1 . In 2017, Hurricane Harvey destroyed larger areas of southern Texas and Louisiana. Heavy rains _________ on Houston, resulting in around $125 billion of damage. Nearly 40,000 residents became homeless. The _________ weight of the floodwater caused Houston to _________ two centimeters.

On the morning of August 27, Jim McIngvale got ready to go for work. But the businessman was _________ to see the enormous damage as he made his way through water to his furniture store. McIngvale was _________ to help his community. He invited residents to his Gallery Furniture store for food and _________. He also arranged for his trucks to rescue around 200 residents who were _________.

But that was not the _________. When Thanksgiving came around, McIngvale hosted dinner for the _________ of surrounding communities. Hundreds of volunteers prepared around 5,000 pounds of turkey and ham. Up to 6,000 meals were __________ that day. McIngvale also __________ a group of rescue workers in that hurricane to fly out to Los Angeles and watch the Houston Astros play in the World Series.

McIngvale has used his __________ for many good deeds over the years. The 68-year-old has raised awareness of mental health __________, funding a related hospital, and __________ furniture to local schools. The core of living is __________. That’s McIngvale’s simple motto.

2 . I seldom believe in luck, but I have really had a string of the bad kind lately. Last week my 15-year-old washing machine ________. I tried to fix it online but ________ realized the repairs would cost more than a(n) ________ machine. Then this week my daughter’s broke, too. Once again, it was beyond any easy repair. I ended up having to ________two new washing machines, putting a couple of big decreases in my credit cards. Both got ________ quickly but l was still annoyed about the ________ period I was going through.

Somehow my ________ traveled back to my childhood. I saw Mum’s hand loading an old fashioned wringer (绞拧器) washing machine with my dirt jeans and muddy shirts. She had to put each ________ through a pair of wringers. After the washing she would often pat the machine ________ — growing up hand washing clothes she was deeply ________ for the machine that did so much of the work for her.

I began to think about it. I have been blessed with so much more than Mum, yet I was ________ in the problems and ________ of modern life instead of thanking for all I have. I felt guilty and thanked for that ________memory.

The good old days had their share of struggles as well as ________. So do the good new days. What ________is how we live and what we learn from them.

3 . Nearly five decades ago, in 1977, Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, observed a contradiction. Cancer begins as mutation(突变)in a single cell. Organisms with more cells, ________, should have a higher risk of developing it. Whales, which have 1,000 times as many cells as human beings do, should be increasingly ________ to tumors(肿瘤). In fact, they are blessed with extremely ________ rates of cancer. Huge bodies and tumor resistance have evolved together. The secret of ________ cancer may therefore be hidden in the genes of giants.

Inspired by Peto’s paradox, as this contradiction has come to be known, researchers are exploring rates of cancer and resistance to cancer in thousands of animal species, with an emphasis on ________. Their hope is to translate the animals’ cancer-fighting talents into treatments for people.

Dr Tollis found that as ancestral whales grew, numerous ________ to their tumor-suppressing(抑制)genes hopped on board. He and his colleagues identified 33 known tumor-suppressing genes in humpback whales that showed evidence of ________ changes. These included ATR, which detects damage to DNA and ________ the cycle of cell division that cancer-promoting mutations encourage; AMER1, which kills cell growth; and RECK, which ________ metastasis, the tendency of cancer cells of peel off their initial tumor and wander around the body looking for other sites to colonize. Humpback whales also have duplications(复制)in genes that ________ apoptosis, the process that commands mutated cells to commit suicide. All this suggests that the evolution of gigantism in cetaceans(鲸类动物)is associated with strong selective pressure ________ genes that conquer cancer.

Cancer biologists are ________ with ART, AMER 1 and RECK because people have them too. But whales may also harbor tumor-fighting genes ________ to science. The next step is therefore to irradiate(辐照)laboratory-grown lines of whale cells in order to encourage ________ mutations. The eventual goal is to discover which strategies whale genes use to fight cancer. Researchers will do this by transferring whale genes into human cell lines, ________ those cells with radiation, and then seeing if the whale genes attempt to repair the DNA damage - as human genes often do - or opt for the often more effective method of triggering apoptosis(细胞凋亡).

