The story of Oprah Winfrey’s life is one of overcoming incredible difficulties and achieving great success. Born into poverty in Mississippi, Winfrey faced numerous challenges throughout her childhood. She was raised by her grandmother, who passed on her a love of reading and a moral duty in work. However, Winfrey was also the victim of abuse and neglect (忽视), both at home and in her community.

Despite these obstacles, Winfrey showed great promise from a young age. At age 19 she became a news anchor (主播) for the local television station, and in 1976 she was made a reporter and co-anchor for the ABC news in Baltimore, Maryland. She found herself limited by the objectivity required of news reporting, and in 1977 she became co-host of the Baltimore morning show People Are Talking.

Winfrey excelled in the casual and personal talk-show format, and in 1984 she moved to Chicago to host the declining talk show AM Chicago. Winfrey’s honest and engaging personality quickly turned the program into a success, and in 1985 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey’s warmth, intelligence, and empathy (同理心) made her a beloved figure to millions of viewers. She used her platform to address important social issues, such as child abuse, domestic violence, and poverty.

Despite her success, Winfrey faced many challenges along the way. She struggled with her weight, and was often criticized for her appearance. She also faced many personal and professional setbacks in her life and work. However, Winfrey refused to give up. She continued to work hard, launching her own production company, Harpo Productions, and starting her own cable network, OWN. She also became a charitarian, donating millions of dollars to charitable causes.

Today, Winfrey is one of the most successful and influential people in the world. She has won lots of awards for her work. She is also a best-selling author and a respected public speaker. Winfrey’s story proves the power of perseverance, hard work, and faith in oneself.

Polar bears normally need sea ice to hunt seals, but an isolated (孤立的) group of polar bears living on the mountainous coast of southeast Greenland have figured out how to make a living, even though the sea ice there melts away early in the year.

These bears have found a way to supplement (补充) their limited sea ice supply by hunting on freshwater ice that comes from glaciers on land. The glacial ice falls off in pieces into fjords (峡湾), where the pieces get together into a floating platform that the polar bears use to catch seals, according to a report in the journal Science.

Climate change is making sea ice less and less. “Loss of sea ice is the primary threat to polar bears,” says Kristin Laidre of the University of Washington, lead author of the new study. But, she says, this new work suggests some bears might be able to deal with a decreased amount of sea ice - at least for a while - in places like Greenland where they can take advantage of floating glacier ice.

While local people have long known that bears live in southeast Greenland, it’s a remote, challenging environment that’s not frequented by humans. “It’s a coastline with huge mountain peaks, lots of winds, extreme conditions and plenty of fogs.” says Laidre, who has spent years working with colleagues to survey polar bears living on Greenland’s 1,800-mile-long east coast.

To see what they could find in southeast Greenland, the team had to take helicopters from the nearest settlement and fly for two hours in a straight line to the coast. “We arrived in these fjords, very isolated fjords, and there’s essentially no sea ice or very poor sea ice offshore,” says Laidre, explaining that the researchers expected to find few bears. “But there were a lot of bears in these fjords,” she says. “It was clearly just a unique habitat.”

The sea ice continues to exist in these fjords for only around a hundred days a year, she notes, meaning that bears don’t have much time to use it as a hunting ground.

Social media can lead to mental exhaustion (疲惫). And when mentally exhausted, you are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts - even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don’t need.

As a professor of advertising, I have studied social media behaviors for years. In late 2022, my colleague Eric Haley and I conducted three online studies on Americans aged 18-65 to test how people under various mental loads respond to ads differently.

The control group in each study were given no introductory task- we just had them look at an ad. A second group had to memorize a nine-digit number and then look at the ad. The third group looked through the Internet for 30 seconds and then looked at the ad. Participants randomly saw an ad with a few hundred likes or tens of thousands of likes. After viewing the ad, each participant rated how willing they would be to buy the product, and how much mental effort it took to think about the information.

The group that used the Internet first were the most likely to want to buy the featured product when there were lots of likes or comments, and they also reported using the most mental effort to assess the ad. Researchers refer to this mentally exhausted state as “cognitive (认知的) overload”. Using social media puts them in this state because they are constantly evaluating different types of texts, photos and video posts from so many different people. All of this evaluating leaves them feeling frazzled.

