Most of all, try to think about why your parents do this or do that. They are still practising being parents and need help you can give them. Some day, when you become a parent, they may be able to help you how to get on with your children.

We've all done it at one time or another: took out our mobile phones to take a picture of a sunset that is too beautiful to forget, or photographed a particularly impressive dish at a restaurant.

   It's obvious that we record our lives to keep our memories from fading, but with such widespread use of camera phones and new devices like the Narrative Clip that automatically takes a picture every 30 seconds—how much is too much? Are we taking too many pictures?

   If you look at recent research by Linda Henkel, a psychology professor at Fairfield University, you might think the answer is yes. Her research has suggested that taking photos can actually damage your ability to recall details of the event later. In her study from 2014, students were led on a museum tour and asked to take photos of certain works of art—and only observe others. When they were tested the next day, they were less able to remember details of objects that they had photographed. This is what Henkel calls a "photo-taking impairment effect".

   "What I think is going on is that we treat the camera as a sort of external (外部的) memory device," Henkel says. "We have this expectation that the camera is going to remember things for us, so we don't have to continue processing that object and we don't involve in the types of things that would help us remember it."

 The poaching(偷猎),or illegal killing, of rhinos in South Africa is growing worse each year. The government recently reported that a record number of rhinos were poached in 2014, a year which had more rhino killings in South Africa than ever before.

      The World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, says about 20, 000 rhinos live in South Africa. That is more than 80 percent of the rhinos in the world. Edna Molewa, South Africa’s Environment Minister, says, “During 2014, we are sad to say this, 1, 215 rhinos were killed. This is a rise in the number of poached rhinos from 1, 004 in 2013 and indeed very worrying.”

      The animals are hunted for their horns. Many people in Asia believe the horn has curing power, which drives poachers, at all costs, mad for more horns. But there is no scientific evidence for this belief. The horn is made of keratin. That is the same thing as human hair, fingernails and toenails.

      Ms. Mo1ewa said 386 suspected poachers were arrested last year, an increase from the year before. But rhino protection workers say poachers often go unpunished after arrest. South Africa’s legal system is ineffective. Ms. Mo1ewa said more needs to be done and South Africa is taking strong measures to protect rhinos. The efforts include moving some of the animals to secret places in neighboring countries. “Now approximately 100 rhinos have been moved to neighboring states in the SADC region during 2014 and 200 more rhinos will be moved this year,” Molewa said.

      Jo Shaw, the rhino program manager at the WWF, said, “We’re talking about a loss of a hundred rhinos a month, or more than three a day. We really need to see effective action not just at a national level but internationally.” She says officials should find the criminal groups responsible for the poaching and punish them. Government officials are to meet in Botswana in March at the Intergovernmental Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade.

The reason why women love to spend hours in shops while men prefer to be in and out of the high street in minutes can trace back(追溯) to their hunter-gathering past, find scientists.

While women spent their days gathering food, often with children, men were hunters who made plans about how to catch and kill their prey (猎物). These two ways of getting food in the past show how we shop in modern times, the study believes.

Women would spend hours trying to find the right things, because they had in the past spent ages trying to find the best quality and health-giving food. Men, on the other hand, decided in advance what animal they wanted to kill and then went looking for it. Once it was found and killed, they returned home.

Daniel Kruger, professor of the University of Michigan, said the study could be the answer to why there are a lot of collisions when couples go shopping together. He said it could also help couples to avoid fights in the shops if they understood the reasons why each sex had different ways of deciding on the perfect present.

“In modern times, women are much more likely than men to know when a specific type of item will go on sale. Women also spend much more time choosing the perfect color and texture.”

Professor Kruger said his study was important because if men and women understood each other’s shopping habits they could avoid arguments while shopping.

  Waste can be seen everywhere in the school. Some students ask for more food than they can eat and others often forget to turn off the lights when they leave  the classroom. They say they can afford these things. But I don't agree with them.

        Waste can bring a lot of problems. Although China is rich in some resources we are short of   others,  for example,  fresh water. It is reported that we will have no coal or oil to use inyears.

       So if we go on wasting our resources,  what can we use in the future and where can we move? Think about it. I think we should say no to the students who waste things every day.   Everybody should stop wasting as soon as possible.

      In our everyday life, we can do many things to prevent waste from happening, for example, turn off the water taps when we finish washing,  turn off the lights when we leave the classroom, try not to order more food than we need,  and so on. Little by little,  everything will be changed. Waste can be stopped one day, if we do our best.

 A few years ago it was common to speak of a generation gap(代沟) between young people and their elders. Parents said that children did not respect and listen to them, while children said that their parents did not understand them at all. What had gone wrong? Why had the generation gap suddenly appeared? Actually, the generation gap has been around for a long time. Many people argue that it is built into every part of our society.

One important cause of the generation gap is the opportunity that young people have to choose their own ways of life. In a more traditional society, when children grow up, they are expected to live in the same area as their parents, to marry people that their parents know and like, and often to continue the family jobs. In our society, young people often travel great distances for their education, move out of the family at an early age, marry or live with people whom their parents have never met, and choose jobs different from those of their parents.

In our society, parents often expect their children to do better than they did, to find better jobs, to make more money and to do all the things that they were unable to do. Often, that is another cause of the gap between them. Often, they discover that they have very little in common with each other.

Finally, the speed at which changes take place in our society is the third cause of the gap between the generations. In a traditional culture, senior people are valued for their knowledge, but in our society the knowledge of a lifetime may become out of date. The young and the old seem to live in two very different worlds, separated by different skills and abilities. No doubt, the generation gap will continue in American life for some time to come.

Small animals like birds, mice and insects are a common sight in many cities and towns. But in recent years, there have been many reports about wild animals coming into cities. There have been bears in Vancouver parks, leopards (豹子) on the streets of Mumbai and wild pigs in gardens in Berlin. What happens when big animals come into our cities? Is it a good thing or is it dangerous for us and the animals?

Often, wild animals come into cities to look for food. In Cape Town, South Africa, baboons (狒狒) are strong animals and sometimes they attack people, so many people don’t welcome them. The city can be a dangerous place for baboons, too. Some have been injured or killed in car accidents. The city council (市议会) in Cape Town has a team of Baboon Monitors. Their job is to find baboons in the city and take them back to the countryside. This makes the city safer for people and the baboons. The problem is that a lot of baboons will come back to the city to find food again.

In Berlin, Germany, groups of wild pigs come into the city to look for food. They eat flowers and plants and dig in gardens and parks in the city. They also walk in the street and cause traffic accidents. In spite of this, some people welcome the pigs and they have been coming into the city for centuries and that people should learn to live with them. But the city council is worried about the traffic accidents. They have told people to stop giving the pigs food and have put up fences to stop the pigs coming into the city.

In Moscow, there are about 35,000 wild dogs. They live in parks, empty houses and train stations. Some of the dogs were pets that people did not want to keep. Others were born on the streets and have always lived there. Some scientists studied the dogs and found that the dogs have adapted successfully to the city life. Dogs know that it is safer to cross the street with people and some dogs even understand traffic lights. They have learned that people give more food to smaller cuter dogs, so they are sent to beg for food. What do people in Moscow think of the dogs? A lot of them like them and they give the dogs food and water. The winter in Moscow is very cold. It can be hard for dogs to survive, but some people have built small houses for the dogs to live in during the winter.

Some animals, like dogs in Moscow, can survive in the city. For others, the city is a dangerous place and it is difficult for animals to live in harmony with humans. We need some good ideas to stop animals coming into the city without hurting them.