May 18th is International Museum Day. Let's take a look at some of the strangest museums around the world.
Giant Shoe Museum
Located in the famous Pike Place Market of Seattle, the Giant Shoe Museum is a single exhibit wall located on the outside of the Old Seattle Paperworks store and brings a lot of business to the shop as a result. A variety of giant shoes include a size 37 shoe worn by the world's tallest man, a real clown shoe and the world's largest collection of giant shoes.
Washington Banana Museum
Ann Mitchell Lovell really loves bananas. In fact, she loves them enough to not only run the Washington Banana Museum, which features almost 4,000 items related to the world's best-selling fruit, but to also upload photos of her favorite items from the museum online so those who can't make it to the physical location can still enjoy the virtual Banana Museum.
Roswell UFO Museum
Visitors can ask as many questions as possible about the Roswell incident of 1947, and know about what was spotted in the sky that fateful night. Exhibits include information on the event, crop circles, other UFO sightings, Area 51, and so on. Regardless of your personal opinion about UFOs, there's no denying that the museum has been quite successful. Since it opened its doors in 1992, it has outgrown two different locations, and now occupies an old movie theater.
Beijing Tap Water Museum
One of the key ingredients you need to make ramen is water, so when you're done with weird (怪异的) museums in Japan, maybe you should head to China to learn more about tap water, specifically the history of the first water plant in Beijing. Here you can study over 300 items to better familiarize yourself with the 100-year-old history of tap water in China. The best thing about this museum is that any of its drinking fountains can provide you with an enduring souvenir of your trip.
Good Morning Britain (GMB) launches special "listening benches" in order to solve loneliness. EastEnders star Maisie Smith joined Susanna and Martin in the studio to talk about her involvement in a special part of the 1 Million Minutes campaign—GMB's special "listening benches" across the country.
Six special "listening benches" have been designed by six celebrities, and can be found in six cities across the UK—and they're in place to encourage people to strike up a conversation. Maisie joined the show to share why the campaign is important to her.
"I'm always very open about mental health," Maisie explained. "It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, what you have—everyone is going through something and I just think the world would be a kinder place if everyone understood that. "
"I think especially growing up in the limelight (引人注目) as a teenager, you're very judgemental of yourself when you do see comments of other people judging you. It can add to the stress of the things you re already going through. I think people do think I'm confident because I cover my nerves with a big smile and that's what I've been doing in my whole life. "
Susanna asked Maisie if she had a technique for dealing with her nerves. "It depends on what it is," said Maisie. "A lot of the time—and it's going to sound really stupid—but I write a script. I write down all of the questions that I could be asked and try to come up with something so that my brain won't go blank when I'm under pressure. "
Many people try to make society change for the better. The real challenge is how to get good solutions to scale up(按比例放大) for major change. New research suggests that social change may depend on the relationship between beneficial behaviors and policies.
The research, conducted by the University of Maine, University of Vermont and Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, attempted to understand how society can accomplish major, transformative social change, particularly the kind of social change necessary to solve the growing problem of climate change.
The researchers studied a behavior that benefits groups, but does not spread without pol- icy support, such as a costly measure to relieve the effects of climate change. They created a mathematical model, which simulates(模拟) a society where agents live in groups and adopt the beneficial behavior of peers. That behavior, given the right conditions, can spread like viral, but not if the institutional costs are too high.
"Large-scale social change is not just policy or behavior, but the emergence of a new self- reinforcing (自我强化)system that combines both. This allows us to ask new questions, such as 'how would a new pattern of behavior and policy spread?' " says Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, lead author on the study.
The results showed that both behavioral change and policy change are required to achieve large-scale social change-and that they need to happen together. Though neither can get the job done on its own, policy change is especially critical. They found that sometimes the beneficial behavior can spread too far. In some cases, the spread of behavior beyond groups with supporting policy can reduce its perceived success and slow the spread of the policy, thereby limiting beneficial social change overall.
In future research, the team aims to apply these types of models to all sorts of beneficial social change, particularly the challenge of tackling climate change.
The area of tropical forest destroyed in 2021 was enough to cover the entire island of Cuba, and sent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as India does in an entire year from burning fossil fuels, according to an analysis published on Thursday.
Some 11. 1 million hectares (around 43, 000 square miles) of forest was destroyed, mainly by logging (伐木)as well as fires, the analysis by the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch and the University of Maryland found. Some of those fires were deliberately lit to clear land and many were deteriorated by climate change.
The loss was less severe than in 2020, but deforestation (毁林)is still occurring at an alarming rate in the tropics. Of the area lost, 3. 75 million hectares were primary tropical forest at the equivalent of 10 soccer fields every minute, WRI reported.
Primary tropical forests in particular are crucial for the ecological balance of the planet, providing oxygen that supports life and as biodiversity hotspots. They are also rich in stored carbon, and when these forests are logged or burned, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
"What's important to understand is that forests, especially tropical forests, are part of the global climate system," WRI senior fellow Frances Seymour told CNN. "So they're not mechanical carbon storage devices. They actually influence the energy transfer and the moisture content of the atmosphere in ways that affect rainfall and global circulation patterns. "
"When deforestation happens, when forests are lost, it not only contributes carbon to the atmosphere, but also disrupts rainfall patterns and increases local temperatures in some ways. For example, it makes remaining forests more vulnerable to fire, and the warmer, drier conditions that come with climate change," Seymour said.
