阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    Heroes of Our Time

    A good heart

    Dikembe Mutombo grew up in Africa among great poverty and disease. He came to Georgetown University on a scholarship to study medicine — but Coach (教练) John Thompson got a look at Dikembe and had a different idea. Dikembe became a star in the NBA, and a citizen of the United States. But he never forgot the land of his birth, or the duty to share his fortune with others. He built a new hospital in his old hometown in the Congo. A friend has said of this good-hearted man: “Mutombo believes that God has given him this chance to do great things.”

    Success and kindness

    After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children's videos in her own house. The Baby Einstein Company was born, and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. And she is using her success to help others — producing child safety videos with John Walsh of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Julie says of her new program: “I believe it's the most important thing that I have ever done. I believe that children have the right to live in a world that is safe.”

    Bravery and courage

    A few weeks ago, Wesley Autrey was waiting at a Harlem subway station with his two little girls when he saw a man fall into the path of a train. With seconds to act, Wesley jumped onto the tracks, pulled the man into the space between the rails, and held him as the train passed right above their heads. He insists he's not a hero. He says: “We have got to show each other some love.”

    Cold weather during winter months may keep many people from leaving home and running in the open air.

    However, a new study shows that the drop in temperature is a good reason to run. In fact, researchers say, running in cold weather helps improve one's performance.

    Many people say running in the winter can be difficult. Two reasons are the low temperatures and bitter winds. Yet many runners might find it easier than running in hot weather.

    That could be because lower temperatures reduce stress on the body. When you run in cold weather, your heart rate and the body's dehydration (脱水) levels are lower than in warmer conditions. The body needs less water on a cold day than in warm weather.

    This information comes from sports scientists at St. Mary's University in London. John Brewer is a professor of applied sport science at St. Mary's.

    For this study, he and other researchers put a group of people into a room they called an “environmental chamber.” The researchers then recreated summer and winter weather conditions in the room. The test subjects were asked to run 10,000 meters under both conditions. Brewer says he and his team recorded biological measurements of the runners.

    “We've got a group of subjects into the environmental chamber, we've changed the conditions to replicate the summer or winter and we've got them to run a 10km under both of those conditions and taken various measurements on each runner while they've been completing their 10km.”

    Brewer says every movement runners make produces heat. He explains that one way in which we lose heat is by sweating. The body loses heat through droplets of sweat. He says the body also loses heat by transporting the blood to the surface of the skin.

    Exactly five years ago, on New Year's Eve, I was invited to a children's ball by a man high up in the business world, who had his connections, his circle of acquaintances, and his close friends. So it seemed as though the children's ball was merely an excuse for the parents to come together and discuss matters of interest to themselves, quite innocently and casually.

    I was an outsider, and as I had no special matters to express, I was able to spend the evening independently of the others. There was another gentleman present who had just stumbled upon (偶然遇到)this affair of domestic happiness，just like me. He was the first to attract my attention. His appearance was not that of a man of noble birth. He was tall, rather thin, very serious, and well dressed. Obviously he had no heart for the family celebration. The moment he went off into a corner by himself, the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick dark brows knitted into a frown. He knew no one except the host and showed every sign of being bored to death, though bravely keeping the role of thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was a provincial, had come to the capital on some important business, had brought a letter of recommendation to our host, and our host had taken him under his protection, not at all with love. It was merely out of politeness that he had invited him to the children's ball.

    They did not play cards with him .They did not offer cigars. Thus , my gentleman , not knowing what to do with his hands , spent the evening stroking his whiskers(胡须). His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so eagerly that one got the feeling that the whiskers had come into the world first and afterwards the man, in order to stroke them.

    Memory, they say, is a matter of practice and exercise. If you have the wish and really make a conscious effort, then you can quite easily improve your ability to remember things. But even if you are successful, there are times when your memory seems to play tricks on you.

    Sometimes you remember things that really did not happen. One morning last week, for example, I got up and found that I had left the front door unlocked all night, yet I clearly remember locking it carefully the night before.

    Memory "tricks" work the other way as well. Once in a while, you remember not doing something, and then find out that you did. One day last month, for example, I was sitting in a barber shop waiting for my turn to get a haircut, and suddenly I realized that I had got a haircut two days before at the barber shop across the street from my office.

    We always seem to find something funny and amusing in incidents caused by people's forgetfulness or absent -mindedness. Stories about absent -minded professors have been told for years, and we never get tired of hearing new ones. Unfortunately, however, absent -mindedness is not always funny. There are times when "tricks" of our memory can cause us great trouble.

Your colleague's sharp comment keeps replaying in your mind. Two of your students are trapped in a" he said/she said" battle. When you reflect on your emotional reactions, you sometimes get caught up in cycles of negative feelings, which can make you feel even worse. If so, the answer may lie in a skill called" self-distancing", the ability to take a step back and view yourself more objectively. According to a research, when people adopt self-distancing while discussing a difficult event, they make better sense of their reactions, experience less emotional suffering, and display fewer signs of stress.

But what might self-distancing look like in action? Consider a typical "he said/she said" student conflict where they are each focusing on their own feelings. One is thinking, "I can't believe he did that to me" And another insists. "She really hurt my feelings" However, if you ask them to take the self-distancing, they might step outside of themselves and ask broader questions:" Why was he so hurt in this situation? "or" How did her anger affect him?"

Although this approach may sound too simple to be effective, studies indicate that a change in point of view can have a powerful effect on the way people think, feel, and behave. Here are several different techniques you can try.

First, consider how a thoughtful friend might respond after quietly observing their situation. Besides, avoid using the pronoun "I". Focus on using third-person pronouns, he, she, they, and they were able to see the stressful event as challenging rather than threatening. Finally, ask yourself, "How would I feel about this one week from now or ten years from now? "This form of mental time travel may be effective because our attention is directed away from our immediate, concrete circumstances.

The gentle giants of our oceans are whale sharks. It's the biggest whale shark and can reach as long as 41. 5 feet, and these amazing creatures are not only the biggest sharks, but they are also biggest fish of any kind.

Whale sharks have a lifespan of 70 years on average, and they spend their days gently swimming in the warm and tropical oceans.

Their teeth are the size of match heads, and while their jaws could be powerful, they have never tended to attack humans. Their teeth play no role in eating, as plankton (浮游生物) does not need to be chewed. They are to be found in numbers in the warmer oceans and they prefer the deep waters of open oceans. They tend to travel alone.

Several times a year they gather together in certain spots where plankton is plentiful. Those areas are all within a 30°north or south latitude from the equator. Sadly whale sharks are targeted by commercial fisheries at those spots.

How easy it must be for the fishermen to catch those beautiful creatures who can only swim at 3. 5 miles per hour! So great a loss in numbers have they suffered that whale sharks are now listed as one of the endangered species. Some countries have started to take measures to protect the whale sharks from extinction.

The Philippines, India and Taiwan have all banned the fishing, selling, importing and exporting of whale sharks for commercial purposes. However, the law doesn't seem to be effective because the hunting and killing still goes on today, especially in Taiwan and the Philippines. Each whale shark can fetch around $21,000. In parts of Asia they are known as the "money shark".

The mighty dollar wins again at great cost to our habitat, and we will not know what we have lost until we have lost it forever. Therefore, it is high time for us to do something for the whale sharks.