1 . For many years people in Estonia have been leaving their rubbish in the forests. Rainer Nolvak, a businessman and his friends wanted to clean up all the rubbish in Estonia. The rubbish was not just an environmental problem. It was a problem of people’s attitudes. Rainer Nolvak got together with a team of 20 friends and they began to make a plan about how to clean up the rubbish. Soon, over 600 people joined in the group.

They named the project Let’s Do It! Estonia. The Ministry of the environment gave them some support. Many other companies joined in the group. Famous actors and singers also took part. Even the President of Estonia joined in. They sent information about Let’s Do It! Estonia throughout the country.

Technology experts developed a special computer program. Team members went into the forests to find where the rubbish was. They used their mobile phones to mark every place where they found rubbish and send the information to the computer program. Then, the marked rubbish places appeared on the map. Anyone could go on the Internet and see the map.

The team found a surprising result. There were over 10,000 tons of waste in the forests of Estonia. When people saw how much waste was around their own homes, they were shocked. Thousands of people began to help. The team chose May 3, 2008 as the day to clean up the rubbish. On May 3, more than 50,000 people helped to get rid of the rubbish.They moved over 10,000 tons of rubbish in only one day!

This was amazing for the environment in Estonia. But it was also an important step for Estonian society. Rainer Nolvak gave a speech at a conference in the Balkans. He said, “The most important thing we did was to build a team. It changed every one of us. We had to connect to people. We had to see that the rubbish was our problem. At times we are afraid of sharing. When we are together and there are many of us, we are not afraid.”

3 . Here’s a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly.

Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for long periods --- even if you also exercise regularly --- could be bad for your health. And it doesn’t matter where the sitting takes place. Several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die.

In an article published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences suggested that authorities rethink how they define physical activity to stress the dangers of sitting.

While health officials have recommended minimum amounts of physical activity, they haven’t suggested people try to limit how much time they spend in a seated position.

“After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals,” said Ekblom-Bak. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose (葡萄糖) and fat in the body start to shut down.

Even for people who exercise, spending long periods of time sitting at a desk is still harmful. Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organization, said people who exercise every day --- but still spend a lot of time sitting --- might get more benefit if that exercise was spread across the day, rather than in a single bout (一回).

Still, in a study published in 2015 that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, whether or not they exercised.

“We don’t have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad,” said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. “But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary (久坐的) behavior, the better.”

Experts said more research is needed to figure out just how much sitting is dangerous, and what might be possible to offset those effects.

“People should keep exercising because that has a lot of benefits,” Ekblom-Bak said. “But when they’re in the office, they should try to interrupt sitting as often as possible,” she said.

6 . True happiness lies in rewarding relationships, not material wealth, according to new research. Scientists have said that a close circle of friends and family is most important for happiness, and that owning things such as iPhones, computers, being wealthy and owning a sports car do not provide the same level of satisfaction.

The study was done by psychologists at the Sahlgrenska Academy and Lund University, in Sweden. The experts analyzed articles in Swedish newspapers published in 2016 and recorded which words most often occurred in the same articles as the Swedish word for happiness. In this way, they could know our common happiness.

Co-author Dr Danilo Garcia, a researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy’s Center for Ethics, Law and Mental Health, said, “It’s relationships that are most important, not material things that we possess, and this is in line with other findings in happiness research.”

The study, which contained more than 1.5 million words, showed that terms such as “grandmother” and personal pronouns such as “you”, “me”, “us” and “them” often emerge in the same article as the Swedish word for happiness. Researchers found that words such as “iPhone”, “millions” and “Google” almost never appear with the word “happiness”.

The study is a part of a larger research project on how people describe both positive and negative events in their lives. The researchers believe that the word analysis reflects a common perception among the members of our society as to what should make us happy.

Dr Danilo Garcia said, “Just as the Beatles sang, most people understand that money can’t buy you happiness or love. But even if we can understand the importance of close and warm relationships at a social level, it isn’t certain that everyone is aware that such relationships are actually necessary for our own personal happiness.”

8 . People get angry because they don’t know enough to keep calm. I couldn’t control my emotions and used to feel annoyed (使恼怒) when I was a child. Worse still, I was not good at communicating with my ______. I didn’t have a very good relationship with my family.

One morning, my mother ______ handed me my father’s vest (背心) instead of mine. I was larger in build than my father. So when I ______ the vest, it was tight and I felt uncomfortable. I realized that it was a mistake of hers. I got very ______. The mistake grew out of her carelessness.

I took out my anger on my mother ______ thinking much. I was so upset that she had handed me the ______ vest. I behaved badly and I threw it ______! Later, my mother shared her sad feeling with my father, “See what your son has done.” Instead of punishing me, my father behaved very ______. He asked my mother to ______ the vest clean. He then wore it to work the next day.

After a long time, mother told me about my father’s ______. “How come my child turns out this way?” he said. I immediately had a great sense of shame for my bad behavior. I ______ that he spent the whole day wearing a vest that his son threw away. He must feel terrible. I was ______ with great admiration (钦佩) for my father. His kindness taught me a life lesson.

On that day, I decided never to let anger get the better of me. I learn to ______ myself down and forgive others when I was treated in an unfair or unacceptable way. ______ I found forgiveness is a way to turn anger off. And whenever I have difficulty controlling my strong emotion, I try to ______ my father’s vest.

9 . There was once a boy called Joseph Webb who always loved to show off how many friends he had at school. One day his ________ said to him, “Joseph, I bet (打赌) you a big bag of popcorn that you don’t have as many friends as you think. I’m sure many of them are nothing more than companions.”

Joseph ________ the bet at once. However, he wasn’t sure how to test whether his schoolmates were real friends or not, so he asked his grandfather. The old man answered, “Wait a minute.” Then he left and ________ soon as if carrying something in his hands, but Joseph could see nothing there.

“Take it. It’s a very ________ chair because it’s invisible (看不见). It’s rather ________ to sit on, but if you take it to school and ________ to sit on it, you’ll activate (激活) its ________ and it’ll be able to tell who your real friends are.”

Joseph, brave and determined, set off for ________ with the strange and invisible chair.   At break time he asked everyone to form a ________, and he put himself in the middle, with his chair. Having difficulty seeing it, Joseph tried to sit on it but he ________ the seat and fell straight onto his backside. Everyone around him had a pretty good laugh.

“Wait! Let me try again, ”Joseph said. But again, he missed the seat,________ more surprised looks and a few catcalls. Joseph didn’t ________ and kept trying to sit on the magic chair. But he kept falling to the ground...until, suddenly he tried again but didn’t ________. Looking around, Joseph saw three of his best friends holding him up.________, many others he had thought of as friends had done nothing but make fun of him. And there, the show came to an end. Joseph understood that true friends were those who care for him, and not just the ________ that happened to be passing by. And someone who took joy in his misfortunes was even less of a friend.