Top Piano Players in the World
Martha Argerich
Martha Argerich could be considered the next Beethoven, as she is one of the most outstanding pianists ever to play. Argerich preferred being on stage with others instead of performing solo; therefore, she has been performing in a concerto format since the 1980s. Argerich was not one for the spotlight, as she often avoided public appearances such as interviews; however, her great talent was all the publicity she needed, standing out during concertos and sonatas.
Leif Ove Andsnes
Known for his appealing performances of Edvard Grieg's works, Andsnes has won praise for his performances at some of the world's most famous concert halls. Andsnes has certainly made his mark in Norway, as he is the founding director of Norway's Rosendal Chamber Music Festival. Because of his unique voice and interesting approach, he was praised by The New York Times as a "pianist of authoritative elegance, power, and insight."
Alfred Brendel
Known for his beautiful interpretations of Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert and Mozart, Alfred Brendel was considered one of the greats. He played in various concertos throughout his career and became known for his interpretive coldness in recreating these works. Brendel was considered one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, as he made his mark in the classical music industry. Brendel was self-taught and learned his love of piano at an early age.
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein was certainly one of the greats. His career began in the early 20th century when he began to come into contact with some of the world's most important composers, such as Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, and Jacques Thibaud. He made various trips worldwide and visited nearly every continent, where crowds met him with great praise and encouragement.
It was October 2005, and the catastrophic earthquake killing some 79,000 people in Pakistan had reduced the valley to mud and ruins.
Yasmeen Lari, a 65-year-old architect, was there to help lead the reconstruction of settlements, but she had never done disaster work before. Lari was known for designing smooth towers of glass and concrete. But here, she'd be drawing plans for earthquake-resistant homes using stone and timber debris(木材碎片). With each passing day, she felt deeply right to do disaster-relief work. So she made it her new mission, spending the next four months working with volunteer architects and engineers from Pakistan and abroad.
Inspired by local buildings made with sustainable materials such as timber debris, bamboo and mud, Lari's shelters can better withstand disasters. Lari says this local, cost-effective and zero-carbon approach is creating an ecosystem. Anyone can learn by watching DIY videos on Lari's Zero Carbon Channel on YouTube.
The design won a UN World Habitat Prize in 2018."We need to believe in people's capacity to bring about change. I treat displaced people as partners, not victims. They know what to do," says Lari.
Over the decades, Yasmeen Lari has won many awards as architect and environmentalist. While it may seem like an unlikely path for a girl who was born into a well-to-do family in1941, she had an unconventional upbringing. At home, her father would talk about the desperate need for housing. Listening to her father talk about the housing crisis and need for architects made an impression on Lari. On a family visit to London when she was 15, she applied to architecture school at Oxford Brookes University. She laughs as she recalls her bravery.
At age 83, Yasmeen Lari is still full of ideas about zero-carbon designs, skills building and self-sustaining villages. "Architects can no longer work for just the one percent," she says. "That doesn't allow them to serve humanity as much as they could."
A new study involving nearly 50,000 people from four continents offers new insights into identifying the quantity of daily walking steps that will best improve adults' health and longevity(长寿), and whether the ideal number of steps differs across people of different ages. The study represents an effort to develop an evidence-based public health message about the benefits of physical activity. The often-repeated 10,000-step-a-day saying grew out of a decades-old marketing activity for a Japanese pedometer(计步器), with no science to back it up.
Led by physical activity professor Amanda Paluch, an international group of scientists conducted an experiment among adults aged 18 and older. They grouped the nearly 50,000 participants into four comparative groups according to average steps per day. The lowest step group averaged 3,500 steps; the second, 5,800; the third, 7,800; and the fourth, 10,900 steps per day. Among the three higher active groups, there was a 40—53% lower risk of death, compared to the lowest step group.
More specifically, for adults 60 and older, the risk of early death leveled off at about 6,000—8,000 steps per day, meaning that more steps than that provided no additional benefit for longevity, while for adults younger than 60, about 8, 000—10,000 steps per day.
"So, what we saw was this continuing reduction in risk as the number of steps increases, until it levels off. Interestingly, the study found no definitive association with walking speed." Paluch says.
The new study supports and expands findings from another study led by Paluch before, which found that walking at least 7,000 steps a day reduced middle-aged people's risk of early death. "There's a lot of evidence suggesting that moving even a little more is beneficial, particularly for those who are doing very little activity." Paluch says. "More steps per day are better for your health."
Next time you consider striking up a conversation with a stranger in line at the grocery store or while waiting at the laundry, keep in mind that it might be beneficial for your well-being. A recent study by a group of researchers found that there is a link between happiness and a term that the researchers coined called "relational diversity."
Using public data from sources like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the World Health Organization, the researchers analyzed data sets and survey responses from people who had shared their daily habits, schedules and interactions. They noticed a clear relationship between relational diversity and overall levels of satisfaction.
Hanne Collins, a Harvard Business School doctoral student who co-authored the study, says that relational diversity is composed of two elements: richness and evenness. Richness measures relationship categories, or how many kinds of people you interact with in a day. That could be your romantic partner, a family member, a neighbor or a stranger. "The more relationship categories they talk to in a day and the more even their conversations are across those categories, the happier they are. And we find this in a large sample across many countries," Collins said. Evenness relates to the distribution of conversations among those different relationship categories. Some people may find themselves interacting with colleagues at work more than, say, their family members. "If you have a few conversations with colleagues, a few with friends, a few with a romantic partner or a couple of chats with strangers, that's going to be more even across these categories," Collins explained.
