体裁分类 知识点题库

    Finding a friend doesn't seem like a difficult job. However, bad friends are easier to find than good friends these days. If you're sitting there and wondering if you have a bad friend, let me define it for you.

    A bad friend is someone whose jealousies and insecurities outweigh their love for someone. They might want to be a good friend but they're too messed up in their own head to ever actually do it. They wonder if their friends are going out without them or if they're being forgotten and left behind. People who are violently insecure don't have what it takes to be the quality of a friend.

    Bad friends are narcissistic(自恋的). They look for any opportunity to bring the conversation back to them. Worse, they might not even be aware that they're doing it. In their mind, they might think they are the best friend ever, which is truly frightening.

    Bad friends are quick-change. They're by your side when you're fun and you have something to give them but as soon as you're going through a difficult time, they will become indifferent quickly. They won't bring you cold medicine. They won't give you a ride to the doctor, everything they do is self-serving.

    If you find a friend who has these same characteristics, send them to your bad friend list immediately. Your friends are supposed to be the solution to your problems, not the source.

    I believe your twenties are a time when you need positive and helpful friends. In such a time, friendships aren't easy to maintain like they once were in school. Now we actually have to put work into it, we have to make a conscious effort to keep the friendship going. You need to ask yourself, "Is this person worth it? Do they treat me like a fool or what?" if you have doubts, try to make them clear by considering the past experiences. Toxic(有毒的) friendships do nothing but drag you down. My point is that you have to take care of yourself and stop getting in touch with your bad friends. Only surround yourself with people who bring out the best qualities in you. It may sound cruel but it's true.

    "I didn't hear them call my name," explained Shelley Hennig to Active Teens (AT) as she talked about that exciting moment on national television when she won the honor of Miss Teen USA 2004. "Are you ready?" is what she heard. Then she said, "I shook my head no, and then they said 'yes' and it was announced again."

It was four days after that life changing moment for the seventeen-year-old high school student from Destrehan, Louisiana—-she was still on cloud nine.

    "I was so shocked! I never believed that it could actually really happen." Present in the audience(观众)that day were: her mother and father, older brother, her friends, and her dance teacher.

    Understanding why members of her family and her friends would be there, AT asked why her dance teacher had traveled so far to see her compete(比赛). "She's always been my role model. I've danced with her since I was six. She's been through so many difficulties and came through them all. I've learned to get over bad life's experiences and learned how to move on because of her."

    One of those bad life's experiences for Shelley happened three years ago when her brother Brad was killed in a drunk driving accident. He was 18. She found writing helped her get through the rough days. She said, "I write a lot about my brother. I write a lot, a lot, a lot..."

    As Miss Louisiana Teen, she traveled around the state speaking to teens(青少年)about the dangers of drinking and driving. In her role as Miss Teen USA, Sheiley will continue to speak to youth about safe driving, in addition to many other things to help the youth.

    When AT asked Miss Teen USA if she had any advice for our readers, she said, "Don't let anyone change you. Hang out with people that make you feel good about yourself. That way, it is easy to be yourself."

    A dozen international coffee experts moved around a long wooden table, pausing at each steaming cup, heads dipping, smelling and tasting. In the wings, coffee farmer Yang Fan watches attentively as the judges' circle, awaiting a decision on her latest crop of beans.

    In recent years, China is fast developing a reputation as a top coffee producer. This tasting was a side event to the first ever Pu'er International Specialty Coffee Expo in China's southwestern Yunnan province, which ran this winter and drew more than a thousand attendees, including industry aficionados (酷爱者) from across the globe.

