B

    Two weeks before my 12th birthday, my teacher asked me to conduct an experiment. When I mixed some powder together, they exploded. Molten liquid hit me in the face, but I felt no pain.

    I vividly remember standing there in a state of calm. I thought I was in a dream, but however hard I struggled to swim to the surface of consciousness, I couldn't wake up. I didn't understand how terrifying it was until I heard people saying, ＂Who's that?＂ That's when I knew I was unrecognizable.

    I was taken to hospital, but the doctors didn't know what to do with me. Later I was flown to Houston for surgery. Between the ages of 13 and 16, I had 40 operations. As each operation came and went, my vision would come back, then fade again. Eventually, it faded completely and I had what was left of my eyes removed for cosmetic reasons.

    Since then, I have lived in total darkness. Most blind people, even if they don't have any sight they're aware of, are still able to sense light. That gives them a sense of day and night. But not me. I absolutely lost that sense of time passing.

    For many years, I felt my sight loss darkening my life like the loss of my parents from which I would never recover. But when I was in my 40s, I realized I had to find a way to live. I trained to become a counselor, and that has helped me see my experiences in a different way. I can't fix people's broken lives — just like I can't fix my sight — but I can help them find a way to manage.

    Sometimes it feels as if all the struggles and negative experiences I've lived through were in fact a kind of preparation for helping others to make their own way towards the light.

    In its early history, Chicago had floods frequently, especially in the spring, making the streets so muddy that people, horses, and carts got stuck. An old joke that was popular at the time went something like this: A man is stuck up to his waist in a muddy Chicago street. Asked if he needs help, he replies,“No, thanks. I've got a good horse under me.”

    The city planners decided to build an underground drainage(排水) system, but there simply wasn't enough difference between the height of the ground level and the water level. The only two options were to lower the Chicago River or raise the city.

    An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced the city that it had no choice but to build the pipes above ground and then cover them with dirt. This raised the level of the city's streets by as much as 12 feet.

    This of course created a new problem: dirt practically buried the first floors of every building in Chicago. Building owners were faced with a choice: either change the first floors of their buildings into basements, and the second stories into main floors, or hoist the entire bulidings to meet the new street level. Small wood-frame buildings could be lifted fairly easily. But what about large, heavy structures like the Tremont Hotel, which was a six-story brick building?

    That's where George Pullman came in. He had developed some house-moving skills successfully. To lift a big structure like Tremont Hotel, Pullman would place thousands of jackscrews(螺旋千斤顶) beneath the building's foundation. One man was assigned to operate each section of roughly 10 jackscrews. At Pullman's signal each man turned his jackscrew the same amount at the same time, thereby raising the building slowly and evenly. Astonishingly, the Tremont Hotel stayed open during the entire operation, and many of its guests didn't even notice anything was happening.

    Some people like to say that every problem has a solution. But in Chicago's early history, every engineering solution seemed to create a new problem. Now that Chicago's waste water was draining efficiently into the Chicago River, the city's next step was to clean the polluted river.

    Sure, it's good to get along with your teacher because it makes the time you spend in the classroom more pleasant. And yes, it's good to get along with your teacher because, in general, it's smart to learn how to relate to the different types of people you'll meet throughout your life. But really, there's one super-important reason why you should get along with your teacher. Kids who get along with their teachers not only learn more, but they're more comfortable asking question and getting extra help. This makes it easier to understand new materials and do yours best on tests.

    When you have this kind of relationship with a teacher, he or she can be someone to turn to with problems, such as problems with learning or school issues.

    As a kid in elementary or middle school, you're at a wonderful stage in your life. You're like a sponge (海绵), able to suck up lots of new and exciting information. On top of that, you're able to think about all this information in new ways. Your teacher knows that, and in most cases, is thrilled to be the person who's giving you all that material and helping you put it together. Remember, teachers are people, too, and they feel great if you're open to what they're teaching you. That's why they wanted to be teachers in the first place to teach!

    Some kids may be able to learn in any setting, whether they like the teacher or not. But most kids are sensitive to the way they get along with the teacher, and if things aren't going well, they won't learn as well and won't enjoy being in class.

