When a leafy plant is under attack ，it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin,reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm.What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds,VOCs for short.

Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked .It's a plant's way of crying out.But is anyone listening?Apparently.Because we can watch the neighbours react.

    Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away.But others do double duty .They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

    In study after study,it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors .The damage is usually more serious on the first plant,but the neighbors ,relatively speaking ,stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to “overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn't a true, intentional back and forth.

    Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate(亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.

    “Our aim is to take our art to the world and make people understand what it is to move,” said David Belle, the founder of parkour ( also called free running－a kind of extreme sport).

    Do you love running? It is a good exercise, yet many people find it boring. But what if making your morning jog a creative one? Like jumping from walls and over gaps, and ground rolls? Just like the James Bond in the movie Casino Royale? Bond jumps down from a roof to a windowsill and then runs several blocks over obstacles on the way. It is just because of Bond's wonderful performances that the sport has become popular worldwide.

    Yes, that's parkour, an extreme street sport aimed at moving from one point to another as quickly as possible, getting over all the obstacles in the path using only the abilities of the human body. Parkour is considered an extreme sport. As its participants dash around a city, they may jump over fences, run up walls and even move from rooftop to rooftop.

    Parkour can be just as exciting and charming as it sounds, but its participants see parkour much more than that.Overcoming all the obstacles on the course and in life is part of the philosophy(理念) behind parkour. This is the same as life. You must determine your destination, go straight, jump over all the barriers as if in parkour and never fall back from them in your life, to reach the destination successfully. A parkour lover said, “I love parkour because its philosophy has become my life, my way to do everything.”

    Another philosophy we've learnt from parkour is freedom. It can be done by anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. It is a kind of expression of trust in yourself that you earn energy and confidence.

The World's Coolest Places

    There's nothing wrong with a relaxing week at the beach. But travel can also be an education, a step toward empathy(共鸣) and international understanding, so for those longing to escape the crowds this summer, encounter new worlds and return with a tale, here're a few little-known travel destinations I recommend.

    I arrived at my mother's home for our Monday family dinner. The smells of food flew over from the kitchen. Mother was pulling out quilt (被子) after quilt from the boxes, proudly showing me their beauties. She was preparing for a quilt show at the Elmhurst Church. When we began to fold and put them back into the boxes, I noticed something at the bottom of one box. I pulled it out. “What is this?” I asked.

    “Oh?” Mom said, “That's Mama's quilt.”

    I spread the quilt. It looked as if a group of school children had pieced it together; irregular designs, childish pictures, a crooked line on the right.

    “Grandmother made this?” I said, surprised. My grandmother was a master at making quilts. This certainly didn't look like any of the quilts she had made.

    “Yes, right before she died. I brought it home with me last year and made some changes, she said. “I'm still working on it. See, this is what I've done so far.”

    I looked at it more closely. She had made straight a crooked line. At the center of the quilt, she had stitched (缝) a piece of cloth with these words: “My mother made many quilts. She didn't get all lines straight. But I think this is beautiful. I want to see it finished. Her last quilt.”

    “Oh, this is so nice, Mom,” I said. It occurred to me that by completing my grandmother's quilt, my mother was honoring her own mother. I realized, too, that I held in my hands a family treasure. It started with the loving hands of one woman, and continued with the loving hands of another.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    George Bernard Shaw，the greatest and funniest British dramatist(剧作家)of the first half of the 20th century，was born in Dublin，Ireland，on July 26,1856.His early life was not happy. His father was a selfish man who drank too much and could not support his family properly. His mother was a disappointed，unhappy woman who found more pleasure in studying music than in her children. Bernard and his two sisters received little love and attention from their mother while they were young. At the age of ten Shaw entered school. At first he was the best student，but soon he was at or near the bottom of his class.

    Although he did not like school，Bernard was a good，bright，curious student. His lifelong interest in everything from music and art to machines and medicine began from school life. The interests of this tireless schoolboy were literature and music. He often entertained(使快乐)his classmates with stories he read.

    Early at the age of fifteen，he went to work in an office. He did well as an office clerk，but after five years he decided that he wanted to be a writer. He left Ireland and went to London，where he began to write seriously. Seventy-four years later the great dramatist died.

    "Dad," I say one day, "Let's take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    As a manager from IBM, my father's job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I had fun under the Eiffel Tower. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me travelling without a purpose, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down (安定下来), but now I want him to explore the world.

    He agrees and we meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

    "What is our first stop?" asks my father.

    "What time is it?"

    "Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he looks up at sculptures of the four Presidents in granite(花岗岩), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

    "Amazing," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor(雕塑家) Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculptures.

    We look up and I ask myself, "Can I devote my life to anything?"

    No directions, no purpose. I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad?" I ask.

    "Only once," he says. "I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave."

    The last sentence—it's probably the same thing I will say about my father. And what I want my child to say about me.

    In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world. I can keep traveling. I realize— and maybe a fixed job won't be as boring as I think.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father. "The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says. "We have got to take another trip like that sometime." I tell him I've decided to settle down and find a fixed job, and I'm wearing a watch.