Garbage or trash is a major kind of environmental pollution.Each person produces about 2kg of trash a day.We are making waste products faster than nature can break them down.And we are using up resources（资源）faster than they can be replaced（取代）.

    This adds up to trouble for the environment.Where does all that garbage go?What can be done to help dispose of（处理）garbage?How call we make less garbage?

    Garbage isn't just the smelly rotting fruits,vegetables or meat that we throw away in our homes.Those are only a small pan of all the stuff we throw away.We create other kinds of waste,in construction,mining and in our factories.

    Did you ever wonder what happens to your garbage?Most is burned or buried in landfills（垃圾填埋场）Less than a quarter of our waste is recycled.

    With a population of 1.3 billion（十亿）,garbage is a big problem for China.Chinese cities create around 148 million tons of garbage every year.The amount is growing at around 10 percent each year.

    Once we used about 3 billion plastic shopping bags every day in China.The result was a great waste of resources and serious pollution.So we did something about that.Now we use more cloth bags and shopping baskets when we shop.

    In the coming years China will build waste-to-energy plants in cities to clean up the garbage.But there's a lot more that needs to be done.And you can play a part.

    As our family are getting ready for the annual holiday of Thanksgiving, which is probably the most important holiday in the U.S because it's celebrated by people of all faiths. I think back to a cold November day more than twenty years ago. It was a day when my husband and I, married just about three months, got stuck on I -89 in Vermont when our car broke down.

    We had just visited my husband's parents in Vermont, and with a huge turkey they gave us slowly thawing (解冻）in the trunk of our old car, we were heading back to our apartment in Boston to celebrate our first Thanksgiving together. Our car broke down half an hour after we got on the highway. And it was raining. Back to then, not everyone had a cell phone, and in those days if you broke down along a lonely stretch of a highway far from the nearest emergency call box in cold November rain, it wasn't fun.

    Fortutiously for us, a van with a bunch of people coming back from a ski trip stopped andasked if we needed help. They gave us a ride to the nearest gas station, from where we could phone my father-in-law and asked him for help. My father-in-law arranged for :he car to be towed (拖引), and drove us all the way to Boston that day.

    So as we sit down to dinner and think of all the things we can be thankful for tonight, I want to say “thank you” to the strangers on I -89 some twenty years ago for giving a young couple a ride when their car with a frozen turkey in the trunk broke down.

    Never underestimate the difference you can make to the lives of others by one small act of kindness. Step forward, reach out and help. This week, reach to someone that might need a lift.

    Nowadays science has made great progress in every aspect and more and more really good inventions have changed our daily lives. However, the U.S. Patent Office has issued over 7.5 million patents (专利), and not all of them are quite so celebrated. Some good, some bad, and some crazy! The following lists some of the most unusual ideas that have come along.

    Snake Leash (皮带)

    In 2002, a patent was issued for a snake-walking leash. There are at least two major problems with this idea. 1) Dog leashes fit securely between the head and shoulders. A snake does not have shoulders; so it might slither (蜿蜒滑行) away. 2) Dogs are OK for public places because they are social animals, and people like them. Snakes are not OK for public places because they are not social, and some people are terrified of them.

    Stadium Helmet

    Americans are known for their love of sports. Unfortunately, good tickets to games are expensive, so some fans have to sit in the backward sections. This invention, patented in 2000, is designed for these fans. Featuring a built-in radio, binoculars (望远镜), a cooling fan, and a helmet for falling litter, this design transforms the stadium experience.

    Bacon Alarm Clock

    When you think about it, waking to the dreadful, blaring noise of an alarm clock is a terrible way to start the day. However, this clock could change that. You simply put a piece of frozen bacon in the alarm clock, set the alarm, and go to sleep. The clock gently wakes you up with the mouth watering smell of bacon the next morning, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of mom cooking breakfast. Who said there's no time to eat breakfast?

    Toilet Lock

    In 1969, a patent was issued for a really bad idea the toilet seat lock. First of all, fishing for your keys when you have to go seems very unpleasant. Then there is the possibility of losing the key altogether. What about guests? Just think that you would have to ask permission for the bathroom. Of course, there is the ultimate question: Why would you lock it in the first place?

    What is stereotype? It is commonly known as a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people, consisting of gender, age, occupation, etc.

