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1. Give youself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you'll have no trouble answering these questions. Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child's day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的) to new stimulation(刺激)，new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits. The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead . They were almost knee - deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they'd felt cold water at first. Another block to awareness is the obsession (痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing. The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. l encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what's around them. I asked them what they'd seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations. Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights , sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.
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2. There's a new frontier in 3D printing that's beginning to come into focus: food. Recent development has made possible machines that print, cook, and serve foods on a mass scale. And the industry isn't stopping there. Food production With a 3D printer, a cook can print complicated chocolate sculptures and beautiful pieces for decoration on a wedding cake. Not everybody can do that - it takes years of experience, but a printer makes it easy. A restaurant in Spain uses a Foodini to "re-create forms and pieces" of food that are "exactly the same," freeing cooks to complete other tasks. In another restaurant, all of the dishes and desserts it serves are 3D-printed, rather than farm to table. Sustainability (可持续性) The global population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and some analysts estimate that food production will need to be raised by 50 percent to maintain current levels. Sustainability is becoming a necessity. 3D food printing could probably contribute to the solution. Some experts believe printers could use hydrocolloids (水解胶体) from plentiful rеnеwаblеѕ lіkе аlgае (藻类) аnd grаѕѕ tо rерlасе thе fаmіlіаr іngrеdіеntѕ(烹饪原料). 3D printing can reduce fuel use and emissions. Grocery stores of the future might stock "food" that lasts years on end, freeing up shelf space and reducing transportation and storage requirements. Nutrition Future 3D food printers could make processed food healthier. Hod Lipson, a professor at Columbia University, said, "Food printing could allow consumers to print food with customized nutritional content, like vitamins. So instead of eating a piece of yesterday's bread from the supermarket, you'd eat something baked just for you on demand. " Challenges Despite recent advancements in 3D food printing, the industry has many challenges to overcome. Currently, most ingredients must be changed to a paste (糊状物) before a printer can use them, and the printing process is quite time-consuming, because ingredients interact with each other in very complex ways . On top of that，most of the 3D food printers now are restricted to dry ingredients, because meat and milk products may easily go bad. Some experts are skeptical about 3D food printers, believing they are better suited for fast food restaurants than homes and high-end restaurants.
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3. When I was 17, I read a magazine article about a museum called the McNay, once the home of a watercolorist named Marian McNay. She had requested the community to turn it into a museum upon her death. On a sunny Saturday, Sally and I drove over to the museum. She asked, " Do you have the address?" "No, but I'll recognize it, there was a picture in the magazine." "Oh, stop. There it is!" The museum was free. We entered, excited. A group of people sitting in the hall stopped talking and stared at us. "May I help you?" a man asked. "No," I said. " We're fine. " Tour guides got on my nerves. What if they talked a long time about a painting you weren't that interested in? Sally had gone upstairs. The people in the hall seemed very nosy (爱窥探的), keeping their eyes on me with curiosity. What was their problem? I saw some nice sculptures in one room. Suddenly I sensed a man standing behind me. " Where do you think you are?" he asked. I turned sharply. "The McNay Art Museum!" He smiled, shaking his head. "Sorry, the McNay is on New Braunfels Street." "What's this place?" I asked, still confused. "Well, it's our home." My heart jolted(震颤). I raced to the staircase and called out, "Sally! Come down immediately!" "There's some really good stuff (艺术作品) up there." She stepped down, looking confused. I pushed her toward the front door, waving at the family, saying, "Sorry, please forgive us, you have a really nice place." Outside, when I told Sally what happened, she covered her mouth, laughing. She couldn't believe how long they let us look around without saying anything. The real McNay was splendid, but we felt nervous the whole time we were there. Van Cogh, Picasso. This time, we stayed together, in case anything else unusual happened. Thirty years later, a woman approached me in a public place. "Excuse me, did you ever enter a residence, long ago, thinking it was the McNay Museum?" "Yes. But how do you know? We never told anyone. " That was my home. I was a teenager siting in the hall. Before you came over, I never realized what a beautiful place I lived in. I never felt lucky before. You thought it was a museum. My felings about my home changed after that. I've always wanted to thank you."
