3 . Elena Yi dreamed of pursuing piano performance in college, never minding that her fingers could barely reach the length of an octave (八度音阶). Unable to fully play many works by Romantic-era composers including Beethoven and Brahms, she tried anyway— and in her determination to spend hours practicing a Chopin concerto, wound up injuring herself.

The efforts of Professor Carol Leone   from the   Southern Methodist University (SMU) are changing all that: twenty years ago, the school became the first major university in the U.S. to introduce smaller keyboards into its music program, leveling the playing field for Yi and other piano majors.

Yi, 21, tried one of the smaller keyboards, “I remember being really excited, because my hands could actually reach and play all the right notes,” she said.

For decades, few questioned the size of the traditional piano. For those with small hand spans (掌距), it’s difficult to properly play many works of Beethoven and Brahms. Those who attempt to play them either get used to skipping notes or risk injury with repeated play. Leone is familiar with such challenges. Born into a family of musicians, she favored classical music and pursued piano despite her small hand span, and earned a degree as a doctor in musical arts.

The idea of smaller keyboards first met resistance from some traditionalists. Leone also said that when she raised the issue with one Viennese professor, he told her there were already too many pianists anyway.

Though such resistance is fading, there are some very traditional people who think of piano as a competitive thing. Leone said, “This is art, not sport. It’s about making as much beautiful art as possible, and we should give everybody the opportunity to do that.”

4 . Litterati is an app that people can use to upload information about litter they collect outside, such as its appearance, material, location, and brand. Shared online, this information contributes to building a global database of “litter maps”, which can influence policy and packaging design.

“Society’s failure to solve the litter problem is not from a lack of trying. There have been public service announcements, and coastal cleanups. But I believe two components are missing from the discussion — community and data,” said Jeff Kirschner, the developer of Litterati app.

Uploading pictures to an app shows users that they are not the only ones picking up litter from public places and that others are invested in cleaning the planet, too. And the data accumulates rapidly, telling a story that helps people understand who picked up what, where, and when. In this way, people are encouraged to do more.

In San Francisco, the Litterati app was able to identify and map more than 5,000 pieces of litter in order to determine how much was caused by cigarettes specifically. Using this information, the city successfully challenged a lawsuit by tobacco companies and doubled an existing cigarette sales tax, bringing in US $4 million annual revenue (税收).

By joining forces with others using the same platform, individuals are able to take their anti-litter activism to another level. The power of combined data leads to more Extended Producer Responsibility, which is precisely what we want and advocate here — producers are forced to be responsible for dealing with their own products once consumers no longer find them useful and areincentivizedto create more environmentally friendly packaging or better policies as a result of that new responsibility.

Litterati takes a refreshingly non-judgmental approach. It shows a positive we-can-do-it attitude. Just as Jeff Kirschner said, “Our goal isn’t to shame. It’s to provide transparency to the problem. We provide access to data and share insights with cities, citizens and businesses, guiding us all to identify the root cause of the problem, and make informed decisions of how to clean the planet.”

5 . When I was eight years old, Mother told me to put my coat on because we were going to go someplace _______. Usually, that meant we were going to see someone important or _______ I would at least get a new toy. I asked which one it would be that day, and she told me that I would be getting something _______ than a toy. She said I would get “access (通向) to a world of toys.”

I had no idea _______ she was being so mysterious (神秘的) that day. _______, I had no real idea what she meant. “Access to a world of toys?” Did that mean we were buying a toy store?

But we did not _______ at any toy store. Nor did we finally see anyone we knew. _______, Mother _______ her car into a parking lot in front of a building that looked like _______ out of the past. It didn’t have a modern look at all. And as we exited the car, I ________ had no idea what this place was.

We took stone steps up to the entrance. Only then did I figure out what this place was, because there was a sign that ________ “Marcy Public Library.” We pushed the door open, and Mother led me to the reception desk. “I’d like to get ________ a library card,” she told the man ________ the desk. He asked her to fill out a form and smiled at me. “What kind of books do you like?” he asked. I was too shy to ________ then. I simply smiled back and shrugged my shoulders. “Well, you’ll figure it out ________.” He said.

I do not remember what I checked out that first day, but I know that in the years that ________ I read everything I could find ________ at that old library. I read through all the Nancy Drew books before advancing to Judy Blume, then the ________: Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Shakespeare. Then I read books on history, books of poetry, and books about art. The library opened up a world that I ________ knew existed.

So Mother was ________ . Getting a library card was like getting access to a world of toys.

6 . Bangladesh's floating gardens, built to grow food during flood seasons, could offer a continuous solution for parts of the world which are likely to suffer from flooding because of climate change, a new study has found.

Bangladesh's floating gardens began hundreds of years ago. The gardens are made from native plants that float in the rivers and operate almost like rafts (筏), rising and filling with the waters. Historically, they were used to continue growing food during rainy seasons when rivers were filled with water.

The farmers layer the plants about three feet deep, creating a version of raised-bed gardens that float in the water. Then, they plant vegetables inside those rafts. As the raft-plants rot away, they release nutrients, which help feed the vegetable plants.

But as climate change affected the volume of water in those rivers, the researchers wanted to understand whether Bangladesh's floating gardens could be a continuous farming practice. They interviewed farming families and found strong evidence that floating gardens provide stability, both in the amount of food available to feed rural populations and in a farming family's income.

