One of my first memories as a child in the 1950s was a discussion I had with my brother in our tiny bedroom in the family house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

    We had heard in school about a planet called Pluto. It was the farthest, coldest, and darkest thing a child could imagine. We guessed how long it would take to die if we stood on the surface of such a frozen place wearing only the clothes we had on. We tried to figure out how much colder Pluto was than Antarctica, or than the coldest day we had ever experienced in Pennsylvania.

    Pluto, which famously was downgraded from a “major planet” to a “dwarf planet”（矮星） in 2006, captured our imagination because it was a mystery that could complete our picture of what it was like at the most remote corners of our solar system.

    Pluto's underdog discovery story is part of what makes it so attractive. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farm boy who built telescopes out of spare auto parts, old farm equipment and self-ground lenses. As an assistant at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Tombaugh's task was to search millions of stars for a moving point of light, a planet that the observatory's founder thought existed beyond the orbit of Neptune. On February 18，1930，Tombaugh found it. Pluto was the first planet discovered by an American, and represented a moment of light in the midst of the Great Depression's dark encroachment (入侵).

    Pluto is much more than something that is not a planet. It's a reminder that there are many worlds out there beyond our own and that the sky isn't the limit at all. We don't know what kinds of fantastic variations on a theme nature is capable of making until we get there to look.

    Humans have launched themselves into the outer space. They've landed on the moon. They've built habitable space stations that orbit the Earth. The next giant leap for mankind is to reach another planet – specifically, Mars.

    The problem is that it's no easy task. The planet is 586 times further away from the Earth than the moon, and it'll take around 180 to 220 days to reach Mars, depending on where each planet is in its orbit. Such long periods in space have suggested many potential health problems, including hormonal changes, skin conditions, and muscle and bone deterioration (损耗).

    Here's where some furry friends come in. A wide range of animals have been in space, from fruit flies and spiders to cats, and dogs. Such experiments began as far back as the late 1940s in first tests to see if living things could withstand the extreme g-force (重力) of a rocket launch.

    Mice continue to play a very important part in space experiments, mainly because the animals make excellent test subjects. They're small, which makes them inexpensive and easy to care for. In addition, their size and short life span make it possible to do the equivalent of several human years of tests in a much shorter time. Finally, because mice are mammals, they share many common characteristics with humans in terms of genetics, biology and behavior.

    Astromice have hit the headlines recently, as a team of scientists led by Betty Nusgens, professor of biology at the University of Liege in Belgium, found that the mice suffered a 15 percent thinning of their skin after 91 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

    This experiment was part of a wider NASA mission (任务) called the Mice Drawer System (MDS). The Italian Space Agency developed the facility, which allows six mice to be housed, monitored, and automatically fed and watered aboard the ISS, among which three survived during the mission.

    The mice have participated in 20 separate experiments, to study such effects as osteoporosis (骨质疏松症), anemia (贫血) and heart health.

    Results for the 20 experiments are coming in gradually. But it's clear that mice continue to play an important role in the ongoing quest to conquer the final frontier.

How to Build a Student's Self-Confidence

    Educating students means more than giving them academic knowledge. Simply knowing a correct response doesn't give a student the confidence to raise his hand to answer a question. Students perform best in constructive learning environments{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Provide leadership opportunities for students. Cultivate (培养) important characteristics, including responsibility and independence by assigning students to take different classroom roles. Suitable jobs include hall monitors, audio-visual assistants and classroom helpers.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Set achievable goals for each student.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Engage in ongoing dialogue regarding your expectations and their individual progress. Reward students for meeting challenges, while persuading struggling students back on track.

    Give constructive feedback to help reduce weaknesses and strengthen strengths. Teach students that self-confidence isn't built from being harmed by praise. Remain honest with each student to encourage them to speak out their problems, instead of avoiding or denying their existence. Make corrections without damaging your students' confidence.

    Encourage students to set high standards for themselves.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Reinforce(强化) this message with age-appropriate examples and literature. Provide consistent encouragement to students to show your commitment to their success.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Realize that conquering difficult tasks builds mental toughness and fosters persistence. Relay this message to your students by asking each one to write a goal that focuses on improving a weak area. Help your students develop relevant attack plans.

A. Push students to improve their weaknesses.

B. Self-confidence games can help students of all ages.

C. Reassure students that they are capable of achieving greatness.

D. You can ease students' insecurities with various activities that build confidence.

E. They are especially useful in helping young children build success for their future.

F. Realize that overcoming self-doubt to achieve objectives helps build students' confidence.

G. Mastering some duties can help build confidence and erase fear of trying new experiences.

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they have found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

The Advantages of Hobbies

    Hobbies provide entertainment and a chance to continuously learn something new and develop a skill set.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Hobbies are praised as a key to stress reduction. Becoming lost in the mental concentration or physical action which you are deeply interested in helps you shift focus from the parts of life that are stressful.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}And in turn you are more peaceful when working on other work.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Many people set goals with their hobbies that provide them satisfaction when these goals have been achieved. These goals can be simple, like improving a golf score, writing a certain number of pages for a novel each day or seeing an entire collection of classic films.

    Hobbies provide a sense of community when you meet other people who enjoy similar activities.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}More populated cities typically have numerous clubs or groups for people to share their knowledge and enthusiasm about a particular hobby. Becoming a member of one of these organizations allows greater growth within your hobby, as well as a chance to make new friends.

    Having a hobby can develop a talent that makes a person feel proud and satisfied. For example, a tennis hobby developed at a young age can lead to a career as a professional athlete one day.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}For example, writer Vladimir Nabokov also collected butterflies, which allowed him to do better in his chosen fields because he used learned skills from one to improve the other.

A.Focusing on something enjoyable can calm the mind.

B.Hobbies also provide a sense of achievement.

C.Some hobbies affect other aspects of your life.

D.There are a variety of hobbies.

E.They also provide many other social and health benefits.

F.Having a hobby increases the chances to interact with like-minded people.

G.Some hobbies containing physical activities offer an enjoyable way to stay healthy.

    I am a Korean-American growing up in Korea. My delayed first day at Wheaton College was my first time in the U.S. in more than 10 years.

    From my first time eating at Chipotle to the endless variety of Scotch tapes on display at Target, culture shock affected me deeply. I was flooded with the rush of Starbucks caffeine (咖啡因). {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    On that first day to-do list was a job interview for a worker position. The interviewer asked where l was from. Seoul. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} English literature. He said, "Oh, you must be enthusiastic about coming all the way here to study English from Korea'!"

    That comment annoyed me, in a way I couldn't describe then. It's clearer now: {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The interviewer was measuring my passion without knowing anything about me, only based on where l was coming from.

    That interview was a small example of what came after that first day of college, but I hesitate to tell the story because some people who made ridiculously ignorant (无知的) comments ended up being my good friends. This wasn't easy. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Through them, I learned to express my feelings clearly in words. To them, I owe this story.

    We get to know some people and others we don't. We make decisions to involve in conversations or not. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} otherwise, I would have stayed in my bubble, meeting only people who say things that sound right.