Los Angeles is always a popular holiday destination. To fully enjoy your travel there, you should know its food, weather, and also traffic. While driving in L. A. is similar to that in other areas, there are a few specific rules to note.
HOV lanes (车道)On many L.A. freeways, one or more lanes at the far left are used as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. They usually have limited access and you can only enter or exit where there is a break in the double yellow line. Most HOV lanes require a minimum of two people in the car; some require three. Vehicles towing trailers (拖车) are NOT allowed in the HOV lane, regardless of how many people are in them.
Toll (收费) lanesOn certain freeways, the HOV lanes are double-purposed as toll lanes for people driving alone who have a FasTrak, an electronic toll collection system. Therefore, you also have to have one in that lane as a HOV, which is inconvenient if you're just visiting. FasTrak is in effect on parts of the 110 freeway between the 405 and 10 freeways, and on parts of the 10 freeway east of Downtown L.A.
Cell phonesIt is against the law to talk on a cell phone while driving without using a hands-free device. Holding a cell phone to your ear while driving will land you with a ticket.
Alcohol (酒精)Driving under the influence is taken seriously in L. A. The legal blood alcohol limit is 0.08%, but you can be charged with lower levels if they show you can't function normally. Placing an opened bottle of alcohol in the passenger area while driving (or sitting) is illegal. Any opened container of alcohol has to be transported in the trunk.
You don't have to be a fan of math to get excited about Pi ("n") Day. While the event may start with some calculations, it is more than likely to conclude with a slice or two of delicious pie. The holiday is held every March 14, because "n" is widely recognized as 3.14.
The tradition of honoring "n" began at San Francisco's Exploratorium museum. On March 14, 1988, physicist Larry Shaw convinced his colleagues to mark the day by marching around one of the museum's circular spaces and consuming fruit pies. The celebration was made official in 2009 when the U. S. House of Representatives set aside March 14 as Pi Day.
Today, Pi Day is observed in many creative ways. Students at the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles host a pie-eating event, which begins at 1:59 a.m. and features 26 pies, each of five different flavors. Though that might seem random (随机的), the date (3.14), time(1:59), number of pies (26), and number of varieties (5) recreate the first nine digits of Pi 3.14159265!Students applying for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston eagerly wait for the day every year to find out if they have been accepted. However, instead of sending out the offers at 3:14 pm, the institution waits till 6:28 pm, as 6. 28 is referred to as Tau, which is Pi multiplied by 2. The number is believed to be much more reliable than Pi by some experts and even has its own celebration on June 28. Since 2017, MIT has also used Pi Day as a fundraiser to support its students, departments and programs.
The town of Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein lived from 1935 until his death in 1955, celebrates the occasion with multi-day festivities that end on March 14. Visitors can participate in concerts, shows, as well as pie-eating, pi-recitation, and Einstein-lookalike contests.
When did you have a really deep conversation where you felt truly heard ？ Connections of this kind are completely necessary for people but they are not always easy to find. That's why one woman decided to take listening to the streets. Her name is Traci Ruble, a therapist (治疗师) who is concerned that people today are experiencing loneliness and lack personal connections. She understands that with busy lives and demanding jobs, people are unable to make these connections.
On a spring day in 2015, Ruble and a small number of volunteers set up chairs on sidewalks in 12 locations around San Francisco and invited people passing by to sit for a few minutes and chat. This was the beginning of the nonprofit Sidewalk Talk. The mission is to create public spaces of connections for people. Today, the organization has more than 4,000 volunteers in 40 cities. These volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds and receive training from the organization.
Sidewalk Talk gives people a chance to speak and be listened to but it is not therapy. "Volunteers are not communicating as a therapist out there. They're not there to solve someone's problems. They're there to practice being human," Ruble said. According to Ruble, therapy is one-sided and therapists are taught to avoid self-disclosure(自我表露) but by "being human" volunteers could approach interactions with communication about their own life and by showing sympathy (同情) for the people they talk with.
Today, an increasing number of people experience loneliness, according to a report from Harvard University. In fact, 31 percent of all Americans feel serious loneliness including 61 percent of young adults. To deal with that, rebuilding community relationships is vitally important. While Sidewalk Talk will not solve the loneliness problem, these chats could help someone have a brighter day. Knowing that there are sympathetic people who are willing to fully listen and share people's feelings could make all the difference to a lonely person.
Recent research discovered that a low-cost computer training program can help older persons drive less dangerously.
