Citisport in Newport
We at Citisport aim to improve sports training and facilities in Newport, giving you more opportunities to try both new and traditional sports.
Golf
We are pleased to be able to offer lessons at Kingsway Golf Centre just outside Newport. These are run by experienced golf professionals, and are held on an all-weather practice area. The adult lessons are open to anyone aged 13 and over, and are suitable for all levels from beginners upwards. These take place on Wednesdays from 3:00 to 4:00 pm over a period of six weeks. Children's lessons for 7-12 year old are held from 2:00 to 3:00 pm on Saturdays during term time.
Tennis
The Citisport tennis courses provide an opportunity for local people to develop their skills on the brand-new indoor tennis court at Newport Leisure Centre. All equipment can be provided, but please feel free to use your own racket (球拍) if you prefer. Our Starter course is held on Mondays from 7:00 to 8:00 pm, and is for beginners of 12 years and over. Our Improver course, which takes place on Tuesdays from 8:00 to 9:00 pm, is for players with some experience.
Football for girls
By popular request, Citisport is holding another one-day girls-only football course. This aims to give local girls the chance to learn essential skills and develop more advanced ones. The course will take place on Saturday, 9th November from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, and is open to all girls aged 10-14 years living in the Newport area.
Gymnastics
This course is for beginners aged 8-14 and will provide an introduction to basic skills. There is a maximum of six pupils per coach in each class. At the end of the course there is a demonstration for friends and family of all the skills learnt there. The course will take place on Thursdays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm.
Each year, the women of Olney and Liberal compete in an unusual footrace. Dressed in aprons (围裙) and headscarves, they wait at both towns' starting lines. Each woman holds a frying pan with one pancake inside. At the signal, the women flip (轻抛) pancakes and they're off!
This "pancake racing" tradition is said to have started on Shrove Tuesday, 1445, in Olney. Shrove Tuesday is the day before the Christian season of Lent (大斋戒) begins. During Lent, many people decide to give up sugary or fatty foods.
Legend says that in 1445, an Olney woman was making pancakes to use up some of her sugar and cooking fats before Lent. She lost track of time and suddenly heard the church bells ring, signaling the beginning of the Shrove Tuesday service. Realizing that she was going to be late for church, she raced out the door still wearing her apron and headscarf and holding her frying pan with a pancake in it. In the following years, the woman's neighbors imitated her dash to church, and pancake racing was born.
The rules are simple. Racers must wear the traditional headscarf and apron. They must flip their pancakes twice - once before starting and once after crossing the finish line. After the race, there are Shrove Tuesday church services. Then Liberal and Olney connect through a video call to compare race times and declare a winner.
In both towns, the races have grown into larger festivals. Olney's festival is an all-day event starting with a big pancake breakfast. Liberal's festival lasts four days and includes a parade, a talent show, and contests that feature eating and flipping pancakes. Although the women's race is still the main event, both towns now hold additional races for boys and girls of all ages.
Think of Japan in the spring and the image that comes to mind is likely the country's famous cherry blossoms, also known as "Sakura" — white and pink flowers, blooming across cities and mountains.
The flowers, which experience a "peak bloom" that only lasts a few days, have been loved in Japan for more than a thousand years. Crowds celebrate with viewing parties, flocking to the most popular locations to take photos and have picnics underneath the branches.
But this year, cherry blossom season has come and gone in the blink of an eye, in one of the earliest blooms on record. Scientists warn it's a symptom of the larger climate crisis threatening ecosystems everywhere.
Yasuyuki Aono, a researcher at Osaka Prefecture University, has gathered records from Kyoto back to 812 AD from historical documents and diaries. In the central city of Kyoto, cherry blossoms peaked on March 26, the earliest in more than 1,200 years, Aono said. And in the capital Tokyo, cherry blossoms reached full bloom on March 22, the second-earliest date on record.
The peak bloom dates shift every year, depending on numerous factors including weather and rainfall, but have shown a general trend of moving earlier and earlier. In Kyoto, the peak date stayed around mid-April for centuries, but began moving into early April during the 1800s. The date has only dipped into late March a handful of times in recorded history.
"Sakura blooms are very temperature sensitive," said Aono. "Flowering and full bloom could be earlier or later depending on the temperature alone," he said. "The temperature was low in the 1820s, but it has risen by about 3.5 degrees Celsius to this day."
This year's seasons in particular influenced the blossom dates, he added. The winter was very cold, but the spring came fast and unusually warm.
