How should one invest（投资）a sum of money in these days of inflation (通货膨胀)? Left in a bank, it will hardly keep its value, however high the interest rate. Only a brave man, or a very rich one, dares to buy and sell on the Stock Market（股票市场）. Today it seems that one of the best ways to protect your savings, and even increase your wealth is to buy beautiful objects from the past. Here I am going to offer some advice on collecting antique clocks, which I personally consider are among the most interesting of antiques (古董).

I sometimes wonder what a being from another planet might report back about our way of life. “The planet Earth is ruled by a mysterious creature that sits or stands in a room and makes a strange ticking sound. It has a face with twelve black marks and two hands. Men can do nothing without its permission, and it fastens its young round people’s wrists so that everywhere men go they are still under its control. This creature is the real master of Earth and men are its slaves.”

Whether or not we are slaves of time today depends on our culture and personality, but it is believed that many years ago kings kept special slaves to tell the time. Certain men were very clever at measuring the time of day according to the beating of their own hearts. They were made to stand in a fixed place and every hour or so would shout the time. So it seems that the first clocks were human beings.

However, men quickly found more convenient and reliable ways of telling the time. They learned to use the shadows cast by the sun. They marked the hours on candles, used sand in hour-glasses（沙漏）, and invented water-clocks. Indeed, any serious student of antique should spend as much time as possible visiting palaces, stately homes (豪华古宅) and museums to see some of the finest examples of clocks from the past.

Antique clocks could be very expensive, but one of the joys of collecting clocks is that it is still possible to find quite cheap ones for your own home. After all, if you are going to be ruled by time, why not invest in an antique clock and perhaps make a future profit?

Title: What to invest in?

  Some students get so nervous before a test, they do poorly even if they know the material. Sian Beilock has studied these highly anxious test-takers.

  Sian Beilock: “They start worrying about the consequences. They might even start worrying about whether this exam is going to prevent them from getting into the college they want. And when we worry, it actually uses up attention and memory resources. I talk about it as your cognitive horsepower that you could otherwise be using to focus on the exam.”

  Professor Beilock and another researcher, Gerardo Ramirez, have developed a possible solution. Just before an exam, highly anxious test-takers spend ten minutes writing about their worries about the test.

  Sain Beilock: “What we think happens is when students put it down on paper, they think about the worst that could happen and they reappraise the situation. They might realize it’s not as bad as they might think it was before and, in truth, it prevents these thoughts from appearing suddenly when they’re actually taking a test.”

The researchers tested the idea on a group of twenty anxious college students. They gave them two short math tests. After the first one, they asked the students to either sit quietly or write about their feelings about the upcoming second test.

The researchers added to the pressure. They told the students that those who did well on the second test would get money. They also told them that their performance would affect other students as part of a team effort.

Professor Beilock says those who sat quietly scored an average of twelve percent worse on the second test. But the students who had written about their fears improved their performance by an average of five percent.

Next, the researchers used younger students in a biology class. They told them before final exams either to write about their feelings or to think about things unrelated to the test.

Professor Beilock says highly anxious students who did the writing got an average grade of B+, compared to a B- for those who did not.

Sain Beilock: “What we showed is that for students who are highly test-anxious, who’d done our writing intervention, all of a sudden there was no relationship between test anxiety and performance. Those students most prone to worry were performing just as well as their classmates who don’t normally get nervous in these testing situations.”

But what if students do not have a chance to write about their fears immediately before an exam or presentation? Professor Beilock says students can try it themselves at home or in the library and still improve their performance.

In third grade your idea of a good friend was the person who shared his or her lunch with you when you forgot yours on the bus.

In eighth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you pack up your childhood stuff so that your room would be a “middle school student’s” room, but didn’t laugh at you when you finished and broke out into tears.

In eleventh grade your idea of a good friend was the person who came to comfort you when you broke up with someone.

In twelfth grade your idea of a good friend was the person who helped you pick out a university, assured you that you would get into that university and helped you deal with your parents, who were having a hard time to adjust to letting you go.

At graduation your idea of a good friend was the person who was crying on the inside but managed the biggest smile one could give as they congratulated you.

