【推荐3】As Ruslan and his friend fished, they suddenly spotted three creatures in the water. It was a mother bear and her two cubs, swimming along trying to cross the lake. “This in itself was not an unusual sight, as bears are extremely common in the Russian wilderness,” said Ruslan.

But soon the men realized something was not right. As the mother swam confidently toward one of the islands, her cubs were starting to struggle. Ruslan and his friend could not believe what they were seeing. The two fishermen were faced with the very real possibility of watching the young bears drown. It was something they couldn’t allow to happen. Ruslan didn’t want to approach the cubs while their mother was still within reach, fearing she might turn around and attack them and their boat. But as the seconds ticked along, he and his friend watched the cubs become more desperate. Finally he decided that when the mother was at a safe distance, they sailed toward the cubs, slowly not to frighten them. To their amazement, it seemed as though the young bears knew this was a lifeline.

The cubs swam close enough to the boat to put their paws on the side. But they kept slipping as they couldn’t get a strong hold to pull themselves onto the boat. The men decided to use their fishing net to help pull the cubs onto the boat. But it would not be easy—two totally wet bear cubs were infinitely heavier than the fish the net was designed to hold.

But this was their best chance, so they had to try. Ruslan jumped into the water while his friend took the net and slowly slid it under the cubs, hoping to pull them up. The cubs turned toward the men and looked straight at them, seemingly acknowledging their efforts to help. Then, an incredible thing happened. The cubs made it onto the boat at last.

【推荐2】The summer vacation is over. It’s true that time always flies fast. During the vacation, the weather was hot and I could not do much work, but I lived happily. As the afternoon was hot, I did my work in the morning. I used to get up at 6:30 and take a walk in the garden for half an hour. After breakfast, I began reading English and Chinese and did some exercises in maths. Those took me three hours or more. I worked quite hard and made great progress. I spent the afternoon outside. I went to swim and it was funny. I would not go home until it was about five or six o’ clock. Sometimes a friend of mine would come to see me and we would spend some hours listening to music. In this way I spent my vacation happily. And I not only studied well but also became a good swimmer. Now I am in good health and high spirits(精神).

【推荐3】Getting hit on the head can cause a serious injury. Sometimes, even if a person feels okay, they may have a brain injury called a concussion (脑震荡). Even a good doctor can have trouble telling if a person has a concussion or not. And if a person is not careful and gets hurt again while they have a concussion, the problems can be even worse. Now Neurology researchers at the University of Pennsylvania think they may have found a solution—an easy-to-use two-minute reading test that can assess (评估) the possibility that a concussion has occurred.

The test was originally designed to test reading skills in children, but it also catches problems with vision and eye movements, which makes it useful for studying concussions. The test consists of a series of numbers arranged in zigzagging (锯齿) patterns on cards, which children read from left to right as quickly as possible. The Pennsylvania researchers tried out the test on boxers and martial (武术) arts fighters in a study earlier this year and found it worked well as a predictor of head injury.

The researchers gave the fighters the test before and after a match. Typically people can complete the test faster the more times they take it, says Laura Balcer, a lead author of the study. But the athletes who had experienced head injury during their fights read the cards more than 11 seconds slower when they took the test a second time. Fighters who had a concussion read the cards especially poorly, worsening by 18 seconds on average.

Now Balcer and her colleagues are studying the test’s ability to predict concussions in athletes who play football and other rough sports. Their goal is to create an evaluation tool that could serve as an early warning sign for coaches, who would need only the cards and their stopwatch to determine whether a player needs to be sent to a doctor.

Magic goes against the rules of nature and physics. During the 2009 CCTV Spring Festival gala, magician Liu Qian managed to drop a coin into a glass placed upside down and transformed a finger ring into an unbroken egg, under the close and watchful eyes of the studio audience, leaving tens of thousands of viewers puzzled by his showmanship.

The mind-blowing performance has set off an enthusiasm of magic all over the country. However, people seldom know that more than 3,600 years ago, the history of magic in China was already underway.

In China, magic goes back many years and has developed from superstitious wizardry into a technologically inspired, sophisticated art form.

Ancient Chinese magic made its appearance as early as 1,600 BC, and was closely associated with divination and wizardry, according to Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lie Nu Zhuan) by Liu Xiang, the well-known historian of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

In 108 BC, Liu Che, emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, gathered more than a hundred acrobats and magicians in the imperial palace and hosted the biggest magic show in history. Zhang Heng’s Western Metropolis Rhapsody (Xi Jing Fu西京赋) records that Duke Huang of the Eastern Sea (Donghai Huanggong), a showman and magician, did knife-swallowing and fire-spitting shows at this gathering.

Magic continued to thrive in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) and began to branch off into separate fields in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Some traditional Chinese tricks such as “Immortal Plants Bean” and “Ancient Color Trick” marked the start of international recognition for Chinese magic.

In the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), there were many cultural exchanges between China and the West. The first generation of modern Chinese magicians like Ching Ling Foo (Zhu Liankui), Han Pingchien and Mu Wenqing went abroad to perform and also learned to incorporate foreign stunts into traditional tricks.

The later generation of magic practitioners, headed by Zhang Huichong, furthered the hybrid form of magic acts by infusing traditional Chinese magic into Western-style illusion acts.

After China’s reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, magicians from abroad began visiting China more frequently. In 1980, Marc Wilson from the United States became the first magician to perform on the Chinese mainland since the founding of New China in 1949. In 2002, David Copperfield caused a stir with his performances of walking through the Great Wall.

And now, Liu Qian has created a hit with his remarkable close-up performances and exposed Chinese audiences to a new, refreshing and delightful art form.