In many countries, it is important to have many children In the US, a few religious groups emphasize the importance of large families, but most people think one or two children are enough, and many couples have no children. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Having many children would restrict the freedom and individualism of the parents as well as the other children in the family.

    Parents teach individualism by the way they raise their children {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Parents begin teaching this self-reliance early, asking the child to do things on her own and praising her when she does.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} They bring their children with them to church, to sporting events, to stores, and to social events. However, many places, such as expensive restaurants and live theatre productions, do not welcome children. Most formal social gatherings those with written invitations do not welcome children either.

    Children，especially boys are expected to be energetic and assertive(果敢的).

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Parents are expected to keep their children under control at all times, particularly in public places and in the homes of others. When a child misbehaves only the child's patents may discipline him. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Most patents discipline their children by rewarding good behaviors, not by punishing bad behaviors. while a spanking，a slap to the child's buttocks(屁股), is acceptable to some people, any punishment that wounds the child or leaves a mark is considered child abuse and is against the law.

A. The relationship between American parents and their children is harmony

B. That doesn't mean, though, that they are allowed to “run wild” in public.

C. Because taking care of a child is very costly, financially, emotionally, and socially, many couples view large families as a disadvantage.

D. Others adults should not interfere (干涉) unless the child is doing something which may be harmful to himself

E. American children are expected to accept invitations to a formal party.

F. Many parents want to expose their children to a variety of situations.

G. They want to create a self-reliant, independent child, who can make it on her own by age eighteen.

    A new study has discovered that meditation（冥想）and oxygen sport together reduce depression. The Rutgers University study found that this mind and body combination, done twice a week for only two months, reduced the symptoms for a group of students by 40 percent.

    “We are excited by the findings because we saw such a meaningful improvement in both clinically depressed and non-depressed students,” said lead author Dr. Brandon Alderman. “It is the first time that both of these two behavioral ways have been looked at together for dealing with depression.”

    Researchers believe the two activities have an interactive effect in combating depression. Alderman and Dr. Tracey Shors discovered that a combination of mental and physical training (MAP) enabled students with major depressive disorder not to let problems or negative thoughts defeat them.

    Rutgers researchers say those who participated in the study began with 30 minutes of focused attention meditation followed by 30 minutes of oxygen sport. They were told that if their thoughts drifted to the past or the future they should refocus on their breathing, enabling those with depression to accept moment-to-moment changes in attention.

    Shors, who studies the production of new brain cells in the hippocampus—part of the brain involved in memory and learning—says scientists have shown in animal models that oxygen sport exercise keeps a large number of certain cells alive.

    The idea for the human intervention（干预）came from her laboratory studies, she says, with the main goal of helping individuals acquire new skills so that they can learn to recover from stressful life events.

    By learning to focus their attention and exercise, people who are fighting depression can acquire new learning skills that can help them process information and reduce the overwhelming recollection of memories from the past, Shors says.

    “We know these treatments can be practiced over a lifetime and that they will be effective in improving mental health.” said Alderman. “The good news is that this intervention can be practiced by anyone at any time and at no cost.”

    Far from the land of Antarctica (南极洲), a huge shelf of ice meets the ocean. At the underside of the shelf there lives a small fish, the Antarctic cod.

    For forty years scientists have been curious about that fish. How does it live where most fish would freeze to death? It must have some secret. The Antarctic is not a comfortable place to work and research has been slow. Now it seems we have an answer.

    Research was begun by cutting holes in the ice and catching the fish. Scientists studied the fish's blood and measured its freezing point.

The fish were taken from seawater that had a temperature of -1.88℃ and many tiny pieces of ice floating in it. The blood of the fish did not begin to freeze until its temperature was lowered to

-2.05℃. That small difference is enough for the fish to live at the freezing temperature of the ice-salt mixture.

    The scientists' next research job was clear: Find out what in the fish's blood kept it from freezing. Their search led to some really strange thing made up of a protein (蛋白质) never before seen in the blood of a fish. When it was removed, the blood froze at seawater temperature. When it was put back, the blood again had its antifreeze quality and a lowered freezing point.

    Study showed that it is an unusual kind of protein. It has many small sugar molecules（分子）held in special positions within each big protein molecule. Because of its sugar content, it is called a glycoprotein. So it has come to be called the antifreeze fish glycoprotein, or AFGP.

    Nearly everyone has bad habits. That's because, try as we might, bad habits are hard to break. On the other side, good habits, such as eating more healthfully or exercising regularly, never seem to stick. As a result, most people throw up their hands and surrender.

    But now a new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin, offers some useful solutions.

    Rubin, who became interested in habits during her research on happiness, which resulted in two popular books, The Happiness Project (2009) and Happier at Home (2012), found that our inability to master unwanted behaviors was a major downer (令人沮丧的因素). So, after guiding millions of readers down the path of true contentedness, Rubin turned her investigative skills toward habits.

