{#blank#}1{#/blank#} Indeed, there are many things in life which we alone cannot perform.

    We need friends' help. Friends are people who willingly and readily help us when we are in trouble, and show sympathy for us when we are in misery.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}For example, when we have passed the graduation examination and are looking for a job, we need experienced and reliable friends to guide us and help us on our way. A good friend is also an adviser, because our own points of view towards things may not be always right. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Of course, we can make friends everywhere. However, I think the best place is school, where we are among a big number of boys and girls our own age, so it is easy to get to know one another in a short time. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    In order to make friends, we ourselves must be honest, noble-minded and kind-hearted whereby to leave a favorable impression on others since other people observe us the same way as we do.

    At the same time, we should avoid bad friends, because they always do harm to us and moreover, they are dangerous to the people around. Worse still, they destroy our friendship with good friends.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Indeed, seeking acquaintance with bad friends would be a serious mistake

B. A faithful friend is hard to find.

C. Therefore, it is necessary for us to seek advice from friends.

D. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

E. Besides, we can also make friends among the people who work with us in the community.

F. A proverb says “One man is not good enough to live alone in the world.”

G. The benefits of friendship are boundless and sometimes invisible.

    Worry problems are everywhere in our daily life. How to solve them? The answer is that we must equip ourselves to handle different kinds of worries by learning the three basic steps of problem analysis. The three steps are：

    Get the facts

    Why is it so important to get the facts? Unless you have the facts, you can't possibly attempt to solve your problem intelligently. Without the facts, all you can do is wondering around in confusion. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} When you are worried, your emotions are riding high. But here are two ideas that can help you see the facts in a clear and objective way.

    When trying to get the facts, you can pretend that you are collecting this information not for yourself but for some other person. This will help you to take a cold and fair view of the evidence. You can also pretend that you are a lawyer preparing to agree.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} You will generally find the truth lies somewhere in between.

    Analyze the facts

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} And write out all the various steps you could take and then the probable consequences (后果) of each step. For example, what am I worrying about? What can I do about it? Here is what I'm going to do about it. After carefully weighing all the facts, you can calmly come to a decision.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Unless you take your action, all you face—finding and analysing—is a waste of energy. How can you break the worry habit before it breaks you? Move worry out of your mind by keeping busy.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Accept what can't be avoided. If you know a situation is beyond your power, say to yourself: "It is so; it can't be otherwise." Don't permit little things to ruin your happiness. Try to develop a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness.

A. Act on that decision.

B. It is not an easy job to get facts.

C. Decide how much anxiety a thing may be worth.

D. Plenty of action is one of the best ways to cure worry.

E. There comes a time when you must decide and never look back.

F. Try to get all the facts both on your side and the other side of the case.

G. Whenever you are worried, write down the questions that make you worry.

    It's becoming more and more common for people to live to 100 or longer. In fact, researchers say that more than a third of all babies now born in wealthy nations are likely to reach their 100^th birthdays, thanks to advanced medical technology and treatment. Here are some of the best strategies for becoming a centenarian.

    Eat vegetables and nuts. A study found that those who ate mainly vegetables gained an extra year and a half over meat-eaters; those who ate nuts regularly lived two years longer.

    Make friends. Another study found that people with strong social networks were 50 percent less likely to die over a certain period. If you don't have many friends or relatives in your local community, you can join in the voluntary activities or take part in a hobby group. You will stay happy and healthy through building the connections.

    Don't smoke. This is important: With occasional exceptions, smokers die younger than non-smokers. Even if you have had the habit for decades, quitting will help with your health greatly. It's important to get your loved ones to stop it, too. People who breathed in secondhand smoke were 26 percent more likely to get heart disease than those who rarely stayed with smokers.

    Improve your lifestyle. Along with healthy eating, you should focus on stress management, regular exercise, and building healthy relationships. When you eat more healthily, manage stress, exercise and love more, your brain actually gets more blood flow and more oxygen.

    Have a sense of purpose. A study found that the common feature in communities with many people who are 100 or older was that older people still took part in daily life, through tasks such as cooking, cleaning and gardening. They feel the motivation(动机) to stay active, to get out of bed in the morning and live for a purpose.

How Bad Are Energy Drinks for Children?

    What Are Energy Drinks?

    There is no clear definition of what makes an energy drink, but it is usually taken that anything non alcoholic with more than 150mg of caffeine per litre is an energy drink. The first of its kind was Lucozade, which was launched in 1927. It was promoted as helping the sick to get better by regaining lost energy. Now there are lots of energy drinks on the market, all claiming to help boost energy levels and aid our performance.

    What's in Energy Drinks?

    We've mentioned the caffeine but energy drinks also contain water and sugar. Some also contain alts and amino acids.

    What Are the Health Concerns?

    The concerns focus on the two main ingredients (成分) of energy drinks, caffeine and sugar. Too much caffeine for children can in the short term cause headaches and raise blood pressure although it is important to mention that caffeine may not harm children in the long term. However, the short term issues do really worry teachers as caffeine can lead to an inability to sleep, which then affects a child's ability to focus and concentrate in class. In fact the maximum recommended (推荐) intake of caffeine for children is 2.5mg for every kilogram a child weighs, so if a child drinks energy drinks, it would be very easy to go over this dose.

