1 . Scientists in Michigan have developed a forest fire alarm system. It can not only monitor when a fire begins but also call for help. This battery-free device hangs in a tree and gains all the energy it needs from the natural swinging of branches. Such a sensor (传感器) could watch the woods for a decade without humans’ attention.

“For forest fire monitoring, you don’t need high amounts of energy,” says Cao Changyong, an engineer at Michigan State University, who led the team behind the new device. It recharges itself about every 10 minutes with just enough power to take a measurement. That’s plenty of time, Cao says, “to produce enough energy.”

There’s an obvious need for fast monitoring of faraway forests. Every year, fires burn millions of acres in the United States. Early findings also can save lives. Right now, forest fires are found from satellites or fire towers. Neither, Cao says, is as fast or low-cost as tree-hanging sensors would be.

Cao’s group faced some challenges in creating its new sensors. For example, these have to produce enough power to check the forest and send out a signal and that power source has to be used for longer time. To deal with the problems, they decided to change mechanical motion (机械运动) into electricity. The device to do this is known as a TENG short for triboelectric nanogenerator. Scientists have explored TENGS as one way to gain energy from the natural world, including harvesting energy from effects on tabletops, falling rain-even keyboards. The new TENG for forest use produces a current (电流) when a tree branch swings. That current is small, yet enough to power a thermometer   (温度计) to monitor the temperature changes signaling fire.

Cao says his team’s new model has not yet been tested over long time periods in the real world, but the device is ready. All he needs now is the money to build more of them.

4 . For one young man who wants to be a farmer, a terrible disease could easily have destroyed his dream. But a 12-year-old won’t let his disease _________ him rolling up his sleeves and getting dirty.

John Ray was born with muscular dystrophy (肌肉萎缩症). “When he was born, the doctors said with much love they didn’t _________ him to live this long,” said John’s mother, Trina Reid. However, John has proved the doctors _________ by living his life to the full, so much that he’s able to _________ his father, Donny Ray, who is busy with farming work.

Young John used to be brought to a specific area of his father’s small farm to _________. But due to his _________, he was restricted in his _________ and how much he could help. His regular wheelchair was _________ for farm life, so his parents tried their best to adapt to his needs.

One day, Donny _________ an all-terrain (全地形) wheelchair, the Action Trackchair. However, the family couldn’t ____________ the expensive chair. ____________, Trina spotted a second-hand one for ____________ and the couple managed to buy it from the seller.

John wasn’t told about the new chair. The couple ____________ to get it up and running before they showed it to John. Donny made a few ____________ so John could help with the feeding in the barn (谷仓). Over the next two months he’s been out in the ____________ helping with the potato planting. And the improved equipment even allows John to start a grass-cutting ____________.

So with the love, support and ____________ of John’s family, the boy’s future farming career looks ____________. And as his mother shares, “If John has ____________ me anything, it is perseverance (坚持不懈). There is ____________ he says he can’t do.”

5 . Five years ago, French navy officer Jérôme Chardon was listening to a radio program about the journey of the bar-tailed godwit, a bird that migrates 14,000 kilometers between New Zealand and Alaska. Chardon understood how treacherous the journey would be, as heavy storms frequently hit Pacific island communities. Yet, somehow, bar-tailed godwits routinely pass through the area uninjured. Chardon wondered whether learning how birds traveled could help coastal communities avoid natural disasters.

This past January, a team from France’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) began experiments designed to test Chardon’s idea. Researchers with a project led by Frédéric Jiguet from NMNH equipped 56 birds of five species with cutting edge animal tracking technology. The team members were ferried to remote islands in French Polynesia, where they attached tags (标签) using tracking technology. These tags sent the birds’ locations to the International Space Station, which bounced the data back to scientists on Earth who could then follow the birds—waiting to see how the birds responded to natural disasters.

The project is focusing on birds’ ability to hear infrasound, the low-frequency sound humans cannot hear but that the researchers believe is the most likely signal birds would use to sense storms and tsunamis (海啸). In a 2014 study, scientists tracking a kind of golden-winged birds in the central and southeastern America found that the birds flew up to 1,500 kilometers to escape from an outbreak of tornadoes (龙卷风) that killed 35 people. The birds fled at least 24 hours before any extreme weather hit, leaving the scientists to believe that they had heard the storm system from more than 400 kilometers away.

The team plans on tagging hundreds more birds across the Pacific to prepare for a potential tsunami. “I think if there’s one wave that spreads across islands, we can get data from different species at different locations,” says Jiguet. “That will say it s worth continuing to tag and to develop local systems to better analyze this. There are chances that we will develop a bird-based tsunami early warning system.”

7 . As a well-known Chinese TV hostess, Dong Qing is now hosting two cultural shows, Chinese Poetry Conference and Readers. The two shows are encouraging people to love traditional culture and find the beauty of life.

Dong was born in a highly educated family in 1973. She had a great love for traditional literature from an early age. In 2015 when she was about to study in the U.S, Dong received an invitation from the director of Chinese Poetry Conference asking her to be the hostess. Because of her passion for traditional literature, Dong accepted the job.

"The contest interests me very much. Hosting it is a process of learning about poetry and performing, "said Dong. To her great joy, the show has become more and more popular.

Under the slogan ”Reading touches people's hearts”, the new TV show Readers has become a success. It invites famous guests from all walks of life to read something. Dong works as both hostess and producer.

Readers became a turning point in Dong' s 21 years of hosting She said it brought her "quite a huge challenge”.

"There is no shortcut in this world. If you want to be a good host, you need to make thorough preparations, said the beautiful hostess. "The charm of life lies in its unknown, so we just have to try and keep going.