The adobe dwellings(土坯房) (1) ______ (build) by the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest are admired by even (2) ______ most modern of architects and engineers. In addition to their simple beauty, what makes the adobe dwellings admirable is their (3) ______ (able) to “air condition”a house without (4) ______ (use) electric equipment.Walls made of adobe take in the heat from the sun on hot days and give out that heat (5) ______ (slow) during cool nights,thus warning the house. When a new day breaks, the walls have given up their heat and are now cold enough (6) ______ (cool) the house during the hot day: (7) ______ the same time, they warm up again for the night This cycle (8) ______ (go) day after day: The walls warm up during the day and cool off during the night and thus always a timely offset (抵消) for the outside temperatures. As (9) ______ (nature) architects, the Pueblo Indians figured out exactly (10) ______ thick the adobe walls needed to be to make the cycle work on most days.
(1) ______ | (2) ______ | (3) ______ | (4) ______ | (5) ______ |
(6) ______ | (7) ______ | (8) ______ | (9) ______ | (10) ______ |
No one is sure how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids near Cairo. But a new study suggests they used a little rock ‘n’ roll. Long-ago builders could have attached wooden pole s to the stones and rolled then across the sand, the scientists say.
“Technically, I think what they’re proposing is possible,” physicist Daniel Bonn said.
People have long puzzled over how the Egyptians moved such huge rocks. And there’s no obvious answer. On average, each of the two million big stones weighed about as much as a large pickup truck. The Egyptians somehow moved the stone blocks to the pyramid site from about one kilometer away.
The most popular view is that Egyptian workers slid the blocks along smooth paths. Many scientists suspect workers first would have put the blocks on sleds(滑板). Then they would have dragged them along paths. To make the work easier, workers may have lubricated the paths either with wet clay or with the fat from cattle. Bonn has now tested this idea by building small sleds and dragging heavy objects over sand.
Evidence from the sand supports this idea. Researchers found small amounts of fat, as well as a large amount of stone and the remains of paths.
However , physicist Joseph West think there might have been a simpler way , led the new study . West said , “I was inspired while watching a television program showing how sleds might have helped with pyramid construction . I thought , ‘Why don’t they just try rolling the things ? ‘ ” A square could be turned into a rough sort of wheel by attaching wooden poles to its sides , he realized . That , he notes , should make a block of stone “a lot easier to roll than a square”.
So he tried it.
He and his students tied some poles to each of four sides of a 30-kilogram stone block.That action turned the block into somewhat a wheel.Then they placed the block on the ground.
They wrapped one end of a rope around the block and pulled.The researchers found they could easily roll the block along different kinds of paths.They calculated that rolling the block required about as much force as moving it along a slippery(滑的) path.
West hasn’t tested his idea on larger blocks,but he thinks rolling has clear advantages over sliding.At least,workers wouldn’t have needed to carry cattle fat or water to smooth the paths.
Parents who help their children with homework may actually be bringing down their school grades. Other forms of parental involvement, including volunteering at school and observing a child's class, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.
The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting(养育子女) where schools except them to act as partners in their children's education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.
Kaith Robinson, the author of the study, said, "I really don't know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents can be involved in their kids' education that leads to declines in their academic performance. One of the things that was consistently negative was parents' help with homework." Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the task." They may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learnt it themselves, but they're still offering advice."
Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive, about 45% negative and the rest statistically insignificant.
Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because "children with good academic success do have involved parents ", admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success." A big surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school hardly involved. They took a more reasonable approach, conveying to their children how success at school could improve their lives."
In 2004, when my daughter Becky was ten, she and my husband, Joe, were united in their desire for a dog. As for me, I shared none of their canine lust.
But why, they pleaded. “Because I don’t have tine to take care of a dog.” But we’ll do it. “Really? You’re going to walk the dog? Feed the dog? Bathe the dog?” Yes,yes and yes.”I don’t believe you.” We will. We promise.
They didn’t. From day two (everyone wanted to walk the cute puppy that first day), neither thought to walk the dog. While I was slow to accept that I would be the one to keep track of her shots, to schedule her vet appointments, to feed and clean her, Misty knew this on day one. As she looked up at the three new humans in her life (small, medium, and large), she calculated, "The medium one is the sucker in the pack."
Quickly, she and I developed something very similar to a Vulcan mind meld(心灵融合). She’d look at me with those sad brown eyes of hers, beam her need, and then wait, trusting I would understand---which, strangely, I almost always did. In no time, she became my fifth appendage(附肢), snoring on my stomach as I watched television.
Even so, part of me continued to resent walking duty. Joe and Becky had promised. Not fair, I’d balk(不心甘情愿地做) silently as she and I walked.“Not fair,” I’d loudly remind anyone within earshot upon our return home.
Then one day-January 1, 2007, to be exact-my husband’s doctor uttered an unthinkable word: leukemia (白血病). With that, I spent eight to ten hours a day with Joe in the hospital, doing anything and everything I could to ease his discomfort. During those six months of hospitalizations, Becky, 12 at that time, adjusted to other adults being in the house when she returned from school. My work colleagues adjusted to my taking off at a moment’s notice for medical emergencies. Every part of my life changed; no part of my old routine remained.
Save one: Misty still needed walking. At the beginning, when friends offered to take her through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.