    In recent years, remote-sensing technologies have become ordinary in archaeological fieldwork（实地考察）. Such tools for excavation produce rapid results and cause no damage to archaeological sites. They are highly accurate and usually cost effective. Here are three of the modern archaeologist's most trusted remote-sensing tools.

    As the simplest of the remote-sensing techniques that archaeologists use, aerial（空中的）photography allows experts to see aspects of a site that may be invisible from the ground, such as the way in which something such as a town, garden, or building is arranged and traces of old walls and roads. The technique involves taking photographs with conventional cameras and filming from airplanes, helicopters, hot-air balloons, or other airborne vehicles.

    Geographic Information System (GIS) contains a large amount of field data archaeologists typically collect in and around excavation sites. While in the field, archaeologists use GIS on their computers to make and manage detailed site maps, and they can combine the results of remote-sensing tests with maps of the region created with the aid of Global Positioning System. Resulting maps sort the most archeologically promising areas and display these sites three-dimensionally.

    Ranging in size from small handled models that one places against the ground to larger ones that one across a site, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) devices use low-power radio waves to detect changes underground. Unlike traditional radar, which broadcasts into the air and uses a dish to focus the returned waves, GPR uses a small but sensitive receiver placed directly against the ground. Depending on their needs, archaeologists can adjust radio frequencies upward for shallow sites or downward for deeper areas, though GPR devices produce the greatest definition（清晰度）when reading depths of three feet or less.

Winners Club

    You choose to be a winner!

    The Winners Club is a bank account specially designed for teenagers. It has been made to help you better manage your money. The Winners Club is a transaction account（交易账户）where you receive a key-card so you can get to your money 24/7 — that's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

    It's a club with impressive features for teenagers.

    No account keeping fees!

    You're no millionaire so we don't expect you to pay large fees. In fact, there are no account keeping or transaction fees!

    Excellent interest rates!

    You want your money to grow. The Winners Club has a good rate of interest which gets even better if you make at least two deposits（储蓄）without taking them out in a month.

Convenient

    Teenagers are busy—we get that. You may never need to come to a bank at all. With the Winners Club, you can choose to use handy tellers and to bank from home using the phone and the Internet, you can have money directly deposited into your Winners Club account. This could be your pocket money or your pay from your part-time job!

Mega magazine included

    Along with your regular report, you will receive a FREE magazine full of good ideas to make even more of your money. There are also fantastic offers and competitions only for Winners Club members.

    The Winners Club is a great choice for teenagers. And it is so easy to join. Simply fill in an application form. You will have to get permission from your parent (so we can organize that cool key-card) but it is easy. We can't wait to hear from you. It's the best way to choose to be a winner!

    The introduction of the iPad, with its touch screen technology, has allowed even very young children to take advantage of a computer. So what if all children in a school were given an iPad to use in class and take home with them?

    Anne Laure Bazin works in a school where every child, teacher and teaching assistant is given a free iPad to use in and out of lessons. For her, the main advantage of everyone having an iPad had been the improvement in communication. Documents can be emailed straight over to workmates during a meeting. Children submit their homework by email, or through the school's learning environment. Teachers now take the register (点名) using their iPad, which means that there is a record of which children are in school, and which classroom they are in.

    The use of iPad has encouraged greater sharing of resources among teacher. All communication with parents is now done by email. Working as a group in class is much easier as children can share documents. The whole class can look at one child's work by attaching (连接) the iPad to the whiteboard. If a child has forgotten the textbook, the teacher can take a photograph of the relevant (相关的) page and send it to the student in class.

    While the use of the iPad in schools has revolutionized (变革) the way children are taught, it hasn't completely replaced more traditional methods of teaching. Worksheets are still used in class as some children prefer the contact with paper. The children all have a textbook and exercise books. In Anne Laure's school, parents feared that the iPads would replace exercise books and children would lose handwriting skills. Anne Laure says, "The teacher are not ready to let go of the traditional style of teaching. We have welcomed the iPads in so much as they help communication and widen the resources available but we are not ready to let go of paper yet. The children themselves still value their exercise books and depend on them for review."