1 . The British love to think of themselves as polite, and everyone knows how fond they are of their “pleases” and “thank you”. Even the simplest business such as buying a train ticket requires _________ seven or eight of these. Another _________ of our good manners is the queue. New-comers to Britain could be _________ for thinking that queuing rather than football was the _________ national sport. Finally, of course, motorists generally stop at crossings. But does all this mean that the British should consider themselves more _________ than their European neighbours? I think not.

Take forms of address(称呼) for example. The average English person -- _________ he happens to work in a hotel or department store--would rather die than call a stranger “Sir” or “Madam”. _________ in some European countries this is the most basic of common address. Our universal “you” _________ everyone may appear more democratic, but it means that we are forced to seek out complicated ways to express _________. I am all for __________ to the use of “thee” and “thou” (Thee and thou are old-fashioned poetic words for “you”); “you” would be reserved for strangers and professional relationships.

And of course, the English find touching and other shows of friendship truly __________. Have you noticed how the British __________ ever touch? Personally, I find the Latin habit of shaking hands or a friendly kiss quite charming. __________ kissing the average English person, and they will either take two steps backwards in horror, or, if their __________ is blocked you will find your lips touching the back of their head. Now what could be __________ than that?

2 . Maryann Webb, a former teacher, knew the impact that literacy (文化水平) and social skills can have on a child's well-being. After a little research, she ________ that three million Australians were living below the poverty line in 2017, and over 700,000 of these were ________. “As a parent, I was shocked by that statistic and how many ________ children live across Australia,” says Webb. “The more I learnt, the more I was ________ to do something.”

Her bright idea was first to ________ Play and Learn packs. The “Play and Learn” packs each come with a(n) ________ doll, the book Imagine If You Had a Friend, which also ________ advice to parents and carers about bonding with children over reading, and an activity book. The packs are gifted to children from ________ socioeconomic backgrounds, and kids ________ disadvantage, trauma (精神创伤) and vulnerability.

What ________ was Project KIN (Kids in Need): a charity that not only helps underprivileged kids, but ________ social pathways for women who feel socially isolated. Today, Project KIN has more than 600 female ________ who sew (缝纫), knit and crochet (用钩针编织) dolls.

“Our goal is to encourage human ________ that contribute to the social and emotional well-being of our volunteers and the communities they live in,” says Webb.

“We know our ‘Play and Learn’ packs won't ________ the problem of disadvantage, but we believe they're a ________ and real piece of the change puzzle,” adds Webb.

3 . Zara Rutherford has set the world record as the youngest woman to fly alone around the world. The British-Belgian _________ started her trip worldwide on August 18, 2021.

The _________ was supposed to take three months. But bad weather and visa delays kept her grounded and _________ the trip by about two months. And then she started in Belgium and _________ west over Britain, Iceland, and Greenland. The path took her over Canada and the United States.

Rutherford couldn’t leave Alaska due to weather and visa delays. A winter storm forced another long _________ in Russia before she traveled to Korea, the Middle East, and _________ to Europe.

To meet the _________ for a round-the-world flight, Rutherford had to land on two points opposite each other on Earth: Jambi in Indonesia and Tumaco in Colombia. The last part of her trip had been _________ , for she had to deal with rain and snow. But she was happy to be _________ by the Belgian Air Force before landing, which she felt grateful for their company.

Rutherford has been __________ traveling in small planes with her parents since she was six. She gained her pilot’s license in 2020 and started flying herself at 14. She __________ being an astronaut and she hopes her trip will get more women __________ in science, technology, and aviation.

Rutherford said, “Boys are taught to choose their __________ as scientists, astronauts, CEOs or presidents. Girls are often __________ to be beautiful, kind, helpful and sweet. With my flight, I want to show young women that they can be __________ and make their dreams come true.”

4 . A stranger helped a Jamaican athlete Hansle Parchment get to his Olympic race. He won gold and tracked her down.

