阅读理解。

    Born on August 9,1963,New Jersey,Whitney Houston almost seemed bound to become a singer.Her mother Cissy Houston was the choir（唱诗班）minister at New Hope Baptist Church,and it was there that a young Whitney got her start.

    When she was 19,Whitney Houston was discovered in a nightclub by the famous Clive Davis of Arista Records. In 1983,Houston made her debut（首演）on national television.In 1985,she released her debut album Whitney Houston and almost immediately became a sensation.Over the next year,her hit singles Saving All My Love for You and How Will I Know helped the album reach the top of the charts,where it staved for fourteen weeks in a row. Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for Saving All My Love for You.

    By 1992,Whitney Houston was on top of the world,but her life was about to get very complicated very quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby Brown.At first the marriage was passionate and loving,but things turned sour as the decade progressed and both Brown and Houston battled drug abuse.

    In spite of these growing personal troubles,Whitney Houston continued to progress in her career,crossing over successfully into acting in 1992 by starring in The Bodyguard.Her single from the movie,I will Always Love You, proved to be Houston's biggest hit ever,spending a record-breaking fourteen weeks on top of the US charts.

    In the late 1990s and early 2000s,Whitney Houston's increasingly rocky marriage,struggles with drug and health problems threatened her career.Over the next few years,Houston attempted to break her drug habit and divorced Bobby Brown in 2007.

    After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life,Houston seemed to be pulling herself together.She released a new album,I Look to You,in 2009.The recording received a warm welcome from music fans.

    In early 2012,Houston worked on a new musical film Sparkle with Jordin Spark.Unfortunately,Houston didn't live long enough to see it.

    Whitney Houston died on February 11,2012,in Los Angeles.With her passing,the music world has lost one of its most outstanding stars.

    Most animals have little connection with animals of a different kind, unless they hunt them for food. Sometimes, however, two kinds of animals come together in a partnership (伙伴关系) which is good for both of them. You may have noticed some birds sitting on the backs of sheep. This is not because they want a ride, but because they find easy food in the parasites (寄生虫) on sheep. The sheep allow the birds to do so because they remove the cause of discomfort. So although they can manage without each other, they do better together.

    Sometimes an animal has a plant partner. The relationship develops until the two partners cannot manage without each other. This is so in the corals(珊瑚) of the sea. In their skins they have tiny plants which act as “dustmen”, taking some of the waste products from the coral and giving in return oxygen which the animal needs to breathe. If the plants are killed, or are even prevented from receiving light so that they cannot live normally, the corals will die.

How Women Were Freed From Their Homes

    As late as 1800, a woman's only place was in her home. Women in business were unheard of. No respectable woman would dream of entering what was strictly a “man's world”. Even if she would, what could she do? Men were sure that no woman could do a job well outside her home.  This was a widely-accepted idea. When the famous Bronte sisters began writing books in 1846, they had to resort to using men's names as aliases.

    Teaching was the first profession opened to women, soon after 1800. But even that was not easy for women to take because most high schools and colleges were open only to men. Oberlin College in Ohio was the first college in America to take in women.

    Nursing was regarded as a respectable profession for women only after Florence Nightingale won high credit for her nursing career and became famous. Miss Nightingale opened the first training school for nursing in 1860 in England.

    The invention of typewriters in 1867 helped to bring women out of their homes to join the business world. Because women are careful and have nimble fingers, businessmen found that they were well suited to this kind of work.

    By 1890, tens of thousands of women were working in schools, hospitals, shops, offices, and factories both in England and the States. Some even managed to become doctors or lawyers. The idea of women working in business and other circles was accepted. 

    One of the greatest contributions（投稿）to the first Oxford English Dictionary was also one of its most unusual. In 1879, Oxford University in England asked Prof. James Murray to serve as editor for what was to be the most ambitious dictionary in the history of the English language. It would include every English word possible and would give not only the definition but also the history of the word and quotations (引文) showing how it was used.

    This was a huge task. So Murray had to find volunteers from Britain, the United States, and the British colonies to search every newspaper, magazine, and book ever written in English. Hundreds of volunteers responded, including William Chester Minor. Dr. Minor was an American Surgeon（外科医生）who had served in the Civil War and was now living in England. He gave his address as “Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire,” 50 miles from Oxford.

    Minor joined the army of volunteers sending words and quotations to Murray. Over the next years, he became one of the staff's most valued contributors.

    But he was also a mystery. In spite of many invitations, he would always refuse to visit Oxford. So in 1897, Murray finally decided to travel to Crowthorne himself. When he arrived, he found Minor locked in a book-lined cell（囚室）at the Broadmoor Asylum（精神病院）for the Criminally insane.

    Murray and Minor became friends, sharing their love of words. Minor continued contributing to the dictionary, sending in more than 10,000 submissions in 20 years. Murray continued to visit Minor regularly, sometimes taking walks with him around the asylum grounds.

    In 1910, Minor left Broadmoor for an asylum in his native America. Murray was at the port to wave goodbye to his remarkable friend.

    Minor died in 1920, seven years before the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was completed. The 12 volumes defined 414,825 words, and thousands of them were contributions from a very scholarly and devoted asylum patient.

It's normal to long for the taste of potato chips or a cheese-covered pizza. Even though they're full of calories, eating them occasionally won't do much harm. However, according to the new numbers, young people are becoming more gluttonous. The BBC's Good Food Nation Survey showed that on average, 16 to 20-year-olds ate fast food at least twice a day in the UK. So what's behind this fast food binge (狂热)?

WebMD, an online publisher of news and information of human health and well-being, surveyed nearly 600 teenagers and adults in the United States. They found that the most common reason was our busy lifestyle. More than 92.3 percent of respondents said they were too busy to cook. Many find it challenging to balance work and life, and the convenience of fast food meets their needs. Fast food is readily available in corner stores and vending machines (自动售货机). Remember those instant noodle cups from the supermarket? They're ready in minutes, and you can store them at home for a long time.

But many people think this trend does no good. Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, told the BBC: "It's frightening that people, especially younger generations, are eating so much fast food loaded with fat, sugar and salt, but offers little nutritional value."

She added, "Especially high in calories, fast food leads to unhealthy weight gain — which in turn increases the risk of 11 cancers later in life."

So what is the right thing to do? Toule suggested that young people should prepare meals in advance and learn to include the different food groups in their diets.