Whether you're making a one-off trip to London or you're a regular visitor, using an Oyster travel smartcard is the easiest way to travel around the city's public transport network.
Advantages of a Visitor Oyster Card
A Visitor Oyster Card is one of the best ways to pay for single journeys on the bus, tube, DLR, tram, London Over-ground and most National Rail services in London:
•Save time - your card is ready to use as soon as you arrive in London.
•It's more than 50% cheaper than buying a paper travel card or single tickets with cash.
•There is a daily price cap - once you have reached this limit, you won't pay any more.
•Enjoy special offers and promotions at leading London restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues—plus discounts on the Emirates Air Line cable car and Thames Clippers River buses.
Buy a Visitor Oyster Card
Buy a Visitor Oyster card before you visit London and get it delivered to your home address. A card costs £3 (non-refundable) plus postage. Order online and arrive with your Oyster in hand! You can also buy a Visitor Oyster card from Gatwick Express ticket offices at Gatwick Airport Station and on-board Eurostar trains travelling to London.
Top Up(充值)Your Visitor Oyster Card
You can choose how much credit to add to your card. If you are visiting London for two days, you can start with £ 20 credit. If you run out of credit, add credit at the following locations:
•Touch screen ticket machines in tube, DLR, London Over-ground and some National Rail stations.
•Around 4,000 Oyster Ticket Stops found in newsagents and small shops across London.
•TFL Visitor and Travel Information Centers.
•Tube and London Over-ground station ticket offices.
•Emirates Air Line terminals.
Last year I ruined my summer vacation by bringing along a modem convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad. Instead of looking at nature, I checked my email. Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed. Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning. I was behaving as if I were still in the office. My body was on vacation but my head wasn't.
So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet. I knew it wouldn't be easy since I'm bad at self-control. But I was determined. I started by giving the iPad to my wife.
The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my attempts at cheating an experience in frustration. I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan. Largely cut off from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for radio and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what I had planned to all along: read books.
This experience has had a happy ending. With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem. I knew I had won when we passed a Starbucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi. "I don't need it," I said.
However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I'm back to work? There are times when the need to know what's being said right now is great. And I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely. But I hope to resist the temptation(诱惑)to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two.
I think a vacation is supposed to help you reset your brain to become more productive. Here I hope this one worked.
Losing weight comes with a lot of health benefits—including making your brain sharper.
Yes it turns out that overweight may damage cognitive functions (认知功能) such as memory and attention. There have been few studies of overweight and cognitive functioning, possibly because it is generally believed that it is not a primary risk cause for poor cognitive performance. Losing weight, therefore, may help improve these mental functions, according to a new research led by John Gunstad, assistant professor of psychology at Kent State University.
Growing evidence suggests that being fat is linked to cognitive deficits (缺陷). So Gunstad and his team guessed that losing weight might improve mental function. For their study, they measured memory and attention in a group of 150 overweight participants, some of whom had some kind of operation for weight loss and some did not. All of the volunteers completed mental skills tests to assess their abilities of memory and attention at the beginning of the study, and again 12 weeks later. To begin with, about 24% of the patients showed damaged learning and 23% showed signs of poor memory when tested. At the end of the study, those who had lost weight after operation improved their scores into the average or above average range for cognitive functions. Scores for the volunteers who didn't lose weight dropped even further.
The study helped Gunstad to find out whether losing weight had any effect on mental function. Now that he's seen the positive effect that weight loss can have on memory and attention, he says he will next study those who choose to lose weight by the traditional way—eating healthier and getting more active. He expects that losing weight in this way will have a similarly positive effect on the brain. "If we can improve the condition with operations, then we can probably produce the same change with behavioral weight loss as well," he says.
A study of violinists found that merely good players practised as much as better players, leaving other factors such as quality of education, learning skills and perhaps natural talent to account for the difference.
This finding challenges the 10, 000-hour rule promoted in Malcolm Gladwell's 1993 study of violinists and pianists. Gladwell states that enough practice will make an expert of anyone. "The idea has been popular and entrenched in our culture for years. It's not an idiom but an overstatement," said Brooke Macnamara, the lead author. "When it comes to human skill, a complex combination of environmental factors and genetic factors explains the performance differences across people."
Macnamara and her colleagues set out to repeat part of the 1993 study to see whether they reached the same conclusion. They interviewed three groups of 13 violinists regarded as best, good, or less accomplished about their practice habits, before having them complete daily diaries of their activities over a week. While the less skillful violinists reached an average of about 6,000 hours of practice by the age of 20, there was little to separate the good from the best, with each reaching an average of about 11,000 hours. In all, the number of hours spent practising accounted for about a quarter of the skill difference across the three groups.
Macnamara believes practice is less of a driver. "Once you get to the highly skilled groups, practice stops accounting for the difference. Everyone has practised a lot and other factors are at play in determining who goes on to a higher level," she said. "The factors depend on the skill being learned: in chess it could be intelligence or working memory; in sport it may be how efficiently a person uses oxygen. To complicate matters further, one factor can drive another. Children who enjoy playing the violin, for example, may be happy to practise because they do not see it as a trouble."
