Every four years, the Winter Olympics surprise us with many new incredible athletes. Here’s a look at the biggest stars from the Beijing Games.

Eileen Gu, China, freestyle skiing

Gu, 18, was undoubtedly one of the biggest stars throughout the Olympics. One of just two athletes to compete in all three freestyle skiing events, Gu brought home a gold in big air and halfpipe and a silver in slopestyle. That made her the first freeski athlete to win three medals in a single Games. She also became the youngest gold medalist in freestyle skiing and was the first woman to land a left-turn 1620.

Nils van der Poel, Sweden, speed skating

The 25-year-old Swede set two Olympic records and one world record. Van der Poel won the men’s 5, 000m and 10, 000m speed skating events, and then subsequently （随后）published a 62-page guide on how to win the events. Van der Poel nearly quit speed skating after a disappointing 2018 Olympics. He joined the Swedish army for a basic ranger course before returning to the ice in 2019. Now, he's a two-time Olympic gold medalist.

Chloe Kim, USA, snowboarding

The 21-year-old Californian won her second straight Olympic gold in the women's halfpipe, becoming the first woman to win the event in back-to-back Games.

“I worked so hard for four years to get back here and do this again, ” Kim said after the event.

The American star is now a two-time gold medalist, and at her age, she could continue for years to come if she wants to.

Nathan Chen, USA, figure skating

Chen helped the US win bronze in the team event in 2018 before an event better run in Beijing. Team USA claimed silver in the team event, and the 22-yearold Chen won gold in the men’s singles competition. That gold medal came after winning singles gold in three straight World Championships（2018, 2019, 2021）.

A new smartwatch app alerts users who are deaf or hard of hearing of nearby sounds, such as knocks at the door or fire alarms.

“The main motivation for the app came from my own experience, and conversations that my colleagues and I have had with deaf and hard of hearing people over several years, ”says Dhruv Jain, who presented the system, called SoundWatch.

Jain, who is hard of hearing, uses SoundWatch at home to avoid sleeping through a smoke alarm. “On a nature walk, it’ll tell me that there’s birds singing, or there might be a waterfall nearby, ” he says. “Those sounds make me feel more present and connected to the world. ”

Sound awareness apps for smartphones exist. But Jain prefers the immediacy of sound notifications on his wrist, rather than in his pocket-and surveys of people who are deaf or hard of hearing show he’s not alone.

The SoundWatch app pairs an Android smartwatch and phone. The watch records surrounding noises and sends that data to the phone for processing. When the phone finds a sound of interest, the smartwatch vibrates (振动)and displays a sign.

Jain, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and his colleagues designed the app to identify 20 noises. In experiments, SoundWatch correctly identified those 20 sounds 81. 2 percent of the time. When set to listen only for urgent noises-a fire alarm, door knock or alarm clock-the app was 97. 6 percent accurate. Eight deaf and hard of hearing people who used SoundWatch around a university campus gave the app broadly favorable reviews, but noted that the app misclassified some sounds in noisy outdoor settings.

Disability is highly personal, and Jain hopes his team can find ways for people to personalize this app for their own specific needs. For example, people can be told about the sounds they care about-a husband’s or wife’s voice versus general speech, the back door opening versus the front door opening, and more.

We humans love food to death.

From mammoths to passenger pigeons, we have driven our favorite meals to extinction through overhunting and habitat destruction. And globally, our tendency to overharvest just a narrow range of crops has limited the variety of foods we eat.

Passenger pigeons were the most common birds in all of North America in the 1800s. It was common to see large groups of passenger pigeons-groups that made a sound like a storm. In Colonial times it was turned into pie. It was baked. It was roasted. It was made into stew (炖). Basically, anything you do to a chicken is what we did to them. Today, they are extinct because of human behavior.

“When it comes to fruits and vegetables, we have access to only a small part of the diversity (多样性) that existed a century ago,” says Lenore Newman in her forthcoming book, Lost Feast: Culinary (烹饪的) Extinction and the Future o f Food (out October 8). She is the Canada research chair in food security and environment at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia.

In her book, Newman mainly explores how human activity has limited our food options and still threatens what we are able to put on our plates.