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4. Fire Prevention Information The University of Adelaide employs a full-time staff of fire prevention professionals. They inspeet all campus buildings and test and maintain all sprinkler (喷水灭火装置) systems, fire alarms, and fire extinguishers (灭火器). They also provide educational programs on fire safety in the residence halls. Whenever you move to a new area, you should locate the fire alarm pull stations and the two exits nearest your room. Fire Alarms The floors of all campus buildings are equipped with manual (手动的) fire alarm systems which include fire alarm pull stations and pipes. Most are also equipped with automatic fire alarm systems consisting of heat detectors, smoke detectors and sprinklers. For your safety，never tamper with (胡乱摆弄) these systems. False fire alarms are illegal and may lead to imprisonment. Fire Drills A fire drill will be conducted in your residence hall every semester. During a fire drill, please do the following: Take your room key and ID, close and lock the door to your room. Exit immediately from the nearest emergency exit; do not use a lift. Meet outside of your residence hall and wait for further instructions. Fire Extinguishers Fire extinguishers are located on each floor and in each apartment. Use a fire extinguisher only if you have been trained to do so. Irresponsible use of a fire extinguisher can create a dangerous situation for other residents and could result in damage to personal property. Misuse of a fire extinguisher will result in fines. Smoke Detectors A smoke detector is on the ceiling in your room. Some buildings also have heat detectors on the ceilings. Do the following to ensure the safe operation of your smoke detector: If your smoke detetor is working properly, the red light should be on. If the red light is not blinking (闪动)，contact residence hall staf inmediately. Do not cover or block your smoke detector in any way. If a smoke detector sets off an alarm and there is no fire or smoke, inform your hall staff.
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5. No one is borm a winner. People make themselves into winners by their own _ . I learned this lesson from a(n) _ many years ago. I took the head _ job at a school in Baxley , Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program. It was a tradition for the school's old team to play against the _ team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn't even practice to _ the game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my disappointment we were defeated. I couldn't _ I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to _ that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were _ me. I had to change my _ about their ability and potential. I started doing anything I could to help them build a little _. Most important, I began to treat them like _. That summer, when the other teams enjoyed their _ , we met every day and _ passing and kicking the football. Six months after suffering our _ on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continued to _. Finally, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a _ for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn't what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me one of the greatest _ of my life! From the experience I learned a lot about how the attitude of the leader can _ the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and _ them. I helped them to see themselves _, and they built themselves into winners. Winners are made, not born.
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6. Would you BET on the future of this man? He is 53 years old. Most of his adult life has been a losing struggle against debt and misfortune. A war injury has made his left hand stop functioning,and he has often been in prison. Driven by heaven-knows-what motives, he determines to write a book. The book turns out to be one that has appealed to the world for more than 350 years. That former prisoner was Cervantes, and the book was Don Quixote (《堂吉诃德》). And the story poses an interesting question: why do some people discover new vitality and creativity to the end of their days , while others go to seed long before? We've all known people who run out of steam before they reach life's halfway mark, l'm not talking about those who fail to get to the top. We can't all get there, l'm talking about people who have stopped learning on growing because they have adopted the fixed attitudes and opinions that all too often come with passing years. Most of us, in fact, progressively narrow the variety of our lives. We succeed in our field of specialization and then become trapped in it. Nothing surprises us. We lose our sense of wonder. But, if we are willing to learn, the opportunities are everywhere. The things we learn in maturity seldom involve information and skills. We learn to bear with the things we cant change. We learn to avoid self-pity. We learn that however much we try to please, some people are never going to love us—an idea that troubles at first but is eventually relaxing. With high motivation and enthusiasm, we can keep on learning. Then we will know how important it is to have meaning in our life. However, we can achieve meaning only if we have made a commitment to something larger than our own little egos (自我), whether to loved ones, to fellow humans, to work, or to some moral concept. Many of us equate (视……等同于) "commitment" with such "caring" occupations as teaching and nursing. But doing any ordinary job as well as one can is in itself an admirable commitment. People who work toward such excellence—whether they are driving a truck, or running a store—make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They've learned life's most valuable lesson.
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7. How does an ecosystem (生态系统) work? What makes the populations of different species the way they are? Why are there so many flies and so few wolves? To find an answer, scientists have built mathematical models of food webs, noting who eats whom and how mucheach one eats. With such models, scientists have found out some key principles operating in food webs. Most food webs, for instance, consist of many weak links rather than a few strong ones. When a predator ( 掠食动物 ) alway seats huge numbers of a single prey ( 猎物 ), the two species are strongly linked; when a predator lives on various species , they are weakly linked. Food webs may be dominated by many weak links because that arrangement is more stable over the long term. If a predator can eat several species, it can survive the extinction ( 灭绝 ) of one of them. And if a predator can move on to another species that is easier to find when a prey species becomes rare, the switch allows the original prey to recover, The weak links may thus keep species from driving one another to extinction. Mathematical models have also revealed that food webs may be unstable, where small changes of top predators can lead to big effects throughout entire ecosystems. In the 1960s，scientists proposed that predators at the top of a food web had a surprising amount of control over the size of populations of other species- including species they did notdirectly attack. And unplanned human activities have proved the idea of top-down control by top predators to be true. In the ocean, we fished for top predators such as cod on an industrial scale, while on land，wekilled off large predators such as wolves. These actions have greatly affected the ecological balance. Scientists have built an early-warning system based on mathematical models. Ideally, the system would tell us when to adapt human activities that are pushing an ecosystem toward a breakdown or would even allow us to pull an ecosystem back from the borderline. Prevention is key, scientists say, because once ecosystems pass their tipping point(临界点), it is remarrkably difficult for them to return.
