That was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe, the sort that has a looking-glass in the door.
"Nothing there!" Everybody rushed out but Lucy stayed because she thought it would be worthwhile trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise, it opened quite easily, and two mothballs dropped out.
Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up—mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe... She took a step further in—then two or three steps, always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.
"This must be a simply vast wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "Is that more mothball?" she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer," she said, and went on a step or two further.
... And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; ... A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.
Friedrich Froebel was a German educator who focused on children's learning. During his lifetime, he worked in both Germany and Switzerland and was strongly influenced by Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who helped Switzerland become one of the first nations in Europe to achieve nearly 100% literacy.
Froebel's childhood was the primary influence on his desire to see the establishing of a place for young children to play and grow. As a young boy, poor Froebel had great difficulty with languages and writing but excelled at math, especially geometry. That inspired him to find employment first as a forest land surveyor and later in the field of architecture, but, in 1805, he abruptly decided to switch careers and accepted a teaching position in Frankfurt.
Fortunately for Froebel, the school at which he was employed was one of the first outside Switzerland to adopt the methods of Pestalozzi, who believed that children had an enormous capacity and desire to learn. His style allowed children to explore their natural curiosity rather than having them sit for hours while listening to lectures and learning. There, Froebel came up with the theory that all children needed to play so that they could be educated by using physical movements and imaginative powers.
In 1816, he opened a school to put his theory into practice. At that time, there was no formal education for German children younger than seven, so Froebel's school was revolutionary. At Froebel's school, singing and dancing were used to encourage healthy activities in children. He also developed a series of geometric building blocks—today called Froebel Gifts—that the children played with and used to understand geometry and to develop spatial awareness. A third aspect of his educational style was to allow the children to work in a garden, where they could watch plants grow and learn to care for them.
In 1837, Froebel created a new school, which, in 1840, he began calling a kindergarten, or children's garden. The success of Froebel's school won him countless admirers, who spread his ideas following his death in 1852. Today, the necessity of early childhood education is accepted by people throughout the world, thereby showing how influential Froebel's theories have become over time.
We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices well after they go out of style. That's bad news for the environment and our wallets—as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.
To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation. Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.
As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones. "The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house," said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We're not just keeping these old devices —we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy, consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.
So what's the solution? The team's data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.
China's Mars rover, Tianwen-1, will likely attempt to land at a site in northeastern Mars, according to a new paper published just days ahead of the mission's launch. The paper was written by team members of China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission, which aims to send an orbiter and a rover to the Red Planet.
The study reveals new details about Tianwen-1, outlining its intended landing area, science goals and the names of instruments aboard the spacecraft. It also stresses the historic nature of the mission: Not only is Tianwen-1 China's first fully homegrown Mars mission, it's also the first to carry both an orbiter and a rover.
Tianwen-1 means "questions to heaven" and was taken from the title of a poem by Qu Yuan (340 — 278 BC). The spacecraft will reach Mars in February 2021, at the same time as NASA's Perseverance rover and the United Arab Emirates' Hope orbiter launched on Sunday (July 19). However, China's rover will remain attached to the orbiter for two to three months before attempting its landing, according to the paper.
The chosen landing area is Utopia Planitia, a huge basin formed by a large impact far back in Mars' history that was also the region where NASA's Viking 2 lander touched down in 1976. China had isolated a part of the vast plain as a landing area, which means there will be more time and atmosphere for the entry spacecraft to slow down and safely land on the surface. The latitude is also suitable for receiving enough sunlight to power the 240 kilograms rover. The relatively smooth surface will also be helpful for roving. The mission also benefits from the engineering heritage of China's Chang'e lunar exploration program, the paper noted.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter will operate in a polar orbit in order to map Mars. The rover will also investigate the surface soil characteristics and water-ice distribution with its own Subsurface Exploration Radar. It will also analyze surface material composition and characteristics of the Martian climate and environment on the surface.
Pain is usually connected to a nervous system. When you put your hand too close to a hot stove, nerve cells send a warning of danger to your brain.That, in turn, causes you to pull your hand away before any serious damage is done. Plants don't have nerves or brains, so they can't feel pain like you do.And since they can't escape a potentially dangerous situation, they need other ways of fighting back.
