2 . Coogle’s parent company is winding down a project that used high-lying balloons to provide Internet services to hard-to-reach areas of the world.

The project, known as Loon, started in 2011. It was managed by Alphabet Inc. It aimed to bring connectivity to areas of the world where ground-based cell towers (手机信号塔) were too expensive or too difficult to set up.

But Loon was unable to reduce costs enough to make its business model run, the project’ s leader, Alastair Westgarth, said in a blog post. “While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, competitive business,” Westgarh said.

Loon’s shutdown isn’t surprising, economists said.

Loon’s technology sent gas-filled balloons the size of tennis courts into the air. They usually stay at heights of around 60,000 to 75,000 feet. There, onboard communications equipment sent Internet signals back down to earth. The system was able to offer mobile coverage to an area 200 times larger than a traditional ground-based cell tower. However, a carrier would need several balloons at once, each would cost tens of thousands of dollars and last only about five months.

Alphabet wasn’t alone in running projects aimed at offering Internet connection to hard-to-reach areas. Companies such as Amazon. com Inc. and Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been making efforts to provide Internet connection in such places, using satellites in near Earth orbit.

Over the last few years, Loon’s technology has proved successful in some suffering communities. In 2017, the project sent balloons into the skies above Puerto Rico after a terrible hurricane damaged the island’s communications facilities. Two years later, soon after a 7. 8 earthquake struck parts of Peru, Loon’s balloons began to provide the locals with mobile connectivity.

Rich Devaul, a founder of the project, said the need for mobile connectivity was rapidly rising recently. This made cell towers more cost-effective than he had expected ten years ago, reducing the need for Loon, “The problem got solved faster than we thought,” he said in an interview.

3 . Annette Prince moves quickly in the pre-dawn light, looking carefully at the base of each building she passes in downtown Chicago.

She finds a warbler(莺) sitting on the ground, upright but dazed(恍惚的). Then she traps it with a net. “It probably hit one of the upper floors,” says Ms. Prince, a volunteer to protect birds from striking glass windows. “It’s a little weak.” She’ll take it to the rescue center.

The warbler is fortunate. In the battle between birds and cities, cities are winning. Scientists suggest that crashing into buildings kills as many as 1 billion birds a year in the United States. The light from ever-expanding cities is making it difficult for the movement of creatures that migrate(迁徙)in the dark. And the preference for glass in buildings has proved deadly.

There are growing efforts to make cities safer for birds. Lights Out programs, in which owners and managers agree to turn off outdoor lights during migration times, have spread to 45 U.S. cities. Architects are learning how to make buildings bird-friendly by using specially treated glass that birds can see. More activists are asking homeowners to consider their own windows as well.

The issue is far more than birds. “It concerns a need to reduce the human influence on the natural world in an age of habitat destruction and climate change,” says Andrew Farnsworth, a bird expert in the University of Chicago. “The fact that architects and builders are using bird-friendly technology is a positive,” he says. “But it’s not happening as fast as it needs to be.”

4 . My grandmother died when my mother was 11, so my mother never learned how to cook particularly well. Cooking skills aside, she’s a(n) ________ nurturer (养育者). Two years ago, she flew to care for me while I ________ from an operation. At my apartment, I handed her a grocery list of comfort foods, which included Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.

“I should make you some chicken noodle soup ________,” she said.

“Mom, you have never made me chicken noodle soup in your life — except from a can (罐头). You did many ________ things for me, but there was no chicken noodle soup.”

“Well, now I’m going to make you some soup,” said my mother.

I then ________ my friend Kate, an amazing chef. I wrote that my mom was making some chicken noodle soup and asked her to send us a ________.

Three hours and a dozen e-mails with Kate later, my mother had ________ made the chicken soup. It looked good. It was definitely chicken soup made with ________.

All we needed was the noodles.

I watched as my mother ________ an entire bag of noodles into the soup when I got the e-mail from Kate. “Noodles, I forgot to say how many. It should be like... a cup.”

We watched in ________ as the noodles soaked up (浸泡，吸收) all the soup. We tried to add more water, but it was too late. We stood in the kitchen, hurriedly spooning the ________ soup into our bowls.

“It’s my fault!” said my mother, ________.

But let me tell you, that one bowl of chicken noodle soup was ________. We did not think about the soup-soaked noodles while we ate, nor did we think about the ________ of life. I was my mother’s best dinner ________, and she was my favorite chef.

6 . Christmas is coming, and it is time to warm yourself and head out to see some festive lights. There are plenty of choices when it comes to following a light path as part of your Christmas celebrations.

Oxford Street

Oxford Street’s festive lights are a treat for the eyes this year. However you’ll have to pick your hours carefully as the lights—which we returned on at the start of November—are only on for eight hours a day this year, from 3-11 pm, in the wake of the rising energy costs the country is facing. It is expected this will reduce energy usage by up to two thirds compared to previous years, when the lights have been on for 24 hours through November and December.