The authors of the 1993 study are unimpressed. Macnamara said it was important for people to understand the limits of practice, though. "Practice makes you better than you were yesterday, most of the time," she said. "But it might not make you better than your neighhour or the other kid in your violin class."
Most of us are used to the sound we hear in daily life, such as loud music, the television, people talking on their phone and even pet dogs barking in the middle of the night. . However, when these sounds keep you from sleeping all night or the traffic starts to give you a headache, it turns into noise pollution. For many of us, the concept of pollution is limited to nature and resources. However, noise that tends to damage the natural rhythm (节律) of life makes solid pollutant.
. Man-made noises such as horns, airplanes and even cars can be too loud for our hearing range. Constant exposure to loud noise can easily result in the damage of our eardrums and loss of hearing.
Too much noise pollution in working areas such as offices, construction sites, bars and even in our homes can influence psychological health. Studies show that the occurrence of aggressive behavior, disturbance of sleep, and constant stress can be linked to excessive(过度的) noise levels. .
Loud noise can certainly influence your sleeping pattern. , if you don't have a good nights' sleep. For example, your performance may go down in the office as well as at home. It is therefore recommended to take a sound sleep to give your body proper rest.
As of now, there do not exist many solutions to such pollution. , when it comes to what an individual can do. It is only when our understanding of noise pollution is complete, can we take steps to get rid of it completely.
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A. You'll feel it hard to deal with others B. It may lead to problems related to tiredness C. But everybody can help to reduce the noise in their homes D. These, in turn, can cause more severe health problems later in life E. Many firm measures should be taken to remove loud noises in our life F. Our ears can take in a certain range of sounds without getting damaged G. All of these have become a part of the urban culture and rarely disturb us |
We adopted Luke four years ago. The people from the orphanage dropped him off at our hotel room without even saying1. He was nearly six years old, only 28 pounds and his face was crisscrossed(交叉着)with scars.2, he was terrified. Luke kicked and3. His cries were animal-like. I wound my arms around him4he could not hit or kick. After an hour and a half, he finally fell asleep, exhausted. I called5. They delivered every noodle dish on the menu. After Luke woke up, I handed him chopsticks and pointed at the food. He stopped crying and started to eat.
That night we went for a walk.6at the moon, he pantomimed(打手势), "What is it?" I said, "The moon, it's the moon." He7and tried to touch it. He cried again when I tried to give him a bath8I started to play with the water. By the end of his bath the room was soaked, and he was9. Then we read the book One Yellow Lion. He loved looking at the10pictures and11the pages. By the end of the12he was saying "one yellow lion"
The next day we13orphanage officials to do14. Luke looked at them and wrapped my arms15around his waist.
It has been four years. Luke is a smart, funny, happy fourth-grader. He is16with charm and is a natural athlete. His teachers say he is17behaved and works very hard. Our neighbor says she has never seen a happier kid.
When I think back, I am18at what transformed this ill-tempered, terrified little creature. It was not medications. It did not cost money. It was love: just simple, plain, easy to19. It is comprised of compassion, care, security, and a leap of faith. I believe in the power of love to20. I believe in the power of love to heal.
After orbiting Earth for six months, the three members of China's Shenzhou XIII mission returned to Earth safely on April 16h, 2022, (conclude) the nation's longest manned spaceflight.
During their stay in the space station, the crew preformed two spacewalks and conducted a series of scientific experiments using a large robotic arm and other (equip) to install and adjust devices. Meanwhile, it was the first time that a female Chinese astronaut (perform) a space walk. Besides, the astronauts, with the (assist) of the staff on the ground, delivered a science lecture 400 kilometers above Earth to millions of students. They showed viewers they lived and worked inside the space station. The uniform called a "penguin jumpsuit", (special) designed to help the astronauts maintain their muscle strength, was introduced. The astronauts also demonstrated some experiments related to physical phenomena in the weightless environment, during he compared the growth of cells in artificial gravity and zero-gravity.
The Shenzhou XIII's space-based lessons, (intend) to popularize space science and spark enthusiasm in science among youngsters, marks the start of the Tiangong Class series. its space station construction advancing, China will share its breakthroughs and strengthen cooperation with other countries to push space exploration (far) forward.
增加;在缺词处加一个漏字符号（/\）, 并在其下面写出该加
词。
删减∶把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改∶在错词下面划一横线, 并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意∶
1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2．只允许修改10处, 多者（从第11处起）不计分。
How is everything going? I am written to express my heartfelt thanks to you because of I've won the first prize in the English Speech Contest of our school. Your kind help has meant more than something.
I remember vividly what you guided and encouraged me. During the preparation of the contest, you help polish my draft many times but better my pronunciation with great patience.
The public speaking skills you shared turned up really effective. More importantly, whenever I felt hesitant and unsure about yourself, you were always there to back me up and boost my confidence. Without you, I could not have made so an achievement.
Thank you for everything you have done for me and wish you all best.
