Coloring is an activity that children worldwide have long enjoyed. With a picture already made for them, kids simply chose a crayon, pencil or marker of their favorite color and fill it in. Today, it also becomes more and more popular among teenagers and even adults, who are enjoying relaxing hours of coloring. In December, five of the top ten best-selling books in the United States were coloring books.

    They are fun, but are coloring books good for you?

    The good feedback(反馈)from customers is encouraging. Trina Lucida, a popular artist creating coloring books, says that many of her customers are buying the coloring books for others who are sick or going through a hard time. She adds that the "big idea" behind her latest book is to encourage people to do something creative.

    Lucida is right, according to Allan Rohan, a psychology(心理学)professor. "Many customers think of coloring books as a new creative stage," he said in an interview, "but what's more important is that people spend time coloring in order to reduce stress after a long day." Research shows that coloring can reduce stress by guiding people to focus on(专注)one simple task. When a person is filling in a flower with a light purple color, he focuses on the flower and forgets about all his troubles in life.

    Experts add that coloring may relieve a certain kind of pain. Doing the coloring helps people relax their mind and calm down. Also, coloring helps people's brain in a healthy way. The shape of the drawing makes one side of the brain active, while the color of the drawing improves the other. Coloring can bring out your imagination and take you back to your childhood. Interesting, isn't it?

    "It's very relaxing," said Susan Jackson, a big fan of Lucida's coloring books. "Coloring frees my mind. And it's not just to try to fill blank(空白的)pages. The pictures make me happy and there is just something about them. So I'm saving the pictures I like best to the very end."

    It is said that more than four million people die each year from smoking. That number is increasing. Seven in ten of those deaths are in developing countries. These numbers are frightening.

    Yet people around the world continue to smoke. The Great American Smokeout has been founded for twenty-five years to show the dangers of smoking and provide support for people who decide to stop smoking. The American Cancer Society says all cigarettes damage the body. It warns that smoking even a small number of cigarettes is dangerous. It is not easy to give up smoking forever. However, doctors say they probably will live longer if they do stop smoking. They will feel better and look better. They also will protect the health of family members who breathe their smoke.

    The American Cancer Society says there is not just one right way to stop smoking. Any useful way to stop smoking is worth trying. They may take long walks or spend time in places where smoking is not allowed. Also, they could eat a small piece of fruit instead of having a cigarette.

    The American Cancer Society says the sooner smokers stop smoking, the more they can reduce their chances of getting cancer and other diseases. It says blood pressure returns to normal twenty minutes after smoking the last cigarette. Carbon monoxide (一氧化碳) gas levels in the blood return to normal after eight hours. After one day, the chance of heart attack decreases. After one year, the risk of heart disease for a non-smoker is half that of a smoker.

Stop smoking before smoking stops you!

    Many objects in the universe are invisible, but they send radio waves. The radio telescope* thus appeared, and it is considered one of the greatest inventions in the twentieth century. Reber built the world's first radio telescope in 1937. Ryle and Hewish developed radio telescope systems for the location of weak radio sources, and they shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974.

    A radio telescope is usually made up of:

    One or more antennas to collect the radio waves. Most antennas are made in the shape of a dish to collect and reflect, the radio waves to the sub—reflector, in the same way as a curved mirror focuses visible light to one point.

    A receiver and amplifier to receive the radio waves from the sub—reflector, and make these weak radio waves strong enough to be recorded and turned into electronic signals. To make an amplifier sensitive enough, it is usually cooled to, very low temperatures (e. g. as low as —270℃）.

    A recorder to keep a record of the electronic signals. Most radio telescopes today keep the signals to the computer's memory disk for astronomers to analyze later.

    Radio wavelengths are much longer than those of visible light, and the radio waves from deep space are always weak. To catch Radio wavelengths are much longer than those of visible light, and the radio waves from deep space are always weak. To catch these waves, radio telescopes usually have huge antennas. The sizes of most antennas in use today are around 50 to 300 metres in diameter. The antenna of FAST in Guizhou, China, the latest and largest radio telescope in the world, is 500 metres in diameter, as large as the size of 30 football fields.

    To avoid interferences, and keep the telescopes sensitive, radio telescopes are built in places where there are no human radio waves or electronic signals. For example, FAST is 5 kilometres away from the closest village and 25 kilometres away from the nearest town.

    Radio telescopes create pictures of the sky, not in visible light, but in radio waves. This is extremely useful, because there are objects that can't be seen, objects that we wouldn't even know without radio telescopes.

Sometimes it can be very difficult to predict(预测) the result of your exams, whether you are in a secondary school or even a university. This is probably because exams are one of the most anxious things in education for students. Whether a student is confident in their abilities or not，exams can be often both predictable(可预测的) and unpredictable. If the worst does happen, failing the exams can be one of the most disappointed experiences for students, especially when they were not expecting to fail their exams. 

One way to deal with exam failure is to talk to people. Talk to your family, talk to your friends, discuss with them what you can do to get good grades. One thing you must remember is that failing your exams is not the end of the world. Exam failure is one of the many difficulties you'll have to overcome(克服) in your life, and there are always possibilities to learn from failure. After all, I' m sure most of you have heard of a famous saying, "Failure makes you stronger". Actually, it is really true. It gives you an understanding of what it means to fail, to lose, to receive a negative result that you may not have expected to get. In addition, from failure, you can learn why you fail. Then, next time, you can avoid this mistake, and can get better grades. 

Information Card

Baseball is one of the favourite sports in the US. Children play baseball in sports field or in parks.

At summer picnics, there is often an informal baseball game. Boys and girls, the young and the old, take turns to beat. Each team has nine players.

The baseball season goes from April to September. During this time, baseball matches are on TV and members of the important baseball teams become America's heroes. At the end of the season, the two top teams play against each other. Many baseball fans go along to watch the game. Millions of others listen to the radio or watch television. People seem to talk only about the result and the players.

American football is perhaps the most popular sport in the US The football season begins when the baseball season ends. More people are interested in football than baseball when there is an important game. Thousands of people sit beside the radio or in front of the television set to hear or watch the result.

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