Now many people like to keep dogs as their pets. But how did dogs become humans' close friends?

    In some places of Europe (欧洲), about 10,000 years ago, some wild (野生的) dogs often came to human's houses to find food. The wild dogs looked different from the ones today. They looked like wolves (狼). At first, they felt ① frightened. They always stood and looked for a short time. Then they got the food and ran away. Sometimes the young dogs couldn't run fast and people caught them. People trained them and the young dogs grew up with the help of people. Slowly, the wild dogs became home dogs. They could make home safe when people were away. They helped people hunt (狩猎). They helped people keep warm on cold nights. ② Sometimes, they could smell and hear danger before people could. In some cold places, they helped people pull (拉) things people need.

    Now there are more than 400 different kinds of dogs in the world. And they look different from each other. The number and kind are growing all the time. Today, some people mainly (主要地) regard dogs as pets. In fact, dogs are really our close friends. We should protect them from being killed.

    Can you create( 创造)your own T-shirt? Let me tell you it's easy! In the modern world, designing a personal T-shirt with your own message or favorite image(图像) is nowa piece of cake.

    At first, you can use a digital camera to take some photos. Also, you can download beautiful pictures from the Internet. Of course, you can also draw your favorite pictures by yourself. In a word, you can use your imagination.

    Then, buy some heat-sensitive iron-on transfer paper(感热的可熨的摹写纸) and print(打印) your picture or text using a standard ink jet printer(喷墨打印机). You can print black or colors or even buy other special paper.

    Put the paper onto a clean T-shirt that you bought from the shops, then just use an electric clothes iron(熨斗) and in a few minutes you can make your own T-shirt.You must be confident and proud in this kind of T-shirt.

    My sister Alli and I have been trying to get people to stop dropping cigarette butts (烟蒂) for seven years.

    One day, we were walking in our hometown and saw hundreds of cigarette butts on the ground.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    They made the town look so ugly that we decided to start a group to make people stop dropping butts. We called it "No Butts About It!"

    At first, we drew pictures with "The Earth Is Not Your Ashtray (烟灰缸) " written on them. We put the pictures around our hometown--in parks, by beaches, and along roads.

    We wanted to make people understand that dropping butts does harm to the environment. Most smokers don't think that dropping butts harms the earth.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Later, we wrote to companies and asked them for money to help us. We used the money to buy ashtrays to give smokers.

    We wanted smokers to carry the ashtrays with them so they didn't have to drop butts.

    At the moment, we are trying to get cigarette companies to put an ashtray in each pack of cigarettes.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Many people have started to join our group since it began.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}And there are even groups in England, Australia and India !

    Many newspapers have written about my sister and I over the last seven years. And we have won many prizes for our good work.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}We just want to make the earth a better and cleaner place for animals, plants and people.

    One day it will be.

A. My sister and I set up a "No Butts About It" group.

B. But we are not interested in prizes.

C. Today there are 45 other "No Butts About It" groups in America.

D. They made the ground dirty.

E. But it does! All rubbish does.

F. Many smokers like to drop butts here and there.

G. Some companies would like to do it.

    Hello! I'm Barbara Green. I'm a girl. Look! I'm from America. I live at 225 King Street, Washington. (华盛顿) My telephone number is 474-8980. My e-mail address (电子邮箱地址） is barbaragreen@sina.com. Do you like to give a call or send an e-mail to me? I'd like to be your friend.

    These days, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" is the wrong question to ask children in the USA. The question should be: "What job are you doing now？"American companies are employing more and more young people as consultants(顾问)to evaluate(评估)products for child consumers. The 12-to-19 age group spends more than $100 billion a year in the USA. Specialist agencies help manufacturers ask kids about all the latest trends in clothes, food and other markets. One company, Teenage Research Unlimited, has groups of teenagers who give their decisions on products like jeans. Another company, Doyle Research Associated, holds two-hour meetings in a room called the "imaginarium". Children are encouraged to play games to get into a creative mood. They have to write down any ideas which come into their heads.

    Some manufacturers prefer to do their own market research. The software company Microsoft runs a weekly "Kid's Council" at its headquarter in Seattle, where a group of school children give their decision on the latest products and suggest new ones. They are called young consultants. One 11-yearold consultant, Andrew Cooledge, told them they should make more computer games which are suitable for both boys and girls. Payments for the work are increasingly attractive, Andrew Cooledge was paid$250 and given some software. However, even if their ideas are valuable, the children will never make money. They cannot have the copyright to their ideas.

    Most of us have never thought about building an educational toy by ourselves. If we need a learning toy or something, we simply go to the nearest store and buy it. However, things are not as easy in third world countries. With families even having no food to put on the table, buying toys, especially the educational ones, is the last thing on the parents' minds.

    So how can one get these kids interested in science？This was a question that worried the Indian engineer Arvind Gupta so much that he decided to give up a good job and spend his life making toys from trash, things that people no longer want or need!

    Mr Gupta began teaching in the 1970s. While still an engineering student at the Indian College of Technology, he volunteered to teach the children who could not afford to go to school. Upon graduation, he found a good job at India's Tata Motors and spent the next five years designing cars.

    But he soon realized that this was not something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. So he took a year's training course and took part in the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program whose aim was to make science fun and exciting for poor children using available materials.

    Mr Gupta found the whole project so satisfying that he decided to leave his high-paying job and focus his attention on designing educational toys that were not only cheap and easy to build, but also full of scientific principles(原理) , so that children could get interested in this interesting subject.

    When the Internet started becoming a more widespread learning tool, Mr Gupta created a toys from Trash website and also recorded over 250 You Tube videos.

    Today, over 50, 000 children and teachers visit the website daily to download the videos for the toy creations based on cool science, Some young children have become so inspired(鼓舞) that they have even won international science competitions with the help of his creations