The biggest threat to a plant's life is getting eaten. Some plants discourage plant- eaters from chewing on them by growing thorns or sharp little hairs, like a rose or a cactus does. Other plants produce bad-tasting or even toxic chemicals.
But a plant called bittersweet nightshade does something even more smartly. When a slug, a small creature, chews holes in a nightshade's leaf, a kind of sweet juice begins dripping out of the edges of the wound, almost as if the plant were bleeding.In their quest to collect the juice, the ants gather all over the injured nightshade plant and attack anything that stands in their way —— including the slug that damaged the plant in the first place. In short: Slug attacks plant; plant calls army of ants to come closer to kill slug. Thus, the plant can help itself by calling the enemies of its own enemies.
But they have armies of cold-blooded killers always ready to obey their orders.
A. Plants may look like passive victims.
B. Your brain recognizes that signal as pain.
C. This sweet juice successfully drives the slug away.
D. Your brain is definitely a complex nervous system.
E. The sweet juice happens to be a favorite food of ants.
F. These force potential attackers to abandon their meals.
G. But plants definitely do recognize when something is hurting them.
I was holding her hand when the man in the white coat came in. 1 both sets of X-rays, he said seriously: Her lungs were filling up with fluid(液体). This meant that 2 I would need to consult with specialists, and stop whatever was 3 into my mother's lungs.
4 , this doctor seemed to have another plan. He began speaking to me about "the quality of life." He gave me a list of my mother's 5 and then concluded that they added up to the 6 of her life. I had heard the phrase "We can make her 7 " too many times. Now I was more 8 than hurt when doctors wanted to kill my mother. My mother couldn't walk, talk or swallow after her stroke, but nursing her was not 9 . Whenever I asked her if her diseases were too hard on her, she just 10 her head. She was conveying to me her love and understanding beyond 11 . And not just to me.
A young nurse stopped me just before the doctor appeared: "You know, I 12 my new job to your mother: She 13 me to learn to drive, so I would be not 14 buses and I could get to the hospital to work."
So, I couldn't help questioning the doctor's 15 of quality of life. How did he arrive at the 16 that my mother should die? Was he making a(n) 17 calculation, that to keep a bedridden(卧床不起的) person alive was costly? He certainly did not "calculate" her endless love, the way it 18 everyone who came in contact with her. If human life is 19 to cost-benefit analyses, all forms of caring for any reason other than self-interest will be 20 . Can we do better?
A Chinese university has built the world's longest 3d-printed bridge. The creation has a(long) of 26.3 meters and a width of 2.6 meters. Its design came from the historical Zhaozhou Bridge(build) in A.D. 605.
Though the ancient Zhaozhou Bridge required decade to build, the team spent only 450 hours(complete) all of their new bridges concrete parts., the bridge's cost came in at just two thirds ofof an ordinary bridge.
The bridge consisted individual 3D-printed concrete units, each of them approximately 3 by 3 by 5 feet. The sides, influenced by the Zhaozhou Bridge, (make) with 68 single concrete plates moved into place by robot arms.
The leader of the team noted that "the demand for labor in construction projects will be in short supply(increasing)" in the future. If China cannot find people to build bridges, "intelligent construction(become) an important channel to solve this problem".
There have been other 3d-printed architectural projects over the last few years, as the technology has become(popular) than before. A team at MIT built a sample house in 14 hours. If there are ever houses on Mars, NASA suspects the houses also will be built by robots using 3D printing.
Many people may have heard a plant that we call it tortoiseshell bamboo. This bamboo can grow so tall as 28 meters. This particular species are the most commonly used material in China's industry. Before it is planted, no obviously growth occurs for up to five years—even under ideal conditions! Then, as if by magic, a plant suddenly begins to grow at the rate of nearly 70 centimeters per day, reached its full height within six weeks. Besides, it's not magic. The bamboo's rapid growth resulted from the miles of roots it develops during those first five years, five years of getting ready.
