【推荐1】Successful public speaking centers on the physical message of presentation. Some call this “body language”.    1    .

We have all seen nervous presenters in classrooms and meetings. One effect of being nervous is moving from side to side.    2    . In fact an audience can lose interest in a speaker who does not move. How a speaker moves is important. Whole-body movement should slow and planned to control attention. Such movement helps to communicate confidence.

    3     They’ll be looking at their notes, the screen or the floor. The problem of having note and trying to talk from notes is often a big problem. So they have trouble with eye contact. The best way to avoid this problem is to use images and few words for notes instead of sentences. The image should help communicate the point you want to make.     4    , then you can look at the audience while speaking.

A good way to change your body language is to make a video of your presentation and watch yourself. This helps you to become aware of what you need to change. An important part of public speaking is practice. When you practice remember these important tips:     5    , eye contact and gestures. Record yourself using a phone, tablet or camera. Watch yourself and plan what you will do to improve.

【推荐3】Bowing is a very important custom in Japan. Unlike people in many other countries, they greet each other by bowing instead of shaking hands. It is impolite not to return a bow to whoever bows to you.

Bowing has many functions in one. It expresses the feeling of respect, thanks, regret, and so on. You can bow when you say, “thank you”, “sorry”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “congratulations”, “excuse me”, “good morning”, and more.

Bowing seems simple, but there are different ways of bowing. Bowing techniques vary from a small nod of the head to a long, 90-degree bow. It depends on the social position or age of the person you bow to. If your opposite is of higher social position or older than yourself, you are supposed to bow deeper and longer than him or her. It is polite to bow from your waist. Men usually keep their hands at their sides, and women usually put their hands together on their legs with their fingers touching. If it is not a very formal situation, you can bow by nodding. The most common bow is a bow of about 15 degrees.

You might feel strange doing it, but try to bow in Japan. You will be considered very polite!

A．

B．

C．

D．

【推荐1】I've come back to check on a baby. Just after dusk I'm in a car down a muddy road in the rain, past rows of shackled (戴镣的) elephants, their trunks swinging. I was here five hours before, when the sun was high and hot and tourists were on elephants' backs.

Walking now, I can barely see the path in the glow of my phone's flashlight. When the wooden fence post stops me short, I point my light down and follow a current of rainwater across the concrete floor until it washes up against three large, gray feet. A fourth foot twisted above the surface, tied tightly by a short chain and choked by ring of metal spikes(尖刺). When the elephant tires and puts her foot down, the spikes press deeper into her ankle.

Meena is four years and two months old, still a child as elephants go. Khammon Kongkhaw, her caretaker, told me earlier that Meena wears the spiked chain because she tends to kick. Kongkhaw has been responsible for Meena here at Mactaman Elephant Adventure, near Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, since she was 11 months old. He said he keeps her on the spiked chain only during the day and takes it off at night. But it's night now.

I ask Jin Laoshen, the Mactaman worker accompanying me on this nighttime visit, why her chain is still on. He says he doesn't know.

Mactaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-crowded Chiang Mai. Meena's life is set to follow the same track as many of the roughly 3,800 captive(被捕获的) elephants in Thailand. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides -- maybe at 55, maybe at 75 she'll die. If she's lucky, She will get a few years of retirement. She'll spend most of her life on a chain.

【推荐2】After their 15-year-old dog Bailey died in 2007, Ron and his wife, Ann, looked for months to find the right new pet. “I love dogs,” says Ron, a worker at a health club in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I can’t imagine not having one.”

Finally, the couple spotted a young dog at the Humane Society in Milwaukee. His name was Oscar. “He was very attractive,” says Ron, 65. Oscar quickly made himself at home, sleeping on his new owners’ bed at night.

A diabetic(糖尿病人) for 25 years, Ron faithfully took his medicine four times a day and generally had no problems. But on March 17, at about 3 a.m., he got out of bed to use the bathroom. Suddenly, he fell down to the floor. “I must have taken the wrong amount of medicine before I went to sleep, because my blood sugar was dangerously low,” he says.

