【推荐1】Women Whose Inventions Changed Life

At the age of 12, Zimmerman invented the Blissymbol Printer, which helps people with physical disabilities communicate via symbols that get translated into written language. What began as a project for a school science fair ended up competing at the World Exhibition of Achievement of Young Inventors. Zimmerman now works at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she develops innovations combining space technology and assistive intelligence.

Director of the Systems Management Office and the highest ranking Hispanic at NASA Glenn Research Center, Gonzalez-Sanabria played a critical role in the development of the "Long Cycle-Life Nickel-Hydrogen Batteries" which help enable the International Space Station power system. She has since won the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

Tsukamoto and her colleagues were the first scientists to identify and isolate blood-forming stem cells. Patented in 1991-the first of 12 patents related to her research-Tsukamoto has furthered her research and thanks to her, bone marrow transplants (骨髓移植) have saved the lives of thousands of people battling blood cancer.

The third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Strickland, along with Dr. Gerard Mourou of France, has significantly advanced the science of lasers (激光). They developed a technology for creating short, powerful laser pulses. The technique, called Chirped Pulse Amplification, has been used in corrective eye surgeries.

【推荐3】I have had a lifelong fascination﹣call it obsession if you like﹣with communication， with making links to other places， other cultures， other worlds． The roots of this obsession have often puzzled me． I am not﹣never have been﹣a gregarious person． Quite the opposite， I was a solitary child and my classmates at school and university always thought of me as a loner． I was never crazy about the noisy solidarity of social gatherings． So why was I possessed of a desire to make contact with distant places？

It can partly be explained by the start I had in life． I grew up on what seemed at the time like the edge of the world﹣in a remote part of rural Ireland， in a household with few books or magazines， and no television． Foreign travel was unheard of． Apart from those who emigrated to Great Britain or the United States， virtually nobody we knew had ever been abroad． Nobody ever went overseas on holiday， and no foreign languages were taught in the schools I attended﹣with the exception of Latin． We lived in a closed society that thought of itself as self﹣sufficient．

There was however one chink of light in the suffocating gloom﹣the radio， which we called "the wireless．" It was， by modern standards， a huge apparatus powered by valves﹣which is why it took some time to warm up﹣and a "magic eye" tuning indicator﹣a greenish glass circle that winked at you as the signal waxed or waned． The best thing about our wireless， though， was that it had a shortwave band． This was the source of endless fascination to me， because it meant that even with this primitive device one could listen to the world． At first I couldn't understand how it worked． Why was reception so much better at night？ Why was it so infuriatingly variable？ I asked my father， who looked evasive and just said it had something to do with "the whachamacallit sphere" （he always called complicated things the whachamacallit）， but this gave me enough of a steer to go to the local library and start digging． In due course I discovered that he was referring to the ionosphere﹣a layer of charged particles high up at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere that acts as a kind of reflector for radio waves of certain frequencies． The reason shortwave radio could travel such huge distances was that it used the ionosphere to bounce signals round the world﹣which was why radio hams in Latin America or Australia could sometimes be heard by a young boy on the western seaboard of Ireland． Signals from such distant shores were more likely to get through at night because then the ionosphere was higher and transmission over longer distances was possible．

I was spellbound by this discovery of how technology could piggyback on a natural phenomenon to push forward low﹣power signals through immense distances． But most of all I was entranced by the idea of shortwave radio， for this was a technology which belonged not to great corporations or governments， but to people． It was possible， my father explained， to obtain a license to operate your own shortwave radio station． And all over the globe people held such licenses， which enabled them to sit in their back rooms and broadcast to the whole world． The world suddenly seemed wide open to me．

【推荐1】All over the world people enjoy sports. Sports help to keep people healthy,happy and help them to live longer.

Sports change with the season.People play different games in summer and winter.

Games and sports often grow out of people’s work and everyday activities.The Arabs use horses or camels in much of their everyday lives;they use them in their sports,too.

Some sports are so interesting that people everywhere go in for them. Football, for example, has spread around the world. Swimming is popular in all countries near the sea or in those with many rivers.

Some sports or games go back to thousands of years ago, like running or jumping. Chinese boxing, for example, has a very long history. But basketball and volleyball are quite new. Neither one is a hundred years old yet. People are inventing new sports or games all the time.

People from different countries may not be able to understand each other,but after a game they often become good friends. Sports help to train a person’s character (性格). One learns to fight hard but fight fair,to win without pride and to lose with grace (体面).

【推荐3】The writer Margaret Mitchell, who wrote under the name Peggy Mitchell is best known for writing Gone with the Wind, first published in 1936.Her book and the movie based on it, tell a story of love and survival during the American Civil War. Visitors to the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, Georgia, can go where she lived when she started writing the story and learn more about her life.

Our first stop at the Margaret Mitchell House is an exhibit area telling about the writer's life. She was born in Atlanta in 1900.She started writing stories when she was a child. She once worked as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal newspaper. One photograph of Ms. Mitchell shows her talking to a group of young college boys. She was only about one and a half meters tall. The young men towered over her, but she seemed very happy and sure of herself. The tour guide explains, "Now in this picture Peggy is interviewing some boys from Georgia Tech, asking them such questions as 'Would you really marry a woman who works？' And today it'd be ‘Would you marry one who doesn't work？’"

The Margaret Mitchell House is a building that once contained several apartments. Now we enter the first floor apartment where Ms. Mitchell lived with her husband, John Marsh. They made fun of the small apartment by calling it "The Dump".

Around 1926, Margaret Mitchell stopped working as a reporter and was at home healing after an injury. Her husband brought her books to read from the library. She read so many books that he bought her a typewriter and said it was time for her to write her own book. Our guide says Gone with the Wind became a huge success. Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the book. In 1939 the film version was released. It won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.