A rock is as big as a house. That’s how the guide book described Giant Rock. Dad said it was carried here by a glacier millions of years ago.

I was finally going to see it, on-snowshoes, with my three older cousins, my dad, and my uncle Don. I’d been snowshoeing before, and I liked the adventure of hiking through deep snow alongside wild-animal tracks. At the parking area, after putting on our snowshoes, we studied the map in the information kiosk(亭子). “We start here”, Dad said, “on the red path. Then we turn left onto the purple circle. That’s where Giant Rock is.” “Remember to stick together, guys,” Uncle Don said.

The path ran uphill alongside a stone wall. It was easy to follow because red markers were nailed to the trees and the snow had been packed down by other hikers. At the top of the hill, we turned onto the purple path, which wound back and forth, travelling through the hills and gullies. We settled into a rhythm, with Dad and everyone else in front and me in the back, crunch-crunch-crunching through the snow. My cousins were faster than I was, but I managed to keep up.

Finally, we reached a hill and saw the massive rock sitting alone in the forest. “It really is as big as a house” my cousin Josh said, gazing up. My cousins and I high-fived(举手击掌)each other and jogged down the slope until we stood at the base, breathless. Standing in the rock's giant shadow, I noticed the sun had dipped even lower. “Let’s head back,” Dad said after a few minutes.

Soon we were crunch-crunch-crunching our way home. I was a little behind the group when I noticed a set of animal tracks I didn’t recognize. I followed them off the path for a closer look. There were no claw marks, which meant they didn’t belong to a dog or a fox. Instead, they looked like tiny handprints and footprints. Must be a raccoon(小熊), I thought.

I looked around when I suddenly realized I was totally alone.

Reaching a crossroads, I tried to calm myself down, picturing the map again.

4 . Art has always been a polarizing(分化的)subject.Some people like realism,others like abstract.But do you know why some people value art in the millions,while others see the same piece as little more than a child’s finger painting?

Many consider art to be quite random in terms of our likes and dislikes.But according to new research,there may actually be a scientific reason behind our fondness for certain works.The answer lies in how a person’s brain breaks down the visuals(视觉效果)of a painting combined with their judgment.

To prove their theory,neuroscientist(神经科学家)Kiyohito Iigaya and his team from the California Institute of Technology(Caltech)gathered more than 1,300 volunteers and asked them to rate 825 different paintings from four different art genres(类型).

After analyzing the data,scientists found that the same groups of people tended to prefer similar aspects of the same paintings.These characteristics were then grouped into“low-level”features like color and blending,and“high-level”features like the emotion behind the painting.

From this experiment,Caltech’s system was then able to predict an individual’s specific taste in art and organize different works into one group,according to the paintings’features and volunteers’preferences.

In a second test,researchers repeated the experiment on six volunteers,showing each 1,000 paintings while inside an MRI—a machine that scans a person’s brain activity.The test revealed(揭示)that the different features of a painting are sent to the part of the brain that deals with valuing items,allowing someone to form their overall opinion.

Finally,the team repeated the first test on new volunteers.Again,the algorithm(算法)was able to accurately predict individuals’art preferences.According to Iigaya,this shows that the factors that contribute to whether a person likes an image are universal,not random.

Lesley Fellows,a neurologist at McGill University who studies value judgments,stated,“We know a lot about‘how’the brain carries out actions,but‘why’is far less well understood.”

5 . On September 11, 2001, I was in my fifth grade at Hutchinson Elementary School in New York. During the day, I ____ that something had happened at the Twin Towers. But nobody seemed to really ____ what was going on. It wasn’t until school let out that I realized something might be ____. My dad usually ____ me up, but he wasn’t there. My dad was a firefighter. His ____ was less than a mile from the Twin Towers.

When I got home, my mom told me that the Twin Towers had been attacked, and my dad had gone there to ____. Most of the rest of that day is unclear. I ____only bits and pieces, like my mom calling hospitals all over New York City, ____ to find my dad. Two days later, she told me that he was probably ____.

We didn’t learn exactly what had happened to my father until much later. We ____ that he had sent a radio message at 9:56 am, when he and hundreds of other ____firefighters were in the burning South Tower, trying to ____ as many people as possible. Just three minutes later, the tower ____. The other tower came crashing down about a half hour later.

17 years later, I still ____ my dad every day. He instilled(灌输) in me a ____ for my community, and his ____ encouraged me to volunteer with the 9/11 Legacy Advocates, a group made up of people who ____ family members on 9/11 like me.

When I look back. I don’t think only of the sad ____. I also remember the great acts of so many people, ____ my dad. I’m really ____ to call him my hero.

6 . In a recent series of experiments at the University of California, researchers studied toddlers’ thinking about winners and losers, bullies (欺凌) and victims.

In the first experiment, toddlers (学步儿童) watched a scene in which two puppets (木偶) had conflicting goals: One was crossing a stage from right to left, and the other from left to right. The puppets met in the middle and stopped. Eventually one puppet bowed down and moved aside, letting the other one pass by. Then researchers asked the toddlers which puppet they liked. The result: 20 out of 23 toddlers picked the higher-status puppet — the one that did not bow or move aside. It seems that individuals can gain status for being dominant (占优势的) and toddlers like winners better than losers.

But then researchers had another question: Do toddlers like winners no matter how they win? So, researchers did another experiment very similar to the one described above. But this time, the conflict ended because one puppet knocked the other down and out of the way. Now when the toddlers were asked who they liked, the results were different: Only 4 out of 23 children liked the winner.

These data suggest that children already love a winner by the age of 21-31 months. This does not necessarily mean that the preference is inborn: 21 months is enough time to learn a lot of things. But if a preference for winners is something we learn, we appear to learn it quite early.

Even more interesting, the preference for winners is not absolute. Children in our study did not like a winner who knocked a competitor down. This suggests that already by the age of 21-31 months, children’s liking for winners is balanced with other social concerns, including perhaps a general preference for nice or helpful people over aggressive ones.

In a time when the news is full of stories of public figures who celebrate winning at all costs, these results give us much confidence. Humans understand dominance, but we also expect strong individuals to guide, protect and help others. This feels like good news.

7 . It wasn’t that I was embarrassed my husband was out of work. It’s just that we were ________ people and didn’t share our ________ much with others. So when he lost his job, we just acted like nothing had changed and no one seemed to ________.

It didn’t take long before my friends found out that my husband ________ a lot more. When asked about it, I told my good friend and neighbour Tammy the ________ and I said we were still looking. She then told me that her husband had also been hunting for ________ all over town because his company was closing down. I was ________. We constantly did things together, yet I hadn’t found any sign of their ________.

After knowing what they were ________, I wanted to help them even though we didn’t have much ourselves. So, I became a ________ shopper. I looked for discount offers everywhere, and when I finished my ________, I would offer to buy things for Tammy at the ________ price. It seems like our money goes even further because we are willing to ________.

It goes the other way too. Tammy and her husband have given us enough wood to ________ our house this winter. It has been a huge ________, reducing our gas bill to almost nothing. There are other ________ of helping each other. I teach Tammy how to make bread; she ________ my kids when I go to job interviews... and the ________ goes on.

I don’t have much to give, but I can give of myself. I can have ________, love and hope, and the more I give these away, the more I ________.