1 . J. K. Rowling frequently shows there is magic every day. Her Harry Potter series has helped people through times of stress and depression and she is always there to deliver wise words of encouragement.

She is one celebrity who is very active on Twitter. So when a single dad named Matt Burke sent her a message thanking her for the series, she noticed. Her series had helped strengthen his relationship with his 9­year­old daughter Bailey.

He included a link to his article titled Being a Broke Parent. He explained how he hadn’t found a level of financial stability that allowed him to pay bills on time and take his daughter on more activities and events. The family also doesn’t have the Internet or TV, which means there’s no “digital babysitter” and he has to rely on his own creative ways to bond with his daughter. Since he received the series, the main thing that has occupied them these days is reading books together.

Burke admits that he thought he was “too cool” for the books when they first came out and he was in his twenties, but he’s loving reading them now. “We switch off chapter by chapter reading them out loud，“Burke explains.” This not only allows her to get more used to reading aloud in front of someone, but it gets me directly involved in something she loves, and it gives me the chance to be very dramatic when I read my chapters and bring myself into the characters in the book, which has proven to be a ton of fun.”

After hearing Burke’s story, Rowling said how honored she was when Harry Potter was a part of his family’s life and offered Burke more books. Besides, people are also offering to send Burke more books as gifts. For Burke, this experience, far more than gifts, will be what he treasures.

2 . A year back I received a full scholarship to attend the University of San Francisco. All of my hard work had paid off. My mom had spent a lot in my attending a private high school, so I made sure to push myself: I volunteered, joined different clubs, and graduated with honors.

I was so excited to start a new life. I had totally packed two weeks and wanted to go to college at once before it was time to leave.

Soon enough, the big day came, but it wasn’t like what I had thought. The first two weeks were the most difficult days of my entire life. Every night I would cry myself to sleep.

I was so homesick (想家) and I didn’t know how to deal with my broken heart. To distract myself, I threw myself into my studies and I applied for a lot of jobs. In any remaining free time, I started forcing myself to the gym. I wanted to keep every part of my day busy so I wouldn’t think how lonely I felt.

Soon after, I began to limit food, and then I became worse. Finally, I went to see a doctor. When the doctor weighed me, I was crazy about the number of my weight. So I continued to lower my goal, and convinced that controlling this number was the solution to my homesickness. But when I was told that I had no choice but to spend time on my studies. I quickly started recovery in my mind.

How could I do? I told myself that school was what I was best at. I decided to get rid of my homesickness and took exercise actively. My first term of college had passed by at last and I had gotten straight A’s. That’s why I want to share my story—to help other students feel less lonely.

3 . People generally like to pick out the best-looking fruits and vegetables when shopping for produce (农产品), but Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws is attracting customers with badly-shaped and faulty produce at the price of 30% lower than normal-looking one.

A trial run of the ugly food line, named “Naturally Imperfect”, began with only apples and potatoes to choose from. Consumer demand has been so huge that Loblaws is going to introduce more ugly vegetables and fruits like onions and mushrooms.

All the produce that will be sold through Naturally Imperfect would otherwise have been used in juices, sauces, or soups, or have not been harvested at all. The director Dan Branson explained that this program benefited both food producers who would otherwise have to let abnormal produce go to waste, and consumers who could buy fresh produce at low prices. And he was right, given how popular the line has become.

“It really went well beyond our expectation,” Branson said. “I think it really spoke to the fact that Canadians are out there really looking for some options.”

Of course, Canadians know that beauty is more than skin deep, and they also recognize that they can get the same flavor and nutritional benefits in spite of appearances. The positive response to the initial offering of apples and potatoes showed the opportunity to expand the line and offer more options at a greater price to Canadian families.

“If you grow produce in your backyard, there will be a lot of produce that won’t look as pretty as what you will see in a grocery store”, said Branson. “And nature doesn’t grow everything perfectly. I’d like to think if somebody were to take a No Name Naturally Imperfect apple, put it right beside a No.1 apple, close his eyes and eat them, there would be no difference.”

4 . Cloud computing is set to change how people communicate,work and learn.But do you know it may also affect how you are hired for a job in the future?

It was once more common for people to find jobs advertised in the newspaper and then physically send applications to organizations. Now we primarily look online using job sites and apply for those jobs using cloud recruitment (招聘) services.

However, many new technologies, with the help of artificial intelligence(AI),are changing recruitment and the way we communicate with those holding the key to our dream jobs.

AI recruitment technology, such as ENGAGE Talent, is making it easier for recruiters to find potential employees by analyzing networking sites, like LinkedIn, for appropriate candidates. Primarily based on keywords, circumstance changes or current company performance, it can find candidates that haven’t clearly expressed an interest in changing jobs. Helen Poitevin, research director of IT research firm Gartner, stated, “This method of finding a passive candidate is the subject of a lot of investment and innovation today.”

Another innovation designed to help recruiters is AI assistants, similar to Apple’s Siri. CNN reported that graduates in the future might have to be overseen by a virtual assistant before getting a real interview for highly competitive graduate programs.

Companies such as Hire Vue have already developed software that plays prerecorded questions for candidates and analyzes their responses for different factors, including grammar, facial expressions and tones. It can then produce a result that defines the candidate’s qualities and recommends whether they should be considered.

