Feifei,an 11-year-old boy from Xuzhou,Jiangsu Province,suffered from a sudden acute eye disease which has almost led to blindness.The disease was caused by excessive（过度的）eye fatigue（疲劳）during the winter vacation, during which he played computer games for continuous 10 days and nights.

    Many youngsters in China nowadays are increasingly addicted to computer games and other electronic products. This is followed by a series of health problems,with the most typical case being myopia,or nearsightedness.

    According to the latest research report released by the World Health Organization (WHO),the myopia rate among Chinese teenagers ranks first in the world—70 percent of high school and college students.The rate is nearly 40 percent in primary school students,while it is only 10 percent for their peers in the United States.

    There are at least 10 million people in China with severe myopia,and they are likely to get pathological（病理性的）myopia in middle age.Pathological myopia can't be treated with glasses or surgery,and it is one of the biggest factors that lead to blindness,Xu Xun,director of the ophthalmology（眼科学）department at Shanghai General Hospital,pointed out.

    Experts explain that two major factors lead to the high rate of myopia among Chinese people.One is high academic pressure,and the other one is excessive use of electronic devices over a long period of time.Genetics,on the other hand,are not the main reason,as only 20 percent of Chinese people had myopia in the 1960s.

    "Teenagers are now faced with severe academic pressure,which means they often study without natural light. This increases their risk of becoming nearsighted,"Xu said.

    Experts suggest that youngsters maintain a proper balance between study and rest so as to protect their eyesight, and parents should play an active role in the process.

B

    Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness(荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

    Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche(雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

    But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.

    As computers become more popular in China, Chinese people are more and more depending on computer keyboards to input Chinese characters(汉字). But if they use the computer too much, they may end up forgetting the exact strokes(笔画) of each Chinese character when writing on paper. Experts suggest people, especially students, write by hand more.

    Do you write by hand more or type more? In Beijing, students start using a computer as early as primary school. And computer dependence is more widely spread among university students. Almost all their homework and essays are typed on a computer.

    All the students interviewed say they usually use a computer.

    It's faster and easier to correct if using a computer. And that's why computers are being used more and more often to modern education. But when people are taking stock in computers increasingly, problems appear.

    'When I'm writing with a pen, I find I often can't remember how to write a character, though I feel I'm familiar with it.'

    'I'm not in the mood to write when faced with a pen and paper.'

    Many students don't feel this is something to worry about. Now that it's more convenient and efficient to write on a computer, why bother to handwrite?

    Many educators think differently. Shi Liwei, headmaster of a famous primary school in the capital said, 'Chinese characters enjoy both practical and aesthetic (审美的)value. But those characters typed with computer keyboards only keep their practical value. All the artistic beauty of the characters is lost. And handwriting contains the writer's feelings. Through one's handwriting, people can get to know one's thinking and personality. Beautiful writing will give people a better first impression of them.'

    To encourage students to handwrite more, many primary schools in Beijing have made writing classes compulsory（必修的）and in universities, some professors are asking students to turn in their homework and essays written by hand.

    Microsoft has developed a new smartphone app that interprets eye signals and translates them into letters, allowing people with motor neurone disease to communicate with others from a phone.

    The GazeSpeak app combines a smartphone's camera with artificial intelligence to recognize eye movements in real time and convert them into letters, words and sentences. For people suffering from ALS（渐冻症）, also known as motor neurone disease, eye movement can be the only way they are able to communicate.

    "Current eye-tracking input systems for people with ALS or other motor impairments are expensive, not robust under sunlight, and require frequent re-calibration and substantial, relatively immobile setups," said Xiaoyi Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft who developed the technology.

    "To mitigate the drawbacks…we created GazeSpeak, an eye-gesture communication system that runs on a smartphone, and is designed to be low-cost, robust, portable and easy to learn."

    The app is used by the listener by pointing their smartphone at the speaker. A chart that can be stuck to the back of the smartphone is then used by the speaker to determine which eye movements to make in order to communicate.

