Hello. I'm Jan from Mrs. Lake's class. My class wants to work together to help the public. We think we have found a great way to do this. Last month we did a class project on the highways near our town. We learned about the Adopt-a-Highway Program. This program brings people together to pick up litter along the roads. We think it would be a great idea for all students in our school to join the program and adopt a highway.

    Adopting a highway is not like adopting a pet. When a highway is adopted, only part of the highway is cared for by a group of people. The group agrees to work every week to keep its part of the highway clean. Each group gets its own sign that has the name of the group printed on it. The sign is put up at the side of the road. This sign lets drivers know who is keeping that area of the road clean.

    The Adopt-a-Highway Program is a great way for people to help their environment look nicer. Also, the government does not have to send out as many road workers. This saves money. Finally, people may try harder to keep roads clean if they see people, especially teenagers like us, cleaning them up.

    We will need helpers to care for our adopted highway. If you want to feel great and keep our roads clean，please come with your parents to the meeting next week. We will meet in Mrs. Lake' room on Wednesday at 6:00 P.M. At the meeting, we will talk about which roads are the dirtiest as a result of people's unkind acts. Then we' ll try to pick an area to adopt and clean.

    I look forward to seeing you at the meeting. Remember to keep our roads clean!

    Dr. Amanda Harris was ready for sleep since it was already 11 pm. The phone rang. On the other end of the line was a woman about to break a promise. The woman was her mother's neighbor. Flora Harris had made the neighbor swear she wouldn't tell her daughter she'd had a heart attack and was in hospital. The neighbor wisely decided to disobey orders.

    Amanda desperately wanted to get to the hospital immediately, but she couldn't. She lives in Washington D. C. and her mother lives in California. For the past year and a half, Amanda has gone to Los Angeles every other month to take care of her mother. Flora Harris takes care of her husband, James, who's 91 and has Alzheimer's disease. They live in their own home, and a caregiver comes to help them a few hours a day.

    Amanda is one of many Americans facing the heartache of how to take care of aging parents from afar. She's often worried and guilty, not to mention busy with a demanding job, two teenage daughters and the frequent trips to California.

    In some ways, Amanda is lucky. She has the resources to make the trips to Los Angeles. Plus, she is a doctor who treats the elderly. She's treated countless patients whose children live far away.

    “But it's still tough,” she says. “I can foresee what the next few years are going to look like, and it's not a pretty picture. There will come a time when my father won't recognize me and I worry he's going to be violent and hurt my mother.”

    So what do you do when you live a continent away from your aging, sick parents? You can hire someone to help, but you can't count on it completely.

    My house is made of wood, glass and stone. It is also made of software.

    If you come to visit, you'll probably be surprised when you come in. Someone will give you an electronic PIN (个人身份证号码) to wear. This PIN tells the house who and where you are. The house uses this information to give you what you need. When it's dark outside, the PIN turns on the lights nearest you, and then turns them off as you walk away from them. Music moves with you too. If the house knows your favorite music, it plays it. The music seems to be everywhere, but in fact other people in the house hear different music or no music. If you get a telephone call, only the nearest telephone rings.

    Of course, you are also able to tell the house if you want something. There is a home control console (控制台), a small machine that turns things on and off around you.

    The PIN and the console are new ideas, but they are in fact like many things we have today. If you want to go to a movie, you need a ticket. If I give you my car keys, you can use my car. The car works for you because you have the keys. My house works for you because you wear the PIN or hold the console.

    I believe that ten years from now on, most new homes will have the systems that I've put in my house. The systems will probably be even bigger and better than the ones I've put in today.

    I like to try new ideas. I know that some of my ideas will work better than others. But I hope that one day I will stop thinking of these systems as new, and ask myself instead, "How did I live without them?"

    A famous doctor once received a little child who was badly ill. Thanks to his skill and care, his young patient got well and was soon able to get up and run about again.

    The child's mother was very much obliged to the doctor, and she called on him to thank him for what he had done for her child. "Doctor," she said, "you have saved my little son. I don't know how to thank you enough. I feel that money alone cannot repay you, so I have made this little purse with my own hands, as a sign of my gratitude. I hope you will accept it." The doctor stood up and said coldly, "Madam, a little present like that is very nice between friends, but a doctor needs to be paid properly for what he has done." The lady was so surprised and hurt so much that she could not reply for a moment. Then she said quietly, "Perhaps you will tell me how much your fee is?"

    "Fifty pounds", he answered.

    The lady opened the little purse and took out four fifty-pound bank notes. She handed one of them to the doctor, and put the other three back into the purse. She put the purse into her handbag and, saying good bye to the doctor, went out of the room.

Not many years ago, a rich and kind old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money by selling and buying goods. When he was seventy-five, he gave f 12,000 to the village to buy land and equipment for a children's playground.

As a result of his kindness, many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaper man. During their talk, Johnson said that he was seventy-five and expected to live to be a hundred. The newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at seventy- five. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked wine and drank some each day. "I have an injection(注射)in my neck each evening." he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of wine.

The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was seventy- five and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injection.

A new study of fifth and sixth graders in Germany examined the relation between classmates' gender stereotypes (性别刻板印象) and individual students' reading outcomes to explain how these stereotypes contribute to the gender gap in reading.

"It's a cycle of sorts," explains Francesca Muntoni, a researcher at the University of Hamburg, who leads the study. "Reading is first thought as a female advantage." It stresses that girls are born to have an advantage in reading, which in turn greatly affects boys by causing them to devalue their actual reading ability. So finally, it damages their reading motivation (积极性)."

The study has proven that boys are less motivated to read and hold weaker reading-related beliefs about their own skills if they hold the strong stereotype mentioned above. And accordingly, they perform poorly in the reading test. The effect of classmates' stereotypes is seen over and above the effect of individual stereotypes. The study found fewer individual positive effects and no effects of classmates, stereotyping on reading-related outcomes for girls.

The researchers say although their study provides evidence of lasting negative effects of stereotypical beliefs in a classroom context, they need more experimental findings on the subject. They also note that students' gender stereotypes were measured by self-reports, which might limit their accuracy. Finally, they point out that their study did not settle how gender stereotypes were formed.

"To solve socially the determined gender inequality in reading and help create classroom contexts that discourage students from acting on their stereotypical beliefs, teacher and parents may consider educating boys and girls in ways that change stereotypical behaviors. And thus students can become aware of their gender stereotypes to counteract their effects on other students' outcomes and to create a gender-fair learning environment," says Jan Retelsdorf, professor of the University of Hamburg, who co-authored the study.