A massive winter storm is expected to begin hitting Massachusetts tonight, dumping up to a foot or more of snow in some areas, while whipping the coast with powerful winds and driving rains, forecasters predict.

    “It's got a little bit of everything,” William Babecock, a meteologist（气象学家）at the National Weather Service in Taunton, said of the post-Christmas storm that brought snowstorm conditions to the Ohio Valley before heading east with its mixed bag of snow, sleet, and rain.

     State Highway Administrator Frank De Paola said more than 4,000 states and snowplows（扫雪车）and salt spreaders were ready to make the roads safer for holiday travelers.

    “MassDOT will be fully staffed and will be ready to handle this,” De Paola said, nothing that the storm, which should bring snow to most of the state except the Cape and Island before turning into rain tomorrow, is Massachusetts' first significant snow storm of this winter season.

    “There have been events where we have had pretty much freezing, icing concerns, which we have treated with chemicals.But this is the first big event that will call for plowing,” he said.

     A high wind watch has been issued for southeastern Massachusetts, including Cape Cod, Forecasters say the wind could reach 60 mph, possibly bringing down power lines.

    In Worcester, some were busy for severer by buying rock salt,shovels and windshield wash,Barrows Hardware president Brain Barrow said.He called the volume（总量）of customers at his Webster Street store very steady on Wednesday morning, “You do get that supermarket effect for sure,”he said of shoppers stocking supplies before a storm.

     There were no flight delays or cancellations at Logan International Airport in Boston as of day,” Right now, everything's running normally.” airport spokesman Richard Walsh said.But Walsh said as the day progressed, travelers should contact their airlines directly to check the status of their flights.

    April 23 marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death. Organizations in Britain have planned numerous events to honor him.

    In Stratford-upon-Avon, his birthplace, the tourism organization has a great number of free events, including performances of Shakespeare's plays, and a dazzling fireworks display. And the BBC is broadcasting a live show from Stratfore-upon-Avon, celebrating Shakespeare's widespread influence on the world. In England's capital, the London Shakespeare Centre and King's College London are holding a series of public performances, exhibitions and activities. It isn't just England that honors the anniversary of the death of this extraordinary writer. In Washington, D. C., the Folger Shakespeare Library, which houses the world's largest collection of documents relating to William Shakespeare, is displaying a series of exhibitions.

    Shakespeare is probably the most famous author who ever lived and is considered a genius by most. He wrote around 37 plays and 154 sonnets(十四行诗), and his work has been translated into over one hundred languages! He penned beautiful metaphors(暗喻), serious dramas and amusing tales.

    Shakespeare also invented many new terms and phrases. If someone's behavior suggested they were not being honest and should not be trusted, Shakespeare called their actions suspicious. If someone was being silly and perhaps looking like a fool, Shakespeare found their actions laughable. And Shakespeare called people who offered their opinions on the quality of something critics. Today, for instance, food critics and film critics give audiences their opinions of food and film. The familiar phrase “break the ice” comes from Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. The “ice is broken” when a difficult conversation or meeting is calmed by some basic introduction, such as a simple game. More common words coined by Shakespeare include road, gossip, lonely, bump and hurry.

    Four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare surely lives on, in everyday speech, as the most famous writer of all time!

    A. High tech with traditional life at Green Bank.

    Over millions of years, penguins（企鹅）have developed a keen sense of where to find food. Once they're old enough, they set off from the shores on which they were hatched for the first time and swim long distances in search of tasty fish like anchovies and sardines. But they don't search directly for the fish themselves.

    For example, when young African penguins head out to sea, they look for areas with low surface temperatures and high chlorophyll(叶绿素) because those conditions signal the presence of phytoplankton（浮游植物）. And lots of phytoplankton means lots of plankton（浮游动物）, which in turn means lots of their favorite fish. Well, that's what it used to mean.

    Climate change plus overfishing have made the penguin feeding grounds a mirage(海市蜃楼). The habitat is indeed plankton-rich—but now it's fish-poor. Researchers call this an “ecological trap.”

    “It's a situation where you have a signal that previously pointed an animal towards good quality habitat. That habitat's been changed, usually by human pressures. The signal stays, but the quality in the environment deteriorates.”

    Richard Sherley, a zoologist at the University of Exeter and his team used satellite imaging to track the African penguins from eight sites along southern Africa. Historically, the birds benefited from tons of fish off the coasts of Angola, Namibia and western South Africa, but now they're going hungry.

    “I was really hoping we'd see them going east, and finding areas where the fish had moved to but it ends up being quite a sad story for the penguins.” said Richard.

    The researchers calculate that by falling into this ecological trap, African penguin populations on South Africa's Western Cape have declined by around 80 percent.

