【推荐1】Natural disasters take many different forms and can happen without warning. Earthquakes, floods, vol-canoes, droughts, typhoons, and hurricanes are all natural disasters.

The earthquake of 26 December 2004 resulted in one of the worst natural disasters in living memory. It was a massive underwater quake and occurred in the Indian Ocean. This caused a huge tsunami (海啸) to cross the Indian Ocean. It destroyed coastlines and communities and brought death and destruction to many people. The survivors needed fresh water, food and shelter as well as medical help. People from all over the world gave money to help the people survive.

The surface of the Earth has not always looked as it does today; it is moving continuously (although very slowly) and has done so for billions of years. This is one cause of earthquakes, when one section of the Earth crashes with another. Scientists can predict where this might happen and the area between plates is called a fault line. However, earthquakes do not always happen on fault lines, which is why they are so dangerous and unpredictable.

All the disasters are very dangerous and continue to kill thousands of people each year,but they are nowhere near the most dangerous disaster to ever happen on earth. One type of event in the earth’s history has regularly killed millions of beings: asteroid (小行星) impacts (撞击). About once every million years the Earth is hit by a piece of rock and ice from space large enough to cause massive destruction (including earthquakes, volcanoes and ice ages) and sometimes to kill entire species. Sixty-five million years ago more than half the earth’s species were killed by such a disaster,including all the dinosaurs (恐龙). Disasters on the Earth may seem dangerous, but the biggest threat to humans is likely to come from space.

【推荐2】A wildfire is a fire that burns strongly and out of control in the wild. Wildfires are becoming even more powerful and harmful over time. That is in part because of climate change. Hotter temperatures and drier forests are helping to cause wildfires. The fires start from natural causes, like lightning. Humans can start fires with cigarettes or campfires, accidentally.

Sometimes, people can set fires on purpose. This is to help an ecosystem and those that live there. For thousands of years, humans have set fires on purpose. Fire does put living things in danger, but this happens naturally, Over time, ecosystems have adapted to the benefits from regular fires, because fires clear out dead material. Some plant and animal populations actually need fire to survive and reproduce. The fires help encourage healthy ecosystems. Of course, these are controlled burns. Modern fire experts now know how to set controlled burns that are well planned and safe.

Why is fire necessary? As dead or decaying(腐朽的) plants begin to build up on the ground, they may prevent organisms in the soil from getting nutrients(养分).They may keep animals on the land from getting to the soil. This coating of dead matter can also choke the growth of smaller or new plants.

Fire removes that layer of decay. The soil gets nutrients from the burned material faster than if it had slowly over time. This allows healthy parts of the ecosystem to grow stronger and stronger.

Some plants actually need fire to continue their life cycles. Seeds from some pine trees grow in pine cones that are covered in a thick sap(汁液). The seeds release from the pine cones when fire melts the sap. Fires allow more seeds to get to the soil and grow. The healthier plant populations after a fire can help animals, too Animals that live in nine trees benefit from more growing trees. Plant growth provides the food sources of animals.

Humans should prevent most uncontrolled damaging wildfires. But trying to prevent all fires might make matters worse. Understanding the benefits of fire is the only way to truly keep our ecosystem safe from its dangers.

【推荐3】A storm hit Houston, Texas, on Tuesday. It brought heavy rains and rising floodwaters. By Tuesday night, some parts of the city had received 10 inches of rain. Police and firefighters helped people move to safe places. They also saved people from cars and buses that were stuck on roads.

Certain areas around Houston were hit really hard. In just four hours, more than seven inches of rain fell in Sugar Land in the southwest of Houston. Cars could not pass through any of the area’s main roadways. On Twitter, Sugar Land city officials asked people to get to high ground.

Tuesday’s rain hit parts of Texas that Hurricane Harvey had already damaged almost two years ago. Hurricane Harvey in August, 2017 was the second most costly hurricane in US history. It caused $125 billion worth of damage in Texas. In the Houston area, 36 people died and about 150,000 homes were flooded.

A spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said that this week’s rain “is not in any way a Harvey-level event”.

But the worst may not be over yet. People will have a break from the heavy rain on Wednesday.

According to the National Weather Service, the Texas Gulf Coast will continue to experience heavy rain later in the week.“Today should be our quietest over the next few days for rainfall,”said Don Oettinger, a National Weather Service meteorologist (气象学家).

Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peia warned,“As there is too much water on the ground and flash floods are likely to happen, we hope people are careful of what they’re doing and encourage them to stay home. There’s no sense in putting yourself, firefighters or anybody in danger needlessly.”

【推荐1】I went to Costa Rica for three months to work for a conservation project for marine turtle(海龟). The project takes place on the Caribbean coast in a wildlife reserve in Gandoca。It is a very remote place, close to the border with Panama. Basically, the work was to keep watching every night to find the turtles coming out. Once we found a turtle, we had to collect the eggs to bring them to one of our two hatcheries (孵化所).We also had to measure the turtle, keep a sign on their body and check if they have any injuries.

Another part of the work was the hatchery duty. The people in the hatchery had the responsibility for preventing any animals or people getting in it. When the first babies began to hatch, they had to take care of the babies.

I must say that sometimes it was hard. Not the work itself, but the mosquitoes, and the fact that we could never have a complete night of sleep or that we had to keep watching even if it was raining. And it rains a lot on the Caribbean coast. But that’s not so important. Working on this project was a wonderful experience. First of all, we had the unique opportunity to meet the leatherback turtle, which is an endangered species. It's a really impressive animal. The female inspires a sort of respect, because she is so heavy and the effort she has to do to go out of the water to lay her eggs is incredible. I fell in love with them really.

Then, working in the reserve was also a chance to practice my Spanish, not only with the Spanish-speaking people among the other research assistants, but also with people of the community. The contact with all the volunteers was great too. We were all there to share the same experience. Everyone was a part of it and we shared strong emotions and feelings together. I will never forget it and know that I will get in touch with some of them for a long time.

Last but not least, Gandoca is a paradise on earth一the beautiful beach, deep rainforest, lots of animals, peaceful atmosphere and so on. I hope that many other people will have the opportunity to live this experience and all I want to add is to go there!

【推荐3】Gary McKee ran 365 marathons in as many days to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support and Hospice at Home West Cumbria.

Gary McKee, 53, from Cleator Moor in Cumbria raised his arms in victory and was cheered by a crowd of supporters as he completed his 365th marathon of the year on New Year’s Eve. As of (截止) 4 pm on Saturday, he had raised more than £890,000 for the charities Macmillan Cancer Support and Hospice at Home West Cumbria, just shy of (缺少) his £1 million fundraising target. The father of three has gone through 22 pairs of sports shoes and has run 9,563 miles in rain, snow and sunshine to raise money for the charities.

“The support has been amazing and it always is and the West Cumbrians get behind us, but cancer affects everybody so it isn’t just a West Cumbrian thing, it’s a national thing,” said Gary.” I just hope that people do get behind us and we do raise those million pounds.” Gary has not only raised money for two fantastic charities, but he has also sprinkled magic on the local community and brought people together to support him with the challenge.

Chris Young, 29, ran 90 marathons with Mr. McKee. “Gary has set a good example to me this year when I began running frequently with him and has given me both physical and mental resilience (适应力) that I don’t know if I would have ever discovered in myself in a million years. I know I don’t just speak for myself on that front as he has inspired not just me or the few, but the entire local community and beyond,” said Chris, “This challenge has raised a great amount of money for two fantastic charities, but the impact (影响) Gary has provided to the community and people around him is immeasurable. A lot of people’s lives will be much better off thanks to Gary’s efforts, mine included.”

【推荐1】Now we are in a "golden age" of space-sample collection and exploration. Space agencies around the world are busy collecting, or planning to collect, samples from asteroids（小行星），moons and planets and so on.

China's Chang'e-5 mission is the most recent sample-return mission that has been successfully completed. On Dec 17, 2020, the Chang'e-5 lunar probe（探测器）returned home and landed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region after weeks of space travel, China Daily reported. This was the world’s first lunar sample-return mission since 1976. The mission collected 1,713 grams of samples of rocks and dust with the help of a drill and a mechanical（机械的）arm.

Another space sample-return mission was completed on Dec 6, 2020. Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe returned a capsule to Earth containing valuable samples from the asteroid Ryugu. This was the second time asteroid samples had ever been collected and brought back to Earth. The first asteroid samples were collected by the original Hayabusa spacecraft back in 2010.

There will be more such missions in the near future. NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which collected samples from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020, is expected to return to Earth in 2023. Russia's Lunar-25 mission is scheduled to launch to the moon in 2021 to collect lunar samples.

“I cannot emphasize enough how valuable return samples are for increasing our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system and our place in the universe, and how we came to be," said Ann Nguyen, a NASA planetary scientist

As for the Chang'e-5 lunar samples, scientists will conduct various analyses, tests and experiments to determine the composition, structure and physical characteristics of the samples. This information will help to deepen our knowledge about the history of the moon, as well as our solar system as a whole.

【推荐2】Laura Sides was a psychology major at the University of Nottingham in 2004. She first noticed signs of her dad’s developing dementia(痴呆) when she moved to Nottingham. She said, "Dad was a doctor, so he knew exactly what had happened to him, but people try to hide it when they are ill. Then, I came home for my 21st birthday and arranged to meet him, but he never showed up as he’d forgotten. That’s when I knew something serious had happened."

So, aged 21, she decided to leave university and look after him herself. She lived close by, popping in every day to make sure he was eating, and that the house was tidy, before heading off to her work.

Besides challenging moments, there was a time when looking after her dad was a pure joy. "We’d wake up, I’d ask what he wanted to do that day, and however ridiculous the adventure is, off we’d go."

Sadly, in 2009, 5 years later, Laura lost her father. Before he died, Laura went to a hospital appointment with him, where doctors mentioned that his form of Alzheimer’s disease was genetic meaning there was a fifty-fifty chance that she had inherited it. For several years Laura agonised over whether to be tested, finally finding out in August 2017 that she has the APP gene, meaning that, like him, she will develop the condition within a decade.

At first, she struggled, feeling as if her life lacked purpose. Then, during a sleepless night in the summer of 2018, she decided at around 2 a.m. to enter the 2019 London Marathon sponsored by the charities Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK.

She hoped to start the conversation around early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and to encourage people to talk about it more openly. "I remember when Dad was ill, people wouldn’t know how to react, but I want to be honest and open," she added. "The more information we can get, the less of a taboo(忌讳) we will feel. That said, the support I’ve received so far after going public has been amazing — that’s what is carrying me through."

【推荐3】For many, it is a journey that you will never give up, and the more you put in, the more you get out. While this kind of attitude may work for some, the latest scientific research suggests that it can also go wrong for many people.

Mauss has shown that seeking happiness can also increase feelings of loneliness and disconnection, perhaps because it causes you to focus your attention on yourself and your own feelings rather than appreciating the people around you. "Self-focus might make me engage with other people less，and I might judge other people more negatively if I think they ‘mess' with my happiness，”Mauss added.

These effects don't end there. Maglio at the University of，Toronto found another way that the conscious happiness-seeking may have the opposite effect: By leading us to feel that time is slipping away. Happiness comes from something pleasant that I can enjoy right now，to something burdensome（难以承担的）that I have to keep working at over and over and over，" Maglio says.

“If you are constantly reminded of your friend enjoying at this beautiful location or at that delicious dinner，I think that might serve as a reminder that other people are happier than you-and kick-start（强力启动）that goal of happiness again. "

Mauss，meanwhile，points out that a lot of research has found that people who take a more “accepting” altitude to bad feelings-rather than constantly trying to fight them as the enemy--actually end up more satisfied with their life over the long-term. When you are trying to be happy，you may become judgmental and disapproving of bad things in your life. . . "For these reasons，she advises people to have a more stoic（苦修的）attitude to life's ups and downs，in which you accept bad feelings as events which last only a short time rather than trying to remove them entirely.

Happiness really is like a shy animal. And once you stop chasing it，you might just find that it appears naturally of its own accord.

【推荐3】I’ve been teaching college for many years, long enough to note the steady relaxation of attention in matters of student dress. I’ve long grown used to the tom jeans, flip-flops, shorts in the dead of the Maine winter, and ball caps worn backward. Still, I took note recently when one of my students showed up in pajama bottoms. I couldn’t help stopping him and remarking, “Did you just roll out of bed?”

His response: “Five minutes ago.”

I'm familiar with the school of thought that says that how students dress is irrelevant, so long as they’re learning. I deposit it in the same category as “Grammar and spelling don’t matter, so long as they’re expressing themselves.” Perhaps. But I also wonder about the wisdom of confusing the line between bed and desk. I should think that dressing properly before entering a formal environment, such as a college lecture hall, is a sort of visible reminder to oneself (and one’s teachers) that impressions are important and that we have come together to get down to business.

I smile when I think back on the occasions that my parents associated with needing to look presentable. Once, when I was 11 and my brother 9, my father announced that he was taking us into Manhattan (just a subway ride away) to see the film of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” My brother and I were happy at the prospect, but were soon deflated when my father directed us to put on our best clothes, including jackets and ties. “But why?” I begged, not wanting to change out of my comfortable jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.

“Because,” he said, “we’re going to New York. Other people would observe and assess us based on our appearance.”

So yes, I’m all for freedom of choice in matters of dress, and yes, I do want my students to be comfortable. But I also want to pay my respects to those students who believe that appearances count.