Thirteen can be a challenging age. Not only did I have to adapt to my changing body, I also had to deal with my parents' bitter divorce, a new family and the upsetting move from my country home to a crowed town.

    When we moved, my beloved companion (伙伴), a small brown horse, had to be sold. I was heartbroken and terribly lonely. I couldn't eat or sleep and cried all the time. Finally, realizing how much I missed my horse, my father bought me another horse, Cowboy.

Cowboy was without doubt the ugliest horse in the world. But I didn't care. I love him beyond all reasons.

    I joined a riding club. When Cowboy and I entered the events where the horse was judged by the appearance, we were quickly “shown the gate”. I knew nothing could turn Cowboy into a beauty. My only chance to compete would be in the timed speed events. I chose the jumping race.

    For the whole next month we practiced running and jumping for hours in the hot sun and then I would walk Cowboy home, totally exhausted.

    All of our hard work didn't make me feel confident by the time the show came. One girl named Becky rode a big brown horse in the race events. She always won the blue ribbons (丝带). I sat at the gate and sweated all out while I watched Becky and her horse charge through the court and finish in first place.

    My turn finally came. At the signal, we dashed (猛冲) towards the first fence, jumped over it without trouble and raced on to the next one. Cowboy then flew over the second, third and fourth fences like a bird and I turned him towards the finish line.

    No cheers filled the air. The end of our run was met with surprised silence. Cowboy and I had beaten Becky and her fancy horse by two seconds.

    I gained much more than a blue ribbon that day. At thirteen, I realized that no matter what the chances would be, I'd always be a winner if I wanted something badly enough and worked for it. I can be the owner of my fate.

    Drinking more than two alcoholic drinks daily in middle-age may raise your stroke(中风) risk more than traditional factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes（糖尿病）, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.

    In a study of 11,644 middle-aged Swedish twins who were followed for 43 years, researchers compared the effects of an average of more than two drinks daily ("heavy drinking") to less than half a drink daily ("light drinking").

The study showed that:

·Heavy drinkers had about a 34 percent higher risk of stroke compared to light drinkers.

·Mid-life heavy drinkers (in their 50s and 60s) were likely to have a stroke five years earlier in life irrespective of genetic and early-life factors.

·Heavy drinkers had increased stroke risk in their mid-life compared to well-known risk factors like high blood pressure and diabetes.

·At around age 75, blood pressure and diabetes appeared to take over as one of the main influences on having a stroke.

Past studies have shown that alcohol affects stroke risk, but this is the first study to pinpoint differences with age. "We now have a clearer picture about these risk factors—-how they change with age and how the influence of drinking alcohol shifts as we get older," said Pavla Kadlecová, M.Sc., a statistician at St. Anne's University Hospital's International Clinical Research Center in the Czech Republic.

    Researchers analyzed results from the Swedish Twin Registry of same-sex twins who answered questionnaires in 1967-1970. All twins were under age 60 at the start. By 2010, the Registry had provided 43 years of follow-up, including hospital discharge(出院) and cause of death data.

    Researchers then sorted(整理) the data based on strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes and other cardiovascular (心血管)incidents. Almost 30 percent of participants had a stroke. They were categorized(将……分类) as light, moderate, heavy or non-drinkers based on the questionnaires. Researchers compared the risk from drinking and health risks like high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking. Among identical twin pairs, siblings(兄弟姐妹) who had a stroke drank more than their siblings who hadn't had a stroke, suggesting that mid-life drinking raises stroke risks regardless of genetics and early lifestyle.

    The study is consistent (一致)with the American Heart Association's recommended limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women. That's about 8 ounces of wine for a man and 4 ounces for a woman.

    Regular heavy drinking of any kind of alcohol can raise blood pressure and cause heart failure or irregular heartbeats over time, in addition to stroke and other risks. "For mid-aged adults, avoiding more than two drinks a day could be a way to prevent stroke in later productive age ," Kadlecová said.

    It's generally believed that people act the way they do because of their personalities and attitudes. They recycle their garbage because they care about the environment. They pay $5 for a caramel brulee latte because they like expensive coffee drinks.