    The sticker shows four grids of letters, which each correspond to a different eye movement. By looking up, down, left or right, the speaker selects which grids the letters they want belong to. The artificial intelligence algorithm is then able to predict the word or sentence they are trying to say.

    Zhang's research, Smartphone-Based Gaze Gesture Communication for People with Motor Disabilities, is set to be presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in May.

    Retired judge Davison hated all the quiet. Evy, his wife of 66 ears, had passed away, and he was lonely and sad in the months after her death. But he knew how to beat those feelings; he decided to build a pool.

    Davison contacted a family-run company in Hopkins, Minnesota, that had built a pool for his previous house 40 years ago. “They did such a great job before and were still in business, so they came out and planned it,” Davison said.

    Kevin, who works on new pools for the company, helped Davison with everything, from initial planning and completing contracts back in March to teaching him how to filter the water once the pool was finish in July.

    “If You build it, they will come,” he thought. He invited all the neighborhood kids over to swim. Now it's not so quiet anymore.

    He hears the sounds of laughter and splashing as he sits on a chair in the shade, watching happy children play in his backyard.

    “I knew they'd come.” 94-yvear-old Davison told KARE-TV.

    Neighbor Jessica thought the judge was joking when he talked about putting in a pool until she saw the work starting. Now she and her four kids have been regulars since the pool was finished in July.

    “It's him spreading joy throughout our neighborhood for these kids.” Jessica said.

    Davison's pool includes a diving board and reaches nine feet in the deep end under the board. It's especially welcome in a town that doesn't have a public outdoor pool.

    Although Davison has three adult children, he doesn't have any grandchildren.

Jessica says she's told him, “You kind of adopted our whole neighborhood of kids. These are your grandkids.”

    The judge's rules require that a parent or grandparent stay while the children are swimming. Once the kids leave, he likes to swim, too.

    Davison tells KARE-TV that he realizes that putting in the pool didn't make a lot of financial (经济的) sense for an old man. But that didn't matter to him.

    “I'm not sitting by myself looking at the walls.” he says. “What else would you think of doing where you could have a whole bunch of kids over every afternoon?” The 94-year-old judge now hears laughter all day as he watches children splash in his backyard pool.

The Boy Made it!

    One Sunday, Nicholas, a teenager, went skiing at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine. In the early afternoon, when he was planning to go home, a fierce snowstorm swept into the area. Unable to see far, he accidentally turned off the path. Before he knew it, Nicholas was lost, all alone! He didn't have food, water, a phone, or other supplies. He was getting colder by the minute.

    Nicholas had no idea where he was. He tried not to panic. He thought about all of the survival shows he had watched on TV. It was time to put the tips he had learned to use.
    He decided to stop skiing. There was a better chance of someone finding him if he stayed put. The first thing he did was to find shelter from the freezing wind and snow. If he didn't, his body temperature would get very low, which could quickly kill him.
    Using his skis, Nicholas built a snow cave. He gathered a huge mass of snow and dug out a hole in the middle. Then he piled branches on top of himself, like a blanket, to stay as warm as he could.
    By that evening, Nicholas was really hungry. He ate snow and drank water from a nearby stream so that his body wouldn't lose too much water. Not knowing how much longer he could last, Nicholas did the only thing he could—he huddled(蜷缩) in his cave and slept.
    The next day, Nicholas went out to look for help, but he couldn't find anyone. He followed his tracks and returned to the snow cave, because without shelter, he could die that night. On Tuesday, Nicholas went out again to find help. He had walked for about a mile when a volunteer searcher found him. After two days stuck in the snow, Nicholas was saved.
    Nicholas might not have survived this snowstorm had it not been for TV. He had often watched Grylls' survival show Man vs. Wild. That's where he learned the tips that saved his life. In each episode(一期节目) of Man vs. Wild. Grylls is abandoned in a wild area and has to find his way out.
    When Grylls heard about Nicholas' amazing deeds, he was super impressed that Nicholas had made it since he knew better than anyone how hard Nicholas had to work to stay alive.