GET A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD'S MOST ATTRACTIVE FEATHERED ANIMALS WITH THESE BOOKS
Flamingo (火烈鸟)
Biologist and photographer Claudio Contreras Koob spent 20 years travelling deep into the wet lands and forests of his native Mexico—and beyond—to feed his flamingo attraction. This book offers a unique window into the behavior and life of red-feathered birds, with more than 120 show-stopping shots displaying their beauty. teNeues, £35.
Around the World in 80 Birds
Inspiring secrets, national pride or scientific discoveries, every bird has a story to tell, from the weaver bird building multi-nest "apartment blocks" in Namibia to the bar-headed goose taking on a twice-yearly trans-Himalayan journey at an extreme altitude. Mike Unwin's tour is accompanied by beautiful illustrations from Ryuto Miyake. Laurence King Publishing, £22.
A World on the Wing
Pulitzer-shortlisted Weidensaul, who's at the forefront of research into bird migration, here tracks some of nature's most remarkable journeys. He sails through the stormy Bering Sea, encounters trappers in the Mediterranean and visits former headhunters in northeast India, where a bird migration crisis has become a conservation success story. Pan Macmillan, £9.99.
Galapagos Crusoes: A Year Alone with the Birds
Explore this updated version of the 1968 title, Galapagos: Islands of Birds, by late bird expert Bryan Nelson, with previously unpublished material from his wife, June. The couple spent a year living on two Galapagos islands, studying birds, including the Galapagos albatross (信天翁). This is their clever and amusing account. Bradt Guides, £11.99.
The South African town Hamburg is situated by one of the most beautiful estuaries（河口）in the Eastern Cape. It's known for its rich Xhosa culture. It is also home to a group of women who have produced a series of extraordinary artworks that have been exhibited around the world.
Keiskamma Art Project was created to teach local women embroidery（刺绣）skills to help them at a tough time economically and socially, but unexpectedly it has grown into something much bigger. Having been shown at international art galleries, many of their tapestries（挂毯）are now being displayed under one roof for the first time, at an exhibition in Johannesburg.
Their story began in 2000, when Dr. Carol Hofmeyr moved from Johannesburg to Hamburg. She found that the town was struggling with high unemployment and that local women were desperate to find ways to feed their families. Having studied embroidery herself, she hoped that passing on that knowledge to local women would help empower them.
From humble beginnings, more and more women heard about the project through word of mouth. Now, over 150 women are part of the project. Selling their works provides a source of income, but the project has also created a support system for the women.
Initially, the women started out simply creating cushions（坐垫）and small handbags to sell to tourists. Eventually, they started receiving tasks for larger pieces. They were given panels about a meter in size to work on at home. By joining the completed panels together, they created the first of their large works and one of their most celebrated, "The Keiskamma Tapestry", which tells the history of the Xhosa people who were subjugated（征服）through colonization and the Xhosa British Frontier Wars from 1776 to 1876.
Another celebrated piece is "The Keiskamma Altarpiece", which was produced by 130 women. The four-meter-high, four-meter-wide piece reveals the struggles that elderly Xhosa women endured when the youth in their community were hit by HIV two decades ago, and they stepped in to care for children.
Recent artworks engage with contemporary issues. "COVID Resilience Tapestry" deals with the pandemic: "A New Earth and Our Sacred Ocean" is a call for environmental consciousness.
Desperately ill and seeking a miracle, David Bennett Sr. took the last bet on Jan.7 when he became the first human to be successfully transplanted with the heart of a pig."It creates the beat; it creates the pressure; it is his heart,"declared Bartley Griffith,director of the surgical team that performed the operation at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Bennett, 57, held on through 60 tomorrows, far longer than any previous patient who'd received a heart from another species. His remarkable run offered new hope that such procedures known as xenotransplantation (异种移植) could help relieve the shortage of replacement organs saving thousands of lives each year.
The earliest attempts at xenotransplantation of organs, involving kidneys from rabbits, goats, and other animals, occurred in the early 20th century, decades before the first successful human-to-human transplants. Rejection, which occurs when the recipient's body system recognizes the donor organ as a foreign object and attacks it, followed within hours or days. Results improved after some special drugs arrived in the 1960s, but most recipients still died after a few weeks. The record for a heart xenotransplant was set in 1983, when an infant named Baby Fae survived for 20 days with an organ from a baboon(狒狒).
In recent years, however, advances in gene editing have opened a new possibility: re-edit some genes in animals to provide user-friendly spare parts. Pigs could be ideal for this purpose, because they're easy to raise and reach adult human size in months. Some biotech companies,including Revivicor, are investing heavily in the field. The donor pig was offered by Revivicor from a line of animals in which 10 genes had been re-edited to improve the heart's condition. Beyond that, the pig was raised in isolation and tested regularly for viruses that could infect humans or damage the organ itself.
This medical breakthrough provided an alternative for the 20% of patients on the heart transplant waiting list who die while waiting or become too sick to be a good candidate.
In the animal kingdom, mimics（模仿）are not rare. Stick insects pretend to be twigs. Hawk moth caterpillars resemble poisonous snakes. The examples, though, are visual. Auditory mimicry is rarer. Danilo Russo of the University of Naples Federico II thinks he has found a novel case of it, as he describes in Current Biology. Some bats, he believes, mimic angry bees in order to scare away owls that might otherwise eat them.
Dr. Russo first noticed bat buzzing a few years ago. The noise struck him as similar to the sound of some bees. He wondered whether bat buzzing was a form of mimicry which helped to scare off would-be predators.