As a star athlete, he is familiar with overcoming barriers(障碍). But he was _______ for a different kind: getting lost in Tokyo on the day of his Olympic race.

He _______ a video this weekend on social media explaining how _______ turned to hope after he met a “good Samaritan(善良之人)”, a（n） _______ working at the Games, who helped him to reach his final destination. In the video, Parchment said that he had been enjoying music while traveling to his race and was not _______ paying attention to what was happening around him.

“By the time I looked up, I realized this bus was going the _______ way,” he said. He got to what he believed was a centre for water sports _______ the athletics event. Officials on-site _______ him to take another bus back to the sports field——an action he knew could have resulted in his _______ the race. He then crossed paths with Stojkovic, who was volunteering at the Olympics. She helped him find transport and ________ his cost.

Parchment ________ on time to warm up and run, finally coming in first place and achieving his season’s best time at 13.04 seconds.

In the video, Parchment revisited the area where he had first ________ Stojkovic days ago, telling her, “You were ________ in my getting to the final that day.” He showed her his gold medal. Jamaican officials ________ Stojkovic as a good Samaritan and said an “official invitation” had been extended for her to visit.

Delighted with his win and his reunion with Stojkovic-Parchment gave her a yellow Jamaican Olympic polo shirt as a gift and left his fans with a message: “be ________ always.”

5 . Group-Centered Societies Have Just as Much Creativity

What does culture have to do with creativity? The answer could be “a lot”. For decades, psychologists trying to understand the roots of creative imaginations have looked at the ways in which two different types of cultures can come to have an effect over its artistic and _________ output. Individualistic cultures encourage people to be unique and to _________ their own interests even if doing so comes at a cost to the group overall. Collectivistic cultures are based on relationships and duties to other people. These types of cultures often _________ the individual’s wants for the needs of those who are close to them or for those in their community.

Individualism has long been thought to have a creative _________. Individualists _________ social convention, the logic goes, and that pushback supports innovation. For instance, around the world, individualistic cultures have more patents than collectivistic cultures do. _________, a new study suggests that these ideas about culture and creativity could be off base. People in collectivistic cultures actually do better with a particular type of creative thinking than those in individualistic cultures. And the findings overall reveal the shortcomings of thinking about innovation too _________.

The new work comes from comparing communities in different parts of China. Though it scores high, as a nation, on measures of cultural _________, China’s 1.4 billion people are more than just a single culture. People from areas north of the Yangtze River tend to be more _________, open to strangers and self-confident, whereas people along the river and farther south are often more inter-dependent, partial to friends over strangers and likely to try harder to __________.

In the new creativity study, researchers investigated innovation with these two groups in mind. The team used a drawing test that had been created by psychologists. They gave kids a sheet of paper with just a few basic elements printed on it: some dots here, squiggles (弯曲的线条) there, and a rectangle that suggested a drawing frame. The children got 15 minutes to use the elements already on the page to draw whatever they wanted. They could get “adaptive creativity” points for doodling in ways that connected the squiggles and lines into an original and __________ image. In addition, a judge checked whether the children chose to incorporate a small shape that could be found just outside the rectangular. This element was easy to __________, so those who included this outside-the-box detail could get points for “boundary-breaking creativity.”

The researchers gave the test to 683 middle school students from north and south of the Yangtze River. When the scientists got the scores back, they discovered that there were no differences in the children’s overall creativity. When they broke down the results into components, they found that students from collectivistic regions scored __________ in adaptive creativity while those from individualistic areas did better in boundary-breaking creativity.

The findings are also a warning against cultural chauvinism (极端民族主义). Western countries have tended to lead the way in innovation — at least as defined by the metrics (指标) we Westerners have created. Perhaps we have been __________ China’s adaptive creativity. For example, while the country may not have invented the assembly line, it is largely thanks to the __________ its people have made to this system that the country has such a thriving manufacturing sector today.

