1 . It was the most destructive wildfire in California history. It started in Paradise (天堂镇) and caused $16.5 billion in _______, destroying nearly 19,000 buildings and killing 85 in all. The beauty of this _______ named place was gone.

Grammer, working in Los Angeles, grew up there. When his friend Edwards posted pictures of his white chimney — the only part of his house to survive — he felt _______. And then he had an idea.

“I’ve got to _______ that chimney,” he says, “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m an artist. It was an opportunity for me to _______.”

Grammer spent three hours painting an image of a woman on the _______ — a reminder of the chimney, of the beauty of life, or even just of _______ itself.

Grammer posted the image on Instagram. Those who were affected by the fire, _______, could not calm down. Someone _______, “You bring beauty and hope.”

Greatly inspired, Grammer returned eight times. Outside one house, he found a photo of a girl, Eleanor. He painted a picture of her on the wall of her home left __________. It was a stamp that life was here and that life can __________ to be here. The painting has __________ meaning for the homeowner. Eleanor’s father, recalls how she used to play just feet away. Eleanor herself returned once to __________ the painting.

Ironically (讽刺的是) that first painting, on the chimney in Paradise, __________ only a few months — the bulldozer (推土机) is a cruel art critic. However, Grammer couldn’t be more delighted. It means that the __________ of Paradise is rising again.

2 . Just about 50 years ago, needing money to support my family — my novels weren’t best-sellers — I had the idea of taking the longest train trip imaginable and writing a travel book about it. The trip was improvisational (即兴的). I didn’t have a credit card. I had no idea where I’d be staying nor how long this trip would take. And I’d never written a travel book before. I hoped my trip wouldn’t suffer a lot, though it was obviously a leap in the dark.

I set off with one small bag containing clothes, a map of Asia, a travel guidebook and some travelers’ cheques. I was often inconvenienced, sometimes threatened, now and then disturbed for bribes (贿赂), occasionally laid up with food poisoning — all this vivid detail for my narrative (叙述).

What I repeated in the more than four-month trip was the pleasure of the sleeping car. Writing on board the Khyber Mail to Lahore in Pakistan, “The romance associated with the sleeping car comes from the fact that it is extremely private, combining the best features of a cupboard with forward movement. Whatever drama is being shown in this moving bedroom is heightened by the landscape passing the window...” A train is a carrier that allows residence.

I wrote The Great Railway Bazaar on my return in 1974, and it appeared to good reviews and quick sales. That’s the past. Nothing is the same. All travel is time-related. All such trips are unique and unrepeatable. It’s not just that the steam trains of Asia are gone, but much of the peace and order is gone. Who’d risk an Iranian train now or take a bus through Afghanistan?

But I’ve been surprised by some of the more recent developments in travel. I rode on Chinese trains for a year and wrote Riding the Iron Rooster, but now China has much cleaner and swifter trains and modernized destinations. A traveler today could take the same trip I took in 1986-87 and produce a completely different book.

All travel books are dated. That’s their fault that they’re outdated, and it’s their virtue that they preserve something of the past that would otherwise be lost.

4 . Sleeping in a noisy room isn’t only distracting (使人分心的), and it can also harm your health. Although researchers have known for decades that long­term loud noises can harm us, it’s only recently become recognized as a widespread problem.

In a new review of previously published studies, researchers from Germany and Denmark took a look at the ways in which noises, such as an airplane passing by or jackhammer digging in the ground, can affect our hearts. Perhaps the most obvious impact of a loud sound while you are sleeping is that it can wake you up. But, even if you don't remember hearing the noise or you don’t physically get out of bed, it can disrupt you in ways you may not realize.

“Noise is not just causing annoyance, but it actually makes us sick,” said Dr. Thomas Münzel, a professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “Regardless of where the sound is coming from, if it gets louder than 60 decibels (分贝),it can increase the risk of heart disease.”

When our body hears these noises, it reacts with a stress reaction. In this case, these sudden and unexpected noises cause hormones(荷尔蒙) to speed up and eventually damage the heart. Although the chance that a single noise will affect you is unlikely, it’s the continuous exposure (接触) to the sound that can finally affect you.

“But our heart health isn’t the only cause for concern. Long-term noise may also raise the risk of type 2 diabetes (糖尿病), depression, and anxiety disorders,” he warns. In the future, Münzel plans to examine how noises from cars, planes, and other vehicles affect the brain. But despite the amount or the depth of research he conducts, it’ll take the help of politicians to improve the effect of noise on our health.

“Politicians have to take into account, in particular, the new findings,” Münzel said, “As for aircraft noise and airports, it is important to make new laws and set new lower noise limits that protect people living close by the airport instead of the owners of the airport.”

