浙江省长兴县中2022-2023学年高一上学期9月月考英语试...

What is a family? Why does it matter? What does it teach us that we can't learn on our own? These questions seem especially relevant in the holiday season when it is often our tradition to gather as families and celebrate together.

My mother was one of twelve children. As they grew up, married and had children of their own, most of them lived near enough to gather for holidays at my grandparents' home in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina.

I don't recall getting many gifts from them. I remember the sense of belonging, of being part of something that assured me I was loved and not alone. I delighted in the laughing playing and fighting with my crazy cousins, I watched my granddad and uncles sit on the porch(门廊), rain or shine, smoking and joking arguing about politics and trying to solve the problems of the world. I listened to grandmother, mother and aunts stir pots on the stove and talk about their lives, hopes, dreams and disappointments, and gossip about any sister who failed to show up. The food was always plentiful and delicious — country ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, biscuits and my grandmother's banana pudding. But for me, the food was never the highlight. The highlight was simply being together. A family.

However, they're all gone now. My parents and grandparents, my aunts and males have left this world for the next. My cousins are scattered(分散) here and there. And yet the memories linger, along with the love that we shared. I treasure those memories and the things they taught me. They told me that families aren't perfect, but they prepare us to find our way in an imperfect world. They made me realize that all families are crazy in their own peculiar(独特的) ways.

My husband and I are growing a new family while keeping close to the surviving members of the families. It's a beautiful blend (混合) of kindness, traditions nurturing(养育) and friendships, which grows year after year.

I hope this holiday season will fill you with lovely memories of the family that raised you, and surround you with all the people who mean "family" to you now.

Natural selection is the process by which one type of animal within a species thrives (兴旺) because of certain characteristics that make it more likely to live than others in its group. The history of the peppered moth (灰蛾) is an example of the natural selection process.

In nineteenth-century England, certain types of peppered moths were able to better blend (融合) into their surroundings. During that time period, great changes were happening in Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution was part of this change, and with it came air pollution. Natural selection often takes hundreds or even thousands of years to occur. For the peppered moth, this process occurred comparatively quickly.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age most peppered moths in England were light-colored and covered with black markings, although a few moths had dark-colored wings. Because the light-colored moths blended into the light-colored bark on the trees, they could not be easily seen by birds that would eat them. The light-colored moths became easy for birds to see against the dark tree trunks. Since the dark-colored moths now had the advantage, their numbers grew. Within 50 years, the peppered moth went from being mostly light-colored to being mostly dark-colored.

In the twentieth century, the air cleared up, and the peppered moth population changed again. As tree trunks lightened due to less soot in the air, light-colored moths once again had an advantage. Their numbers increased as soot levels declined. Depending on their environment, the coloration of the moths helped them to be "naturally selected" to survive.

Weather could power the next generation of smart windows. Researchers have created glass by harvesting energy from wind and precipitation(降水). The approach offers an alternative to other smart windows powered by batteries, solar panels, and even standard power outlets." The creation represents a new kind of renewable energy source, "says Liming Dai, a nanomaterial engineer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who was not involved in the research.

Smart glass, which changes its characteristics to block out light, has been around for decades. Common examples include glarefighting rearview(后视) car mirrors and windows that change color for energy savings and privacy. But many are expensive, and people are still looking for ecofriendly ways to power the windows. Batteries and plugin outlets aren't apparently "green", and builtin solar panels can cloud or hide parts of the glass.

In experiments, the glass produced up to 130 milliwatts per square meter, enough to power a pacemaker or a smart phone while it's asleep, the team reported online last month in ACS Nano. This output might suit many applications, such as being a power source for home or office electronics, says co­developer and scientist Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Since their first project in 2012, a light­up sidewalk powered by footsteps, he and his colleagues have miniaturized（使小型化） their generators（发电机） to create everything from self­cleaning keyboards to sensors for security systems.

But Wang and his colleagues still have more work to do before this smart glass is ready for commercialization. Now, the glass has no way to store the energy it creates. To solve this problem, Dai says, transparent super capacitors(电容器) could be placed into the glass without decreasing visibility.

For now, the team wants to improve the energy efficiency of their nanogenerators. These tiny power plants can convert about 60% of the mechanical energy that they collect into electricity. "The output power is a constant goal, "Wang says."Free energy surrounds us, and anything can happen if you take control of it."

One day when I was 12, my mother ordered me to walk to the public library and borrow at least one book for tho summer. This was one more weapon for her to 1  my strange problem 2  to read.

In the library, I sat down on the floor and pulled a few books off the shelf 3 . The beagle (比格猎犬) on the book's cover 4 my eye. The first and only animal companion I ever had as a child was a beagle. 5 , one morning, he was gone, given 6 to someone who had this space and money to care for him. I never 7 my beagle.

The beagle on tho cover looked 8 to my dog. My eyes ran across the 9 , " Amor, the Bengle with a Plan." 10 , I I had read the title. Without opening the book, I 11 it from tho library for the summer.

I started to read about Amos very slowly and with 12 . It was about a dog who, like mine, had been 13  from his family and found his way back home. That dog was my dog, and I was the little boy in the book. At the end of the story, my mind continued the final scene of 14  until my own lost dog and I were, in my mind, running together.

My mother's call returned me to the 15 world. I suddenly 16 something I had read a book and loved it. Everyone knew I couldn't read, but I had read it. Books were 17 , and I was going to read them.

I 18  told my mother about my miraculous (奇迹般的) experience that summer, but she saw a slow but remarkable 19  in my classroom performance during the next year. Years later, she was 20 that her son had read thousands of books, was awarded a PhD in literature and authored his own books, articles, poetry and fiction.