Do you know there are apps that make it easy to help others, our planet, and ourselves, so we lead more giving and meaningful lives? Check out four of the best ones and spring into action!
Be My Eyes
This app connects visually impaired people in need of some help with sighted people with a few minutes of spare time to offer through video calls. The help needed may be something like finding a missing object in the home. This app is available in over 150 countries and in more than 150 languages. Volunteers register and de tail which languages they speak. When someone needs help, a message reminder appears on their device.
Zooniverse
Want to help with cutting edge global research? Zooniverse is an app with millions of registered volunteers that lets you become a citizen researcher! Help professional scientific researchers through your mobile device or the companion website. Global volunteers taking part in this exciting crowd sourcing project typically don't have a scientific background but their contribution is highly valued.
My Selfless Act
This is a social networking site and app promoting the idea of giving back to the community through volunteering. It offers information on local volunteering opportunities globally and encourages the sharing of ideas and activities.
Aloe Bud
Created by someone who struggles with his mental illness, routine and remembering daily self-care, Aloe Bud is a welcoming and simple "self-care pocket companion" app. It gently reminds users about self-care activities in physical, mental and emotional needs. These reminders relate to anything from drinking enough water to taking screen breaks to maintaining connections.
I've long believed that positive living isn't about being optimistic every minute of every day. That kind of permanently happy state can't be the goal, because it's impossible to achieve.
It turns out that psychological research finds true happiness comes from authentic positivity, and authentic positivity comes from emotional flexibility.
Being flexible emotionally means being open to the full range of emotional experiences, including the challenging ones like anger, disappointment and sadness. Emotional flexibility means being able to shift behaviors and mindsets to meet different situation al needs, and adapting when circumstances change.
However, emotionally flexible people are not chameleons（变色龙）whose outlook changes based on which way the wind is blowing. Instead, emotional flexibility is a skill that helps people judge the complexities of daily life, and stick to their deeply held values.
I've learned a new word that I'd like to share with you: eudaimonia（幸福感）. Eudaimonia is the opposite of hedonism（享乐主义）, the idea that happiness comes from the constant pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Eudaimonia, by contrast, encourages us to pursue meaning and authenticity, growth and honest joy. Both are philosophical approaches to happiness, and recent psychological thought is leaning toward eudaimonia as a more sustainable, satisfying model.
Eudaimonia was first mentioned by Aristotle, who got the term from the Greek word "daimon," which means "true nature." To me, walking a positive path means accepting that we each have positive true nature and permanent goodness. What we learn from the concept of eudaimonia is that we are best equipped to realize this nature when we are emotionally honest and flexible.
Buddy or Friendship Benches（长椅）are needed because playgrounds can be lonely places some times. When a school places the bench, they teach a little lesson to the kids on how it is to be used. Then when a child sits on the bench, it sends out a message to others that basic ally says, "Hey, I'm alone right now and would welcome the company（陪伴）of others." Kids in the playground see this and from their training, they see there is a fellow student in ne ed. They are encouraged to come over and sit on the bench and make a new friend.
Benches like this have been around for a while now in many schools. But in Ireland, they are trying to do something different with the m. This school in Cork in the south of Ireland is the 247th to get benches from a social organization called "Buddy Bench Ireland" that doesn't just provide schools with benches, but also runs special projects with trained child psychiatrists（精神病专家）. They use the bench as an opportunity to start conversations about mental health. They talk about the importance of knowing and understanding your feelings and those of others.
Judith Ashton, a co-founder of Buddy Bench Ireland said, "T he children need to understand what the bench is about, what it represents —friendship, understanding, listening to each other and the most important thing is that it's important to express feelings."
But do children really use the bench? It's a matter of great public concern. Sinead Mcgilloway from Maynooth University carried out a study and said, "We found that 40% of the children told us that they had actually used the benches at the time of the study. And over 90% said that they would talk to a child if that child was sitting on the bench. So, there's nothing to worry about."
Children's mental health and safety at school is increasingly a concern in many countries. I n Ireland, they're hoping these benches will no t only tackle problems like school violence and school bullying（校园暴力和校园欺凌）, but also give students the confidence to open up about t heir feelings.
Animals can adapt quickly to survive unfavorable environmental conditions. Evidence is mounting to show that plants can, too. A paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science details how plants are rapidly adapting to the effects of climate change, and how they are passing down these adaptations to their offspring（后代）.
Plants are facing more environmental stresses than ever. For example, climate change is making winters shorter in many locations, and plants are responding. "Many plants require a minimum period of cold in order to set up their environmental clock to define their flowering time," says Martinelli, a plant geneticist at the University of Florence."As cold seasons shorten, plants have adapted to require shorter periods of cold to delay flowering. These mechanisms allow plants to avoid flowering in periods when they have fewer opportunities to reproduce."
Because plants don't have neural（神经的）networks, their memory is based entirely on cellular（细胞的）, molecular（分子的）, and biochemical networks. These networks make up what the researchers call somatic memory（体细胞记忆）. "It allows plants to recognize the occurrence of a previous environmental condition and to react accordingly," says Martinelli.
These somatic memories can then be passed to the plants' offspring via epigenetics（表现遗传）. "Several examples demonstrate the existence of molecular mechanisms modulating plant memory to environmental stresses and affecting the adaptation of offspring to these stresses," says Martinelli.
