One of the most successful singers of the twentieth century, Ella Fitzgerald has made several different styles of her own. She was born in Virginia but was brought up in an orphanage in Yonkers, New York. Chick Webb spotted her in an amateur competition when she was sixteen. He engaged her to sing with his band and when he died in 1939, she took over.

    Unlike Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald taught herself the sentimental music so popular in the 1930's — songs like “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”— and her recordings became best-sellers. During the 1940's she developed her own “scat singing” — a breathless, nonsense—syllable style—for songs like “Flying Home” and “Lady Be Good.”

    Ella Fitzgerald was the perfect musical partner for her friend, the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, matching him in warmth and artistry. “I just like music, period,” she said. “To me, it's a story. There's only one thing better than singing…. It's more singing.”

    When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she struggled to find a place to sleep on the street. But she overcame these terrible setbacks to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry to Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, "Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story" shown in late April.

    Liz Murray, a 22.year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up in the shadow of two drug-addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just l5 years old. The effect of that LOSS became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died,she decided to do something about it.

    Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. ".What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,'' she wrote in her book Breaking Night.

    She admitted that she used envy to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that "next to nothing could hold me down".

    She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS."I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time."

    Liz wants moviegoers to come away with the idea that changing your life is "as simple as making a decision".

    I want to tell you the story of one of my old friends called Bob，His teachers called him A Troublemaker，They also said that he had no future and no hope. But now he owns a small second -hand bookstore store which makes him enough money to live on and also to support his mother.

    He told me that after he finished grade nine, he went to study at a technical college. He was a pretty bad student so he became one of the gang (一帮) leaders there. Many of them got caught many times for fighting.

    It looked like nothing could change his life. That was until one sad day when his father died. That changed everything.

    After his father died, his mother had to work very hard to make enough money to support the family. He told me that he really pitied his mum after his dad died. He felt that he needed to earn some money rather than let his mum work alone. He loved reading cartoon(卡通)books and had been collecting them for years. As his family was short of money, he decided that he should sell them. He did this by the side of the road where his mother was selling food.

    Soon he realized that his books were very popular. So he decided to set up his own business. He started his business by going around buying cartoon books from other people. He bought them for 25% and then sold them for half price. He could make enough money to help support the family.

    He was a troublemaker to his teachers but he is a hero to me. If you are judged as a bad student or as someone being stupid, I suggest you pay no attention to what they say. Just do your best in everything. Don't give up so easily. Believe in yourself. If you think that you can do it, then you can. Believe me, one day you could be more successful than those persons who looked down upon you.

    We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices (装置)well after they go out of style. That's bad news for the environment—and our wallets—as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.

    To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life—from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s.Devices were grouped by generation. Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992.Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997.And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.

    As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones.“The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house,” said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007.We're not just keeping these old devices—we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (排放)more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.

    So what's the solution (解决方案)?The team's data only went up to 2007,but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

    When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.

    Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It's a plant's way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbors react.

    Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

    In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

    Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to "overhear" the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn't a true, intentional back and forth.

    Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate (亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.

Looking back, the memory of doctors, nurses and the conclusion of appendicitis（阑尾炎） was still clear. 1 , nothing hurt more than three days with appendicitis. After a series of emergencies, I could merely lie 2 and beg my body to stop hurting.

All the 3 acquired from years of swimming was eaten away. Previously, I could swim miles daily. Now it was a（n） 4 to sit up and I couldn't swim for almost three months.

When I finally returned to the pool, I struggled with my 5 ability. Race after race, I 6 my goals. Every time I 7 to enter the national competitions, I failed by a tiny amount.

Finally, I came to the last event that could 8 me for nationals. This was my last 9 : now or never. After so many failures, I couldn't help being furious about recent events.

The race started, and I dived in, throwing the pain, 10 and anger I had experienced recently into the pool. My mind focused, self-limitation was 11 and I devoted all my attention and strength to my moves.

When I saw my time, a wave of 12 swept over me. I eventually 13 self-doubt and won what almost 14 from me. Nationals were waiting for me, and by no means would I let anything 15 my advancement.