House Sitting

    In many countries of the world people do what is called house sitting. It means that if owners of the house are going away, they want someone to come into their home and look after the house and maybe pets while they are away.

    In Australia, many people travel. After people retire, they might buy a van and travel all over the country. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    So if someone wants to travel or go away for some reason, they might want someone in their home to care for it and keep the gardens tidy. House sitters might have to care for pets. Also, quite a few people have swimming pools in their back yard and they need cleaning. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} I feel it is a great way of seeing the country, because you go and stay in a new city, get to meet new people, and have time to go sightseeing in a new area.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} There are websites where you find the advertisements by people who want to travel, and by replying to the advertisement, you can make arrangements to go and look after their home.

    There are some requirements to be a house sitter. You must be a trusted person, so that the home owner knows you will not steal anything. You must be able to go when the house owner wants you to go, so you need lots of free time. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} You need to be good with pets, able to care for cats and dogs, or other pets they may have.

    Some house sitting jobs are just for a few days or a couple of weeks while the house owners have a short holiday. Sometimes it is for much longer. We have had one house sit for six months, while the home owner travelled to Europe.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Then you can travel to many different countries and stay there. One of  the important things to get is references from the home owners where you have stayed. A reference is a written letter to say that you are trustworthy and have looked after their home well. You can show these letters to possible house sitting jobs and they know you will do a good job.

A. I have done house sitting many times.

B. Thousands of people do this all the time.

C. It is also possible to do house sitting in other countries.

D. Generally you have many opportunities to get a house sitting job.

E. You must take a little care over what your description says about you.

F. This is an international house sitting service for all city and country areas.

G. You must have a good car, so you can travel to different parts of the country.

    American researchers found females are the more talkative sex because of a special “language protein” in the brain.

    The study, conducted by neuroscientists (神经学家) and psychologist from the University of Maryland, concluded that women talked more because they had more of the Foxp2 protein. The research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that higher levels were found among humans that were women but in rats that were males. Their findings came after it was previously claimed that ladies speak about 20,000 words a day — over 13,000 more than men. “This study is one of the first to report a sex difference in the expression of a language-associated protein in humans or animals,” said Prof Margaret McCarthy, who led the study. In their study, the researchers attempted to determine what might make male rats more vocal than their female friends.

    They separated four-day-old rats from their mothers and then counted the number of times they cried out in the “ultrasonic (超声波的) range”, the frequencies higher than humans can hear, over five minutes. While both sexes called out hundreds of cries, the males called out twice as often, they found. But when the pups were returned to their mother's cage, she fussed over her sons first. Tests conducted on the parts of the brain known to be associated with vocal calls showed the male pups have up to twice as much Foxp2 protein as the females. The researchers then increased the production in the brains of female pups and reduced it in males. This led to the female rats crying out more often and their mothers showing more interest in them. In contrast, males became less “talkative”.

    The researchers then tested samples from ten children, aged between three and five, which showed that females had up to 30 per cent more of the Foxp2 protein than males, in a brain area key to language in humans.

    “Based on our observations, we assume higher levels of Foxp2 in girls and higher levels of Foxp2 in male rats is an indication that Foxp2 protein levels are associated with the more communicative sex,” said Prof McCarthy.

    “Our results imply Foxp2 as a component (成分) of the neurobiological basis of sex differences in vocal communication in mammals.”

    Many of us live with a roommate at some stage. Sometimes, there can be problems. Who hasn't had an argument about whose turn it is to take out the rubbish or who should be the one to clear up after dinner? However, living with another person also comes with many benefits.

    You know that there's always someone else around, which can help you feel safer. There is always someone to talk to, so you never feel lonely. Besides these obvious benefits, there are some you may not notice. For example, we're actually more likely to eat healthier food when living with others.

    To examine the effect of living alone, Australian university researchers did much research and found that people living alone tended to eat less fresh food, which can have a significant negative effect on long-term health. However, those living with others generally benefited from a more varied diet compared to those living alone.

    What could explain these findings? The researchers believe the social and cultural roles played by cooking, food preparation and eating may be important considerations. For example, those living with friends have someone else to go shopping with, and thus are likely to buy higher-quality fresh food regularly.

    Cooking skills may be another factor. If people living alone find they do not have the knowledge required to prepare a particular dish or cook a certain food, they may fall back on ready-made, less healthy food. However, if they live with at least one other person, they may be able to ask for help.

    In addition, people living alone can eat whatever they want at any time of the day or night. However, it's helpful to have someone around who questions your decision to eat frozen pizza at 3 am. In other words, roommates can draw your attention to unhealthy routines.