Going forward, Martinelli hopes to understand even more about the genes that are being passed down. "We are particularly interested in decoding the epigenetic alphabet without changes in DNA sequence（序列）," he says. "This is especially important when we consider the rapid climate change, we observe today that every living organism, including plants, needs to quickly adapt to survive."
Why are people taking pictures of their faces, their hobbies and their food? Why do we capture every single moment? .
The special thing about photography is that we can capture moments anywhere and anytime. All we need for this is our smartphone—something that rarely leaves our side.
. Every single one of us can get started with this wonderful hobby, no matter if your goal is to sell your photographs or just to keep them for your own viewing pleasure.
Every picture you take is a personal story. There is no painting without context（背景）. However, unlike a painting, you don't need to spend hours of your time on it. .
If you prefer to share your pictures with the world, you can also get immediate feedback（反馈）. . Pictures connect and show the people around us what's going on in our life right now.
The most amazing thing for me is without question the ability to capture every single click of a button. . It's crazy how the emotions of one single picture can throw you back in time. We can connect to our past, no matter where we are and preserve those memories that are most meaningful.
A. Camera phones allow us to upload our pictures in a few seconds.
B. Photography is an amazing tool to appreciate the world around us and to stay in the moment.
C. I can't really give you an answer, because I also like taking photos of everything.
D. Compared to other forms of visual art, you don't need any special talent for it.
E. This enables me to remember every experience as it happens.
F. It is a way to express yourself through different photographs.
G. It is a way to allow each of you to become an artist.
Until a few years ago, I had what most people would call a good life, and there was nothing much wrong in my life. 1 , I was bored.
I wanted more. I wanted to live 2 and loudly and make sharp memories instead of the gray ones of everyday life. But I was 3 . I've never had any 4 in myself. As a child, even buying something in a shop caused me a great deal of 5 , and even though I did get better as I got older, I never 6 that childhood shyness.
And I tried everything, like reading books about confidence. I took tiny steps leading to my goals. But none of them really 7 .
So I 8 that the small steps weren't enough. I signed up for an internship（实习期的工作）teaching English in Vietnam, an 9 huge step, one that terrified me as much as it excited me. And then the day came and I left my home and my loved ones. I was alone in a country where the food and the streets were 10 . I had no idea whether I would be able to 11 everything this very strange environment would 12 at me.
I spent five months in Vietnam, teaching and exploring and laughing. I'd learned to 13 myself, my skills, my abilities and my decisions. I returned home being 14 , even to myself let alone to others. The 15 that had controlled my life and the self-doubt were completely worn off.
That one big chance changed everything for me, and in me.
More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have sounded the alarm on climate change. In a paper （publish）last week in the journal BioScience, they signed a declaration（声明）stating clearly that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency, saying that if no changes （make）, the world will face untold suffering. The evidence that the scientists collected reveals an undeniable truth human activities have been causing global warming from the fast rise of fossil fuel consumption the increase in greenhouse gas emissions（排放）over the past 40 years.
The scientists also gave some instructions to fight against global warming, proposing six actions to prevent （far）disasters: stabilizing population （grow）by investing into family-planning services and girls' education, replacing fossil fuels, cutting the emissions of climate pollutants, eating less meat, restoring and protecting （ecosystem）, and building carbon-free economy.
The scientists say the climate crisis is （close）related to human activities, so they call on people （change）their life styles. But these measures are comparatively abstract. Therefore, it is high time for policymakers to figure out more practical measures that can bring down carbon emissions.
1. 曾为中国人民解放军（Chinese People's Liberation Army）战士，且在战争期间两次被授予"战斗英雄"（Combat Hero）称号；
2. 1955年退役后，到湖北来凤县的贫困山区工作；
3. 淡泊名利，从未提及自己的成就。直到2018年底，他的人生故事经媒体报道后才为人所知；
4. 于2019年获得"感动中国"奖（the"Touching China"award）。
注意：
1. 词数100左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
We met Max at the pickup area of Alaska Airlines. A standard poodle（鬈毛狗）born on Valentine's Day in 2002, he came to us in a small blue box. We had adopted him from a friend, who raised many dogs.
We were a sweet little family—me, my husband, and our children, Sophie and Jake. But for years I'd felt as if we wouldn't really be complete until we had a dog. Also, my husband travelled for some 200 days a year on business, and I knew I'd feel safer with a large animal sleeping by the door.
When we opened the box, we saw him. With his curly black hair and intelligent eyes, Max was beautiful. He was so small that he fit into the palm（手掌）of my hand, his big paws（爪子）lapping over the sides. He was also scared. As I pulled him close, I felt his heart pound and wondered if we'd done the right thing, taking him from his mother. But it was too late. Sophie and Jake were already fighting over who would hold him next.
Over the following months, we spent endless hours watching Max play with his toy or run around the living room. Like most poodles, he was smart. He mastered house-training quickly and never chewed on our furniture or shoes. He considered himself one of us.
Some days after school, I'd find Jake curled up with Max inside his box. When I suggested that my son get out of the dog box, Jake yelled, "Max wants me in here! We're brothers!"
By his first birthday, Max had grown into a 50-pound guard dog. He manned the front door like a soldier, barking fiercely at other dogs walking by. I felt safe with him there, especially when my husband was away. Sometimes, when I was missing my husband a lot, I held Max close.
Many years later, my husband passed away. My kids grew up and went to university. They worked in other cities after graduation.
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:
And then, suddenly, I was alone.
Paragraph 2:
One Day, I found there was something wrong with Max's back legs.