As the months went by, I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty. The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day’s medical drama unfolded. The evening walk was a time to shake off the day’s upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.
When serious illness visits your household, it’s not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar. Pretty much everyone you know acts differently.
Not Misty. Take her for a walk, and she had no interest in Joe’s blood or bone marrow test results. On the street or in the park, she had only one thing on her mind: squirrels! She was so joyful that even on the worst days, she could make me smile. On a daily basis, she reminded me that life goes on.
After Joe died in 2009, Misty slept on his pillow.
I’m grateful-to a point. The truth is, after years of balking, I’ve come to enjoy my walks with Misty. As I watch her chase a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminded me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future, there’s almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.
下面短文中有10处语言错误。请在有错误的地方增加、删减或修改某个单词。
增加:在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧),并在其下面写上该加的词。
删除:把多余的词用斜线(/)划掉。
修改:在错的词下划一横线,并在该词下面写上修改后的词。
注意:
(1) 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
(2) 只允许修改10处,多着(从第11处起)不计分。
When I was a very young children,my father created a regular practice I remember well years late.Every time he arrived home at end of the day ,we’d greet het at the door.He would ask who we was and pretend not to knowing us,Then he and my mother would have had a drink while she prepared dinner and they would talk about his day and hers.While they chat,my father would lift my sister and me up to sit in the top of the fridge.It was both excited and frightening to be up there!
My sister and I thought he was so cool for putting us there.
If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal(夜间活动的)species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences-called light pollution-whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into sky. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels-and light rhythms-to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life is affected.
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze(霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We’ve grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night-dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth-is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet(磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses. Humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs. Like most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage-the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way-the edge of our galaxy-arching overhead.
December 15, 2014
Dear Alfred,
I want to tell you how important your help is to my life.
Growing up, I had people telling me I was too slow, though, with an IQ of 150+ at 17, I’m anything but stupid. The fact was that I was found to have ADHD(注意力缺陷多动障碍). Anxious all the time, I was unable to keep focused for more than an hour at a time.
However, when something did interest me, I could become absorbed. In high school, I became curious about the computer, and built my first website. Moreover, I completed the senior course of Computer Basics, plus five relevant pre-college courses.
While I was exploring my curiosity, my disease got worse. I wanted to go to college after high school, but couldn’t . So, I was killing my time at home until June 2012 when I discovered the online computer courses of your training center.
Since then, I have taken courses like Data Science and Advanced Mathematics. Currently, I’m learning your Probability course. I have hundreds of printer paper, covered in self-written notes from your video. This has given me a purpose.
Last year, I spent all my time looking for a job where, without dealing with the public , I could work alone, but still have a team to talk to. Luckily, I discovered the job—Data Analyst—this month and have been going full steam ahead. I want to prove that I can teach myself a respectful profession, without going to college, and be just as good as, if not better than, my competitors.
Thank you. You’ve given me hope that I can follow my heart. For the first time, I feel good about myself because I’m doing something, not because someone told me I was doing good. I feel whole.
This is why you’re saving my life.
Yours,
Tanis
Cell Phone Repair Form | |
Customer’s Name | Thomas (1) ______ |
Telephone No. | (2) _____ |
Time of Purchase | (3) ______ 1st,2015 |
Problem | Screen went (4) ______ |
Solution(解决方案) | (5) ______ it up and check the inside |
Yangshuo, China
It was raining lightly when I (1) ______ (arrive) in Yangshuo just before dawn. But I didn’t care. A few hours (2) ______, I’d been at home in Hong Kong, with (3) ______ (it) choking smog. Here, the air was clean and fresh, even with the rain.
I’d skipped nearby Guilin, a dream place for tourists seeking the limestone mountain tops and dark waters of the Li River (4) ______ are pictured by artists in so many Chinese (5) ______ (painting). Instead, I'd head straight for Yangshuo. For those who fly to Guilin, it’s only an hour away (6) ______ car and offers all the scenery of the better-known city.
Yangshuo (7) ______ (be) really beautiful. A study of travelers (8) ______ (conduct) by the website TripAdvisor names Yangshuo as one of the top 10 destinations in the world. And the town is fast becoming a popular weekend destination for people in Asia. Abercrombie & Kent, a travel company in Hong Kong, says it (9) ______ (regular) arranges quick getaways here for people (10) ______ (live) in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
(1) ______ | (2) ______ | (3) ______ | (4) ______ | (5) ______ |
(6) ______ | (7) ______ | (8) ______ | (9) ______ | (10) ______ |
Doctor: Good morning, Sir. (1) ______
Johnson: Yes, doctor. I'm always tired but when I go to bed I can't sleep.
Doctor: (2) ______
Johnson: Since I started my new job two months ago.
Doctor: What is your job ?
Johnson: I’m in advertising. (3) ______
Doctor: It depends. How many hours do you work?
Johnson: About 80 hours a week
Doctor: (4) ______ . Do you often take exercise?
Johnson: Not very often. (5) ______ .
Doctor: Well, you do need to find some time. Try to work less, or look for a more stress-free job.
A. That's a lot! B. I like my job. C. Does it matter? D. How can I help you? E. I don't have the time. F. What time do you usually go to bed? G. How long have you had this problem? |