Ultimately, Collins says, the study gives insight to the idea that humans are social creatures at heart. Having a support system is important, but it goes beyond your inner circle. "It's about this mix. It's about connecting with people who are close to you, who are maybe less close to you, who connect you with other people, who provide different kinds of support, "she said. "Essentially, the idea is that the more diverse your social connections, the happier you are and the higher your well-being."
Secret codes (密码) keep messages private. Banks, companies, and government agencies use secret codes in doing business, especially when information is sent by computer.
People have used secret codes for thousands of years. Code breaking never lags (落后) far behind code making. The science of creating and reading coded messages is called cryptography.
There are three main types of cryptography. For example, the first letters of "My elephant eats too many eels" spell out the hidden message "Meet me."
You might represent each letter with a number, for example. Let's number the letters of the alphabet, in order, from 1 to 26. If we substitute a number for each letter, the message "Meet me" would read "13 5 5 20 13 5."
A code uses symbols to replace words, phrases, or sentences. To read the message of a real code, you must have a code book. For example, "bridge" might stand for "meet" and "out" might stand for "me." The message "Bridge out" would actually mean "Meet me." However, it is also hard to keep a code book secret for long. So codes must be changed frequently.
A. It is very hard to break a code without the code book.
B. In any language, some letters are used more than others.
C Only people who know the keyword can read the message.
D. As long as there have been codes, people have tried to break them.
E. You can hide a message by having the first letters of each word spell it out.
F. With a code book, you might write down words that would stand for other words.
G. Another way to hide a message is to use symbols to stand for specific letters of the alphabet.
第三部分，语言运用，
A winter morning I went to a local drive-in restaurant to pick up breakfast for my son.
As I 1 the drive-in restaurant I saw an old ragged man 2 on the sidewalk quietly, with no shoes, no socks, just 3 feet. A woman was offering him some 4 . After receiving my son's food I 5 around to the parking lot close to where the man was. A couple weeks ago, I had 6 a bag for a homeless man I had seen down by the beach, but I had not seen him again, so I didn't 7 the bag. It had a blanket, clean shirts and socks, some snacks and baby wipes. I knew the bag I packed was 8 for this old man.
I got out of my car and 9 him the bag. He was nearly in 10 and thanked me so much. He was so moved and happy. The woman who offered him food thanked me and asked my name. I 11 myself as Leann, which happened to be the name of her daughter who is now in heaven, and she asked to give me a big 12 . She told me I was an angel and James, the homeless fellow 13 .
I am not an angel, just a person who has been through something 14 before and know what it was like. It's always good to show 15 and offer help to others.
People around the globe have been mourning the death of Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, lifelong research in hybrid rice helps feed more people around the world.
Born in Beijing in 1930, Yuan devoted his entire life the study of hybrid rice. With his tireless efforts, he finally (overcome) numerous difficulties and cultivated the world's first hybrid rice strain in 1973, which was planted first in Hunan province in the following year. It was the first time that a hybrid rice (use) for farming.
Having spent over five decades in hybrid rice research, Yuan has helped China work a great wonder— (feed) nearly one-fifth of the world's population with (little) than 9 percent of the world's total land. Moreover, Yuan's team has also offered training (course) in dozens of countries to help them address the problem of food (short). However, impressed the world most was that despite such great contributions he made, he still considered himself farmer and cared little about money or fame. Yuan is surely a great figure to be remembered.
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。
Announcement for Medical Emergency Drill
……
The Student Union
My mother believed in using things up. Last year, our cornfield had a bad harvest because birds feasted on the crops. It was probably then that Mom's frugality(节俭) became even more extraordinary. She began keeping everything that seemed useless in the attic(阁楼)—worn-out clothes, old sheets, broken umbrellas, and some other old items. Mom's favorite saying was "waste not, want not". My brother Josh and I weren't sure what that meant until the "Affair of the Scarecrow(稻草人)", which, as it later became known, left a lasting impression on us.
The story began with a pretty hat that Mom received as a gift to protect her from the sun. However, Josh and I could see that Mom's frugal nature and fashion sense were in battle. Mom really didn't want to get rid of the hat—it was new and had a lot of use left in it—but neither could she stand wearing it. She tried to take off the fancy decorations, but they were stuck on tight. She'd have to find some other solution.
Josh and I watched as Mom headed upstairs to the attic with the hat. "Waste not, want not," she called back down. We heard boxes being moved around. Moments later, Mom leaned out, holding a flour bag full of straw, and with a mysterious smile, she placed the hat on it.
"What is that for?" I asked, confused. "A scarecrow!" Mom exclaimed. "But not a good one yet. It needs a strong body to stand firm in the field," she said with a frown. "And it doesn't look scary enough," Josh remarked. I had to admit that Josh, though younger than I was, could sometimes be more imaginative. Josh and I turned to each other, searching for a good idea. Soon enough, Josh's eyes lit up with inspiration.
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。
Paragraph 1:
"Come with me!" Josh called out
Paragraph 2:
In the days that followed, the scarecrow stood tall.
