As one of the world's oldest holidays, Halloween is still celebrated today in several countries around the globe, but it is in North America and Canada that it maintains its highest level of popularity. Every year, 65% of Americans decorate their homes and offices for Halloween. Halloween is the holiday when the most candy is sold and is second only to Christians in terms of total sales.

Austria

    In Austria, some people will leave bread, water and a lighted lamp on the table before retiring on Halloween night. The reason for this is that it was once believed such items would welcome the dead souls back to earth on a night which for the Austrians was considered to be brimming(溢)with strong cosmic energies.

Belgium

    The Belgians believe that it is unlucky for a black cat to cross one's path and also unlucky if it should enter a home or travel on a ship. The custom in Belgium on Halloween night is to light candles in memory of dead relatives.

Canada

    Modern Halloween celebrations in Canada began with the arrival of Scottish and Irish immigrants in the 1800s. Jack- O- Lantern is carved and the festivities include parties, trick-or-treating and the decorating of homes with pumpkins and corn stalks.

France

    Unlike most nation of the world, Halloween is not celebrated by the French in order to honor the dead and departed ancestors. It is regarded as an “American” holiday in France and was unknown in the country until around 1996.

French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant（移植）— giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.

    Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.

    “The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.

    The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.

    The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face.

    The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants.

    Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity（敏感） to foreign tissue.

    Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality

    There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.

    Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral（道德的）and ethical(伦理的)issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of three transplant.

    Yellowstone National Park.☞文章内容an easy day hike or boat trip can turn into a battle for survival.

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as ever when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. A mother who has not thought about the words for years can teach her daughter the poem that begins "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" or remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, extra learning attempts or tries to increase the length of time we will remember it.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, and bicycle riding long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables(乘法口诀表) are an exception（例外） to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming(突击学习)for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to pass the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.

    I was playing in my kitchen. My mom stood in front of me, hardly keeping the tears from spilling over. She told me that my little cousin had cancer. Hearing this, I went completely numb. How could this be happening? I had just seen her, and she was fine.

    These things didn't happen to our family, that's what my uncle said. It seemed like the world turned upside down; just last week my grandmother had passed away. I felt like I couldn't get my feet on solid ground.

    That's when my sister, Ella, came down the stairs with her long brown hair freshly washed. She sat next to me and smiled. Despite what was happening, everything would work out, her smile seemed to say.

    “Mom, do you think I could get my hair cut tomorrow?” Ella asked.

    “Sure,” Mom said, starting to wash the dishes.

    “I want to donate it to Locks of Love” Ella smiled.

    My mom stopped washing and turned to look at her. “Are you sure?” I noticed that Mom was holding back tears. This was a sacrifice(牺牲) for Ella. Her long hair was an important part of her.

    “Yeah, it's just hair. Eventually it will grow back.” She said.

    “All right,” Mom said quietly, smiling again.

    Ella gave up a part of herself for a while. She let a piece of herself go to someone else, someone she didn't know. That day she became my hero too.

    Look at the map of Spain and point at the center. You've located the country's capital and one of Europe's most beautiful cities: Madrid. This popular destination is considered a city of contrasts with its abundant historic sites, resting in the shadows of modern skyscrapers.

    History

    This city of over 3 million people is proud of Western Europe's largest royal palace, and some consider it to be Madrid's most beautiful building.

    Inside the Royal Palace 2,800 rooms are decorated in glory with museum-quality furniture and artworks. Tourists can tour 50 of these large and splendid rooms.

    Art

    The Internationally respected Prado Museum is the largest and most impressive art gallery in Spain. Opened in 1819, it is filled with works of art that feature the world's most comprehensive collection of Spanish paintings.

    Shopping

    Madrid has some of Europe's best shopping, and potential buyers love to look through the stores looking for bargains. But for 500 years, shoppers have gathered to an extremely large outdoor flea market known as the Rastro where they find everything from antiques to CDs.

    Entertainment

    No trip to Madrid is complete without seeing a performance of Spain's famous art form, flamenco. Every day, flamenco performers sing, dance or play the guitar in small cafes and grand theaters alike.

    Food

    Madrid has a wide variety of restaurants, but because the Spanish typically eat late at about 9 or 10 p.m., it's difficult to find good dinner food earlier. If you get hungry before then, the best solution is to try a tapas bar where light snacks are served. Be sure to try the jamon, a kind of dry-cured ham: Spain is famous for it.

Machines work well at a constant speed —and the faster the better.Whether they are spinning cotton {#blank#}1{#/blank#}dealing with numbers,regular,repetitive actions are what they excel at.

Increasingly,our world is being designed by machines and for machines.We adapt to machines and hold ourselves to their standards:People {#blank#}2{#/blank#}(judge)by the speed at which they respond, not the quality of their response."Always on"becomes something to take pride {#blank#}3{#/blank#}.When I ask people {#blank#}4{#/blank#} they are doing,they almost always answer "busy".Ticking things off the "to do"list becomes{#blank#}5{#/blank#}means of defining ourselves. {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (occupy)if not with work then with family or our social networks,most of us feel exhausted.

A few years ago,I became very interested in what it meant {#blank#}7{#/blank#}(pause).I started to notice where pauses show up in my own work and life.For example,I realized when I was writing,a short walk was a(n) {#blank#}8{#/blank#}(effective)way to focus than concentrating harder.The small walk acted as a pause, {#blank#}9{#/blank#}(enable)me to rest,reflect or refresh,appreciate and break a block in my {#blank#}10{#/blank#}(creative).I realized that pause is not nothing!

A minute eating ice-cream is not the same as a minute doing push-ups.Even time itself isn't a uniform raw material —as the physics of Einstein shows.