5 . Just being intelligent (聪明的) doesn’t mean someone will be successful. And just because someone is less intelligent doesn’t mean that person will fail. That’s one take-home message from the work of people like Angela Duckworth, who works at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Like many other scientists, Duckworth wondered what makes one person more successful than another. When digging deeper, Duckworth found that the people who performed best shared a quality independent of intelligence. They had what she now calls grit (毅力). Duckworth developed a set of questions to test it. She calls it her “grit scale (量表).”

In one study of people 25 and older, she found that as people age, they become more likely to stick with a project. She also found that git increases with education. People who finished college scored higher on the grit scale than people who quit before graduation. People who went to graduate school after college scored even higher.

She then did another study with college students. Duckworth wanted to see how intelligence and grit influenced performance in school. So she compared scores on college-entrance exams, which measure IQ, to school grades and scores on the grit scale. Students with higher grades tended to have more grit. That’s not surprising. Getting good grades takes both smarts and hard work.

But some people counter that this grit means success. Among those people is Marcus Crede, a professor at Iowa State University in Ames. He recently pooled the results of 88studies on grit. Together, those studies tested nearly 67, 000 people. And grit did not predict success, Crede found.

However, he thinks grit is very similar to someone’s ability to set goals, work toward them and think things through before acting.

“Study habits and skills, test anxiety and class attendance are far more strongly connected to school grades than grit,” Crede says. “We can teach students how to study well. We can help them with their test anxiety,” he adds. “I’m not sure we can do that with grit.”

6 . Tomatoes are common in daily life. Cathie Martin, a British scientist, has been working on developing purple tomatoes for years. Though the color is unusual, now this special kind of tomatoes, which has gained approval from the US government, has very high levels of antioxidants(抗氧化剂).

Antioxidants, also known as AOS, are found naturally in plants like blueberries and red cabbage. Scientists believe AOS may help prevent heart disease and help fight against diseases like diabetes. But tomatoes naturally only have a small amount of AOS in them. Martin wanted to see if she could create tomatoes with lots of AOS by changing the DNA of a tomato plant.

A plant developed from specially created DNA is known as a GMO. After adding two genes(基因) from a plant called snapdragon, Martin soon found her plants were producing small purple tomatoes with lots of AOS. Martin and other scientists further tested the tomatoes on mice that were likely to get cancer. The mice that were fed the purple tomatoes lived about 30% longer than those fed normal tomatoes. Though that’s good news, experiments on mice don’t always predict what effects on humans will be like. We need to see more experiments about it.

GMOs were first allowed in America in the late 1990s. But GMO products weren’t popular with customers. Many people were scared by the idea that the foods weren’t natural or safe. There’re still questions about the effects of GMO crops on the environment. However, scientists deny these claims.

Even so, many people still have concerns about them. Because of these concerns, most GMO products created over the last 20 years have focused on helping farmers rather than attracting customers.

Anyway, on September 7, 2022, the US approved the purple tomatoes, which is the first time it has approved a GMO plant designed to target human health.

10 . Lisa Gautier receives nearly a dozen parcels of human hair every day. With her San-Francisco-based non-profit organization Matter of Trust, Gautier turns donated hair into mats used to soak up oil spills on land, and booms(long tubes)used for spills at sea.

A standard way to clean up oil from land is to use mats made from polypropylene(聚丙烯). But polypropylene is a non-biodegradable plastic, and producing it ultimately means more drilling for oil. Hair, by contrast, is an environmentally friendly resource that can soak up around five times its weight in oil, according to Matter of Trust, and it is abundant.

Oil spills can pollute drinking water, endanger public health, harm plants and wildlife, and damage the economy. According to Gautier, the spills that hit the headlines only make up 5% of global oil pollution.

Megan Murray, an environmental biologist at the University of Technology Sydney, develops sustainable technologies to tackle oil spills. Her research indicates that as well as being biodegradable, human hair is often just as effective as polypropylene, and in some circumstances even better. “The hair mats are very beneficial to land spills,” says Murray but adds that when raw oil is spilled on beach sand, it is very difficult to absorb it using any of the materials she has tested. Another advantage of hair is that it costs less than conventional materials and is “globally available as a recycled material,” she says.

However, Murray cautions that hair mats are not a perfect solution, because they are single-use, and can only be dealt with by burning or by burying into soil which then isn’t suitable for growing food. She is now researching methods to extract the oil from a used hair mat, meaning both can be reused.

As the hair mat designs aren’t under patent, other groups have begun producing their own mats and booms. Gautier is pleased to see the movement growing. “Anyone can make a hair mat,” she says. “It creates green jobs, it cleans water, it reduces waste in landfill, and it’s promoting renewable resources.”