6 . The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate to higher-intensity physical activity each week, and it should be in ________ of at least 10 minutes each for substantial health benefits, which has led many to ________ about the inefficacy of brief activities. Why people take two minutes going up the stairs if more than 10 minutes is ________ to make it worthwhile for health?

But now a study suggests something else: go ahead, take the stairs! Every minute ________ toward reaching the 150-minute goal, whether it’s part of a 10-minute period of activity or not. The purpose of the study conducted at the University of Utah was to see if moderate to vigorous physical activity in less than 10-minute episodes was ________ to weight outcomes. The study, published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, found that each minute spent ________ in some kind of moderate to vigorous physical activity — be it walking the dog, vacuuming, or taking the stairs — was associated with lower BMI and lower weight.

“The idea here is, you can do a minute at a time and that’s not a problem,” Jessie Fan, lead author of the new paper and a family and consumer studies professor at the University of Utah, told Today.

For the women who participated in the study, each minute spent in higher-intensity activity was associated with a 0.7 drop in body mass index (BMI). For a 5'4" woman, that means a ________ of nearly half a pound, which may not sound like much, but that’s just for one minute. Little by little, they add up.

The authors concluded that the current 10-minute ________ guideline was based on health benefits other than weight outcomes and that their findings showed that for weight gain ________, accumulated higher-intensity physical activity bouts of less than 10 minutes are quite ________, supporting the message that “every minute counts.”

When it comes to your brain, it also rings true. An April 2019 study in Jama Network Open looked at how exercise affected the brain, and even short bursts ________ 22% greater brain volume.

“Our study results don’t ________ moderate or vigorous physical activity as being important for healthy ageing. We are just adding to the science, ________ that light-intensity physical activity might be important too, especially for the brain,” Dr. Nicole Spartarno, first author of the study from Boston University said.

“I think it’s easier for people to ________ that message,” Fan says. “Otherwise, if they don’t have a block of time they might be ________, and they don’t do anything.”

7 . “A revolutionary approach on how to connect our world without being super-weird... In the Iceland-verse, there’s... skies you can see with your eyeballs, volcanic rocks you can caress, and really big geysers (间歇泉) you can observe from a safe distance.” So _________ a viral advertisement designed to lure tourists to Iceland. The target of the parody (滑稽的模仿) is Mark Zuckerberg in _________, and Silicon Valley in general, for whom the idea of the “metaverse (元宇宙)” — a sort of 3d sequel (续集) to today’s two-dimensional internet, in which users work, play, buy and sell inside immersive virtual worlds- has become the latest Next Big Thing.

Iceland’s tourist board is not the only _________. When, on October 28th, Mr. Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta Platforms, to signal his _________ to the new idea, many assumed it was a PR stunt (公关伎俩) to divert attention from the social-media giant’s scandals. Mr. Zuckerberg may well prefer to think about exciting new products than deal with the downsides of his existing ones. And exaggerated advertising is the water in which techies swim. _________, to stop the analysis there would be too dismissive. There are good reasons to take the metaverse seriously.

One is historical: as computers have become more capable, the _________ that they generate have become richer. The internet began its life displaying nothing more exciting than white text on a black background. Flat _________ were added in the 1990s. Video came to dominate in the 2010s. Therefore, a(n) _________ into three dimensions is a logical consequence of the steady growth in computing power.

That progression is more than merely _________. The video-game industry has been selling virtual worlds for years. “Ever Quest”, an online game launched in 1999, had half a million subscribers ____________. (Players quickly co-opted (选择) it for socializing, and even ____________, as well as dragon-slaying.) “World of Warcraft,” which arrived five years later, ____________ 12 million, with many players spend their real money on virtual goods. It is hard to argue that an idea will never ____________ when, for millions of people, it already has.