    So, if you now live alone and find yourself fighting a losing battle against poor eating habits, why not consider sharing a home with someone else? You could encourage one another on to greater health and well-being.

    There are many programs for high school students today that help lonely teenagers deal with loneliness. However, loneliness is not only a problem for teens but also an important and rarely acknowledged one in the elderly.

    In Britain, Tracey Crouch was appointed to be the first Minister of Loneliness in order to address the problems caused by loneliness. This is the first time such a position has been created.

    In Britain, there are around 9 million people who say they are lonely frequently. In Germany, a study conducted by Ruhr University Bochum found that 20 percent of people over the age of 85 felt lonely, and 14 percent of those between age 45 and 65 felt socially lonely. In the United States, more than 25 percent of the population live alone, more than 50 percent are unmarried.

    Loneliness is generally associated with heart disease  overweight, and anxiety. Additionally, the stress from loneliness can cause your cells to change on a molecular (分子) level that reduces its abilities to defend your body against diseases. In fact, doctors believe having feelings of loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes per day in regard to its effect on health!

    In Britain, the new Minister of Loneliness will help introduce government policies on the problem and fund a charity—an organization for helping people in need, to devote their efforts towards aiding loneliness. There are charities that link lonely seniors to high school students in order to give them a line of communication whenever they feel lonely!

    The possibilities for the new Minister of Loneliness are endless. For example, she can provide education services to household businesses so that they can identify lonely customers if they see one. Loneliness fits into the category of being a social problem that must be monitored by the entire community in order to help those in need. Therefore, government involvement in medical services and care for seniors and others is vital for happy seniors.

    You don't need to get in a time-traveling machine to see how technology will reshape our lives, such as the way we shop. Several new technologies that are to change your buying habits already exist. Let's see what's waiting for your future shopping.

    Try it on, virtually(虚拟的). Want to shop online for a new pair of eyeglasses? You don't need to guess which pair looks best on you. Go and see the eBay Fashion iPhone app to try a pair of eyewear you're checking out on a picture of your face. But what if you want to buy something bigger? Thanks to Microsoft Kinect's motion tracking camera, you can cover clothes on your screen body. You can even choose the background of your virtual fitting room to enrich your shopping experience.

    Get a perfect, custom fit. Everyone's body is shaped differently. To get a perfect fit, you sometimes have to get your clothes changed. But by using 3D scanning(扫描) technology, all the clothes you buy will fit your body perfectly. Some companies scan your body using High-tech to get the most exact sizes, so they can make special clothes just for you.

    Experience high-tech shopping carts and checkout counters. High-tech shopping carts could, in time, be a common sight in malls and supermarkets. Microsoft Kinect-enabled carts are under test at present. The cart can follow you along the aisles (通道), controlled only by your movement and your voice. In China, a supermarket chain(连锁超市) introduced tablet-equipped carts that guide shoppers around the stores' aisles.

    In the United States, several supermarkets use a device(装置) called Scan It that gives buyers the freedom to scan goods on their own while they shop. While it's great not having to line up at a checkout counter, we wouldn't mind it if the store used Toshiba's new Object Recognition Scanner. The machine identifies(辨认) a product as soon as it's placed in front of a camera just by its shape and color, even if it has no bar code(条形码).

    Global warming is the process of earth's atmosphere heating up. Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of earth's atmosphere has gone up 1 Fahrenheit. The weather has not changed exactly the same way in every area of the planet. But scientists think that the rise in average temperature is already affecting the earth, s climate.

    Many scientists now believe that global warming is caused by cutting down trees, producing more trash, and polluting the environment are some of the reasons that the temperature has gone up. Many scientists believe that the biggest causes of global warming are new human technologies that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

    The greenhouse effect is not new. Certain gases in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, prevent heat energy from escaping back into space. In the past, the climate didn't change much because nature produced just the right amount of greenhouse gases to deal with it.

    Today, most scientists are pretty sure that the rising temperature can't be blamed on nature. Ever since the industrial revolution in the 1700s, humans have relied on machines for daily life. And many of those machines give off a lot of greenhouse gases. An increase in the release of greenhouse gases from human activities is throwing nature off balance.

    The climate is a very complicated thing, but many scientists agree that the rising atmospheric temperature has already damaged the environment. Sheets of ice, called glaciers, are melting in Antarctica and other parts of the globe. As glaciers break off and melt into the oceans, they are adding warm water to the oceans and causing the sea level to rise.

    Over the past last 100 years, the sea level has risen 6-8 inches around the world. That means land along the coasts is beginning to disappear under water. Bigger and warmer oceans are also adding to other weather problems caused by pollution in the atmosphere. Some places have received more rain, others have had bigger storms and a few areas in the world have experienced unusual droughts.