Each morning Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table, reading his book. His grandson wanted to be just like him and tried to copy him in every way he could.

One day the grandson asked, "Grandpa, I try to read the book just like you, but I don't understand it, and I forget what I understand as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the book do?"

The grandpa quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and replied, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water."

The boy did as he was told, but all the water leaked out before he got back to the house. The grandpa laughed and said, "You'll have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again. This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned. Out of breath, he told his grandpa that it was impossible to carry water in a basket, so he went to get a bucket instead. The grandpa said, "I don't want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You're just not trying hard enough." The boy again dipped the basket into the river and ran hard, but when he reached his grandpa the basket was empty again. Out of breath, he said, "Grandpa, it's useless!"

"So, you think it is useless?" the grandpa said, "Look at the basket."

    The boy looked at the basket and for the first time he realized that the basket was different. It had been transformed from a dirty old coal basket and was now clean.

"Grandson, that's what happens when you read the book. You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, you'll be changed, inside and out."

    All animals produce waste. We call it "waste," but we all know it can be very useful. In some parts of the world, animal waste, or poop, is collected, dried, and burned for cooking and heating. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} 

    The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Center has an unusual way of using animal "waste." The center's 40 pandas produce about two tons of poop a day. This material is being turned into a new product called Panda Poop Paper. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} After all, paper is made from plant fiber, which cannot be digested and simply goes through the body as waste.

    Since pandas eat nothing but bamboo, their "waste" is perfect paper material. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} 

    Their stomachs haven't fully developed for their vegetarian diet, so their bodies make use of just 20% of what they eat. The other 80% comes out as poop: very high in fiber and perfect for paper.

    Once the poop is collected, it is cleaned with chemicals, crushed(碾碎), and put into frames(框架) to dry. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Because of its good quality as well as the worldwide popularity of the panda, gift products made from the paper sell well.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} They got the idea from the elephant dung(大象粪) paper made at Elephant Conservation Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand. And Creative Paper Wales in the U.K. sell paper gifts made from sheep waste.

A. But do you know some paper from poop?

B. Where does the paper come from?

C. After these steps, good, strong paper comes into being.

D. Moreover, there is more special about pandas.

E. It's not really that strange!

F. Yet, the Chinese weren't the first people producing paper from animal waste.

G. Farmers have been using animal and human waste for a long time.

    Winter is a really fun time of the year—it's great to have snowball fights and build snowmen{#blank#}1{#/blank#} When it's cold outside and you're not prepared, you can feel uncomfortable. Lucky for you, learning how to stay safe is not difficult.

    ●{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Wearing thick clothes is the best way to stay warm in the cold. Depending on where you live and how cold it is, some kids may need more clothes, some less.

    ●Take that hat. You maybe wear a large overcoat and ready to go, but are you forgetting something?{#blank#}3{#/blank#} You'll stay much warmer with a hat than without one—tons of body heat escapes right from your head.

    ●Drink up. Sounds like advice for hot weather, not cold weather, right?{#blank#}4{#/blank#} When you're outside in the cold and breathing hard, your body loses a lot of water through your breath. And the best way to get that water back is to drink up!

    ●Take it easy. Sometimes if you're out having fun, it's easy to forget to pay attention to your body. But if your body temperature drops even 4 or 5 degrees while you're out side, it can make you feel terrible{#blank#}5{#/blank#} And if you ever feel weak, those are signs that you have to take it easy indoors for a while.

A.Love those clothes.

B.Have a snowball fight.

C. Pull a hat onto your head.

D. That's why you need to be careful with your body s signals.

E. Well, the truth is that it's good advice for both kinds of weather.

F. but you have to know how to be safe while you're out having fun.

G. You can stay outside as long as possible to fully enjoy your snow days.

    There were no people on the park bench as I sat down to read beneath the branches of an old willow tree, with good reasons to sigh, for the world was dragging me down. At this time, a boy approached me. He stood right before me, and said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

    In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight, with its petals (花瓣) all worn. Wanting him to take his flower and go off to play, I managed a smile and then turned to the other side.

    But instead of leaving, he sat next to my side and placed the flower to his nose and said firmly and clearly, “It really smells pretty and it's beautiful, too. That's why I picked it. Here it's for you.”

    The flower before me was dying or dead. But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave. So I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

    But instead of placing the flower in my hand, he held it in mid-air. It was then that I noticed that the boy was blind.

    I heard my voice quiver (轻微颤抖), and at the same time my tears shone like the sun. As I thanked him for picking the very best one, he smiled and said, “You're welcome.”

    And then he ran off to play, not knowing the influence he'd had on me.

    I sat there and wondered how he managed to see a self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree. Perhaps from his heart, he'd been blessed with true sight.

    Through the eyes of the blind boy, I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all of those times I had been blind. From now on, I promised to see beauty and appreciate every second. Then I held the flower up to my nose and breathed its fragrance and smiled as that young boy.

    Most dog owners believe their dogs experience guilt, but animal behaviorists say the "guilty look" of a dog is simply a reaction to you and that dogs lack the ability to feel shame.

    Alexandra Horowitz, a psychology professor and principal investigator at the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Columbia University once carried out a study on dog "guilt". She videotaped 14 dogs in a series of trials and observed how they reacted when their owners left the room after instructing them not to eat a treat. When the owner was gone, Horowitz gave some of the dogs the forbidden treat. Then she would tell the owners whether their dogs had eaten the treat or had behaved. However, Horowitz wasn't always honest with them.

    Horowitz found that the dogs' "guilty looks" had little to do with whether they'd eaten the treat or not. In fact, dogs that hadn't eaten it but were scolded by misinformed owners tended to exhibit the most elements of the "guilty look".

Horowitz says this shows that the dogs' body language is actually a response to their owner's behavior—not an experience of shame for a misdeed. Why then, do dogs look so ashamed when we scold them?

Maybe that look of guilt is the result of a learned association. When you scold your dog for chewing up a pair of slippers, he quickly learns that if he lowers his head and tucks his tail, the undesirable response—raised voice and angry expression—is more likely to disappear.

    If you could have a superpower, what would it be? Other than flying and communicating with someone from his mind (which, let's be honest, would probably actually be awful), breathing underwater is one of the favorites. You can hang out with Aquaman and Ursula, and when the end of the world comes and we're all living under water, you'll be fine.

    With this in mind, a student at the Royal College of Art, London has designed a 3D-printed amphibious garment called AMPHIBIO —essentially a set of gills (鳃) —for this very purpose. According to Jun Kamei, a biomimicry designer and materials scientist, it is "for a future where humankind lives in the water".

    With the world set for a global temperature increase of 3. 2℃ (5. 7℉) by 2100, rising sea levels are a very real threat to large coastal cities, potentially affecting up to 2 billion people —or 26 percent of the current global population.

    Kamei's little device uses a specially designed porous (多孔的) material that fills oxygen again in the water and releases carbon dioxide. It is inspired by water-diving insects that create their own little scuba diving set by creating a protective bubble of air around their body thanks to their water repellent (防水的) skin.

    The technology is easily 3D-printable too, which will be great when we need them together. These "gills" could replace heavy and clumsy scuba equipment, making it more similar to free diving but for longer. This could have immediate applications for underwater rescue plans —the 12 boys rescued by divers from a flooded cave in Thailand, for example, where it took weeks to work out how to get the boys and the vital breathing equipment through those narrow tunnels.

    So far, the tech has only been tested as a working prototype, not actually on humans, so the dream may have to be on hold for now. And scaling up and testing on humans is Kamei's next plan. This may sound unbelievable, but Kamei insists he has a much more optimistic vision of the future.