    Gender stereotype refers to a judgment about someone according to their sex instead of believing in their ability. Men have been thought to be a leader, strong, aggressive and brave. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Age stereotype is that someone judges other people's behavior and appearance because of the age. Children are often described innocent, naughty. Then, young people are usually stereotyped impatient, rebellious and indulge in comfort. Adults are related to responsibility. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Because the old people are stereotyped weak and sick, not moving flexibly, which means to be a big trouble.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} A concept can easily be formed that star is a descent and charming job with a lot of fun and more opportunities to contact fashion and celebrity, to dress up, and to taste delicious food in high-class restaurants. But not all stars can have these wonderful experiences. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} They have to work on the other business to earn money under the pressure of life.

    Some view stereotype a good way to enable them to response to different things, judging if they are good or bad, as well as adapt into a new environment. However, some stereotypes are not quite consistent with the reality. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Society is developing every day, if we are always looking at it with stereotype, we will lose another side of it. Therefore, it is a good choice for us to deal with issues in wider perspective.

A. Women can also take charge of the nation and run their business.

B. There are more stereotypes about stars than other occupations.

C. Occupation stereotype also occurs in our minds.

D. So most people consider it easy to produce prejudice or misunderstandings.

E. Some stars' salary is lower than common white-collar workers.

F. But women are thought to be attached, weak, compromised and soft.

G. Nowadays, many adults are not willing to attend to their parents.

    As businesses and governments have struggled to understand the so-called millennials—born between roughly 1980 and 2000—one frequent conclusion has been that they have a unique love of cities. A deep-seated preference for night life and subways, the thinking goes, has driven the revitalization of urban cores across the U.S. over the last decade-plus.

    But there's mounting evidence that millennials' love of cities was a passing fling(放纵). Millennials don't love cities any more than previous generations.

    The latest argument comes from Dowell Myers, an urban planning professor at USC. As they age, says Myers, millennials' presence in cities, will "be evaporating(蒸发) through our fingers, if we don't make some plans now." That's because millennials' preference for cities will fade as they start families and become more established in their careers.

    It's about more than aging, though. Demographer William Frey has been arguing for years that millennials have become stuck in cities by the 2008 downturn and the following slow recovery, with poor job prospects and declining wages making it harder for them to afford to buy homes in suburbia.

    Myers, too, says observers have confused young people's presence in cities with a preference for cities. Survey data shows that more millennials would like to be living in the suburbs than actually are. But the normal career and family cycles moving young people from cities into suburban houses have become, in Myers' words, "a plugged up drain."

    But unemployment has finally returned to healthy lows (though participation rates and wages are still largely stagnant), which Myers says should finally increase mobility for millennials.

    Other trends among millennials, supposedly matters of lifestyle preference, have already turned out to have been driven mostly by economics. What was once deemed their broad preference for public transit may have always been a now-reversing inability to afford cars. Even decades-long trends towards marrying later have been accentuated as today's young people struggle for financial stability.

    Investors are already taking the idea that millennials will return to old behavior patterns seriously, putting more money into auto manufacturers and developers. But urban lifestyles, up to and including trendy bars, aren't just hip—they're a part of what powers a city's economic engines, bringing people together to explore new ideas, create companies, and build careers.

    From the 1960s to the 1990s, we saw that suburbanization(城市郊区化)also means an economic and social hollowing out for cities. Now that the economic shackles are coming off today's young city residents, cities that want to stay vibrant(充满生机的) have to figure out how to convince them—and their growing families—to stick around.

One of the tallest wooden buildings in Europe, a 98m timber mixture skyscraper, is to rise in Berlin.

The 29-storey WoHo Tower, to be designed by a firm of Norwegian architects, is intended to be a "light-house project" for low-carbon construction, towering over Potsdamer Platz and the Landwehr Canal.

Its core, including lifts and a staircase, is to be built around a steel-reinforced concrete structure but the rest of the building, including flats, offices, cafes and a kindergarten, will be fashioned down wooden beams and panels.

"As Norwegians, we are used to working a lot with timber," Nicolai Riise, CEO of the Mad Architects' Practice said.

"The thing about timber is that it demonstrates sustainability from top to bottom. The carbon footprint is close to zero and it's a fantastic material to build with. If you look at this in a broader way, it's one of the ways we are going to be able to beat the climate crisis."

Wooden skyscrapers, once regarded as an unprofitable pipe dream, have become a realistic prospect with the coming of cross-laminated building techniques and more flexible planning laws. Because these structures' parts are fit with care, they can be far lighter than their concrete equivalents and are thought to be relatively resistant to fire. A cubic meter of wood can also take an estimated ton of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Larger wooden structures are planned elsewhere. London is examining blueprints for the 300-meter Oakwood Tower. A project in Tokyo could rise to 350m.