Auckland is New Zealand's largest urban area with a population of just over a million people. It is not, however, the capital, although it was at one time, until the capital moved to Wellington. Auckland is the center of commerce and industry, and is perhaps the most energetic, prosperous and multicultural city in New Zealand.

    The city's landscape is decided by volcanic hills, the twin harbors, bays, beaches and islands. Its nickname “the city of sails” is very suitable. Auckland has more boats for each person than anywhere else in the world.

    Auckland has many volcanic hills, many of which currently afford great views of the city. And Auckland's geography is such that shiny waters seem to attract people from every point. It is a water lovers' best place, with some of the best beaches, swimming, diving, fishing, sailing, windsurfing and water sports in the country.

    Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is also the cultural, administrative and political center of the country. Two aspects of the city that will immediately strike any visitor are the harbor and hilly landscape. Everywhere you go, the sounds and the smell of the ocean hang in the air, and green hills and valleys wrap you in a bear-hug embrace. At night, Wellington offers a spectacular, shimmering(闪闪发光的) cityscape that is unlike almost anywhere else in the world. Even after seeing it for a hundred times, it takes your breath away.

    Wellington is a scenic, windy and diverse place. It has some of the best museums, art galleries, restaurants, and coffee houses in the country. It is the storehouse for the nation's historic, cultural and artistic treasures. Being the first place where European settlers arrived, it also boasts lots of historic streets and buildings.

    Wellington is host to an excellent Festival of the Arts every two years.

    The TV science-fiction series Star Trek no longer looked far-fetched (牵强的) as four men and four women in black space-suits locked themselves into a giant hi-tech greenhouse, known as a ‘biosphere', in the Arizona desert yesterday for a two-year study of the environment.

    As dawn broke over the Santa Catalina mountains, the eight waved goodbye to television cameras. Edward Ross, their multibillionaire sponsor from a Texas oil family, closed the door of the $150 million structure, with its mini-ocean, marsh, desert, savanna, rain-forest and 3,800 plant and animal species designed to allow the team to recreate Earth and its ecosystems.

    The so-called Biosphere 2 is the latest of a dozen environmental projects started by the self-titled ‘ecopreneur'. The project's main aim is to set up a self-sustaining community for possible use in a spaceship or on another planet. The crew members must plant, harvest and process their food on a half-acre farm in the seven-storey glass and metal structure, while conducting a series of experiments.

    ‘We will be custodians (监护人) of our new little world,' said Abigail Mayer, aged 31, a US marine biologist on the team, her voice choking with emotion. ‘It is a brave new step.' Many scientists, however, are more than skeptical. They point out that the largest closed ecosystem which survived more than a few days was smaller than a football. It was developed at the University of Miami and contained only shrimp, algae and other micro-organisms.

    Critics have also accused Mr. Ross of being more interested in producing a profitable theme park than in carrying out serious scientific research. Hundreds of tourists visited the site daily in the summer before it was occupied by the team. They paid $9.95 to enter and all stopped at the souvenir shop.

    Changing technology stimulates (刺激) the brain and increases intelligence. But that may only be true if the technology challenges us. In a world run by intelligent machines, our lives could get a lot simpler. Would that make us less intelligent?

    After the Industrial Revolution, machines began to replace manual workers. The process played out in agriculture as well as manufacturing so that groups of agricultural workers were replaced and forced to move to cities to make a living.

    When machines took away much of the manual work, people became less physically active and gained weight. The sedentary (久坐的) lifestyle contributed to a worldwide spreading of overweight and related metabolic disorders such as heart disease, secondary diabetes and kidney disease .

    As our bodies rested, our brains were forced to work harder, however. It is much more difficult to drive through an overcrowded modern city than it is to move around in a small rural village, for instance. Modern jobs are also more complex and urgent and they require more education because employees need to process new information quickly. Even during our leisure time, our brains work harder due to greater availability of books and explosion of audiovisual media, for entertainment, study, music, news, and so forth.

    Now in the Internet age, the amount of information grows fast along with the advance of electronic technologies. The number of people with whom we interact electronically grows by leaps and bounds thanks to the ease of use of social media like Facebook and Twitter.

    All of this extra work for our brains makes us more intelligent. That helps explain why human intelligence increases steadily from generation to generation in all developed countries, a phenomenon named the Flynn Effect. Of course, there are other reasons, including improved nutrition, better medical practices that reduce brain damage, and improved sanitation and public health that reduce diseases of childhood.

    In the P.G Wodehouse novels, Bertie Wooster got away with being a fool because Jeeves was there to back him up with superior brain power. Similarly, people of the future are at risk of being less intelligent because machines will do their thinking for them.

    Artificial intelligence is taking over many human jobs. For instance, planes are being flown much of the time by automatic pilots. Moreover, the complex problem of controlling air traffic around large modern airports is also achieved by artificial intelligence that operates well beyond the capability of mere human air traffic controllers.

    Artificial intelligence exists in many fields of modern life for the simple reason that intelligent machines can already outperform humans, including some aptitudes (天资) which were once thought to be a human advantage, such as playing chess or recalling details in a game of Jeopardy.

    Machine intelligence is increasing much faster than human intelligence. As machines get smarter, they will do more of our thinking for us and make life easier.

