1 . You wake up one morning, and your head feels like it’s burning. Right away, you think, “Oh, no! I have a fever!” However, when you take your temperature, you see that it’s only 37.2℃.

So, you don’t have a fever. Or, do you? From the standards (标准) in use for a long time, a fever starts at 38℃. Some doctors now don’t agree with that, though. They feel our ideas about fevers are wrong and too old. It’s the same for normal body temperatures.

These doctors argue that everyone’s normal body temperature isn’t 37℃. It’s 36.6 to 38℃ for kids and 36.1 to 37.2℃ for adults. Women also have a higher temperature than men. Besides, people’s body temperatures don’t stay the same all the time.

When your body temperature is around 38℃, you have a fever. Many people think it’s a bad thing, but it’s not. Fevers show that the body is doing its job. It’s fighting the bad viruses (病毒) and bacteria (细菌) in your body.

The body attacks them by turning up the heat. That way, it’s harder for the viruses and bacteria to make copies of themselves. When their numbers go down, the fever does, too.

Mild fevers don’t last long. So, let them do their jobs and don’t treat them. Instead, try to find the cause and treat that. If the fever reaches 39.4℃ or higher, call your doctor. Do the same if the fever lasts longer than three days. Fevers fight to protect us, so they’re our friends, not our enemies.

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① Everybody has a brain, but not many people know how the brain works. Some people believe that the brain is like the hard disk (磁盘) of a computer. We use it to store things-pictures, language (words, texts, sounds) and so on. Others compare the brain to a huge container with lots of shelves and boxes in it. We put information into these boxes and hope to find it again later.

②The brain is not a computer disk, And it isn’t a container. Look at the picture here. It looks a bit like weeds (杂草) in a garden, doesn’t it? The picture actually shows a child’s neocortex—a part of the brain. You can guess what happens—more ‘weeds’ grow as the child gets older. Scientists call these neuronal (神经元的) networks. What makes them grow? Learning! “Learning is brain change,” says Professor James Zull from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. “Without learning, nothing changes in the brain. For every new word you learn in your English lesson, every problem you solve in maths, every new song you learn to sing, a neuronal network grows in your brain and the brain changes.”

③There are many ways to make your brain stronger. The more neuronal networks we grow, the better we can think and the better we remember. You may wonder if there is anything you can do to make the networks in your brain grow better. Professor Zull says yes, there is. He says that brain change is the strongest in the following situations:

·You are interested in and like what you are learning;

· You are in control of what you learn;

· You get challenging tasks that make you think hard.

Choose a right way to learn something, and you may develop your brain better than you think.

4 . There are many types of maps in the world. Most of them are widely used in our everyday life. Different maps have different uses. When we are in a new place, a proper map may help us solve the problems easily.

Tourist maps, for example, have signs to show places of interest in an area. When tourists read these maps, it is easy for them to find where to go and what to see in a place and it is easy for them to go and find their ways to these places, too.

Road maps show large areas so that people can plan long trips. We use different numbers to stand for different roads. For example, if you want to go to Wood Green, you just follow No.621 Road and keep looking at the road signs.

Distribution (分布) maps use colors or signs to show facts about an area. For example, what languages people speak, how many people live in an area, how cold and hot some places are, or whether a place is short of water.

Some maps, such as railway maps, use straight (直的) lines to show everything. It’s easy for people to read them. Trains are fast. People don’t have to think about small places they go past. They just need to know the two ends of their trips.

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5 . We all know that the eyes are the windows of the soul. People use different methods to protect them, such as exercising, taking some medicine, eating some kinds of food and so on.

Do you know what kind of common food is good for our eyes? The answer, of course, is carrots which are common in our daily life. However, a new study suggests that besides carrots, grapes are also good for our eyes.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have found that eating just a few grapes a day can improve our vision (视力). This is especially good for people who are older. Dr. Eun Kim, the lead researcher, said, “Our study is the first to show that eating grapes is good for our eyes, which is very exciting, especially with a growing and ageing population.” Dr. Kim added that grapes were fruits that can easily get. This is good news for people who don’t really like carrots.

The study is published in Food &Function. Thirty-four adults took part in experiments over 16 weeks. Half of them ate one-and-a-half cups of grapes per day. The other half ate a snack (小吃). Dr. Kim did not tell them whether she was testing the grapes or the snack. She thought that not telling this information would give better test results. She found that people who ate the grapes had improved muscle strength (肌肉力量) around the retina (视网膜). The retina passes information about light to the brain. It protects the eyes from blue light which is bad for our eyes. A lot of blue light comes from computers, smartphones and LED lights.

In a word, although food has a certain effect on protecting our eyes, we still need to take good care of them. Let’s start now!

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6 . Every year, when the Dragon Boat Festival comes, Chinese people often put a kind of plant on the door. It is called wormwood (艾草).     1     On the other hand, its special smell can also keep insects away from rooms.

In fact, wormwood tastes terrible but smells very pleasant.     2     So we can see it in Compendium of Materia Medica (本草纲目). Now this book is the classic of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The writer of the book is Li Shizhen.     3    

Wormwood is well-known because it can treat a great number of illnesses. Hundreds of years later, in Qichun, Hubei Province, it is still helping people. Recently, Qichun is busy preparing for the World Wormwood Industry Show (艾草产业展会).     4     And it will be good for TCM and the traditional Chinese culture.

Wormwood is becoming the main-industry in this area.     5     At the same time, wormwood is becoming more and more famous around the world as a kind of traditional Chinese medicine.

10 . There are lots of things that are good for your brain. Reading, for example, helps your brain to grow and work better. Solving puzzles (拼图) can help, too. Scientists now find out another way of bringing health to brains: exercising.

Babies need exercise for their brains to fully grow. Meanwhile, exercise improves children’s attention and helps them do better at school. In the elderly, exercise can help to keep their minds sharp. They can notice or understand things quickly. Exercise also helps blood flow to the brain. The brain needs oxygen (氧气) from blood. Without oxygen, the brain would stop working.

Babies do not have to try to exercise. They are almost always moving. Developing new skills like sitting, standing, walking, running and jumping forces their brains to grow.

As children get older, exercise is still important for the brains. Scientists did an experiment. They found two groups of children between 7 and 9 years old. One group exercised for an hour after school. The other group did not. Scientists then gave both groups a number of brain tests. The kids who had exercised were quicker to learn than those who had not exercised.

Finally, exercise helps adults think quickly. The older people become, the smaller parts of the brain they will get. This can make it harder for old people to remember things. For example, grown-ups who exercised for 30 minutes, five times a week did better on brain tests than grown-ups who did not exercise as much.

Exercise is also good for the patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (阿尔茨海默病), which harms the brain and causes people to lose their memories.