Have you ever been to a music festival? Well if you live in the UK, the answer is probably yes. The number of festivals has grown greatly over the last few years and now there are around 200 every summer. So let's look at the history of four famous festivals.
The Glastonbury Festival is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts held most years in Somerset, in the south-west of England. There are a rock and pop stage, a jazz stage, the Avalon stage, a theatre comedy stage, a cinema tent, a dance tent and a circus(马戏团). The festival started in1970 and about 120,000 people go to it every summer.
The Reading Festival is truly world-class with rock and pop bands appearing from all over the world, particularly the USA. About 80,000 music fans go to Reading every August Bank Holiday. The festival first came to its present site on the banks of the River Thames in Reading in 1971, when it moved from Plumpton in Sussex. It is still on the same site over 47 years later!
WOMAD stands for World of Music, Arts and Dance and was the idea of rock musician Peter Gabriel to promote world music. The WOMAD Festival started in 1982 and takes place in July at Charlton Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, and you can see different bands and musicians from all over the world. The festival welcomes over 26, 000 visitors each year.
The one-day Monsters of Rock Festival at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes was first held in 1980 and gave visitors the chance to hear the very best of hard rock and heavy metal. There were no festivals between 1996 and 2003 as a result of changing musical fashions, but now it has returned and grown into a two-day festival with a campsite for the 30,000 people who go there in summer days.
On a journey to the little-known Northeast region of India, we discover "a rare creature": the "Forest Man of India". Nearly every day for almost 40 years now, Jadav Payeng, a local farmer, has risen before dawn to cross the river on his boat, and begins the daily two-mile journey to his vegetable farm and his life's mission: reviving the ecosystem here.
When Payeng was a boy, the river island of Majuli was attached to the mainland. Over the past several decades, erosion (侵蚀) from the powerful river waters of the Brahmaputra has gradually cut it off from the mainland. "Earlier, this was all sand. No trees, no grass—nothing was here. " Today fields of tall grasses stretch into the distance. Along with bright green plains dotted with cows, cotton trees stand straight in rows as far as the eye can see.
Payeng set about planting here in 1979, after unexpectedly seeing some dead snakes piled on the sand in the Indian sun. "When I saw it, I thought even we humans will have to die this way in the heat. It struck me," he said. Payeng sought no permission to plant the forest. He just grew it, carrying on his tribe's tradition of honoring nature.
The dense forest now covers an area of more than 1,300 acres. He is delighted that wild elephants cross the shallow river waters to walk around in his forest. Besides elephants, the home is filled with deer, monkeys, tigers and a wide variety of birds. "It's not as if I did it alone," says the self-styled naturalist. "You plant one or two trees, and they have to seed. And once they seed, the wind knows how to plant them, the birds here know how to sow them, cows know, elephants know, even the Brahmaputra River knows. The entire ecosystem knows. "
Payeng has single-handedly changed the landscape. When asked how he has sustained his passion, Payeng strikes a respectful tone. "Nature gives me inspiration. It gives me power. As long as it survives, I survive. "
Even if you aren't into artificial intelligence, it's time to pay attention to ChatGPT, because this one is a big deal. ChatGPT is an Al chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful Al system can accomplish.
ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models. It lets you type natural-language prompts(提示) and then offers conversational responses. It remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It finds relevant information in its oceans of training data, and converts(转化) that into plausible-sounding（听起来合乎情理的）paragraphs of text.
You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that's useful. For example. you can ask it encyclopedia questions like. "Explain Newton's laws of motion." You can tell it. "Write me a poem." and when it does. say. "Now make it more exciting." You can ask it to write a computer program that'll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.
A few days after its launch. more than 1 million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January. accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.
Many people fear that ChatGPT might help students cheat better. But as with many other technology developments. it's not a simple black-and-white situation. Decades ago. students could copy encyclopedia entries and use calculators. and more recently. they've been able to use search engines and Wikipedia. ChatGPT offers new abilities for everything from helping with researeh to doing your homework for you outright.
Dustin York. an associate professor at Maryville University hopes educators will learn to use ChatGPT as a tool and realize it can help students think critically.
" Educators" thought that Google, Wikipedia, and the Internet itself would ruin education, but they did not. "York said. "What worries me most are educators who may actively try to discourage the acknowledgment of Al like ChatGPT. It is a tool, not a villain. "
Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction: somewhere between 30 and 159 species disappear every day, and more than 300 types of animals have died out since 1500. This is not good for the future of life on our planet, but what if we could make some of the extinct species come back to life? Thanks to ongoing advances in DNA recovery and cloning technology, de-extinction（灭绝动物复活） may soon be realized, and we may see Tasmanian Tigers, or Dodo Birds back into existence in the near future.
Some scientists are confident and optimistic about de-extinction. They think that the best reasons for de-extinction have more to do with ecology than tourism. "If this is always going to be a zoo animal, then stop," says Ben Novak, the lead researcher at Revive & Restore—a foundation devoted to rescuing endangered and extinct species in San Francisco, California. "The goals have to be about ecological restoration and function."
Take passenger pigeons for example. Their numbers reached nearly 5 billion at the start of the 19th century, and they played an important role in shaping the forests they inhabited(居住). After their extinction, the forests have never been the same. "The passenger pigeon is a very important ecological species if we want their original habitat back." Novak says.