    Some research groups are exploring the idea of moving chicks to a place where they can't get trapped, like the Eastern Cape. But Sherley thinks that a longer-term solution means making and carrying out rules to create more sustainable(可持续的) fishing industry, something that he says needs public support.

    Some of Australian cyclists have used "GPS art" to turn a 202 km (125 mile) ride into the outline (轮廓) of a goat, which interests many people greatly.

    The four men marked their route on an app before using it track their journey around Perth. When uploaded to the computer, it was shown as a picture. Cyclist Ben Jones said the group settled on a goat because it was an easy animal to draw. He said the ride lasted more than six hours, with the four men stopping only for food, and flat tyres. "Except for riding 202km,' it's relatively simple," Mr. Jones told the BBC. "You mainly mark your route on the app and it plans directions out."

    GPS art has also been widely used by runners and other cyclists when they travel out. Mr. Jones said his group wanted to shake up their normal weekend ride. "We all ride 10, 000km to 15, 000km a year," he said. "Mostly we just ride together as mates and have a good time—that's what this was about."

    The group received much attention after posting their map to social media this week. Others described Mr. Jones as a goat guy in an interview on Australian television. For their next piece of GPS art, the group plans to draw a local animal such as the koala. "Certainly, there'll be something coming, for we are making our decisions to put more and more plans into practice. I'm sure of that," Mr. Jones said.

    Forget Cyclists, Pedestrians are Real Danger

    We are having a debate about this topic. Here are some letters from our readers.

    ■ Yes, many cyclists behave dangerously. Many drivers are disrespectful of cyclists. But pedestrians are probably the worse offenders.

    People of all ages happily walk along the pavement with eyes and hands glued to the mobile phone, quite unaware of what is going on around them. They may even do the same thing while crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing or elsewhere. The rest of us have to evade (避让) them or just stand still to wait for the unavoidable collision.

    The real problem is that some pedestrians seem to be, at least for the moment, in worlds of their own that are, to them, much more important than the welfare of others.

—Michael Horan

    ■ I loved the letter from Bob Brooks about cyclists (Viewpoints, May 29). I am afraid they seem to think they own the roads.

    I was walking across Altrincharn Road one morning when a cyclist went round me and on being asked what he was doing he shouted at me.

    The government built a cycle lane on the road but it is hardly used.

    The police do nothing. What a laugh they are!

    The cyclists should all have to be made to use the cycle lanes and wear helmets, fluorescent (发荧光的)jacket and tights at night and in the morning. They should pay some sort of tax and be fined for not wearing them.

—Carol Harvey

    ■ Cyclists jump on and off pavements (which are meant for pedestrians), ride at speed along the pavements, and think they have a special right to go through traffic lights when they are on red.

    I was almost knocked down recently by a cyclist riding on the pavement when there was a cycle lane right next to him.

    Other road users, including horse riders, manage to obey the rules so why not cyclists?

    It's about time they had to be registered and insured, so when they do hit a pedestrian or a vehicle, or cause an accident, at least they can be traced and there might be an opportunity to claim.

—JML

    Write to Viewpoints of the newspaper.

    Imagine being a business that regularly takes huge quantities of your own products worth millions of pounds and burns them up. Your stock literally goes up in smoke. It sounds crazy, but the practice is common for some of the world's biggest clothing manufacturers. They argue that it is the most cost-effective way of maintaining their brand's exclusivity (独特性).

    The clothes that are burned are those that do not sell at a high enough price. Rather than watch them go on sale, the companies would set fire to them and regain a small amount of energy.

    Nobody knows exactly how much unsold stock is burnt annually by those fashion houses, but burning clothes has various negative impacts on the environment. For example, burning clothes made from artificial fibers may release plastic microfibers into the atmosphere, which worsens global warming. A U.K. parliamentary committee report on sustainability and the fashion industry advises the government to ban the burning of unsold stock if it can be reused or recycled.

    Actually, there are other approaches. What if those companies had a section tasked with taking back unsold clothes, redesigning them into new products, and shipping out the new products to the market once again?

    There is also now an opportunity to focus on biodegradable (可生物降解的)fabrics. Clothes that break down faster might not have to be burned. They would also appeal to those who care about the environmental impact of their own wardrobes.

    Additionally, we have an over-production problem. According to the World Bank, while clothing sales have risen steadily since 2000, clothing utilization has fallen at roughly the same rate. For every extra T-shirt that is sold, it will be worn roughly half as much as it would have been 20 years ago. That means better forecasting market trends would in theory result in less waste.

    Burning clothes won't happen simply through fashion firms. The scale of fashion production has to change. And it's important to recognize that these consumer-focused brands will only go where the market takes them. If protecting the environment really matters to the public, they have to make clear that they want more sustainable clothing in the first place. Without consumers demanding that, it won't change.