1 . Active listening is a communication skill that involves going beyond simply hearing the words that another person speaks but also seeking to understand the meaning and intention behind them. The word “active” implies that you are taking some type of action when listening to others.

Be fully present

Active listening requires being fully present in the conversation. It enables you to concentrate on what is being said. Being present involves listening with all your senses and giving your full attention to the speaker. To use this active listening technique effectively, put away your cell phone, ignore distractions, and shut down your internal dialogue.     2     And let everything else slip away.

Pay attention to non-verbal cues (非言语暗示)

As much as 65% of a person’s communication is unspoken,     3    . This involves not folding your arms, smiling while listening, leaning in, and nodding at key points. It can also be helpful to pay attention to your facial expressions when active listening so that you don’t convey any type of negative response.

Keep good eye contact

When engaged in active listening, making eye contact is especially important. This tells the other person that you are present and listening to what he or she says.     4     At the same time, you don’t want to use so much eye contact that the conversation feels strange. To keep this from happening, follow the 50/70 rule. This involves maintaining eye contact for 50% to 70% of the time spent listening, holding the contact for four to five seconds before briefly looking away.

Be patient

Patience is an important active listening technique because it allows the other person to speak without interruption. Being patient involves not trying to fill periods of silence with your own thoughts or stories. This also requires listening to understand, not to respond.     5     Also, don’t change the subject too abruptly as this conveys boredom and impatience.

4 . People tend to use trees for papermaking. But maybe electronics (电子) engineers are missing out on something here. “It turns out that two major building blocks of wood have a lot of electrical qualities,” says Magnus Berggren, a professor at Linköping University.

His team has been working to make parts for electronics from the forest. Right now, they’re focusing on two materials of trees. The first material is cellulose, which can make energy. Lignin, the second material, can store that energy, just as a battery does. The team has found when pressed, cellulose can produce electricity.

Some device must then store the electricity until it’s needed. Batteries can do this. But batteries aren’t very green. They have harmful materials. That’s where lignin comes in.

Batteries cause electrons to flow from one place to another, which can produce electricity. In a typical battery, one material must give electrons. The other must accept them. Lignin can do both. A weak acid (酸) encourages lignin to produce electrons. “With a metal wire (金属线) to guide those electrons, you’ll have electricity,” says Berggren.

Berggren’s team use this quality to create its new lignin-based battery. Typical batteries use a metal wire as a path to guide the flow of electrons into or out of the device. But since Berggren wants to make a battery of the forest, he looks for a natural way. Once again, he turns to cellulose.

This natural material can serve as a wire-like path for electrons. To make it work well, Berggren lines them with another chemical known as PEDOT, which isn’t from a tree. But when PEDOT is added to cellulose, they can conduct electricity like a wire. “With a weak acid, now you have a battery,” Berggren says. “And two of its three materials come from the forest.”

Berggren can imagine one day having mobile phone batteries made largely from forest products. Tree-based electronics might also be useful in lighting.

5 . Leah Brown aged 36 fell several hundred feet from Oregon’s highest mountain right before the eyes of a group of volunteer rescue workers who rushed to her aid and helped save her life.

The woman was coming down a popular path (小路) on Mt. Hood, about 70 miles east of Portland, on Saturday morning, according to the local police. Mt. Hood is the highest in Oregon, standing at around11.240 feet.

The fall was seen by members of Portland Mountain Rescue (PMR), a volunteer organization focused on helping people in mountainous areas. The group called 911 and rushed to the woman, providing medical care. They helped keep the woman warm for seven hours as the police worked to get her off the mountain safely. Finally, the woman was evacuated (转移) to a parking lot at 9:30 pm and taken to a hospital.

The climber, Leah Brown, said she didn’t know what caused her fall. “I can only guess it was either an ice tool or a crampon (冰爪) that didn’t land and stick like it should have, so I became detached from the mountain,” Brown said. “The thing I’d like to most stress is my appreciation for the members of PMR who evacuated me and took good care of me the whole time,” Brown added. “They saved my life. ”

In a statement after the rescue, PMR warned of the dangerous winter conditions at the mountain. “The short days and lower temperatures mean that the snow tends to be very hard and icy, and the conditions tend to be much steeper. Climbing the mountain in icy conditions is much more difficult,” the group said.

7 . Earhart was an American aviator.     1    . She had several excellent flights, including becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1928, as well as the first person to fly over both the Atlantic and Pacific. She passed away in 1939.

After seeing wounded soldiers returning from World War I, Earhart volunteered for the Red Cross.     2    . She developed a strong admiration for aviators, spending much of her free time watching the Royal Flying Corps practicing at the airfield nearby.

At a Long Beach air show in 1920, Earhart took a plane ride that changed her life. When she landed, she knew she had to learn to fly. She finally earned enough money to take flying lessons.     3    . She read everything she could find on flying and spent much of her time at the airfield. In the summer of 1921, she set out to make a name for herself in aviation.