However, we need to think twice about Novak's idea. Any new scientific initiative (倡议；新方案) is bound to have risks, so is de-extinction. Although some assume that de-extinction may help the environment, we can't be so sure. The de-extinct animals would now be strangers to their habitats. As the habitat is no longer what it was, the species role within the ecosystem may have also changed. This could be actually a threat to the other species within the environment as the de-extinct animals enter the area and compete for food sources. Once again we're trying to force nature to act in a certain way, rather than letting it remain natural.
Many scientists also believe that priorities(优先权) would change within the conservation of currently endangered species. Would we still put in the effort to preserve living animals if we knew we could just magically bring them back from the dead? Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, stresses this worry. "Honestly, the thing that scares me most is that the public absorbs the misimpression that extinction is no longer scary. The general attitude becomes: Deforest, no worry, we can reforest. If we drive something extinct, no worry, we can de-extinct it. " said McCauley.
It seems that with the subject of de-extinction, we must look at our reasons for doing such a thing. Yes, we may, in the near future, be able to de-extinct the extinct species. But does that mean we should? Are the risks really worth it? Does it make sense to focus on the dead than the living? And who are we truly benefiting in the end?
I: Introduction P: Point Sp: Sub-point (次要点) C: Conclusion
B . 
C . 
D . 
How strong are you?
That is a difficult question to answer, whether you are a man or a woman. But, really, I want to ask…how do you define your strength? How do you know your limits? When pushed, we often discover that we are much stronger than we think.
Strength is not always just about physical strength. Rather, it's about willpower, discipline and drive. I know some people who are intelligent, but they get very little done in their jobs. And I know others who find work very difficult, but are able to move mountains by their hard work. They have inner strength.
Limiting yourself
What I have observed is that most people limit themselves. They limit their output according to how limited they imagine their abilities and strengths to be. Sometimes these limits are based on past experiences. Sometimes they are based on what they think their abilities are.
Pushing it…
Many people are working out, but nowhere near as much as they could.
Pushing yourself is what it takes to increase your limits. In the gym, bodybuilders discovered this long ago.
But, this is also true when it comes to inner strength.
Want to test your limits? Push yourself. Test your limits to see if they are simply what you imagine them to be. Make sure your goals are slightly beyond what you think can be achieved.
You are stronger than you think
Most people underestimate their strength. As you go through your day, test your limits. Push yourself to find your true limits and define your strength.
A. Physical ability.
B. What is strength?
C. The same applies to daily life.
D. It's about the ability to get things done.
E. Sometimes these limits are based on nothing.
F. If you want to be stronger, you have to push yourself.
G. When discovering how much you've really got, you may surprise even yourself.
There are young trees near my window, growing proudly around pink flowers. My little hill with the trees1me of my childhood best friend. The2of a best friend lasts even if the friendship does not.
I met my best friend Marianne when I was 14. She sat behind me in our Grade 9 classroom. I can still 3 her there with orange hair. She was thin and had bright eyes, a sweet smile and an inviting openness. Once she asked me over to her house after school. We first stopped at a bakery to satisfy our never-ending4. We each bought two small cakes, and started5 with mouths full of cake.
The laughter never6. We laughed through elegant dinners and playing hide-and-seek in the dark. We were7. We sucked all the childhood juices out of our young lives8 there was no more childhood to suck up. And then we were ready to 9.
Marianne and I went in10directions. In our late 20s, we met up for one11lunch in a cafe after I bumped into her in Toronto. We became Facebook friends and glanced over pieces of each other's 12.
I recently felt a longing to call Marianne. We chatted about old times and caught up on news about our kids and parents. A few days later, she13a story on Facebook. She is living with breast cancer.14, she is sweet and full of that lovely energy I noticed in our classroom. She is 15 life, and she wants us to do the same. I called her after reading her post, and we talked like two schoolchildren16 it was 46 years later.
I'm17for her inspiring philosophy of life, which reminds me of when we were two silly girls 18 the unknown of our new lives with hope and love.
When I look out from my window, I can see the little hill with its trees. I think of those19 as my childhood friends and see Marianne there, 20 and blooming(盛开) with love and grace. And I'm thankful. Marianne will be my best friend forever!
A Journey to the Center of the Earth is an 1864 science fiction novel by rules verge. The scientific knowledge in the book is old, but this has nothing to do with the (popular) of the book.
There are three main (character) in the book: axes, the narrator of the story; his uncle, Professor Lidenbrock, the scientist of geology, and Hans, their (faith) Iceland guide.
The Professor was impatient person, but he insisted on continuing the journey, and finally (manage) it. Hans was silent and incredibly calm. As long as the Professor was hiring him and paid his wage (regular), he could do anything for him, despite the seemingly hopeless situation. His faith, courage and excellent skills saved the other two companions for several times.
One day, the Professor found a book, described the way down to the center of the Earth. He and his companions got equipped immediately, (start) their adventurous journey. What was waiting for them? Well, we can only figure this out by reading the book.
The book is a short one. Some words in it may be difficult (understand). But don't worry! Not knowing these words will not stop us understanding the plot. And the rest are easy. Therefore, it should be a suitable book high school students and the fans of science fiction.
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2．只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。
People can't be perfectly in every way. How we can do is to change ourselves to become a better person. Recently I felt rather worrying because I didn't well in my monthly exam. I had been prepared well for it and worked hard for the long time. But my efforts didn't bring any results. I told my mom all my feelings, and I couldn't help crying. She sat next to us but said nothing until I stop crying. She wiped away the tear on my face and gave me a warm hug. I'll never forget what she said "trust me, you are good". She gave me lots of energy, but I realized that sometimes the process is more important than the result.
