It may not come as a surprise but the world as a whole is getting richer. Some people have more disposable(可支配的) income to spend on luxuries such as holidays, cars, TVs and smartphones. Recent data has shown that the number of people living in extreme poverty(贫穷) has halved in recent decades. So should we celebrate the fact that more of us now have a better standard of living?

    Maybe not. Whilst the gap between rich and poor in some countries is narrowing, there is still a lot of inequality in other places-some people have a lot of money and opportunities and others don't. A recent report by Oxfam and Credit Suisse revealed how divided many of us are when it comes to wealth. A lot of the money in the world is in the hands of very few people. In fact, 48% of global wealth is owned by the richest 1% of the population.

    But some countries are attempting to reduce this inequality and make the poor, less poor. According to David Bryer from Oxfam, Brazil has been taking "some really sensible measures-measures around having more progressive(逐步发展的) tax, around investing in a higher minimum wage and investing in central public services." Having a higher minimum wage, can help people eat better and seek a better education. And more people with more money buy more things-and factories can produce more. In turn, a factory which produces more will need more workers. So, more jobs are created.

    Other wealthy individuals are doing their bit to help reduce inequality. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, earned a lot of money from his company but when he retired, he and his wife Melinda, created a foundation to help the poor. He thinks that rich people should, of course, pay their taxes but he also advises that they should all "look at taking their wealth and being philanthropic, both in their own country and to help the global poorest."

    Bill Gates feels that giving money to help poor people is "fulfilling". But if other super-rich people don't want to experience this fulfilment then, according to Oxfam, very soon the wealthiest 1% will soon own more money than the rest of the world's population.

    Fear and its companion pain are two of the most useful things that man and animals possess if they are used. If fire didn't hurt when it burned, children would play with it until their hands were burned away. Similarly, if pain existed but fear didn't, a child could burn itself again and again because fear would not warn it to keep away from the fire that had burnt it before. A really fearless soldier--and some do exist--is not a good soldier because he is soon killed; and a dead soldier is of no use to his army. Fear and pain are therefore two guards without which man and animals might soon die out.

    In our first sentence we suggested that fear ought to be properly used. If, for example, you never go out of your house because of the danger of being knocked down and killed in the street by a car, you are letting fear rule you too much. The important thing is not to let fear rule you, but instead, to use fear as your servant and guide. Fear will warn you of dangers; then you have to decide what action to take.

    In many cases, you can take quick and successful action to avoid the danger. For example, you see a car coming straight towards you; fear warns you, you jump out of the way, and all is well.

    In some cases, however, you decide that there is nothing that you can do to avoid the danger. For example, you cannot prevent an airplane crashing into your house, and you may not want to go and live in a desert where there are no airplanes. In this case, fear has given you its warning, you have examined it and decided on your course of action, so fear of the particular danger is no longer of any use to you, and you have to try to overcome it.

    It was a warm April day when a big fat envelope came in the mail from the only college I had ever imagined attending. I tore open the packet. My eyes were fixed on the word “congratulations”. I don't remember ever smiling so wide.

    Then I looked at my financial(财政的) package.

    The cost of Dream School's tuition(学费), room and board was around ＄40,000 ? An impossible sum! How could I afford to attend? What good reasons did I have to go there when three other fine colleges were offering me free tuition? My other choices were good, solid schools even if they weren't as famous as my first choice.

    In my mind, attending my dream university would be the only way to realize my dream of becoming a world-class writer. My parents understood how I felt. They told me that even though it would be a financial problem, I could go wherever I would be happiest. But as I was always careful with money, I wasn't sure what to do.

    One of the schools that offered me a full ride had an informational dinner one night in the spring. Considering my parents' financial difficulties, I decided to drive the 45 minutes and attend. At first, all I had planned to do was smile politely, eat free food, listen quietly. But I surprised myself.

    At dinner the president of the university talked about the wonderful activities on campus (校园) including guest lectures and social gatherings. He also made it perfectly clear that free food would be offered at all future events. He continued with explanations of professors, class sizes, activities, and sporting events on campus. As he spoke, I began to realize that this school, though not as good as my first choice, might be the best one for me. It seemed small yet with many great programs. It seemed challenging yet caring.

    As the president ended his speech, we clapped politely and pushed back our chairs. As I walked out of that door, a feeling of comfort washed over me. Looking at the campus that night, I realized that I would be spending the next four years right there.