    Too much sugar can also cause health problems including obesity, tooth decay and in the long run Type 2 diabetes. So as with caffeine, if children are drinking energy drinks and consuming sugar in foods and other drinks, then it would be easy to go over the daily sugar allowance for a child. The thing to be aware of is what is called free sugars. Free sugars are those sugars which are added to foods or drinks, not the natural sugar found in fruits and vegetables. The amount of free sugar that a child should have is 19 grams per day for those aged 4-6 and 24 grams for those aged 7-10. So again it is easy to see that if children are drinking energy drinks over and above sugar that will be present in food they eat, it would be easy to go over the recommended amount of sugar each day.

    Selling Energy Drinks to Children

    There are currently voluntary bans for shops not to sell energy drinks to children under 16, but there are calls to make this illegal. Some schools have already banned children from bringing these drinks into school.

On the surface, one would be hard-pressed to find many similarities between German chancellor Angela Merkel, Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — except for the fact that they are all female leaders of nations. Merkel, for example, spent more than a decade as a chemist before going into politics, while Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's first president, served as her father's political assistant while at college, and Johnson Sirleaf worked at multiple financial institution s before running for vice president. Is there something deeper than they share?

    The researcher Susan R. Madsen of Utah Valley University interviewed women in some countries about their paths to leadership. She was surprised by the similarities among the women when they spoke about how they became leaders. "Every single one of them talked about finding their voices and their confidence at dinner-table conversations with their families. Their parents talked about politics, about what was happening in the community, and when the women had something to say, their parents didn't stop them," Madsen said.

    As part of a series of interviews on women and leadership, I spoke to three women from different countries who have each become leaders in their respective fields: Agnes lgoye of Uganda, who works with her government to counter human trafficking; Ikram Ben Said, the founder of Tunisian women's rights organization Aswat Nissa; and Sairee Chahal of India, who started a digital platform that helps women get back into the workforce.

All three of my interviewees pointed to the family environment they had been raised in — particularly a father figure who taught and empowered the women in the family to learn, ask questions, and form their own opinions. Also, mothers broke convention by displaying leadership within the family.

    Igoye, for example, credited her father with having the foresight to send his daughters to school despite opposition from others in their village. Her mother went back to school as an adult to improve her career as a teacher, which lgoye described as being a big influence on her. Similarly Ben Said talked about how her father encouraged political debate among the family when she was growing up, even when her opinions contradicted his. Meanwhile, Chahal said that even in her younger days, her parents went against the general convention of expecting their daughters to aim only for a good husband.

Another conclusion from Madsen's work is that women's leadership development doesn't look like men's. "Men tend to follow a more straight path to becoming a leader. Women's paths are much emergent. They tend to not necessarily look ahead and think, ‘I want to be on top.' Women would point to a number of experiences— motherhood, or working with a non-profit, or sitting on a board, as shaping their path to becoming leaders," she said.

    Actually, women leaders tend to be held to higher standards than their male counterparts, lgoye has felt this in Uganda. "Women who take up leadership positions in my country have to be tough, it's not easy at all," she said. "You are always aware that you are representing all women. You have to work extra hard to deliver, to perform, because if you do something wrong, they will say, 'Ah, you see, women!' "

    Therefore, merely having women leaders can change the opportunities available for generations of women in a country. What leadership looks like in their country, how much of a voice the women leaders are having, influences what leadership is and what it means to its women.

    What do women leaders have in common?

    A fresh-faced batch of teenagers just began a new school year, but will they get the most out of it? In the mornings, many are forced to get to school much too early. And at night, screens are a temptation that's hard to resist. This double whammy (双重灾难) is a perfect lesson in sleep deprivation (剥夺).

    Three out of every four students in grades 9 to 12 fail to sleep the minimum of eight hours that the American Academy of Medicine recommends for their age group. In most cases, insufficient sleep results in reduced attention, preventing students' progress and lowering grades. More alarmingly, sleep deprivation may lead to physical and emotional problems.

    It is important to understand why teenagers have a particularly hard time getting enough sleep, and what adults need to do to help. First, a reminder of the basic biology: Adolescents are no longer the morning larks of their younger years. They become rewired as night owls, staying awake later and then sleeping in. This is mostly driven by changes in the way the brain responds to light.

    New technology habits aren't helping. More teenagers now turn to activities involving screens at night. The growth in screen time is particularly problematic for sleep. The blue light emitted by LEDs, TVs, tablets and smartphones suppresses the body's secretion (分泌) of melatonin, the hormone that signals it's time to sleep. Overdosing on screens at night effectively tells the brain it's still daytime, delaying the body's cues to sleep even further.

    Parents should inform their kids of the time that can be spent on screens, and praise children who show signs of regulating their own media consumption. In the hour before bedtime, there should be a suspension on bright lights in the home, avoiding devices and harsh LED bulbs in kitchens and bathrooms.

    In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that middle and high schools start no earlier than 8: 30 a. m., a policy now backed by the American Medical Association and many other health organizations.

    Parents also need to join forces with community leaders, sleep scientists, health professionals and educators to put school start times on the local, then state agendas.

    Whenever schools have managed the transition to a later start time, students get more sleep, attendance goes up, grades improve and there is a significant reduction in car accidents.