A man came home from work and found his three children outside， still in their pajamas(睡衣) playing in the mud，with empty food boxes and wrappers thrown all around the front yard.

    The door of his wife's car was open，as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.

    Walking into the entry，he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring(大声播放)a cartoon channel，and the family room was thrown with toys and various items of clothing.

    In the kitchen，dishes filled the sink，breakfast food was spilled on the counter，the fridge door was open wide， dog food was spilled on the floor，a broken glass lay under the table，and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.

    He quickly headed up the stairs，stepping over toys and more piles of clothes，looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill，or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small drop of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he looked inside he found wet towels， soap and more toys thrown over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap(堆) and toothpaste had been put over the mirror and walls.

    As he rushed to the bedroom， he found his wife still sleeping in the bed in her pajamas，reading a novel. She looked up at him，smiled，and asked how his day went. He looked at her puzzled and asked， “What happened here today？”

    She again smiled and answered，“You know every day when you come home from work and ask me what in the world I did today？”

    “Yes，” was his reply.

    She answered，“Well，today I didn't do it.”

    Science textbooks around the world have become suddenly out of date. Four new chemical elements(元素)have been added to the periodic table. A big decision now lies ahead-elements 113,115,117 and 118 need to be given their official names and symbols.

    New elements can be named after a mythical(神话的) concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property(性质) or a scientist. The names have to be unique and maintain “historical and chemical consistency”. This means a lot of “-iums”.

    “They're Latinising the name,” explains chemist Andrea Sella. “The most recent tradition is to name them after places or people.” The places chosen tend to be where the element was discovered or first produced.

    No one has yet named an element after themselves but many elements are named in honour of important scientists. Albert Einstein was given einsteinium. This can also be a way of righting the wrongs of the past. “Lise Meitner was really the chemist who spotted nuclear fission(核裂变)but she was never really recognised for it because she was Jewish and a woman, ” says Sella. “Giving an element a name that reminds us of her is greatly important. ”

    The naming process isn't quick. The scientists who discovered them will start things off by suggesting a name. But it will be down to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) to approve it. A special division of the US-based group has to accept the suggestion. Then there is a public review period of five months before the IUPAC gets the final approval. Once it's ready, the name is announced in the scientific journal Pure and Applied Chemistry.

    Naming an element is not just about functionality. Names are always important.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    A city child's summer is spent in the street in front of his home, and all through the long summer vacations I sat on the edge of the street and watched enviously the other boys on the block play baseball. I was never asked to take part even when one team had a member missing—not out of special cruelty, but because they took it for granted I would be no good at it. They were right, of course.

    I would never forget the wonderful evening when something changed. The baseball ended about eight or eight thirty when it grew dark. Then it was the custom of the boys to retire to a little stoop(门廊) that stuck out from the candy store on the corner and that somehow had become theirs. No grownup ever sat there or attempted to. There the boys would sit, mostly talking about the games played during the day and of the game to be played tomorrow. Then long silences would fall and the boys would wander off one by one. It was just after one of those long silences that my life as an outsider changed. I can no longer remember which boy it was that summer evening who broke the silence with a question: but whoever he was, I nod to him gratefully now. “What's in those books you're always reading?” he asked casually. “Stories,” I answered. “What kind?” asked somebody else without much interest.

    Nor do I know what drove me to behave as I did,for usually I just sat there in silence, glad enough to be allowed to reain among them; but instead of answering his question, I told them for two hours the story I was reading at the moment. The book was Sister Carrie. They listened bug-eyed and breathless. I must have told it well, but I think there was another and deeper reason that made them to keep an audience. Listening to a tale being told in the dark is one of the most ancient of man's entertainments, but I was offering them as well, without being aware of doing it, a new and exciting experience.

