A rainforest is an area covered by tall trees with the total high rainfall spreading quite equally through the year and the temperature rarely dipping below 16℃. Rainforests have a great effect on the world environment because they can take in heat from the sun and adjust the climate. Without the forest cover，these areas would reflect more heat into the atmosphere, warming the rest of the world. Losing the rainforests may also influence wind and rainfall patterns，potentially causing certain natural disasters all over the world.

    In the past hundred years，humans have begun destroying rainforests in search of three major resources（资源）: land for crops，wood for paper and other products，land for raising farm animals. This action affects the environment as a whole. For example，a lot of carbon dioxide（二氧化碳）in the air comes from burning the rainforests. People obviously have a need for the resources we gain from cutting trees but we will suffer much more than we will benefit.

    There are two main reasons for this. Firstly，when people cut down trees，generally they can only use the land for a year or two. Secondly，cutting large sections of rainforests may provide a good supply of wood right now，but in the long run it actually reduces the world's wood supply.

    Rainforests are often called the world's drug store. More than 25％ of the medicines we use today come from plants in rainforests. However，fewer than 1％of rainforest plants have been examined for their medical value. It is extremely likely that our best chance to cure diseases lies somewhere in the world's shrinking (萎缩的) rainforests.

    When I was eight, I saw a movie about an island that had an erupting volcano and jungles filled with wild animals. The island was ruled by a beautiful woman called Tondalaya, the Fire Goddess of the Volcano. It was a low-budget(小成本) movie, but to me, it represented the perfect life. But through the years, Tondalaya was forgotten.

    The week I turned 50, my marriage came to a sudden end. My house, furniture and everything I'd owned was sold to pay debts that I didn't even know existed. In a week I had lost my husband, my home and my parents who had refused to accept a divorce (离婚) in the family. I'd lost everything except my four teenage children. I used every penny I had to buy five plane tickets from Missouri to Hawaii. Everyone said I was crazy to think I could just run off to an island and survive. I was afraid they were right.

    I worked 18 hours a day and lost 30 pounds because I lived on one meal a day. One night as I walked alone on the beach, I saw the red orange lava (火山岩) pouring out of Kilauea Volcano in the distance. It was time to live my imagination!

    The next day, I quit my job, bought some art supplies and began doing what I loved. I hadn't painted a picture in 15 years. I wondered if I could still paint. My hands trembled the first time I picked up a brush. But before an hour had passed, I was lost in the colors spreading across the canvas (画布) in front of me. And as soon as I started believing in myself, other people started believing in me, too. The first painting sold for $1,500.

    The past six years have been filled with adventures. My children and I have gone swimming with dolphins, watched whales and hiked around the crater rim (火山口边缘) of the volcano. We wake up every morning with the ocean in front of us and the volcano behind us. The dream I had more than 40 years is now reality. I'm living freely and happily ever after.

    In the world today, all of the people need recreation(消遣). We cannot work all the time if we are going to keep healthy and enjoy life.

    Everyone has his own way of relaxing. Perhaps the most popular form is to take part in sports. There are team sports, such as basketball and football. There are also individual(个人的) sports, such as swimming and running. Skating and mountain climbing are the most popular recreation for people who like to be outdoor. Not everyone who enjoys sports likes to take part in them. Many people like watching them on TV or listening to them on the radio. So many people like some forms of recreation, such as watching TV, singing and dancing. It doesn't matter whether we like indoor recreation or take part in outdoor sports. It is important for everyone to relax from time to time and enjoy some forms of recreation.

    Is any economist so dull as to criticize Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries(奇思遐想)as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made.

    Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like--he tries to guess her preferences, as economists say--and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is not easy; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought if they had spent the money themselves.

    Interested in this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought to estimate the difference in dollar terms. In a study, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid(by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the sentimental value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.

    In addition, recipients may not know their own preferences very well. Some of the best gifts, after all, are unexpected items that you would never have thought of buying, but which turn out to be especially well picked. And preferences can change. So by giving a jazz CD, for example, the giver may be encouraging the recipient to enjoy something that was ignored before. This, a desire to build skills, is possibly the hope held by many parents who ignore their children's desires for video games and buy them books instead.

    Finally, there are items that a recipient would like to receive but not purchase. If someone else buys them, however, they can be enjoyed guilt-free. This might explain the volume of chocolate that changes over the holidays. Thus, the lesson for gift-givers is that you should try hard to guess the preference of each person on your list and then choose a gift that will have high sentimental value.

Hong Kong Science Museum

    You might really like the Science Museum if you are interested in science. The Museum wants to teach kids science. It gives them a place to have fun with the equipment there. However, adults can learn some science too.

    The Museum has 6,500 square metres. There are over 500 exhibits, and nearly 70 percent of them are suitable for visitors of all ages. Since its opening in April 1991, the Hong Kong Science Museum has proven itself to be a good place for learning science. Through having better exhibits and fun science programs in an enjoyable environment, the Museum wants to popularize science to the public and the support science education in schools. Visitors at the Science Museum can visit the exhibition in their own way and enjoy the fun of discovery learning.

    If you want to have a visit, you'd better read the information carefully.

    When hospital staff are in full scrubs (手术衣), their faces are almost completely covered by their caps and face masks, and we can only see their eyes and eyebrows. In order to solve the problem, a doctor in Sydney, Australia, called Rob Hackett launched a campaign named "Theatre (手术室) Cap Challenge"-encourage hospital staffs to write their' names and roles on their caps. At first, his colleagues didn't take it seriously. However, with time going on, it has been adopted around the world with studies from the US and UK reporting how this simple idea can decrease human errors in healthcare.

    "I went to a theatre where there were about 20 doctors and nurses in the room," Dr. Rob Hackett said. "I struggled to even ask to be passed some gloves because the person I was pointing to thought I was pointing to the person behind them, because I don't know their names." said Rob. As we all know, doctors are a stressful profession. When faced with life and death, they need to save the patient's life for a second. At the moment, effective communications are important.

    "The 'Theatre Cap Challenge' is in response to concerns about how easily avoidable mistakes and poor communication are contributing to rising harmful events for our patients." said Rob. "We need to develop systems which reduce mistakes and misunderstanding without causing harm. For this to happen, we need to let everyone know we're human." he added On the other hand, from the patients' viewpoint, caps with names on them can make patients more unworried. When everyone appears the same, it is extremely difficult to distinguish who is who. Knowing them relaxed.