Many people travel during the holiday season but do not make sure that their houses and homes {#blank#}1{#/blank#} (protect). Crimes go up {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (rapid) during the winter and summer holiday seasons. Here are some things that you should keep in mind when you go on holiday.

    Always give {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (strange) the feeling that you are at home. Have the snow {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (clean) off your stairs or out of your driveway during the winter season. You might ask someone to park his/her car in {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (you) driveway.

    Tell your newspaper deliverer that you are not at home. {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (have) a pile of newspapers and other mail on your doorsteps tells people that you are not at home, so you could also have a neighbor {#blank#}7{#/blank#} a relative get your mail every day.

    Fix a timer(定时器) in some of your rooms {#blank#}8{#/blank#} turns lights on and {#blank#}9{#/blank#} during different time of the day. Some TVs also come with a timer that you could set to be turned on during certain time. Have motion(运动) sensitive lights outside your house that keep thieves away {#blank#}10{#/blank#} you are not at home.

Is climate change consuming your favorite foods?

    Coffee: Whether or not you try to limit yourself to one cup of coffee a day, the effects of climate change on the world's coffee-growing regions may leave you little choice. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} America, Africa, Asia and Hawaii are all being threatened by rising air temperatures and unstable rainfall patterns, which invite disease and {#blank#}2{#/blank#} species to live on the coffee plant and ripening beans. The result? Significant cuts in coffee yield and less coffee in your cup. It is estimated that, if current climate patterns continue, half of the areas {#blank#}3{#/blank#} suitable for coffee production won't be by the year 2050.

    Tea: When it comes to tea, warmer climates and erratic precipitation aren't only {#blank#}4{#/blank#} the world's tea-growing regions, they're also messing with its distinct flavor. For example, in India, researchers have already discovered that the Indian Monsoon has brought more intense rainfall, making tea flavor weaker. Recent research coming out of the University of Southampton suggests that tea-producing areas in some places, {#blank#}5{#/blank#} East Africa, could decline by as much as 55 percent by 2050 as precipitation and temperatures change. Tea pickers are also feeling the {#blank#}6{#/blank#} of climate change. During harvest season, increased air temperatures are creating an increased risk of heatstroke for field workers.

    Seafood: Climate change is affecting the world's aquaculture as much as its agriculture. As air temperatures rise, oceans and waterways absorb some of the heat and {#blank#}7{#/blank#} warming of their own. The result is a decline in fish population, including in lobsters (who are cold-blooded creatures), and salmon (whose eggs find it hard to survive in higher water temps). Warmer waters also {#blank#}8{#/blank#} toxic marine bacteria, like Vibrio, to grow and cause illness in humans whenever ingested with raw seafood, like oysters or sashimi.

    And that {#blank#}9{#/blank#} "crack" you get when eating crab and lobster? It could be silenced as shellfish struggle to build their calcium(碳) carbonate shells, a result of ocean acidification (absorb carbon dioxide from the air). According to a study, scientists predicted that if over-fishing and rising temperature trends continued at their present rate, the world's seafood {#blank#}10{#/blank#} would run out by the year 2050.

    When Marco Polo was 17 years old, he travelled {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Europe and Asia with his father, who wanted to do trade with the Chinese. And {#blank#}2{#/blank#} they arrived in Beijing.

    Marco was amazed by how beautiful and powerful China was. He was impressed by Beijing and the Emperor's palace. He was surprised to see Chinese people using paper money in the markets because he could not understand how people could pay for food and valuable things with paper! He was also {#blank#}3{#/blank#} by the black stones people used to burn for fuel. The black stones were coal, but Marco had never seen it before.

    Not long after his return to Italy, a local war {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. During the war, he was caught by the enemy and put into prison. Another prisoner, who was an author, took {#blank#}5{#/blank#} while Marco told all his stories about China and wrote the stories in a book called The Description of the World.