    "Coffee has huge potential in China," says Liu Ying, who is working in private investment in Beijing to grow coffee in Pu'er five years ago. "The younger generation prefers to drink coffee in their offices much more than tea." Still, Pu'er remains synonymous with tea. In a region of China known for thousands of years of tea growing, a new crop is beginning to change the country's landscape: coffee. This town near the Laos border is surrounded by the green hills scored with tea plantations; it produces a variety of tea which is also called Pu'er. But the region's mild climate is also perfect for growing Arabica coffee. And as China's young people move away from traditional tea in favor of the invigorating coffee, Pu'er's farmers are catering to the demand. Yunnan accounts for 98% of China's coffee harvest, with half coming from the misty landscape around Pu'er. Today, China is the 13th biggest coffee producer in the world - rising from zero output three decades ago to 136,000 tons annually today.

    In April, Seattle's annual Specialty Coffee Expo decided to showcase China as its portrait country of origin. It follows on the heels of Starbucks' launching its first single-origin Yunnan coffee last year after eight years of partnership with Yunnan farmers.

    With global coffee prices at record lows, Yunnan farmers are processing beans in bespoke (定制的) ways to create distinct flavors -allowing them to enter the market of specialty coffee. "At current coffee prices, I can't even feed my family," says the farmer Yang. "My only way out is to produce specialty coffee, to make the best coffee beans." That means letting beans dry in their cherries, thus producing a wild, fruity flavor, or allowing them to "honey" in their sugary inner layer, which adds a slight sweetness.

    "If I told you this was Colombian or Panama coffee, nobody would argue with me," says Samuel Gurel, CEO of Pu'er's Torch Coffee Roasters, as Yang breaks into a laughter. "It's a great example of how Chinese coffee is evolving."

    Food experts say washing could spread the germs on your turkey in the kitchen sink or nearby food. But it's been a challenge trying to convince cooks to stop rinsing (冲洗)off raw poultry. Germs that can make people sick are common in the guts of healthy poultry and are legally allowed to be on raw turkey and chicken. The assumption is that nobody eats their poultry raw, and that thorough cooking will kill the bacteria.

    The do — not — wash raw poultry advice from the USDA is relatively new and perhaps hasn't caught on because it goes against the common belief that washing makes things clean, said Chapman. Benjamin Chapman, a study author and food safety expert at North Carolina State University, said the instinct to wash raw poultry goes back at least decades when people relied more on visual clues to spot problems with poultry. Meanwhile, washing hands and surfaces are also important.

    But food preparation is a complicated act, and germs from poultry can be spread even if it's not washed, especially when birds are removed from packaging.

    The USDA-funded study stresses that point. Researchers sprayed raw chicken with a harmless strain of E. coli (大肠杆菌)and watched volunteer cooks at test kitchens. Among those who washed their raw chicken, about a quarter ended up spreading the bacteria to their lettuce. But even some of those who did not rinse the chicken got germs on the lettuce. And there are other opportunities for germs to survive on turkeys: melting and cooking.

    To ensure a bird is thoroughly cooked, they say to use a thermometer to check that the deepest and thickest parts of it have reached 165 degrees. Even after the meal is cooked, you aren't out of the danger zone. To keep turkeys and other leftovers safe, experts say they should be refrigerated after two hours.

    Recently a growing number of foreign universities, such as the University of Cambridge, are accepting China's gaokao results as one of their admission standards. Is the Chinese college entrance exam being recognized globally?Forum readers share their opinions:

    Cecilia Zhang（China）

    The gaokao is a really tough exam. If possible, it can be used as one of the indicators（指标）for foreign universities, in addition to other indicators, such as how well they speak the target language. The students, who perform well in the gaokao, also have the ability to successfully adapt to Western styles of education. I believe accepting the gaokao as an indicator is a win-win for Chinese students and overseas universities.

    Wchao37（US）

    In fact, gaokao is perhaps much more difficult than the SAT or ACT exams. You can get a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT but not in the gaokao, partly because the SAT is a machine-scored multiple-choice exam. Do you know anyone that has ever achieved a perfect score in the gaokao?

    Harry01(UK)

    Hundreds of students from China have entered universities in the UK using their gaokao scores, which requires that their knowledge of English be above a certain level. This measure has benefited specific groups of students from various backgrounds in China.