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8. I must have always known reading was very important because the first memories I have as a child deal with books. There was not one night that I don't remember mom reading me a storybook by my bedside. I was extremely inspired by the elegant way the words sounded. I always wanted to know what my mom was reading. Hearing mom say , "I can't believe what's printed in the newspaper this morning," made me want to grab it out of her hands and read it myself. I wanted to be like my mom and know all of the things she knew. So I carried around a book, and each night, just to be like her, I would pretend to be reading. This is how everyone learned to read. We would start off with sentences , then paragraphs, and then stories. It seemed an unending journey, but even as a six-year-old girl I realized that knowing how to read could open many doors. When mom said, "The C-A-N-D-Y is hidden on the top shelf," I knew where the candy was. My progress in reading raised my curiosity, and I wanted to know everything. I often found myself telling my mom to drive more slowly, so that I could read all of the road signs we passed. Most of my reading through primary, middle and high school was factual reading. I read for knowledge, and to make A's on my tests. Occasionally, I would read a novel that was assigned, but I didn't enjoy this type of reading. I liked facts, things that are concrete. I thought anything abstract left too much room for argument. Yet, now that I'm growing and the world I once knew as being so simple is becoming more complex, I find myself needing a way to escape. By opening a novel, I can leave behind my burdens and enter into a wonderful and mysterious world where I am now a new character. In these worlds I can become anyone. I don't have to write down what happened or what technique the author was using when he or she wrote this. I just read to relax. We're taught to read because it's necessary for much of human understanding. Reading is a vital part of my life. Reading satisfies my desire to keep learning. And I've found that the possibilities that lie with in books are limitless.
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9. History Fait Competition Understanding history is vital to understanding ourselves as a people and as a nation. History is much more than the study of dusty old objects and events long past. It is an essential part of who we are today and who we will become. Thornton Middle School History Fail Competition makes understanding history exciting, engaging, and fun! This Year's Theme All participants must address how communication or transportation technology has promoted the quality of life for Americans throughout history. To many people, technology means computers, hand-held devices, or vehicles that travel to distant planets. However, technology is also the application of scientific knowledge to solve a problem, touching lives in countless ways. Individuals or groups may enter one of the following categories: Performance Documentary（记实作品） Essay Writing Category Requirements Performance: A dramatic presentation of the topic no more than 10 minutes long. If special clothes are used, they should truly represent a given period. Documentary: A visual presentation ( such as a video, slide show, or computer project ) no more than 10 minutes long. A desktop computer, screen, projector, and loudspeakers will be available. Students must provide their presentations on CDs before Friday, March 23. Essay Writing: An academic paper of 2,000 to 2,500 words. No illustrations（图解）are allowed. Please do not include covers. A list of references must be included. Important Dates January 5 submit a topic proposal to your history teacher. The teacher may require a second proposal if the first is off-topic or unclear. February 5 Submit a first draft of your essay, performance script（剧本）, or documentary highlights. February 19 A committee of teachers will evaluate materials and give opinions. Students then have an opportunity to improve their products. March 9 Submit a final draft of your essay. March 15 Performance and documentary committee preview March 24 Thornton Middle School History Fait Competition7:00 A.M. - 9:00 A.M. Participants signing in at the gym 10:00.A.M. - 6:00 P.M. Competition adn judge's review 7:00 P.M. Awards ceremony and picnic
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10. I was ready to pay for my bananas at the grocery one night, when fear seized me. My wallet was gone. I could only have left it on the G9 bus,which was now speeding in the dark to some _ station. The _ moment was quickly followed by mental math. How much time and money would it cost to replace the _ of that little wallet? The credit cards, the driver's license, the cash, all lost to the bus. Two hours later, back at my house, I heard a knock on the door. My husband _ it while I was on the phone in the dining room. "Does jennifer live here?" I heard a lady say. In my husband's hand was my wallet, with not a penny _ . She left before I could _ make it to the door to offer my thanks. After sharing the story online, I heard from someone, who _ the lady as Erin Smith. Without _ , I called to thank her. She said she _ my wallet on a bus seat. She _ that going to a stranger's house was a _ move, but she decided to take the chance. "If I were in that _ , I would want someone to try to find me", she said. This one stranger responded beautifully to my small _, but she actually wasn't the only one. Right after Erin _ my wallet on the bus, she posted a picture of my driver's license to an online forum（论坛）, trying to see _ anyone knew me. No sooner did she leave my doorstep than I had emails from two women whose kids go to my son's nursery and who recognized my face. I've never _ words with those moms beyond small talk, but they wanted to help. I read that people are more divided than ever, but that's not how the people I _ tend to act. _, I feel blessed someone had wanted to help a stranger. Erin had gone _ what almost anyone would have done, finding my house on a bitterly cold night, and for that I was extremely _.
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