【推荐2】Different people have different hobbies. For example, some people like reading, some like swimming and some like collecting things.

In the past, I loved reading books and drawing pictures because by reading books I could learn many new things. Now travelling is my favourite. I enjoy visiting many different places of interest. I can learn a lot about people, places and history. It’s very interesting.

I have many good friends. They all have their hobbies. Mary studies very hard, and her hobby is reading. Tony loves physical work, and his hobby is gardening. He usually plants flowers and trees in his yard. Judy is a quiet girl. She likes knitting. She likes to knit sweaters for her dolls. We all have different hobbies, but we are still good friends.

【推荐3】Some little boys are addicted to Legos. Others can’t get enough of dinosaurs. But it is Blackpool Tower in England that has captured one 6-year-old’s imagination.

The Blackpool Tower was built in 1894. It is twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty in NYC. Now Charlie Barratt has achieved his dream by becoming the voice of the attraction’s lift (电梯). Charlie did a project about the tower at school, recording his own version of the lift’s existing speech. In the voice-over, Charlie welcomes visitors to the attraction. He also offers interesting facts about the tower. One of his teachers contacted Kenny Mew, the tower’s operation manager, and told him about Charlie’s love for the 518-foot (157 meter) structure.

Mew told BBC Radio Lancashire, “His school reached out to me and said they had this young boy who was passionate about Blackpool Tower and had actually recorded the lift speech and I was thinking to myself: how’s he done that? I played it back and he had the speech word for word that we’d had recorded already in the lift and it just sounded amazing. And we thought we were going to give Charlie the opportunity to do it. He was absolutely brilliant. He’s done an amazing job, and we’re really proud of what he’s done.”

Charlie was then invited into a professional recording studio to perform his version and his mum, Wendy, is as thrilled as he is. She told the BBC, “He adores the tower.” Wendy first took Charlie to visit the tower when he was a baby. She said he loved it “from the minute he can walk”.

Now Charlie is the voice of the attraction’s lift. As well as the lift, there are plans in progress for Charlie to lend his voice to other areas in the future.

【推荐1】The right paint can add appeal to your walls and now it can also make them smarter. Researchers recently transformed a wall into an outsize trackpad and motion sensor by using low-cost conductive paint to create a large grid of electrodes（电极）.

Such a smart wall can sense human touch and track gestures from a short distance. It can also detect where electrical equipment is and whether it is switched on. The technology could someday turn on lights when a person enters a room, track a player's motion in an interactive video game or monitor a child's television use. "Walls are everywhere, so why not turn them into sensors for smart homes?" says Yang Zhang, a computer science doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University. who helped to develop the concept.

To create the high-tech surface, Zhang and his colleagues applied painter's tape in a lattice（格子结构）pattern to a twelve-by-eight-foot wall, and then coated it with commercially available conductive paint. Removing the tape left a pattern of diamond-shaped electrodes, which the researchers connected using thin copper tape strips. Finally, they wired the strips to a custom-built circuit board and covered the wall with standard latex（胶乳） paint. The entire project took four hours and cot less than $200. In theory, Zhang says "Anyone can use the technique to make a wall smart. "

In the wall's appliance-detection mode, the power is turned off. The researchers detected iPads up to 6. 5 feet away from the wall; fans and floor lamps could be sensed from about 10 feet. Zhang and his colleagues presented the wall in April at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

"Engineers have long dreamed of technologies that blend into our surroundings, "says Christiar Holz, a research scientist at Microsoft Research in Redmond, who did not participate in the work. "It nicely questions our understanding of what a device might be and demonstrates how rich sensing technology can combine with everyday objects."

【推荐2】At first glance, the snow that’s changed from white to bright pink in the Italian Alps seems like a stunning feat of nature. But scientists say it may actually be a warning sign of environmental trouble.

Algae (藻类) are to thank or blame for the pink layer that coats the Presena Glacier in northern Italy. Scientists say it’s not an uncommon phenomenon in the spring and summer, but they warn that it could become a problem if it starts occurring more frequently.

Biagio Di Mauro, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences (ISP) at Italy’s National Research Council, traveled to the glacier to investigate the mysterious algae. While the phenomenon is well-documented, “there is relatively little scientific literature on this phenomenon, which has the direct effect of accelerating the melting of snow and ice,” the institute said.

Photos from the trek show a massive algae bloom, turning large swaths of the glacier from white to pink. Di Mauro said on Twitter that the algae was likely Chlamydomonas nivalis (极地雪藻). According to a study published in the journal Nature, snow algae has influence on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The algae is not dangerous; it is a natural phenomenon that occurs during the spring and summer periods in the middle latitudes but also at the Poles, Di Mauro said in a press release.

The algae could accelerate melting in the already fragile region. Climate change, contributing to 2020’s unseasonably warm temperatures and lack of snow, is exacerbating the issue. Typically ice reflects the majority of the sun’s radiation, but algae darken the ice, causing a decrease in reflectivity. This causes the snow to absorb more heat and melt more quickly. “Everything that darkens the snow causes it to melt because it accelerates the absorption of radiation,” said Di Mauro, In order to flourish, the organisms need an available supply of water. So, as the ice melt even more algae will appear.

In May, Antarctica saw green snow, also caused by microscopic algae. At the time, scientists said that as the planet warms and more of Antarctica’s snow melts, the algae will only continue to spread.

【推荐3】For four lonely years, Evelyn Jones of Rockford, Illinois, lived friendless and forgotten in one room of a cheap hotel. “I wasn’t sick, but I was acting sick,” the 78-year-old widow says, “Every day was the same. I would just lie on my bed and maybe cook up some soup.” Then, six months ago, she was invited to The Brighter Side -- Rockford’s day care center for the elderly. Every weekday morning since then, she has left her home to meet nine other old people in a church for a rich program of charity work, trips, games, and -- most important of all -- friendly companionship.

Just a few years ago, there were few choices for the elderly between a normal life in their own homes and being totally confined in nursing homes. Many of them were sent to rest homes long before they needed full-time care. Others like Mrs. Jones were left to take care of themselves. But in 1971, the White House Conference on Aging called for the development of alternatives to care in nursing homes for old people, and since then, government-supported day-care programs like The Brighter Side have been developed in most big American cities.

“This represents a real alternative to the feared institution and makes old people believe they have not left the world of living”, says Alice Brophy, 64, director of New York City’s Office for the Aging, “They do well at the centers, and I hate it when people describe us as elderly playpens.” New York’s 138 centers encourage continuing contact for the aged with the community’s life. The centers serve more than 15,000 members, and volunteer workers are always looking for new ones. If someone doesn’t show up at the center for several days in a row, a worker at the center calls to make sure all is well. And although participation in the center is free, those who want to can pay for their lunches.

No normal studies have been made of these centers for the elderly, but government officials are enthusiastic. In the future, the Public Health Service will do a study to decide if the programs can receive federal Medicare money. And the old people themselves are very happy with the programs. “There is no way”, says Evelyn Jones, smiling at her new companions at the Brighter Side, “that I will ever go back to spending my day with all those loses at the hotel.”