Over the past few days, a number of forest fires     1    (break) out in Chongqing and its surrounding areas due to the extremely dry and hot weather. Many rescue personnel and volunteers participated in the rescue overnight,    2    moved a lot of people across the country. The mountain fires in several regions in Chongqing have been     3    (eventual) put out on Friday morning. No casualties have been reported.

Chongqing motorcyclists are being praised     4    heroes for volunteering to transport much-needed supplies to the fire and rescue workers     5    (fight) the wildfires caused by prolonged heat and drought across multiple districts in the municipality(自治市).

Facing the tough situation, the city government called for volunteers with related skills and experience     6    (join) the firefighting,     7    a large number of motorcyclists have played an important role and won widespread praise. The team members, with     8    average age of 29, took turns to use five dirt bikes and four scooters to carry materials and equipment to firefighters and to transport people and     9    (necessary).

The example of a foreign teacher who volunteered to help fight the raging wildfires in Chongqing’s Beibei district with other local residents has touched many.

When all the people     10    (unite), peace will reign across the country.

With exotic Silk-Road themed music     1       (perform) by musicians from the China National Traditional Orchestra, a grand art exhibition titled Silk Road: Artists’ Rendezvous kicked off on the afternoon of Aug 15 at the National Art Museum of China.

Attracting about 40 foreign diplomats and     2     (representative) from several international organizations, the exhibit presents over 190 works by artists from 112 countries in the Belt and Road Initiative. The exhibit also includes an interactive, immersive unit     3     visitors may click a mouse or use their fingers on a touch screen     4     (change) digital versions of the artwork.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism     5     (invite) influential artists from Europe, Africa, America, Oceania and Asia for field trips, residency programs and workshops across China over the last decade. Drawing inspiration     6     their China experiences, these artists have created a wide variety of works, including oil paintings, traditional Chinese ink paintings, sculptures and mixed media.

“The Silk Road was important over the centuries. It carried not only silk but also knowledge and cultures,” said Shahbaz Khan, director of UNESCO Beijing, at the opening ceremony.

The Silk Road is     7     invaluable world heritage to be celebrated for reminding the world of the importance of cultural     8     (diverse) and cross-cultural communication, Khan said,     9     (add) “cultural and artistic creations, no matter their specific forms, are all conducive to innovation and sustainable development in a country”.

Khan suggested that the exhibit     10     (bring) to countries in the Belt and Road Initiative.

7 . “One day I went to a Swedish friend’s and while we were playing in his room, his mom yelled that dinner was ready. And check this. He told me to WAIT in his room while they ate!” an Internet user shared on a media platform. Consequently, there was a lot of criticism of the Swedes. Many said they wouldn’t dream of being so mean in their culture. Would a host in Sweden really not invite a guest to join their meal if it’s dinnertime?

It does happen, says Richard Tellstrom, a food historian at Stockholm University. He says this so-called “non-hospitality” was customary when he was a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s. If he was over a friend’s house and it was time for dinner, he would go back to his own house to eat. Or he would stay and wait in another room while his friend finished his meal. Then they’d continue playing.

“Some Swedes think feeding a guest creates a sense of duty.” explains Tellstrom. “And in a society that values equality and independence, people don’t want to put a burden on someone or feel like they owe someone something.” However, it wasn’t a universal rule. Families in the countryside, for example, were more likely to feed guests. People lived farther apart, so it wasn’t as easy for people to go home and eat. The “no dinner for you” policy has slowly faded, says Tellstrom. “Since the 1990s, food has become a new symbol in society. We have open kitchens. People like to dine there and show off their cooking.”

But non-sharing hosts haven’t entirely disappeared, says Mohini Mehta, a food scholar. She admits she had a tough time adjusting to life in Sweden when she moved there in 2020. She was used to cooking dine every day for friends and hosting dinner parties almost weekly in India. She learned that in some cultures, like her own, sharing a meal with someone is a way to break the ice—but this isn’t always the case for Swedes.

