Today's Flight Time Table

（Departure＝leave）

    In January, 2016, Harry Styles made a bold decision. He left the popular boy band One Direction and went solo (单飞). Now he is making his own voice heard. The 23-year-old British singer released his first solo single called Sign of the Times. His self-titled album (个人同名专辑) is coming out on May 12.

    Going solo is a journey for him to find his identity (身份). Though at the time, he was uncertain about his future, he kept a word in his mind - “honesty”. “I didn't want to write ‘stories',” he told Rolling Stone. “I wanted to write my stories, things that happened to me. The number-one thing was I wanted to be honest. I hadn't done that before.”

    He is indeed full of stories since beginning his solo career. Last fall, he spent two months recording on a remote island in Jamaica (牙买加).Along with some musicians, he filled a two-floor house with instruments. They hung out at the bar that looked like a tree house. Many mornings began with a swim in the river down the hill. They watched many romantic comedies. Styles always held a black notebook and looked like a college student who was studying, Rolling Stone reported.

    His coming album is about rock music. In fact, he grew up with it. His father Desmond was a rock music fan. When Styles was very young, he danced to The Dark Side of the Moon, a classic song by British rock band Pink Floyd. “I couldn't really get it. But I just remember (thinking that) this is really cool.”

    Harry said, “At the very beginning, all I wanted was to be the granddad with the best stories.” Surely, now he is on the right track (轨道).

    The koala is an unusual creature. Native to Australia and a bit bigger than a rabbit, it spends most of its time in eucalyptus trees（桉树）, feeding on leaves that are poisonous to nearly every other animal on the planet.

    The koala sleeps about 22 hours a day and spends the remainder of its time eating and resting. It might spend 10 minutes a day moving, experts say, usually from one tree to another. It has a soft pad at the end of its spine and extra thick fur on its rear end to make the effort, of sitting more comfortable.

    Threats and protective measures

    The unique lifestyle of the koala has helped it prosper, but today the cute and iconic creature is facing threats from habitat loss, disease and a changing climate. Koala populations are expected to decline by 50 percent in the next 20 years according to the Australian Museum.

    To help protect these animals, which bring in an estimated $1.1 billion to Australia each year through koala-related tourism, an international team of researchers has published the first complete genome（基因组）of the koala. Their hope is that the keys to the marsupial's（有袋动物）long-term survival might be planted in its genetic code.

"The ultimate goal is that we won't have to…rescue them from the edge of extinction," said Rebecca Johnson of the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney, who led the work.

    "Now we have a really good understanding of the koala genome, and we are in a fantastic position to use that knowledge to help us manage them."

    Early findings

    An elementary analysis of the koala's genome, published in Nature Genetics, has already yielded some interesting findings.

    For example, the authors found that, compared to other mammals, the koala's DNA includes an expansion in the number of genes that encode for enzymes involved in anti-poison. That allows them to have a diet that depends almost entirely on eucalyplus leaves which are unusually high in poison. However, it also means that koalas metabolize（代谢）medicines like anti-chlamydia antibiotics faster than other animals.

    The koala genome also revealed why koalas are such famously picky eaters. They are known to consume leaves from just 20 of Australia's 60 known eucalyplus species. And even when they are in one of their preferred trees, koalas take leaf selection very seriously.

    Information waiting to be discovered

    Johnson said that the information encoded in the koala's DNA is already being included in management strategies by conservation groups. However, she said the findings described in the new paper represent the early stages of what can be gleamed from the marsupial's genome.

    "The data is public, and I would love for anyone to start mining it and see what other amazing things they can find," she said." Once you have a genome of this quality, the sky's the limit with what you can do with it."

    In most people's opinion, the tiger is not an animal that we would ordinarily think of as being chicken. However, one tiger, which lives in an English zoo, turned out to be more cowardly (胆小的) than his keepers could ever have imagined.

    Tanvir, a two-year-old Bengal tiger, got stuck at the top of a new 5m-high activity tower in the zoo, after climbing it for the first time.

