I received a call today asking if I would be willing to bring food to a family in need. The mother was having a major operation and would be lying down for several weeks. Of course, I responded with an immediate “Yes!”. As I planned the meal in my head, I reflected on how many times over the years I had been asked to prepare food. I have done so countless times with a very open heart.

    But the truly amazing thing is that I have received double over the course of my life. When my mother passed away, our house was filled with fresh dinners for weeks. A woman from the church of our community stopped by each evening with some food. The gift of food was her small way of trying to ease our pain.

    Later in my life, when I was on bed rest during my pregnancy with twins, women of the church again stepped in to help. They arranged babysitting for my two-year-old daughter, and brought lovely dinners to our house. Even when I was put in the hospital, my husband would bring cooked meals to my hospital room. How we relied on these dinners to feed my tired husband and young daughter.

    Food is all about comfort. It feeds our bodies, but it can also feed our souls. When you hear people talking about their favorite holidays, it usually includes their feelings connected with sharing food. I know that I will have many more opportunities in my lifetime to prepare food for others. It is truly a gift I want to prepare and deliver to someone in need.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    Try this: For an entire day, forget about the clock. Eat when you're hungry and sleep when you're tired. What do you think will happen?

    You may be surprised to find that your day is much like most other days. You'll probably get hungry when you normally eat and tired when you normally sleep. Even though you don't know what time it is, your body does.

    These patterns of daily life are called circadian rhythms（生理节奏）, and they are more than just habits. Inside our bodies are several clocklike systems that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle. Throughout the day and night, our inner clocks direct changes in temperature, body chemicals, hunger, sleepiness and more.

    Everyone's rhythms are different, which is why you might like to stay up late while your sister always wants to go to bed early. But on the whole, everyone is programmed to fell tired at night and energetic during the day.

    Learning about our body clocks may help scientists understand why problems arise when we act out of step with our circadian rhythms. For example, traveling across time zones can make people wake up in the middle of the night. Regularly staying up late can make kids do worse in tests.

    "There is a growing sense that when we eat and when we sleep are important parts of how healthy we are," says Steven Shea, director of the Sleep Disorders Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

    One way to learn about how our body clocks tick is to mess them up and see what happens. That's what neurologist（神经病学家）Frank Scheer and his workmates did in a recent study.

    Staying up night after night, their studies suggest, could make kids extra hungry and more likely to gain weight. And regularly sleeping too little, Scheer says, may be one cause of the recent increase in childhood obesity.

Zero Waste Awards

    Who should enter?

    Entries(参赛作品) are welcomed from anyone who processes waste. While we expect

    most entries to come from the UK, we welcome international entries, too. Entrants have been split into the following groups: private sector, public sector, community sector and partnerships.

    What are the categories?

    There're five categories which are based on the Waste Hierarchy(层级). We appreciate that companies will have different strengths within those categories as they work towards Zero Waste. The broad categories are: waste prevention, re-use, recycle/recover, energy recovery, general.

    How do I enter?

    Submitting an entry is really easy! Just follow these few simple steps:

    1) Carefully read through the category information;

    ). Write your entry--it should be a maximum of 1,500 words and a word document;

    3) Arrange your supporting material into a single document--maximum six pages long;

    4) Complete the simple online entry form.

    Important dates

    While entries are welcomed all year round, these are key dates—this is to give the judges plenty of time to read through all the entries! These are listed in entry deadlines column below. Don't worry if you have just missed one of the entry deadlines, your submission will be automatically entered into the next session.

    You can submit a maximum of two entries per year—six months apart.

    Awards

    We understand that working towards Zero Waste is an ongoing journey and as such the

    Zero Waste Awards scheme offers organizations a structure to celebrate their progress along the way. The four awards are: Gold (76-100), Silver (51-75), Bronze (26-50), Highly Commended(0-25).

C

   The English are often described as unfriendly people who don't talk to strangers (陌生人). But not London taxi drivers. I once asked one cabby to describe his life to me and he didn't stop talking until I arrived home half an hour later. He told me many interesting stories and this is one of them.”Some strange things happen late at night. The other day I was taking a woman home from a party. She had her little dog with her. When we got to her house, she found that she'd lost her key. So, I waited in the cab with her dog while she climbed in through the window.”

    “I waited and waited. After hour of ringing the bell I decided to find out what was going on. I tied the dog to a tree and started to climb in through the window: The next thing I knew was that the police came. They thought I was to rob the house! Luckily, the woman came downstairs. She'd gone to sleep and forgotten about me and the dog. I was in such a hurry to get away that I forgot to ask her for the fare.”

    Explorers had been landing in America for some time before English settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But it was in that spot on the James River that English colonization(殖民化) began, and with it, the history of America.

    James I was the king of England at that time, and he had granted approval for a group of businessmen who were part of the Virginia Company to settle in this new land. In all, 214 people set sail for America. They reached it on May 14, 1607. Very soon after they landed, the English found themselves under attack from Algonquins, a native American tribe(部落) who had been living in that area for some time. The English managed to drive off the attackers and stay there.

Under the leadership of Captain John Smith, the English built a fort(城堡)and other buildings designed to protect their new colony. They also found friendly native Americans, like Powhatan, who was willing to trade with them.

    There was a terrible winter in 1609 and only 60 of the 214 settlers survived, which was also hard on Powhatan's tribe and other neighboring native Americans.

    One of the main crops grown by the English settlers was tobacco, which they sold to native Americans and to people back in England, beginning in 1612. Tobacco became a very popular crop because it was easy to grow and because it brought in so much money.

    Once the money started flowing in regularly, the Jamestown colony grew, as did other settlements in Virginia and in other states along the eastern coastline.

    America's first elected assembly (议会), the House of Burgesses, met in Jamestown for the first time on July 30, 1619. The year 1619 also saw another significant development: the first arrival of black workers on boats from Africa. These men and women were originally servants, who worked a small piece of land for a few years and then got to keep the land as owners. Jamestown was also the capital of Virginia and remained so until 1698.

    My teacher held up a piece of broken glass and asked, "Who broke this window?"

    Thirty boys tried to think about not only what they had done, but also what our teacher may have found out. She seldom became angry, but she was this time.

    "Oh," I thought. I was the one who broke the window. It was caused by a naughty throw of a baseball. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn't even get an allowance. "My father is going to have a fit." I thought. I didn't want to raise my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward. I told the truth. "I did it." It was hard enough to say what I had.

    My teacher took down a book from one of our library shelves and I had never known my teacher to strike a student, but I feared she was going to start with me.

    "I know how you like bird," she said as she stood looking down at my guilt-ridden face. "Here is that field guide about birds that you are constantly checking out. It is yours now. It's time we got a new one for the school anyway. You will not be punished as long as you remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed, I am rewarding you for your truthfulness."

I couldn't believe it! I wasn't being punished and I was getting my own bird field guide—the very one that I had been saving up money to buy.

    All that remains of that day is my memory and the lesson my teacher taught me. That lesson stays with me every day, and it will echo forever.