1 . Feeling achy and feverish? Your misery has plenty of company. By the end of December, the tally (计数器) of flu-like illnesses in the state exceeded the peaks in the two previous seasons, when the biggest number of cases occurred in February and March. This time, the flu virus seems to be hitting even harder.

Flu is unique among human diseases. It circulates constantly in cool and dry areas. Because it spreads from person to person and can be picked up easily, nearly everyone is exposed. While it’s unclear whether the annual flu epidemic (流行病) will worsen this year, or just arrived earlier, fears have been increased by the severity of flu in Australia during its most recent season and the fact that the vaccine may protect against the predominant (盛行的) kind of the flu only 30 percent of the time.

Despite the worries, doctors and public health officials say there is no evidence that people are getting sicker than usual. Flu cases in Massachusetts started rising around Thanksgiving and increased steadily, with an especially steep climb in the last week of the year. “This is a bad flu season but not a horrible one,” said Dr. Andrew G. Villanueva, a lung specialist and chief quality officer at the Lahey Hospital & Medieal Centre in Burlington.

The flu season, while clearly in full swing, doesn’t “feel different” from previous years, Villanueva said. “We’re not seeing a lot of people being hospitalized because of flu,” he said. “Most people with the flu recover on their own without medical care.”

3 . If we want to find out what kind of technology people used in the past, we normally have to rely on archaeologists to find ruined buildings and parts of tools or instruments or machines. Archaeologists then try to reconstruct, sometimes with the help of computer technology, what these ancient buildings and objects must have looked like, and how they might have been made. Sometimes historians are lucky and find an ancient document with a written description of these ancient buildings and objects.

We can understand, then, why Chinese historians were so excited when they found cave paintings which show ancient science. They found these paintings in the world-renowned Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang City, in Northwest China's Gansu Province. There are 500 man-made caves and they have survived for at least 1,600 years. Almost all of these caves have paintings on their ceilings or walls and they date from the 4th to 14th centuries. Wang Jinyu is an expert on these cave paintings (also called frescoes) and he says: “We discovered frescoes containing scientific and technological content in almost all of the caves which have frescoes.” What is remarkable about these cave paintings according to the Xinhua News Agency is that they provide evidence of "scientific and technological inventions by ancient Chinese in maths, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, agronomy, architecture, textiles, traffic and transportation, arms and military equipment and medical sciences".

Among the discoveries experts have made are cave paintings showing ancient techniques of pottery making and wine production and paintings showing ancient weaving machines and then toothbrushes! The paintings also give some evidence of the lifestyle at the time with, for example, pictures of people boiling milk over 1,000 years ago. Experts believe that there is more evidence to be found, but even now the caves are a wonderful natural museum. If the walls and ceilings of the caves were all put together they would form a tapestry 20 kilometers long and 2 meters high!

4 . These days, teenagers often have their noses buried in a cellphone or other electronic devices. They are often so _________ with what’s happening on social media that they often _________ what’s going on around them. But you _________ can’t say that about this 17-year-old. Seeing _________ the teen helped an elderly woman who was _________ at the Dollar General just restored my _________ in our youth!

17-year-old Senquavlous Driver joined his _________, Connie, for a trip to the Dollar General. They’d put down their shopping and were starting to _________ when Senquavious noticed a woman in her eighties struggling to get out of her car. She _________ but was having trouble walking. Senquavious wasted no time coming to the __________!

The teen jumped out of his aunt’s car without __________. He helped the elderly woman to the sidewalk and __________ with her into the store. She was there to get soda, but could __________ walk. The woman explained that she’d recently __________, hurting her back and face. So, Senquavious stayed with her the whole time, helping her get her shopping done, and then saw her back to her __________.

His aunt watched on, __________ by her nephew’s compassion (同情). She pulled out her cellphone and took some photos. “I was in __________ taking pictures because he didn’t hesitate to help her, and that made me happy,” she said. “I’m so __________ of him.”

Connie proudly __________ the photos of her nephew’s act of __________ on Facebook, saying, “I hope he continues to do great things in his life.”