Every morning my father buys a newspaper on his way to work. Every day I open my books in class and start lessons. Every evening my mother looks through magazines at home. And every night, I look at the posters with photos of David Beckham and Yao Ming on my bedroom wall before I go to sleep. Can we imagine life without paper or print?

    Paper was first created about 2,000 years ago, and has been made from silk, cotton, bamboo, and, since the 19th century, from wood. People learned to write words on paper to make a book. But in those days, books could only be produced one at a time by hand. As a result, they were expensive and rare. And because there weren't many books, few people learned to read.

    Then printing was invented in China. The first printed books were made by putting ink on a wooden block and holding the paper against it. When printing was developed greatly at the beginning of the 11th century, books could be produced more quickly and cheaply. As a result, more people learned to read. After that, knowledge and ideas spread(传播) quickly, in a way that can be compared with the introduction of the Internet in the 20th century.

    But will books be needed in the future? Today information can be received online, downloaded from the Internet rather than found in books, and information can be kept on CD-ROMs or machines such as MP4 players. These machines are smaller and lighter than books so that they can be carried very easily.

    Computers are already used in classrooms, and newspapers and magazines can already be read online. So will books be replaced by computers one day? No, I don't think the Yao Ming poster on my bedroom wall will ever be replaced by a computer two metres high!

    If you go into the forest with friends, stay with them. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}If you get lost, this is what you should do. Sit down and stay where you are. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}You can help them find you by staying in one place. There is another way to help your friends or other people to find you. You can shout or whistle (吹口哨) three times. Stop. Then shout or whistle three times again. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Keep up shouting or whistling. Always three times together. When people hear you, they will know that you are not just making a noise for fun.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}They will give you two shouts or two whistles. When a signal is given twice, it is an answer to a call for help.

    If you don't think that you will get help before night comes, try to make a little house with branches(树枝). {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    When you need some water, you have to leave your little branch house to look for it. Don't just walk away. Pick off small branches and drop them as you walk in order to go back again easily. When you are lost, the most important thing to do is to stay in one place.

    It's December 31, New Year's Eve. Bob and Sally are celebrating the holiday with *heir children, Lucy and Tom. The family is a very happy one.  Next year is going to be a very good year for the family.

    Next year Bob and Sally are going to take a long holiday. They are going to visit Sally's parents in California. Tom is going to finish high school. He is going to move to Boston and go to college. Lucy is going to be 16 years old. She is going to finish middle school and go to high school.

    In a word, it is going to be a happy year for all of them.

    Many people seem to know well about the rain forests. Some people even go to the rain forests to spend some of their time trying to make friends with the plants and animals there. The scientists are actually hard at work studying the plants that grow in the very top level of a rain forest. Rain forests are one of the richest environments on Earth. They are home to millions of species of plants and animals. The red research raft provides scientists with a platform from which to study life in the treetops. Scientists can even sleep on the raft, so they can stay up in the treetops for days at a time.

    Rain forests cover only about 6 percent of Earth's land surface. However, they contain more than half of the plant species on Earth. Many of these plants provide useful medicines to use against human diseases. In fact, about 25 percent of prescription medicines in the United States are based on chemicals from rain forest plants. Scientists think that many new medicines might be developed from plants that are yet to be discovered.

    Unluckily, rain forests are disappearing. Rain forest trees are being cut down for wood. Huge chunks of the forests are cleared to provide land for farm animals and crops. Scientists haven't identified all the plants in these forests yet. Some scientists think thousands of kinds of plants that we'll never even know about are being destroyed each year.