“Write All About It”

Centerville High School Essay Contest

Rules

1). Students are asked to hand in essays of 500 to 700 words of their own work. Any essay containing material copied from another source will be disqualified.

2). Manuscripts should be typed double-spaced, with the student's name, address, and grade level on a separate sheet of paper.

3). Essays must be turned in by 4:00 P.M. on November 30. They can be brought to Mrs. Elton in Room 104 or to Mr. Markham in the school library.

Essay-Writing Tips

1). Catch your reader's interest—Your opening should immediately pull your reader into your essay. Asking a question or starting with a story, or surprising statement are some good ways to do this.

2). Create a picture—Use active words that show your reader what is happening. Instead of telling your reader that “the room was disordered,” paint a picture using active verbs and lively adjectives.

3). Have a purpose—Well-written essays do more than just describe an event or express a viewpoint; they also communicate a message.

4). Check for mistakes—Read your paper over to check for mistakes. Ask another student to read your paper. Another pair of eyes will often spot a mistake you have missed.

5). Format your essay—Neatly type your essay on white paper. Choose an attractive cover for handing in. The computer lab will be open after school from 3:15 to 4:45 P.M. each day this month so that students can use the computers.

Prizes

Winning essays will be published in the Centerville Times. Everyone who takes part in it will also receive a free pass to enter one school activity this year.

First Prize: $50 savings bond

Second Prize: Dictionary and reference book

Third Prize: Pen set and journal

Special thanks to the Centerville Writers' Association for the prizes to help encourage our aspiring authors. Good luck to all contestants.

    Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn't much—a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed –the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out.

    Her name was Rosalind Franklin.” She should have been up there,” says historian（历史学家） Mary Bowden.” If her photos hadn't been there, the others couldn't have come up with the structure.” One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars（学者）doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors

    At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA's parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King's College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule(分子). The rays produced patterns reflection the shape.

    But Wilkins and Franklin's relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project.

    What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, “Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to to go or be put in her place.”

    As Franklin's competitors, Wilkins, Watson  and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that  “Franklin was only two steps away  from the solution.”

    No, Franklin was the solution. “She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer,” Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the “Dark Lady of DNA”, Franklin is finally coming into the light.

    Some educators told us that more years of school could help students get higher scores on intelligence tests. That was a finding of a study of teenage males in some countries. Now, another research shows that physical activity may help students do better in their classes.

    The research comes as educators in some countries are reducing time for activities like physical education. They are using the time instead for academic（学术的）subjects like math and reading. The studies appeared between 2008 and 2014. They included more than 55, 000 children, aged 6 to 18.

    Amika Singh:“ According to the results of our study, we can conclude that being physically active is beneficial for academic performance. There are, first, Physiological explanations, like more blood flow, and so more oxygen to the brain. Being physically active means there are more hormones(荷尔蒙)produced like endorphins(内啡肽). And endorphins make your stress level lower and your mood improved, which means you also perform better.”

    Also, students taking part in organized sports learn rules and how to follow them. This could improve their classroom behavior and help them keep their mind on their work.

    The study leaves some questions unanswered, however. Ms. Stash says it is not possible to say whether the amount or kind of activity affected the level of academic improvement. This is because of differences among the studies.

    The researchers said they found only two high-quality studies. They needed more high-quality studies to confirm (证实) their findings. They also pointed out that “results for other parts of the world may be quite different.”

    Still，the general finding was that physically active kids are more likely to do better in school. Ms. Singh says schools should consider that finding before they cut physical education programs. Her paper on “Physical Activity and Performance at School” is published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

    Once upon a time there were two friends who lived in a palace and worked in the service of the king. One of the two boys knew a girl he liked so much that he wanted to give her a present.

    One day, when he was walking with his friend in the main palace hall, he saw a big vase filled with the most beautiful flowers. He decided to take one to give to the girl, thinking that no one would see him do so except his friend. He did the same thing the next day, and the next, and the next... until, one day, the king noticed how few flowers were left in the vase. He was so angry that he called everyone in the palace to come together in the hall.

    When they were all before the king, the boy thought he should say it was he who had taken the flowers. However, his friend told him to be quiet, because the king would be terribly angry with him. The boy was filled with fear, but when the king came near, he decided to confess.

    As soon as the boy said that he had done it, the king went red with anger, but on hearing what the boy had done with the flowers, a smile appeared on the king's face, and he said, “I couldn't have thought of a better use for my flowers.”

    And from that day, the boy and the king became great friends. They went to the vase and took two of those wonderful flowers, one for the girl, and the other for the queen.

    Entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and Space X, Eldon Musk may have a little more time on his hands, as he's leaving his position on the board of the Open Al, according to a blog post.

    The departure is likely the result of Tesla's moving into the field of Artificial Intelligence(AI)，which he said in 2017 would be the “best in the world”and would even be able to “predict your destination, ”Musk will continue to “donate and advise the organization,” Open AI said in a blog post on Feb. 20, adding that “As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will avoid a potential future conflict for Eldon.

    Musk and Y Combiner CEO Sam Altman co-founded the nonprofit enterprise in December2015, its mission is to develop safe artificial general intelligence and ensure those developments are made public. Open AI researchers published a paper on the site ArXiv, org, detailing the possible secure threats that come with“malicious”AI. In fact, Musk has heard the “evil AI”alarm several times, On Aug.11，2017, he warned that artificial intelligence poses a bigger threat to humanity, and he told a gathering of state governors that the government needs to regulate Al before robots start “killing people. ”

    Musk's departure from the Open AI board could mean big things for Tesla. As Eton Goodbye, a financial reporter, noted on Futurism, the move “could signal that Tesla is more deeply committed to their own AI projects than we thought. ”He added, “Those who have had their ears to any rumors (谣言)that Tesla is ready to deliver vehicles capable of Level 5autonomy could take this new Open Al development as a sign that the company is inching closer to that unapproachable goal, ”No company has reached that level of autonomy, which means that a driverless car could navigate any road under any conditions and that all the human “driver” would need to do is to input a destination.

    One of the questions surrounding climate change is how it might affect the food supply for a growing global population. A new study suggests that researchers have been overlooking how two key human responses to climate—how much land people choose to farm, and the number of crops they plant—will affect food production in the future. The new study focused on the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, an emerging（新兴的）global breadbasket（产粮地区）that as of 2013 supplied 10 percent of the world's soybeans. The researchers used variations in temperature and precipitation（降水）across the state over an eight-year period to estimate the sensitivity of the region's agricultural production to climate change. Those historical comparisons can help in making predictions about the sensitivity of agriculture to future climate change.

    The study found that, if the patterns from 2002 to 2008 hold in the future, an increase in average temperature in Mato Grosso of just 1 degree will lead to a 9 to 13 percent reduction in overall production of soy and corn. “This is worrisome given that the temperature in the study region is predicted to rise by 2 degrees by 2050,” said Avery Cohn, who led the study.

    Most studies of this kind look only at the extent to which climate shocks affect crop output. But researchers can miss critical dynamics（动力）that can affect overall output, says Leah VanWey, one of the study's senior authors. “If you look at output alone, you're not looking at all of the information because there are economic and social changes going on as well,” said VanWey.

    If output decreases, farmers may put less land area into production because it's not profitable. Farmers may also vary the number of crops they plant in a growing season. Double cropping is common in Mato Grosso. But if the weather is bad, farmers may change their decision to plant a second crop.