Man has been to the moon. It has been the first step towards future exploration in space. When compared with the distances between Earth and the other planets, the distance between the Moon and Earth is very short indeed. Mars, the nearest planet to Earth is millions of miles away! Traveling to the planets will be man's next step. Such travels will be more challenging than the trip to the moon and certainly more exciting and dangerous. Recently, two American spaceships, Viking 1 and 2, landed on Mars trying to discover whether that planet has any life on it. So far the signs of life on Mars has neither been confirmed nor ruled out (排除). Russians have discovered that the surface of Venus is so hot that it is almost certain that there is no life there. Also the atmosphere of Venus is extremely dense and the pressure is nearly a hundred times greater than that of the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists believe man may find planets which have the same conditions as those we have on Earth, but man should realize Earth will be his only home for a long time and begin to love and care for it.

    Thousands of taxi drivers in Shenyang, Liaoning province, reportedly blocked streets with their vehicles on Sunday in protest against unlicensed vehicles using taxi-hiring apps and apps-based car rental companies providing passenger services, including high-end cars. Although the drivers also complained about the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy (补贴)by the government, their main complaint was the loss of business because of the rising number of Internet-based car services companies.

    On Wednesday, news reports came that Beijing transport authorities will take measures to stop the illegal “taxi business” of private cars through the newly rising Internet apps, following the footsteps of Shenyang and Nanjing.

    It is not yet clear how the Shenyang city government will handle the issue and whether it will declare the services offered by market leaders such as Didi Dache, a taxi-hiring app provider backed by Tencent Holdings, and Kuaidi Dache illegal. But Shanghai transport regulators (交通管理结构)have set a rule, by banning Didi Zhuanche, or car services offered by Didi Dache in December.

    Such regulations will cause a setback to the car-hiring companies and investors that are waiting to cash in on the potentially booming business. Just last month, Didi Dache got $700 million in funding from global investors, including Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, Russian investment company DST Global and Tencent. Besides, the market is uncertain that Kuaidi Dache is about to finalize its latest round of funding after getting $800 million from global investors.

    Regulatory uncertainties, however, could cast a shadow on the future of the Internet-based car-hiring services, which have become popular in most of China's big cities. To be fair, these companies' business model is anything but bad. For example, Didi Zhuanche works side by side with established car rental companies to provide high-end car service mainly for businesspeople through the Internet and mobile phone apps.

    Every link in this business model chain has legal companies and services. Hence, it is hard to define it as illegal and ban it.

    For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and our status to a considerable extent. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important, the injustices of work can be pushed into a corner, and that because most work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom, frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. For the foreseeable future, however, the material and psychological rewards which work can provide will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer.

    Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions where their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination or initiative.

    Inequality at work is still one of the most glaring (明显的) forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we handle it determinedly.

    The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning. They are able to exercise responsibility. They have a considerable degree of control over their own and others' working lives. Most important of all, they have opportunities to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, work is a boring, dull, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in intolerable conditions. The majority have little control over their work. It provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Many jobs are so routine that workers feel themselves to be mere cogs (齿轮) in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated (疏远) from their work and their firm.

    A woman in Pulaski, Virginia, says she was stopped by a squirrel, who pulled on her leg repeatedly and led her to help its injured baby.

    Tia Powell was walking in Kiwanis Park when she was "approached by a squirrel", the Pulaski Police Department wrote on Facebook. The squirrel stood in her way on the path. After realizing that the squirrel did not mean any harm and wasn't going to leave her side, Powell turned around and the squirrel led her down the path to a baby squirrel with an injured leg.

    At one point, Powell wasn't sure she could help and she began walking and the squirrel followed her again and actually pulled her trouser leg! So, she fed the squirrels a sandwich she had with her and watched them try to Jump up into a tree. When she realized the baby squirrel was still struggling to get up the tree, she decided to call in backup. Powell called the Pulaski Police Department.

    Powell didn't know how the baby squirrel got injured, but she thought a nearby street cat was the culprit (肇事者). So, the group of rescuers decided to move the squirrels to safer area. "We were able to get the baby and mother to a different area with more trees and it was able to climb all the way up and they looked very happy," Powell said.

    She went back a few days later to show her kids where it all went down. In the trees, Powell spotted two squirrels staring at her, and couldn't help but wonder if they were the same squirrels she rescued.

    Recently, American President Trump announced his budget. One of the budgets would cut all money to the Institute of Museum and Library services and libraries across the United States. However, as far as I'm concerned, we need to save our libraries.

    Libraries provide books and after-school programs for children. They encourage literacy (识字）with summer programs. They help inspire a life-time love of learning and reading in children of all ages. Without them, where will kids with no Internet at home do their homework? Where will kids have a place to study or borrow books after school? Therefore, we need libraries for our kids. We need them so that kids can grow up with a place, other than school , where learning and exploration is encouraged. For adults, libraries serve as a place where they can use the Internet to apply for jobs, get job training, early voting centers as well as book clubs to help make new friends. It can also serve as a place to pick up a book and learn something new. What's more, they can also borrow a book and get away from it all.

    Libraries save our information for the next generation. When we live in an age of alternative (选择性的）facts, where science is ignored in favor of personal feelings, we need libraries now more than ever. We need them to educate ourselves on the facts and hold the government responsible for them. We need them to have strong public participation.

    If you agree with me, you shouldn't be silent on this issue. You can write or call directly to tell the president to save our libraries. You can also write to both your state Senators (参议员）and your district representative. If you do not know who they are, you can find out here. Let them know this is a beneficial issue because all people use public libraries in their daily life.

Natural selection is the process by which one type of animal within a species develops well because of certain characteristics that make it more likely to live than others in its group. The history of the peppered moth(桦尺蛾) is an example of the natural selection process.

In nineteenth-century England, certain types of peppered moths were able to better blend (融合) into their surroundings. During that time period, great changes were happening in Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution was part of this change, and with it came air pollution. Natural selection usually takes hundreds or even thousands of years to occur. For the peppered moth, this process occurred relatively quickly .

At the beginning of the Industrial Age, most peppered moths in England were light-coloured and covered with black markings, although a few moths had dark-coloured wings. Because the light-coloured moths blended into the light-coloured bar k on the trees, they could not be easily seen by birds that would eat them. As the air grew more polluted, however, tree trunks (树干) became covered with soot (煤烟) and became darker. The light-coloured moths became easy for birds to see against the dark tree trunks. Since the dark-coloured moths now had the advantage, their numbers grew. Within 50 years, the peppered moth went from being mostly light-coloured to being mostly dark-coloured.

In the twentieth century, the air cleared up, and the peppered moth population changed again. As tree trunks lightened due to less soot in the air, light-coloured moths once again had an advantage. Their numbers increased as soot levels declined. Depending on their environment, the colouration of the moths helped them to be "naturally selected" to survive.