"We developed a training program, called Drive Aware, which could be used by anyone who has a computer," says Jing Feng, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at NC State. "Drive Aware is a cognitive (认知的) training program for older persons that helps them notice traffic risks more effectively. The purpose of our recent study was to see how much Drive Aware changes trainees' driving behaviors once they get behind the wheel."
The researchers found 27 persons aged 65 and up to test Drive Aware. In a driving simulator (模拟器), all of the study participants (参与者) experienced a basic driving exam. The "active training" group was made up of nine of the study participants. Every two weeks, the active training group had two Drive Aware trainings. A group of nine additional study participants was asked to take "passive training". This group watched videos of others receiving the Drive Aware instruction. This happened twice, with each lasting about a week. The control group, which was made up of the remaining nine study participants, received no training. After that, all 27 study participants performed a second driving exam in the simulator.
The study participants in the active training group experienced 25% fewer "unsafe incidents ( 事件 ) " following the training, according to the researchers. There was no obvious change in the number of dangerous incidents among study participants in the passive training and control groups.
"This testing was done with a fairly limited number of study participants," Feng says. "If we can succeed in getting the fund, we'd like to further our testing with more people to clearly prove how effective this training is at reducing accidents among older drivers."
As you get older, you'll meet a wider range of people from different cultures. Culture is an idea that isn't easy to understand. People often use the term to refer to things like food, holidays, clothing and music. Customs, beliefs and values are also part of your culture. So when meeting people from different backgrounds, you can sometimes find that there are huge differences in how you see the world.
For example, when you meet people from a different culture, ask them about their lives. It is one of the best ways to understand the culture. But be polite about it and remember they don't owe you an answer, and might not want to give it-not everyone wants to explain everything about their culture.
Maybe you've recently met someone from a different culture you find interesting. Get to know his/her families and see how their customs and traditions differ from yours. You might be surprised to find how culturally different two people living even in the same town can be!
Read books by and about people who are different from you. Reading memoirs (回忆录), biographies and other nonfiction books is an obvious way to learn about a country or someone's life. Like with books, you can also watch movies to learn more about a culture. What's more, keeping yourself in a different culture through travel is also an amazing way to understand another culture.
So accept and respect the differences between yourself and your friends from different cultures- remember that what is a difference to you is just their normal life!
A. Make friends with him/her.
B. But it also goes much deeper than that.
C. Show respect for people from other cultures.
D. You may think you know a lot about a culture or place.
E. Differences between us are what makes life so interesting.
F. There are many ways to understand other people's cultures.
G. Also don't ignore novels that have been translated from other language.
Standing on the top of Mount Tai, I watched the sun rising through the cloud and taking its place in the sky. I haven't seen many1, but I can feel that seeing one from the top of Mount Tai must be one of the best ways to 2 the beauty of nature.
When I left for China, the 3 of climbing Mount Tai had not even 4 me. I was going to China to 5its language, history and culture and gain a better understanding of international agricultural trade between my country and China.
Now I have stayed in China for a few weeks. In Beijing, my group have 6 friendship with many Chinese students. Through our broken Chinese and their 7 English, we are still able to teach each other about our cultures. We 8 that we are all just students working towards the same 9 of having careers, families and lives and trying to make the world better. Cultural differences seem 10 —even the language almost completely differs from our own. But their daily lives are similar to our own routines (常规). 11 , people worry about the same things we do here. They are 12 food safety, pay close attention to the government and feel the effects of the economic markets.
This 13 makes me realize how many cultures my country has in common with other countries around the world. More importantly, it makes me 14 for travel, and I am looking forward to having more 15 to engage in cross-cultural communication and learning.
If you are(interest) in both China's ancient finance and architecture, Pingyao is a place you can't miss.
The Ancient City of Ping Yao, (locate) in the central Shanxi Province, China, is well-preserved example of a traditional Han Chinese city. Its walls are about 12 meters high, and three to five meters wide at the top. The western and eastern sides of walls have two gates the southern and northern walls each have one gate only.
From the 19th century the early 20th century, Pingyao, (control) almost half of the economy of the country at its booming period, was a financial center for the whole of China. There (be) once over twenty draft banks' head offices, whose (branch) were distributed widely around the whole country, even in some western and southeastern countries.
Today when other Chinese cities have been more than happy to bury their history under skyscrapers, this (origin) Chinese Wall Street chooses not to. Ordinary people still live in the Chinese traditional courtyards as they did in the past. This city is helping Chinese rediscover the value of (preserve) what little is left of the country's ancient buildings.