Your best friend that follows you around when the sun comes out - your shadow - doesn't serve an important function like your heart or brain, but what if you could use shadows to create electricity? When using solar panels (电池板) that are powered by light, shadows can be boring because it means electricity can't be created. However, researchers from the National University of Singapore have engineered a way to create power from the shadows present everywhere.
A team of the university created a machine that can collect energy from shadows. It is created by placing a thin coating of gold onto silicon (硅). Like in a normal solar panel, when put in light, the silicon electrons (电子) become energized and the energized electrons then jump from the silicon to the gold. The voltage (电压) of the part of the machine that is placed in the light increases relative to the dark part and the electrons in the machine flow from high to low voltage. They are sent through an external circuit (外电路) creating a current that can be used to power another machine. The greater the contrast between light and dark, more energy is provided by the machine.
The team is working on improving the performance of the machine, borrowing approaches from solar panels to gather light. Increasing the amount of light the machines can receive allows them to better make use of shadows, as well as developing shadow energy collecting panels that can successfully gather from indoor lighting. The team is also researching the use of other materials other than gold to drop the price of the machine, meaning they would be more cost effective and easier to apply in society.
Shadows are present everywhere and perhaps one day in the future we will be able to collect energy from them by placing the shadow-effect energy machine around the world in places that have been considered unfit for solar panels to work, or indoors. "A lot of people think that shadows are useless," Tan says, but "anything can be useful, even shadows."
Applying to university can seem very challenging. There's so much to do! But really, getting your application in is just a series of stages: do the research, narrow down your university choices, write the applications, and then play the waiting game. Then come the final decisions. .
Choosing your university
. This depends on many factors, including entry requirements, funding and financial factors, subjects and courses available and many more. But such factors often have to come second to important considerations about visa requirements and funding opportunities. And when it comes to entry requirements, it is generally worth applying to a range of institutions so you have at least one back-up choice, just in case.
Once you have narrowed down your options, the real work starts.
Writing university applications is very different for different universities. Some colleges often expect extensive personal essays, which are designed to reveal much more than just your learning skills. Some are more formal and structured around school achievements, motivation and extracurricular activities.. Admissions teachers can always tell.
After applying
. For some universities there will be interviews at the second stage of the application process, but if not, you'll have to sit tight until decisions are announced.
When the entire above are sorted, the only thing left is to stock up on stationery (文具), review any reading lists and prepare for the next adventure.
A. Preparing for university interviews
B. Writing your university application
C. Once you have hit the big red button on all your applications, the waiting game begins
D. For those looking to study at university, the following is essential guide to your applications
E. Make sure you adapt your application for each university, rather than copying and pasting each section
F. Researching the options available to you is an essential start to your university application process
G. Visiting universities in which you are interested can help you understand more about whether it is the right fit for you
Most people who keep animals choose to have dogs, cats or fishes. But Recep Mirzan keeps a 1 animal on his farm in Western Turkey. The 63-year-old retired worker has a swan (天鹅) which he 2 many years ago. Mirzan was driving in his car when he 3 an injured swan with a 4 wing. Mirzan immediately 5 and took the swan with him to 6 her from predators (捕食者).
"Since I love 7, I said to myself that I should take her home instead of 8 her as prey (猎物)," Mirzan told The Associated Press.
He named the swan Garip. It means "strange" in the Turkish language but is also used to 9 a person who has had difficulties in their lives. After Garip's broken wing improved, she 10 with Mirzan. Mirzan is not married and has no 11, so the swan is like a child to him. Garip has been living on Mirzan's farm for the past 37 years, 12 Mirzan wherever he goes and never trying to 13 the farm.
According to the group Swan Sanctuary, in Britain, swans live in the 14 for only about 12 years. But thanks to the 15 environments, Garip can live up to nearly 40 years.
In 2019, Tu Youyou was selected by the BBC as one of the most influential (figure) of science in the 20th Century along with Albert Einstein and Alan Mathison Turing. Tu Youyou was noted for her bravery in being a scientist during a difficult time for science in China, her ability to use old (wise) and new methods to achieve her goals and the fact that her work (bridge) the Eastern and Western worlds, (save) millions of lives.
In 1969, Tu (choose) to establish a team to find a cure for malaria. This was not an easy task. The reason why this was difficult was that the team had (limit) resources. They did not have enough staff, and the laboratory they worked had poor air quality. However, after hundreds of failed experiments, they eventually came across a promising chemical. It worked well in experiments on animals, they had to know if it was safe for humans. Tu (brave) volunteered to be the first human subject when they were ready to start testing and the rest of her team followed her. The test was success. The medicine they discovered, artemisinin, has now become the world's most effective drug for fighting malaria. Many have heard of shark's fin soup.
