Dear SJ,

    Losing a best friend is never easy.

    Your problem, is not just that you miss your best friend, it is that you feel empty and lost without her friendship.

    It takes time to get over a lost, and during that time, your mind is getting used to a new way of being. This is usually a good thing, even if it feels like a bad thing.

    Now that you are on your own, you are being forced to learn to be by yourself and to rely upon your own inner voice for guidance. I am sure that this feels strange for you, but if you can hang on for a bit longer, it may work to your advantage.

    Best friends are cool, but it is important to know the difference between missing someone and being too independent upon them.

    At your age, girls do tend to stick together and having a good boyfriend may not yet be the better choice. Your friend is leaving you, her best friend, for a boyfriend. Boyfriends are completely different from best friends. The distinction is that boyfriends come and go, while girl friends often stay in your life throughout high school, and even afterwards. It is a completely different sort of bond.

    I suggest that you take advantage of this period in your life to expand your horizons. Enjoy the freedom of having no best friend for a while, and hang with the group. By the time your former best friend breaks up with her boyfriend, you will be in a completely different place, a far better place.

    And, by the way, next time you feel empty and lost, try to write about it in a diary. In several months, you will look back and read it with curiosity about yourself. “Who was I then, and what could I have been thinking?”

    It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and Maggie and I were returning from our walk through the woods. We were only a couple of blocks from home when I spotted a cell phone and a credit card sitting on the road. We took them home. We always find amazing things on the street and she looks upon them as a movable feast-a chicken wing here or a barbecue rib there.

    I found another cell phone a few years back, too, and called a number in its phone book. I explained the situation to the guy who answered. He said it was his sister's and that he'd come to pick it up, which he did.

    And that was that. No verbal thank-you, no written thank-you, no “here's a box of chocolates” thank-you.

    I didn't have time to call anyone on my latest found cell phone. I was pouring myself coffee when it started to vibrate(震动) and dance across the kitchen counter.

    “Who's this?” someone asked when I picked up.

    “Who's this?” I countered（反问.“Sarah?”

    She was surprised at my knowing her name until she realized her name was on the credit card. “Could you send them to me?” she asked.

    She lives in Arlington, which is 2 miles from my house.

    “Hmm, no, ”I replied, adding that I thought she could come to get them, and that if I wasn't at home, they would be in my mailbox.

    A day later, when I was out for a run, someone retrieved(取回) them. There wasn't even a piece of paper put in the mailbox with “Thanks” on it. In this age of e-mail and cell phone, there's really no excuse. Years ago, I found something more precious than a $100 bill on the street: a driver's license. I saw  that its owner lived a couple of blocks from me, so I called him up. He asked whether I could slip the license through his front door.

    “I guess I could, ”I replied.

    And that was that.

    What makes one person more intelligent than another? What makes one person a genius, like the brilliant Albert Einstein, and another person a fool? Are people born intelligent or stupid, or is intelligence the result of where and how you live?{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    We know, however, that just being born with a good mind is not enough. In some ways, the mind is like a leg or an arm muscle.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Mental exercise is particularly important for young children. Many child psychologists think that parents should play with their children more often and give them problems to think about. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}38．__ If, on the other hand, children are left alone a great deal with nothing to do, they are more likely to become dull and unintelligent.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} According to some psychologists, if parents are always telling a child that he or she is a fool or an idiot, then the child is more likely to keep doing silly and foolish things. So it is probably better for parents to say very positive things to their children, such as “That was a very clever thing you did.” or “{#blank#}5{#/blank#}”.

A. A healthy body contributes to one's intelligence.

B. Parents should also be careful about what they say to young children.

C. What people want to express is like this.

D. The children are then more likely to grow up bright and intelligent.

E. It needs exercise.

F. You are such a smart child.

G. These are very old questions and the answers to them are still not clear.

    Oxford English Dictionary editors recently said that "run" has become the word with the most meanings in English, with more than 645 different usage cases for the verb form alone. This entry(条目), took one professional dictionary writer nine months of research to complete. How could three little letters be responsible   for so many meanings?

