1 . At six o’clock sharp the curtain rises at Southside Cultural Center, in Reno. Two hundred audience members, including the mayor of Reno, look to the stage. Dozens of actors break out into the first number of The Lion King.

But this is not your typical production. The gifted cast is made up of homeless children living at the Volunteers of America family shelter in Reno. The children have been given a chance to live their dreams onstage, thanks to volunteer acting coach Nasya Mancini. “I see so much of myself in these kids,” says Nasya. “I tell them their current circumstance doesn’t have to be their destiny (命运) . If they are determined, they can do anything they want.”

Determination is something Nasya knows all about. She was born prematurely and was given little chance of survival. But Nasya kept fighting. Her very name means “miracle” in Hebrew. Nasya was small, but quickly proved that her talents were as big as her will to survive. She started dancing at two. By six she’d been spotted by an acting coach, who encouraged her parents to enroll her in drama classes. “There was something about being onstage,” Nasya says. “It made my spirit come alive.” She decided that she was going to be an actor.

However, her enthusiasm didn’t sit well with some of her schoolmates. They teased (嘲) her, “You’re a shrimp. You’re not even pretty.” Nasya came home in tears. Her mother hugged her and told her to ignore it. By high school, Nasya was winning awards in theater competitions. She also provided community service by teaching drama to the children at the shelter. Nasya wanted the kids at the shelter to discover the confidence that acting could give. The best way to do that, she decided, was to put on a big play.

The production was a hit. The kids took several curtain calls. Donations to the shelter rolled in. Nasya reminds the kids of something she knows with every part of her spirit to be true: “Believe in yourself. The world is your stage.”

6 . Each day, I woke up with a mental list of the tasks I had to complete. My routine was ________ : class, soccer practice, and sleep. I adapted well to it. However, my life ________ on the day of the final game.

As I ________ the center of the field, I ________ myself that I would give this game my all as if it were my ________ game.

The whistle sounded, and the ball was kicked in my direction. ________ the ball, I crossed it, just in time for my teammate to meet it and pound it right into the ________ .“Goal!”The game had started out ________. But the game grew intense as the score was tied at 1-1, until I had the ball with one minute ________. I needed to put the ball in the net, and I did just that, making the ________ score 2-1. But it didn’t go exactly as planned. To block my shot, my opponent ________ me in midair. But instead of heading the ball, her body ________ mine, leaving me unconscious in the middle of the field.

I went through a very difficult operation, followed by a long,________ road to recovery. I couldn’t play soccer any more. It did turn out my last game. Yet, looking back on the situation in its entirety, I have no ________. I said I would give it 100 percent. I did just that, and finally, I came out a ________.

7 . Everywhere I look, there are new buildings under construction. The neighborhoods that I knew as a boy, filled with beautiful old buildings, have mostly disappeared, and in their place, modern, high-rise buildings have appeared. There is good reason for this. Residents want all the conveniences of modern living. However, how can our children understand and maintain their cultural identity if we erase so much of the physical evidence of it?

The arguments for preserving historic buildings are not simply about an emotional attachment to the past. There are also good economic arguments in favour of preservation. The renovation (修缮) and preservation of historic districts can become an economic engine, drawing tourists and small businesses to the area. For example, in Dubai, the historic Al Bastikiya district draws thousands of tourists every year from all over the world. It also attracts local residents, eager to learn about their city's past.

Some have argued that historic preservation is too expensive, but many recent projects have demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case. In fact, renovation of an existing structure for adaptive reuse can cost about £40 per square metre less than even the most basic new construction, while preserving the beauty of the original building. And, although it is often claimed that old buildings have a more significant environmental footprint than new construction because they aren’t very energy efficient, architects and environmental experts maintain that the greenest building is the one that is already built. New construction almost always has a more serious environmental impact (影响) because it requires the use of all-new materials that must be transported, often over long distances, instead of recycled materials that are already on site. We recycle so many other things. We can and should recycle buildings, too.

Historic preservation is an option that opens many possibilities; demolition (拆毁), in contrast, is irreversible. Once these treasures are lost, they are lost forever, an important link in our heritage that can never be recovered.

10 . Studies show that females usually have better handwriting than males. University of Warwick researchers note that “Girls are generally better handwriters than boys. Girls also usually write faster than boys”. But why do females have better handwriting than males? There are a number of reasons.

Handwriting differences may be because of cultural label. Researchers asked boys and girls aged 7 and 8 to model after each other’s handwriting. When modeling after writing, boys tried to make theirs “smaller and neater” while all the girls said that they had made their handwriting larger, and half of them said they had made it less tidy. Do females work hard to write neater because there is an expectation that they have neat handwriting? Are females encouraged to write better because there is an expectation?

Handwriting may be influenced by the writer’s female hormones (激素). Babies before they are born receive various amounts of female hormones with males receiving less and females more. One sign of female hormone effect is the relative length of a person’s index finger to ring finger (called the “2D: 4D rate”). This study found that the higher the 2D : 4D rate for right-handed female writers,the neater their handwriting is.

Neural development differences between males and females may be the reason for the differences. During the early school years, when kids are learning to shape letters, the neural fibers that control fine motor skills in boys’ brains usually haven’t matured (成熟) as much as girls’ have. Boys’ brains finally catch up and their handwriting gets better than before, but it’s still usually not as neat as that of the girls. That’s because women usually have more neural connections between the two sides of the brain, which also helps with correctness.