Every 30 seconds there is an earthquake. But don't worry because most are so weak that they cannot be felt. Only a few big ones hurt people.

    Many earthquakes happened in China, such as the big one is Sichuan last year. Thousands of people died in it. So it's important to know what to do when one hits. Here are some tips on how to stay safely in an earthquake.

    If you are indoors during an earthquake, hide under a desk. Stay away from windows and anything that could fall on you.

    If you are outdoors, move to a clear place. Try to be away from trees, signs, buildings and streetlights. These could fall on you.

    If you are in a shop and far from the door, don't try to run to outside and rush for exits(出口). Everyone will be doing that and you'll find it hard getting out. Don't get into a lift during an earthquake. Just hide under some strong covers near you.

    When an earthquake has ended, be careful because after-shocks may still happen. These are just as dangerous as the earthquake itself. So stay under the desk until you make sure it's safe to get up.

    If you are at home and you smell gas, open the windows and get out of the building as quickly as you can. A gas line in your house may be broken. This could be very dangerous.

    Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of hearing stimulation. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that a baby notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances(讲话，说话). By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling tones. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is happy or angry, attempting to begin or end new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of clues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

    Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating(夸张) such clues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other researchers have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels(元音) longer, and emphasize certain words.

    More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make those precisely perceptual（知觉的，感性的） recognition that are necessary if they are to acquire listening language.

    Babies obviously obtain pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to boring meaning that it often is for adults.

    When I was in the eighth grade, one caring teacher of mine taught me several useful little techniques. He told me to keep a notebook nearby when I was reading and that I should try to figure out what the main idea of every paragraph was so that I could understand the passages better. It seemed awfully boring at that time, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

    It didn't take long before I started reading a book called How to Read a Book that would completely change how I thought about the written word. Thanks to these techniques, I learned to get the most out of reading. I kept applying them over the years until I finally came up with a lot of little techniques for reading a book.

    I also eventually came to learn that there were a lot of different kinds of reading. For example, when I read a Stephen King novel, the interesting plot made me completely relaxed. Then there's reading to learn new things, which is what I do when I read personal finance books. There's also reading to understand and grow, which is easily the hardest and the most rewarding. The last kind of reading involves taking a piece of literature or a nonfiction book that you might read for simple pleasure and transforming it into something life-changing, or something that causes you to question some of your deeply-held ideas and beliefs.

    How to Read a Book really focuses on the latter two: books that you read to learn about a new topic or to learn a skill, and books that you read to learn about yourself. If you've ever been drawn to read to really improve yourself, this book is well worth the time to read even if it's a bit dry at times. Let's dig in.

    The world is a greener place than it was 20 years ago. A study published in the journal “Nature Sustainability” said that recent satellite data reveals a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India. The study shows that human activity in China and India dominates this greening of the planet, thanks to tree planting and agriculture. The effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.

    “China and India account for one-third of the greening,” said lead author Chi Chen of Boston University. “ That is a surprising finding, considering the vague idea of land degradation (毁坏) in populous countries from overexploitation,” added Chen.

    China alone accounts for 25 percent of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6 percent of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42 percent) and croplands (32 percent), but in India, it is mostly from croplands (82 percent) with minor contribution from forests (4.4 percent).

    China's outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part from its programs to conserve and expand forests with the goal of preventing land degradation, air pollution, and climate change.

    “Once people realize there is a problem, they tend to fix it,” said Rama Nemani, research scientist and co-author of the study. “In the 1970s and 80s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss was not good. In the 1990s, people realized it, and today things have improved. Now we see that humans are contributing.”

    Land area used to grow crops is comparable in China and India—more than 770, 000 square miles—and has not changed much since the early 2000s. Yet these regions have greatly increased both their annual total green leaf area and their food production.

    This was achieved through multiple cropping practices, where a field is replanted to produce another harvest several times a year. Production of grains, vegetables, fruits and more have increased by about 35%～40% since 2000 to feed their large populations.

    Most people know something about the greenhouse effect. Factories send gasses such as carbon dioxide, or CO₂, into the atmosphere, the air around the earth. In the past, this wasn't a problem because trees absorbed the CO₂. But now people in many countries are cutting down billions of trees all around the world. At the same time, factories are sending more CO₂ into the atmosphere. It's difficult to believe, but factories put billions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. One ton is over 2000 pounds, so it is a lot of pollution. There is too much CO₂ and there aren't enough trees, so the world is getting warmer. In other words, we have a greenhouse effect. This is terrible for the environment.

    What can we do about this? Firsts we can stop using so much coal and oil. We can learn to use different kinds of energy: the sun, wind, steam from volcanoes, and heat from inside the earth. Second, instead of cutting down trees, we should plant more trees. One tree can absorb ten pounds of carbon dioxide every year.

    The trees are good for the earth's atmosphere and for Guatemala (拉丁美洲国家危地马拉).In small towns and villages in Guatemala, most women are poor and have hard lives. Trees help them in three ways. First, the Connecticut factories pay them to plant the trees. Their pay is com, not money. The com is good for their children. Second, these women know a lot about their environment. They know where to plant when to plant, and what kinds of trees to plant. For example, they plant many fruit trees. The fruit gives them vitamins for their families^' diets. Other trees are good for firewood. In a few years, the women won't spend so much time looking for firewood. Third, all these trees are good for the soil. Now rain can't wash the soil down from the mountains so easily.

    This plan isn't enough to stop the greenhouse effect. However, it's a start. The woman of Guatemala are helping themselves and helping their environment.

On a hot afternoon Rhiannon was driving her old van down the highway. As she 1 her window to let in some fresh air, her car registration paper blew off the sun visor (防晒板) and onto the floor inside. When leaning down to 2 it, she accidentally drifted into oncoming traffic, in panic, she over-corrected and pulled the 3 sharply in the other direction. 4 , the van rolled over three times, and Rhiannon was thrown onto the road, lying in the middle of the road and bleeding, nearly 5 .

A medical student witnessed the accident and came to her 6 . He covered Rhiannon with his coat and gave her emergency first aid, including 7 the wound on her left arm before the ambulance arrived.

8 , Rhiannon was rushed to a hospital where an emergency room doctor spent hours 9 all the pieces of windshield (挡风玻璃) from her arm, and gave her three dozen stitches (缝针).

Luckily, Rhiannon was saved. Not for the bandage, she would not have 10 long enough for the emergency personnel to arrive. Though Rhiannon didn't know him, she was grateful to the medical student who saved her life. So she 11 the words online, "It's a pity that I don't know your name. If you happen to see or hear this story and recognize yourself, thank you for your kind 12 ."

Rhiannon also had a message for the other 13 heroes, "Please consider this a pay-it-forward letter of 14 —a letter from the 15 you helped who, for whatever reason, couldn't thank you themselves."