1 . Scott had always been creative. As he finished university, he _______ to become an inventor. He often designed many new things. His friends thought that he was misguided. “You cannot spend your life as a(n) _______. You will never have a steady income.” Luke, his best friend, was _______ his friend’s future. “Why don’t you reconsider and get a job in the city?” Luke often asked. “This is my _______, ” Scott said to Luke. “I have wanted to be an inventor since I was a small child. I am not going to give up.” 

Over several years, Scott developed many ideas that _______ to become a success. His first invention had many _______ and he was unable to sell it. His second idea received little support from people or companies. Scott’s friend Luke _______ to encourage him to find a(n) _______ career.  

“Scott, you have to think about your _______. I think it is now time to try something else.” “But I cannot stop now. I am so close to coming up with something huge. ________ I left my designs now, all my life would have been wasted,” he replied. Luke nodded, “I ________, my friend. Just know that I am here to support you.” 

Then one day it happened. Scott ________ his design of a new wing for an airplane. He presented it to several companies who all loved his ________. After some competition, a company offered to buy his design.  

“I knew that one day I would________ it!” he said to Luke as they celebrated at his apartment. Luke felt a little guilty for ________ suggesting that Scott should give up. “I don’t know how you kept going all these years,” Luke said. “You certainly deserve every bit of your success.”

3 . Evelyn Glennie was the first lady of solo percussion (独奏打击乐) in Scotland. In an interview, she recalled how she became a percussion soloist in spite of her disability.

“Early on I decided not to allow the________of others to stop me from becoming a musician. I grew up on a farm in northeast Scotland and began________piano lessons when I was eight. The older I got, the more my passion for music grew. But I also began to gradually lose my________. Doctors concluded that the nerve damage was the________and by age twelve, I was completely deaf. But my love for music never________me. 

“My________was to become a percussion soloist, even though there were none at that time. To perform, I________to “hear” music differently from others. I play in my stocking feet and can________the pitch of a note (音调高低) by the vibrations (振动) I feel through my body and through my imagination. My entire sound world exists by making use of almost every________that I have. 

“I was________to be assessed (评价) as a percussion soloist, not as a deaf musician, and I applied to the famous Royal Academy of Music in London. No other deaf student had________this before and some teachers were against my admission. Based on my performance, I was________admitted and went on to graduate with the academy’s highest honors.” 

“After that, I established myself as the first full-time solo percussionist. I wrote and arranged a lot of musical compositions since________had been written specially for solo percussionists.” 

“I have been a soloist for over ten years.________ the doctor thought I was totally deaf, it didn’t mean that my passion couldn’t be realized. I would encourage people not to allow themselves to be________by others. Follow your passion; follow your heart. They will lead you to the place you want to go.”

4 . The Young Scholars Program

The University of Maryland’s Young Scholars Program is a perfect summer camp for academically talented teenagers who want to earn college credits, pursue academic interests or discover college life at the University of Maryland. The program is challenging and rewarding. Students have the opportunity to show that they can be successful in a university environment.

The Activities

During three weeks of exploration, teens preview the university experience, study with students who share similar interests and communicate with the best teachers of the University of Maryland in a dynamic and challenging classroom environment. Students can have trips to nearby Washington, DC and enjoy movie nights and activities at the student union. Workshops and seminars featuring speakers in academic fields further enrich the learning experience.

The Courses

The Young Scholars Program offers college courses that are at the cutting edge of theory, thought and technology. Classes generally meet every day from Monday to Friday. The program is a great introduction to the University of Maryland. Participants can benefit from the University of Maryland’s vast resources, including libraries, computers and instructional labs.

The Rewards

Upon program completion, teens will go home with better preparations for the college experience-both academically and socially. In addition, students earn three college credits that post to the University of Maryland transcript (成绩单).

The Application

The application process includes submission (提交) of the application, high school transcript and a letter of recommendation.

Ages: 14 — 18

Mailing address: The University of Maryland College Park

For more information, call 3014057762.

5 . “I hate New Orleans! I wanna go home!” I _______ to my mother as we moved boxes. _______, going home was not easy because my home was 1,100 miles away.

I was born and _______ in Virginia. Virginia was my home, and I never expected that to _______. Last year, my parents decided to move to my mom’s hometown, New Orleans.

Only three months after my parents made the _______ to move, I found myself moving boxes into our new house. My announcement to my mother that I _______ the new environment was mostly due to the fact that I felt like my entire life had been turned upside down. Far away from almost everyone and everything I had ever known, I was _______. To make matters worse, I was starting high school in two weeks. Starting high school is a scary _______ on its own.

I spent my first few months in New Orleans, _______ wanting to go back to Virginia. But after that, I ________ that I had a choice. I could continue missing my old home, or I could start trying to build a new home right here. I ________ the latter.

