What should you think about in trying to find your career（职业）? You are probably better at some school subjects than others. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} A boy who is good at mathematics can use that in an engineering career. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} So it is important to do well at school. On the other hand, you may not have any specially strong or weak subjects but your records show a general satisfactory standard. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Knowledge of history is not required for most jobs but if history is one of your good subjects you will have learned to remember facts and details. This is an ability that can be useful in many jobs.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If nothing else, you may have learned how to get to work on time, to follow instructions and to get on with older workers. Just as important, you may become interested in a particular industry or career you see from the inside in a part-time job.

    Facing your weak points is also part of knowing yourself. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Your school record, for instance, may not be too good, yet it is an important part of your background. You should not be apologetic about it but instead recognize that you will have a chance of a fresh start at work.

A. It is better to face any weaknesses than to pretend they do not exist.

B. A girl who spells well and likes English may be good at office work.

C. He may do well in his future work.

D. Although not all subjects can be used directly in a job, they may have indirect value.

E. Your school must have taught you the skills.

F. These may show strengths (优势) that you can use in your work.

G. If you have had a part-time job on Saturday or in the summer, think what you gained from it.

    Our brains work in complex and strange ways.There are some people who can calculate the day of the week for any given date in 40,000 years,but who cannot add two plus two.Others can perform complex classical piano pieces after hearing them once,but they cannot read or write.

    Dr.J.Langdon Down first described this condition in 1887.He called these people idiot savants.An idiot savant is a person who has significant mental impairment（损伤）,such as in autism（孤独症，自闭症）or retardation.At the same time,the person also exhibits some extraordinary skills,which are unusual for most people.The skills of the savant may vary from being exceptionally gifted in music or in mathematics,or having a photographic memory.

    One of the first descriptions of a human who could calculate quickly was written in 1789 by Dr.Benjamin Rush, an American doctor.His patient,Thomas Fuller,was brought to Virginia as a slave in 1724.It took Thomas only 90 seconds to work out that a man who has lived 70 years,17 days,and 12 hours has lived 2,210,500,800 seconds. Despite this ability,he died in 1790 without ever learning to read or write.

    Another idiot savant slave became famous as a pianist in the 1860s.Blind Tom had a vocabulary of only 100 words,but he played 5,000 musical pieces beautifully.

    In the excellent movie Rain Man,made in 1988 and available on video cassette,Dustin Hoffman plays an idiot savant who amazes his brother played by Tom Cruise,with his ability to perform complex calculations very rapidly.

    Today we more clearly recognize that the idiot savant is special because of brain impairment.Yet not all brain impairment leads to savant skills.Some studies have shown that people who have purposeful interruption of the left side of the brain can develop idiot savant skills.However few people wish to participate in such experiments.There are many excellent reasons for not undergoing unnecessary experimentation on one's brain.The term idiot savant is outdated and inappropriate.Virtually all savants have a high degree of intelligence and are thus not idiots.

    An interesting study posted on Facebook recently shows how men and women develop new interests as they mature(成熟).

    While women tend to take exercise seriously from the age of 34, men will wait until their 45th birthdays before working hard to get in shape. The average woman spends more time talking about sports, politics, career and money as she gets older.

Women's interest in books reaches its peak(顶峰) at the age of 22, while that of men does so when they are in their 50s.

    Men start to change their focus from the workplace to other things after age 30, while women do not do so until eight years later. Both, however, care most about fashion at age 16.

    The research used anonymous(匿名的) data donated by thousands of Facebook users, recording the statuses, 'likes' and 'interests' they had posted on their profiles.

It found the average woman talks about television most at 44, while men peak much younger, at age 31.

    Men are also most likely to see a film in a cinema at age 31, while women go out to see films most when they are only 19.

    Men are most interested in travel at 29, women at 27, while women talk most about food and drink at 35, and men at 38.

    And if you are middle aged, a safe topic for any audience is the weather, which is a key interest for many as they approach 60.

    Stephen Wolfram, the British scientist who carried out the research, says, “It's almost shocking how much this tells us about the changes of people's typical interests.

    “People talk less about video games as they get older, and more about politics.”

    Imagine you're standing in line to buy a snack at a store. You step up to the counter and the cashier scans your food. Next, you have to pay. But instead of scanning a QR Code(二维码) with your smart phone, you just hold out your hand so the cashier can scan your fingerprint. Or, a camera scans your face, your eyes or even your ear.

