Walking will be banned on escalators as part of a trail designed to reduce congestion(拥堵) at some of the country's busiest stations.

        In the first move of its kind, all travelers will be forced to stand on both sides of escalators on the London Underground as part of a plan to increase capacity(容量) at the height of the rush hour.

         A six-month trial will be introduced at Holborn station from mid-April, eliminating the rule of standing on the right and walking on the left. The move, imitating a similar structure in Far eastern cities such as Hong Kong, is designed to increase the number of people using long escalators at the busiest times. It could be expanded across the Tube network in coming years.

     According to London Underground, only 40percent of travelers walk the full length of long escalators, leaving the majority at the bottom as they wait to get on to the “standing “side.

       A three-week trial at Holborn last year found that the number of people using escalators at any time of could be raised by almost a third. Peter McNaught, operations director at London Underground, said: “It may not seem right that you can go quicker by standing still, but our experiments at Holborn have proved that it can be true. This new six-month trial will help us find out if we can influence customers to stand on both sides in the long term.”

      Holborn has one of the longest sets of escalators on the Underground network at 23.4high. Tube bosses claim that capacity was limited because so few people wanted to walk up—meaning only one side was used at all times. Research has shown that it is more effective use of escalators over 18.5 to ban walking.

      The previous trial found that escalators at the station normally carried 2,500people between 8:30 am and 9:30 am on a typical day, rising to 3,250 during the researching period.

      In the new trial, which will be launched from April 18, one of three “up” escalators will be standing only, with a second banning walking at peak times. A third will remain a mix of walking and standing.

(Note: Answering the questions or complete the statements in NO MORE THAN TEN WORDS.)

Parents Model Healthy Eating

    It should come as no surprise that the more stressed parents are at work, the greater the burden on their family is{#blank#}1{#/blank#} After all, the more time parents spend working, the less time and energy they have to plan and prepare healthful meals.

    For years, most studies have focused on the role of working mothers while fathers were ignored. They didn't look at the family as a whole{#blank#}2{#/blank#} adds a new wrinkle（褶皱）to the relationship between work stress and family nutrition.

    Mom's work related stress is still a central factor in low well families eat because they typically do most of the food shopping and cooking{#blank#}3{#/blank#} The study found that when mom or dad experience high levels of work related stress, their families are eating one-and-a-half fewer family meals per week, and the parents themselves report eating fewer fruits and vegetables, more fast food, and are less likely to eat breakfast regularly.

    It's worth nothing that the study looked mainly at low income families who belonged to ethnic（民族的）or minority groups{#blank#}4{#/blank#} But the implications are wide ranging.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Teaching kids, especially teenagers, to help with grocery shopping and to cook actual meals, instead of just putting a frozen pizza in the microwave, could be an important piece of the puzzle in helping families improves their eating habits.

A. And the role of fathers in particular

B. But dad's work related stress has a large impact, too.

C. Yet, the kids' stress may influence the families' nutrition, too.

D. So the findings don't necessarily apply directly to other types of families.

E. When it comes to family nutrition, the entire family plays a role even kids.

F. It's also probably not a surprise that this can negatively affect a family's nutrition.

G. It is parents who give their kids a good model to develop a good eating habit.

    When was the last time you read a book or a magazine article? Do your everyday reading habits centre around updates on the Internet? In case you are one of innumerable individuals who don't make a habit of reading consistently（持续的）you may be passing up a great opportunity: Reading has a remarkable number of advantages and only a couple of advantages of reading are recorded below.

    Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information and you never know when it might be useful to you. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to overcome any challenge you'll ever face. Additionally, here's a bit of food for thought: Should you ever find yourself in terrible circumstances, remember that although you might lose everything else—your job, your possessions, your money, even your health—knowledge can never be taken from you.

    At the same time, the more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they'll surely make their way into your everyday vocabulary. Being able to express your ideas clearly in words is of great help in any profession and knowing that you can speak to higher-ranking people with self-confidence can be a great encouragement to your self-esteem（自尊）. It could even aid in your career as those who are well-read, well-spoken, and knowledgeable on a variety of topics tend to get promotions more quickly (and more often) than those with smaller vocabularies and lack of awareness of literature, scientific advances, and global events. Reading books is also vital for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used in context, which will improve their own speaking and writing fluency.

    When you read a book, you have to remember a lot of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history as well as a variety of plots that weave their way through every story. That's a fair bit to remember, but brains are wonderful things and can remember these things with relative ease. Amazingly enough, whenever you remember something new, new synapses（神经元的突触）are formed and existing ones are strengthened. How cool that is!

