2 . As a child, I didn’t enjoy cartoons like other girls my age, but I did love listening to discussions about politics (政治). I was very talkative and asked too many questions, which wore out the patience of my friends and sometimes even the adults around me. My Grade 4 report summarized my social relations with “needs improvement”.

It wasn’t until I turned 46 that I learned my uniqueness has a name — autism (自闭症). My diagnosis (诊断) was like discovering a missing piece of my brain, picking it up, putting it in place and feeling whole for the first time. From then on, I started to fully enjoy life. What I’ve found out since is that there are a number of others like me — people who weren’t diagnosed as having autism until midlife.

In my 20s, I talked with a doctor about my growing anxiety. But autism never entered the conversation. In early 2017, I began a new job in which I was being praised and recognised as never before, so I didn’t know how to deal with it. As I neared the end of my one-year work, all the symptoms (症状) of my undiagnosed condition appeared in my working environment: becoming so stressed out because of overwork. Then, two months later, I received my diagnosis. Finally everything started to make sense.

Today, I have my own company called Liberty Co., which suggests that facing the facts brings us freedom. Our goal is to increase the population of people like me in the workplace. It gives me a chance to be a supporter for women with autism.

5 . Winter is often quite cold, which often makes us stay indoors more instead of heading out to exercise. Worse still, there are many viruses(病毒) doing their best to make you sick. And sneezing, coughing and nose blowing make the rooms a habitat for viruses.     1    Touching a doorknob or shaking a hand may make you get sick. Although it may sound terrible, there are still some things you can do to avoid viruses. Here are several simple tips to stay healthy in winters.

Wash your hands. You pick up viruses everywhere and they live on your hands, so wash your hands and do it often.     2    . But if that’s not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer (消毒杀菌剂).

    3    :Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with your hands. That’s one way viruses can get into your body.

Get the flu shot(疫苗).     4    , but getting the flu shot lowers your chances of getting the flu. For example, getting the flu shot last year resulted in a 34% lower risk of coming down with the flu.

Avoid sick people.     5     Viruses spread very easily through the air, so keep at least six feet between you and the sneezing, sniffling and coughing person.

Tu Youyou is the first female scientist of the People’s Republic of China to receive the Nobel Prize for her contribution to the fight against malaria.

Tu Youyou was born     1     1930, in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. She     2     (study) medicine at university in Beijing between 1951 and 1955. After graduation, she completed many further training     3     (course) in traditional Chinese medicine. Her education was soon to prove very     4     (use). In 1969, she became head of     5     team intending to find a cure for malaria. They worked day and night. Two years later, they succeeded in     6     (make) qinghao extract, which could treat malaria in mice.

To speed up the process of trials on patients and ensure     7     (it) safety, her team volunteered to test qinghao extract on themselves first. Through trial and error, they     8     (final) discovered qinghaosu     9     is the most effective part of qinghao extract. Since then, it has benefited about 200 million malaria patients.

In her Nobel Lecture, Tu Youyou encouraged scientists     10     (explore) the treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine and raise it to a higher level.

9 . Flu is killing us. The usual response to the annual flu is not enough to fight against the risks we currently face, let alone prepare us for an even deadlier widespread flu that most experts agree will come in the future. Yes, we have an annual vaccine , and everyone qualified should get it without question. The reality, however, is that less than half Americans get the flu vaccines. And the flu vaccines we have are only 60% effective in the best years and 10% effective in the worst years. We urgently need a much more effective flu vaccine.

In the U.S. alone, seasonal flu can cause up to 36 million infections, three-quarters of a million hospitalizations and 56,000 deaths. We are not investing the resources needed to protect ourselves, our loved ones and our communities.

Why not? We haven’t been hit by a truly destructive widespread disease in a long time. So as individuals, we let down our guard as our leaders quietly defund and destaff the services we need to protect us.

The risk of continued foot dragging is huge. In a severe widespread disease, the U.S. health care system could be defeated in just weeks. Millions of people would be infected by the virus, and would die in the weeks and months following the initial outbreak.

The cost of preventing epidemics   is roughly a tenth of what it costs to cope with them when they hit. In 2012, a call was issued for an annual billion-dollar U.S. commitment to the development of a universal flu vaccine. Six years later, the search for a universal vaccine remains seriously underfunded.

The simple reason lies in our collective satisfaction. As soon as headlines about the flu are gone, hospitals are emptied of flu patients, and school and workplace absence rates decline, we go back to business as usual.

Leading scientists and public health officials have the capability to keep us much safer from flu. They need your quick and decisive support to succeed. Your action today may be a matter of life and death for you and your loved ones.