When I was a baby, I entertained you and made you laugh. Whenever I was “bad”, you'd shake your finger at me and ask, “How could you?”--but then you'd give up, and roll me over for a belly scratch and I believed that life could not be any more perfect.

    My housetraining was a long process, because you were terribly busy, but we worked on that together. We went for long walks, runs in the park and car rides. We stopped for ice cream. I took long naps in the sun waiting for you to come home at the end of the day.

    Gradually, you began spending more time at work and on your career, and more time searching for a human mate. Eventually, you fell in love. She, now your wife, is not a dog person, but I still welcomed her into our home. I was happy because you were happy. Then the human babies came along and I shared your excitement, I was fascinated by their pinkness, how they smelled, and I wanted to mother them too. Your wife was afraid I would bite them. But nevertheless, as they began to grow, I became their friend.

    Now, you have a new job in another city and you and they will be moving to an apartment that does not allow pets. You've made the right decision for your “family”, but there was a time when I was your only family.

    I was excited about the car ride until we arrived at the dog pound. It smelled of dogs and cats, of fear, of hopelessness. You filled out the paperwork and said, “I know you will find a good home for her.” They shrugged and gave you a pained look. The children were in tears as they waved me goodbye. And “How could you?” were the only three words that swept over my mind.

    Is it better to live with hope or without hope? At first, whenever anyone passed my pen (围栏), I rushed to the front, hoping it was you, that you had changed your mind and that this was all a bad dream.

    My beloved master, I will think of you and wait for you forever. I hope you receive more faithfulness from your family than you showed to me.

    I was very disappointed not to be able to go to the concert last Friday. The advertisement in the paper said you could buy tickets at the theatre box any day between 10:00 and 4:00. Since I work from 9:00 to 5:30, the only time I could go to the theatre was during my 45-minute lunch break. Unfortunately, the theatre is on the other side of the town, and the bus service between my office and the theatre is not good. But if you are lucky, you can make the round trip in 45 minutes. Last Monday, I stood at the bus stop for 15 minutes. By the time I saw one come, there was not enough time left to make the trip. So I gave up and went back to the office. The same thing happened on Tuesday, and again next day. On Thursday, my luck changed. I got on a bus right away and arrived at the theatre in 20 minutes. When I got there, however, I found a long line at the box office, and I heard one man say he had been waiting for over an hour. Realizing I would not have enough time to wait in line, I caught the next bus and headed back. By Friday I realized my only hope was to make the trip by taxi. It was expensive, but it would be worth it to hear the concert. The trip by taxi only took 10 minutes, but felt like an hour to me. When I got to the theatre, I was relieved to see that nobody was waiting in line. The reason, however, I quickly discovered, was that they had already sold all the tickets.

    Rapid advances in a new technology will soon transform science fiction into reality — meaning people will have driverless cars, small robots at their command and the ability to experience being in another place without leaving home, predicted Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet's largest cell phone trade show.

    Introduction of books available online, Internet translation of languages and voice recognition for computers all happened much faster than anyone could foresee and that technological research into even more previously unheard of advances is progressing at a fast speed.

    “People who predict that holograms（全息图）and self-driving cars will become reality soon are absolutely right,” Schmidt told thousands of attendees. Research under way will lead to situations where people can put themselves at events like a rock concert so that they can see, hear and even feel the event. And turn down the volume, if it's too loud.

    One attendee said she was scared that the possibility could be dehumanizing, but Schmidt replied by holding up his cell phone into the air. “It has an off button and it is here on the right,” Schmidt said. “My point is that it is all about your control. If you don't like my version of a rock concert, I'm not forcing you to go.” In the future, small robots could be used so busy people can send them to events for video and voice transmissions when their presence isn't required, Schmidt said.

    Technology in the near future will redefine the relationship among people in the world. “With technology comes power and with power comes choice, and smarter resourceful citizens are going to demand a better deal for their new life,” Schmidt said.

    Homesick is a compound word made up of HOME and SICK. You know what each word means on its own, of course. But think about what the words mean when they are used together. Homesick means SICK FOR HOME.

    Now think for a minute about SEASICK. If you change the word home in the definition(释义)to the word sea, would the definition fit SEASICK? Seasick means SICK BY THE MOVEMENT ON THE SEA. When you are homesick, the only place you want to be is at home. When you are seasick, the last place you want to be is at sea.

    Have you ever heard of a person being heartsick? Heartsick doesn't mean that something is wrong with a person's heart, people are heartsick when they are hurt deep inside and when they feel as if their hearts are broken.

    But, on the other hand, we have such compound words as handshake, handstand, and handbag. Perhaps you may write definitions for them.

    A company in San Francisco, California, has found a way to turn used plastic bottles into women's shoes.

    Every day, millions of Americans drink water and other liquids from plastic bottles. More than 60 million of them are thrown away each day. Many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills or are burned with other waste products.

    A San Francisco start-up company called Rothy's, however, turns this plastic waste into environmentally friendly shoes. Roth Martin is the company's co-founder. He explains how they turn plastic into soft material for women's feet. They take the plastic, clean it, and break it down into small pieces. Then they press them through a device that makes soft fibers. Those fibers arc then combined together. This is done by a 3D machine. It is designed to reduce waste while making the shoes. The knitted stuff and the inner part of the shoe arc then attached to the shoe's outer part, called the sole (鞋底).This outer sole is also made from environmentally friendly material: responsibly responsibly sourced no-carbon rubber.

    Rolhy's shoes are sold online. They are flat shoes, with either a rounded or pointed toe. They come in different colors and designs. They cost either $ 125 or $ 145 per pair, depending on the design. After American actress Gwyneth Paltrow discovered them last year, the demand for the shoes grew. Martin says there is no shortage of material to fill that demand. "We're not going to run out of water bottles any time soon. So we have a limitless supply of material, and I think that is a good sign for our future." When the environmentally friendly shoes wear out, customers can return them at no cost to a company that uses the recycled material to make other products.

    For now, the shoes are only available to be shipped in the United States. However, the company says it will add international shipping in the near future.

    Hotshot jet pilots are no match for cliff swallows. The birds rocket over bridges and skim over lakes, rushing forward at accelerations that would knock an Air Force. By tracking these contests with high-speed cameras, a new study gives the first, in-depth peek into avian aerodynamics (鸟类空气力学) in the wild. "The findings may even provide insight into how to design better micro air vehicles-tiny drones. This technology will be brilliantly useful," says biomechanics expert Jim Usherwood of the United Kingdom's Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield. "High-resolution field studies like this have never been done before for birds."

    For cliff swallows, the trouble starts when they return from wintering in South America to their summer homes in North America. After arrival, they seek out their old mud nests—usually located under concrete bridges and freeways-and start rebuilding their homes. But rather than hunt down a fresh supply of mud, some swallows prefer stealing supplies from their more hardworking neighbors. Others take things further and will even lay an egg or two in their neighbor's nest before taking off.

    Battles in the air follow if the invaders are caught in the act, and a new study takes advantage of these fights to learn how birds perform high-speed maneuvers (演习). The team placed three cameras along a North Carolina lake crossed by a highway bridge that houses several cliff swallow nests and waited for the battles to commence.

The team was surprised to learn that most of the time, chasers copied the move of fleeing invaders. Swallows also pull very hard turns to escape an enemy, with one extreme case reaching 7.8 gravity. Fighter pilots usually pass out at about 5 or 6 gravity, which is why these experiments have earned interest, and partial funding, from the Office of Naval Research. The Navy may use the findings to build better guidance systems for micro air vehicles. However, the swallows' biomechanics are complex, and now the team is simply trying to collect a few tricks.