    Think about it: When you run a fever, for example, those three letters have a different meaning than when you run a bath to treat it, or when your bathwater runs over and makes your bath runner wet, forcing you to run out to the store and buy a new one. There, you run up a bill of $85 because besides a small carpet and some cold medicine, you also need some thread to fix the run in your stockings and some tissue for your runny nose and a carton of milk because you've run through your supply at home, and all this makes fear run through your soul because your value club membership runs out at the end of the month and you've already run over your budget on last week's grocery run when you ran over a nail and now your car won't even run properly. God—you'd do things differently if you ran the world.

    When the OED's first edition came out in 1928, the longest entry belonged to another three letter word: "set". Today, it has some 200 meanings.

    Why is "run" suddenly the Swiss Army Knife of verbs? According to British author Simon Winchester, "run" has earned some major lift during the Industrial Revolution (工业革命), when new inventions chose it as their verb of choice. "Machines run, clocks run, computers run there are all of those that began in the middle of the 19th century," Winchester says.

    So, ready to run through the whole list of definitions(定义)? You'll have to wait for the next edition of the OED, expected in 2037.

    To see the world is one thing; to have someone to share it with is another. Indeed, travel becomes more interesting when you have a travel partner. A travel partner can be a close friend, a family member, a pal you've met online, or a business friend.

    You can have someone to talk to.

    Traveling alone is fun, but wouldn't you feel lonely？Having a travel partner can remove the feeling of loneliness. This is especially true if you can get a travel companion who is very familiar with the place you're traveling to. You don't have to ask any information from the locals, and you can increase the time you spend in the country.

    __________________________

    One of the major headaches in traveling is the costs involved. You can't simply ignore the rising price of hotels or plane tickets. You should also think about your daily needs, such as your food. Of course, you can't simply go back without bringing any souvenirs (纪念品) to your friends and family. All these can ruin your budget. However, when you have a travel friend, you can have someone to share the expenses with.

    You can meet a good friend.

    Having a travel mate is a good way of meeting a new friend or even a lifelong partner. You can never count the number of couples who actually found their way into each other's heart while traveling together in another country.

    You can have someone to watch out for you.

    When you're in a foreign land, you'll never be really safe. You don't know the rules as well as the culture of the people. A travel mate will be perfect to remind you of your duties in the country and to watch your back just in case you get lost.So why don't you find a travel companion now?

    Let's find out how...

    Antaretica's ice-white environment is going green and facing other unexpected threats. Scientists say that as temperatures go up in the polar region, invading (入侵) plants and insects, including the flies, cause a major conservation threat.

    More and more of these invaders, in the form of larvae (幼虫) or seeds, are surviving in coastal areas around the South Pole, where the temperature has risen by more than 3℃ over the past three decades. Glaciers have retreated, exposing more land which has been occupied by mosses that have been found to be growing more quickly and thickly than ever before-providing potential green homes for invaders.

    “The common house flies are a perfect example of the problem the Antarctic now faces from invading species,” said Dominic Hodgson of the British Antarctic Survey. “It comes in on ships, where it exists in kitchens and then at bases on the continent. It now has an increasing chance of surviving in the Antarctic as it warms up, and that is a worry. Insects like the house flies carry bacteria that could have a deadly effect on native lifeforms.”

    The Antarctic has several native species of insects. Together with its native mosses, these are now coming under increased threat from three major sources: visiting scientists, increasing numbers of tourists and global warming. However, it is global warming that is the main driver of the greening of Antarctica.

    In 2015, more than 38,000 tourists visited Antarctica. “These tourists are often very careful about not leaving waste or having mud. But they could carry seeds or larvae on their boots when they set foot on the Antarctic,” said Hodgson.

    More and more invasive insects and plants have been found on the Antarctic and have required removal. “the insects and plants that are native to Antarctica have survived these for thousands of years,” said Hodgson. “We have got to act now if we want to save the environment.”