1 . Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty-three, fought for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape way — through the boot(行李箱).

Mr. Johnson’s car had finished up in a ditch(沟渠) at Romney, Kentucky, after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. “Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly,” Mr. Johnson said, “I couldn’t force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in.”

Mr. Johnson, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn(喇叭) and hammering on the roof and boot but failed. Then he began to use his own efforts to escape.

Later he said, “It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew(旋松) the back seat to get into the boot. I hammered hard with a hammer trying to make someone hear, but no help came.”

It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench(扳手) and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. “It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I unlocked the boot, the water and mud poured in.

His hands and arms cut and hurt，Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Trembling in a blanket, he said, “That thirty minutes seemed like hours.” Only the car wheels could be seen, the police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.

2 . After months of expectation and secrecy, the official mascot of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games—a giant panda-inspired cartoon character—made its first public debut with cheers at Beijing’s Shougang Ice Hockey Arena.

The panda is named “Bing Dwen Dwen” in Chinese. Bing means “ice” in Chinese, while Dwen Dwen suggests “health and cleverness”—characteristics also shared by pandas. Pandas are perhaps the most recognized animal species in China, organizers said.

“Pandas combine China’s traditional culture and its modern appearance together with winter sports elements in a fascinating image that shows our great expectations for the Games and shows that we welcome the world,” said Beijing Mayor Chen Jining, who also serves as an executive president on the organizing committee.

“I have already seen the mascot and from what I’ve seen, it’s a wonderful choice,” IOC President Thomas Bach said before introducing the character.” “The mascot really takes in the best elements and characteristics of China and the Chinese people. It will be a great ambassador for the country and the 24th Winter Olympics.”

The ring of light surrounding the mascot’s face is suggestive of ice and snow tracks, as well as the flowing “ribbons” of the National Speed Skating Oval. The oval is one of two new competition sites in downtown Beijing expected to become a landmark of the Games, according to its chief designer Cao Xue.

The introduction of the mascots marks the key point of a journey that began in August 2018, when Beijing organizers started a global design competition for the mascots. A total of 5,816 designs were received from 35 countries, and were reviewed by Chinese and international experts in a comprehensive evaluation and selection process.

The new mascot will serve as spirited symbol of the Games that will take place in the three zones of downtown Beijing, the suburban district of Yanqing and co-host city Zhangjiakou in surrounding Hebei province.

3 . Marco Springmann and his colleagues, at the Oxford Martin School’s Future of Food Programme, built computer models that predicted what would happen if everyone became vegetarian by 2050. The results indicate that if the world went vegan (严格的素食主义者), the greenhouse gas emissions declines would be around 70%.

In the US, for example, an average family of four emits more greenhouse gases because of the meal they eat than from driving two cars---but it is cars, not steaks, that regularly come up in discussions about global warming.

Food, especially livestock (牲畜，家畜) also takes up a lot of room. 68% of agricultural land in the world is used for livestock. When these lands become grasslands and forests, they would capture carbon dioxide and further ease climate change.

However, if the whole world went vegan, there would be negative effects too. First, it is necessary to keep livestock for environmental purposes. “I’m sitting here in Scotland where the Highlands’ environment is very man-made and based largely on grazing by sheep,” says Peter Alexander, a researcher in socio-ecological systems modeling at the University of Edinburgh. “If we took all the sheep away, the environment would look different and there would be a potential negative impact on biodiversity.”

Plus, meat is an important part of history, tradition and cultural identity. Numerous groups around the world give livestock gifts at weddings, celebratory dinners such as Christmas with turkey or roast beef.

And nowadays, moderation in meal-eating’s frequency and portion size is key to solving these conflicts. “Certain changes would encourage us to make healthier and more environmentally friendly dietary decisions,” says Springmann, “like putting a higher price lag on meat and making fresh fruits and vegetables cheaper.”

In fact, clear solutions already exist for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock industry. What is lacking is the will to carry out those changes.

4 . No one ever said science education was easy. Certainly the concepts we teach, like conservation of momentum or quantum mechanics, can be hard to grasp. But what really makes our reaching complicated is that we’re also trying to teach a deeper lesson at the same time to help students understand the nature of science itself.

All too often, young people get the impression that science is about learning certain “laws” and then applying them to different situations. After all, that’s what we make them do on tests, to show that they’ve been doing the work. But that’s not it at all. Science is the process of building these concepts through the collection of experimental evidence.

And while I’m on it, let’s call these concepts what they really are not laws, but models. Science is all about building and testing models. It’s difficult to help students understand that aspect of science when we just give them the models to begin with. Sure, in physics we often include historical or mathematical evidence to support big ideas, but that often isn’t enough.

Of course, we can’t start from scratch. If students had to build their own models from the ground up, it would be like trying to learn programming by inventing computers. As Isaac Newton is supposed to have said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We must take models built by others and go from there.

What I’d like to suggest is that this actually provides a great way into the adventure of science and an opportunity to meet our objectives as educators. If you can create a situation that challenges students’ assumptions and produces conceptual conflict, that’s a great opportunity for learning.

5 . 19-year-old Torri together with three other teenage girls drove through Florida last February. _______ the laughter from the four teenage girls inside her car gave way to _______. As they approached a crossing, another car drove towards them unexpectedly, _______ theirs to come to a stop when it _______ into a tree. _______ Torri was slightly injured and climbed out through the window successfully _______ two of her friends, who’d also _______ to free themselves. She felt relieved.

But _______ Torri could dial the number for help, she realized that her best friend-Simmons wasn’t with them. She looked into the car and found Simmons _______ on the back seat, unconscious (昏迷). “I checked her pulse.” “Nothing.” “I put my head against her chest.” No ________ of life. “That’s when I started CPR.”

If the accident had happened a few weeks ________, she might not have known what to do. But Torri, who wants to pursue a career in ________, had earned her CPR certificate (证书) just the day before. Torri knew she had ________ little time to practice what she’d learned. She started pumping Simmons’s chest with her interlocked fingers and ________ into her friend’s mouth in the hope of filling her lungs with the kiss of life. No response. And then, after the 30^th ________, Simmons began ________ and gasping for air. The CPR had ________! Soon, doctors arrived and ________ Simmons to the hospital, where she received careful ________. Later she was informed how her best friend had saved her life. “I wasn’t ________,” Simmons told CGTN. “She is always helpful and ready to help others by all means.”