Now , your idea of a good friend is still the person who gives you the better of the two choices ; holds your hand when you’re scared ; thinks of you when you are not there; reminds you of what you have forgotten ; helps you put the past behind you, but understands when you need to hold on to it a little longer ; stays with you so that you have confidence ; goes out of their way to make time for you ; helps you clear up your mistakes ; helps you deal with pressure from others ; smiles for you when you are sad; helps you become a better person; and above all, loves you!

Thank you for being a friend. No matter where we go or who we become, never forget who helped us get here.

Title: The (1) of a good friend

Acting is the activity of performing in plays or films. It’s about living an alternative reality. It lets you explore all kinds of possibilities of what you could be. Just being your own self can be boring sometimes, and acting gives you an opportunity to be someone else for a while. It is voluntarily entering the psyche (心灵) of another personality and thinking according to a different set of values and constraints (约束). It lets you explore many parts of you, which you thought never existed. It lets you deeply explore what it means to be a human being.

One of the best ways to begin your own acting studies is to start reading some good plays. Choose your favorite role from one of your favorite plays and prepare to act it out in front of the audience. To learn to act, you must act. Here are some tips on how to become an actor with no experience:

To play a role, you must understand the character that you are going to play with open arms. Understand the plot of the play, as well as the psyche of your character. Understand the conditions in which your character lives. Try to understand why your character behaves in that way. So you must learn the lines or dialogues thoroughly and explore the thought behind every sentence. This will help you picture the circumstances in which the character finds himself/herself. Some actors go as far as “living” as that person for a while, to understand him or her. The idea is to go as close as possible to being that person. More importantly, only through practice can you get close to actually being that person. So seize every chance and perform as frequently as you can. This will help you develop confidence and overcome stage fright.

As a student of acting, you need to always be a sponge (海绵), ready to absorb, learn, and observe the performances of great actors, to learn the slight differences of the art. While you watch movies, plays and any other performance, study the differences of a role played by any actors, especially the masters. By just keeping your eyes open, you can pick up a lot of things.

Why do you want to act? Is it for money, fame, or genuine love for the art? Would you do it if you were not paid for it? If the answer and your motivation is love for acting, you are sure to eventually succeed.

Almost everybody in America will spend a part of his or her life behind a shopping cart(购物手推车). They will, in a lifetime, push the chrome-plated contraptions many miles. But few will know—or even think to ask—who it was that invented them.

Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging(吃力地携带) groceries around in baskets they had to carry.

One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to attract more business.

On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.

But Goldman was disappointed. Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.

After a while, Goldman decided to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.

But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony(假冒的) customers.

As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come—those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.

Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937—before the coming of the shopping cart.

During my stay in Africa, I went to a local supermarket and there was a young boy in one of the passages. He was around ten years old and in clothes __  (1)  didn’t fit him well. He had no shoes on and stood there   (2)  (stare) at the candy section. I walked down the next passage and back to where he was standing. There  (3)  (seem) to be nobody with him. He pulled my sleeve

  (4)   (attract) my attention and said, “Excuse me. Do you know what I can buy  (5)   this?” He held out __  (6)   20-cent piece. I knew he couldn’t really buy anything much. However, even though the boy looked so sad, he also looked   (7)  (hope). So, I said, “Hold out your hand and let’s see what happens.” He held out his hand and then I put enough money in   (8)  for him to buy the candy. I smiled at him and walked off. All I could hear was him saying ,“Thank you, lady! I’m so happy!”I didn’t know   (9)  he bought and I didn’t care. The  (10)  (excite) in his voice made my day!

Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is a stress. Some stresses get you going and they are good for you - without any stress at all many say our lives would be boring and would probably feel pointless. However, when the stresses undermine both our mental and physical health they are bad. Here we shall be focusing on stress that is bad for you.

Stress is the feeling we have when under pressure, while stressors are the things we respond to in our environment. Examples of stressors are noises, unpleasant people, a speeding car, or even going out on a first date. Generally (but not always), the more stressors we experience, the more stressed we feel.

When we are stressed the following happens:

Blood pressure rises.                            

Breathing becomes more rapid.                         

Heart rate (pulse) rises.                             

Muscles become tense.

We do not sleep (heightened state of alertness).