    In all honesty, my university is not as well-known as my “dream” university. However, it turned out to be the right choice of schools for me.

    Two hundred years ago the English poet William Wordsworth wrote "I wander'd Lonely as a Cloud", a poem that expresses a basic spirit of early English Romanticism.

    What makes this poem an example of Romantic thinking? It isn't just that Wordsworth chooses to write about natural scene：it is the way he describes the scene as if it had human emotions. For him, nature is not only a neutral (无感情色彩的) mixture of scenery, colours, plants, rocks, soil, water and air. It is a living force that feels joy and sadness, shares human pain and even tries to educate us human beings by showing us the beauty of life.

    Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage, is now one of the most popular destinations in the Lake District. You can go on a tour of the garden which William planted with wild flowers and which survived in his backyard even after they disappeared from the area "He always said that if he hadn't been a poet, he would have been a wonderful scenery gardener," says Allan King of the Wordsworth Trust.

    The place near Ullswater, where Wordsworth saw the daffodils(水仙花), is at the southernmost end of the lake. The lake is wide and calm at this turning point. There's a bay where the trees have had their soil eroded(侵蚀)by lake water so that their roots are shockingly exposed. You walk along from tree to tree, hardly daring to breathe, because you are walking in the footprints of William from two centuries ago. The first group of daffodils appear, but they aren't tall yellow trumpets(小号状的花)proudly swinging in the gentle wind. They're tiny wild daffodils, most of them still green and unopened, in groups of six or seven. They're grouped around individual trees rather than collecting together.

    But as you look north, from beside a huge ancient oak, you realize this is what delighted Wordsworth: group after group of the things, spread out to left and right but coming together in your sight so that they form a beautiful, pale-yellow carpet. What you're seeing at last is nature transformed by human sight and imagination.

    A food chain is a simple way of explaining how each living thing gets its food. For example, a simple African food chain might consist of three parts: first, trees and bushes; second, giraffes; and third, lions. Each link in a food chain is food for the next link. Food chains always start with plants and end with animals.

    Plants are at the bottom of the food chain. Scientists call them producers, because they use light energy from the sun to produce food from carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis（光合作用）. Animals, unlike plants, can't produce their own food. Instead, they must eat plants or other animals. This is why scientists call them consumers.

    Consumer animals fall into three categories. Herbivores（食草动物）eat only plants. Carnivores（食肉动物） eat only other animals. Omnivores eat both plants and animals. In addition to producers and consumers, there are also decomposers(分解者).These organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, feed on decaying(腐烂) matter. They help the food chain by speeding up the decaying process that releases minerals back into the soil to be absorbed by plants as nutrients.

    Most food chains have only four or five links in them. As you go up a food chain, the amount of energy at each level diminishes, because some of the energy is lost in the form of waste or is used up by the organism at the level. That is why it takes many plants, for example, to feed a few giraffes who in turn feed one lion.

    Most animals are part of many different food chains, because they must eat more than one type of food to satisfy their energy needs. All of these interconnected food chains form a more complex structure called a food web. Humans, for example, are at the center of a very complex food web, because we tend to eat many different types of plants and animals.

    Angus, Doris, Gabriel and Kamil are some of the 21 names that have been chosen to be given to storms in the UK in the 2016/17 season.

    The Met Office, the UK's national weather service, decided to give storms boys' and girls' names in 2015 in the same way as they did in America.

    The Met Office hopes that naming big storms will mean people are more aware (意识到) of them and how dangerous they can be. Derrick Ryall, from the Met Office, said, "We have seen how naming storms elsewhere in the world raises people's awareness of storms before they break."

    In the past, the same UK storm could be given different names by different organisations. "We noticed that many organisations during the last couple of winters, when we have had bad storms, started giving names to them. Think back to the St Jude's Day storm in 2013, and the so­called Hurricane Bawbag in Scotland in 2011. But it led to confusion (混乱)," a Met Office spokeswoman said.

    According to the Met Office, there is a name for each letter of the whole alphabet (字母表), except for Q, U, X, Y and Z. That is the same as the naming tradition used in America. And not all storms will be big enough to get names — only those expected to cause great damage.

    If there are more than 21 storms in a year, the Met Office will start again with another name beginning with "A". However, according to Met Office spokeswoman Lindsay Mears, "It's unlikely we would get through the whole alphabet in one season. We had 14 storms in the very bad winter of 2013/14, and if the naming system had been in operation then we wouldn't have used the whole alphabet."