3 . Laughter is so familiar to every one of us. There is an English saying that _________, “He who laughs last laughs the hardest.” High School Musical star Zac Efron is laughing a lot these days.

_________ a young boy, Efron was picked on in school because he was always the smallest in his class and _________ because he had a big space between his teeth. In sixth grade, Efron’s basketball team made it to the league championships. In double overtime(两个加时赛), with three seconds left, he rebounded the ball and passed it-- to the _________ team! They scored and his team lost the game.

But history, as they say, is a thing of the _________. Now at 21, Efron is one of People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People, graces the cover of Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood’s most _________ magazine, and is traveling the world _________ the third High School Musical film. Director Adam Shankman _________ Efron as “ the biggest teen star in America right now.” Simply google “Zac Efron” and you get more than 14 million_________. Yes, it seems Efron has a lot to smile about these days.

Efron was born and __________ in California. He took school __________. According to Efron, “I would get crazy if I got a B and not an A in school.” It was his father who encouraged him to act. He took part in school __________ and acted in a local theater group. He also__________ singing lessons. He graduated from high school in 2006 and was __________ to the University of Southern California to study film. But he put it off--why study movies __________ you can star in them?

Now Efron is also earning more than $3 million for his __________ in High School Musical 3. Not bad for a 21-year-old. But Efron __________ remembers those bullies(欺人者). “You always have to remember that bullies want to bring you down because you have something that they __________.” Efron said. “Also, when you get made fun of, when people point you’re your __________, it’s an opportunity for you to rise above.”

Efron has risen all the way to the top of the movie business. And he can now __________ all the way to the bank.

At noon that day, I drove back to my house after the performance. Just as I entered the living room, I heard a gentle sound coming from the bedroom upstairs—it was the sound of my favorite violin.

“Thief!”

I dashed upstairs. Sure enough, as expected, a boy of about 12 years old was petting my violin. The boy had messy hair and a thin face, his oversized coat seemingly filled with something. At first glance, I found a new pair of shoes missing. It seemed that he was surely a thief.

Then, I saw his eyes full of fear and despair. My anger was immediately replaced by a smile, I asked, “Are you Mr. Ram’s nephew, Michael? I’m his housekeeper. Two days ago, I heard his nephew living in the countryside will come. It must be you. You’re really like him!”

On hearing my words, the boy was first astonished, but then quickly said, “Has my uncle gone out? I think I’d better first go out for a walk and visit him again in a while.”

I nodded and asked the boy who was preparing to put down the violin, “Do you like to play the violin so much?”

“Yes, but I’m so poor that I can’t afford it,” the boy replied.

“Then, I give this violin to you.” The boy looked at me questioningly, but he picked up the violin. Going out to the living room, he suddenly saw on the wall my huge color photo I performed in the Sydney Opera House. He involuntarily trembled for a moment and ran out without looking back.

I was sure that the boy had understood what happened because no one would decorate the living room with the housekeeper’s photo.

A few years later, I was invited to be a judge at a music competition of senior high school students.

After the competition, “Michael” ran to me, holding a violin box.

5 . As scientists probe(探究) the mysteries inside our heads, their discoveries are proving new insights into how we can all sharpen our mental machinery.

In fact, you brain is the fattiest organ in your body, consisting of a minimum of 60 percent fat. Fat carries, absorbs and stores vitamins in your bloodstream.    1    .

Rawan Tarawneh, an assistant professor, points out that although some mental processes decline as we age, not all does.    2    , On the other hand, language functions tend to remain well preserved as we get older, peaking even into our early 70s.

    3    

Comparing the brains of great thinkers, writers, and mathematicians hasn’t yielded conclusive evidence that the size of the brain has a connection to intelligence.

Intelligent people were better at detecting movements of small objects on a screen but worse at movements of large background objects. This may be because in nature, large movements such as the wind in the trees are irrelevant, but the harder-to-see animals is essential.    4    

For example, experiments have shown that people who were born blind use the visual parts of their brains for tasks other than seeing.

6 . “Could your weekend lie-in(睡懒觉) kill you?, asked the Daily Mail. It is said in a study that sleeping more at weekends can increase the risk of heart disease. Since most of us change our sleep schedule depending on whether it’s a work or non-work day, it’s an interesting question. Is the lie in really so dangerous? Researchers say that changing sleep pattern cause social jet lag. Is that even a thing?

Changing our sleeping hours causes the effect of crossing a time zone-it makes us sleepy the day. People who changed their sleep patterns were also more likely to gain weight during the study and more suited to going to bed and waking late because of the change of their biological clock. They were more at risk of these changes than earlier sleepers and risers. The study also shows an association switching sleep patterns and changes in some blood results. It does not show that anyone’s developing heart disease was because they had lie-ins.

Jim Horne, one of the professors of the Sleep Research Center, says the concept of social jet lag is likely to feed our anxiety about sleep, so we should really stop worrying so much and have a limited weekend lie-in. Worry is bad for sleep and we naturally compensate for not getting enough rest in the week by lying-in at weekends, so we shouldn’t stop doing it. However, we should limit the time.

Studies show that if you accumulate a five-hour sleep debt during the week, then you only need one and a half hours of extra sleep on your days off to make up for it. It would be a shame to be scared of lie-in. Studies of sleep and risk factors for heart disease can struggle to tell between poor sleep causing stress and stress disrupting sleep. Sleep is the test for the state of one’s health, and the most important thing that happens when you don’t get enough of it is that you feel sleepy.

7 . Alibaba co-founder and chairman Jack Ma on Monday announced in an open letter that he would step down, with the company CEO Daniel Zhang taking over as the chairman of the board. Zhang, is known as a key architect of Alibaba’s “Singles Day”, the Nov. 11 event that has become the world’s largest online shopping event. In the letter entitled “Happy Teachers’ Day,” Ma said he would retire as the chairman of the board on Sept. 10, 2019. Ma said he would work closely with Zhang to ensure a smooth transition and stay on the Alibaba board of directors until the annual shareholders meeting in two years. After he steps down, he will continue to be part of the “Alibaba Partnership”, which has the ability to nominate the majority of directors on the company’s board. He also wants to return to education and charity, which gives him excitement and blessings.

“There’s only Bill Gates who has done the same. No other tech founder in the world has just resigned like that at the top,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, which publishes an annual influential list of China’s richest people. Hoogewerf added that in China, Ma was a figure like no other, with friends ranging from movie stars to billionaires, though he often outshone them all. “He’s the big one, he’s the one that brings them together.”

The company was founded at a time when the industry was still dominated by state-owned firms and entrepreneurship was seen as a risky career path. Alibaba, previously recognized as an on-line shopping company, also has investments in sports content, microchips and facial recognition technology and has been positioning itself as a serious player in cloud computing. Mr. Ma said in the letter, “The one thing I can promise everyone is this: Alibaba was never about Jack Ma, but Jack Ma will forever belong to Alibaba.”