In 1925, Earhart was forced to abandon her studies in Columbia University and found employment first as a teacher, then as a social worker.     4    , becoming a member of the American Aeronautical Society’s Boston chapter. She also invested a small amount of money in the Dennison Airport in Massachusetts, and acted as a sales representative for Kinner airplanes in the Boston area.

    5    . In 1929, she entered the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Women’s Air Derby, placing third. In 1931, she set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet. Between 1930 and 1935, Earhart set seven women’s speed and distance aviation records in a variety of aircraft.

Earhart’s life and career have been celebrated for the past several decades on “Amelia Earhart Day,” which is held annually on July 24—her birthday.

8 . As Aristotle said, no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods. But have you ever made friends online? What exactly is an online friend? What’s the difference between an online friendship and an offline one?

A person you know only through the Internet (which includes social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest) or email and will seldom, if ever, meet is considered an online friend. Online friendships can develop in places like forums (论坛), gaming sites, blogs, online groups or even from websites that help you meet friends.

An online friendship begins when two people bond with each other, just like an offline relationship. They may share photos, email each other, or chat on the phone finally. The friendship can become a source of support and provide emotional benefits even though the friends will never meet in real life.

Online friendships can be valuable during times when you lack (缺少) friends or have just moved to a new city or country. But in order for a friendship to be truly real, you need to communicate face to face. That isn’t to say that an online friendship can’t hold a special place in your heart or give you the kind of acceptance and support your desire. What it means is that this type of friendship will be very different. In an online friendship, people can hide their true personality. You’ll never see them lose their temper (脾气) or show you how they act when they’re tired or hungry. They have the choice to always show their best selves, always say the right thing and even avoid upsetting you with subjects they bring up during small talk or a deeper conversation.

An online friendship can feel very real. However, since you can hide behind the computer, it isn’t exactly the same as when you have friends you can meet in person.

9 . The 187-foot-tall Tower of Pisa is famous all over the world mainly because it leans (倾斜). For many years, people believed that the tower’s designer intended it to lean. As it turns out, though, the tower’s lean is an accident caused by poor planning. The Tower of Pisa was constructed (建造) on a riverbed of sand and clay (黏土) that was not strong enough to support a building so tall and heavy.

Construction of the tower began in 1173. Because Pisa experienced several wars, the tower wasn’t completed until 1350. Only a few years after the construction started, people could see that the first three floors of the tower were already leaning. As the next three floors were added, builders purposefully built them with one side higher than the other to try to correct the lean. This resulted in the tower leaning in the opposite direction

Fortunately for the people of Pisa, the long delays (耽搁) during construction gave the structure time to settle and the ground to become compacted (结实的). This mad the foundation (地基) stronger over time, which is the main reason why the tower never fell over. For hundreds of years, the tower was indeed falling. It would lean one more inch about every 20 years. In the end, in 1990, it was closed to the public for fear that a large group of people at the top would weigh enough to make it fall down.

From 1990 to 2001, engineers from around the world helped balance the tower After several unsuccessful attempts at a solution, engineers finally came up with a plan that worked. They slowly removed ground under the high side of the tower. When they had finished, they had returned it to the position it held in about 1838—the tower had been straightened by nearly 16 inches. Except a sudden great disaster, such as a earthquake, engineers believe the tower is safe for another 300 years now.

10 . Giorgio Morandi was one of the greatest artists in the history of Italy. He was the eldest of five children born into a middle-class family in Bologna, Italy. His early love of art upset his father, who wanted his son to work with him in his export business. Morandi attempted the business unsuccessfully in 1906.

After that, Morandi entered the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts in 1907. He continued his study with the support of his mother when his father suddenly passed away in 1908, forcing him to support his mother and younger sisters. During that time, he was introduced to Cubism and Futurism, which influenced his early work.

After he graduated from the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts in 1913, Morandi continued his study by traveling around Italy, especially to the Venice Biennale. Those tours would finally prove important, as Morandi seldom traveled overseas after the 1920s, and much of his future exposure (接触) to painters came from published art works. He was especially interested in the work of Impressionists like Claude Monet, as well as following greats such as Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne. He also traveled within Italy, especially to see galleries and exhibitions, and was far more well-traveled than some historical sources show him to be.

After Morandi finished his traveling, he returned home and lived with his family. For many years, Morandi kept a peaceful daily routine. And he did most of his work in his workshop, a small room in a flat he shared with his mother and sisters.

Life wasn’t easy for him at first, but he quickly established himself as an important modern artist. His skills of color, light and arrangement began to gain notice, shining in the face of current painting in the manner of abstraction (抽象). And he was named “one of the greatest painters living” by Roberto Longhi in 1934.