阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

    You may not know a lot of people when you start high school. Even if you know some new students, you still feel nervous that you don't know any upperclassmen (高年级学生) and teachers. How are you going to make friends among this sea of unknown faces?

    Most high schools welcome new students before school actually starts. These are helpful not only because you learn your way around the buildings and get to meet some of your teachers, but also because you get to meet new students. That way, when you show up on your first day of school, you may already recognize a few familiar faces.

    When you talk to people, you'll probably find that a lot of them are feeling just like you. They're all new to the school and don't know what to expect. Talking about a common concern with your classmates can help you develop friendships.

    The work in high school is something freshmen are probably worried about. The work in high school builds on what you learned in middle school, giving you a more advanced knowledge of many subjects. So you may find you have more work to do or that it's a bit more challenging (有挑战性的). If you ever find your work too difficult, teachers can give you extra help.

    High school also has more activities after class than middle school, such as clubs, music and theater groups and sports teams. This is a good time to explore your interests and try new things.

    Middle school taught you the basics of academics, time management, and social skills while providing you with a little extra support and guidance. High school gives you the chance to learn how to be more independent (独立的) and responsible (有责任的).

    Many experts say that Billy Wilder changed the history of American movies. He is often called the best movie maker Hollywood has ever had, known for making movies that offered sharp social comment.

    Between the 1930s and the 1980s, Billy Wilder made almost fifty movies. During that time he received more than twenty nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He won six of the Oscar awards. His movies have been seen by people around the world, like “Sunset Boulevard”, “Some Like It Hot”, “The Lost Weekend”, “The Apartment”, and “The Seven Year Itch”.

    Samuel Wilder was born in 1906 in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. His mother had enjoyed spending several years in the United States when she was young. So she called him Billy because she thought it sounded American. Billy Wilder started law school in Vienna, Austria. Then he decided not to become a lawyer. Instead, he began reporting for a Vienna newspaper. By the 1920s, he was writing movies in Germany.

    However, the Nazis had risen to power in the nation. Wilder was Jewish, and he recognized that he had no future in Nazi Germany. In 1933, he went to Paris. There he directed a movie for the first time. It was called “The Bad Seed”. Then he received word that producers in the United States had accepted one of his scripts. Billy Wilder left Europe for America.

    Billy Wilder had only eleven dollars when he arrived to settle in the United States in 1934. He decided to live in the center of American movie making, Hollywood, California. Then he formed a writing team with Charles Brackett. The two writers created many successful films together. Wilder always praised this man as a friend and teacher whose humor and expert direction greatly influenced his work.

    In his love stories, Billy Wilder did not follow the Hollywood tradition of sweet boy-meets-girl situations. He had an unusual way of showing relations between men and women. Wilder died in March, 2002. A current Hollywood producer said: “Billy Wilder made movies that people will never forget.”

    Wetlands are ecosystems found in low, flat areas. Often they border ponds, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Wetlands include marshes, swamps, and bogs.

    No trees grow in a marsh, but there are lots of grassy plants. Ducks, turtles, and many different bugs (虫子) live there, too. Florida has the world's biggest freshwater marsh. The Everglades covers 4,000 square miles. The Everglades is not entirely fresh water, however. Near the sea the fresh water and salt water mix. Some plants and animals can live only in this brackish water.

    Saltwater marshes lie along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. During high tide these marshes are under water. During low tide these marshes can be seen. The water rushes out, carrying bits of plants, dead animals, and minerals necessary for sea animals. Many plants and animals depend upon this ever-changing environment.

    Swamps are forested wetlands. Like marshes, they are often found near rivers or lakes and have mineral soil that drain very slowly. Unlike marshes, they have trees and bushes. Swamps have trees that grow with their roots underwater. But the trees will die if their roots stay underwater too long. Animals such as water snakes and frogs live in swamps.

    Bogs have damp, soft soil. So many dead plants have piled up that there is no longer any standing water. This rotting plant matter turns into peat (泥炭). In Ireland and Scotland peat is dried and burned to heat homes. Bog soil is useful for growing wild rice. Lots of insects live there.