“I think the important lesson that I took away from writing this book was realizing that things can-and do-go extinct even if we really love them,” Newman told NPR. Silphium, a plant that was important to Roman and Egyptian culinary society, is one of many examples of foods we loved that are now considered extinct. The branch of the silphium plant was used to flavor (加味于) food, and its leaves were fed to sheep and cattle to improve the flavor of their meat. Newman says the extinction of silphium taught us that loving a food is not enough to keep it in existence. “We actually have to fight to be conscientious, especially as we have a bigger impact on the planet,” she says. “We need to be a little more thoughtful about how we eat.”

Body language, in some ways, is complicated. There are many types of body language, and all of them can mean different things. There are also different ways to understand them.     16    .

Facial expressions

    17    . Some of them are subconscious, while we can control others. These emotions include happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, confusion, contempt, excitement, fear, etc. These are the same across all cultures and can help determine if we can trust a person as well as make them trust us.

Gestures

Gestures refer to the little movements and signals of our body.     18    . These are used mostly during arguments and while aggressively trying to make a point.

Some gestures are made consciously and can mean different things in different cultures. So it is vital to be careful with them.

    19    

This is one of the most critical aspects of non-verbal communication. The way you look at someone or the amount of eye contact you make can communicate a lot of things about you as well as what you are trying to say. For example, when a person looks directly into your eyes while having a conversation, it indicates that he or she is interested and paying attention. However, continued eye contact can feel threatening.

Space

While touch is an important aspect of non-verbal communication, it is also important to maintain a respectful distance and give people the space to make them feel comfortable.

The level of personal distance that individuals need to feel comfortable can vary from culture to culture.

    20     . People from Latin countries tend to feel more comfortable standing closer to one another as they interact while those from North America need more personal distance.

The boy’s name is Aaron Moreno, and he’s 8 years old. He started his own business selling_________ in Los Angeles.

The story began earlier this year, when his mother _________ her job because of the pandemic. They were already in a financially _________ situation: Aaron’s older sister had been sent back to Mexico to _________ with her grandparents. They even ended up homeless, living in shelters.

In June this year, the situation got so bad that Aaron _________ to start a business selling plants to help his mom support the family. He hoped to make it_________ to bring his older sister back home from Mexico.

At first, he bought plants in the downtown Los Angeles and took them with his mother to resell at various places in the city. He called the_________ “Aaron’s Garden”.

It was hard work, as they had no tools of their own. They had to carry the plants by their_________ on public transportation. By June 24, he had a social software account that he used to start _________ what plants he was selling. Providers started bringing him plants to__________.

On July 13, __________ by Aaron’s initiative （倡议）and hard work, a friend of the family started a GoFundMe __________, and Aaron’s Garden started to get media__________ as well. “People support us by buying plants, following us, leaving us__________comments, and they tell us nice things to keep us moving forward. It’s what we__________, ”Aaron told local TV station.

All the hard work__________. The GoFundMe campaign had an initial__________of $1, 000, but it’s raised nearly $70, 000. Thanks to both the business and the__________ of donors, the family has__________ behind the shelters where they were living. The family has now moved into their own home and Aaron’s __________ has come back from Mexico!

Blue whales are the largest animals in the world. But they’re shy, and they live in some of the most remote places on     41     planet, so it is hard for us     42    (see)them. Yet researchers recently found a new group of them. They didn’t     43    (actual)see any of the whales. Instead, they heard their “songs” in recordings made over the last couple of decades. They sped up the recordings to make the “songs” easier to hear.

Each population of blue whales has its own unique songs. The songs can travel     44    (hundred)of miles.

Researchers reviewed recordings made by a network of underwater microphones. The network listens for proof of nuclear-bomb (核弹)tests. But it also records other undersea sounds,     45    (include)whale “songs”.

The researchers found a song that no one had heard before. It includes three parts,     46    (last)a total of about three minutes. They called it the “Chagos” song because it came from around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. It    47    (hear)as far away as Australia, though, indicating that the whales cover a large range.

The song is similar to    48     produced by several populations of pygmy (非常小的)blue whales. They’re the    49     (small)of all blue whales-about 80 feet long. The researchers said that the new song was produced by an undiscovered population of pygmy blue whales.

No one knows the number of the whales,     50     the recordings provide proof that a new population of hidden giants (巨兽)is swimming through the Indian Ocean.