4 . I walked into the post office with a huge smile and an excited heart. My story had been accepted for ________ in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. I had read the e-mail three times before I actually ________ it. Grasped firmly in my hand was the form giving ________ to print my story. I had decided to send it back through the mail just to be ________ it reached its destination.

“That will be ten dollars,” the clerk said, “Our system is out of order today, so we can only ________ cash or check,” said the clerk.

I searched my ________ for cash in dismay (沮丧). Before the pandemic, I carried cash. Now, I ________ did, shuddering (发抖) to think of bills and coins passing through scores of germy fingers. Tears ________ my vision. Then a man behind me said, “I’ll take care of it.” I turned to meet his ________ gaze as he held out a ten-dollar bill. “Just pay it forward,” he said.

As I walked back toward my car, I ________ a credit card on the sidewalk, I played detective for several blocks, ________ to find the owner. As I finally handed a young woman her lost card, she wiped away a solitary (单独的) tear and said to me, “You ________ my day.”

During my drive home, I thought that being on both the receiving and the giving end of kind ________ felt equally good. I had ________ a literal interpretation of paying it forward - first with cash, then with credit. When it ________ acts of kindness, all forms of payment are acceptable.

5 . I sat staring out of the window, holding back tears, as the old red bus moved along one of the main highways in Guatemala City. For nine months I had been _______ in the Guatemalan capital with an aid organization that helps _________ living and working on the streets. I found the work challenging and _______, but my repeated attacks of poor _______ had led the organization’s doctor to order me to fly back home.

Now I faced having to say goodbye to the children and workmates I had come to _________ about; and I found myself on the bus feeling very ill, and _________. It was while I was sitting there, absorbed in_______,that an elderly woman sat down next to me as if I were an old friend. She _______ only a worn bag and a small bunch of yellow flowers carefully _______ in a sheet of newspaper. She stayed next to me for the remainder of her journey, __________ happily about her family and asking about mine.

As she __________ to leave, she pulled half the bunch out of the newspaper. She pushed them into my arms and gave me a blessing before getting off the __________ . Feeling much less alone, I held __________those beautiful flowers; a __________that even when life takes unexpected turns, there is still beauty to be found and __________ to be shared.

6 . JESSICA WELLS had always wanted to be a nurse. In 2006, she ______ to the Associate Science of Nursing (ASN)program. ______, her GPA wasn’t high enough to make the cut, so she was______ as a general education student, hoping to improve her academic ______.

Eventually, Wells, who is deaf, blossomed, ______ the accommodations(调和) that the college offered to her, such as volunteer note takers and ______ who accompanied her in class.

After college administrators asked an employee whether Wells, a ______ girl, would make it as a nursing student, the employee reported that “the deaf-of hearing individual can be ______ as both a medical student and a nurse.” Wells, then in her mid-20s, was accepted into the ASN program in fall 2007.

On January 22, however, just before the spring 2008 semester began, Wells received a letter from the school, ______ her from the program. The college decided that her “hearing loss would ______ limit (and in some cases completely limit) her ability to safely conduct ______ shifts.” On January 21, 2009, Wells made a protest to the Circuit Court of Greene County. She claimed that her failure to stay in the program ______ the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“She’d done just fine in her training,” says Wells’s lawyer, Rita Sanders. “The school’s decision had no ______.”

However, the college replied, arguing that the loss of hearing will ______ a direct threat to the health or safety of patients. Faced with such an injustice, Wells resolved to fight for herself and others facing the same ______.

7 . Zulema and Jose ran a small grocery store outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Little did they know that their baby would have a birth _______ that would throw them into uncertain waters for months.

Miguel was born with a cleft(唇裂), a condition neither of his parents had ever _______ of before his birth. Zulema cried for days and refused to _______ visitors. She said, “I was really _______ because I had never seen anything like this before.” The staff at the hospital where Miguel was born _______ them that his cleft was not only common, but very _______ . They soon left the hospital to see a(n) _______ but the doctor wasn’t as helpful as they’d hoped, so they got a new appointment—but it was _______ for months in the future. One day, a customer told the _______ about Smile Train, the world’s largest cleft-focused organization,   ________ that Smile Train partners with local hospitals worldwide, including in Buenos Aires.