They found that farmers typically use hybrid (杂交) seeds, which must be repurchased each year, to grow a diverse range of vegetables in the floating gardens. The gardens are also sensitive to pests, so farmers end up spending some money on both pesticides and fertilizers. But even with those expenses, they found, benefits outweighed costs. One farmer told the research team that he earns up to four times as much money from the gardens as from traditional rice fields.

However, before gaining profits, farmers often take out high-interest loans (贷款) to cover the investment costs of filling the beds and stocking them with plants. Luckily; there are also lower-interest loans from responsible government or non-governmental organizations, which could ease that burden.

7 . A simple gesture can be formed into a child’s memory so quickly that it will cause the child to give a false answer to a question accompanied by that gesture. A new finding suggests that parents, social workers, psychologists and lawyers should be careful with their hands as well as their words.

While memories of both adults and children are easy to react to suggestion, those of children are known to be particularly influenced, said lead researcher Sara Broaders of Northwestern University. Kids are used to looking to adults to tell events for them and can be misled even if not intentionally.

Previous research, for example, has shown that detail-loaded questions often cause false answers; when asked, say “Did you drink juice at the picnic?” the child is likely to say “yes” even if no juice had been available. It is not that the child is consciously lying, but rather the detail is quickly formed into his or her memory.

To avoid this problem, social workers have long been advised to ask children only open-ended questions, such as “What did you have at the picnic?” But an open-ended question paired with a gesture, briefly meaning a juice box, is treated like a detailed question. That is，children become likely to answer falsely.

And it isn’t just a few kids: 77% of children gave at least one piece of false information when a detail was suggested by an ordinary gesture. Gestures may also become more popular when talking with non-fluent language users, such as little kids, Broaders said as hand movements can impart meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. “It certainly seems reasonable that adults would gesture more with children.’’

In general, Broaders advises parents and other adults to “try to be aware of your hands when questioning a child about an event. Otherwise, you might be getting answers that don’t reflect what actually happened.’’

8 . When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we had a milkman delivering milk to our doorstep. His name was Mr. Basille. He wore a white cap and drove a white truck. As a 5-year-old boy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the coin changer fixed to his belt. He noticed this one day during a delivery and gave me a quarter out of his coin changer.

Of course, he delivered more than milk. There was cheese, eggs and so on. If we needed to change our order, my mother would pen a note—“Please add a bottle of buttermilk next delivery”—and place it in the box along with the empty bottles. And then, the buttermilk would magically (魔术般) appear.

All of this was about more than convenience. There existed a close relationship between families and their milkmen. Mr. Basille even had a key to our house, for those times when it was so cold outside that we put the box indoors, so that the milk wouldn’t freeze. And I remember Mr. Basille from time to time taking a break at our kitchen table, having a cup of tea and telling stories about his delivery.

There is sadly no home milk delivery today. Big companies allowed the production of cheaper milk, thus making it difficult for milkmen to compete. Besides, milk is for sale everywhere, and it may just not have been practical to have a delivery service.

Recently, an old milk box in the countryside I saw brought back my childhood memories, I took it home and planted it on the back porch (门廊). Every so often my son’s friends will ask what it is. So I start telling stories of my boyhood, and of the milkman who brought us friendship along with his milk.

9 . At the foot of the Tianmu Mountain in Zhejiang，a homestay (民宿)is attracting travelers from far and wide, which has won architectural (建筑学的) medal at the 2021 German iF Design Awards.

The owners of the homestay are a couple in their late 30s who decided to return to their hometown three years ago. Li Xiumei used to be in charge of a division at a company in Hangzhou, and her husband was a sales director. It was an ordinary situation where Li’s husband was on business trips a lot and Li worked overtime on weekends. City life sometimes is not easy.

In 2018, they quit jobs and went back to Dongtianmu village, which lies in a forest of bamboo. The first time they drove into the village was one late afternoon. The cooking smoke was rising from the foot of the mountain, which gave them a very different feeling form the city.

The homestay was built beside her husband’s old countryside house. The old house is preserved (保留)，while a brand-new building was built on its side and the whole site is made up of for courtyards. It has been updated to have a hall, a tea room, a kitchen, a dining room. Japanese cherry trees are planted in the east courtyard. A swimming pool is placed in the west courtyard, with a bar located on one side.

Li and her husband love gardening and music, and their new home gives them enough space to continue their interests and relax in the heart of nature. Li wants to share the quiet country life, so she makes her new home a homestay. In 2019, the homestay became an online hit after guests shared their experiences on social media. “The longer I stay here, the more I feel it was the right choice to come back, and this is more meaningful than making money,” Li says.

People need transportation to move from one place to another. As time went by, transportation methods improved. Especially after the invention of airplanes, they made travel more convenient and     1     (easy).

The airplane     2     (invent) by Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903.     3     first airplane, Wright Flyer I, flew 36.5 meters in 12 seconds. After that, the two brothers kept     4     (improve) their airplanes. They     5     (fly) in public in France in 1908, and started taking passengers with them. From then on, many other people made great efforts to improve and develop airplanes. Thanks to their efforts, airplane technology developed     6     (extreme) fast.

Today, airplanes have many different     7     (apply). People can use airplanes to travel to other countries, send urgent mails and help people in danger. They use airplanes to send water, food, medicine, etc. to cities     8     urgent (紧急的）help is needed. However, airplanes are not only used in positive ways,     9     they are also used to fight wars.

Many things     10     (change) since the invention of the airplane. Airplanes have made travel or transport faster. Airplanes have really changed our lives.