Good manners are important, but you can easily make a social blunder when you visit a foreign country, because sometimes good manners in one place are bad manners in other places.

    Suppose you visit some friends in Mongolia and they ask you to eat with them. What kind of manners do they want you to have? They want you to give a loud “burp” after you finish eating. Burping shows that you like your food. But in some other countries, if you give a loud “burp”, you are supposed to say, “Excuse me, please.”

    In many places people like to eat together. But in some parts of Polynesia it is bad manners to be seen eating together. People show their good manners by turning their backs on others while they eat.

    What are manners like in an East African town? The people try not to see you. When you are visiting a friend, he may not see you at all. If you are polite, you will sit down beside him. You will wait until he finishes what he is doing. Then he will talk to you.

    If you visit a friend in Arabia you should walk behind other tents until you come to his tent. If you pass in front of other tents, you will be asked into each one. The people will ask you to eat with them. And it is bad manners if you say no.

    Manners are different all over the world. But it is good to know that all manners help people show that they want to be friends.

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    You're riding in the car on this family vacation. Suddenly your dad slows down. And you may see the following：

1). Bubblegum Alley

San Luis Obispo, California

    Some call it art; others call it just plain gross. Bubblegum Alley is covered from top to bottom with wads of chewed gum, a tradition that was started mysteriously by locals in the 1950s. Some artists even created images of funny faces and the American flag.

2). Blue Whale

Catoosa, Oklahoma

    Not ready to dive the depths of the ocean to see a blue whale? No problem. Just visit this 80-foot-long cement beast, which even has a slide and diving board so visitors can take a dip in the pond. When the artist died, the whale fell into disrepair. Neighbors couldn't stand to see the grinning whale fall apart, so they fixed it and now keep it bright with gallons of blue paint.

3). Lonesome Legs

Amarillo, Texas

    Just what are these large legs doing in a cow pasture? According to artist Lightnin' McDuff,  they  represent a poem  about a traveler who finds a bodiless statue of an Egyptian pharaoh (法老) called Ozymandias. Using concrete over a steel frame, McDuff constructed the legs to appear as if they were  made of weathered sandstone. And the socks? A prankster (恶作剧的人) keeps adding them—even though McDuff always removes  the unwanted addition.

4). Giant Penguin

Cut Bank, Montana

    Bundle up (使……穿暖)when you visit  this statue, because temperatures here can get  as low as 47 degrees below zero. As a nod to the frosty conditions, a local businessman built the 27-foot-tall penguin out of 10,000 pounds of concrete. The creator left for warmer weather, but the statue—7 times the height of a real emperor penguin—still stands, welcoming visitors to its chilly home.

You must have written your research paper, your personal essay, your book review—-whatever your school class requires. You think you have provided good information in the needed number of words.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    But is it really done? Many teachers and professional writers believe that writing is revision.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Revision of writing is a necessary skill for students. The classroom is a good place to practice patience, concentration and listening. There are rewards with spending time with your thoughts and really taking time to compose your ideas in an orderly and reasonable way. You should put away your paper after you have written a first version, or draft. Wait several hours, maybe overnight, before working on it more.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Not only are you refreshed, but you're looking at things through different eyes. That's what revision literally means—to see again through different eyes.

Following a four-step process may help you with your paper. The first step in the process is invention. It includes forming many questions about your subject. It is called “question-storming”.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Then comes the revision period. Take your time to read what you've written, to think about it, and maybe to re-shape it based on what you see now, as a kind of new person looking at it with a reader's eyeglasses rather than a writer's. The fourth step is called “publication”.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}In a sense, anytime you turn it over to another person, that's publication.

    Probably, the process takes away some of the tension of writing. And worry about the quality of your writing often disappears when you share that writing.

    The Loss of Innocence

    Innocence is such a precious gift. It's explained as freedom from guilt or wrong doing. Just imagine never having to worry about anything and having a guilt free mind. Some people wish to save this kind of innocence from being lost from childhood to adulthood.

