3 . When I was seven, my father gave me a watch, Timex. It was my first watch. I loved it, wore it for years, and haven’t had another one since it stopped clicking a decade ago. Why? Because I don’t _________ one. I have a mobile phone and I’m always near someone with an iPod or something like that. All these _________ tell the time — which is why, if you look around, you’ll see lots of empty _________; sales of watches to young adults have been going down since 2007. But while the _________ men have realized that they don’t need them, others _________ are spending total fortunes on them. Brands (品牌) such as Rolex and Philippe command shocking _________, up to £250,000 for a piece.

This is _________. These days all watches tell the time as well as all other watches. Expensive watches come with extra _________ but who needs them? How often do you dive to 300 metres into the sea or need to find your _________ in the South Pole? So why pay that much of five years’ school fees for watches that allow you to do these things? If justice were done, the Swiss watch industry should have __________ when the Japanese discovered how to __________ accurate watches for a five-pound note.

Watches are now categorized as “investments”. A 1994 Philippe recently sold for nearly £350,000, while 1960s Rolexes have gone from £15,000 to £30,000 plus in a year. But a watch is not an investment. It’s a(n) __________ for self-satisfaction, a matter of fashion. Prices may keep going up. But when fashion moves on, the __________ of that £350,000 beauty will __________ find his pride and joy is no more a good investment than my __________ Timex.

6 . People often say that “failure is the mother of success.” This cliché (陈词滥调) might have some truth to it, but it __________ tells us how to actually turn a loss into a win, says Emmanuel Manalo, a professor of educational psychology at Kyoto University in Japan. As a result, he says, “we know we shouldn’t give up when we fail—but __________, we do.”

Manalo and Manu Kapur, a professor of learning sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, put together a special issue of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity last December on __________ failure. The issue’s 15 studies provide teachers and educational researchers with a guide for __________ success. One study reported, for example, that the sooner and more often students fail at a task, such as building a robot, the sooner they can __________ and improve. Another confirmed that feedback on failures is most __________ when the giver comes across as caring, and the receiver is prepared to weather negative emotions.

Manalo and his co-authors also contributed their own study focused on overcoming one fundamental, everyday form of failure: not __________ a task. They asked 131 undergraduates to write an essay about their school experiences. Half of the students received __________ for structuring their writing, and half were left to their own devices. All, however, were __________ prior to finishing. Afterward the researchers found that those in the structured group were more motivated to complete their essays, compared with those who lacked guidance—even if the latter were __________ to being done. Knowing how to finish, __________, was more important than being close to finishing.

The researchers dubbed this finding “the Hemingway effect,” for the author’s self-reported __________ to stop writing only when he knew what would happen next in the story—so as to avoid writer’s block when he returned to the page. Manalo believes that learning how to fail temporarily can help people avoid becoming __________ failures at many tasks, such as completing an essay, learning a language or inventing a new technology.

Demystifying failure and teaching students not to __________ it make goals more attainable, says Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and supporting inventors. Couch, whose work was also featured in the special issue, __________ that we “should really be thinking of failure as part of a process of going forward toward success.”

8 . In 1968 a grave dating from about 1100 was uncovered near Hattula, in Finland, Little remained of the occupant’s skeleton, but the inhumation included two swords and a knife. Such grave goods would normally suggest said occupant was a man. The skeleton was, _______ also decorated with brooches (胸针) and woollen clothing of types more usually worn at the time by women. This _______ guess that the burial was actually of a powerful woman, possibly a local ruler in her own right rather than just the wife of a male king.

This would be noteworthy enough. But a re-examination of the remains, just published in the European Journal of Archaeology by Ulla Moilanen of the University of Turku and Elina Salmela of the University of Helsinki, suggests the truth may be yet more _______. Ms. Moilanen and Dr Salmela suspect that the individual _______ may have had outward characteristics of both a man and a woman.

In 1968 working out the _______ of a skeleton in an ancient grave was tricky. After years of deterioration, the bones of men and women look pretty much _______. But that was before the use of DNA became possible. So Ms. Moilanen and Dr Salmela thought it worth trying again.

