Music

    Opera at Music Hall: 1243 Elm Street. The season runs June through August, with additional performances in March and September. The Opera honors Enjoy the Arts membership discounts. Phone: 241-2742. http://www. cityopera.com.

    Chamber Orchestra: The orchestra plays at Memorial Hall at 1406 Elm Street, which offers several concerts from March through June. Call 723-1182 for more information. http://www.chamberorch.com.

    Symphony Orchestra: At Music Hall and Riverbend. For ticket sales, call 381-3300. Regular season runs September through May at Music Hall and in summer at Riverbend. http://symphony.org/home.asp

    College Conservatory of Music (CCM): Performances are on the main campus (校园) of the university, usually at Patricia Cobbett Theater. CCM organizes a variety of events, including performances by the well-known LaSalle Quartet, CCM's Philharmonic Orchestra, and various groups of musicians presenting Baroque through modern music. Students with I.D. cards can attend the events for free. A free schedule of events for each term is available by calling the box office at 556-4183. http://www.ccm.uc.edu/events/calendar.

    Riverbend Music Theater: 6295 Kellogg Ave. Large outdoor theater with the closest seats under cover (price difference). Big name shows all summer long! Phone: 232-6220. http://www.riverbendmusic.com.

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    In the age of the keyboard,some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out.

    Steve Graham, a literacy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has been hearing about the death of handwriting for the past fifteen years. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} He said, "If the results of a survey we have published this year are accurate,it is being taught by about ninety percent of teachers in grades one to three."

    Ninety percent of teachers also say their are required to teach handwriting. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Professor Graham says one study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}others teach it for sixty to seventy minutes a day.

    Many adults remember learning that way—by copying letters over and over again. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead ,they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Teachers commonly report that about one-fourth of their students have poor handwriting.Some people might think handwriting is not important anymore because of computers and voice recognition（辨认）programs.

A.After all,that is why we write.

B.Nowadays teachers pay more and more attention to their students' writing.

C.So is it still being taught?

D.But who cares if people know how to write well?

E.But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it.

F.Today's thinking is that short periods of practice are better.

G.He says some teachers teach handwriting for ten or fifteen minutes a day.

    The Great Pyramid(金字塔)was built nearly 5,000 years ago for a king called Khufu. It is on the west bank of the Nile River. In fact, all the pyramids along the Nile River are on its west bank. The ancient Egyptians thought of the rising of the sun as the beginning of life and the setting of the sun as the end of life. This is why their bodies were buried on the west of the Nile.

    It is very hard to realize just how big the Great pyramid is. It has over 2,000,000 pieces of stones. Most of these big stones weigh two and a half tons each. Some even weigh fifteen tons. Without machinery, the ancient Egyptians cut and moved and lifted each of these stones. Almost all the stones came from the east bank of the Nile, and they were taken across the river in boat. It took more than 100,000 people twenty years to build the Great Pyramid.

    The Great Pyramid is over 450 feet high today. Each of the sides of the Pyramid is 755 feet long. It takes about twenty minutes to walk all the way around it.

    Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) needs to prove its worth through rigorous clinical trials, according to the head of one of China's largest herbal remedy companies, as a contentious new law to boost the $40bn sector comes into effect.

    Traditional Chinese Medicine is estimated by analysts to account for a third of sales in China's $117bn pharmaceutical (药学) market, the world's second largest. But most of those sales are of relatively cheap over-the-counter drugs, with many Chinese hospital doctors unwilling to prescribe TCM remedies because of the lack of evidence for their effectiveness.

    China's first law promising equal status for TCM and western medicine in the country's state-dominated healthcare system comes into effect this weekend. Provisions include encouragement for hospitals to set up TCM centres, and a licensing system for practitioners (从业者). "This law is very important for securing the status of TCM," said Wu Yiling, chairman of Yiling Pharmaceutical, a company that makes herbal remedies based on traditional recipes in the northern province of Hebei.

