Hangzhou City is a charming mix of the old and the new. It was     1     capital city of the Southern Song Dynasty in the     2     (twelve) century. Even in those days, it was an     3     (extreme) booming (繁荣的) urban area with a population of about one million. The West Lake Scenic Spot takes one back to ancient times with the reconstructed Leifeng Pagoda (塔). The original pagoda     4     (build) in 975 AD. When it was destroyed, an exact replica (仿制品) appeared in its place.

    5     (compare) with other tourist cities, Hangzhou City is well-known for its beautiful scenery. Almost everyone will be attracted     6     the West Lake Scenic Area when visiting Hangzhou City. The West Lake Scenic Spot consists of several smaller scenic areas like Guo’s Villa, Orioles Singing in the Willows, Su Causeway, Fish & Lotus Pond, etc. The lake is so vast that there are many unique is lands in     7     (it) waters, classic Chinese bridges, flowering gardens, ancient trees and more. There are     8     (bench) near the Broken Bridge so people can either just sit and admire the beautiful sight     9     walk along the path. There is a ferry (摆渡) service that takes visitors all around the lake, so one can spend a wonderful day     10     (explore) all its treasures. Visitors also choose the boat ride around the lake.

2 . I was in my early twenties. I ________ from college in Education but still couldn’t find a full-time teaching job. I ________ each morning for the phone to ring so I could work as a substitute (代课老师) that day. However, it wasn’t ________. Finally one day I was asked to teach in a local school substituting for a 5th grade ________. Though I was a substitute, I was ________ to work hard. I went over the lesson plans, taught the subjects, and stayed ________ with the students. I smiled, congratulated the kids when they got something right, and ________ them if they didn’t.

At the end of the day just as they were leaving the classroom, a girl handed me a folded (折叠的) note. I waited until they were all gone before I ________ it, which was a lovely drawing full of childlike wonder and a note that said, “You are the best teacher I have ever had!” It really ________ me. I hadn’t realized that I would ________ the girl. I took that ________ home. Anytime I was feeling down or discouraged I would ________ it.

That experience showed me the ________ that a single kind word can have. It really can make a ________. I never saw that girl again later, but I sincerely hoped that her life would be full of kind ________ and loving people.

3 . According to Ellen Langer, author of the new book The Mindful Body, your mind can affect your health, and changing your mind in different ways can lead to a healthier life. How can you use your mind to help yourself?     1    

Question online recommendations. Don’t follow all recommendations just because an online expert tells you to. We have our own unique makeup. So, for example, the expert tells you that being one point above the threshold (阈值) for high cholesterol (胆固醇) requires a complete change of diet.     2     After all, there is little real difference between someone one point above versus one point below the threshold, and that reading may change one day to the next.

Recognize what counts as “risky” is different from person to person.     3     It makes sense to them in the moment based on their self-knowledge. So, for example, backcountry skiing may seem risky to you, but it could be great fun and adventurous for someone else.

    4     This is never good for our health. Instead of achieving something related to others, focus on finding meaning in what you’re doing. For example, most people think taking care of the elderly can be boring or stressful. But when you do it out of love, it can give you a feeling of pleasure.

Understand that your choices are never completely “right” or “wrong”. You should focus less on regretting “bad decisions” and more on how to make your choices. Look for the positive For example, if you move to a new city and don’t love it right away, you shouldn’t regret your decision to move.     5     Maybe there are different people to meet and befriend, or closer public parks to enjoy.

4 . The Best School Camps in Victoria

Burnside Camp

Located on the Surf Coast near Anglesea, Burnside Camp is set over 4-hectare beautiful bushland (灌木丛) close to opollution-free peaches, Running throughout the year, Burnside Camp serves as a fantastic base for groups of up to 88 students. Camp programs centre on outdoor adventure activities. These include biking, canoeing, and exciting bush night hikes.

Mill Valley Ranch

Mill Valley Ranch is one of the best school camps in Victoria for large groups of students. It can accommodate up to 100 students. At Mill Valley Ranch, activity programs typically centre on confidence and character building. When outdoors, this sees young people given the opportunity to experience everything from horse riding to archery (射箭). However, it is also possible to organize a wide range of other team games and activities.

Camp Wilkin

Set in Anglesea, Camp Wilkin covers a 15-acre area home to resident kangaroos, which is in easy reach of quiet bushwalks and fantastic beaches. It offers the best school camp accommodation in Victoria for large groups, accommodating up to 163 students. And it also offers a variety of outdoor activity programs. Camp facilities include large meeting rooms suitable for everything from presentations to group learning activities.

Halls Gap

Halls Gap can hold up to 56 students. One of the best school camps in Victoria for natural sightseeing, it features reserved activities taking the form of short journeys to experience some of the largest waterfalls in Victoria. Halls Gap Camp students can also join in rock climbing. Such activities are in the company of local tour guides.

I grew up in southeastern Michigan. I was a fan of Detroit Tigers, a famous baseball team, as a young boy.

My childhood dream was to be like my hero, Al Kaline, and someday play for the Tigers. My Dad would take me to Tiger Stadium several times a year and my hero Al Kaline would never let me down. We never attended a game that he didn’t get at least one hit.

