Australia is the smallest continent in the world. It is a little smaller than China. It is on the Southern Hemisphere of the earth. Australia is big, but its population is small. The population of Australia is nearly as large as that of Shanghai.

    Enough laws have been made to fight against pollution. The cities in Australia have little air or water pollution. The sky is blue and the water is clean. You can clearly see fish in the rivers. Plants grow very well.

    Last month we visited Perth, the biggest city in Western Australia, and went to a wild flower exhibition. There we saw large numbers of wild flowers on show, most of which we had never seen before. We had a wonderful time. Perth is famous for its beautiful wild flowers. Every year in spring Perth has a wild flower exhibition. After visiting Perth, we spent a day in the countryside. We sat down and had a rest near a path at the foot of a hill. It was quiet and we enjoyed ourselves very much. When we heard bells ringing at the top of the hills, we looked up, but what we saw made us pick up all our things and run back to our car as quickly as we could. There were about three hundred sheep coming towards us along the path.

    Australia is famous for its sheep and kangaroos. After a short drive from any town, you will find yourself among the white sheep. Sheep, sheep, everywhere you can see sheep.

    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 15 years old. The effect of that 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 o f 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 (who often see films) to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.

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    Most reading groups study books by{#blank#}6{#/blank#} (variety) writers. However, some groups read the work of a single writer,{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (usual) one that has been famous for a while. Other groups may{#blank#}8{#/blank#} (name) for an important person in the work of the writer,{#blank#}9{#/blank#} a Sherlock Holmes Club. Members of these book clubs often are experts about their{#blank#}10{#/blank#} (choose) reading materials. One member of a Holmes reading group, for example, can identify almost every person in every Sherlock Holmes story.

                                                Inventor Creates Wheels That Let Cars Roll in Any Direction

    Omnidirectional wheels have been around for a while, but they are mostly used on utility(实用的) vehicles like forklifts. London-based inventor William Liddiard has created a special set of all-around wheels that can be bolted on to any car, allowing it to move in any direction, spin 360 degrees and slide into a parallel park with ease.

    "Unlike other all-around capable wheels, my wheels do not require the vehicle to be built around them. This is a world first bolt-on application for anything with wheels." Liddiard wrote in the description of a You Tube video he uploaded to show how his invention works on an old Toyota Echo. "They are stronger, faster, and more accurately controlled than previous technology. They can take a beating. The tires can have the same build characteristics (siping, grooves, rubber compounds etc.) as regular tires. Now you can drive in all directions, and tum on the spot, when needed."

    While the "Liddiard Wheels" shown in the video are just proof of concept prototypes(原型机), they seem to work as described by the inventor. His car can be seen spinning in place and sliding from one side to the other as the tires move under the power of 24,000 pounds of torque (扭矩) applied directly to them.

    William is now hoping that the power of social media will help him get his invention out there and eventually team up with a company willing to help him improve the wheels and eventually bring them to the market.

    "Will a set of wheels make sideward parking an easy thing? Yeah, I'm pretty sure these things will be in high demand if they ever end up on the market." the inventor said confidently.

    Waiter Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in Edinburgh, Gotland. At the age of two, Scott suffered from polio (小儿麻痹症) which left him with a limp. He was sent to live with relatives to try and find a cure. In 1783 he attended the University of Edinburgh. He had to leave for a year because of health problems. In 1786, Scott worked in his father's law firm. He returned to the university in 1789 to study law, graduating in 1792. The same year he became a lawyer and was accepted into the Faculty of Advocates (苏格兰律师公会).

    Scott did some translation work from 1796-1798. In 1799, Scott became sheriff-deputy of Selkirkshire, a post which he held until he died. In 1800, Scott rewrote a ballad collection called Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In 1805, he became part owner of The Ballantyne Press which had published his The Eve of St. John in 1799. His poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel was published that same year and became very popular. He was a co-founder of the Quarterly Review, a literary journal. Scott continued to write poems and ballads, each one becoming more popular than the last. In 1810, The Lady of the Lake was published and sold 25,000 copies in less than 9 months.

    Scott moved his family to Abbotsford in 1812. In 1813, The Ballantyne Press collapsed, which caused Scott to have serious financial problems. In 1814, he wrote a novel called Waverley to earn money and it became the most successful English novel of the time. He went on to write 26 novels in the series.

    In 1826, Scott faced financial ruin again when his publisher failed, which him to work even harder. In 1830, he began suffering from diseases and he died at home on September 21,1832.

    A T-shirt that constantly monitors the heart's activity and detects abnormalities could help protect people against stroke. The T-shirt, which can be washed up to 35 times before it needs replacing, has been developed to improve the detection of dangerous heart conditions like atrial fibrillation( 心房颤动), which causes an irregular heart rhythm and raises the risk of stroke.

    At least one million people in Britain are known to have this condition; however, it's estimated that at least another 500,000 have it but haven't yet been diagnosed because they have no obvious symptoms. Some will have symptoms such as chest pain, dizziness and fatigue; but a large number of people have no idea they're ill until they suffer a stroke.

    Detecting atrial fibrillation involves carrying out an ECG(心电图). Conventional ECGs are done in a hospital and involve highly trained teams of staff attaching up to 24 separate electrodes(电极) to different parts of the body to measure electrical signals. But most patients experience abnormal rhythms only intermittently(间歇地). This means the chance of picking them up during a short hospital check is slim.

    Doctors sometimes issue patients with a device called a Holter monitor to wear under their clothes to try to pick up cardiac( 心脏的) problems. This is an electronic box which clips onto your waistband and is connected to a series of electrodes worn on the upper part of your body. But the box itself is quite bulky, hard to hide beneath clothing and involves a dozen or more wires being attached to the patient's chest.

    The Cardioskin T-shirt, which is made from cotton, could be a much more convenient alternative and can be worn 24 hours a day — meaning it is more likely to pick up any abnormal rhythms in the patient's heart. It has 15 tiny electrodes woven into the material which are strategically placed around the chest area to track the electrical signals from the heart as they travel across the main part of your body.

    The electrodes are powered by a battery which can be removed easily when you need to wash the T- shirt and feed results to a microchip which then sends them out wirelessly to an app. This converts( 转换) the data into an easy-to-read chart showing if the heart rate is abnormal. The results are shared with the patient's doctor so they can check the patient's heart without having to call them into the hospital.

    Martin Cowie, a professor of cardiology at Imperial College London, said, “Cardioskin could be an important development for cardiologists.”