    Instead of struggling to identify ourselves to some electronic system via passwords that are secure only if they are hard to remember, the system will work harder to identify us using biometrics (生物测定学) such as fingerprints or even the individual sound of our hearts. More technologies of the future may also be voice-activated so that we will talk with machines much as we would talk to a friend.

    In the future, the electronic assistant will develop to the point where it serves similar functions as a real living chief male servant of a house, fulfilling requests such as: “Organize a dinner party for six on Thursday, Jeeves, and invite the usual guests .”

    At that point, our long struggle with challenging technologies is at an end. Like Bertie Wooster, we can take it easy knowing that the hard work of planning and organizing is being done by a better brain—the electronic assistant. Starved of mental effort, our brains will return to an earlier or less advanced form.

    The future is still in the fog.

    Two friends have an argument that breaks up their friendship forever, even though neither one can remember how the whole thing got started. Such sad events happen over and over in high schools across the country. In fact, according to an official report on youth violence, “In our country today, the greatest threat to the lives of children and adolescents is not disease or starvation or abandonment, but the terrible reality of violence”. Given that this is the case, why aren't students taught to manage conflict the way they are taught to solve math problems, drive cars, or stay physically fit?

    First of all, students need to realize that conflict is unavoidable. A report on violence among middle school and high school students indicates that most violent incidents between students begin with a relatively minor insult (侮辱). For example, a fight could start over the fact that one student eats a peanut butter sandwich each lunchtime. Laughter over the sandwich can lead to insults, which in turn can lead to violence. The problem isn't in the sandwich, but in the way students deal with the conflict.

    Once students recognize that conflict is unavoidable, they can practice the golden rule of conflict resolution ( 解决): stay calm. Once the student feels calmer, he or she should choose words that will calm the other person down as well. Rude words, name-calling, and accusations only add fuel to the emotional fire. On the other hand, soft words spoken at a normal sound level can put out the fire before it explodes out of control.

    After both sides have calmed down, they can use another key strategy ( 策略) for conflict resolution: listening. Listening allows the two sides to understand each other. One person should describe his or her side, and the other person should listen without interrupting. Afterward, the listener can ask non-threatening questions to clarify the speaker's position. Then the two people should change roles.

    Finally, students need to consider what they are bearing. This doesn't mean trying to figure out what's wrong with the other person. It means understanding what the real issue is and what both sides are trying to accomplish. For example, a shouting match over a peanut butter sandwich might happen because one person thinks the other person is unwilling to try new things. Students need to ask themselves questions such as these：How did this start? What do I really want? What am I afraid of? As the issue becomes clearer, the conflict often simply becomes smaller. Even if it doesn't, careful thought helps both sides figure out a mutual（彼此共同的） solution.

    There will always be conflict in schools, but that doesn't mean there needs to be violence. After students in Atlanta started a conflict resolution program, according to Educators for Social Responsibility, “64 percent of the teachers reported less physical violence in the classroom; 75 percent of the teachers reported an increase in student cooperation; and 92 percent of the students felt better about themselves”. Learning to resolve conflicts can help students deal with friends, teachers, parents, bosses, and coworkers. In that way, conflict resolution is a basic life skill that should be taught in schools across the country.

    Since many of you are planning to study at a college or university in the future, you may be curious to know what your future study will be like. This is the question I want to discuss with you today.

    First, let's talk about what your weekly timetable will look like. No matter what your major may be, you can expect to spend between four and six hours a week for each class attending lecture. Lectures are usually in very large rooms because some courses such as Introduction to Sociology or Economics often have as many as two or three hundred students, especially at large universities. In lectures, it's very important for you to take notes on what the professor says because the information in a lecture is often different from that in your textbooks. Also, you can expect to have exam questions based on the lectures. So it isn't enough to just read your textbooks; you have to attend lectures as well. In a typical week, you will also have a couple of hours of discussion for every class you take. The discussion part is a small group meeting usually with fewer than thirty students where you can ask questions about the lectures, the reading, and the homework. In large universities, graduate students called teaching assistants, usually direct discussion parts

    If your major is chemistry, or physics, or another science, you'll also have to spend several hours a week in the lab doing experiments. This means that science majors spend more time in the classroom than non-science majors do. On the other hand, people who major in subjects like literature or history usually have to read and write more than science majors do.

    Climate change, pollution, overuse of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze. India's Ganges and Africa's Nile. WWF said on Tuesday. At the global launch of its report "World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk", the group said many rivers could dry out. affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic (水生的) life.

    "If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity (生物多样性) will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security, "said. Rayi Singh, secretary—general of WWF—India. The report, launched ahead of "World Water Day" today, also cited the Rio Grande in. the United States, the Mekong and Indus in Asia, Europe's Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia's Murray—Darling as in need of greater protection.

    Rivers are the world's main source of fresh water and WWF says about half of the available supply is already being used up. Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains, while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that feed them, the report said. Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, it found. The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the world because of decades of heavy industrialization, damming and huge influxes (流入) of sediment (积淀) from land conversion.

    Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means serious consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political security in Africa's arid Nile basin. Tributaries (支流) flowing into the Ganges are drying up because of irrigation, WWF said.