1 . There’s a song in your head. You keep hearing it repeatedly. You can’t make it stop, and it’s driving you crazy! Has this happened to you? Maybe you have suffered from an earworm, which is a memory of a song.

Earworms are common. A study showed that 90 percent of people experience them. Why do we get earworms? According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, music affects us whether we pay attention to it or not. We’re surrounded by music all the time in our everyday lives. Sacks wonders if there is a higher incidence of earworms today because of all this music in our environment.

Research on the primary auditory cortex supports Sack’s ideas. The auditory cortex is the part of the brain that processes sound. It’s a short-term storage system for small amounts of auditory information. Some of this auditory information is forgotten, and some of it goes into long-term memory. However, songs appear to stay in the auditory cortex for a long time.

James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati, thinks that only certain types of songs become earworms. These songs are repetitive, simple, and incongruous — something unexpected such as uneven rhythm. Your brain pays a lot of attention to a song like this, Kellaris says. Because it is repetitive and unusual, it stays longer in the auditory cortex. At that point, Kellaris believes, it becomes an annoying earworm.

Advertisers often use jingles — short songs that are easy to remember to promote sales. Advertisers want jingles to stick in people’s minds to keep them thinking about their products. It seems that advertisers have learned what Kellaris has found out in his research.

Is there any way to get rid of an earworm? Here are some tips Kellaris collected: replace the earworm song with another song, try to distract yourself by doing an intense activity such as exercising, or tell someone about your earworm. What if none of these strategies work? Then perhaps you should just sit back and try to enjoy the music in your head!

According to UNESCO, deep in the sea     1     (lie) a great number of valuable relics—around 3 million boats, many cities and thousands of human relics. Today, these relics of human heritage are suffering serious damage from commercial and industrial exploitation (开发), making     2     (they) protection even more urgent.

    3     (protect) and inherit (传承) our hard-to-notice yet still important underwater cultural heritage, the National Base of Underwater Archaeology for the South China Sea     4     (launch) by China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration in Feb, 2023.

The base is planned to cover     5     area of 74 mu and a total construction area of 31,085 square meters. It is expected to perform various     6     (function), including underwater cultural heritage surveys and protection measures, cultural heritage repair and archaeologist training, according to the administration.

Li Qun, vice-minister of culture and tourism, told Xinhua     7     the South China Sea is the     8     (large) in scale and richest in underwater cultural heritage among China’s waters and is an important area of the Maritime Silk Road.

Building the base is an important step toward strengthening the country’s underwater cultural heritage protection work and is     9     great importance in passing on traditional Chinese culture and     10     (safeguard) China’s sovereignty (主权), security and maritime rights, Li added.

3 . Esports (electronic sports) are organized competitions where players—often referred to as “athletes” — face off against each other in video games. They are not just games in a sense. Actually, they are a sport that can improve the players’ thinking ability, hand-eye coordination, willpower and team spirit.

The esports industry has experienced significant growth in recent years around the world, though it’s still in the nascent stage, which means it has huge growth potential going forward.

In the 1990s, Games like the beat’em up Street Fighter II and the first-person shooter Doom added variety to the increasingly popular competitive gaming scene. In the 2010s, MOBA games like League of Legends and Dota 2 became mainstream in the world of esports. In 2022, esports were announced to be officially included in the Asian Games. There are now over 40 esports games with players competing around the world at huge events.

Esports made their first appearance as a medal event at the Asian Games from Sept 23 to Oct 8, 2023. Seven games were included: FIFA Online 4, PUBG Mobile Asian Games Version, Arena of Valor Asian Games Version, Dota 2, League of Legends, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, Street and Fighter V.

Previously, eight esports games were scheduled at the Hangzhou Asian Games. However, virtual card game Hearthstone (《炉石传说》) was removed in March. This followed the breakdown of negotiations between Hearthstone producer, Blizzard Entertainment, and NetEase, their local partner company in China, over their rights partnership.

4 . Peter walked home from school. Salty tears ran down his cheeks. He didn’t know what to do. Grandma saw him and asked why. Peter replied, “I have to give a(n)________ about a family tradition. I know we have lots of beliefs and customs. Can you ________ me of one?”

Grandma smiled and nodded her head. She went to a closet and ________ to reach the top shelf. Pulling out a small box and ________ the dust, she handed it to Peter. Peter opened the box. He ________ a wooden hoop with string woven and twisted around. It was in the shape of a circle, like a spider web. Peter wiped away his ________ and smiled.

“This is a dream catcher,” said Grandma. “Our people have made these for many years. ________are symbols of unity and strength. Hang it over your bed and it will ________ your bad dreams in the web, and your good dreams will fall through the center. Maybe it will give you ________ to do your presentation.”

“Can I take this one to school?” asked Peter. “No,” said Grandma. “This dream catcher is ________ . It means a lot to me.”

Peter felt ________ because he wanted to share it with his class. “We could make you one,” said Grandma. They worked together and ________ a dream catcher. The next morning he told Grandma his plan — to show his class how to make one. “Great! Let’s ________ after your presentation. We will have a ________ party,” said Grandma.

Peter did as he had planned. Peter didn’t feel ________ or scared at all. He felt proud in his culture and felt pride in himself, too.

5 . LIKE-MINDED MATES

It’s fun to spend time with people who have similar interests to you. Friendships based on mutual passions enable you to indulge (沉溺) in the things you enjoy doing while sharing your creativity and experiences with others. Here are some of the benefits you might discover.

