During the winter holiday, I volunteered at a nursing home to help look after the old people there. This experience allowed me    1     (have) a better understanding of the need to care for the elderly.

In the morning, I walked into the nursing home with a smile as bright    2     sunshine. I said hello to everyone. Then I    3     (join) the rest of the volunteers as they did their work.We cleaned tables    4    mopped the floor. We wanted to make the nursing home neat and     5     (comfort) to live in.

After     6     (clean), some of us gave the elderly haircuts, chatted with them, or cooked food for     7     (they) in the kitchen. I was busy putting up Spring Festival couplets (对联) .Seeing the elderly smiling, I felt a sense of joy deep in my heart. At the end of the day, everyone got together and sang the beautiful song Grateful Heart.

Respecting and loving the elderly is    8     traditional virtue (美德) . I think the only things the elderly    9     (real) need are company (陪伴) and love. By giving them love, we can also feel the kind of joy    10    can only be gained by giving.

4 . As the major habitat of wild Asian elephants, Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture (自治州) in Yunnan province has seen a growth in its population of elephants in recent decades.

On the one hand, the prefecture has made more than 20 rules and laws to further ________its environment and wildlife, which has contributed to the ________ population of wild animals.

On the other hand, business ________ are now not allowed in all of the prefecture’s nature reserves.

All of the Asian elephants in Yunnan ________ in the southern part of the province, which covers Xishuangbanna, and the cities of Pu’er and Lincang. To protect the Asian elephant, the prefecture ________ the area of its nature reserves, which has ________doubled from 24,000 hectares (公顷) in the 1980s to 41,466 hectares now.

In 1996, a Wild Asian Elephant Valley was built as the prefecture’s biggest wild animal ________ center. So far, more than 1,200 animals have been saved at the ________ In 2008, China’s first Asian elephant breeding (繁殖) base was also ________in the valley.

An increase in the ________of elephants is from decades-long ________protection. According to Dong Yonghua, the growing number of elephants means there is a ________need for living space for the species. “About 25 years ago, elephants could be seen only in Xishuangbanna and Lincang. Now, Pu’er has also become one of their ________” he said.

________, the prefecture has built several areas to provide ________ food resources for elephants in recent years.

5 . A heartwarming letter written by Yuan Longping, known as “the father of hybrid rice”, has caught people’s eyes as the nation is mourning (悼念) over his passing away. In 2010, at the age 80, Yuan wrote this letter in memory of his late mother, Hua Jing, and many are deeply touched by its sincerity (真情).

In the letter, entitled“The Rice is Ripe (成熟), Mom”, Yuan recalled the old days with his mother in Anjiang town in Central China’s Hunan province, where his mother was buried in 1989.

Born in a wealthy family in Yangzhou, eastern China’s Jiangsu province, Hua Jing was well educated and open-minded. She taught Yuan English when he was very young. Having never worked in the fields, Hua moved to Anjiang town to support her son’s family and research.

“Mom, the rice is ripe and I come back to Anjiang to see you... Every time when I was able to deliver a speech to the audiences from around the world or take a prize in my study, I always thought of you. You made me who I am. People say I’ve changed the world with one tiny rice seed but mom, I know you sowed (播种) the seed in me when I was a little boy.”

The total number of tigers in many countries has greatly decreased these years.     1    the development of Asia, many lands have been divided up for roads, farms, factories, and so on.     2    , tigers are losing their natural habitats.     3    (hunt) who kill wildlife     4    for human consumption or for illegal trade have reduced numbers of deer and other animals,     5     (make) tigers’ food insufficient. Some roads allow people to     6     (easy) get close to places where wild tigers live. Tigers     7     (kill) for their fur, bones and other body parts, many of     8    are used as ingredients in medicines. Even though the sale of tiger parts is illegal, some people still take     9    (risk). In 1920, scientists     10     (figure) out that there were 100,000 tigers in the wild. But today the number is in the low thousands.

9 . After men landed on the moon in 1969, astronauts around the world had a problem — there were no other places they could go! Even today, the other planets are still too far away for astronauts to fly to. So, while rockets and robots can go to other planets, flights with astronauts have to stay closer to home, at least for the time being.

Therefore, since visiting the manned space programs have turned their attention to solving problems related to living and working in space.

For the past decade, NASA’s manned space exploration program has focused on the space shuttle program. During that time, NASA operated three space shuttles: Discovery Atlantis, and Endeavor. Unfortunately, two of NASA’s shuttles, Challenger and Columbia were lost through accidents.

Seven astronauts died in each accident. While the shuttle program was going on, the shuttles flew over 120 missions. These missions included putting satellites into orbit, photographing the earth, studying space, conducting experiments related to working in space, and connecting with various manned space stations in orbit. Today, however, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor are no longer being flown. NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011.

As well as putting rockets and space shuttles into orbit, several space stations have been put into orbit. In 1986, the Soviet Union launched the Mir space station. Mir stayed in orbit until March 23,2001. Over that time,104 astronauts visited the station to stay for various lengths of time.

The person who has spent the longest in space so far is Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev Working aboard Mir and flying in other missions, Mr. Krikalev lived and worked in space for a total of 803 days,9 hours, and 39 minutes. That is more than two years in space.

Another space station, the International Space Station (ISS), is still in orbit today. The first part of this space station was launched in 1998.NASA added the final section to the ISS in 2010, officially completing the space station. In the long run, it is predicted that research done aboard the ISS will help scientists learn about living and working in space.

10 . Each year, Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute and his colleagues capture around 70 polar bears in Svalbard and fit them with a tracking collar which continuously records movement. Once a day the collar makes a satellite call, sending the last 24 hours of data back to the Institute. “Data from movement has been very important to understand how they react and how they might respond to climate change,” Aars explains.

A warming climate means a vast amount of the region, and rising temperatures are also preventing seasonal ice which melts and recurs annually from forming in places it once did. Several seal species — polar bears’ main prey (猎物) — rely on sea ice, and more often than not, so do polar bears. But these creatures are being forced to move with the times.

“Because conditions change, polar bears will spend more time on land and look for different options,” Aars explains. “They hunt reindeer and they will take more birds and eggs. We have seen that bears are in different areas than they used to be — so much further north.

“According to NASA, summer ice in the Arctic is decreasing by more than each decade, and this year the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported the second lowest levels of summer sea ice ever recorded. The 14 lowest levels of sea ice have all occurred in the past 14 years, according to the NSIDC.

“You don’t find polar bears anywhere in the Arctic where you don’t have sea ice at least seasonally,” says Aars! “Changes so significant and so fast: we will reach some stage in the future where it will get much harder to be a polar bear in Svalbard.”