Most of us have varying interpretations of what stress is about and what matters. Some of us focus on what happens to us, such as breaking a bone or getting a promotion, while others think more about the event itself. How you see that stressful event will be the largest single factor that impacts on your physical and mental health. Your interpretation of events and challenges in life may decide whether they are invigorating or harmful for you.

There are three broad methods you can follow to treat stress.

Self help for treating stress

Exercise has been proven to have a beneficial effect on a person’s mental and physical state. For many people exercise is an extremely useful stress buster.

Alcohol and drugs will not help you manage your stress better. Either stop consuming them completely, or cut down.

     If your consumption of coffee and other drinks which contain caffeine is high, cut down.

Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. Make sure you have a healthy and balanced diet.

Talk to you family, friends, work colleagues and your boss. Express your thoughts and worries.

Stress management techniques

Stress management can help you to keep away from the source of stress, change the way you view a stressful event, and lower the impact that stress might have on your body. Stress management therapy will have the objective of pursuing one or more of these approaches.

Medicines

   Doctors will not usually prescribe medications for coping with stress, unless the patient has an underlying illness, such as depression or some type of anxiety. If that is the case, the doctor is actually treating a mental illness. In such cases, an antidepressant may be prescribed. Bear in mind that there is a risk that all the medication will do is mask the stress, rather than help you deal and cope with it.

Britain will soon ban smoking in cars with children. Britain’s government wants to reduce the harm cigarette smoke    61   (do) to children. New laws    62   (cut) the chances of children passive smoking. Many studies say passive smoking can almost be as    63  (harm) as actually smoking a cigarette. The British government said it looked at research that found children who sat in smoke-filled cars had health    64  (problem). Britain’s leader David Cameron said the problem is    65  (particular) bad in cars because there is so little space, so the car fills with smoke very quickly. The new law will make it illegal for anyone to smoke in    66  car that has a child in it.

Not everyone agrees with the new law. Some lawmakers say it takes away the freedom for people   67   (smoke)in their own car. They believe people should be able to smoke in their car because there are so many public places   68   smoking is not allowed. However, Britain’s health minister said the health of children was   69   important than the freedom to smoke. He told reporters: “The freedom to smoke in your car in front of a child doesn't seem to me that important and    70  (protect) a child's health does seem to me to be extremely important.”

Sit-down habit is killing us

How many hours do you spend sitting in a chair every day? Eight hours in the office plus three hours in front of the TV after work is the norm for many people. You probably don't need an expert to tell you that sitting too much is not good for your health---from an increased risk of heart disease and obesity(肥胖) in the long term, to reduced cholesterol（胆固醇）maintenance in the short term, not to mention the strain（拉紧）on your neck and spine.

To make matters worse, a growing body of research finds that negative effects of sitting too much cannot be replaced with a good diet and regular exercise, according to an article in The New York Times.

The article reported that a 2010 study of nearly 9,000 Australians found that for each additional hour of television a person watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent.

Another study tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006. The death rate for men who spent six hours or more per day sitting was about 20 percent higher than for men who sat for three hours or less.  The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher. In other words, sitting is killing us.

Stand up for health

So what can we do about it? Health experts suggest we break up those many hours spent sitting with more hours spent standing.

The BBC and the University of Chester in the UK conducted a simple experiment with a small group of 10 volunteers who usually spent most of the day sitting. They were asked to stand for at least three hours a day. The researchers took measurements on days when the volunteers stood, and when they sat around. When they looked at the data there were some striking differences, the BBC reported on Oct. 16.

Blood glucose leveled off (呈平稳状态)after a meal much quicker on the days when the study subjects stood compared with the days they spent in a chair. Standing also burned more calories — about 50 calories an hour. Over the course of a year that would add up to about 30,000 extra calories, or around 3.63 kilograms of fat. "If you want to put that into activity levels, then that would be equal to running about 10 marathons a year," said John Buckley, a member of the research team. "Just by standing up three or four hours during your day at work."

    Buckley said that although doing exercise offers many proven benefits ,our bodies also need the constant, almost imperceptible(感觉不到的) increase in muscle activity that standing provides. Simple movement helps us to control our all-important blood sugar.

The researchers believe that even small adjustments, like standing while talking on the phone, going over to talk to a colleague rather than sending an e-mail, or simply taking the stairs instead of the elevator, will be of great help to us.