1 . What is identity theft?

Identity theft occurs when someone steals your personal information to take over your credit accounts, open new ones, access bank accounts, or commit many other crimes in your name and at your expense. When it strikes, the effects can be disastrous. What’s more, because it frequently involves no physical theft, identity theft may not be noticed by its victims until significant damage has already been done-often several months and thousands of pounds later. It’s estimated that more than 100, 000 people are affected by identity theft in the UK each year, costing the British economy over £1.3 billion annually.

How does it happen?

These are some of the ways crooks get hold of your personal information:

• Fake emails

You may receive an email seemingly from, say, your bank requesting that you follow a link and key information into a website that looks very similar to your bank’s own site but is in fact a fake.

• Pretext phone calls

A crook pretending to be an official from, for example, your bank may phone up asking you to give personal or account details as a security check.

• Dishonest people

Sometimes sales assistants,unbeknown(不知情的) to you, swipe your card through a machine which records its details. At the workplace, a fellow employee can use your personal details fraudulently.

How can you protect yourself?

Be careful who you give your personal details to, and tear up documents like credit-card slips before you throw them away. Don’t make this serious crime easy for crooks!

2 . In 1910, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about a boy who was charged with opening a valve (阀门) on a water pump powered by a steam engine to release the built-up pressure. His whole job consisted of staring at these machines all day, which was incredibly boring. The “ lazy ” boy then invented a release for the pump to run just as it should and won his freedom. The first automatic steam engine was born.

This story may be fictional, but the boy’s behavior reflects a deeper truth. When we are feeling lazy, we often search for an easier way, trying to update the process and save time and effort. In other words, laziness can drive innovation.

In recent years, some psychologists and business leaders have wised up to this insight, changing our perspective of what laziness really means. Both Bill Gates and Walter Chrysler have been credited with a quote: “ I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it. ”

Our brains are born for laziness. Compared with our ancestors who had to conserve energy to compete for food, flee from predators, and fight, we now don’t take survival as a daily issue. It seems natural that we would choose to be “lazier” , but the opposite has occurred. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans sleep less and work more than we used to; productivity per worker has gone up 400 percent since 1950. Our culture teaches us that our worth depends on how industrious we are, so we work even harder to produce even more.

But there’s one big paradox (悖论), sad but true: The harder we work, the less productive we are. When demand increases, we tend to push harder. Yet the trouble is that, without any refresh and recharge, we are less efficient, make more mistakes, and get less engaged with what we’re doing.

Therefore, how can we make our labor more meaningful and our lives more fulfilling? Current research in psychology and neuroscience points to a new understanding of the value of the wandering mind. Taking breaks and allowing your thoughts to drift can help your brain retain information, refocus, and gain fresh perspective.

Here’s the core problem: When the time finally comes to put our feet up, we often don’t know how. We have little training in how to be idle. But at least give it a shot. Maybe this week, notice some downtime in your day, some white space in your calendar. Instead of filling the space with more work, just sit in the sofa, and be, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, “ idle and blessed. ”

4 . Artistic activities like taking a painting class or visiting a gallery are becoming increasingly popular today.     1     However, scientific studies have shown that art plays a critical role in promoting health and well-being.

Art is found to be effective in relieving stress. This applies to both children and adults. Activities such as painting, drawing, and sculpting have been linked to lower stress and mental calmness. They take participants’ mind off busy daily work.     2    

Another great benefit of art is that it encourages both kids and adults in imagination and creative thinking. It helps develop and improve problem-solving skills.     3     That allows people to imagine different solutions to problems. This type of creative thinking allows the brain to perform complicated functions in ways that learning a new language does.

    4     It drives the brain to produce a hormone (激素) that makes people feel good about themselves, improves concentration, and increases motivation, providing a sense of accomplishment. After completing a creative project, people will feel happy and satisfied. This process of creating something unique can promote a sense of well-being and even slow down aging.

Sharing the creative process of making art is a great way to help students build their social awareness and interpersonal skills. This can remind schools to have students work with seniors in the community!     5     Creating visual arts helps in transforming lives of people with brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease by increasing connections, promoting cell growth and improving memory.

Over the centuries, farmers     1     (discover) thousands of different species of food crops. Each species has special qualities. To feed the seven billion people on Earth, most farmers today are growing only species of plants that are easy     2    (produce) in large numbers. Meanwhile thousands of other species are becoming extinct. For example, in China, 90 percent of the wheat     3     (vary) grown just a century ago have disappeared.

One solution     4     this problem is to collect and preserve the seeds of as many different species as we can     5     they disappear. This idea     6     (suggest) for the first time by Russian scientist Nikolay Vavilov. In     7     1920s and 1930s, he collected around 400,000 seeds from five continents. There are now around 1,700 seed banks in countries around the world. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which preserves almost one million seed samples, has one of the     8     (large) collections.

In the US, Diane Ott Whealy and her husband founded Heritage Farm, a place     9     people can store and trade seeds. By doing this, they are reintroducing foods into the marketplace     10     haven’t been grown for years.

9 . Will printed newspapers disappear one day? It’s quite possible. Here are some reasons.

First of all, printed newspapers aren’t the only way to get information. You can find the same information on the Internet. Besides, you can read a lot of information online for free, which makes the Internet even more attractive.

Lots of people are becoming Internet users and most of Internet users read news online. For example, I usually get new information about events that happen in the world by reading short messages on Twitter. As far as I know, students in our university hardly read newspapers. One can argue that older generations may have been used to reading printed newspapers and do not want to change anything, but research proves the opposite. According to a study, the number of Internet users aged between 70 and 75 has increased greatly within four years. This fact sounds strange, but some of Internet users are over 73 years old.

Where do newspapers get their money? The answer is “advertisers”. It is quite expensive especially when you have a lot of other opportunities. Online advertisements are becoming more and more popular. It is good to both sides because it is easier to track (追踪) how many clicks have been made on this link than to find out how many people have actually read a newspaper and paid attention to advertisements.

Also, printed newspapers are not environmentally friendly. They need tons of wood, lots of electricity and many delivery (运输) ways to produce and transport the papers.

10 . If having to make a choice between reading an e-book and a printed book, which would most people choose? Some would go for an e-book while some still prefer the hard-printed book.

Undoubtedly, e-books do have benefits. Firstly, changes to an electronic publication are relatively easy to make. They are quicker to obtain. E-books are more easily updated. The printed books on many subjects can become outdated very quickly. Secondly, e-books can be easily and quickly kept up to date. You usually get far more than just the e-books. Most e-books are sold with bonuses and related information that usually do not come with the purchase of a printed book. Moreover, they take up less space. Instead of a big library, you can fit literally thousands of books on your computer. It also makes it easier to share this information with families and friends.

For nearly twenty years, additionally, futurists have been predicting the development of printed books. The conventional view has been that digital e-books are on the verge of replacing paper books. However, this has not been the case. A printed book has its advantages too. Firstly, it is an object that can be carried and used alone. It needs no electric outlet (插座), no batteries, nothing. Secondly, e-books will always require some forms of support that the printed book does not need.

I believe that the online publishing has not taken off because people want real books. What is being published online more and more are pamphlets (小册子) and things that really do not need to be in print. These are stuff that people throw away afterward. More often, people do not want to read a book on the computer. What could be better than a paper book? It lasts a long time. These books are designed to last a long time without disappearing.

To sum up, there is no denying that the printed book is still very much preferred over its digital cousins. Reading electronic publications is just not the same when it comes to books. People are still very interested in real books and notebooks.