My senior years, I can't believe it is almost over. Now when I look back, it was stressful, but exciting, the ball, graduation, and then of course, college.

    I started applying for my college months before Christmas. My parents told me it would be smart if I set up interviews and tours. But I wasn't motivated. I wanted to go to college, but I didn't want to deal with the stress.

    As the days flew by, my applications lay on my desk just as I had left them three months before. “You are wasting valuable time,” my parents complained. Sweeping away the gathered dust on the applications, I worked on them every Sunday until I finished. Next came writing the essays. I had many ideas, but every school had different requirements. I changed them until I was pleased. Finally, everything was underway.

    Now I just had to wait. In March, I started receiving letters of rejection. I began to think that I had set myself up for disappointment. I had a letter from Salem State College starting that they wanted to see my grades before they made their decision. Yes! At least someone wanted to consider me. At the beginning of April, I received a letter from Keens State. Those opening words: “We regret to inform you…” made me sit down and cry. I had lost all hope. Then I heard from Plymouth State. Not my first choice, but…I had been accepted. Maybe if I get my grades up, I can choose another school…

    The college application hurt me deeply. All my friends had dozens of schools to choose from. I guess my parents were right. High school grades are undoubtedly important to your future plans. If I could do it all over again, I would take it more seriously.

    British chemist David Evans has become an overnight celebrity on Chinese social media. His chemistry experiments have attracted over 2 million followers in just a few months. Evans is a chemistry professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The 60-year-old always wears a white lab coat, a pair of safety goggles (护目镜), and smiles often. Some web users say he looks just like the “grandpa of KFC”.

    Evans has posted videos of various experiments. His most popular experiments have attracted millions of hits on video-sharing apps. Excited children's cheers and shouts can be heard in his videos. “I hope my experiments can arouse people's interest in science,” he says.

    Evans has been interested in China since childhood. In the early 1970s, before the reform and opening-up, he viewed it as a “country full of mysteries”. He first visited the Chinese mainland in 1987 to attend a chemistry conference in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He quit his job in the United Kingdom and moved to Beijing in 1996. Many of his friends thought he was crazy. But Evans says they just saw China's challenges but not its potential.

    Since 2011, Evans has turned to the Internet to popularize science. He learned short-video apps are also popular in small cities and rural areas. And he realized this enables him to reach more students, who lack opportunities to perform fun experiments. But even a one-minute video requires a considerable amount of work. Still, he thinks it's worth it to fulfill his responsibility to popularize science.

    His experiments always fill schools' lecture halls with laughter. Some viewers call him “a Harry Potter-like magician”, but he disagrees. “A magician never tells the secrets behind his tricks, but a scientist always gives an explanation.” He sees himself as a teacher. He performs experiments to spread knowledge, inspire thinking, remove misunderstandings and show that science can create change. Evans says he looks forward to more “chemical reactions” with China.

    A nation's humor is linked to the historical development of the country. How funny somebody finds a certain thing depends on many things including ages, personal experiences, levels of education and locations. Therefore, humor is something that is not always transferable (可转移的) in another country.

    What about when both countries speak the same mother tongue? Does that mean they will then share the same sense of humor, or can differences still take place? Let's take the example of Britain and America. Time and time again, people say that Brits and Americans don't "get" each other's sense of humor. It is often argued that one of the most common differences between the British and American sense of humor is that Americans don't understand irony (反话). Simon Pegg explores this topic in depth in his article What Are You Laughing At? He concludes that this statement isn't true and I agree with him.

    In fact, Brits use irony on a daily basis while Americans don't. I think Americans understand British irony (most of the time anyway); what they don't understand is the need to use it so frequently. When Americans use irony, they tend to say that they are "only kidding". They feel the need to make a joke more obvious than Brits do. Maybe this comes from a fear of offending (冒犯) people.

    The American sense of humor is generally more slapstick (闹剧的) than that in Britain. I think this arises from a cultural difference between the two. Their jokes are more obvious and forward, a bit like Americans themselves. British jokes, on the other hand, tend to be more subtle. This may stem from the fact that British culture is more reserved (矜持的) than American culture.

