2 . Twins may be more common today than at anytime in history. Researchers analyzed records from 165 countries and found a significant rise in twin birth rates since the 1980s, with one in 42 people now born a twin. According to the survey, the global twin birth rate has risen by one-third, on average, over the past 40 years.

“The trends are really quite striking,” said Christiaan Monden, a professor at Oxford University. “Over the past 40 years we’ve seen a strong increase in twinning rates in rich and developed countries. Globally, twinning rates have risen from nine to twelve per 1,000 births since the 1980s, but the picture varies from country to country. The greatest rises are seen in North America (71%), Europe (60%) and Asia (32%). In the UK, twinning rates rose about 62%. In the Oxford study, a decrease of more than 10% was found in only seven countries over the dates surveyed. “The absolute number of twin deliveries (分娩) has increased everywhere except South America,” Monden said. “In North America and Africa, the numbers have increased by more than 80%, and in Africa this increase is caused almost entirely by population growth.”

Raj Mathur, a doctor at St. Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, said, “It doesn’t surprise us that twinning rates have increased because the availability of assisted reproduction (生殖) has increased and also because women are slightly older when they have their first children, and both those things will increase the twinning rate.”

“The majority of twin babies are completely fine, but there is no doubt that a twin pregnancy (怀孕) carries greater risks for the mother and the baby. So when we can avoid it, we should avoid it. The principle we follow is simply summed up by the phrase ‘one at a time’,” Mathur said.

3 . The word mukbang is from the Korean words “muk-ja” (let’s eat) and “bang- song” (广播). Hosts eat amounts of food in front of a camera while interacting with their audience. The show appeared first in South Korea, where the videos became popular via live stream(直播)channels.

The show comes from South Korea but other countries follow in significantly different ways. Take America as an example, Koreans plan their streams around dinnertime hours so viewers can feel like they are sharing a meal with a friend. And yet Americans tend (倾向于) to be more conversational in their videos which are pre-recorded. Korean mukbangers tend to eat traditional Korean dishes while American mukbangers eat a wider variety of foods.

Why are millions of people so drawn to watching perfect strangers eat in the first place? It’s a combination of sensory, psychological, social, emotional, environmental even neurological factors, says Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist at Brown University Alpert Medical School. She specially explains how food attracts our senses and develops our behavior when it comes to what we like to eat. A big part of that neurological factor is the ASMR (autonomous sensory-motor response), described as a brain feeling which can help people relaxed from the familiar sounds of eating in the mukbang videos.

Earning the popularity and money, more and more mukbangers appear. However, the show has not come without its unfavorable comments. As our habits change, we spend more and more social engagement on social media. It’s only a matter of time before mukbang affects our behavior around food. Viewers could probably develop unhealthy eating habits from watching. Despite the negative comments, mukbang continues to do well on the Internet and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.

5 . One Saturday afternoon in a small town, Emma came out of a shoe shop with some new shoes. They were _________ shoes, but Emma was very _________ with them. She was seventy-three years old and did not have much money. She began to _________ home.

It was a _________ town and there was nobody in the street. _________, Emma heard something behind her. She did not have time to look, because just then somebody ran up behind her, hit her on the _________, and snatched(抢夺)her bag out of her hands. Emma _________.

“Help! Help!” Emma cried. But nobody came. Emma _________ got up and went to the nearest house. The people there were very _________ and gave Emma a cup of tea. Soon an ambulance came and took her to a __________.

At the hospital a doctor looked at Emma’s head and back and told her to stay in hospital for a few days. Emma thanked the __________.

Later, a policeman __________ the hospital and Emma told him about the bag-snatcher. The policeman __________ a small bag. In it there were a lot of pictures of eyes and ears, hair and mouths. Carefully Emma took the small pictures and __________ a big picture of the young man’s face.

After two days, in a morning a policeman came to the hospital with Emma’s new shoes and an empty bag. “A little girl __________ them in the street and took them to the police station,” he said. “How kind she is! Thank you very much,” Emma said and felt happy, though she lost some money.

6 . The Housing Problem

With the high speed rising in prices of houses, it is difficult for wage-earners to afford an apartment. Recently, the housing problem has been a widespread topic for people.     1    . For one thing, land agents create smoke screens of lacking houses so as to raise the housing price.     2     They can borrow money from the banks to afford houses. And later they have to pay back gradually. What they have done causes fierce competition in estate (房地产) business and leads to increasing prices of houses.

Facing the housing problem, most people believe that, for their limited income, to purchase a house, the family members have to spend a whole life to save money for the house. It is beyond their consideration at all, so they have to live in a small house with a big family and it is very common in big cities that several generations live under the same roof.     3     Because their children have reached the age of about marriage, they badly need a house.

    4     Then how to solve the housing problem in big cities? Government should do practical things, such as building more cheap rooms for the poor.     5     Only through government’s effective guidance do many people have chances to consider it in a new way according to their own abilities.

9 . From video games and museums to medical training, virtual reality (VR) has been changing our lives for the better. However, this amazing new technology has a so-far unsolvable shortcoming: motion sickness. “With modern VR systems, the possibility of motion sickness after only 15 minutes is anywhere from 40 to 70 percent.” Thomas Stoffregen, a researcher told ABC News. Indeed, some VR applications have a user-sickness rate of nearly 100 percent!

When caused by VR, this sickness is called cybersickness. It’s probably caused by sensory conflict, explains Stoffregen. When you are wearing a VR device, your body’s motion sensors cannot match the information received by your eyes. For example, when we wear a VR headset and ride a virtual roller-coaster, we think we are going up and down, but our bodies stay still. It leads to confusion of balance and spatial orientation. Sickness is our bodies’ natural response to this confusion. Adding to this problem, Stoffregen says, “Women are more likely to feel sick from the VR experience than men.”

According to a study by Bas Rokers, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, one reason could be the headsets. To work properly, VR headsets must match up with your pupil distance. Since they are designed larger than the average PD, not everyone gets the best experience.

Rokers found that when the headset PD is too large, users experience greater discomfort. Based on his studies, about 90 percent of women have a shorter PD than the headset is designed for. In comparison, only 5 percent of men had this problem. ABC News says that cybersickness presents a “serious barrier” to widespread use of VR technologies. However, people believe it will become comfortable and easy to use and that it can play a great role in our lives.

A cruise ship     1     (carry) 456 people capsized(翻) on the Yangtze River in China's Hubei province. Officials say so far only 15 people     2     (survive).     3     is reported that the ship sank within a few     4     (minute), while many people were asleep. Most of those     5     board were tourists aged between 50 and 80 travelling from the eastern city of Nanjing to Chongqing. There is no doubt     6     for some of those on the Eastern Star it would have been the trip of a lifetime. One survivor,     7     tour guide said the ship began to shake     8     (violent) and capsized all of a sudden. A 65-year-old woman was among those     9     (save) from the ship by brave divers. She said she tried to hold on to     10     she could find to keep her head above water in the darkness until divers came to her rescue.