Do some colours make you feel calm while others give you energy? Scientists have studied the connection between colours and mood for a long time. Many believe that colour can influence our moods.

    Warm, bright colours such as yellow and red are positive colours. They can give people a pleasant feeling. Cool colours such as blue, purple, and green are relaxing colours. They help people experience calm feelings.

    Many public places are decorated with certain colours in order to create certain moods. Orange makes people feel hungry, and many restaurants are painted this colour.

    People use colour in their homes to create moods as well. Blue is a peaceful colour. It helps you rest, so it is a very good colour for a bedroom.

Colours can create bad moods too. Some types of blue make people feel sad. Red can make people feel angry.

    What is your mood right now? Now look at the colour of the walls round you. Does it match your mood?

    Susan is 14 years old and she is an American girl. She is one of my best friends. She is interested in Chinese and good at it. Every summer she travels with her parents. She believes（相信） that traveling is an important part in her life. She likes London best because it is both clean and beautiful. She knows that China is a large country with lots of interesting places. This July, her family are coming to China. I am very happy to know that they will first come to my city. They will stay here for three days. I will take them to visit the city. Then they will fly to Beijing. I am sure they will have a nice time in China.

    ［1］China's “four great new inventions” in modern times have made the daily life of the public more and more convenient. They are the high-speed railway(HSR), shopping online, shared bikes and mobile phone payment.

    ［2］Living in Hong Kong, I knew them from the papers, the TV and the Internet. But last month I had the chance to experience all of them.

    ［3］As usual, the golden week stopped the traffic. It was hard to get a railway ticket anywhere in the train stations. But I bought a train ticket to Beijing on the Internet and paid for it through Zhifubao. It was even cheaper than it was bought in the station. Then we got on the high-speed train. I was shocked at its speed and quietness. There was no noise which the train made while running. It was reported that China has the longest high-speed railway in the world, which is regarded as a “name card” for China.

    ［4］China's HSR has also gone abroad. In 2014, China finished building its first foreign high-speed rail in Turkey. In June 2015, China and Russia agreed to build the 770 km of high-speed railway connecting Moscow and Kazan. In October 2015, China helped Indonesia to build a high-speed rail between Jakarta and Bandung.

    ［5］Did I feel bored during the trip on the train? Not at all. I bought many cheap and good things in Taobao and Tmall on the Internet through my mobile phone. It's amazing that there are oceans of products in Taobao and Tmall.        ［6］Soon we arrived in Beijing. We got on a bus near the train station.     getting off the bus, my friend told me that the bus stop is far from his home. I thought we would have to spend much money going to his home on a taxi, but it seemed that he wasn't worried about that. He showed me some bikes on the side of the street. They are called shared bikes. We only need to use our mobile phones to scan(扫描) the QuickResponse code(二维码) on shared bikes, then we could ride the bikes anywhere we wanted to go. It was so cool!

    We have found plastic in the ocean and in animals like birds, fish and whales. But for the first time, scientists have found plastic in human poop (大便) , USA Today reported. The findings came from a study led by scientists from Environment Agency Austria {#blank#}1{#/blank#} The volunteers wrote down what they ate for a week and then provided a stool sample (大便样本) for testing.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}About 20 small plastic particles (IM) were found in every 10 grams (克) of stool. "The smallest plastic particles can enter the blood, the lymphatic system, and may even reach the liver (肝脏)," said Philipp Schwabl, who took part in the research. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}They're not sure how the plastic got in the volunteers' bodies, either. But most of the volunteers said they drank from plastic bottles and also ate seafood that could include plastic from ocean pollution.

    In fact, plastic is everywhere around us. Every year, lots of plastic waste goes into the ocean.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} Most of the particles stay in the ocean. Others can spread into the soil, and air. Could plastic in the air fall onto food and get into the human body?

    Some past studies may also give us a clue. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}And even some drinking water has been found to have tiny plastic particles in it.

Dear Li Hua,

    Thanks for your last letter. In your letter you talked about your problems on English study. Here are some tips on learning English for you.

    Read a book, newspaper or magazine in English with a dictionary. This will help you learn new words in a fun way. Even by spending just 15 minutes a day, your skills can be improved greatly.

    Listen to speeches and watch movies or documentaries in areas you aren't familiar with. They are fun tips on improving English. This activity will help improve listening and vocabulary at the same time.

    Know English grammar inside and out. It is one of the top tips on learning English. Grammar is a basic tool for English learners. It can help you understand better.

    Keep a diary. It allows you to use all of your English skills. This is one of the greatest tips on improving English at any stage of learning the language.

    All in all, learning English is hard, but with these tips on learning English, I believe you will get better at English.

Yours,

Lisa

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A different kind of alarm clock

    When Matty Sallin, 24, was studying art and technology at New York University, he got an interesting task for the final exam：Create something for the ordinary family. He decided to create an alarm clock.

    "To get up in time, many people have to use an alarm clock every morning. But the sound of the clock is extremely noisy and unpleasant." he says. So before he started to design the new clock, he asked different people what they'd like to wake up to in the morning. A lot of them said, "The smell of bacon(培根)."

    So Sallin and his two classmates invented a new kind of alarm clock: a wooden box with a pig face and a digital clock that uses the smell of cooking bacon to wake people up. He explains, "There's no danger of burning, because I built it carefully, It uses special light bulbs(灯泡) instead of a fire for cooking and turns off automatically after ten minutes. "Just a few easy steps are required to set the "alarm".

    "What you do is to put a few pieces of bacon meat inside the box the night before, then you set the alarm," says Sallin. "If you set the alarm for 8：00, it will turn on at 7:50 and slow cook for ten minutes under the bulbs. Then the bulbs turn off and a fan blows the smell out through the nose of the pig."

    "So the pleasant smell of bacon will wake you up. There will be no more noisy alarms," says Sallin. "Then you can open the door on the side and pull the bacon out and eat it."

    When Sallin was a kid, he spent a lot of time making drawings of inventions. "I wanted to make a lift in my back yard and a special tree house," he says. "But I never really thought I'd become an inventor！"

    Sallin got an A for his alarm clock and went on to invent other things-but people continue to email him every day asking where they can buy his alarm clack. If he decides to produce and sell his special alarm clock, maybe he can build a successful business out of it.