2 . With low temperatures and food shortage, winter is a terrible season for animals. Many animals enter hibernation (冬眠) to get through it. Hibernation can help cool the animal’s body and slow its heartbeat to just a few times per minute, for up to months at a time.

But why don’t humans hibernate? Our body is not fit for hibernation. Humans have only migrated into temperate and subarctic areas (温带和北极地附近) in the last hundred thousand years or so. That’s not quite long enough to evolve (进化) all the metabolic adaptations (代谢适应) we would need to hibernate, according to the BBC Science Focus magazine. For example, how to settle waste is a big challenge for human hibernation. Animals that hibernate are able to stop their defecation (排泄), and sometimes save energy by taking their waste. Unluckily, humans can’t do this. There are other challenges. Body temperature below 2.8℃ may hurt human’s stomach and cause pain. Cold temperature can also make people ill easily, according to Smith-sonian magazine.

In fact, humans don’t need to sleep through winter. We can use fire, clothes, houses and food to help us live in the cold.

Could humans hibernate in the future? According to University of Oxford in the UK, being able to hibernate would make such long-time journey less boring and save important energy for the astronauts. It’s likely for long-term space travel. From 2014, NASA has worked hard to do a research on it, for it will be a way to help develop long-term space travel, according to The Atlantic magazine.

4 . Mobile phone has become a problem for middle schools. Some middle schools in Australia have banned (禁止) students from carrying mobile phones during school hours.

Mobile phone use among children has become a problem for the school this year. Several children have got mobile phones as Christmas gifts, and more students will want them.

Marry Bluett, an official, said mobile phone use is a distraction (分心的事) to students during school hours and it also gives teachers so much trouble in their classrooms. Teachers were also saying that sometimes students might use phone messages to deceive during exams.

She said some schools had tried to ban mobile phones. Some parents felt unhappy because they couldn’t get in touch with their children.

Many teachers said students should not have mobile phones at school, but if there was a good reason, they could leave their phones at school office. They also said there were many reasons why the students should not have mobile phones at school: they were easy to lose and were a distraction from studies.

Many people say that they understand why parents would want their children to have phones, but they think schools should let the students know when they can use their mobile phones.

5 . Long long ago, people lived on wild animals, fruits and other plants and they didn’t need to use money.

As time passed, families had more products (产品) than they needed, such as animals and crops. So they needed to trade with others. They began to use money to make it easier. However, it was not like the money we use today. They used shells, rice, salt or large stones.

During the 600 BC, people began using coins as money. Because they were easier to carry than goods (货物), countries began to make coins as their money.

The Chinese were the first to use paper money, probably in the 11th century. An Italian traveler, Marco Polo, saw the Chinese use paper money when he visited China in the 1200s. After his travel, he told the western people what he saw. But European countries didn’t start using paper money till the1600s.

Today people have many ways to pay for things, such as coins, paper money and cards. Some prefer to pay by card. That’s because paying with a card is easier and safer than carrying around a lot of “real” money.

6 . The first forest library in Shanghai opened to the public on February 20th, 2023. Readers can relax and read books in the forest library. The forest library was built by Pudong New Area and Shanghai Library. It is known as Read & Joy Forest. The forest library is near Shanghai Library East. It covers an area of 20,546 square meters.

Readers can relax themselves in the quiet and comfortable environment (环境). There are many different kinds of trees in the library. The green spaces are connected (连接) by wooden walkways (木制人行道).

The library is in the open air. There are many things such as chairs and information desks. Most of the visitors to the forest library are young people and parents with their children.

Having a library in the forest is such a wonderful idea. People enjoy themselves reading in the forest. “It is not only a place for lending books, or a reading room, but also an open space for enjoying fresh air and the smell of trees. It offers readers a different reading experience (经历). I love the fresh air and trees here,” said Wang Tao, a reader of the library, “The library makes it possible to enjoy reading in the natural environment. I feel very relaxed here. I will come back for sure.”

How to use the Internet

At present, most of us have net or Wi-Fi at school and at home._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9 . What do the following animals have in common? Pandas, tigers, whales, lions and camels (骆驼)? They are all in danger!

Animals are in danger for many reasons. Sadly, people’ s activities are some of them! Here are three reasons.

Excessive hunting (过度猎杀). For centuries, people have hunted elephants and tigers for money, and caught many other animals for their meat. So many wild animals leave the world at last.

Foreign animals. In 1505, Europeans found a beautiful island in the Indian Ocean named Mauritius. They brought dogs, pigs, monkeys, and mice with them. It was bad for dodo birds. Dodo birds did not have any natural enemies (敌人) before. They picked up fruit falling down from trees and built their houses on the ground. Shortly after people came, however, dodo birds were in big trouble—people caught them for their meat, and those animals broke their houses and ate their eggs. The number of dodo birds first became less. In the end, they all perished and the last dodo bird lost its life in 1681.

Loss of home. People cut down forests for farming. They cut down trees to build houses. They build pools to make sure that they have enough water to use. However, they don’ t pay attention to protecting the environment. When they are trying to make their lives comfortable, the land for animals to live on becomes less and less.

Animals are people’s good friends. People should learn to protect nature and get on well with animals.