Lonely Planet Trips

Here are some travel destinations by Lonely Planet. Reading them, you’ll be in a flash.

The Kingdom of Bhutan, located on the Silk Road in South Asia, claimed the No. 1 spot partly for its majestic beauty and because it had become the first fully organic nation by 2020. The kingdom has lush subtropical plains in the south and sub-alpine Himalayan mountains in the north, which include Gangkhar Puensum, Bhutan’s highest peak and is believed to be the highest unclimbed mountain in the world.

If you want an alternative to Europe's more popular travel spots, North Macedonia could be for you. Its mountains and their trails are “blissfully quiet” and the locals are “unfailingly helpful” according to Lonely Planet. Among its destinations is Ohrid, a charming, old town dotted with medieval ruins and churches, lined with cobblestone streets, and overlooking Lake Ohrid.

The kingdom offers multitudinous climate and topography differences, and is known for its wide varieties of wild animals, which include more than 500 bird species and 107 mammal species. The nation has seven nature reserves, four frontier conservation areas and three wildlife reserves.

Costa Rica is beloved for many reasons, from its coffee to its epic surfing. It’s also notable for its reliance on green energy sources. In fact, 90% of its energy is created by regenerative sources such as wind and hydro. It is also one of the world’s most biodiverse countries — home to half a million species. Of course, no trip to Costa Rica is complete without a visit to the Sloth Sanctuary.

He Zehui, a Chinese nuclear physicist, accomplished great things in physics and became an outstanding scientist.

Her family is famous for producing three famous women scientists, including her two sisters. She graduated from Tsinghua University in 1936 with a degree in physics, and then went on to study at the Technical University of Berlin, where she was the top in her class, outperforming her future husband Qian Sanqiang — China's "father of the atomic bomb”. In 1940, she earned a Ph. D. in Engineering.

The couple made great discoveries in the field of uranium fission （铀核裂变），which drew global attention and earned them worldwide reputations, also marking a milestone in the development of China's experimental fission physics. Many Western media called the couple the “Marie Curie and Pierre Curie of China”・

As one of the pioneers in nuclear science and technology in China, Professor He contributed a great deal to nuclear physics. During the 1950s, she started the research and development of nuclear emulsions（核乳胶）in China and their research reached the advanced world level at that time. He and her research group took the lead in building China's first nuclear reactor and accelerator. She was awarded the first Award of the National Prize of Natural Sciences for making outstanding achievements in supporting the national program of nuclear weapon development.

Throughout her career, He conquered many obstacles, and was always on the front lines of China's science-related work. She published dozens of papers yet placed little value on personal fame. The world's top physicists recognized He as a famous scientist, “ Chinese Madame Curie”.

He passed away in Beijing in 2011 at the age of 97, nearly 20 years after Qian Sanqiang. She dedicated herself to science, living a simple life, always nurturing young researchers and maintaining the highest standards that she had always valued. She loved her country and science; to both she is now an icon.

While many of us may have been away somewhere nice last summer, few would say that we’ve “summered.” “Summer” is clearly a noun, more precisely, a verbed noun.

Way back in our childhood, we all learned the difference between a noun and a verb. With such a tidy definition, it was easy to spot the difference. Not so in adulthood, where we are expected to “foot” bills, “chair” committees, and “dialogue” with political opponents. Chances are that you didn’t feel uncomfortable about the sight of those verbed nouns.

“The verbing of nouns is as old as the English language,” says Patricia O’Conner, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review. Experts estimate that 20 percent of all English verbs were originally nouns. And the phenomenon seems to be snowballing. Since 1900, about 40 percent of all new verbs have come from nouns.

Even though conversion (转化) is quite universal, plenty of grammarians object to the practice. Some most leading experts, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, in The Elements of Style—the Bible for the use of American English—have this to say: “Many nouns lately have been pressed into service as verbs. Not all are bad, but all are questionable.” The Chicago Manual of Style takes a similar standpoint, advising writers to use verbs with great care.

“Sometimes people object to a new verb because they resist what is unfamiliar to them,” says O’Conner. That’s why we’re comfortable “hosting” a party, but we might feel upset by the thought of “medaling” in sports. So are there any rules for verbing? Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief at Random House, doesn’t offer a rule, but suggests that people think twice about “verbifying” a noun if it’s easily replaceable by an already existing popular verb. Make sure it’s descriptive but not silly-sounding, he says.

In the end, however, style is subjective. Easy conversion of nouns to verbs has been part of English grammar for centuries; it is one of the processes that make English “English”. Not every coined word passes into general use, but as for trying to end verbing altogether, forget it.

Humans are not the only ones that like gold. Australian scientists have discovered a new fungus (真菌) that decorates its long, thread-like tendrils (卷须) with gold collected from the soil. The experts desperately hope the “gold digger” will provide information on the locations of gold deposits and make searching for the precious metal easier, and more environmentally friendly.