    The wooden tower had been designed to provide mental exercise for Tanvir by testing his ability of dealing with troublesome situations, but after climbing it in just a few seconds, he lost his courage when it came to coming back down. Tanvir went on to spend nearly two days at the top of the tower trying to collect the courage to attempt to get down.

    A spokesperson for the zoo said that several days before Tanvir had taken half an hour to get down a lower tower only 1.5m high, and the taller tower had clearly been too much challenging for him.

    "Every time he got to the edge, he looked out, put a paw over, and thought, 'no, I cannot make it!" 'laughed Samantha Cordrey, Tanvir's keeper. In the end Tanvir's hunger defeated his fear, and after almost 48 hours he made his way down. Burying himself in a big meal just like a hungry pig, Tanvir seemed to forget such a shameful experience for a while.

    It appears that his experience would not be the worst in Tanvir's life if he continued to act like a chicken. It is not known whether he will take courage to go back up his exercise tower again.

    The whole episode (插曲) only serves to show the difficulties faced by zoo staff in creating environments that will improve animals' living ability in enclosed space.

New research into a long-lived tree has shown some of the tricks that have helped it survive for thousands of years. The ginkgo(银杏树) is a huge, slow-growing tree with fan-shaped leaves, native to China, but planted in parks and gardens across the world. Some of the largest ginkgoes are said to be more than 3, 000 years old.

In order to discover how these and other trees can live for so long, scientists from the US and China studied 34 healthy ginkgoes of different ages. The team studied growth rings in each tree's trunk(树干), as well as cells(细胞) from the bark, leaves and seeds. They found that 600-year-old trees were just as healthy as 2-year-olds.

To learn more, the team then looked in detail at the DNA of nine trees aged between three and 667 years old. DNA is the chemical in the cells of plants and animals that holds instructions that tell any living thing how to grow and develop-including what to do at different times in its life At the beginning of a tree's life, DNA instructs the cells in a seedling to divide quickly so the tree grows rapidly. The cells also make special chemicals to help the young plant survive difficult situations, such as disease. As most trees grow older, their DNA tells their cells to divide more slowly (so growth slows down) and to make fewer chemical defenses(防御).

Ginkgoes, however, do things differently. The team found that although their growth finally slows, both young and old trees make protective chemicals." The secret is keeping a really healthy defense system," said researcher Richard Dixon." As ginkgoes age, they show no sign of weakening their ability to defend themselves from things like disease. "Other trees that live for a long time may have the same ability.

For all their defenses, though, ginkgoes cannot live forever--they finally meet with deadly accidents such as fire, disease and storms. While they last, however, these leafy trees are some of the most beautiful trees in the world.

Washington Irving once wrote, "…Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every moldering (腐朽的) stone was a chronicle (编年史). "

{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Cultural tourism becomes a new landmark in the tourist enterprise. For a tourist guide, it is an easy job to introduce or describe the natural scenery to the visitors, but it is not that easy for them to explain the culture. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

{#blank#}4{#/blank#} From the ancient times, the ancestors of Chinese laboured, lived, and multiplied on this vast land and have created splendid culture. As one of the four birthplaces of world's earliest civilizations, it has a recorded history of nearly 4, 000 years. Throughout the history of Chinese civilization, its agriculture and handicrafts have been famous for their high level of quality. During these 4, 000 years, China has raised many great thinkers, inventors, statesmen, strategists, men of letters and artists, resulting in a rich cultural heritage and fine cultural traditions. 

{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Click the links below to know each aspect specifically, which offer introduction, culture, and history of every division. 

A. Tourism is always closely related to culture. 

B. Europe was rich in the treasure of age. 

C. China is a large country with time-honored history. 

D. Of all the global tourist attractions, China tops the list. 

E. Topchinatravel here collects some treasures of Chinese culture for your reference. 

F. Therefore, visitors have to study the culture themselves in order to gain an impressive trip. 

G. Therefore, we cooperate with tourist agencies throughout the world offering unforgettable travels.