Finally, mockers (嘲笑) is a(n) ____________ guide to the future. When YouTube was launched in 2005, commentators wondered why anyone would what to watch spotty teenagers filming themselves in their bedrooms. The two decades, online dating has taken its place as a perfectly normal way to meet people. Smartphones are some of the bestselling devices ever built. In the 1990s their brick-sized predecessors were considered ridiculous status symbols for insecure investment bankers.

This does not mean every Silicon Valley brainwave will automatically succeed. Nor does it mean a fully grown metaverse will arrive overnight. But it does suggest that something metaverse — ____________ lying in the relatively near future is an idea worth taking seriously.

8 . When I started the Fit Nation programme, I was a big guy. Seven months later, I'm still a big guy. I've run endless miles, biked endless hills and swum endless laps. Is there _______ of me? Yes. Am I fitter? Yes. Am I healthier? _______ . But am I finished? NO WAY！

There has been quite a debate ranging in recent years about _______ you can be "fat and fit” . There's no easy answer to that question. Perhaps the answer varies from person to person as our goals _______ .

Over the years, everyone in the Fit Nation family has achieved great success, but in many cases, the pounds don't always dramatically _______ . We've all gained strength and improved our cardiovascular(心血管的)health, but I never _______ this as a weight-loss programme. At least for me, the real changes have been in my body（more muscles and less fat）, my overall endurance and my mental _______ .

I've learned that being healthy is ultimately about being honest with myself. It's about being honest about what I can accomplish and what I can _______ to accomplish in the short term and in the long term. While I'm _______ now than I was at the beginning of the year, I still have improvements to make and fitness to ________ . I hope to continue making gains for the rest of my life.

Setting goals is really pretty simple when you think about it. A ________ is something for which you're willing to work. And you get what you want by planning and putting that plan into ________ . I have more goals to set and more success to ________ .

The only true measure of my accomplishment is how far I've come and how much farther I have to go. Most ________ , I've come to understand that fitness is a journey and not a ________ .

9 . Last winter we had to put our two dogs, which accompanied us for a long time, and couldn’t live along because of old age, to sleep. The house felt so _________ but we weren’t ready for a new dog. Instead, we _________ two cats. Then a few weeks ago one of our cats never came back home and the house was now too _________ . My husband, who’s a _________ vet with PTSD (创伤后应激障碍) and other issues, saw a dog up for _________ at a local shelter. The _________ read, “ good with cats. ” So we made an _________ to meet her. Later we _________ she came from an abusive home and was _________ afraid of men. Her trainer had __________ her all year to get her to a point where she was even adoptable. After an hour with the trainer, we got to __________ her. It was love at first __________ and she even let my husband pet her.

We took her home. She’s a little scared and shy but is warming up to her new __________ of humans and cats. That night we also __________ that we adopted her exactly 8 years after our Husky died. Her name is karma.

All week we’ve been walking around the house and property __________ saying “ good karma ” to reassure her. It makes me smile and so I just really feel like sharing it with you.

10 . Elizabeth Buechele, the founder of The Smile Project, from the age of 17 has set out to find the true meaning of ______. Starting as one of her many ______ accidents, The Smile Project began in the late fall of 2011 as Liz ______ home.

“It was unusually warm and I had my windows down and my radio up. I couldn’t tell you a single ______ that was on the radio, but I ______ I was happy,” she recalled. “I got home and ______ a Facebook status stating, “Day 1: Happiness is… those ______ car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs.”

As day 1 turned into day 2, 3, 4 and now nearly 3,307 days of finding joy, this practice has ______ into “The Smile Project”, a campaign with one simple ______ : share joy.

Liz Buechele admits that it was ______ initially to stay true to the commitment of finding joy every day but she ______ that there is no day without joy and she felt moved to ______ one each day. Many people are ______ as she shares, “It’s easy to feel that what we do is so ______, but none of us is truly able to grasp the profound impact that our lives will have on one another. Happiness and kindness are just another way to ______ love and that’s something we could all use a little more of right now.”