Today is a perfect day that can leave you with good memories you may someday share with your friends. Here's how:

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} You can see or do something a million times, but you can only see or do it for the first time once. As a result, first time experiences usually leave a deep mark in our minds for the rest of our lives. So try to experience something different and you'll have more memories!

    Work on something that's great to you. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Life is short. Today is the day to take action.

    Smile and notice what's right. Everything that happens in life is neither good nor bad.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} And no matter how it turns out, it always ends up just the way it should. Either you succeed or you learn something.

    Be true to yourself. The only shoes you can wear are your own. If you aren't being yourself, you aren't truly living. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Make a new friend. People are interesting creatures (生物), and no two people are exactly alike. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Find out what makes them different. They'll likely open your eyes to wonderful ideas. And you never know, they just might change your life.

    Be present.  Be here now. Remember, right now is the only dear moment to you.  Right now is life.  Don't miss it.

A. Learn a new skill.

B. Try something new.

C. It just depends on your opinion.

D. So meet someone new today.

E. And in fact, you're only existing.

F. Pay close attention to what you're doing.

G. Make yourself busy with something meaningful.

    Our planet is home to about seven billion people. Since the 1990s, population experts have predicted the number would grow to nine billion before it begins to slow down and possibly decrease.

    But a new report predicts the world's population is likely to increase to almost 11 billion by 2100. Based on the most modem statistical tools, the new report makes use of government records and considers expert predictions, including death rates, birthrates and international migration, or people moving across borders. The report says during the rest of this century, Africa's population will grow from about 3.5 billion to 5.1 billion over the next 85 years.

    John is director of the United Nations Population Division. He says that in the past, researchers thought population growth in Africa would be similar to that of other areas. They expected slower growth rates as birth control use became more widespread. But he says those ideas were wrong.

    “The level of contraception use has continued to increase but slowly — more slowly than expected, and birthrate therefore has been falling less rapidly than expected, and the population therefore continues to grow somewhat more rapidly than we expected.

    The new findings are based on a joint research project of the United Nations and the University of Washington,

    The researchers believe the population of Asia will reach five billion by 2050. That is up from the current 4.4 billion. And then begin decline. The researchers also believe that North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean area will have a total population of below one billion.

    John says the pressure of feeding the rising population is likely to be less than that might be expected.

    “The relatively good news is that the world has been winning the race between population growth and food production. If you look back historically over the last 50 years, certainly for the world as a whole and for many, most individual countries and regions, the increase in food production has outpaced the increase of population.”

    David Lindenmayer of the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra says that older trees play important roles in maintaining landscapes and ecosystems.

    David studies conservation, landscape, ecology and biodiversity at the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra. “Lots of people recognize that as humans get older they tend to have less and less children while trees do it the other way around. What really happens is that the older some of these really big old trees get, the more seeds they produce and the more germinant（萌芽的）they're likely to be. So it's actually the polar opposite of what we see with humans and most other animals, so really quite extraordinary. “On January 26th he spoke to Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina when they were both at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

    In actually it's quite a worrying situation, because in plenty of forests and woodland and other ecosystems around the world, populations of large old trees are declining very quickly. And this matters because a lot of biodiversity, a lot of carbon, a lot of key ecosystem processes are associated with those really big, old trees.

    We can make sure we grow more forests, that we protect the big trees we have now, and that we don't do things that really put a lot of pressure on those trees. We should not be cutting down really big old trees anymore.

    Have you ever learned about F. Scott Fitzgerald? F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on September 24, 1896, an American novelist, was once a student of St. Paul Academy, the Newman School and attended Princeton. University for a short while. In 1917 he joined the army and was posted in Alabama, where he met his future wife Zelda Sayre. Then he had to make some money to impress her.

    His life with her was full of great happiness, as he wrote in his diary:" My own happiness in the past often approached such joy that I could share it even with the person dearest to me but had to walk it away in quiet streets and take down parts of it in my diary."

    This side of paradise, his first novel, was published in 1920. Encouraged by its success, Fitzgerald began to devote more time to his writing. Then he continued with the novel the Beautiful and Damned (1922), a collection of short stories Thales of the Jazz Age (1922), and a play The Vegetable (1923). But his greatest success was The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, which quick brought him praise from the literary world. Yet it failed to give him the needed financial security. Then, in 1926, he published another collection of short stories All the Sad Young Men.

    However, Fitzgerald's problems with his wife Zelda affected his writing. During the 1920s he tried to reorder his life, but failed. By 1930, his wife had her first breakdown and went to a Swiss clinic. During this period he completed novels Tender Is the Night in 1934 and The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1940 while his wife was in hospital in the United States, he got totally addicted to alcohol. Sheila Graham, his dear friend, helped him fight his alcoholism.

    Hip-hop dancing(街舞) is popular with many young people today. They like it because they can invent their own moves. They use this dance to show their love for life. It also shows that they are not afraid of problems.

    Hip-hop dancing has a history of more than 20 years. It first began in the 1980s in the US. In early times, it was seen in New York and Los Angeles. At that time, many young black people often danced to the music in the streets. They used their legs, arms, heads and even shoulders to dance. Many young people still use most of these moves today.

    Hip-hop dancing became popular all over the world because of the 1983 movie Flash dance. Some people performed Hip-hop dancing in the movie. People enjoyed their performance. They began to dance like them. Then it became popular. There are two kinds of Hip-hop dancing: new school and old school. More and more young people are learning Hip-hop dancing. People believe that it is a good way to exercise their bodies, and that it is good for their health.

Exploring nature allows us to catch sight of rare animals and come across special places of beauty. Of course, none of this would be possible {#blank#}1{#/blank#} protected nature areas. This is {#blank#}2{#/blank#} national parks are so important. A few national parks allow things like hotels and recreation areas {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (construct) within them, but most parks do not allow any development at all. 

The very first national park {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (be)also one of the most famous in the world—Yellowstone, in the western USA. Nineteenth-century explorers {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (amaze) by what they saw in Yellowstone. Apart from the beautiful mountains, {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (rush) rivers, and tall waterfalls, there were geysers, which sent boiling water as high as 91 meters into the air. Then there were the hot springs, as colourful as rainbows. These explorers wanted to protect the natural {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (feature) of the area from development so that future generations could enjoy the area. And so, in 1872, Yellowstone was established as {#blank#}8{#/blank#} national park. Today, around four million people a year visit it. Many come hoping to see wildlife, {#blank#}9{#/blank#} is no longer as common in the American West as it once was. Everyone comes to see the geysers, {#blank#}10{#/blank#}(especial) Old Faithful, which sits near the centre of the park, and sends 95. 6 ℃ water up to 56 metres into the air every 44 to 125 minutes.