I was crazy about baseball. If there was a game in my high school, I was never absent. I kept practising so that I could achieve my dream of playing for the Tigers, and I was doing well at each level of play. Later, I got a chance to sign up for a strong American Legion baseball program. There I met our coach, Bob Ohm, who knew a lot of baseball and taught each of us the basics as well as more advanced baseball skills. With Bob Ohm’s help and my hard work, I had set new records in many baseball championships.

My dream to be like my hero seemed to draw near. One summer, I went up to play the final season in Marinette. There were scouts who came to find the best players. This was it! My big chance!

Well, as the game progressed I hit the ball very well getting five hits in the game. Unfortunately, I also made four mistakes. The final mistake actually drew laughter from the crowd.

After the game, I knew my dream of playing professional baseball was lost.

Today, I teach baseball in a high school.

8 . A study published Tuesday in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review found that words expressing angry feelings sound alike in several unrelated languages. They’re less likely than other words to include the sounds L, R, W or Y. And more friendly versions of such words often have these sounds added. The finding suggests that certain rules may link the world’s languages, no matter how different they are.

Ryan McKay, co-author of the paper, happened to discover that some of the English curses (诅咒语) seem to have something in common; They’re often short and include the sounds B, P, T or K. Then Dr. McKay teamed up with his colleague Shiri Lev-Ari to learn whether these rules went beyond English.

During the experiment, they asked fluent speakers of Arabic, Korean, German and Spanish to list the worst words they could think of. Once they’d made a list of each language’s most commonly used curses, the researchers compared these with neutral (中性的) words from the same language. To their surprise, the rules still apply.

Next, the scientists asked the same people to listen to pairs of invented words, such as “yog” and “tsog” and guess which word in each pair was a curse. The subjects were more likely to guess that words without L, R. W and Y, such as “tsog”, were curses. Finally, the researchers looked through the dictionary for English curses and their cleaned-up versions. Once again, the cleaned-up versions included more of the sounds L, R, W and Y.

“Most 20th-century language scientists held that any word could have any meaning,” said Dr. McKay. “With curses, though, the sounds themselves seem to carry meaning. This can shape and change our understanding of how languages are formed.”

“It is the first time for researchers to study curses across languages and the finding is very interesting,” said Benjamin Bergen, a language scientist at the University of California, who was not involved in the study. “But it is just another case of what’s called sound symbolism in the language study: A word sounds like what it means.”

9 . The first wave of concerns over artificial intelligence(AI)in 2023 appeared soon after New Year’s Day when classrooms reopened and schools from Seattle to Paris started blocking ChatGPT, a powerful software based on AI large language models, because teenagers were using it to do their homework.

The AI large language models behind such products as ChatGPT work by repeatedly guessing the next word in a sentence after having “learned” the rules from a huge amount of/human-written works. Although they often get facts wrong, their answers appear so natural that Keven, their inventors begin to worry about their possible use for spreading false information.

People became more worried when various AI products started to create not just texts but novel images, music and human voices, which threatened the livelihoods of anyone who writes, draws or sings for a living. It led to strikes by Hollywood writers and actors and legal challenges from artists and bestselling authors. Some of the most respected scientists even warned that the technology’s unchecked progress was possibly threatening human existence. “In the longer term, they might manage our attention,” pioneering AI scientist Fei Fei Lisaid. “They would tell us which video to watch, which book to read or whose communication to respond as AI technology’s abilities improve rapidly. They could be a very good assistant, but also with really big risks.”

Li hoped that 2023 is going to be a year for people to think about what Al is, how to use it and what the effects are — all the good, the bad and the ugly.

“It’s easy to forget that they are not the first wave of AI products. Computer vision techniques developed by Li and other scientists have helped sort through a huge database of photos to recognize objects and individual faces and guide self-driving cars. Speech recognition advances have made voice assistants like Siri and Alexa a normal thing in many people’s lives,” said Tom Gruber, co-founder of Siri Inc.

10 . For most of December, Adele Adkins had the top-selling album in Australia, followed by Ed Sheeran, and then there was a collection of songs that took everyone by surprise.

Songs Of Disappearance is a collection of calls from endangered Australian birds. Last month, it briefly reached No.3 on the country’s top 50 albums chart (排行榜) — ahead of Taylor Swift.

Anthony Albrecht, a PhD student at Charles Darwin University, produced the album with Professor Stephen Garnett. “I knew it was a crazy thing to suggest. But Stephen’s a little bit crazy like me and he let me do it,” Albrecht said.

Songs Of Disappearance was published with a university report which found that 1 in 6 Australian bird species are now threatened. The album records 53 of those species.

“Some sing what you might think of as bird songs, but not all of them,” said SeanDooley, who represents the conservation organization Bird life Australia. “Songs from the golden bowerbird sound like a death cry from some sci-fi series. And the love songs from Christmas Island frigate bird, which has a piece of skin hanging under its mouth that caninflate (膨胀) like a huge red balloon, sound as bizarre as its unusual looks.”

There’s also the Christmas Island pigeon. When people hear that pigeon, they might think that it’s a human making silly noises, Dooley added.

The Charles Darwin University and Bird life Australia report does document successes in protecting endangered birds, the hope being that the album will protect more species.

“The increased awareness can make a difference,” Dooley said. “When we have a community on board, that brings pressure to the government to do the right thing. We know that these conservation actions do work.”