1 . The caller said she was in trouble and that he could help. Mom________it and lost thousands of dollars. It took us months to recover her money and her________.

One April morning, my mother’s phone rang. The man that greeted her sounded________“Someone has____to your bank accounts and can take all your money.” The warm voice was exactly what she badly________during her isolation from the community due to COVID-19. The man said he needed information to ensure the money was safe and she tried to follow his________though her brain injury made it rather hard.

He explained slowly what to do and hours later, she said she had to relieve herself. “OK, but Stay on the line_________we will lose our progress.” Then she________the phone on the shelf in the bathroom. Suddenly the phone buzzed with a text-it was my father, checking in. She typed back there was a problem, but she was ________it. Then she________out her worn, printed-out packet of passwords from a pile of books and entered them.

My Mom thoughts he had labored for hours protecting her family. ________, the scammer (诈骗犯) had taken away her personal information and money. After learning the truth, my mother sought to________the conversations with the scammer but just said, “I can’t remember. I don’t know what to do. This was so stupid.”

I tried different means and________got the money back. We didn’t blame her as the internal shame my mom felt could turn into something more________depression and even suicide.

The other day my dad mentioned, “You know, another scammer called your mama. She did the right thing, though. She hung upon him and called me.” My mom was smiling at me and I knew she was________.

2 . Antibiotics, which can destroy or prevent the growth of bacteria and cure infections, are vital to modern medicine. Their ability to kill bacteria without harming the patient has saved billions of lives and made surgical procedures much safer. But after decades of overuse, their powers are fading. Some bacteria have evolved resistance, creating a growing army of superbugs, against which there is little effective treatment. Antimicrobial (抗菌的) resistance, expected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050 up from around 1 million in 2019, has been seen as a crisis by many.

It would be unwise to rely on new antibiotics to solve the problem. The rate at which resistance emerges is increasing. Some new drugs last only two years before bacteria develop resistance. When new antibiotics do arrive, doctors often store them, using them only reluctantly and for short periods when faced with the most persistent infections. That limits sales, making new antibiotics an unappealing idea for most drug firms.

Governments have been trying to fix the problem by channeling cash into research in drug firms. That has produced only limited improvements. But there is a phenomenon worth a look. Microbiologists have known for decades that disease-causing bacteria can suffer from illnesses of their own. They are supersensitive to attacks by phages, specialized viruses that infect bacteria and often kill them. Phages are considered a promising alternative to antibiotics.

Using one disease-causing virus to fight bacteria has several advantages. Like antibiotics, phages only tend to choose particular targets, leaving human cells alone as they infect and destroy bacterial ones. Unlike antibiotics, phages can evolve just as readily as bacteria can, meaning that even if bacteria do develop resistance, phages may be able to evolve around them in turn.

That, at least, is the theory. The trouble with phages is that comparatively little is known about them. After the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, they were largely ignored in the West. Given the severity of the antibiotic-resistance problem, it would be a good idea to find out more about them.

The first step is to run more clinical trials. Interest from Western firms is growing. But it is being held back by the fact that phages are an even less appealing investment than antibiotics. Since they are natural living things, there may be trouble patenting them, making it hard to recover any investment.

Governments can help fun d basic research into phage treatment and clarify the law around exactly what is and is not patentable. In time they can set up phage banks so as to make production cheaper. And they can spread awareness of the risks of overusing antibiotics, and the potential benefits of phages.

4 . A national park is an area set aside by a government for the preservation of the natural environment. The national parks in the United States and Canada center on the protection of both land and wildlife.     1     And those in Africa primarily protect animals.

It is widely thought that the idea of a park or nature reserve under state ownership started in the United States in 1870.     2     Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks were established in the United States in 1890. And the U. S. National Park Service (NPS)was created in 1916 to manage the parks.     3     In addition to national parks, the system included national preserves, seashores, historic parks and sites and so on.

Partly following the American example, movements supporting national parks sprang up in many other countries.     4     . And Canada set up its first three national parks in the mid-1880s. The establishment of modern national parks and nature reserves gained momentum (动力)only after World War I or, in some cases, after World War II in Europe. Great Britain established the administrative machinery for both national parks and nature reserves in 1949.     5    

But interest in parks came later in Asia and Latin America than it did in the Anglo-American countries and Europe.

6 . Booksellers have run their trade along the banks of the River Seine for about 450 years, their time-beaten green boxes a Paris tradition as treasured as freshly baked baguettes (法棍面包).

But this piece of French history is now at the center of a storm after the city’s police ordered that the booksellers and their stalls (排位) be relocated for “safety reasons” to make way for the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games in 2024.

One plan was for booksellers’ boxes to remain in place but they must be examined by the police first and sealed off (封锁) during the Olympic event, which would attract millions of visitors to the city—including many who would potentially visit their stalls. Another plan, considered even worse by booksellers, was to move the boxes elsewhere. As booksellers pit on, many bores have been is place for 30 or 40 years. Most are mused and all their parts are not strong enough.

Although the city’s government has offered to relocate the bookstalls and cover the cost of the move as well as repairing damaged stalls, booksellers say the lack of consultation over a decision affecting a Paris landmark has left them fearful about the future.

