Celebrate!

Pinatas(彩饰陶罐)

    In Mexico, children often get pinatas on their birthday．Their parents put chocolates and other sweets inside the pinata and hang it on a tree．Then the children hit the pinata with a stick. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Noodles

    In China，people often celebrate birthdays by eating with family or friends，and the last dish of the meal is always noodles. The noodles are long and thin. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You can't cut them. In Chinese culture，long noodles mean you will have a long life.

Business birthdays

    A business birthday shows that a company is successful．Many businesses in the USA celebrate important birthdays, like 10, 50 or 150 years．{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Sometimes they make TV advertisements．It is a good chance to advertise the business.

Name days

    As well as a birthday, many people in Southern Europe also celebrate their name day. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} People have big parties and open their houses to anybody who wants to come．People bring small gifts，often flowers or a box of sweets．

Islamic New Year

    In Muslim(穆斯林) countries across the world，people celebrate Eid. Eid means festival or celebration．During Eid，people visit family and friends，as well as people who are sick or in hospital．{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Children receive toys，too．Children often wear special traditional clothes during the Eid celebrations.

A．You have to eat them in one piece.

B．They go out for a meal to celebrate.

C．Companies hold parties and send cards.

D．They give presents, such as sweets and food.

E．It breaks and the sweets fall out on to the ground.

F．This is one of the two important festivals in this country.

G．In Greece, name days are more important than birthdays.

With the clicking of walking sticks and determined steps, a long line of walking group along the winding road is a fantastic sight. Almost each of the walkers is using some kind of fitness tracker. A few Fitbits, some Xiaomi wrist bands (手环), a couple of phone apps and some other pedometers (计步器) — and all, they say, are counting their steps.

    Fitness trackers are in. Sales figures for 2016 released by Internet Data Center (IDC) indicated 25% market growth compared to the previous year, with Fitbit taking the lion's share, followed by the brand Xiaomi.

    However, the wearables market has had a rollercoaster ride in recent months. Jawbone, once a popular fitness tracker brand, announced that it is leaving the consumer market. Microsoft has removed its Fitness Band on its online store although it is still available on retail (零售) giant Amazon. Fitbit remains a key brand name at the heart of the fitness tracker revolution. But it is recently reported to be cutting down on workers, and its founder James Park said it experienced “softer than expected” sales recently.

    Counting steps is probably the most common use of wearable devices (可穿戴设备), but recently experts have questioned whether the golden goal of walking 10,000 steps a day is actually worthwhile, and a US study concluded that health trackers did not aid weight loss.

Analyst Ben Wood from CCS Insight used to wear a fitness tracker on either wrist. Now, however, his concern is about users'experience — these devices don't tell you anything new after a while. There are also battery problems and many of the older and cheaper varieties aren't waterproof (防水的).

    The Healthy Habits Survey shows that only about one third of American seniors have correct habits. Here are some findings and expert advice.

    ⒈How many times did you brush your teeth yesterday?

    Finding: A full 3% of seniors brush their teeth only once a day

    Step: Remove the 300 types of bacteria in your mouth each morning with a battery-operated toothbrush. Brush gently for 2 minutes at least twice a day.

    ⒉How many times did you wash your hands or bathe yesterday?

    Finding: Seniors, on average, bathe fewer than 3 days a week. And nearly 30% wash their hands only 4 times a day—half of the number doctors recommend.

    Step: We touch our faces around 3,000 times a day—often inviting germs（病菌）to enter our mouth, nose, and eyes. Use toilet paper to avoid touching the door handle. And, most importantly, wash your hands often with hot running water and soap for 20 seconds.

    ⒊How often do you think about fighting germs?

    Finding: Seniors are not fighting germs as well as they should.

    Step: Be aware of germs. Do you know it is not your toilet but your kitchen sponge（海绵）that can carry more germs than anything else? To kill these germs, keep your sponge in the microwave for 10 seconds.

    While the start of a new school year is always exciting, this year was even more so for some elementary school students in Auckland, New Zealand. They became the world's first kids to be “taught” by a digital teacher, Will. Will is just an avatar(用户头像) that appears on the student's desktop, tablet, or smartphone screen, not a human-like robot walking around the classroom.

    Auckland energy company Vector and AI company Soul Machines worked together to develop Will, which has been modeled after the human brain and nervous system, allowing it to perform human-like behavior. The digital teacher is currently assigned to teach Vector's “Be sustainable with energy,” a free program for Auckland elementary schools.

    Just like the humans it replaced, Will is able to instantly react to the students' responses to the topic. Thanks to a webcam(网络摄像头) and microphone, the avatar not only responds to questions the kids may have, but also picks up non-verbal cues(非口头提示). For instance, if a student smiles at Will, he responds by smiling back. This two-way interaction not only helps capture the students' attention, but also allows the program's developers to monitor their engagement, and make changes if needed.

    Vector's Chief Digital Officer, Nikhil Ravishankar says, “What was fascinating to me was the reaction of the children to Will. The way they look at the world is so creative and different, and Will really captured their attention.”

    Will, in place since August 2018, has been a great success thus far. However, regardless of how popular it becomes, Will is unlikely to replace human educators any time soon. For one, the avatar's knowledge base is severely restricted. But more importantly, even the smartest digital avatars could never predict and react to all the unexpected situations that educators have to deal with on a daily basis. However, it could come in handy as a “personal tutor”, providing kids with one-on-one help on specific subjects or even topics.

    Everyone likes living in a clean and comforting environment. If the environment are bad, it will affect our body, and make us not feel well. Sometimes we may be terribly ill. At that time we don't want to work, and we have to stay in bed and rest at home. So the environment is very important to us.

    It's germs that makes us ill. There are germs everywhere, They are very small and you can't find them with your own eyes, but you can see them with a microscope They are very small and there may be hundreds of them on a very small thing, Germs can always be found in dirty water. When we look at dirty water under the microscope, we shall see them in it. Germs can also be found in air and dust. If you cut your finger, some of the dust from the floor may go into it, and you will have much pain in it. Sometimes the germs will go into all of your body, and you will have pain everywhere.

    To keep us healthy, we should try our best to make our environment become cleaner and tidier. This needs us to act together.

    Barbara McCintock was one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century. She made important discoveries about genes(基因) and chromosomes (染色体).

    Barbara McClintock was born in 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family moved to Brooklyn area of new York City in 1908.Barbara was an active child with interests in sports and music. She also developed an interest in science.

    She studied science at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Barbara was among a small number of undergraduate students to receive training in genetics in 1921. Years later, she noted that few college students wanted to study genetics.

    Barbara McClintock decided to study botany, the scientific study of plants, at Cornell University. She completed her undergraduate studies in 1923. McClintock decided to continue her education at Cornell. She completed a master's degree in 1925. Two years later, she finished all her requirements for a doctorate degree.

    McCintock stayed at Cornell after she completed her education. She taught students botany. The 1930s were not a good time to be a young scientist in the United States. The country was in the middle of the great economic Depression. Millions of Americans were unemployed. Male scientists were offered jobs. But female geneticists were not much in demand.

    An old friend from Cornell, Marcus Rhoades, invited McClintock to spend the summer of 1941 working at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It is a research center on Long Island, near New York City. McClintock started in a temporary (临时的) job with the genetics department. A short time later, she accepted a permanent (永久的) position with the laboratory. This gave her the freedom to continue her research without having to teach or repeatedly ask for financial aid.

    By the 1970s, her discoveries had had an effect on everything from genetic engineering to cancer research. McClintock won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for her discovery of the ability of genes to change positions on chromosomes. She was the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize.