Two young Chinese athletes placed a torch in the center of a giant snowflake during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. One of the two athletes, Dinigeer Yilamujiang, was born in the Altay Prefecture,     1     (locate) in the northern part of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,     2     (wide) acknowledged as the birthplace of human skiing.

In earlier times, artifacts from Scandinavian and Russian archaeology proved the     3     (exist) of ancient skiing, with the oldest found in Russia     4     (date) back to 7,000-8,000 years ago. In 2005, the record     5     (break). A group of farmers in the Altay region went to a cave to hide from the rain, only     6     (find) cave paintings describing men stepping on twin snowboards     7     prey (猎物) carried on their backs. It turned out that, according to archaeologists’ analyses, the cave paintings were drawn 12,000 years ago, some 4,000 years before the artifacts from Russia     8     were believed to have been made.

After Beijing’s successful bid to host the Winter Olympics, experts from 18 countries including Norway and Russia paid     9     visit to Altay to study the “potential origin of human skiing activity,”. After that they jointly issued a declaration in 2015, recognizing Xinjiang’s Altay as the     10     (early) skiing region in the world.

2 . Many years ago, I owned a service station and roadhouse on the main road between Melbourne and Adelaide.

One very cold, wet night at about 3:30 a. m., there was a ________ on the front door of our house. A young man, wet from head to toe (脚趾), explained that he had ________ out of petrol about 30 km up the road. He had left his pregnant (怀孕的) wife and his two children ________ at the car and said that he would hitchhike (搭便车) back.

Once I had ________ a can with petrol, I took him back to his car where his two-year-old and four-year-old children were both crying, saying that they were cold. Once the car had started, I suggested that he ________ me back.

Before leaving, I had turned the heater ________ in the roadhouse, so that when we went in, it was nice and warm. While the little ones played and ran ________, I prepared bread and butter for the children, and hot chocolate for the ________.

It was about 5 a.m. before they left. The young fellow asked me how much he ________ me and I told him that the petrol pump (加油泵) had ________ $15. He offered to pay “call-out fee”, but I wouldn’t accept it.

About a month later, I received a ________ from Interstate, a large bus company that we had been trying to ________ to stop off at our roadhouse for a long time. It ________ out that the young fellow I had helped was its general manager, the most powerful person in the company.

In his letter, he thanked me again and ________ me that, from then on, all their buses would stop at my service station. In this ________, a little bit of kindness was rewarded with a huge amount of benefits.

3 . The parents of a troubled teen may feel unsure as to whom to turn to in order to find help for their child. They may feel as if they have exhausted all of their options, and sometimes they are on the verge of giving up. But there is hope. Schools for troubled teens offer discipline and in some cases, drug treatment programs that can provide important life skills, and more importantly, a fresh start.

Boarding Schools

When a child is unable to deal with the relative freedom of a standard school day, boarding schools might be a good choice. At boarding schools, the child lives in a dorm setting, where almost every minute of the day is scheduled by school administrators.

Treatment Centers

When a teenager has an addiction to drugs or alcohol, a residential center that specializes in young people is an outstanding way to help them break the cycle of addiction. Treatment centers feature individual and group counseling to help identify the root causes of the drug problem and help develop the life skills needed to stay clean when the program is over.

Wilderness Programs

Designed to help improve the discipline and self-reliance of the children, wilderness programs send kids back to nature. By placing them in a foreign and sometimes uncomfortable setting, wilderness programs hope to improve children’s behavior. Programs generally include hikes, exercise programs and team building exercises.

Boot Camps

Boot camps are the most extreme style of school for troubled teens. These facilities are modeled after actual military boot camps, where the individual must get into shape, work as part of a team, and follow a long, hard set of rules and regulations. However, boot camps might not be the best choice for a teen with a drug addiction.

4 . Ever wondered how many Tyrannosaurus rex (霸王龙) ever walked around the Earth? The answer is 2.5 billion over the two million or so years in which the species existed, according to a calculation published today in Science. The figure has allowed researchers to estimate just how rare it is for animals to fossilize.

Researchers led by Charles Marshall used a method employed by ecologists studying contemporary creatures to estimate the population of T. rex during the late Cretaceous period.

The team used their estimates of the total range of T. rex across modern North America, combined with their estimates of the dinosaur’s weight, to calculate that, at one time, around 20,000 T. rex would have been alive on the planet. That translates to around 3,800 T. rex in an area the size of California, or just 2 T. rex moving around Washington DC. Calculating that T. rex survived for about 127,000 generations before disappearing, the researchers came up with a figure of 2.5 billion individuals over the species’ entire existence. Only 32 adult T. rex have been discovered as fossils, so the fossil record accounts for just 1 in about every 80 million T. rex. This means that the chances of being fossilized were small.

These numbers suggest that fossils in general are rare, and that many species that were less widespread than T. rex were probably never preserved, says Marshall, who adds, “The fossil record is our only direct knowledge of these past histories of our planet.”

Thomas Holtz, a researcher, says that “we always knew that the chance of any individual becoming a fossil was rare, but we lacked the calculation to figure out how rare”. He’d like to see comparable studies made on disappearing species with more abundant fossils, which might allow us to better understand historic ecosystems.

6 . Working on your adventure list? These national park treasures which turn favorites during the harvest time should be on it.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

33,000 acres of forests wait between Cleveland and Akron, all along the snaking Cuyahoga River. The park will delight you with plenty of outdoor activities suiting every interest, but do not climb over the fenced areas, rocks, or Brandywine Falls. Now the red maple trees will be visually on fire, which you can enjoy from the comfort of the tourist railway — Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

Gateway Arch National Park

This urban park comes back thanks to the Arch’s new Museum and Visitor Center. Give your feet a break after walking over five miles of park pathways with a ride to the top of the Arch to enjoy beautiful leaves. You can even bring your dog: the park is hosting Arch Bark every October.

Gulf Islands National Seashore

Extending some 160 miles along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, this series of parks includes a historic building, untouched barrier islands, and sugar-white beaches. Don’t miss the Fort Pickens area, which is a perfect spot to observe wild animals living in the scenic natural environment. With an average high of 79℉and a low of 60℉, the fall weather here is exceptional.

Voyageurs National Park

Yellow and red leaves in fall will catch your eyes, contrasting with this park’s glassy waters. In the Land of 10,000 Lakes, there are no roads in the park, so visitors use boats to cross this remote 218,000-acre park. Over 100 bird species, even the rare ones, pass through the park, so keep an eye out for them.

8 . If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be terrified. But what if you were trapped in ruins after a natural disaster and first responders couldn’t locate you? Maybe then a human-seeking drone wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. That concept is the focus for engineers at Germany’s Fraunhofer FKIE Institute, who’ve built a drone to find people by detecting human screams.

“The human-seeking drone would be ideal for post-disaster situations, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires,” said Macarena Varela, one of the lead engineers. “They could hover over an area that rescue crews have difficulty getting to and locate exactly where people may be trapped.”

Locating people by sound presents its share of challenges. An auditory(听觉的) system would need to distinguish human cries from sounds that often happen in nature, such as animal calls and wind. It might also need to recognize patterns associated with kicking, clapping or other ways people try to get the attention of rescue teams.

Engineers took those situations into account when building out their concept drone. They recorded themselves screaming, tapping and creating other noises that might be a sign of people in trouble. Then, they analyzed each sound frequency to find common signatures and used those to train artificial intelligence software. They also worked to remove the noise created by the drone and other environmental sounds.

Once the software part was complete, the team placed tiny digital microphones under the drone and used signal processing techniques that enabled them to track where human noises are coming from. The microphones also enhanced the volume and clarity of the speech. So far, they have conducted successful open field experiments, finding that the drone can estimate a victim’s location within a few seconds of picking up sound.

Next, they would like to add a higher frequency microphone to a drone to acquire more audio sound signals. “The idea is to pick up noises from hundreds of meters away,” Varela said. In the real world, victim’s location data might one day be sent wirelessly to emergency crews carrying a tablet.

9 . When you consciously keep thinking of something, your unconscious mind will somehow spontaneously(自发地) push that idea or issue back to the surface even when you are doing something else, because your unconscious mind accepts, stores and plays back everything that the conscious mind focuses on. The unconscious mind is like a “yes” person, agreeing, accepting and reminding.

Hence, your unconscious mind can respond positively or negatively, depending on how you have consciously conditioned it — by constantly thinking about something. For instance, if you keep telling yourself that it is very difficult to study English or that your English lecture is boring, then that thought will always crop up uninvited when you are chatting with someone or doing something else. That is how the unconscious mind works. Successful athletes who consciously, continuously and consistently focus on superior performance actually perform well because they are driven by their unconscious mind. It’s important to understand that whatever you consciously focus on, your unconscious mind will accept it. You need to think positively so that your unconscious mind will respond likewise. If you find yourself in a negative mood, discontinue that mood.

You must not hold a negative thought too long, or it will come back again and get more rooted in your system. Once you are in a negative system, it would take much more reprogramming to uproot the bad “trees” in your mind. You could have a full-grown negative “forest” in your mind — and that could take ages to uproot. So replace it with a positive thought. Affirm(强化) consciously, continuously and consistently your new positive image. Focus on the new trait visually and see yourself succeeding in it.

Review your behavior. Do you moan and groan too often? Do you talk like a loser? Are you small-minded, selfish and unforgiving? It’s time you consciously conditioned your unconscious mind to work in a positive manner.