1 . In the early hours of the morning on April 17, Kevin Record, 43, was sleeping in his apartment on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England. His dog, Shogun, jumped onto the bed and ______ him up. Record’s e-scooter (电动摩托车) was sparking. In a sudden, the scooter’s battery ______ and the bedroom was quickly set on fire.

Though suffering serious life-changing ______ on the right-hand side of his body, Record managed to ______ from the flat and survive from the fire. ______, Shogun lost his life. “Losing my hero dog especially made me ______.” Record said. “He was everything to me. I’ll never ______ what he did for me.” Record added: “I can’t explain the ______ of the fire. I had never seen anything like that. Within seconds, it was like a fireball that ______ to everything in sight. It was so quick and ______.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) ______ to the apartment fire. They put out the fire but could not ______ any of Record’s belongings. Fire investigators believed that the ______ in Record’s e-scooter had been overheated while powering up, causing the scooter to catch fire.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Kevin promised he would routinely check his e-scooter and make sure it is in good working ______. After Kevin recovered from his injuries, the 43-year-old was hoping his experience would serve as a(n) ______ for anyone storing or charging e-scooters.

2 . One of Twitter’s main characters recently was a man who chose to keep his middle seat between a couple on a flight instead of moving to the side. The situation raised some questions: Who are these middle-seat lovers? What do they want?

Many of the thousands of replies suggested that the majority of the flying public cannot understand why someone would ever choose the middle over a window or an aisle (走廊). But among the majority appeared a few people who endorse middle seats. “In the middle seat I don’t feel I should lean one way or another and generally sit pretty comfortably,” one person wrote. Another added: “I’m not getting hit by someone walking down the aisle or luggage either.”

Kyle Burke, in Florida, said on Twitter that he usually exchanged seats when asked. “I didn’t want to sit between a couple that were upset with me,” he told The Washington Post. At 6-foot-7, Burke, 41, said he didn’t fit well in plane seats, anyway. So, he preferred the middle, which gives him double chance of having a chatty neighbor.

Frederick resident Samantha Jones told The Post by email that she usually chose the middle seat when traveling alone. As a mother of three, “Having personal space is a far-off memory.” she said. “Middle seats have the least amount of responsibility,” she wrote. “I don’t control the window shade and only have to get by one person to get out or to go to the bathroom.”

Despite the few fans, middle seats are still not likely to get much respect. “There’s nothing good in the middle seat,” Scott McCartney, the writer of the journal Middle Seat said. “The position’s infamy (臭名昭著) was part of the reason for the journal’s name.” He added: “People really care about the ‘middle seat’, so they are more likely to pick up this magazine on seeing it.”

3 . Saodat Sadikova is an English teacher in Jizzakh, Uzbekistan. As a young girl, she dreamed of becoming a flight attendant (空乘人员) and traveling the world, so she learned at least three languages. Although she was not able to become a flight attendant, Sadikova could speak Uzbek, Russian, English and Turkish. Sadikova has never traveled abroad but reports feeling connected to people around the world.

American Trina Bright worked in education for nearly 25 years and she traveled to many countries, including China and South Africa. Bright used stories from her travels to help her students in the U. S. understand their place in the world and see value in their own cultures. But Bright, unlike Sadikova, does not report feeling connected to people around the world.

Bright is not alone. Pew Research Center recently asked people in 24 countries a series of questions about how connected they feel to the world to see how travel experience relates to feelings of connectedness.

The study found that respondents (调查对象) who had traveled to at least one other country feel more connected to people around the world. 99 percent of respondents in the Netherlands reported having visited at least one other country and 77 percent of respondents from the Netherlands said they feel at least somewhat close to people all over the world. But international travel does not always mean a person feels a closeness to people around the world. 99 percent of Swedish respondents said they had visited at least one other country. Yet a much smaller number of Swedish respondents—47 percent—report feeling close to people all over the world.

Sadikova said she felt connected to the world because of media, which makes it quite easy to get to know events and news.

4 . New research from the University of Portsmouth has shown a marked increase in shipping in the North East Atlantic. Scientists now warn that more monitoring is required to help protect sea life.

Researchers at the University of Ponsmouth have discovered that rates (率) of shipping in the North East Atlantic area rose by 34 per cent in a five-year period. The research is the first detailed survey of shipping activity in the North East Atlantic. Researchers used data from over 530 million vessel (船) positions recorded by Automatic Identification System(AIS). They looked at the change in shipping between 2013 and 2017 across ten different vessel types. In total the study area covered 1.1 million km², including waters off Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany,Iceland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal. Spain, and the UK.

Lead author, James Robbins said: “This change is likely to put more pressure on the marine (海洋的) environment, and may influence the protection of at-risk species. Renewed monitoring effort is needed to make sure that protective measures are enough to save species under threat in a changing environment.”

Some of the greatest shipping increases were found in areas close to the Spanish coast. The Espacio Marino de la Costa da Morte saw a rise of 413 percent in vessel activity. It is an area used to protect seabirds.

Dr. Sarah Marley, Visiting Researcher at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Shipping is the most widespread human activity in our oceans, carrying a set of threats-from unnoticeable effects like underwater noise pollution to serious results when ships hit whales.”

Professor Alex Ford. from the University’s Institute of Marine Sciences, said: “Given the well-documented effects that shipping can have on the marine environment, it is necessary that this situation continues to be monitored-particularly in areas used to protect vulnerable (脆弱的) species which may already be under pressure.”

This year’s winter has proven an important season for Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang province, as interest     1     the icy destination greatly increased after social media posts showed many citizens from the     2     (warm) south flooding into the snowy city. It     3     (welcome) nearly 3.05 million visitors, taking in $832.39 million of tourism revenue (收入), during the three-day New Year holiday.

To facilitate the consumption of Harbin’s popular frozen pears, the city has even introduced frozen pear plates, making     4     easier for tourists to enjoy the delicacy. Moreover,     5     (attract) more tourists and improve overall services, Harbin has rolled out a     6     (vary) of activities, including live performances on New Year’s Eve, firework displays, theme parks, intangible heritage culture shows and concerts. A series of     7     (measure) have also been introduced to enhance the visitor experience in Harbin, covering areas such as dining, accommodation, travel, shopping and entertainment.

It is these careful and considerate details     8     make sure that tourists feel warmly embraced, cared for and respected. Consequently, their positive experiences are     9     (wide) shared on the internet,     10     (contribute) to Harbin’s “internet celebrity” city status.

8 . There’s a part of your brain that processes faces. It’s located, according to scientist Nancy Austen, in the area “just behind and underneath, and a bit from your right ear.” It’s called the fusiform gyrus (梭状回).     1    . You’ll tell yourself, “That’s Bob.” It also sends out messages to other parts of the body that add emotions to the information, such as “I like him. He’s my friend.”     2     when an accident, illness, or hereditary gene (遗传基因) breaks the connections between the fusiform gyrus and other parts of the brain?

There are people who may see a particular person’s face every day of their lives and still not recognize it. They see a nose, teeth, and cheeks, but when these are put together, they cannot keep a memory of it.     3    . Researchers say that as many as 1 in 50 people suffer from some form of the condition.

    4    . Another best known sufferer of prosopagnosia is the neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Sacks, a famous author of the best-selling books, one of which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. As a lifelong sufferer of extreme face blindness, Sacks has said that his condition is so severe that he often doesn’t recognize his own face.

Sufferers of face blindness must develop other ways of recognizing coworkers, friends, and family.     5    . Jane Goodall says, “I usually make up for it by pretending to recognize everybody. And then, if they say, ‘But we haven’t met before,’ I say, ‘Well, you look just like somebody I know.’ ”