【推荐2】Kim Stemple was a special-education teacher. In 2012, she found herself in Boston hospital being ____ for one of several diseases she had been diagnosed (诊断) with. The normally energetic Stemple was naturally getting very ____ . And then a friend gave her a medal.

Before she got too ____ to exercise, Stemple had been a marathon runner. The medal came from a ____ partner who had just ____ a half marathon in Las Vegas and hoped the medal would act as a kind of ____ . It worked like magic.

After Stemple hung the medal on the wall, other ____ said they wanted medals too. That got Stemple ____ . “A medal is a simple way to give a _____ message,” she told others. And so was born her charity, We Finish Together, which ____ medals from strangers — runners, dancers, swimmers, singers, and even spelling bee winners — and gives them to all sorts of people ____ .

People who have received the medals have ____ hospital patients, people from homeless shelters, etc. Part of the process involves the ____ owner writing a personalized note on the ribbon (绶带) . “This helps them ____ with someone,” says Stemple. “If they receive a medal, they know someone ____ .”

Can a simple medal ____ make a difference? Yes, says Joan Musarra, who ____ from a serious lung disease. “When I opened my package containing my new ____ and the notes of positive, warm thoughts, I was very _____,” she wrote to Stemple. “At that moment, I was sitting on my sofa breathing through an oxygen cannula (氧气管) because my lungs were so weak. It ____ so much to me to feel that I am not alone.”

【推荐3】When Beverley Burdeyney turned seventy-four last year, she started having problems with her _________, notably dryness and discomfort.

“I was simply _________ a terrible experience,” MS. Burdeyney said at her home in Toronto. “I felt so _________ and insecure because the quality of my life was affected.”

Ms. Burdeyney talked to some friends who had similar problems and discovered that they were largely suffering in silence.

“Nobody chooses to talk about it because it seems so _________,” she said. “But more and more are suffering and lives are being compromised (妥协)”

Eventually, Ms. Burdeyney learned about plans for an eye research _________ at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The research team _________ Canadian doctor Allan Slomovic, who has done ground- breaking (开拓性的) work on eye care using stem cells. Seeing a ray of hope, Ms. Burdeyney began raising _________ for the project with a friend, Toronto businessman MeyerZeifman. _________ she has raised $110,000 with another $40,000 _________.

“I’m trying to get more and more people to __________ that there are solutions,” said Ms. Burdeyney, a trained nurse who is still working as a personal trainer after __________. “I say there is no old __________, here’s only neglect (忽视). Don’t stand still, do something about it.”

Ms. Burdeyney __________ that she was hoping to do more for the research project. “I just want to bring __________ into people’s eyes and this is just the __________. There is still a long way to go.”

【推荐1】At the doctor’s office, first I log onto a computer to announce my presence. Then I wait until a robotic nurse _______ me into the examination room. Soon, in steps the doctor, who also is a robot. He records my _______, does a few calculations and then _______ out a prescription (处方). Having swiped (刷) the credit card at a machine on the way out, I return home without having come across another human being. This scene is my horrible imagination of the future, which hasn’t come to pass —_______ not yet now.

I really do like many aspects of _______. I’m a big fan of air conditioners in summer and heat in winter. But I don’t want machines to _______. When I call my dentist’s office and on the line actually get a human being, I am pleased. When I call the airport and get the lady-computer who _______ asking me to report myself, I want to scream. When I see the slow occupation of self-service check-out stations at the supermarket, I feel like shouting, “When it _______ cashiers, make mine humans, please!” 

After all, a human cashier might _______ a bag of flour leaking and get you a replacement. Real-life cashiers may have a ________ word for an elderly person struggling to pay the bill. Even more than that, they often take an interest in particularly cute children, which can ________ a young mother’s day. I don’t want to go back to the Stone Age, but I’m also ________ about a completely computerized world, where face-to-face communication is replaced by swiping credit cards and feeding numbers. Self-service check-out stations can be efficient. But they lack a(n) ________ so vital to everyday life. It is something that urges us to offer others a smile, a hug or a prayer, which may be ________ what they need at that moment. Call it the spirit, the soul or the heart. It is something that no ________ will ever have.

【推荐3】Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor cars _______ a hundred miles in more than an hour, aircraft cross the world within a day, _________ computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of _________ seems never-ending. Every year motor cars are produced which go even faster and each new computer boasts (吹嘘) of _________ precious seconds in handling tasks.

All this saves time, but _______ a cost. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag (时差). Our bodies feel that they have been _________ behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at _________ results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to some scientists; too much use may transmit (传播) harmful _________ into our brains, a consequence we do not like to _________ about.

However, how do we handle the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so used to constant activity that we find it ______________ to sit down and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen ______________ to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.

There was a time ____________ some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation (耕作) of the ______________ or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking (多重任务) there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors ______________. Modern machines have ______________ people from that primitive existence.

【推荐2】Two new residents in Aarwangen, a small village in Swiss, complained that the constant ringing of cowbells affect their life. They asked for the cows’ bell to be _______ at night so they could sleep.

Long-term residents, and the village’s remaining farmers were _______ . They thought it was a (n) _______ on their traditional culture. “We want to _______ and keep our lived traditions in the future,” they say.

Cowbells have been used in rural Switzerland for centuries. They were once useful for _______ cows on the hill side in summer. Farmers say they can_______ each cow by the sound of its own bell. _______ in modern times, many farmers have switched to using electronic chips _______ bells.

Over the past few decades, many new_______ have arrived here from large cities and they are not so________ to the traditional way of rural life.

This year’s battle is not the first time that residents have ________ cowbells. In 2005, a Zurich appeals (呼吁) court ________ a farmer to remove the bells from his 27 cows from 10: 00 to 7: 00 am, because the cows were safe in a small farm and the neighbors could sleep ________ .

Next month, Aarwangen’s villagers will gather for a public meeting to vote (投票) on the ________ of their bells. They will decide how the sound of the bells can ________ without breaking noise pollution laws.

【推荐3】When storm clouds gather, and the wind howls in anger, the natural reaction for most people is to seek shelter. But some run towards the ________. Photographer Liu Yijing is one of that rare type, as he captures and ________ nature’s anger.

For the past year, Liu, 21, has travelled about 24,000 kilometers across 11 provincial-level administrative regions in China, chasing (追赶) and ________ thunderstorms. From the first ________— a small wind developing into a strong wind, a violent sky, and birds fleeing— he ________ what appears to be a ________ task.

Liu has received a great deal of ________ for his work. His photos captured a complete supercell structure, a type of thunderstorm which ________ in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Aug 22. This image has been ________ as the cover photo for the May edition of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, a key publication in its field.

“It is a typical supercell and I still have a vivid memory about how ________ I felt the moment it formed. While recording, I couldn’t ________ myself and kept screaming, he says, ________ that the picture and video have become popular on the Internet, ________ among meteorologists (气象学家).

Many social media users nicknamed him “storm chaser”. A Sina Weibo user ________ that Liu’s photos and videos show how amazing ________ is and how insignificant humans are.