It’s never too late to earn your college degree. Just ask 94-year-old Hazel Soares.

The woman was one of about 500 students to pick up diplomas (学位证书) at Mills College. “It’s taken me quite a long time because I’ve had a busy life,” said Soares. “I’m finally achieving it, and it makes me feel really good.”

Soares, who has six children and 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, is believed to be the world’s second oldest person to graduate from college. Born in Richmond, Calif. in 1915, Soares said she had wanted to attend college right after she graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1932, but that was during the Great Depression. “Unless you had some help, it would have been impossible to go to college,” Soares said. “However I never lost the desire to go.”

Soares married twice, raised six children and worked as a nurse before she retired. After retiring, she decided to return to try to achieve her dream of earning a college education.

She spent six years taking courses before earning her associate’s degree when she was 85. Then she enrolled at Mills College in 2007.

“We are really amazed and very proud of my mom,” said Regina Hungerford, Soares’ youngest child. “The biggest thing that we can all learn is that we’re never too old to do something.” Soares doesn’t plan to relax now that she finally has her degree. The art history major hopes to work as a guide at a museum.

Soares said she doesn’t know the source of her longevity (长寿). No one in her family has lived as long as she has — but she believes it has something to do with eating lots of fresh vegetables.

She hopes others realize that it’s never too late to get a college education. “There’s no reason why you could not go back,” Soares said. “Some people say it’s too late or that there is   much work. They may not realize that once you try it, it’s exciting to go to school.”

Prairie dogs（草原犬鼠）are native to the prairies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. They are actually a type of squirrel named for the place where they live and the warning call they give when they are threatened（威胁）, which sounds similar to a dog’s bark. One of the amazing things about prairie dogs is the way that they live in “towns.” These towns can contain many hundreds of prairie dog families.

Prairie dogs like to live with other prairie dogs, so they join together to make prairie dog towns. These are collections of prairie dog families that can cover one or two square kilometers. Prairie dog towns are big because each family lives in their own tunnel（地道）system, which is usually 10-30 meters wide. Families are usually made up of 1 male, 2 to 4 females, and their children. When the young prairie dogs reach three years of age, they leave home to found their own families on the edges（边缘）of the town.

Prairie dog tunnels usually have several chambers. These chambers are like rooms in a house. Female prairie dogs use them when they give birth and when they raise their babies. The other chambers are used by the family for sleeping. To make them comfortable, prairie dogs separate the chambers by lining the walls with grass. The tunnels are also used for protection when prairie dogs are threatened by other animals. For this reason they are designed with two or more holes serving as doors.

Prairie dogs like living in towns and they even make social visits to each other. When two friendly prairie dogs meet, they greet each other with a kind of kiss. However, the male prairie dogs defend the borders of the family’s tunnel system against enemies. Prairie dog towns have conflicts, social gatherings, and cooperation just like a human town, which makes them very interesting.

The technology of autonomous（自动驾驶的）vehicles (AVs) is advancing rapidly, but have we really thought how they’ll work? In this report on AVs in Australia, Austroads paints both positive and negative scenarios（场景）for the future.

The positive scenario suggests that AVs could reduce car ownership and use thanks to a large number of shared and connected AVs. But for this scenario to work, AVs must be shared and not privately owned and there must be a good enough public transport（运输）system, which is not the present situation in most Australian cities, suggesting it’s unlikely that the arrival of AVs will reduce our dependence on private cars.

I once spoke to a group of car owners working outside the centre of Sydney, who used their cars to do all kinds of things. They saw their cars as spaces of climate-controlled comfort, where they could have time alone, away from busy lives. They also expressed a strong belief that Australians have a basic right to be comfortable, protected and autonomously mobile.

Is public transport good enough? If AVs are to reduce car ownership and use, we will need to drive less than we currently do. This requires other useful and reliable transport choices. Yet for many of us, taking public transport remains difficult: we are car dependent because we have little choice.

However, AVs really have many advantages over private cars. AVs don’t need to be parked nearby to their rider, and they can go off and park themselves wherever there’s a free space. Imagine the scenario of someone currently driving 10km to work each day and paying $10 to park.

