The government has awarded $5 million to three different local nonprofit organizations. The money will     1    (distribute) over a four-year period and is aimed at helping approximately 1, 000 homeless people in the county of Arvada.

One agency,     2    (base) in Woodbridge, is expected     3    (receive) $1. 5 million. The agency director says that they will focus their resources on     4    (educate) the homeless. “We will probably build another school-home with this money,” he said. “A school-home is exactly     5     it sounds like. It is a school and a home. We have already built four school-homes throughout the county. We get the homeless off the street,     6     we educate them so they don’t have to return to the street. We teach them how to be gardeners, painters, carpenters, bricklayers, electricians, and air-conditioning repairmen.”

“You wouldn’t believe     7     success that we have had. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, our office air-conditioning went out. My secretary called a repairman. To our surprise, the repairman     8    (be) one of our first homeless students. He now owns his own air-conditioning business, plus two houses, two cars and a boat! He has a dozen employees. He’s doing better than I am. He fixed our air-conditioning     9     free. I think I might sign up for the air-conditioning class     10    (I). ”

2 . There has been a very serious decline in the numbers of shallow-water fish as a result of overfishing. People still want to eat fish, so the fishing industry must look at other sources, especially the deep waters of the Atlantic.     1    

Conservation measures will have to be put in place if these deep-sea fish are to survive. Research on five such species shows that numbers have declined by between 87 percent and 98 percent.     2     Many species could well disappear completely if the present trend continues. These are species that have been swimming in our oceans for hundreds of millions of years.

The problem is emphasized by the fact that the decline in numbers happened in less than twenty years. Deep-sea fish take a long time to reproduce and normally live for many years.     3     The average size of such fish also declined, with one species showing a 57 percent decline in average size. This is of particular concern, as large fish tend to produce more offspring than small ones.

    4     The deep-sea species have been caught as if they were the fast-breeding (快速繁殖) fish like sardine and herring. It is like killing elephants as if they reproduced at the same rate as rabbits.

The damage done by overfishing goes beyond the sea environment. Millions of people make a living in the fishing industry.     5     Measures must be taken to not only conserve ecosystems, but also sustain livelihoods and ensure food security.

3 . For years, David James, who studies insects at Washington State University, had wanted to examine the migration (迁徙)patterns of West Coast monarch butterflies (黑脉金斑蝶). The route the butterflies travel has been hardly known because the populations are too small to follow. For every 200 monarchs tagged (打标签)by a researcher, only one is usually recovered at the end of its trip, James says, and finding even 200 in the wild to tag is unlikely. Knowing the route is vital to conservation efforts, but James had no way to figure it out- until he got a phone call from Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

The prison was looking for new activities to improve the mental health of those serving long-term sentences. So James began working with prisoners to raise monarchs through the whole process of their transformation. The adult insects were then tagged and released from the prison. Over five years, nearly 10, 000 monarchs flew from the facility. Elsewhere in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, researchers released another few thousand.

The tags included email addresses, and soon after the first butterflies took off, James started receiving messages from people who had spotted them. The butterflies, the reports confirmed, wintered in coastal California. Twelve of them landed at Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz. Several more headed to Bolinas and Morro Bay.

The work helps researchers identify ideal places to plant milkweed and other vegetation that are important to the life cycle of West Coast monarch butterflies. It also brought out the gentler side of some of the prisoners. “They were very worried that they were going to harm the butterflies, ”James says. Watching the monarch change their form also touched the men. “This butterfly changed, ” James recalls prisoners telling him, “and maybe we can too. ”

4 . Dr. Smith of New York works at a center for children who can’t learn well. One day a father brought his son to him for________ at his office.

The father told Dr. Smith about his son. “My son has ________ in learning and can’t even play baseball. He isn’t doing well because he doesn’t try. I have done everything for him. I have even shouted at him. But nothing ________. ”

After Dr. Smith tested the boy, he ________ his father. He asked the father to sit in front of a ________ and then gave him a pencil and a piece of paper. There was a ________ on the paper. He asked the father to look only in the mirror and ________ the lines of the star with the pencil. The father made the same ________ anyone makes. Every time he ________ the pencil, it went the wrong way. The father’s face became red.

At this ________ the doctor shouted at him, “Hurry up! Why are you ________ so long? You can’t do such an ________ thing! You don’t know left from right!” These ________ made the father very angry.

“Now you can ________, can’t you?” The doctor said to him. “Your son has felt just like that all the time. You scolded (训斥) him too often, so he didn't try any more. He was afraid of making mistakes. ”

________ the father understood everything. He put his face down. Now he felt so sorry.

5 . We all know that unpleasant feeling when we’re talking about something interesting and halfway through our sentence we’re interrupted. But was that really an interruption? The answer depends on whom you ask, according to new research led by Katherine Hilton from Stanford University.

Using a set of controlled audio clips (录音片段), Hilton surveyed 5, 000 American English speakers to better understand what affects people’s perceptions of interruptions. She had participants listen to audio clips and then answer questions about whether the speakers seemed to be friendly and engaged, listening to one another, or trying to interrupt.

