develop (base) on our experiences.
Actually, it can be either or a bit of both. I had pretty outgoing, confident parents, and there are some (study) that suggest the more confident or outspoken a parent in childhood, the shyer a child could (potential) become.
Some research has shown that the more sensitive the parent is their child's needs, and responds appropriately to them, the risk of shyness decreases. In my case this is happened — my parents turned in to me and my needs and the shyness all but (disappear) completely over time.
On the other hand, a person's personality has a (biology) basis, and has long been said can be identified from babies only a few months old. It's important to recognize though that a child's personality can change, and gradually as they (expose) to more and more people, objects and situations, signs of shyness can fade away.
注意： 1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear David,
Yours,
Li Hua
If you had to choose one word to describe Kevin, it might have been "slow". He didn't learn his ABCs as fast as other kids. He never came in first in the schoolyard races. However, his smile was brighter than the sun in June; his heart was bigger than the mountain sky. Kevin's enthusiasm for life was quite infectious.
When Kevin joined the boys' school basketball team, basketball became the center of his life. At practice, he worked so hard that you'd think he was preparing for the NBA. He liked to stand in a certain place near the free-throw line and shoot at the basket. Patiently, he stood there throwing ball after ball after ball. "Look at me, Coach! " he'd shout at Randy, jumping up and down with the excitement of shooting.
Kevin and his whole team truly loved basketball. But just loving the game didn't help them win. More balls fell out of the basket than into it, and the boys lost every game that season, except one — the night when it snowed and the other team couldn't make it to the game.
It was a cold snowing afternoon when their last game came. As the last-place team they played against the first-place team. The game went pretty much the same as expected, and near the middle of the fourth quarter Kevin's team stood nearly 30 points behind.
At that point, one of Kevin's teammates called time-out. As he came to the side, Randy couldn't imagine why the time-out had been called. "Coach, " said the boy. "This is our last game and I know that Kevin has played in every game, but he's never made a basket. I think we should let Kevin make a basket. " With the game completely out of reach, the idea seemed reasonable, so the plan was made. When they had the ball again, they passed it to Kevin who was standing in his special place near the free-throw line.
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。
His first shot bounced around but missed.
Finally, the ball took one bounce and went in unexpectedly.