    Most people do not find wetlands beautiful. But wetlands are important. Marshes and swamps store water, thus reducing the flooding a heavy rain can cause. About one-third of all of America's endangered plants and animals live in wetlands. Now laws protect some wetlands. More than a dozen wetlands in the US are refuges (保护区) and wildlife preserves.

    Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three graduate students at Brown University in Providence built a company around sleep deprivation(睡眠不足).

    Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business and engineering schools. They began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest a night.

    The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time people spend in the most restorative(有恢复作用的) stages of the sleep cycle: REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing? Five years of research, 20 employees, $14 million and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.

    Their company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass, launched its product in June, 2009. The Zeo device uses a headband with tiny sensors(传感器) that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states-REM, light, deep and waking sleep. The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes you as you're not in REM sleep. In the morning you can upload the data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. Most of the feedback(反馈) comes in the form of Zeo's ZQ score showing how well you've slept.

    “Zeo allows people to unlock this black box of sleep,” says Dave Dickinson, a health-care CEO.

    Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 P.M.

    For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson also plans to spread it to countries such as Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches US levels.

    The siesta competition took place in a supermarket, with plenty of shoppers, screaming babies, talking voices, and footsteps to take the competitors' attention away from their after lunch sleeps.

    Five bright blue sofas were laid out, and five competitors at a time were allowed to take a 20-minute sleep. A doctor measured their pulse to time how long they actually spent on asleep. Competitors earned extra points for snoring (打鼾), sleeping in strange positions, or wearing silly pajamas (睡衣). The winners of each round advance to the next stage in the competition.

    It's amazing that any of those people would fall asleep in the middle of such a busy place, while on couches that they are not used to. Yet, many of them did. They hugged pillows or soft toy bears. They covered their eyes with sleep masks, too. Whatever it took to help them fall asleep fast and stay asleep.

    The siesta is a tradition in Spain that many feel is becoming forgotten. It used to be that people would take a brief nap after lunch every day. This would energize them, and keep them going for the rest of the day. Not to mention the health benefits of a good nap. But, that's all changing. People are too busy making money or watching gossip shows on TV after lunch to care about taking a nap.

    The National Association of Friends of the Siesta wants to bring Spain back to their traditional roots. They are doing this by having the siesta competition. They set up the competition to reward the best sleepers with money. Actually, they were paid to sleep.

    There are really health benefits to a midday nap. We could all learn from this tradition. It's a much better way to get more energy than drinking a cup of coffee. It is also believed that a nap, and in fact a good night's sleep, can help reduce heart disease. The more rested we are, the less stress we feel with day-to-day life.

    Of the several films Hirokazu has made about childhood and children, this one is the most modest, but no less pleasing for its delicate style and small setting. I Wish was originally called Miracle, and the change is for the better. The two-word title makes you want to know who's wishing for what, while the single word sounds plain and self-praising. This wise and funny film works small miracles in describing such a moment when kids turn from the wishfulness of childhood into shaping the world for themselves.

    The sweetly reflective hero, a sixth-grader named Koichi, starts out by wishing for a volcano to erupt. Not just any volcano, but the one that towers above his town, smoking heavily and giving off ash. An eruption would lead to a withdrawing, which would lead, at least in his mind, to a reunion with his father and kid brother, who've been living in Hakata while Koichi lives with his mother and retired grandparents in Kagoshima. The volcano, knowing nothing of this, refuses to erupt, but Koichi hears of another approach to realizing the desired miracle.

    One of the pleasures of I Wish is watching how kids behave—how Koichi attacks his dinner, for example. Another pleasure is rediscovering how kids think. These kids can be logical and ever so tricky. But children's thought processes can also be fancy. A boy wishes he could play baseball like one of baseball stars, who eats curry for breakfast; so he, too, starts eating curry for breakfast, instead of practicing on the field. Another boy tries to wish his dead dog, Marble, back to life. And what does Koichi finally wish for? I wish you'd see this delightful film to find out.