Imagine asking your roommate if they want to get pizza. Under normal conditions, the roommate might consider several factors such as cost, hunger, timing or their schedule. Now imagine asking your roommate the same question while they are on the phone with a sick relative. They no longer have the mental energy to logically consider whether pizza for dinner is a good idea. They might just yell “Yeah, sure!” while running inside to clean their shoes.

By understanding how social media influences them, consumers can be more thoughtful in regulating their use and hopefully will not buy yet another water bottle they don’t need.

How are you feeling today? Often when we ask people that question, they reply “not bad”, or “could be worse”     22     Maybe we could live better by being healthier, less stressed, more motivated-but how?

Of course there are many treatments for improving our mental health, but sometimes there are small and simple solutions to help improve our wellbeing. It’s something the BBC TV programme Easy Ways to Live Well has been looking at.     23     And maybe they could help us too.

Firstly, to tackle putting on weight and to cut the calories, the programme found sniffing peppermint (嗅薄荷) stops our desire for a snack. Presenter, chef and writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says “a scientific theory called” mutual competition’ shows that a strong smell can distract (分心) our brain from the food we’re thinking about.”

If your addiction to your smartphone is getting you down, it’s suggested that turning your phone screen grey helps you reduce screen time.     24     With recent studies showing our phones can make us 26% less productive, it seems easy to try this idea.

    25     Well, the BBC programme found a daily swim in freezing water gets you used to the stress of doing it and therefore prepares you for other life stresses. And another way to relax is to leave your smartphone at home, bury yourself in a forest, and breathe in the fresh air. Forest bathing is the perfect medicine for the stresses of urban life.

Other life-improving ideas included things such as singing to reduce pain and moving morel to get away from our sedentary (久坐的) lives.     26    

Have you seen the incredible guitar playing of man born with no arms? The musician who was born without arms is being _______ for his greatest guitar-playing skills in a short documentary (纪实的) video which shows him playing the instrument with his _______.

Mark Goffeney, 46 of San Diego, who is _______ as “Big Toe” because of the way he plays the guitar, shows how he became a talented performer despite his _______ in the inspiring video. “I first _______ the instrument when I was nine, after my father brought home a beat-up _______ with only four strings. My first guitar came from some place like a landfill (垃圾场),” says Mark, who adds that he became “_______” about becoming a musician at age 12.

Mark devoted every waking hour to searching his town and trying to join a _______, but ran into _______ because of his disability. Therefore, he started his own rock band, called Wicked Misfit, and began booking gigs (特约演奏) in California.

Things were ________ professionally for Mark because of his disability. But everything ________ when he started playing music from the heart. “When I ________ pursuing this fantasy dream of being a rock star and just started playing music to make whatever milk money I could to support my family, everything started feeling good and ________ out for me,” he shares.

Today, Mark ________ with his band, Big Toe, and also becomes a street-performer in California, where he makes quite good money ________ by passers-by.

The Palace Museum is becoming waste-free as the 720,000-square-meter structure has managed     42     (reduce) the number of rubbish bins to 110 sets in areas open to the public. This is a decrease from 310 sets     43     (record) in January 2020, when a zero-waste campaign     44     (launch), said the museum.

While protecting features of the six-century-old historical relic, the action also helps visitors and tourists get into     45     habit of creating less waste. Up to now, four types of rubbish bins have been equipped following Beijing’s regulations on the management of household waste. Cleaning staff also check them to make sure all rubbish is     46     (correct) sorted, which is later transported to different destinations for disposal (处理). The museum also recycled more than 32,000 plastic     47     (bottle) to make cultural and creative products between June 2021 and October 2023,     48     (mean) a reduction in carbon emission by 931 kilograms.

By launching the campaign, the Palace Museum is taking a careful, science-based way to waste management. The target is to minimize the production of waste     49     needs to be buried or burned and bring the amount of such waste as close     50     zero as possible.

So far, about 3,000 museum staff members, 40,000 tourist guides, and 21 million visitors     51     (participate) in the campaign.