    What would the world be like if innocence were never lost? One way it would benefit humanity is the lack of hatred （仇恨）among the world. During youth, there may be an occasional argument, even a little physical fight, but nothing like firing a handgun at a fellow human being. And children are blind towards the racial differences of others. A kid will hang out with any other kid. It is the lack of innocence and the ignorance we learn from adults that influence children otherwise. Another benefit is the constant desire for fun and adventure. With very little if any time at all for fun，the adventurous mind is lost in time with the responsibilities placed upon adults. If innocence were kept alive, these ambitions would never depart from our lives.

    However, other people actually hate the idea of innocence lasting forever. They feel that the lack of organization and mental power of those with innocence would cause extremely destructive consequences to society in general. A large number of individuals would never have the urge to learn, work, and act upon the necessary needs for humanity to survive. Without a proper education which is usually provided by those who no longer live in a world of innocence, people would not have the desire to succeed, get a good job in life, or provide income for their families, which would hurt the lives of children.

    The lack of a good education and career would also harm the economy. As long as innocence is kept alive, no one would be terribly angered at the lack of effort people put out in the workplace, resulting in a strong decline in production and quality of needed goods.

    Maybe it is wrong in wanting to save innocence. It sure is a nice thought, though. Perhaps innocence was meant to be lost. It was God's will to make things the way they are, and there is a good purpose for everything. All that remains to be said about innocence is to enjoy it while it lasts.

    Dogs are our best friends. That's especially true after a disaster, such as an earthquake. When buildings fall down, search and rescue dogs help find trapped people. Dogs' amazing noses can pick up the smell of survivors. Now scientists have developed an electronic tool that does the same thing. It's taking smell detection(探测) to a whole new level.

    The new invention is a sort of electronic nose, which can detect extremely low levels of many compounds(化合物) from people's skin. This isn't the first time engineers have developed such an object. Earlier models, however, have been bulky and expensive. They could not detect low levels of target compounds either. The new one is inexpensive and small enough to fit inside hand-held equipment.

    The electronic nose can detect extremely slight smell of more than one compound at the same time. "Being able to do this, in such a small object, is the significant discovery," says Sotiris E. Pratsinis, Professor of Process Engineering&Materials Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His team tested it in special spaces. They were like the small spaces where people might be trapped. Chemicals given off by the volunteers built up inside. The electronic equipment detected those compounds at unbelievably low levels.

The results were good news for the research team. But they may be not for our four-legged friends, who could soon be out of a job. "Ideally, this technology could replace search and rescue dogs," Pratsinis says.

    Stephen Taylor, an electrical engineer, agrees that the new technology has some benefits over dogs. Still, he thinks it may be too soon to have our trusty friends retire. He suspects, "I foresee that such an object could add to the fine work done by the dogs." Taylor also pointed out some potential limitations of the new invention. "E-noses are useful, but can be very likely to be affected by unstable readings and interruption," he says.

Plastic sludge (污泥) and garbage is a disaster for the world's oceans. A film crew traveled the globe to document the rubbish. And Julie Andersen of the Plastic Oceans Foundation says what we see is just the tip of the problem. "Half of the waste actually sinks to the bottom, and that remains on the surface actually breaks down. "

The filmmakers found rubbish in ocean gyres, the circulating currents that trap large concentrations of pollution in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, home of what some have plastic. "What we found was a plastic smog that spread throughout all the water. And in some parts of the oceans, scientists have found more plastic than plant. "

The pieces of the plastic garbage infect the food chain, sometimes visibly，and more so at the microscopic level, where the plastic particles interact with other pollutants. "There are heavy metals, medicines, industrial waste in the sea, while they acts like magnets (磁铁). These poisonous substances absorb on the plastic, and then when seafood absorbs the plastics, those poisonous substances enter the fatty tissues. " To be consumed by other sea life and by people at last.

China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are the worst plastic polluters. The United States, although a leader in recycling, is one of the world's 20 since it produces and consumes so much plastic. There are efforts around the world to address the problem, including at this newly opened recycling center in Lebanon (黎巴嫩). But Andersen says there is more that people can do. "Cut back on single­use plastics, straws, plastic cups, plastic water bottles, plastic bags and find alternatives like reusable materials. " She says healthy oceans are essential to our survival.