In the world of fully autonomous vehicles, they would certainly choose to save that $10 per day and have their car drive them to work, drop them off, take itself home, only to return when the driver orders it to come at the end of the day. That makes a 20 km a day or a 40 km a day. And imagine that for millions of households across the city.

In addition, AVs will ensure that time in the car is more pleasurable and useful. Being stuck in a traffic jam might not be such a pain if you could be working, reading, watching a movie, having a coffee with friends, playing with the dog, or starting Friday night drinks early.

So, when considering the influence of AVs, we need to be careful. The automotive（机动车辆的）industry is powerful. We need to be prepared for AVs to strengthen, rather than replace, the present situation of car ownership and use.

Miami is one of the most international and attractive cities in the US.     16     The city has also become a heaven for the rich and famous, with plenty of famous people from Jennifer Lopez to Whitney Houston calling Miami home. What makes it so attractive?

The most famous section of Miami is South Beach (also known as SoBe). It’s in the heart of the “Art Deco District”. The neighborhood is colorful and has some truly unique architecture (建筑). South Beach is popular for its shopping and fashionable restaurants, but it’s definitely the section of town where people come to have fun.     17     One of the most popular clubs in South Beach is “Level”, also known as the “Crown Jewel of South Beach Nightlife”.

Miami has just about any type of food you could imagine.     18     Cuban food is the most popular and you can find it just about anywhere, from the “cafeteria” on the corner to some of the more upscale（高档的）South Beach spots like “Larios”.

The only bad things about Miami are the tropical（热带的）storms that often hit the area. Miami has always been a hurricane hotbed because of its location on the southern tip of Florida.     19     Actually, Andrew was the most destructive hurricane on record to ever hit the United States.     20     The hurricane was responsible for 23 deaths in the US and three more in the Bahamas. The damage caused by Andrew was estimated（估计） at over $26 billion. Thousands of people were left homeless after the disaster.

We had a terrible snowstorm over the weekend. The city was brought to a(n) _______ until crew（技术人员团队）and snow moving equipment could open up streets. I live in a(n) _______. My neighbors and I had parked in a(n) _______ parking lot. I hadn’t been able to go anywhere since last Friday, because my car, and everyone else’s car were buried（埋）in snow.

The snow moving equipment was able to _______ by Wednesday afternoon and clear a path down the aisles（通道）between the rows of cars. We had to shovel（铲）out our own cars, though. I have a little red _______ shovel, and it took me one and a half hours to clear off my car.

I headed back into my apartment feeling pretty great _______ being free again. My neighbour was at her doorway, so I stopped and _______. She said she was in poor health and she needed to get out, but she hadn’t been able to shovel out her car yet. She thought the snow moving crew would come back and finish the job for her. I said that they _______ would, but I knew they wouldn’t. We live in a big city, and removal crew don’t have time to shovel out individual cars.

So, last night after _______, I headed secretly out with my little red plastic shovel, ________ her car, and shoveled the snow away from around it. It only took ________ because her car is smaller than mine.

I had to take pain killers last night so I could sleep. Five months ago, I broke my ________ and pulled muscles in my back. I have ________ well and regained my mobility, but shoveling snow for two and a half hours put too much burden on my shoulders.

It was all good this morning, ________. Even better, when I looked out my window, I could see ________ in the snow where my neighbour had been able to just jump in her car this morning and drive away.

When teenagers go through a period of rapid physical and mental development, every aspect of life     36    （affect）greatly, especially the relationships with their parents. It seems that they can’t see eye     37     eye with their parents, so     38     (heat) arguments or cold silences are not     39     (common) between the both sides. Physical changes in adolescents, including sudden changes in their voices, shooting up in height, or weight problems, can cause family     40    (tension). They enter a strange middle ground,     41     they are no longer a child but not quite an adult. As a result, psychologically they desire both independence and parental care. However, balancing their mental needs can be a headache. For parents, they both want to treat them as children and expect them to behave like adults.

    42     it is impossible to solve the problem     43     (thorough), communicating frequently and honestly can ease the tension in the relationship. Learning to calmly understand the situation from parents’ point of view before     44     (lose) temper（脾气）is also a good solution. As children, they should learn to back     45     bravely and ask properly their parents to relax their control over them. With this stormy period not lasting, the changes and challenges during this period will turn out all right in the end.