Zulema and Jose ________ made an appointment at the nearby Asociacion PIELs. When Miguel was 4 months old, he had his first ________ , and Zulema learned how to bottle-feed him and give him post-surgical care. Miguel needed one more operation in a year to fully ________ his upper lip. He can now eat, speak, and most importantly, smile, with no ________ . When they first saw their son after his cleft was healed, they ________ in tears of pure joy and relief.

8 . Nisha Blackwell was putting herself through nursing school when she was laid off for the third time. To make matters worse, she couldn’t______ a gift after being invited to attend the birthday party of a close friend’s daughter just a few days later. “That’s______ I looked around and I said, ‘What do I have?’ I had a sewing machine still in a box,” she says.“ And 1 had this bag of clothes.’

Nisha had cloth and a sewing machine, but she didn’t______ know how to sew. So she turned to YouTube, and video by video, taught herself, “I was typing into YouTube: How to______a sewing machine...“ she remembers. I probably didn’t make the machine work______midnight and this was in the hot summer when my house didn’t have air conditioning. I remember just sting there, just sweating to death, but so______to make this thing for this party!”

She ______ making a box of hair bows(蝴蝶结发饰). She went to the party, restless, ______how people would receive the fact that they were handmade.“ It felt like it took forever to get to my gif,“ she says. “ I was so ______ because I kept imagining that these hair bows would just be like pieces of cloth that came out, and I felt like I must have done something wrong. But something ______happened. My friend _______the box out onto the high chair and I remember   all of the parents coming up to me saying, so ________! ‘Where did you get them? How did you do that? Can you make me some?’”

Nisha left the party with six customers and started getting _______ soon. She began training   other women from her______to produce the product.

“If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path. I make sure that I am looking back and helping, and make sure that I’m not just doing something that is only ______me.” Nisha says.

9 . After the earthquake, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I ________ to help at a hospital in Haiti——or how it would ________ my life.

Upon my arrival, I was ________ shocked by the poor conditions. The surgical beds were old and felt cold. The lights were ________. An overworked air conditioner hummed(发嗡嗡声) somewhere.

The next day started on a positive note. The first surgery was on an old man. His granddaughter was his bedside ________. She couldn’t be any more than 11, in a dirty dress, and the serious expression of someone far ________. She did not ________ her grandfather the entire time.

I explained the surgery to them and they agreed to ________. She walked alongside her grandfather while he was carried on the stretcher(担架) to the operating room, and then ________ outside in the courtyard.

Things went ________ during the operation. The surgery took a few hours, but as I walked out of the building, the young girl was still sitting there. When she saw me, she ________ to her feet. I slowed my pace and smile. She smiled and for the first time she looked her age.

The ________ image of life at the time of a disaster was replaced by the ________ of the young girl as we returned her grandfather to his bed. The smile, the hope in her eyes, the ________ to her grandfather — she smiled in spite of her surroundings. I was inspired by this case, and it supported me for the rest days as a volunteer in that month-long ________.

10 . Recently my wife and I were flying across the country and were about to board our flight when a woman sitting across had a medical episode.

I came back from the restroom. My wife leaned in to me and ______ “something’s wrong”.   The woman was ______ all over and quickly lost control of her body. I jumped up and ______ in front of her, asking if she was okay.

She ______ that when she was ______ to a lot of stress, her body went into a nerve overdrive. She added that she’d had this ______ condition for thirty years and would be “perfectly fine in just a bit”. She flew to visit her daughter so ______ that she forgot her medical ______ at home.

I asked if she needed a wheel chair, she nodded. My wife called in an airport worker and presented our ______ . I stayed behind to keep her ______ on board, but the worker misunderstood that she was having a stroke (中风).

I ______ for her that, despite her forgetting the papers, her condition would soon ______ .The worker agreed to let her board with my ______ Just like the woman said, then she was perfectly fine.

Luckily, I was right there and didn’t hesitate to ______. Everyone has their own ______ and sometimes needs someone to care.