While going through life with the pursuit of money on our mind, we're often told that money can't buy happiness. But what truth is there in the saying? Is there a relation between money and happiness?  {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Humans are very sensitive to change. When we get a rise, we really enjoy it. But some studies have shown that in North America, additional income beyond 75,000 dollars a year stops impacting day-to-day happiness. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}They often end up spending all the money, going into debt, and experience ruined social relationships.

    So surely money can't really buy happiness. Well, recent studies suggest that the problem may actually be in the way that we spend money. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Studies show that people who spend their money on others feel happier. As for the people who spend money on themselves, their happiness is unchanged.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} One experiment showed that instead of an organization writing a large check to a charity, dividing the amount up among employees, allowing them to contribute to a charity of their choice, increased their job satisfaction. Similarly, individuals that spend money on each other, as opposed to themselves, not only increase job satisfaction, but improve the team performance.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Interestingly, the specific way money is spent on others isn't important. Spending something on others is the important aspect of increasing your happiness.

Primary Source Holiday Shopping Night at Ten Thousand Villages

● Shop for your holiday gifts and give back to Primary Source at Ten Thousand Villages on Friday, December 4! 15% of all sales from 3:00 p. m．—7:00 p. m. that day will be donated to Primary Source. Join us for light refreshments and enjoy beautiful handmade gifts from artisans around the world. All are welcome!

Primary Source's Holiday Shopping Night

Friday, December 4, 2014

3:00 p. m．—7:00 p. m.

Ten Thousand Villages

226 Harvard Street, Brookline, Massachusetts (Coolidge Corner)

Download our flyer and tell your friends!

    Ten Thousand Villages provides vital, fair income for the people from developing countries by marketing their handicrafts and telling their stories in North America. Learn more and preview toys, home decor, jewelry, and other gifts online.

● Can't join us on Dec. 4? At GoodShop, 30% of your spending will be given to Primary Source. The next time you're ready to make an online purchase(购物), visit www. goodshop. com and enter “Primary Source” in the space provided. Click “verify” and choose from more than seven hundred popular stores and sites, from Apple to Zappos. GoodShop is free and easy to use, and each purchase you make will help Primary Source provide global education materials for schools all over New England.

    Spell checks are turning us into a nation of idiots with a third of adults failing to reach the expected spelling ability of an 11-year-old child,a shocking study shows.

    A survey involving 1,000 adults aged between 16 and 77 found that 67 percent would reach Level 4 in Standard Assessment Tests (ASTs),while less than half (44 percent) would achieve Level 5.Fifteen percent of the adults tested even failed to reach Level 3,which is below Level 4—the expected level of children at age 11.Experts blamed the poor showing of the adults on the popularity of tools such as spell check and auto-correct,which both play an important role in modem-day living.

    The study asked adults to complete Key Stage 2 spelling tests designed to judge the performance of children aged 10 and 11,as they reach the end of primary school.But the test spelled trouble for many of the adults tested.The study was charged by King Digital Entertainment,makers of popular mobile games such as Candy Crush.People taking part in the test were asked to spell 35 different words taken from SATs spelling papers from the past three years.In a test which imitated real exam conditions."Phenomenon" and "unnecessary" were among the words spelled wrong by more than half of those participants.Other words which fewer than half were able to spell included rhythmic (42 percent) and jewellery (49 percent).

    Susie Dent.Lexicographer（字典编纂者）and resident word expert on TV show Countdown,believed the results were partly down to the popularity of tools such as spell check and auto-correct.She said,"Tho result is disappointing. It suggests that the ability to spell is losing its importance in our daily lives.Modem tools like spell check and auto-correct encourage us to switch off from learning,leading to satisfaction or,at worst,indifference."

    Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch or wake up early in order not to miss varies by culture？

    From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.

    Around the world, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight savings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to "winter time" starting on October 26.

    Russia's other late nights and early mornings generally correspond to public holidays. On New Year's Eve, Russians have the world's latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 a. m.

    Russians also get up an hour later on International Women's Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.

    Similarly, Americans' late nights, late mornings, and longest sleeps fall on three-day weekends.

    Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey (冰球) final.

    The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation. The worst night for sleep in the U. K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning. Thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup.

    It should be made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns; in some of these nations, it's likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that's the case, though, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?

注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填1个单词。

When a thought has found words

    Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure and modern poets are looked upon as odd creatures from a strange universe. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered old-fashioned and not relevant to the needs of today's students.

    In China, however, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum and, with recent changes announced by the Ministry of Education, the number of poems students will have to memorize and recite is being increased from fourteen to seventy-two. Now, before you gasp in horror, let's think about the reasons why studying so many poems, especially ancient poems, is important.

    First of all, poetry is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. It is a pathway to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and emotions that are common to everyone but which we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those emotions into words and bring us self-understanding.

    Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something commonplace can become beautiful. Here is a poem called "Fog" by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes / on silent haunches (弓腰蹲着) / and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and mysteriously like a cat, and Sandberg captures that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.

    Of course, to really appreciate poetry, it has to be really aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poetry, especially Western poetry, was actually spoken before it was written. Take Homer's Iliad (伊利亚德), the story of the Trojan War (特洛伊战争), for example. That epic saga (史诗般的故事) of Helen's kidnapping and the war that followed was apparently told for hundreds of years in palaces, taverns (客栈) and on street corners before Homer wrote it down and was given credit for it.

    The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." And poems are very concise—there is not a wasted word. You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

Coral reefs (珊瑚礁) as underwater walls can help reduce the effects of hurricanes on coastal communities. This seems unbelievable. It is reported that scientists have discovered that coral reefs are even more effective than man-made sea walls under the water. However, coral reefs are especially easy to be influenced by climate change. Overfishing and pollution have also proved very dangerous to them. Since 1950, half of the world's coral reefs have already been lost. To protect our communities and keep sea ecosystems alive, we need to protect coral reefs right away.

Let's take a closer look at how coral reefs protect us from floods, and how scientists are 1restoring (修复) reefs.

The roles that coral reefs play as underwater walls have long been recorded by scientists. During a Category 3 hurricane in 2015 in Australia, the coral reefs effectively protected the eastern shoreline from flooding. In contrast, the western coasts without coral reefs suffered serious damage. The researchers observed that the shape of coral reefs can break the approaching waves. More recently, researchers at the University of Miami have reached the same conclusion. They used a special lab simulator (模拟装置) to recreate ocean conditions during a Category 5 hurricane. They found that coral reefs could reduce the impact of waves by up to 95 percent!

Because of higher ocean acidity (酸性) and temperature, coral reefs are disappearing and dying out. At the same time, climate change puts weakened coral reefs under more stress. The University of Miami researchers are testing to plant new coral reefs while others are actively looking for effective methods to reduce the acidity of sea water. The governments have also paid more attention to these actions and provided enough money for reef restoration. With these efforts, we may address climate threats to coral reefs and they can carry on protecting our communities.