To test this idea, he and his colleagues first recorded the buzzing that captured bats made. Then, with protective clothing, they began the more dangerous task of recording the buzzing made by different bees. Computer analysis revealed that bees' and bats' buzzing were, indeed, similar.
Then the researchers recruited several owls. They put the owls, one at a time, in an enclosure with branches for them to stay on, and two boxes with holes in them. They placed a loudspeaker alongside one of the boxes and, after the birds had settled in, broadcast through it five seconds of uninterrupted bat buzzing and a similar amount of insect buzzing three times in a row for each noise. As a control, they broadcast in like manner several non-buzzing sounds made by bats.
During the broadcasts and for five minutes thereafter, they videoed the owls. After analysis, the results were unequivocal. When they heard both the bat buzzing and the bee buzzing, the owls moved as far from the speakers as they could. In contrast, when the non-buzzing bat sounds were played, they crept closer.
Dr. Russo believes this is the first reported case of a mammal using auditory mimicry to scare away a predator. They strongly suspect, however, that it is not unique. Anecdotes suggest several birds also make buzzing noises when their nests are disturbed. And with the result of the experiment, he therefore predicts that auditory mimicry is far more widespread than currently realized.
How to Set Goals
Whether you have small dreams or high expectations, setting goals allows you to plan how you want to move through life.
Find out your life goals. Ask yourself some important questions about what you want for your life. What do you want to achieve today, in a year, and in your lifetime? The answers to this question can be as general as "I want to be happy" or "I want to help people" .
Set specific (具体的) goals. Be specific and realistic about what it is that you want to achieve. Research shows that setting a specific goal makes you more likely to achieve it. For example, "Be healthier" is too big and vague to be a helpful goal. "I want to eat more vegetables, and I want to run a marathon" is better.
Write out your goals. Be detailed, be clear, and include your steps.Keep your list in a place where you can get informed frequently. This will help keep you motivated.
You may find yourself set in your ways concerning broad life goals, but take the time to reevaluate your smaller goals. Are you accomplishing them according to your timeline? Are they still necessary to keep you on track towards your larger life goals? Allow yourself the flexibility (灵活性) to make some small changes to your goals.
A. Adjust your goals.
B. Track and measure your progress.
C. Having a plan will help push you ahead.
D.Writing them down tends to make them a little more real.
E. Here are some important ideas that you may find helpful.
F. Consider what you hope to achieve in 10, 15, or 20 years.
G. Remember that you may need to break large goals into smaller goals.
Jennifer Webb-McRae always knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She really never wanted to be anything else 1 a lawyer when she grew up and that was because her family kind of put that idea in her head. They used to say she 2 every point, so she should grow up and be a lawyer.
Webb-McRae was raised in New Jersey and received her law degree there. 3 , Webb-McRae was interested in family law, so she clerked for a judge 4 in that field. Later, she got a chance to work with the juvenile (未成年) justice system. During that time, she found she had a 5 for criminal law and decided to work for that.
Now, she feels fortunate to get a job representing juvenile defendants. Her responsibilities are complex and she says she has a role to 6 in this system. She works to help people make good choices, 7 when they are young. She recognizes the power of peer pressure that children face. She 8 the strong "no-snitching"（ 禁止告密）culture among young people that can block needed intervention.
To 9 this disturbing and worrying situation, Webb-McRae 10 an Annual Back to School Initiative. After just six years in 11 , the program now involves 40 schools. Earlier this year, Webb-McRae also started a community engagement series. She thinks everyone has a right to 12 the justice system is fair and just.
"Our justice system certainly is not 13 , but I'm passionate about doing my little 14 to make it better. I believe in action and moving the ball forward." Webb-McRac hopes her example will 15 girls in New Jersey to pursue their dreams.
A proverb says, "Time is money". But in my opinion, time is even precious than money. Why? when money is spent, we can earn it back. However, when time is (go), it will never return.
is known to all that the time we can use is limited. Therefore we should make full use our time to study hard so as to serve our country in future.
But it is a pity that there are a lot of people do not realize the value of time. They spend their precious time (play).
In a word, we should form the good habit of (save) time. Do not put off what can be done today tomorrow.
Walter John was a 20-year-old college student from Homewood, Alabama. As a young man in college far away from home, he didn't have much money. He had to work part-time to cover his living costs.
Recently he gave up his part-time job in the fast-food business and found a new one at a home-moving company called Bellhops. The pay for his new job was higher, and John gained more flexibility with his hours, which allowed him to focus on his studies a bit more. He wanted to do everything he could to secure this new employment opportunity, so he thought he had to try his best to make sure that everything would go well on his first day!
But sometimes, life hits you unexpectedly. A day before John began his new job, his car broke down! With little money to his name, he couldn't have his car repaired at the garage. None of his friends were able to take him to work. What was worse, the public transportation was not running at his working time. If he took a taxi, it would cost him half his salary. Therefore, he decided to walk to the company.
In order to get there by six in the morning, he thought that the safest way would be to leave at midnight. John even challenged himself to arrive there one hour earlier. Even though it seemed like such a far walk, John knew he was fit enough to do it. This was challenging, but John knew it was possible.
He grabbed his wallet and his phone and left his apartment. As soon as he stepped out of the door, he realized that walking alone in the dark at midnight can be dangerous. Moreover, he had to walk through a large wood as well as many blocks of the city. Therefore, he went back to take a bat （球棒）and a kitchen knife for safety purposes. In case a wild animal or some bad person attacked him, at least he would have something for protection.
注意：1.续写词数应为 150 左右;2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置。
Finally John started his long walk.
At that time, a car was drawing closer.