Plus, there’s concern about what will happen when the Olympics are over. “Are they even going to offer us the same spots again after the games?” asked a bookseller. “I’m afraid that we get our boxes back either in a year, or maybe never, or with someone else’s things in them,” he said.

Booksellers worried that not only would moving the boxes be much more expensive for the capital, but a relocated book market wouldn’t work. “The stalls only make sense when they are on the banks of the Seine,” they said. The attraction and culture of the boxes is their age-worn character, their poetic shades of green.

7 . Entertaining Fall Festivals, Events and Activities

Duluth Fall Festival in Duluth, Georgia: Sept. 30—Oct. 2

The 40th yearly end-of-summer celebration takes place in downtown Duluth on the last weekend in September. This free event is run by a team of 300-plus volunteers. Attendees can wander around more than 180 vendors (摊贩) selling arts and crafts or catch a show at either of the two stages with 20-plus scheduled performances throughout the weekend. Kids can experience rides and games just for them, and anyone can enjoy the on-site carnival (嘉年华).

Fall for Greenville in Greenville, South Carolina: Oct. 12—15

Dozens of food and drink vendors set up for this yearly fall festival. Entry and entertainment are free, but attendees can buy Taste Tickets to try dishes prepared by local restaurants and exchange them for drinks, carnival rides and slides in the Kids’ Area. Dozens of free performances are given by local and national acts on stages throughout the weekend.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico: Oct. 7—15

Well-known as the largest hot air balloon festival in the world, this annual autumn attraction has been around for more than half a century. Attendees can enjoy activities for which they will have to pay a fee. A full schedule of events keep attendees busy throughout each day with a series of themed balloon competitions. Additional activities include free live music performances, firework shows, and shopping and dining at vendors.

West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta in Tualatin, Oregon: Oct. 21—22

Tualatin draws people each October for a free festival with unique fall-themed activities. This year the event kicks off on Saturday with a competition of a giant vegetable weigh-off. The next day starts with a 5K run to raise money for scholarships for local students. Attendees then gather on the banks of Lake Tualatin to watch the festival’s main performance: the Giant Pumpkin Competition.

8 . Tonal languages use pitch (音调) to distinguish words that otherwise might sound the same. In Mandarin, for instance, mă means horse whereas mã means mother. Nontonal languages like Spanish sometimes include pitch changes to suggest emotion, for example, but not to change a word’s meaning.

As a Mandarin speaker and musician, Jingxuan Liu wondered about the crossover (融合) between language and music. While studying at Duke University, Liu helped analyze the musical abilities of nearly half a million people from 203 countries. Her colleagues had launched an online game in which participants completed several musical tasks, including identifying matching melodies at different pitches and finding beat tracks that fit songs’ rhythms.

On average, native speakers of the 19 represented tonal languages were better at the melody task compared with speakers of 29 nontonal languages. And the effect wasn’t small a tonal first language strengthened melodic understanding by about half the amount that music lessons did, which was also surveyed. But tonal languages speakers tended to be worse at the rhythm task.

Humans must be choosy about what they pay attention to. Pitch patterns are quite important in tonal languages, which might explain the balancing act in music. “You’ve got a finite resource of attention, and you’ve got to divide up that somehow,” says study coauthor Courtney Hilton, a scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Prior research on language and music often compared just two tongues, usually English and Mandarin. But other cultural influences, such as Eastern and Western music styles, could have affected results. By examining a wide range of people, the new study included languages never estimated in this way and reached more generalizable conclusion.

“Our result here is showing that the language someone speaks which is an important part of culture — also shapes cognition,” Hilton says.

9 . Four Not-So-Scary Books for Halloween

These seasonal picks are fun to read and aren’t meant to be frightening.

Halloween Ball

By Perdita Cargill and Honor Cargill, illustrated by Katie Saunders

(Tiger Tales)

In this new Diary of an Accidental Witch series, Bea is on the planning committee for her school’s Halloween Ball. She’s excited and a little scared too. Bea wants to come up with good ideas, but she’s nervous her dad will find out about her magic powers.

Ages 9 and under

Lumber-Jackula

By Mat Heagerty, illustrated by Sam Owen

(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Jack’s mom is a lumberjack, and his dad is a vampire. But Jack doesn’t want to follow in their footsteps.(He loves to dance more than anything and will have to get up a lot of courage to follow his dreams. The art in this graphic novel has many fun details.

Ages 8-12

The Pug Who Wanted to Be a Pumpkin

By Bella Swift

(Aladdin)

Peggy, a pug, is worried that going trick-or-treating with Chloe, the little girl in her family, will be scary. After all, Peggy is afraid of monsters, ghosts, and most certainly the dark. Will she be brave enough to put on her pumpkin costume and be by Chloe’s side on Halloween?

Ages 7-10

The Pumpkin War

By Cathleen Young

(Wendy Lamb Books)

In Madeline Island, Wisconsin, it’s a tradition to grow pumpkins that can be hollowed out and used as a type of paddle boat. During last year’s boat race, Sam’s pumpkin ran into Billie’s pumpkin and broke it. Billie hasn’t forgiven Sam for what happened. Will they become friends again before this year’s race?

Ages 8-12