    Now, this type of technology might not be far away. As technology companies move away from the traditional password, biometric (生物特征识别的) security, which includes fingerprint, face and voice ID, is becoming increasingly popular.

    In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5s, one of the first smart phones with a fingerprint scanner. Since then, using one's fingerprint to unlock a phone and make mobile payments has become a commonplace, bringing convenience to our lives. And since 2016, Samsung has featured eye-scanning technology in its top smart phones, while Apple's new iphone X can even scan a user's face. But despite its popularity, experts warn that biometrics might not be as secure as we imagine." Biometrics is ideally good in practice, not so much," said John Michener, a biometrics expert.

    When introducing the new iPhone's face ID feature, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president, said. "The chance that a random person in the population could look at your iPhones X and unlock it with their face is about one in a million." But it's already been done. In a video posted on a community website Reddit, two brothers showed how they were each able to unlock the same iPhone X using their own face. And they aren't even twins.

    "We may expect too much from biometrics," Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University, told CBS News. "No security systems are perfect."

    Earlier last year, Jain found a way to trick biometric security. Using a printed copy of a thumbprint, she was able to unlock a dead person's smart phone for the police, according to a tech website Splinter. "It's good to see biometrics being used more," Jain told CBS News, "because it adds another factor for security. But using multiple security measures is the best defense."

    Imagine putting a seed in a freezer, waiting 30,000 years, and then taking the seed out and planting it. Do you think a flower would grow?

    Amazingly, scientists have just managed to do something very similar. They found the fruit of an ancient plant that had been frozen underground in Siberia—a region covering central and eastern Russia—for about 31,800 years. Using pieces of the fruit, the scientists grew plants in a lab. The new blooms have delicate white petals. They are also the oldest flowering plants that researchers have ever revived from a deep freeze.

    “This is like regenerating a dinosaur from tissues of an ancient egg,'' said Jane Shen-Miller, a biologist of University of California, Los Angeles.

    The plant has a long history. Back when mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses walked on the land, an Arctic ground squirrel buried seeds and fruits in an underground chamber near the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. The ground became pennafrost, a layer of soil that stays frozen for a long time.

    Recently, Russian scientists dug out the old squirrel hole and found the plant remains 38 meters below the surface. Back at the lab, the team fed nutrients to tissue from three of the fruits to grow shoots. Then the scientists transferred the shoots to pots filled with soil. The plants produced seeds that could be used to grow even more of them.

    It's important for scientists to know that plant tissues can still be revived after being frozen for a long time. That's because many researchers are trying to preserve the seeds of modem plants by freezing them and then storing them in giant lockers at various spots around the globe. One such endeavor, an underground facility in Norway, is called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It stores hundreds of thousands of frozen seeds. If a plant ever goes extinct, scientists could bring it back by taking its seeds from the Svalbard or other storage lockers.

    "No one knows how long they are able to live for, but freezing is basically the format for many plant conservation attempts nowadays," Jane Shen-Miller said. It's a good thing that at least some plants are tough enough to survive in the experience.

Swimming and English Learning

    Can you swim? Do you like swimming? Yes? Well, how can you learn to swim? I think the best way is to go into the water and learn. I'm afraid you'll never learn to swim just by reading books about swimming or looking at others swimming. It's the same with the English study. We must practice, practice and practice.

    Listening and speaking are very important for beginners. The children in English-speaking countries first listen to others. Then they try to imitate and speak. We can listen to English programs on radio. You may just understand a few words. It doesn't matter. Just be relaxed, try to catch every word.

    Somebody may be a good listener. But he dare not speak. He's afraid of making mistakes. You know we sometimes make mistakes when we speak Chinese. Don't be afraid. We must be brave. If you really want to learn English well, you must try to speak with everyone so long as he knows English. Whether you know him or not is not important when there's nobody to talk with, you can talk to yourself in English. It's interesting and also a good way to practice your spoken English. Remember, the more you speak, the fewer mistakes you'll make.

    Reading and writing are more important for senior school students. First we must choose the books we're interested in. A lot of reading will improve your language sense. This is the most important.

    Keep writing English diaries. We can also write English articles. You may even post them to English magazines. Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is the mother of success.

    Easier said than done. Well, let's do more practice from now on. I'm sure you'll learn English well in this way.