    Her most important find? Change is possible if we do some soul searching and identify how we respond to expectations. And, just about everybody falls into one of four personality categories: Questioners, Obligers, Rebels and Upholders.

    Rubin believes herself to be a classic Upholder, someone who forms habits relatively easily because she responds well to both other people's deadlines and her own. As to the other types, Questioners will only form a habit if it makes sense to them; Obligers work hard to meet other people's expectations but often let themselves down. And Rebels resent (反感) habits.

    "Think about the habit that you want to form and then think: "What's everything I could do to set myself up for success?" says Rubin. For example, if you want to exercise more and you're an Obliger, call your friend who lives across the street and meet at 6：30 every morning for a walk.

    One common pitfall (陷阱), says Rubin, especially when it comes to changing your diet, is lack of clarity (清楚). "You can't make a habit out of eating more healthfully, "she says. Instead, your habit should be something like: "I'm going to pack a lunch every day and bring it to work instead of eating out."

    As for exercise, Rubin recommends a strategy called pairing—coupling two activities, one that you need or want to do and one that you don't particularly want to do. Rubin, for example, only allows herself to read magazines while on fitness equipment at the gym.

    US inventor Thomas Alva Edison once said: "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." He was not exaggerating. Perspiration, indeed, plays a very important role in Chinese scientist Tu Youyou's success.

    Tu was given the Nobel Prize in Physio logy or Medicine in 2015 for discovering a new drug for malaria, a deadly disease caused by the bite of some types of mosquito. She is the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize in science. "It is the pride of the whole Chinese science community, which will inspire more Chinese scientists," China Daily noted.

    Malaria is a disease that infects around 200 million people and k ills about half a million people each year, according to the Economist. Tu's discovery has saved millions of lives, especially in the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, by 2013 malaria deaths had fallen by 47 percent compared with 2000.

    But the road to this achievement was a tough one to travel. In the late 1960s, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976), Tu joined a government project on which she began research on a new malaria drug.

    In the beginning, Tu read a lot of old folk remedies(药方), searched texts that w ere hundreds or thousands of years old and traveled to remote places.

    Over several months, Tu and her team collected over 600 plants and created a list of almost 380 possible remedies.

    "This w as the most challenging stage of the project," Tu told The Beijing News. "It was a very labor-demanding and dull job, in particular when you faced one failure after another."

    But the hard work and the dullness failed to break the team's spirit. In the following months, she and her team tested the remedies on malaria- infected mice and they found that an extract(提取物)from the plant qinghao seemed to work w ell.

    Not that the work was easier after that. The fact that the extract didn't always work against malaria discouraged some of her teammates. But Tu was ambitious to make a contribution to the world and so she encouraged her teammates to keep going. They decided to start again from the beginning.

    In 1971, they were rewarded for their efforts. After nearly 200 failures, Tu finally made an extract that was 100 percent effective  against malaria parasites.The extract was called "Artemisin in"(青蒿素).

    Thanks to decades of hard work, Tu and her team had "provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people every year," said the Nobel Prize Committee. "It has greatly improved human health and reduced suffering."

Painting

    The art of creating pictures using colors, shapes and lines is called painting. Museums and galleries show the paintings of professional (专业的) artists. But painting is also a popular form of entertainment and creative expression.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Experienced painters usually use a brush to apply oil paints to a canvas cloth surface. Young painters usually use watercolors on pieces of paper. Very young children may use finger paints to create paintings.

    Painters can use their art to express devotion to a religion, to tell a story, to express feelings and ideas, or simply to present a pleasing picture. Religious paintings often show a god or a scene from a sacred text (圣典). Other common subjects have been famous legends and events in history, as well as scenes from daily life. Artists also paint portraits (画像), or pictures of people.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} All of these types of paintings show the human figure in some way.

    Some kinds of paintings do not focus on people. In landscape (风景) painting the focus is on scenes from nature. Artists also paint still objects such as fruits and vegetables.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Some artists communicate their ideas through pictures that do not represent any object.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Paintings dating back 15,000 years have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Samples of painted pottery (陶器) from at least 5,000 years ago have been found in China and Iran. The ancient Egyptians decorated their temples with beautiful paintings. People in ancient Greece painted decorative objects such as vases in addition to the walls of temples.

A. These works are called still-life paintings.

B. These works can communicate a special feeling.

C. Humans have been making paintings for thousands of years.

D. People of all ages create pictures using a variety of materials.

E. Cave paintings generally show animals that early humans hunted.

F. The design of a painting is the plan of its lines, shapes and colors.

G. Sometimes artists make portraits of themselves, which are called self-portraits.