    1    . And having a place where you can explore and develop your creative self is fulfilling and energizing. Groups enable you to gain support, seek advice, and find inspiration. They can be a welcome break and somewhere to relax after a busy day.

·Chance to escape and recharge

Taking part in activities that differ from those in your daily life is a good way to refocus and recharge. Time away from school is uplifting.     2    . Engaging in creative pursuits with others also helps you to be more mindful, meaning you’re more present in the moment and less likely to be thinking about the past or worrying about the future.

·    3    

Talking through projects can help you to discover and develop new ideas.     4    . You might uncover an innovative technique, a way to streamline your work. Creative groups enable you to experiment with things you might not have considered, exposing you to new modes of expression.

·Motivation

Learning and growing with friends allow you to make more of your potential. Sharing a journey can give you a push forward if you become stuck. And the enthusiasm of others is a great motivator.     5    , everyone in the group can support each other, working towards your various goals.

6 . You may have already seen robot waiters in restaurants: waist-high machines that can greet guests, lead them to their tables, deliver food and drinks and carry dirty dishes to the kitchen. But are they the future?

Many think they are the solution to the industry’s labor shortages. Sales of them have been growing rapidly in recent years, with tens of thousands now working in dining rooms. But others say they have a long way to go before they can replace humans. They can’t take orders, and many restaurants have steps and other physical challenges they can’t adapt to.

Still, the robots are increasing. Redwood City, Califomia-based Bear Robotics, introduced its service robot in 2021 and expects to have 10,000 used by the end of this year worldwide. The lack of labor sped up the adoption of robots globally. In the US, the restaurant industry employed 15 million people in 2022, but that was still 400,000 fewer than before the pandemic. In a recent survey, 62% of restaurant operators told the National Restaurant Association they don’t have enough employees to meet customer demand.

Public recognition of robot servers is already high in Asia. The US was slower to adopt robots, but some chains are now testing them. But not all chains have had success with robots. Chili’s introduced a robot server named Rita in 2020 and expanded the test to 61 US restaurants before abruptly stopping it last August. The chain found that Rita moved too slowly and got in the way of human servers. And 58% of guests surveyed said Rita didn’t improve their overall experience.

It’s expected that about 30% of restaurants will continue to have human servers and be considered more luxurious (豪华的), while the rest will rely on robots in the kitchen and in dining rooms. Economics are on the side of robots; the cost of human labor will continue to rise, but technology costs will fall. But that’s not a future everyone wants to see. “Humans don’t go to a full-service restaurant to be served by technology,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage. “They go for the experience of themselves and the people they care about being served by a human.”

9 . “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. ”

— Jack London

Jack London fought his way up out of the factories and waterfront dives (酒馆) of West Oakland to become the highest paid, most popular novelist and short story writer of his day. He wrote passionately about the great questions of life and death, the struggle to survive with honor and honesty, and he put these basic ideas into stories of high adventure with his own life at sea, or in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California. As a result, his writing appealed not to the few.

Along with his books and stories, however, Jack London was widely known for his personal exploits. He was a celebrity who was often in the news. Generally fun-loving and playful, he could also be a soldier, and was always quick to help with the underdog against unfairness of any kind. He was a passionate public speaker, and much admired as a lecturer on socialism and other political topics. He was a man whose brilliant success was due not to special favor of any kind, but to a combination of unusual mental ability and great efforts.

On November 22, 1916, Jack London died at the age of 40 after suffering from a variety of illnesses, including a kidney (肾脏) condition that was extraordinarily painful at times. Nevertheless, right up to the last day of his life he was full of great plans and boundless enthusiasm for the future.

“No writer, unless it were Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London. The untimely death of this most popular American Fictionists deeply shocked a world that expected him to live and work for many years longer.” (Ernest J. Hopkins in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916 ).

Soon, every robotic dog will have its day!

Isn’t it nice to always have a lovely dog follow you around and respond when     1     (ask) to sit down or shake hands? What     2     the dog has some unique skills, such as standing on one leg while resting on a chunk of tofu without destroying it, or continuously making back flips(后空翻)? This would be even better.

In fact, a life-like quadrupedal (四只脚的) robotic dog     3     is developed by Chinese tech company Xiaomi Corp seems like that special one.

    4     (weigh) 8.9 kilogram, about the size of a Doberman, CyberDog 2 is the latest push by Xiaomi to popularize quadrupedal robotics. With a black, shiny, futuristic design, CyberDog 2 can run along at speeds of 3.2 meters per second, analyze its surroundings in real-time, create navigational maps, plot its destination,     5     avoid obstacles (障碍物).

“Coupled with human posture and face     6     (recognize) tracking, CyberDog is capable of following its owner and avoiding obstacles,“ said Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi.

“This is the first time I     7     (see) a robotic dog in reality. It is quite cool!” said Zhang Lu,     8     university student in Wuhan, Hubei province, after witnessing CyberDog 2 during an exhibition earlier this month. “I have seen videos of people walking robotic dogs online. But it is     9     (interesting) in reality,” Zhang said, adding that domestic technology products have changed and developed rapidly.

On being asked     10     the robot dog can help deliver parcels, an employee at Xiaomi said as long as the weight of the package is within the acceptable range of the flat back area of the robotic dog, it can be done.