“Normally, Oscar is very quiet and well-behaved,” says Ron. “But when I hit the floor, he let out sounds like a wild animal.”

“Honestly, it sounded like the dog from hell,” says Ann, who was awakened by the sound.“I didn’t know what the sound was. Then I saw my husband lying on the bathroom floor. He was cold.” She ran for the phone and called an ambulance.

Ron spent several hours in the hospital. By 6:30a.m., he was well enough to go home. “You would never suspect Oscar of any heroism.” says his grateful owner. “He’s a wonderful little guy. We are lucky enough to own him.”

Even before Oscar’s heroic action, the couple had given their pet a new nickname(昵称). “We felt the name Oscar wasn’t good enough,” says Ron, “so sometimes we call him Eduardo”—more suitable, they think, for their dog.

【推荐2】Most sea turtles, whales and fish may have plastic in their bodies. To determine the various forms and colors of this material in marine animals, Marga Rivas at the University of Almeria in Spain and her team analyzed data from 112 studies published in the past decade. These looked for microplastics and larger macro plastics in marine species globally.

Of the studies, 80 examined the gastrointestinal tracts (胃肠道)of animals to see what they had taken in. The others also looked at wider animal tissues to identify plastics that end up in other parts of the body. After examining all of the data, Rivas and her team concluded that 66 per cent of sea turtles have white-colored macro and microplastics in their systems, while 55 percent have a distinct class of plastic called microfibers, which are shed by some fabrics (织物). The high amount of white plastic in turtles was unsurprising, says Rivas, given that plastic of this color, particularly larger pieces, may resemble jellyfish, a large part of the animals' diets.

Microfibers were also present in 80 percent of whales and dolphins - and white macro and microplastics in 38 percent of them. The researchers also concluded that clear fiber microplastics are probably the most common form of this waste that is taken in by large marine animals globally. Rivas and her colleagues also discovered that the animals with the highest rates of plastic were those in the Mediterranean and the northeast Indian Ocean.

“The Mediterranean is the most contaminated sea in the world, so we expected to find these results,” says Rivas. Marine plastic pollution has increased roughly 10-fbld since 1980, and Rivas says the problem is worsened by inadequate water treatment systems. In parts of India and the southeast Mediterranean, waste water isn’t adequately treated or recycled, she says. This means that microfibers shed by fabrics in washing machines, and larger pieces of rubbish, enter the sea. “It’s possible to introduce management strategies to control these huge threats,” says Rivas.

【推荐3】Housework might seem a drag, but researchers have suggested tasks like dusting, sweeping floors and washing the windows might help adults to stay healthy into old age. Writing in the journal BMJ Open, a Singapore-based team of researchers said regular physical activity “improves physical and mental health, and relieves the risks and effects of chronic(慢性的) diseases among older adults”.

The team randomly chose adults from the town of Yishun in Singapore, and asked them to complete cognitive function tests as well as activities to assess their physical capabilities, such as standing up from a chair as quickly as they could. Participants were also quizzed on their levels of physical activity, including the amount of light housework and heavy housework they did, and were assessed for their risk of having a fall based on measures such as knee extension strength. The study involved 249 participants aged 21-64 and 240 participants aged 65-90. Most of those who reported doing high levels of heavy or light housework were women.

After taking into account factors including age and sex, the team found cognitive scores and attention scores were 8% and 14% higher respectively for older adults doing high amounts of heavy housework—on average 131 minutes a week—compared with low levels, which appeared to amount to none at all. Sit-to-stand time was shorter for older adults reporting high amounts of heavy housework compared with low amounts, while they were also assessed as being at lower risk of having a fall.

Dr Shiou-Liang Wee, the co-author of the research, said health messaging on staying active should not just be about recreational physical activities. “Housework is a purposeful activity performed by many older adults. Independent of recreation, commuting (通勤) and other work-related physical activity, heavy housework is linked to sharper memory and better falls protection in older adults,” he said.