Hilton found that American English speakers have different conversational styles. She identified two distinct groups: high and low intensity speakers. High intensity speakers are generally uncomfortable with moments of silence in conversation and consider talking at the same time a sign of engagement. Low intensity speakers find it rude to talk at the same time and prefer people speak one after another in conversation.

The differences in conversational styles became evident when participants listened to audio clips in which two people spoke at the same time but were agreeing with each other and stayed on topic, Hilton said. The high intensity group reported that conversations where people spoke at the same time when expressing agreement were not interruptive but engaged and friendlier than the conversations with moments of silence in between speaking turns. In contrast, the low intensity group perceived any amount of simultaneous (同时) chat as a rude interruption, regardless of what the speakers were saying.

“People care about being interrupted, and those small interruptions can have a massive effect on the overall communication,” Hilton said. “Breaking apart what an interruption means is essential if we want to understand how humans interact with each other.”

6 . Calendars are for managing your time. They work overtime to keep the messiness of human life confined into neat little grids, squeezing our lives into seconds, minutes and hours. I appreciate a calendar’s determined efforts to manage time.     1     For the past several years, I’ve kept a planner with me at all times. The real magic in planners, to me, comes in the blank space where I reflect on the past and imagine the future. Cracking open a fresh week’s layout on a Monday morning and seeing the empty pages expand like a canvas waiting to be filled, the tone of the week yet to be set, the possibilities endless.

You start by creating a wish list for your ideal life. The idea is to be as specific as possible. You then pick the one goal that would have the biggest positive impact. You break that goal down into smaller tasks, and then prioritize them.     2     This method turns a general idea in your head into something that you can actually accomplish. From there, you can reflect every month on how you spent your time, and whether what you did actually is consistent with the goals you set.

    3     It leaves no digital footprint, but it does leave a paper trail that you can look back on for years to come. It doesn’t buzz impatiently when you don’t look at it, and it will not be exported to Outlook. It requires you to sit in quiet conversation with yourself, reflecting on your past and visualizing your future. It forces me to answer hard truths, like what do I really want out of life and am I spending my days in line with who I want to be.     4    

Planning helps me ensure that I’m not a passenger at the mercy of my calendar, but rather driving toward a destination that I choose.     5     And some really nice pens.

7 . Branding events of China Daily

Since its launch in 1981, China Daily has grown to become the nation’s leading English-language newspaper. With a combined print, online and mobile readership of more than 350 million, it serves a vital role in telling the world about China, providing valuable insight into the world’s second-largest economy. A series of branding events are conducted by China Daily to improve public diplomacy (外交) and international communication.

Vision China Lectures

A series of talks are organized by China Daily in which leading political and business figures are invited to speak and interact live with domestic and foreign audiences. The Vision China lectures focus on major issues facing China and the world, explore what China’s story means for the world, and how Chinese wisdom can help the world.

China Watch Think Tank Forum

Elites, including opinion leaders, politicians and businesspersons with expertise (专业知识) on China, discuss topics on developments and the future of China and the world in China Watch Think Tank Forum.

Asia Leadership Roundtable

The China Daily Asia Leadership Roundtable provides a platform for high-level dialogue and communication among leaders and social elites in the fields of politics, business and academia in Asia.

“21st Century Cup” National English Speaking Competition

The competition is the most famous English-speaking competition in China. It is the qualifying round for students who wish to represent China in the International Public Speaking Competition in London.

TESOL China Assembly

Organized by China Daily in partnership with TESOL International Association (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), the TESOL China Assembly is a high-level international English Language Teaching (ELT) event in China. It aims to promote scholarship and cross-cultural understanding among English educators in China, and to enhance dialogue between China’s ELT professionals with their peers worldwide.

For more details, click here.

More than 300 participants     1     were from international organizations, research institutes, universities and enterprises came together at the 6th International Agricultural Research Conference in Beijing on December 15,2022 to exchange ideas on how to make a     2     (contribute) to global food security, calling for more international cooperation in agriculture.

Themed “strengthening agricultural science and technology cooperation to jointly promote global food security,” the conference was hosted by the Center for International Agricultural Research (CIAR) and the Department of International Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS),     3     (adopt) the form of virtual lectures and online broadcast.

Wu Kongming, president of CAAS, said that CAAS remains committed to providing Chinese     4     (solution) and wisdom to help address global challenges such as food security, poverty reduction and green development, and to do so through multilateral and bilateral international cooperation mechanisms.

According to Carlos Watson, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Representative in China, the conference offered     5     great and timely opportunity to facilitate(使便利)constructive discussion on international joint actions concerning global agricultural development and food security,     6     the face of challenges posed by the pandemic and climate change.

“Given China’s     7     (success) experience in the eradication(消除)of extreme poverty, digital innovations, and agricultural and rural development, China is     8     (unique) positioned to share its innovation experience, innovative technologies, and best practices with the rest of the world,” he said.

During the conference, experts discussed the current situation and future prospects of international cooperation in agricultural science and technology. They also discussed the policy environment, market environment, investment model and service demand for overseas agricultural investment, as well as strategies and measures     9     (ensure) global food security.

The International Agricultural Research Conference     10     (hold) for six consecutive(连续的)years since 2017.