1 . The only science fiction that ever really caught my attention when I was growing up, besides Star Trek and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, was the novel Contact by Carl Sagan. When I was 15, I saw the 1997 film version of this. Later, as a 17­-year-­old adapting to my first semester (学期) at university, I read the book. Contact eventually became the gateway for me to try more popular science books.

One thing that interested me was the bitter fights the researchers got into with one another about their different ways of measuring the expansion rate of space­time. On second thoughts, maybe this was a lesson I was supposed to draw from Contact, but, at the time, I didn’t regard such politics as a scientist problem. Instead, what caught my attention was the portrayal of Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, a scientist who searched for alien intelligence. In the film version, Ellie is seen listening to space using a pair of headphones connected to the Very Large Array (VLA)—a real facility in New Mexico.

Astronomers don’t really do this for the purposes of actual research because there is rarely any point. This is the kind of detail that is unimportant for the film of Contact, but how it portrays radio astronomy is one of the inaccuracies I occasionally hear scientists complain about. I was lucky enough to observe the behaviour of some water molecules (分子) in the Orion nebula (猎户座星云) using the VLA for my third­year lab course. We didn’t listen to the data. Instead, we processed it so that we could look at it.

That was probably the only time I ever excelled in the lab, and I was so excited to be a real­life Ellie Arroway. Later, I was forced to think more about the human aspects of my working experience. I witnessed unnecessarily heated arguments between scientists, complete with shouting and chalkboard punching (用拳猛击). But, thankfully, Contact had not only introduced me to the idea of radio astronomy as a possible career path, it had also given me a road map for remaining calm in the confused conflict of astronomical wonder and human politics.

3 . Nisha Blackwell was putting herself through nursing school when she was laid off for the third time. To make matters worse, she couldn’t______ a gift after being invited to attend the birthday party of a close friend’s daughter just a few days later. “That’s______ I looked around and I said, ‘What do I have?’ I had a sewing machine still in a box,” she says.“ And 1 had this bag of clothes.’

Nisha had cloth and a sewing machine, but she didn’t______ know how to sew. So she turned to YouTube, and video by video, taught herself, “I was typing into YouTube: How to______a sewing machine...“ she remembers. I probably didn’t make the machine work______midnight and this was in the hot summer when my house didn’t have air conditioning. I remember just sting there, just sweating to death, but so______to make this thing for this party!”

She ______ making a box of hair bows(蝴蝶结发饰). She went to the party, restless, ______how people would receive the fact that they were handmade.“ It felt like it took forever to get to my gif,“ she says. “ I was so ______ because I kept imagining that these hair bows would just be like pieces of cloth that came out, and I felt like I must have done something wrong. But something ______happened. My friend _______the box out onto the high chair and I remember   all of the parents coming up to me saying, so ________! ‘Where did you get them? How did you do that? Can you make me some?’”

Nisha left the party with six customers and started getting _______ soon. She began training   other women from her______to produce the product.

“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path. I make sure that I am looking back and helping, and make sure that I’m not just doing something that is only ______me.” Nisha says.

4 . While they can’t pick out precise numbers, animals can comprehend that more is, well, more. From birds to bees and wolves to frogs, animals use numbers to hunt, find a mate, return to their home, and more. Researchers believe that this ability, known as numerical competence, plays an important role in how animals make these decisions. Andreas Nieder, a biologist at the University of Tübingen, explores the current literature on how different animals comprehend numbers.

Honeybees, for instance, can remember the number of landmarks they pass when searching for food in order to find their way back home. This ability can also be seen in animals choosing a larger amount of food over a smaller amount or in animals forming hunting groups. Wolves are more likely to hunt successfully if they have the right number of wolves in their pack for their prey (猎物) with prey like elk (驼鹿), only around six to eight wolves are needed, while hunting wild pigs requires a pack of nine to thirteen. Their prey also uses this concept to protect themselves—elk tend to live in small groups, which rarely have encounters with wolves, or gather in large groups to reduce the chance of any individual becoming prey. “They are assessing the number of individuals in their groups for their everyday life situations,” Nieder says.

Furthermore, numerical competence also plays a role in attracting a mate. For example, male frogs sing “advertisement” calls to attract females. The females, listening to their complicated calls, choose the males that sing the most “chucks” in their calls.

Now researchers do have some sense of the rules that govern numerical competence in animals. For example, they count approximately (大概) rather than specifically and two numbers need to be more different for them to tell them apart as those numbers get bigger. However, Nieder argues that more research needs to be done. “I hope I can encourage behavioral ecologists to specifically explore numerical competence in the wild, and, in doing so, also open new research fields,” he says.

5 . George Daniels lives in London. He is a watchmaker. His work continues the tradition of the English watchmakers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Today this tradition is almost dead. Daniels is the only man in the world who designs his own watches makes all the pars himself and then puts them together.

A Daniels watch is the product of his hands alone. One of his watches which is now in an American museum took 3500 hours to complete. He usually makes one watch a year. Each one is inscribed (刻) with “Daniels London” and costs about $10,000. Of course these are not ordinary watches—they are very beautiful and will last three centuries.

George Daniels has always been attracted by clocks and watches. When he was five he used to take his father’s clock apart and put it back together again. At school he used to repair his teachers watches.

He is now internationally famous and many people would like him to make watches for them. But most of them will be disappointed. He chooses his customers very carefully indeed. It must be someone who understands the subject,” he says “not someone who will leave the watch in the drawer and only show it to dinner quests.”

6 . What would life be like without commas (逗号)? It would be quite confusing. Take this simple sentence as an example: Let’s eat Dad! Without a comma, Dad becomes the food. Add comma, and Dad becomes a partner at dinner: Let’s eat, Dad! The comma enables people to have a better understanding of the sentence.

Here’s another example: Tom said Sarah stole the cake. Here, Sarah is the thief. But add a pair of commas, and Tom becomes the thief: Tom, said Sarah, stole the cake.

The examples above clearly show that people cannot do without commas in writing. Yet, the comma came from oral speeches. Long ago, most people could not read. They listened to the news or stories told by the people who gave speeches. The comma began as something to mark the resting place in a sentence. When reading, the speakers knew where to stop and take a breath.

In writing, commas are like shining red lights on the road. They require that you wait a moment before continuing. And don’t add a comma when you feel like it. There are rules that people shall not break. Learn them, and you won’t be eating anyone or making wrong changes.

9 . Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s most famous scientists, believed that to survive, humans will one day have to move into space. “Once we spread out into space and establish independent settlements, our future should be safe, ”he said.

Today, several leading countries in space exploration are all planning to send astronauts-people who travel into space - back to Earth’s closest neighbor: the moon. Some of these countries want to create space stations there within the next 10 years. These stations will prepare humans to visit and later live on Mars or other Earthlike planets.

Robert Zubrin, a rocket scientist, thinks humans should take control of space. He wants to start with Mars. Why? He thinks sending people to Mars will allow us to learn a lot of things-for example, the ability of humans to live in a very different environment. Eventually, we could create new human societies on other planets. In addition, any advances we make in the fields of science, technology, medicine, and health will benefit people here on Earth.

Not everyone thinks sending humans into space is a smart idea. Many say it’s too expensive. Also, most space trips are not short. A one-way trip to Mars, for example, would take at least six months. People traveling this kind of distance could face many health problems In addition, these first people would find life extremely difficult in space. On the moon, for example, the sun’s rays are very dangerous. People would have to stay indoors most of the time

Despite these concerns, sending people into space seems certain. In the future, we might see cities on the moon or even new human cultures on other planets. First stop: the moon