Most people have two sex chromosomes (染色体): XX in women and XY in men. Find DNA from a Y-chromosome in a skeleton and the chances are the body was _______. And, looking at a fragment of femur brought to her by Ms. Moilanen, who is the archaeologist in the _______, Dr. Salmela, who is the geneticist, did indeed find such DNA. But not much of it. That led her to wonder about contamination (污染), but also to consider whether the individual in the grave had had a(n) _______ X-chromosome that was swamping the signal from the Y.

Having an abnormal number of sex chromosomes is rare, but not vanishingly so. The particular ________ XXY leads to what is known as Klinefelter’s syndrome. To determine the occupant’s karyotype (染色体组型) from the tiny amount of DNA available, Dr. Salmela drew ________ with living people. The grave delivered 8,329 pieces, so she used a computer to draw samples of similar size from the genomes of living people with various karyotypes, including XXY, and also from mixtures of both sexes, to ________ contamination. She then compared these with the DNA from the grave and ________ it was 99.75% probable the individual concerned bad indeed had Klinefelter’s syndrome.

While Dr Salmela was working all this out, Ms. Moilanen and her team had another look at the grave. They confirmed that it was a ________ burial. For instance, they found evidence of fine furs, probably from foxes. Clearly, this was a well-respected human being, but what led to that ________ in a world then dominated by male values is a matter of puzzle. Perhaps the person came from a family powerful enough for such things not to matter.

9 . After my mother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, the plants in our house began to die. In years past, I remember the deep, earthy smell that would _________ in our house after my mother had made her weekly watering rounds. Back then, I never _________ it with the care that was at the foundation of everything she did.

But now, leaves were _________, some dry and edged with brown, and many of the stems bare. It was a mark of how my mother can no longer attend to all the things that she lovingly cared for. I was so focused on the increasing _________ of her own care that her beloved plants had escaped my _________.

I began her old rounds, pouring water into the thirsty soil, and soon the plants _________. That’s the thing about houseplants: They demand nothing. They wait quietly, no matter how _________ they are. But even after my best _________, some of the plants couldn’t survive. My mother’s kind caregivers have since brought new ones to add to her _________, and my father buys fresh flowers every week.

Though Alzheimer’s disease __________ so much of her memory, her desire to care is still there. I would guide her down the steps to water the plants herself. I watched as her shaking hands picked the brown leaves. Each time, she smiled up at me with __________ satisfaction because being able to __________ something is still what brings her the greatest joy.

I look at plants __________ these days. I see them as my mother does: __________ reminders of the need for kindness toward all living things. It is clear to me that the things we spend a lifetime __________ are never truly lost and the love she has planted in me still blooms.

10 . It was the most destructive wildfire in California history. It started in Paradise (天堂镇) and caused $16.5 billion in _______, destroying nearly 19,000 buildings and killing 85 in all. The beauty of this _______ named place was gone.

Grammer, working in Los Angeles, grew up there. When his friend Edwards posted pictures of his white chimney — the only part of his house to survive — he felt _______. And then he had an idea.

“I’ve got to _______ that chimney,” he says, “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m an artist. It was an opportunity for me to _______.”

Grammer spent three hours painting an image of a woman on the _______ — a reminder of the chimney, of the beauty of life, or even just of _______ itself.

Grammer posted the image on Instagram. Those who were affected by the fire, _______, could not calm down. Someone _______, “You bring beauty and hope.”

Greatly inspired, Grammer returned eight times. Outside one house, he found a photo of a girl, Eleanor. He painted a picture of her on the wall of her home left __________. It was a stamp that life was here and that life can __________ to be here. The painting has __________ meaning for the homeowner. Eleanor’s father, recalls how she used to play just feet away. Eleanor herself returned once to __________ the painting.

Ironically (讽刺的是) that first painting, on the chimney in Paradise, __________ only a few months — the bulldozer (推土机) is a cruel art critic. However, Grammer couldn’t be more delighted. It means that the __________ of Paradise is rising again.