There is an English saying:“{#blank#}1{#/blank#}.” Until recently, few people took the saying seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to look into laughter and the effects it has on the human body. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

    Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their hearts, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.

    Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group that tolerated(忍耐) the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny program. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.

A. Laughter can make one's life longer.

B. As a result of these discoveries, some doctors in the United States now hold laughter clinics in which they help to improve their patients' condition by encouraging them to laugh.

C. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce a kind of chemicals in the brain which reduce both stress and pain.

D. It increases blood pressure, the heart beating and breathing; it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach and even the feet.

E. Although laughter helps cure the disease, doctors still can not put this theory into clinic practice.

F. Laughter is the best medicine.

G. They have found that laughter really can improve people's health

Learning a second language

    Nowadays, more and more people are learning a second language. So why should we invest time in learning a second language? Is it worth it? What are the benefits of learning a second language? Let us see.

{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    If your work involves regular contact with speakers of foreign languages, being able to talk to them in their own languages will help you to communicate with them better. It may also help you to make sales and to negotiate and secure contracts. Knowledge of foreign languages may also increase your chance of finding a new job, getting a promotion or a transfer overseas, or of going on foreign business trips.

{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Needless to say, being able to speak a foreign language, for example, the Japanese, would benefit you a lot when you are travelling to Japan. Being able to speak the language of the target country will save you a lot of communication trouble and inconvenience. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Education

    If you are a high school student or a college student who is interested in going abroad for further education, then you will, in all possibility, have to learn the language of the country where you wish to move to, for further studies. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Learning a second language can help in broadening one's horizon, it can help in learning about the culture of that particular country and it can pave the way for new interests and hobbies. Not only can you enjoy forms of art and literature connected with the new language, but you can also meet new people, make new friends and develop long-lasting relationships…all on the basis of learning a new language.

    There's no doubt that water is vital to any life. About 60 percent of the average adult human body is made of water. This includes most of your brain, heart, lungs, muscles and skin, and even about 30 percent of your bones. Yet there's little scientific agreement about the exact amount of the stuff an individual should consume each day. So how much water do you actually need to drink to be healthy?

    You may have heard that you should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. Yet, the downside of this rule, researchers say, is that drinking water by the glass is not the only way that humans take in it. The “8 X 8” rule essentially overlooks two big sources of daily water consumption. One such source is food. Everything you eat contains some water. Watermelons, for example, are more than 90 percent water by weight. Different diets naturally contain different amounts of waters, and the counts. The other key water sources are other beverages. Non-alcoholic drinks such as coffee, and tea, contain mostly water and all contribute to your hydration（水量）.

    So, between all the food, water and other fluids you consume in a day, how much water should you aim to take in?

    The National Academics of Sciences suggests that woman consume a total of approximately 2.7 liters (91 ounces) of warm from all beverages and foods each day and men 3.7 liters (125 ounces). But these are just general guidelines.

    The truth is, there is no magic standard for hydration—everyone's need vary depending on their age, weight, level of physical activity, general health and even the climate they live in. The more water you lose, the more water you'll need to replace with food and drink. If you are looking for concrete advice, though, the best place to look is within. Drink up when you're thirsty.

    There have always been a lot of commonly believed but false ideas about being fat and doing exercise. Some people believe that they can't help putting on weight as they get older, while others hold that if they stop exercising, their muscles will turn into fat. Here are some more myths:

I'll never lose weight — I come from a fat family.

Wrong! While we can't change the body type we are born with, we can't blame our genes for making us fat. There's plenty of evidence that fatness runs in families, and the main reason is that they share the same habits of eating too much and exercise too little.

    I am fat because I burn calories slowly.

Wrong! Fatness is not caused by a slow metabolism (新陈代谢). If fact, although fat people consume more energy that slim people, they also fail to realize how much they eat! Keeping a diary can help you work out your daily food intake more accurately.

    Exercise is boring.

    Wrong! Anything will become boring if you do it many times. The key is to develop a balanced and varied program that's fun as well as progressive. If you enjoy a Sunday walk, take a different route. If you do Yoga, try a tai chi class. If you like swimming, set yourself a distance or time challenge.

    No pain, no gain.

    Wrong! Exercise is not meant to hurt. Indeed, pain is your body telling you something's wrong, and continuing to exercise could lead to serious injury. You may experience mild discomfort as you begin to exercise regularly, but this your body adapting to the positive changes in your lifestyle and the aches should disappear relatively quickly. If you don't, rest and seek medical advice.

    The United States Congress is responsible for making and approving federal laws—rules that everyone in the country must follow. But exactly how do those laws get made? The process is not easy, and it takes a long time.

    A law begins when someone puts forward an idea. The idea can come from anyone, but it has to get to a U. S. lawmaker who wants it to become legislation. In time, the idea is further developed into a written proposal, called a bill.

    Then, a member of Congress officially proposes the bill. After the bill is introduced, it is sent to a small group of lawmakers, called a "committee". Sometimes committee members seek more information about the proposal by holding hearings. Sometimes the committee changes the bill. Sometimes it decides not to take any action. In that case, we say lawmakers "table" the bill, or let it "die in committee".

    But now and then, the bill is offered to lawmakers not on the committee. Those lawmakers debate the bill further. They might change the bill again. Finally, the full House or Senate votes on the bill. If it does not earn the majority of votes, the bill does not advance.

    Finally, the agreed-upon bill is sent to the president. If the president signs it, the bill becomes a law. If the president does nothing and Congress is officially meeting, the bill becomes a law. But if the president does nothing and Congress is not in session, the bill does not pass. Or the president can officially reject the bill. If that happens, the bill is not stopped. Instead, it is returned to both the Senate and the House. If two-thirds of the senators and two-thirds of the House members approve the bill once again, even with the president objecting, they turn the bill into a law.

    A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    "It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件)," said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. "The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own," he said.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. "The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to," said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

    While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers' fields or on the battlefield. "Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around," he said.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. "You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead," he said. "So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis."