Lucy and I are twin sisters. We always have a strong connection—we can almost read each other’s minds. A lot of people say it is _______ for twins to have that connection, but I never thought about it much. _______, I do now because the special connection saved Lucy last year.

When Lucy left for college, I was _______ we would not keep in touch, but thanks to mobile phones, that didn’t _______. I was really looking forward to her coming home during her vacation. But when she got home, I felt something was wrong. I asked how she was and she replied that _______ was fine.

A month later I decided to visit her. As I was _______ to her college, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I stopped the car and wondered what was wrong with me, but then I _______ that it was with my sister. I quickly called her to see if she was OK. She said that things were fine.

About twenty minutes later, the same thing happened. But much _______ than before and all I could see in my mind were pictures of my sister lying on the floor. I raced to the _______, parked the car, and ran to her room.

When I got there, it was just like what I had seen in my mind. I called 911 and they took ________ to the hospital.

When Lucy woke up, she smiled weakly and said the special connection was really magic.

A plane without oil! Super Google glasses! Sound like the year 2050? Take a look at the coolest inventions of 2013.

Solar­powered plane. A plane flew for more than 18 hours over the U.S. on Saturday and didn’t use a drop of oil! How? Solar Impulse is a solar­powered plane, the biggest such plane in the world. It has the same weight as a small car. It carries only one person. It can get solar power from the sun.

Super light camera. It weighs only 36g. It’s as light as six coins. It’s easy for you to take this small camera with you when travelling. It’s small, but it also has many uses. You can take a colourful photo or a black and white one. There are many shapes you can use. You can also use the camera as a key ring.

Google glasses. They are the latest technology from Google. People who wear the glasses can record what they see and hear around them, and put them on the Internet for the world to see. There is a GPS system in the glasses, and it will find where you are and tell you where you need to go. Google glasses are a bit like a helpful secretary. You can tell them what you want to write in an e­mail and they will type it for you.

A thirsty crow (乌鸦) comes across (偶然遇到) a bottle of water, but the water level is out of its reach. The bird then drops some stones into it and gets the water.

“It’s just a story,” you may think. But new research has found that crows’ brains may sometimes be better than those of 6­-year­-old children.

In a recent experiment, American scientist Corina Logan and her team caught six crows to test them. The crows and children had to choose between two sets of tubes (试管). They had to drop stones in and get water.

With the red set, when they dropped a stone into a wide tube, the water level raised in a connected narrow tube. The blue set of tubes, however, had no connection between them. Children aged 7 to 10 were able to learn the rule. Children aged 4 to 6, however, failed. Five of the six crows failed the test. But Kitty, a 6­-month-­old crow, passed it. She put most of the stones into the red tubes.

So, could a bird be cleverer than a kindergartner? Don’t be too quick to say no.

If your ears are working well, you hear sounds all the time. You can’t switch(关掉) your ears off, even when you are asleep.

When you really want to listen to something, you tell your brain to focus on that sound. If your ears are healthy and are both working well, they can turn down other sounds while you focus on what you want to hear. If one ear isn’t working as well as the other, they can’t do this. If your hearing cells(细胞) have been damaged by too much noise or music, what you want to hear can get mixed up and lost in the other sounds around. With healthy ears you can choose what you want to listen to, but you can’t choose what you hear.

Your brain deals with the received sounds and tells you what they mean. Some people have problems understanding what they are hearing because their ears don’t work well and they don’t hear all the sounds. The brain does not get enough information to understand the messages or they may be mixed up.

Lots of mums and dads think that kids have this “problem”. They think that the kids select what they are going to hear and what they can’t hear! Many mums say that dads do this, too. In fact, this is something we may all do to try and make our lives a bit easier. Some children wrote what they liked to hear and what they didn’t like to hear.