Mrs Smith trembled(颤抖)with excitement when she was told her fortunes(命运). "Somebody is coming home to you, " Mrs Gray said slowly. "He's carrying a rifle(步枪)on his back and he's almost there."

    Mrs Smith felt as if she could hardly breathe. "And there he is!"Mrs Gray cried, pointing to the road. They all rushed to the door to look.

    A man in a blue coat, with a gun on his back, was walking down the road toward the Smith farm. His face was hidden by a large pack on his back.

    Laughing and crying, Mrs Smith grabbed(抓住)her hat and her children and ran out of Mrs Gray's house. She hurried down the road after him, calling his name and pulling her children along with her. But the soldier was too far away for her voice to reach him.

    When she got back to their farm, she saw the man standing by the fence. He was looking at the little house and the field of yellow wheat. The sun was almost touching the hills in the west. The cowbells rang softly as the animals moved toward the barn(畜棚).

    "How peaceful it all is, "Private Smith thought." How far away from the battles, the hospitals, the wounded and the dead. My little farm in Wisconsin. How could I have left it for those years of killing and suffering?"

    Mrs Smith hurried up to her husband. Her feet made no sound on the grass, but he turned suddenly to face her. For the rest of his life, he would never forget her face at that moment.

    "Emma!" he cried.

    The children stood back watching their mother kissing this strange man. He saw them, and kneeling down, he pulled from his pack three huge red apples. In a moment, all three children were in their father's arms. Together, the family entered the little unpainted farmhouse.

    Later that evening, after supper, Smith and his wife went outside. The moon was bright, above the eastern hills. Sweet, peaceful stars filled the sky as the night birds sang softly.

    His farm needed work. His children needed clothing. He was no longer young and strong. But he began to plan for next year. With the same courage he had faced the war, Private Smith faced his difficult future.

    Welcome to your handy pricing guide

    This leaflet gives you the prices for Royal Mails UK and International services and Parcelforce Worldwide UK services — whether your item is to the UK or abroad, urgent or you simply want a standard service. To obey national and international regulations governing the carriage of mail, and ensure that mail in transport does not present a danger to the general public, we restrict or ban certain items from our network.

    If you want to find out more about our parcel and letter services, please take a look at the 'our services' booklet for more detailed information. Alternatively, you can find out more by visiting www.royalmail.com or by calling Customer Services on 03457740740. If you are deaf or hearing impaired, we offer a Textphone service on 03456000606.

    We can video chat with astronauts aboard the International Space Station and watch live footage from the frozen heights of Everest. But communicating with a submarine (潜艇）or a diver is not so easy. The lack of practical methods for sharing data between underwater and airborne devices has long been a frustration for scientists. The difficulty stems from the fact that radio signals work perfectly in air travel but poorly in water. Sonar (声呐）signals used by underwater sensors reflect off the surface of the water rather than reaching the air.

    Now, researchers at MIT have developed a method with the potential to revolutionize underwater communication. "What we've shown is that it's actually feasible to communicate from underwater to the air," says Fadel Adib, a professor at MJT's Media Lab, who led the research.

    The MIT researchers designed a system that uses an underwater machine to send sonar signals to the surface, making vibrations (震动)corresponding to the ls and Os of the data. A surface receiver then reads and decodes these tiny vibrations. The researchers call the system TARF. It has any number of potential real-world uses, Adib says. It could be used to find downed planes underwater by reading signals from sonar devices in a plane's black box and it could allow submarines to communicate with the surface.

    Right now the technology is low-resolution. The initial study was conducted in the MIT swimming pool at maximum depths of around 11 or 12 feet. The next steps for the researchers are to see if TARF is workable at much greater depths and under varying conditions—high waves, storms, schools of fish. They also want to see if they can make the technology work in the other direction— air to water.

    If the technology proves successful in real-world conditions, expect "texting while diving" to be the latest underwater fashion.

    I travel a lot, and I find out different "styles"(风格）of directions every time I ask "How can I get to the post office?"

    Foreign tourists(游客) are often confused(困惑)in Japan because most streets there don't have names; in Japan, people use landmarks(地标)in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, "Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop."

    In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, "Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile."

    People in Los Angeles , California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure(度量) distance in time, not miles. "How far away is the post office?" you ask. "Oh," they answer, "it' is about five minutes from here." You say, "Yes, but how many miles away is it ?"They don't know.

    It's true that a person doesn't know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, "Sorry, I have no idea." But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers "I don't know." People in Yucatan believe that "I don't know" is impolite. They usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!

Beijing is the capital city of China. It {#blank#}1{#/blank#} (cover) an area of around 17, 000 square kilometers, in which there are different kinds of bird habitats (栖息地), {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (include) grassland, scrubland (灌木丛林地), wetland, and also agricultural land. Researchers call these areas "service stations," where migrating (迁徙) birds stop {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (rest) and feed. But the birds ‘"service stations" re {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (rapid) closing in Beijing, as the city considers scrubland, grassland and old agricultural land to be "dirty" and "ugly". 

The loss of grassland and scrubland is already having a major influence {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Beijing's bird life. In the north of Beijing, the land around Miyun used to be visited by thousands of cranes (鹤). Now, much of that land is covered with man-made forest and {#blank#}6{#/blank#} number of cranes there has greatly fallen. 

"Cranes are rare and valuable animals in China. At Miyun, a festival {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (hold) to celebrate the migration of cranes every year," one researcher, Townshend, says. "Because it is Beijing, we can attract many people—both local people {#blank#}8{#/blank#} visitors."

"More cooperation (合作) between {#blank#}9{#/blank#} (country) is needed," Townshend adds. "Migratory birds are a shared natural heritage (遗产), and with this comes a common {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (responsible) to protect them and the places they need," he says.

Art galleries are places in which artists can display all types of works of art, including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, etc. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} At the same time, however, each artwork must be protected from exposure to too much light since that can cause works to fade and therefore get ruined. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

The most common form of lighting used to light up the artwork is indoor spotlights on tracks attached to the ceiling near where the work is being displayed. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. It permits the lights to be moved more easily when the light patterns require adjusting. Recessed(嵌入的) lights in walls and ceilings can be useful so long as they are not fixed in place but can instead be easily moved to create ideal light patterns. Most art gallery directors state that a combination of tracked and recessed light equipment is ideal because the tracked lights focus directly on the artwork while the recessed lights are used in the nearby walls to provide a surrounding light source. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

How to angle the lights depends upon the height of the ceiling and the size of the artwork. Caution must be taken to avoid creating too many areas with shadows or to have the lights cause a glare on the artwork. Besides, the lights should not be bare bulbs(电灯泡) burning directly on the artwork but should be made in some way to make the lighting softer. According to experts, low voltage(电压) bulbs are the best to use when lighting artworks. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. Thus artworks should be placed in a room where sunlight cannot directly hit them.

A. It can make the displays attractive.

B. Using tracked lighting is beneficial.

C. Light plays a key role in art galleries.

D. This light source can better improve the mood surrounding the work.

E. To better improve their appearance, the display area needs to be well lit.

F. Finding a happy medium between not enough light and too much of it requires considerable skill and experience.

G. Above all, natural light should be avoided since direct sunlight will damage artworks, particularly paintings, over time.