In stressful times, the art of making people laugh could help to relieve pressure. We all know that laughter is the best medicine. It creates physical changes in your body that accelerate healing and protect you from harm. Scientists tell us that people who can laugh at their own misfortunes bounce back faster and stronger.
If you have trouble seeing the funny side of your own failures, then you might find some useful advice in the story of a friend of mine, who developed an unpleasant reaction to garlic for which his doctor prescribed (开处方) a short course of ointment (药膏) and suppositories (栓剂). After a few minutes, the chemist, standing at the far back of the shop, shouted at the top of her voice, "I've got your ointment, but I'll have to order your suppositories!"
Following a short yet strongly uncomfortable silence, she came forwards to the counter and said, "" "Yes, you did, " was my friend's quiet reply. I asked him how he was able to see the funny side of such an embarrassing incident and he said, "If I was standing in the shop and this had happened to someone else, it would have been funny. "
Laughing at yourself doesn't make you a fool. It makes you strong, confident and self-assured. We all make mistakes; we all forget, trip, take wrong turns. They cannot learn and will repeat the same mistakes, over and over again.
A. Sorry, I shouted that, didn't I?
B. Sorry, you didn't hear what I shouted, did you?
C. So it's no less funny, just because it happened to me.
D. When someone denies a mistake, they become proud.
E. He took the prescription to the drug store and waited patiently.
F. The feeling you get when you feel bad about a mistake is embarrassment.
G. There is much scientific research proving that laughter does more than cheer you up.
One day, I came cross an old lady who looked worried on my way back home from running a special assignment. She stopped me on the sidewalk, 1 asking for directions. I gave her the right directions, 2 the way she needed to go. But she looked 3 and started to tear up, like she had been lost for a while and wasn't 4 with the area. And the fact was like that.
It was dark and cold, so I offered to walk with her, 5 her it was only a 5-minute walk. I saw her 6 to walk and keep up the pace, so I 7 down and carried her bags for her.
I 8 with her during the whole time, getting to know her. I found out she lived outside of the country and came here temporarily to 9 a sick family member. From what she said, I found she was incredibly 10 and kind.
When we got to her 11 , she cried, gave me a big hug and showed me great 12 for helping her. With a smile on my face, I let her know I was 13 she was safe. Meanwhile, I 14 myself being lost in an unfamiliar place. And I hoped I'd receive similar 15 in that situation.
NASA is planning its first ever mission to bring dirt and rocks from Mars back to Earth, but before that historical event happens, the space agency has to figure out (exact) how to protect our home planet from any alien microbes (微生物) that might come along.
This week, the agency is holding public meetings and looking for feedback on its plan (land) a spacecraft carrying Martian specimens at a U. S. Air Force testing range in Utah in the early 2030s.
"Maybe this is the most important environmental (assess) that humans have ever done," says Peter Doran, a geologist at Louisiana State University who studies life in extreme environments. Having a rock sample from Mars here on Earth would let researchers run detailed lab tests to look for evidence of this cold, harsh, rocky world was once habitable (可居住的) or maybe even inhabited.
For researchers, this is long-held dream. Discussion about such a mission (go) on for decades, and it will cost billions of dollars to accomplish. Until recently, there hasn't been a lot of focus on the details of the sample return facility because (science) didn't think it was going to happen.
NASA officials are working out a plan to safely collect the samples: A spacecraft would land on Mars and launch a container full of the previously (collect) rock samples into orbit around the planet. Once in orbit, this container could be swallowed by another container— a big fish eating a little fish—to keep anything that had touched Mars inside and then it would (seal).
When I was eight, my mom was very sick and very sad, and there was nothing my dad could do to cheer her up. I made her a get-well-soon card, but that didn't work either. All she said was, "There are no roses. . . "
I knew what she was talking about. Not long ago, we lived in a much bigger house, with a large garden full of roses, roses everywhere. Mom loved roses very much. We lived in that house all my life, then when I was six, things went very wrong. Dad's business crashed, and even though he managed to save the company, he had to fire two-thirds of his staff, and we had to sell the big house.
We moved into a smaller house in front of which the earth was dry. The minute she saw it, Mom hated it. "It will be great," Dad comforted her cheerfully. "I'll paint the house on the weekends, and you'll plant your roses!" "Yes," Mom said, forcing a smile. But we could see she was not a bit excited.
"Oh, look. Mom! The neighbor has roses!" I screamed, pointing to the garden next door with thousands of flowers. "That means you can grow roses too!" But Mom wasn't feeling well, and she didn't have the energy to start a new garden.
I sat in our new yard and stared at the neighbor's garden. My neighbor, a kind granny, was out among the roses, wearing a huge hat. She saw me and asked, "What are you doing, looking at my roses?"
"I was just looking," I replied, "They're really beautiful! My mom used to have roses. But my mom is seriously ill now, and she is very sad because she misses her roses. "
"I am so sorry to hear that. But I know you are a good boy. You can pick as many as possible if the flowers can offer your mom some relief. " I hugged granny for her generosity.
The next morning, when the sun rose, everything was ready. I sat on the floor in a corner of my mom's bedroom and waited for her to wake up.
注意：
1）续写词数应为150左右；
2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
My mom opened her eyes and sat up slowly and laboriously.
After that, I often assisted my neighbor with her garden.