The US graduate Sarah Ali has been through eight Hire Vue interviews. She told CNN, “Once I understood the AI interview process, I started thinking of it as a game and how I could optimize (优化) myself.”

This interview process has yet become the mainstream outside the US, but with the power of cloud computing, how long will it be before this tech is used worldwide?

6 . Wouldn’t it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within ten years or so, we would be able to communicate with one another through small earpieces with built-in microphones. That’s because technological progress is extremely fast. It’s only a matter of time. Such is the belief among certain parents that the technology is imminent and they’re wondering if their kids should learn a second language.

It’s true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating “Noes Bueno dormer mucho” into “It’s not good to sleep too much”. Replacing a word with its equivalent (对等词) in the target language is actually the easy part of a translator’s job. But even this seems to be a difficult job for computers.

It’s so hard for computers because translation doesn’t — or shouldn’t — involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it’s about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, people need to understand a lot of information all at once. Think about all the related clues that help us understand what someone is trying to say: volume, gesture, situations, and even your culture. All are likely to convey as much meaning as the words you use.

Therefore, we should doubt a machine that can’t understand our world like we do. If people from different cultures can upset each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.

7 . Is It Worth Buying Organic Food?

Organic food, grown without artificial chemicals, is increasingly popular nowadays. Consumers have been willing to pay up to twice as much for goods with organic labels (标签). However, if you think paying a little more for organic food gets you a more nutritious (有营养的) and safer product, you might want to save your money. A study led by researchers at Stanford University says that organic products aren’t necessarily more nutritious, and they’re no less likely to suffer from disease-causing bacteria, either.

The latest results, published in the Annuals of Internal Medicine, suggest that buyers may be wasting their money. “We did not find strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious or healthier,” says Dr. Crystal Smith-Spangler from Stanford. “So consumers shouldn’t assume that one type of food has a lower risk or is safer.”

For their new study, Smith-Spangler and her colleagues conducted a review of two categories of research, including 17 studies that compared health outcomes between consumers of organic against traditional food products, and 223 studies that analyzed the nutritional content of the foods, including key vitamins, minerals and fats.

While the researchers found little difference in nutritional content, they did find that organic fruit and vegetables were 20% less likely to have chemicals remaining on the surfaces. Neither organic nor traditional foods showed levels of chemicals high enough to go beyond food safety standards. And both organic and traditional meats, such as chicken and pork, were equally likely to be harmed by bacteria at very low rates. The researchers did find that organic milk and chicken contained higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, a healthy fat also found in fish that can reduce the risk of heart disease. However, these nutritional differences were too small, and the researchers were unwilling to make much of them until further studies confirm the trends.

Organic food is produced with fewer chemicals and more natural-growing practices, but that doesn’t always translate into a more nutritious or healthier product. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that “Whether you buy organic or not, finding the freshest foods available may have the biggest effect on taste.” Fresh food is at least as good as anything marketed as organic.

9 . On July 17, 2017, Olympic diver Greg Louganis arrived in Honolulu for Louganis and Lutu’s first official father-and-son hug. “It was just meant to be,” Louganis said of joining his father in Honolulu for an extended Lutu family reunion. “It’s so wonderful to have him with us,” said Lutu. “And this is more of a beginning,” added Louganis.

But the four-day celebration also marked the conclusion of an emotional lifelong journey for Louganis, who was put up for adoption as a baby and struggled for years with the feeling that his biological parents never loved him. His adoptive parents were always open with him about that. But the adoption organization had lost Louganis’s files in a fire, and unanswered questions led to troubled times for the young athlete. Later, Louganis got to know his biological parents had been young and had no choice in giving him up for adoption. “This helped ease the question of whether I was loved,” he said.

Feeling more “at peace” about his family, Louganis turned his focus to diving. By the time he was 28, he’d become a four-time Olympic gold medallist. Among his biggest fans was Lutu, who for years had quietly followed his son’s life from afar. Then in 1984, Lutu decided to meet him when Louganis was in Honolulu.

Face-to-face with his son for the first time, Lutu was emotional. “Like me, he’s a man of few words. But he told me he’d wanted to raise me,” said Louganis. Despite his skepticism, Louganis continued to meet with Lutu. “He never asked for anything,” said Louganis. “He just wanted to know if I was okay and that I was happy.”

The reunion gave Louganis a lot to look forward to. “I have family there,” he said, almost in disbelief. “It’s an incredible gift that I’ve been given.”

10 . Greco-Roman Festival

Friday, April 28th!

You will be assigned to a group. As a member of the group, you will participate in at least ONE of the following activities.

Sign up with your English teacher, and remember space is limited for each event, so don’t delay.

Mrs Jones has a list of authentic recipes from ancient Greece and Rome. You may make American food but be sure to give it a unique, mythological name. This is a great way to practise your skills in the kitchen. (Please bring your food in a disposable container.)

Be sure your artwork reflects ancient Greek or Roman culture. Artwork may include sculptures, paintings, mosaics, drawings, and models. The museum is a great place to show off your artistic talent.

Rewrite your favourite Greek myth using modern language or change the lyrics of a popular song to tell a Greek or Roman tale. Gather your creative energy and submit your ideas to your English teacher for approval. To try out, you must perform for your teachers. This audition helps the teachers choose the BEST performance groups for the talent show, so be sure your group has rehearsed.

This party may give you inspiration. Learn to tie your toga. Thursday, April 27 after school in the gym.