As soon as I stopped giving all my ________ to how much I missed Virginia, I was able to begin accepting the love that local people were giving me. I joined some clubs at school, which gave me the chance to make friends. My neighbors taught me how to cook some local food, and I found a wonderful ________ of neighbors. Overall, I seized every possible opportunity to ________ myself and to rebuild my life.

Because of my resilience(适应力) in creating a new home for myself and the ________ that local people have shown to me, home is right here.

6 . A brave ICU nurse, who suffered a breakdown after working through the COVID-19 pandemic, ran the London Marathon for charity on October 3, 2021, hoping to beat the Guinness World Records as the fastest man to run a marathon dressed in a pint of beer costume.

Joan Laplana, a dad of three kids, ______ running after he was diagnosed(诊断) with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had been a nurse for 23 years and was ______ as a lead nurse. His mental health suffered when he lost a patient, who was the same age as him, with daughters the same age as his and had no underlying(潜在的) health conditions. Despite suffering from ______ attacks and anxiety, Joan still wanted to ______ his work in ICU when the second wave ______ the country.

But he went to pieces during it and was diagnosed with PTSD. His mood would often change quickly and he couldn’t slept through the night. He started getting counselling. Since his new fitness plan, Joan said he wasn’t ______ medicine anymore, and for the first time in 18 months he had ______ slept through the night. He said, “In March I joined a running ______ and on days when I can’t motivate myself, my friends from the club will message me. I knew I had to get ______ about my running when I got an email saying I got a ______ for the London Marathon. I am very proud of myself after everything that I have been through. Running has ______ my mental health. It helped with my ______, reduced my panic attacks and improved my mood changes.”

In July 2021, Joan ______ to the top of Snowdon, a mountain in northern Wales, dressed in a pint of beer costume also for ______. Though his first attempt at beating the Guinness World Records at the London Marathon failed last year, Joan will once again try to ______ the record at the 2022 London Marathon.

7 . Electronics woven (编织) into fabrics promise to open up all kinds of interesting possibilities, from clothing that monitors muscle activity and tracks breathing, to garments that can talk to one another. Developing pliable power sources to go with them is an equally important field of research, so scientists at the University of British Columbia have put forward a particularly impressive solution that they say could be the first ever battery that is both stretchable and washable.

To develop a battery with such capabilities, the scientists reimagined the way these devices are put together. Rather than forming a lithium-ion battery packed with hardened materials inside a rigid exterior, the team turned to an alternative chemistry in zinc-manganese (锌锰) dioxide, which is appealing for its low cost and safety. These materials were ground down into tiny pieces and inset in a polymer (聚合物) to form very thin and stretchable layers.

“We went with zinc-manganese because for devices worn next to the skin, it’s a safer chemistry than lithium-ion batteries, which can produce deadly compounds when they break,” says Nguyen.

The resulting battery is flexible and can be stretched to twice its normal length, has a specific capacity of 160 mAh g-1 and keeps 75 percent of its capacity over 500 charge and discharge cycles. Impressively, the team found the battery to withstand 39 wash cycles so far.

The team is now working to improve the power output and lifetime of the battery, and says the creation has already attracted commercial interest, with the cost expected to be similar to a standard rechargeable battery. They imagine it being put to use in watches and patches that measure vital signs, and in smart clothing that does much the same thing.

8 . Rain is vital to life on Earth. However, rain isn’t just made of water anymore — it’s partly made of plastic.

Millions of tiny pieces of plastic, called microplastics, are wandering around Earth’s atmosphere and traveling across entire continents, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 12. Another study, published in the journal Science in June 2020, has revealed that every year more than 1,000 tons of the particles — equivalent to over 120 million plastic bottles — fall in rain.

Microplastics are plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter and come from a number of sources. Plastic bags and bottles released into the environment break down into smaller and smaller bits. Some microplastics are manufactured deliberately to provide abrasion in a host of products, such as toothpaste and cleansers, according to the Daily Mail. Another major source is your washing machine. When you wash synthetic clothing, tiny microfibers get flushed away with the wastewater. Even though the water is treated by a wastewater plant, the microplastics remain, and they are released into the sea, according to American magazine Wired.

Plastic rain may remind people of acid rain, but the former is far more widespread and harder to deal with. The tiny particles, too small to be seen with the naked eye, are collected by the wind from the ground. They are so light that they stay in the air to be blown around the globe. As they climb into the atmosphere, they are thought to act as nuclei around which water vapor condenses to form clouds. Some of the dust falls back to land in dry conditions, while the rest comes down as rain, according to the Daily Mail.

Microplastics have been found everywhere you can imagine. From fish and frogs to mice and mosquitoes, their bodies have been found, on average, to contain 40 pieces of microplastic, reported Daily Mail. As the top of the food chain, humans are exposed to microplastics, too. “ We live on a ball inside a bubble,” microplastic researcher Steve Allen at University of Strathelyde, Scotland, told Wired. “There are no borders, there are no edges. It (plastic rain) is raining on the land and then getting blown back up into the air again, to move somewhere else. There’s no stopping it once it’s out.”