    It's undeniable that behavior comes from our inner dispositions（性情）,but in many instances we also draw inferences about who we are,as suggested by the social psychologist Daryl Bern,by observing our own behavior.We can be strangers to ourselves.If we knew our own minds,why would we need to guess what our preferences are from our behavior?If our minds were an open book,we would know exactly how much we care about the environment or like lattes.Actually,we often need to look to our behavior to figure out who we are.

    Moreover,we don't just use our behavior to learn about our particular types of character—we infer characters that weren't there before.Our behavior is often shaped by little pressures around us,which we fail to recognize.Maybe we recycle because our wives and neighbors would disapprove if we didn't.Maybe we buy lattes in order to impress the people around us.We should not mistakenly believe that we always behave as a result of some inner disposition.

    Whatever pressures there can be or inferences one can make,people become what they do,though it may not be in compliance（符合）with their true desires.Therefore,we should all bear in mind Kurt Vonnegut's advice:"We are what we pretend to be,so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

    At the beginning of the century there was a big farm called Hollywood Ranch. It was near Los Angeles in California. A few years later Hollywood was one of the famous places of the world. From 1910s to the 1950s Hollywood was the film center of the world. Every family knew the names of its film stars Charlie Chaplin, Grete Garbo, Bergman and hundreds more.

    The reason why people went to Hollywood to make films was the sun. At first people made films in New York on the east coast of the United States. But then they heard about Los Angeles where there are 350 days of sun every year. As they made all the films by sunlight, the west coast was a much better place to work.

    Also near Hollywood you can find mountains and sea and desert. They did not have to travel far to make any kind of film.

    When TV became popular in the 1960s, Hollywood started making films for television. Then in 1970s they discovered people still went to cinema to see big expensive films. After twenty years they are still making films in Hollywood and people watch them all over the world.

    You're probably used to the regular upgrades in our cell-phone networks. There was 2G, which came along in 199l, replaced with 3G in 2001, followed by 4G in 2009. Now we're hearing about the coming of 5G.

    But 5G is a much bigger leap than before. 5G, of course, is much faster than 4G in the real world and a 5G phone in a 5G city will enjoy Internet speeds between 9 and 20 times as fast. The arrival of 5G also means enormous leaps forward in capacity－so much that every cell-phone plan will offer cheap, truly unlimited Internet access. "The consequences of that are huge," says Sherif Hanna, Qualcomm's director of 5G marketing. For example, apps will no longer degrade (降低) your video quality or postpone downloading when you're out of Wi-Fi range. In fact, you'll probably prefer to do your downloads when you're on cellular (使用流量) because 5G will be much faster than whatever service you've got at home or work.

    "However, not everyone is excited by the 5G development. The new standard gets its speed partly by using existing transmission(传输) frequencies more efficiently and partly by using the millimeter wave range. That's a big, juicy line of radio frequencies that are currently underused because millimeter wave is really hard to use," Hanna says.

    These frequencies are much higher than anything we've used for the cellular, which means they can offer unbelievable speed－but at the cost of range. Millimeter wave cellular towers have to be about 500 feet apart. Cell carriers not only will have to upgrade all their cell transceivers (called small cells) but will install(安装) a lot more of them as well.

    That's why the millimeter wave flavor of 5G, the superfast coverage, will be available only in densely populated cities such as New York and San Francisco. In suburban and rural areas, 5G will bring a speedup of "only" nine times faster.

Steven Stein likes to follow garbage trucks. His strange habit makes sense when you consider that he's an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including things that fall off garbage trucks as they drive down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein's jobs is defending an industry behind the plastic shopping bags.

Americans use more than 100 billion thin film plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities do not allow them at checkouts(收银台). The bags are prohibited in some 90 cities in California, including Los Angeles. Eyeing these headwinds, plastic-bag makers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume.

Among the bag makers' argument: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.

The industry has also taken aim at the product that has appeared as its replacement: reusable shopping bags. The stronger a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. However, longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make. One study found that a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times to be better for the planet than plastic.

Environmentalists don't dispute (质疑) these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years.