    The books they themselves read were the Rover Boys or Tom Swift or G.A.Henty. I had read them too, but at thirteen I had long since left them behind. Since I was much alone I had become an enthusiastic reader and I had gone through the books-for-boys series. In those days there was no reading material between children's and grownups'books or I could find none. I had gone right fromTome Swift and His Flying Machine to Theodore Dreiser and Sister Carrie. Dreiser had hit my young mind, and they listened to me tell the story with some of the wonder that I had had in reading it.

    The next night and many nights thereafter, a kind of unspoken ritual (仪式) took place. As it grew dark, I would take my place in the center of the stoop and begin the evening's tale. Some nights, in order to taste my victory more completely, I cheated. I would stop at the most exciting part of a story by Jack London or Bret Harte, and without warning tell them that that was as far as I had gone in the book and it would have to be continued the following evening. It was not true, of course; but I had to make certain of my new-found power and position. I enjoyed the long summer evenings until school began in the fall. Other words of mine have been listened to by larger and more fashionable audiences, but for that tough and athletic one that sat close on the stoop outside the candy store, I have an unreasoning love that will last forever.

    One Sunday, my son asked me if he could ride up to his elementary school on his bike and meet his friend. He wanted both of them to ride back to our house so they could play video games and jump on the trampoline (蹦床). I have to admit, part of me wanted to say no. We could go to pick him up or his parents could bring him over here. I thought. But my son is eleven years old now. And after all, I do let him ride his bike to school. But I also drive my daughter to school and I can see him on the way, making sure he is getting there safely.

    My husband thinks I am overprotective. I don't dare to let my children walk anywhere without one of us going along. As you go out of our neighborhood, there is a shopping center across the street. My son always asks if he can ride his bike or walk over to the drugstore by himself. But crossing that street is just too dangerous. The cars fly around the comer like they're driving in a car race. What if he gets hurt? What if some teenager bullies are hanging out in the parking lot? I want so much to give my children the freedom that I enjoyed having when I was growing up but I hesitate to do so, because there are dangers around every comer. Too many kidnap, too many robberies and so on.

    I honestly don't think my mom worried about such things when her children were young. Growing lip in the 1970s was indeed very different. I never wore a helmet (头盔) when I rode a bike. We were all over the neighborhood, on our bikes and on foot, coming home for dinner and then-back out again until dark. We rode in the back of the truck and didn't wear seat belts. I walked to and from school every day.

    People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

    Rachael Jack from University of Glasgow, said that rather than scanning evenly across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

    "We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, while Easterners favor the eyes and ignore the mouth."

    According to Jack and his colleagues, the discovery shows that communication of human emotions is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used reliably to convey emotions in cross­cultural situations.

    The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the facial movements of 13 Western people and 13 Eastern people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, or angry. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

    It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggests that while Westerners use the whole face to convey emotions, Easterners use the eyes more and the mouth less."

    In short, the data shows that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotions. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotions. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

    Ms. O'grady, the head of Britains Trades Union Congress, issued a challenge on September 10th. "We can win a four-day working week, "she told members. The demand is far from new. Shorter working weeks have been tried in New Zealand and Sweden, wherein happier, healthier and more motivated employees. Those who work shorter weeks are also reported to be more productive. Should weekends, therefore, be lengthened?

    France's experience suggests workers may not leap at the chance of working for fewer hours. The government reduced the full-time workers week to 35 hours in 2000. Last year the French worked 38.9 hours a week on average, seeming happy to labor above the required level and pocket the extra pay or holiday allowance.

    And businesses may not seize the opportunity either. Working less may be linked to higher productivity (on a per-hour basis), but overall output could still fall because of the smaller number of hours worked. That will not get governments or employers excited.

    Advocates of a four-day week could claim that improving people's quality of life is more important than boosting the economy. In an essay published during The Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote of an "age of leisure and abundance" in which technological advances would allow people to work 15-hour week.

    Unfortunately for any readers working hard on a Friday afternoon, Keynes jumped at his conclusion too soon. Even Ms. O'grady, now demanding a longer weekend, is pessimistic in her timescale. A four-day week is apparently achievable “in this century”.