    Listed in Shenzhen, Wu Yiling has a market capitalization of RMB 20.7bn ($3bn). Mr Wu, the son of a herbal practitioner, controls a family fortune of $1.6bn, according to the Hurun Rich List.

    Mr Wu is both a supporter of the nature of Qi—the mystical energy force that provides the basis for much of TCM theory—and the clinical trials vital to western pharmaceutical companies. "TCM needs to develop using modern research methods," he said.

    For instance, researchers from Peking and Cardiff Universities tested the health benefits of Yiling's herbal medicine Yangzheng Xiaoji, publishing papers in the International Journal of Oncology that showed the drug can slow the growth of cancer tumours. "The theory and recipe is TCM, but in practice the evaluation of our medicines is carried out according to western evidence-based methods," Mr Wu said.

    Analysts say such tests can help gain support from doubtful hospital doctors and boost prescriptions. "Doctors need strong evidence that drugs definitely work," said Serena Shao, healthcare analyst at brokerage CLSA. "Some of these companies are currently doing clinical trials, and getting proof that their drugs have the same efficacy (功效) as chemical drugs. That's the way to go." she added.

    The TCM law has been greeted with doubt from China's western-schooled medical establishment, which points to a lack of rigorous training for TCM doctors, and a recent series of shocking events involving herbal injections believed to have been harmful. "Officials will try and encourage TCM, but also will be very cautious about what kinds of TCM they use in hospitals," added Ms Shao.

    Everybody hates the idea of cutting back financially(财政上) because it usually means living without things you like. But not always.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}.They could reduce your costs by thousands of dollars a year.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    An increasing number of grocery chains are selling their own lines of food. Actually, these brands cost vastly less than the name brands, but taste the same. Switch and you could save 25 percent on your grocery bills.

    Make a list.

    Whether you're buying groceries or gifts, spur－of the－moment impulses(一时冲动)are your enemy.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}. If you want to buy something on impulse, force yourself to go home and think about it.

    Carry snacks.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. The same holds true for anything you eat out. So if you know you're going to be out for several hours and likely to get hungry, throw an apple in your car or carry a six-pack of soda or water in your bag.

    Use it up.

    Before you run to the store, make sure you check your fridge. There's a good chance that you've got lots of unused or partially used items that will go to waste while you waste your cash buying more.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

A. Make a savings plan

B. Switch to store brands

C. There are many painless ways to save

D. Choose reliable brands of well-known companies

E. Write a to-do list before you go shopping and stick to it

F. Whether it's food or beauty care, use it up before you replace it

G. Buy a soda at a restaurant and you're likely to pay twice as much

    Any foreigner who has tried to learn Chinese can tell how hard it is to master the tones required to speak and understand. And anyone who has tried to learn to play the violin or other instruments can report similar challenges.

    Now researchers have found that people with musical training have an easier time learning Chinese. Writing in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Northwestern University say that both skills draw on the same parts of the brain that help people discover changes in pitch(音调).

    One of the study's authors, Nina Kraus, said the findings suggested that studying music "actually tunes our sensory system". This means that schools that want children to do well in languages should hesitate before cutting music programs, Dr. Kraus said. She said music training might also help children with language problems.

    Mandarin(普通话)speakers have been shown to have a more complex encoding(编码) of pitch patterns in their brains than English speakers do. This is because in Mandarin and other Asian languages, pitch plays a central role. A single­syllable word can have several meanings depending on how it is intoned.

    For this study, the researchers looked at 20 non­Chinese speaking volunteers, half with no musical background and half who have studied an instrument for at least six years.

    As they were shown a movie, the volunteers also heard an audio tape of the Mandarin word "mi" in three of its meanings: squint, bewilder and rice. The researchers recorded activities in their brain stems to see how well they were processing the sounds. Those with a music background showed much more brain activities in response to the Chinese sounds.

    The lead author of the study, Patrick C.M. Wong, said it might work both ways. It appears that native speakers of tonal languages may do better at learning instruments.