Kew Garden

One of the most famous light paths of the season, Christmas at Kew offers a full-on festive experience with over 2 km of lights to walk through. Along the way you’ll have the chance to sample festive food and drink, and possibly even say hello to Santa himself.

Regent Street

Regent Street’s lights are on the theme of The Spirit Of Christmas this year, bringing golden angels to the shopping street. The lights, which cover Regent Street and the St James neighbourhoods, were turned on on November 9, and like the Oxford St lights are turned on between 3 and 11 pm.

Covent Garden

A visit to Covent Garden will certainly get you in the festive spirit this year, with the central London destination offering a whole lot of lights—from 11 am until midnight every day until January 3. Visitors can also enjoy daily snow showers as well as festive food treats and heated wine—with over 40 different varieties there.

8 . At present, in many American cities especially, many teachers in the public schools say they are underpaid. They point to jobs such as secretary or truck driver, which often pay more to start than that of a teacher. In many other fields, such as law, medicine, computer science, a beginning worker may make more than a teacher who has taught for several years.

Teaching has never been a profession that attracted people interested in high salaries. It is by history a profession that has provided rewards in addition to money — the satisfactions of sharing knowledge, of influencing others, of guiding young people. But in the past several years, there are more difficulties in teaching, for many, than there are rewards.

Unruly students, especially in big cities, large classes and a lack of support from the public in terms of money and understanding have led many public school teachers to leave the profession.

As a result, many of the best students, who would have chosen teaching as their life career in the past, are going into other fields.

Another reason for this change in teacher candidates is the changing status of women in the United States. Until the late 1960s and 1970s, one of the most popular choices for women was teaching. But as other professions, such as law and medicine opened up to women, women stopped pouring into teacher training programs. Thus, a major pool of excellent candidates for the teaching profession dwindled.

Bit by bit government officials and others realized that the status of the teacher had suffered. They talked about change. But the change in a vast society like the United States is not easy. People’s attitudes have formed over many years, and sometimes change takes many years.

9 . If someone asked whether you like the arts, you’d probably say you do—at least in theory. According to a survey, more than two-thirds of U.S. adults say the arts “lift me up beyond everyday experiences.” However, only 30 percent attended a concert of any type in 2017; 23 percent went to an art museum. Fewer than half actively created art of any kind.

The mismatch can boil down to the fact that we are weighed down by our day-to-day responsibilities, leaving our schedule packed. Maybe you like to play a little background music while you work or do the chores, but even before the pandemic, most of us rarely, if ever, saw a live performance, let alone visited a gallery or watched a play.

Too often, we let the dull reality of life get in the way of the arts. But this is a mistake. The arts are the opposite of an escape from reality; they might just be the most realistic glimpse we ever get into the nature and meaning of life. If you make time for consuming and producing art—the same way you make time for work and exercise and family commitments—I assure you that you’ll find your life getting fuller and happier. Think of a time when you heard a piece of music and wanted to cry. Or maybe your dizziness as you emerged from a narrow side street in an unfamiliar city and found yourself in a beautiful town square as if in a fantasy. They probably stimulated a sudden awakening, much like the shock from a lungful of pure oxygen after breathing in smoggy air.

If you are among the people who feel that art is pure pleasure to experience and participate in, you might see it as a luxury item, while a preferable attitude is to treat art less like a distracting pleasure, and more like exercise or sleep, a necessity. Then draw up a schedule of your art exposure journey, and gradually weave art into your everyday life.

10 . Nightmares, or bad dreams, are terrible. I’ve dreamt about throwing up, animals swallowing me, and someone breaking into my house―all causing me to wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing, anxiety growing out of control. Sometimes, my bad dreams reflect exactly what I’m feeling anxious about. Other times, they’re about something else, but still seemingly caused by my anxiety levels. To find out if anxiety really can cause bad dreams, I went straight to the experts.

The experts I spoke with agreed that anxiety could contribute to bad dreams. “Thoughts filled with anxiety while someone is asleep can manifest (显现) themselves as bad dreams or stress dreams,” said Alex Dimitriu, a double board-certified physician in psychiatry and sleep medicine. “Stress dreams, such as missing an important event, a test, or a flight, are often quite common in people undergoing stress during their daily lives.”

Although the reasons why we dream are not fully understood, there may be times when your mind is simply trying to work through a challenge from that day — one that can be causing you to feel anxious. “We do know from research that the brain continues to work on solving problems during sleep,” explained Jason Durant, a New York-based licensed clinical psychologist.

In that sense, dreaming can actually be a good thing, even if it feels uncomfortable at the time. “The mind is attempting to prompt (促使) you to use the tools you successfully used before when in a similar life situation, or to remind you what did not work and to try something new,” said Nancy Irwin, a clinical psychologist.

Anyhow, bad dreams may be the last thing you want. You may not be able to prevent bad dreams completely, but you can focus on managing your anxiety during the day, which may help alleviate (减轻) the problem. Dr. Dimitriu suggests going for a walk, talking to friends and journaling to process your feelings throughout the day. Then, in the evenings, step away from your devices, and take some time to plot out a strategy for dealing with the things that are causing you stress.