    No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away（溜走）when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other realms（领域）while an interesting article will distract you and keep you in the present moment, letting tensions drain away and allowing you to relax.

注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。

When a thought has found words

    Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure and modern poets are looked upon as odd creatures from a strange universe. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered old-fashioned and not relevant to the needs of today's students.

    In China, however, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum and, with recent changes announced by the Ministry of Education, the number of poems students will have to memorize and recite is being increased from fourteen to seventy-two. Now, before you gasp in horror, let's think about the reasons why studying so many poems, especially ancient poems, is important.

    First of all, poetry is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. It is a pathway to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and emotions that are common to everyone but which we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those emotions into words and bring us self-understanding.

    Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something commonplace can become beautiful. Here is a poem called "Fog" by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes / on silent haunches (弓腰蹲着) / and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and mysteriously like a cat, and Sandberg captures that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.

    Of course, to really appreciate poetry, it has to be really aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poetry, especially Western poetry, was actually spoken before it was written. Take Homer's Iliad (伊利亚德), the story of the Trojan War (特洛伊战争), for example. That epic saga (史诗般的故事) of Helen's kidnapping and the war that followed was apparently told for hundreds of years in palaces, taverns (客栈) and on street corners before Homer wrote it down and was given credit for it.

    The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." And poems are very concise—there is not a wasted word. You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

Yellow Robot deliver snacks to your home

    A robot makes its way back to a supermarket after making a delivery during a demonstration in Beijing.

    Along a street on the outer edges of Beijing, a yellow and black cube about the size of a small washing machine moves leisurely to its destination. This “little yellow horse” is a delivery robot, transporting daily essentials like drinks, fruit and snacks from the local store to the residents. Equipped with GPS system, cameras and radar, the robot is seen by its creator as the future of logistics(物流) in China.

    “The weak point is that it can't deliver directly to the door like a human.” said one customer, who does not live on the ground floor. “But it is still quite practical. The robot delivers relatively quickly.”

    The robot takes off for Chinese customers' love of cashless payments and smartphone shopping. China is the world's biggest online shopping market with more than half of its population making at least one smartphone purchase per month, according to professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Whether buying electronics, toilet paper or clothes, Chinese customers are used to simply tapping a button on their smartphone and getting a home delivery.

    To get a delivery via the “little yellow horse”, customers select the desired products, tap in the address and pay via their phone. Then, the supermarket staff place the items in the robot.

    Liu Zhiyong, founder and CEO of Zhen Robotics, which manufactures the robot, sees a bright future for his creation. “At the moment, there are 100 million packages delivered every day in China. It will be one billion in the future,” Liu said. “ There will not be enough humans to make the deliveries. We need more and more robots to fill this gap and reduce costs.” These costs are especially high in the last kilometer of a delivery.

Dear James,

    It is a beautiful day here and I am sitting under the big tree at the end of the garden. I have just returned from a long bike ride to an old castle. It seems amazing that at my age I am still fit enough to cycle 20 kilometres in an afternoon. It's my birthday in two weeks' time and I'll be 82 years old! I think my long and active life must be due to the healthy life I live.

    This brings me to the real reason for my letter, my dear grandson. Your mother tells me that you started smoking some time ago and now your are finding it difficult to give it up. Believe me, I know how easy it is to begin smoking and how tough it is to stop. You see, during adolescence I also smoked and became addicted to cigarettes.

    By the way, did you know that this is because you become addicted in three different ways? First, you can become physically addicted to nicotine（尼古丁）, which is one of the hundreds of chemical in cigarettes. This means that after a while your body becomes accustomed to having nicotine in it. So when the drug leaves your body, you get withdrawal symptoms. Secondly, you become addicted through habit. As you know, if you do the same thing over and over again, you begin to do it automatically. Lastly, you can become mentally addicted. I believed I was happier and more relaxed after having a cigarette, so I began to think that I could only feel good when I smoked. Quitting smoking was really difficult because I was addicted in all three ways. But I did finally manage.

    When I was young, I didn't know much about the harmful effects of smoking. I didn't know, for example, that it could do terrible damage to your heart and lungs or that it was more difficult for smoking couples to become pregnant. Neither did I know that my cigarette smoke could affect the health of non-smokers. However, what I did know was that my girlfriend thought I smelt terrible. She told me that she wouldn't go out with me again unless I stopped! I also noticed that I became breathless quickly, and that I wasn't enjoying sport as much. When I was taken off the school football team because I was unfit, I knew it was time to quit smoking.

    I am sending you some advice I found on the internet. It might help you to stop and strengthen your resolve. I do hope so because I want you to live as long and healthy a life as I have.

Love from

Grandpa