    Record fires sweeping across the Amazon this month have been catching global headlines as scientists and environmental groups are worried that they will worsen climate change and threaten biodiversity(生物多样性).

    As the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon is often called "the lungs of the world". It is also home to about 3 million species of plants and animals, and 1 million local people. The vast lands of rainforest play an important role in the world's ecosystem because they take in heat instead of it being reflected back into the atmosphere. They also store carbon dioxide (二氧化碳)and produce oxygen, making sure that less carbon is given off, mitigating the effects of climate change.

    "Any forest destroyed is a threat to biodiversity and the people who use that biodiversity," Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist at George Mason University told National Geographic. "The shocking threat is that a lot of carbon goes into the atmosphere," he stressed. "Facing the global climate change, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity. The Amazon must be protected," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

    Data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show that the number of forest fires in Brazil quickly increased by 82 percent from January to August this year from a year ago. A total of 71,497 forest fires were recorded in the country in the first eight months of 2019, up from 39,194 in the same period in 2018, INPE said. "It's reported that the forest areas in the Brazilian Amazon have decreased something between 20 and 30 percent compared to the last 12 months," Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

    Brazil owns about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, whose drop could have severe results for global climate and rainfall. The size of the area ruined by fires has yet to be determined, but the emergency has transcended(超出）Brazil's borders, reaching Peruvian, Paraguayan and Bolivian areas.

    About six years ago I was eating lunch in a restaurant in New York City when a woman and a young boy sat down at the next table. I couldn't help overhearing parts of their conversation. At one point the woman asked, "So, how have you been?" And the boy — who could not have been more than 7 or 8 years old —replied, "Frankly, I've been feeling a little depressed lately."

    This incident(小事件) stuck in my mind because it confirmed(证实) my growing belief that children are changing. As far as I can remember, my friends and I didn't find out we were "depressed" until we were in high school.

    The evidence of a change in children has increased steadily in recent years. Children don't seem childlike anymore. Children speak more like adults, dress more like adults and behave more like adults than they used to. Whether this is good or bad is difficult to say, but it is certainly different. Children as they once were on longer exists. Why?

    Human development is based not only on innate biological states, but also on patterns of access to social knowledge. Movement from one social route to another usually involves learning the secrets of the new status. Children have always been taught adult secrets, but slowly and in stages: traditionally, we tell sixth graders things we keep hidden from fifth graders.

    In the last 30 years, however, a secret-revelation (揭示)machine has been installed in 98 percent of American homes. It is called television. Television passes information indiscriminately to all viewers alike, be they children or adults. Unable to resist the temptation, many children turn their attention from printed texts to the less challenging, more vivid moving pictures.

    Communication through print, as a matter of fact, allows for a great deal of control over the social information to which children have access. Reading and writing involve a complex code of symbols that must be memorized and practiced. Children must read simple books before they can read complex materials.

When {#blank#}1{#/blank#} (ask) by a TV reporter to talk about air and water quality in his hometown, Qi Mu noted, "The air is great now, and we can take more walks and enjoy being outdoors again." He felt quite pleased because the villagers were living {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (harmonious) with nature once more. However, he could not forget about an earlier time {#blank#}3{#/blank#} his village had been struggling with a serious air quality problem.

In the 1990s, garbage from nearby city was usually brought to the village. "How can we make use of this?" The villagers wondered. Soon they found that garbage could be used {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (feed) pigs. "Over the next few years, {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (dozen) of pig farms were set up," Qi recalled. But then nobody in the village wanted to open their windows. "The smell from the garbage and pig waste was making us sick," Qi said. The numbers of mosquitoes and flies were also {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (horrify). "Under such circumstances, no single women wanted to marry anyone in our village and move here," Qi {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (sigh).

The villagers could no longer tolerate the situation. So {#blank#}8{#/blank#} initiative was launched and "clean-up" campaign was added to the government agenda, including restricting large vehicles {#blank#}9{#/blank#} passing through the village. Garbage from the city was no longer disposed of in the village and more trees were planted. "We can all breathe more freely now that the natural beauty of our village {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (restore) since then," said Qi.