The gold-loving fungus was discovered accidentally by a team of researchers led by Dr. Tsing Bohu, a scientist at Australia national science agency, CSIRO, when they were examining the microbes (微生物) in the soil at Boddington, a tiny town home to Australia’s largest gold mine.

A closer analysis suggested that the fungus uses chemical interactions with underground minerals to accumulate gold from its surroundings. Though fungi often interact with other things in nature, the reaction with gold was unexpected. ―Fungi are well-known for playing an important role in the recycling of organic material, such as leaves and bark, as well as for the cycling of other metals,” Dr. Bohu explained. ―But gold is so chemically inactive that this interaction is both unusual and surprising.”

The fungi are not wearing the gold for beauty. ―There is a biological benefit from this reaction.” Dr. Bohu said, ―Gold-loving fungi can grow faster and bigger relative to other fungi that don’t work with gold.”

The researchers still need to conduct further analysis to understand the relationship between the fungi and the precious metal. More importantly, they need to determine if its presence is a sure sign of the existence of large deposits of the metal underground. The scientists also believe the fungi could be used to detect the presence of gold in waste products and man-made electronics.

However, those hoping to get free gold from the fungi are in for a disappointment, for the delicate fungus is hard to see. Also, its gold can only be seen under a microscope.

Talking to yourself may seem a little shameful. According to the well-known saying, talking to yourself is the first sign of madness,     16     Talking to ourselves, whether out loud or silently in our heads, is a valuable tool for thought.

Far from being mentally ill, self-talk allows us to plan what we are going to do, manage our activities, regulate our emotions and even create a description of our experience.    17    

As children, according to the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, we use private speech to regulate our actions in the same way that we use public speech to control the behavior of others.    18     Psychological experiments have shown that the private speech can improve our performance on tasks ranging from judging what other people are thinking to sorting images into categories. One recent study suggested that self-talk is most effective when we address ourselves in the second person, as “you” rather than “I”.

    19     If you want proof, turn on the sports channel. You’re certain to see an athlete or two cheering themselves up with a bitter phrase or scolding themselves after a bad shot.

Conduct a dialogue with ourselves.    20     The private speech seems to be a particularly good way of solving problems and working through ideas. The to-and-fro between different points of view means our thoughts can end up in expected places, just like a regular dialogue can, and might turn out to be one of the keys to human creativity.

A few years ago, my father arranged to send me a mail-order fruitcake at Christmastime. While I had recently settled in Manhattan with a good job, he _______my cupboards and refrigerator might be bare.

I was 44 then, and he was 72. He wanted me to have a particular brand of fruitcake. Made in Texas, it was famous among fruitcake lovers-or, _______ , among people who gave fruitcakes to those who were assumed to _______ them. "It reminds me of my mother's," he said. My grandmother's _______ , I later learnt, was a cake typical of the Great Depression Dad grew up in, made without sugar, butter or eggs.

_______ the fruitcake was his way of trying to take care of me from afar. Regardless of my _______ status, I was still his son. A fruitcake, in his mind, was a _______ Christmas gift: Fruitcake can fill your belly and has a long shelf life.

“It should arrive the first week of December,“ he said. "Let me know what you think _______ you get it." I was looking forward to _______ the flavors that transported him to his childhood. The first week of December passed with no sign of his fruitcake. ________ by holiday mail, I assumed.

He remained ________ the fruitcake would come by New Year's Eve. Yet, January, February, and March came and went with no fruitcake. Though my father ________ to ask about it, I never once considered lying and telling him the fruitcake had ________arrived and was delicious. Instead I said, “That cake is orbiting earth, and sooner or later it will ________ . ”

Early last December, nearly a year after my father died from a failing heart, I got a call saying, “You have a package. " I went downstairs to pick it up. The brown box had a FedEx label with a ________ address in Texas.

Yungang Grottoes (石窟) in Datong, Shanxi Province, are a world cultural heritage (遗产) site with a history that     36     (go) back more than 1,500 years. In Yungang’s 45 big grottoes and more than 200 small grottoes, roughly 59,000 figures of the Buddha,     37     (be) a priceless treasure of human culture.

    38    because of the effects of climate change and natural disasters, the grottoes face damage year after year. Thanks to     39     (advance) digital technology, researchers are busy “duplicating” (复制) the Yungang Grottoes in an attempt to preserve the precious cultural relics (遗物). Employing 3D laser scanning technology, the researchers    40     (digital) record the shapes, colors and other fine details of the grottoes and later reproduce    41    by using 3D printing technology.

The new technology could enable more people    42     (access) the cultural relics despite the distance. In June, 2020, the Zhejiang University Cultural Relics Research Institute and Yungang Grottoes Research Institute together “copied and pasted” Cave No. 12 of the Yungang Grottoes for an    43     (exhibit) in Hangzhou, in which is the world’s first 3D-printed 1:1 “copy” of a grotto.

These Yungang    44     (researcher) attempt is a good example of technology helping to preserve cultural heritage. It is hoped    45    the new digitalized technologies will facilitate the “rebirth” of the cultural relics, and bring them to more places worldwide.