8 . It seems as if social media platforms have taken over our lives. According to a study, there were over 3.6 billion social media users in 2021. And that number is only expected to grow.

Although social media platforms have helped to keep friends and family connected, there is also a dark side to social media. To put it simply, it is a money making machine. This is partially because of social media influencers. A social media influencer is someone “who can shape audience’s attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media”. You may be asking yourself, “Why would they want to do this, though?” The answer is simple: to make money. Social media influencers make money by promoting brands among their followers. In fact, influencer marketing is so profitable that the study reported that the industry is expected to reach $15 billion in value in 2022.

Social media influencers are now being called out because some of their actions have started to negatively impact the environment. One man in particular, who goes by Steve to remain anonymous (匿名的), noticed that some online influencers failed to follow rules when they went to national parks or public places. This included things like leaving garbage behind, or using drones (无人机) to take pictures from the sky.

Because of this, Steve made it his mission to stop social media influencers from hurting the environment with their bad behavior in order to get the “perfect shot”. In 2018, he made the account “Public Lands Hate You” to name and shame influencers who failed to follow the rules made to protect the environment. The account now has over 85 thousand followers.

He hoped that it could help some influencers find the light and right their wrongs. Steve said, “If everybody thought just a little bit more about their small actions and the impact those actions have on the environment and the people around them, I think that a lot of our bigger problems would be much more easily solved.”

9 . A new research led by University of Pittsburgh psychologists shows that older adults may be able to prevent declines (衰退) in a certain kind of memory by sticking to regular exercise.

From the study, exercising about three times a week for at least four months is how much people need to obtain the benefits in episodic memory. Episodic memory, which is supported by a part of the brain that’s known to benefit from exercise, is the kind that deals with events that happened to you in the past. It’s also one of the first to decline with age.

Exercise that gets the heart pumping has shown promise in increasing brain health, and experiments in mice show that it improves memory — but studies looking at the same link in humans have come out mixed.

During the research, the team read 1,279 studies carefully, eventually narrowing them down to just 36 that met specific criteria (标准). Then they used specialized software and no small number of Excel spreadsheets to transform the data into a form where the different studies could be directly compared. That work paid off when they found that pooling together those 36 studies was enough to show that for older adults, exercise can indeed benefit their memory.

Past analyses looking at connections between exercise and memory didn’t find one, but the team took several extra steps to give them the best chance of finding a link if one did exist. They limited their search to particular groups and age ranges as well as a specific kind of strict experimental setup. Another key was focusing specifically on episodic memory.

With that much larger pool of participants, the team was able to show a link between exercise and episodic memory. The team also found the greatest effects of exercise in those who hadn’t yet experienced any cognitive (认知的) decline.

10 . Alan Mathison Turing was born in England in 1912. Like many talents who go on to great things, Turing showed his incredible intelligence from a very young age. In fact, by the time he was halfway through primary school, Turing’s teachers had already realized he was a mathematical genius. He could do complex calculating in his head even though he had never been taught about it.

Fortunately, Turing was the opposite of Hawking, and he absolutely loved school. Proof of this is the extreme lengths he would go just to get to class. For example, on one occasion when there was a train strike, Turing even cycled 60 miles to attend. Now that’s devotion!

However, in spite of Turing’s scholarly attitude and his obvious genius, his teachers had their concerns about his future. This is because well-known schools in Britain like the ones Turing attended regarded the Classics, such as Latin and Greek as the most important, not subjects like maths and science. Turing’s proud teachers even wrote letters to his parents asking them to convince the young man to focus more on the Classics. Imagine how different the world might be if the young Turing had listened to his teachers! Thankfully, his love for all things scientific and mathematical meant there was no chance of that.

After finishing secondary school, Turing completed a degree in mathematics at King’s College Cambridge, and then obtained his PhD from Princeton University in the USA. It was during these university years that he invented the Turing Machine, which is considered by many people to be the earliest version of a computer processing unit. It sounds unbelievable that anybody could have invented something which was similar to a computer in 1936. But that just shows how far ahead of his time Alan Turing was, even when he was still a young man.