A study of more than five million books, both fiction and non-fiction, has found a marked decline in the use of emotional words over time. The researchers form the University of Bristol used Google Ngram Viewer, a facility for finding the frequency of terms in scanned books, to search for more than 600 particular words identified as representing anger, dislike, fear, joy, sadness and surprise.

    They found that almost all of the categories (类别) showed a drop in these “mood words” over time. Only in the category of fear was there an increase in usage.

    “It is a steady and continuous decrease,” said Dr Alberto Acerbi. He assumed that the result might be explained by a change in the position occupied by literature, in a crowded media landscape. “One thing could be that in parallel to books the 20th century saw the start of other media. Maybe these media—movies, radio, drama—had more emotional content than books.”

    Although both joy and sadness followed the general downwards trend, the research, published in the journal PLOS One, found that they also exhibited another interesting behaviour：the ratio (比率) between the two varied greatly, apparently mirroring historical events.

    During the Roaring Twenties the joy-to-sadness ratio reached a peak that would not occur again until before the recent financial crash. But the ratio plunged at the height of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the researchers held a reserved opinion about their claim that their result reflected wider social trends. In the paper, they even argue that the reverse could be true.

“It has been suggested, for example, that it was the suppression (压抑) of desire in ordinary Elizabethan English life that increased demand for writing ‘filled with romance and sex' perhaps,” they conclude, “songs and books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.”

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

    When my father was celebrating a milestone (里程碑) birthday, I pulled together a surprise gift that he would never forget.

    As he was approaching 60,1 had a firm idea: What if I could get the memories people had of him, put each one into an envelope - 60 in total - and have him open them, one by one, on his birthday? So I wrote an e-mail to family and friends, explaining my idea.

    I sent the e-mail and waited. And then the replies started coming in and I was very, very surprised. There were so many memories, and they were all so lovely. They came from the '50s, '60s, '70s, from every decade（十年） between now and the day my dad was born. They came from my mother, my siblings, my grandma, my dad's friends from high school, his sister, my dad's first boss, a colleague at his first job, from people who hadn't seen my dad in 40 years, from people I myself hadn't even informed. They typed them and handwrote them. They mailed them and e-mailed them.

    The night before Dad's birthday, my sister and 1 stayed up late, putting everything together with some

    The next morning, after breakfast and presents and cake, we gave the pile of envelopes to him. "Just one more thing for you," we said.

It took him a long time to open them and read. Each one was a brief ticket to another time, a leap (跳跃) backward over years and decades. There was a lot of laughter and a few tears, too.

    I was kind of sad when the project was over because it was great fun to collect these memories. It gave me a different picture of my dad.

    Last December, Doris Low turned 90. Once a week she still drives to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) in Toronto, where she helps transform literature into Braille(盲文) to bring the power of story and knowledge to the hears and minds of blind readers. She has been volunteering her time and talents to such enterprises foe more than 40 years.

    After working in the business world for a while, Low got fed up. So she turned to teaching at a technical school and later moved into the library.

    Low's mother liked reading. As her eyes began to fail, low read to her. Then “ hearing an advertisement encouraging people to learn Braille, I decided to give it a try.” In 1973, she was certified as a braille transcriber (转译者) and began transcribing books as a volunteer for the CNIB library.

The job was strenuous —she could get to the end of a page, make a mistake on the last line, and have to do the whole thing again. For a number of years, low also worked in the CNIB sound studio reading books onto tape. Three years ago, she took up proofreading (校对) at the CNIB's word factory.

    In April, during Volunteer Week, the CNIB recognized Low for her great contributions. Thanks to volunteers like Low, the CNIB library has got more than 80,000 accessible materials for people unable to read traditional print. “ I can't imagine how many readers of all ages have benefited from

Doris's contribution as a skilled volunteer through her rich voice and her high degree of accuracy in the hundreds of books she has brailled and proofread over the years— and she is still doing so,” said a CNIB official.

     “For me,” said Low, “the CNIB is more than just a place to volunteer. Three thins matter most in my life: a little play, a little work, a little love. I've found them all here.”

    When Jenny Brown, 10, developed bone cancer, her right leg below the knee was cut off to save her life. During the treatment, Jenny had a cat named Boogie, which seldom left her side as she got used to life with a prosthetic（义肢）leg. “My relationship with Boogie showed me animals think, feel, and suffer as we do,” says Jenny, now 44.

    In 1994, Jenny graduated from college and began her film career in television. She also volunteered for animal rights groups. In 2002, having learned about some shocking mistreatment of farm animals, she knew she needed to help them. A year later, Jenny gave up her job to work as an animal caregiver at Farm Sanctuary（农场动物庇护所）.

    The next year, she opened the Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization aiming to rescue farm animals and help them recover. It gives tours of the farm from April to October and asks for volunteers and support through www.woodstockfarm.sanctuary.org. The farm website describe the backstory and the character of each of the animals living there.

    In September, 2016, the sanctuary was moved to a new farm, which has an equipped kitchen, a dining hall and other buildings in High Falls, New York. The new place has allowed her team of 17 to host vegan（素食的）cooking classes and a kids' camp.

    “People love spending time with the animals.” says Jenny. “There's a magic that happens here.”

    What kind of house will you buy in the future? Would you like to live in a house where your plants can call your phone to tell you that they need to be watered? Or a house that helps you cut your energy bill by turning off the lights when you leave a room? It may sound like science fiction, but it already exists! Come and visit the Smart Home at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. It will show how you can live a green lifestyle by making use of advanced technology throughout the home that makes your life easier and simpler.

    The Smart Home uses green technology to record the energy it uses, including electricity, water and gas. The house's energy dashboard (仪表盘) lets you know your energy use through your television and computer. The house greets you with the new information when you walk in the door. It is able to record when you enter and leave rooms, and can switch the lights, television and music off                    .

    The Smart Home is made entirely of recyclable and renewable materials. The furniture is made from used light bulbs, plastic bottles and other renewable materials, but you can't tell from just looking at them. The kitchen countertops (工作台面) are made of recycled glass.

    The entire house is designed to control the use of energy. The roof of the Smart Home has a sustainable vegetable garden, which does little harm to nature. Even the personal computer is green: it uses less power than a 60-watt light bulb. The house can raise and lower the window shades by itself.

    The 82-year-old Frances Wood entered the Nazarene University two years ago. At that time, her husband of 59 years died, which left her a little lonely and sad. As a result, she started to study at university.

    Ms Wood said that she was the oldest student on campus, and was known as “Granny Franny”. The lady is just like a grandma away from home. The students wanted to vote Ms Wood as the homecoming queen, but the granny refused to accept the honor. So instead, the school honored her during half time at a football game by making her become the homecoming granny queen, the first award of its kindness ever given by the school. Ms Wood got a standing ovation(鼓掌) and was presented with flowers. To prove her popularity further, she had three male youths holding on her arm for the evening ceremony.

    Ms Wood took classes in finance, history and literature at university. She said after being widowed two years before, she needed something different to do. When she got to college, she said it was a little surreal being surrounded by the young ones. “I think this is unbelievable and dreamlike to do this,” she said.

    Eager to get into her little classmate circle, she handed out homemade business cards with her phone number and e-mail address, so that the students could reach out to her. The cards also featured a photo of her, saying “about 10 years ago”.