    Mbursian (Canada)

    In order to attend a university in an English-speaking country, a student needs to have an acceptable band score on the IELTS. Most importantly, students need an acceptable knowledge of the language spoken in any country they plan to study in. Now the Chinese gaokao is closer to meeting the requirements of different countries.

    ＂New and improved. "These words are put in so many marketing campaigns that we tend to accept them as linked. But many new drugs aren't an improvement over the best existing drug for a given condition, and the fast drug-approval processes in recent years have added to the uncertainty about their advantages.

    A recent report in the British Medical Journal, "New Drugs; Where Did We Go Wrong and What We Do Better?" analyzed the issue, The authors looked at 216 drugs approved between 2011 and 2017; 152 were newly developed, and 64 were existing medicine approved for new uses. Only 25% offered a major advantage over the established treatment, and fully 58% had no confirmed added benefit to reduce symptoms or improve health-related quality of life.

    ＂This doesn't mean there's no added benefit, "lead author Wieseler said. "It just means we have no positive proof Either we have no studies or have studies not good enough.”Wieseler and her co-authors work for a German agency which evaluates new treatments and advises on whether the country's health care system should pay a premium(补贴）for them. If payers think a new drug isn't better than an existing drug, these agencies will require that hospitals try the cheaper drug first.

    Germany's HTA demands trials to prove that a new treatment beats the existing standard. This isn't always practical. For one thing, such studies can be expensive and time-consuming, with no guarantee of success. Secondly, it can discourage companies from attempting to develop new alternatives. This is already happening. Drug developers are increasingly focused on areas where there are no good treatments to compete with, such as rare diseases.

    This lack of meaningful data to guide patients is a major point of Wieseler's paper. With accelerated approval, there are more products approved, with a greater amount of uncertainty about risks and benefits. But there are other solutions besides drug trials. One idea is to require postmarket studies to track the effectiveness of newly approved drugs-a step too often neglected.

    GRAMMY award-winning blues harmonica (口琴) player Sugar Blue made his first China performance in December 2017. Chinese audiences were amazed by his stormy playing of the harmonica.

    Born on December 16, 1949 in New York, Sugar Blue is a great singer and composer. Sugar Blue's love for music comes from his mother. Till today, he still vividly remembers the first time his mother took him to the Apollo Theater to see Stevie Wonder, a music genius. The way Wonder played the harmonica onstage greatly impressed Sugar Blue and made him even more determined to spend his life working on his musical dream.

    Sugar Blue's musical career has been quite smooth, in which New York City plays an integral part. At that time, the musical atmosphere in New York was very diverse, jazz, blues, pop, rock, etc.

    He tries to pour everything that he feels about a song into it. His inspiration comes from people and the things that he comes across in his daily life, involving personal relationships, love, work, and daily struggles. In his eyes, you can write about the wonderful things that happen to you and you can also write about things that are not so good. He also draws inspiration from literature. Besides poetry, Zora Neale Hurston's book also influenced him a lot, which is in his eyes "poetry from the first word to the last."

    Among the cities he has been to, Shanghai is his favorite." In Shanghai, there's rock and roll, jazz, hip-hop, traditional Chinese music. I had a wonderful experience." he said." The city itself is full of life and energy."

    In his new album, Sugar Blue writes a song about Shanghai to show his special love of it. The song features well-known Chinese sheng musician's playing. Sugar Blue loves this song and highly values such cooperation with Chinese musicians.

Candy comes in many flavors. Some taste like fruit. Some taste like flowers. Some are chewy, like taffy (太妃糖) and gum. Hard candies are, well. hard! So, they last a long time.

But, in spoken English, there are some types of candy that you cannot eat. For example, you can't eat eye candy. Eye candy is a person-man or woman-who is very good-looking. So, looking at this person is a treat for the eye, just like candy is a treat for the taste buds.

Do you hear of candy coat? Of course it is not a coat made of candy. But you can say I don't candy coat the truth. What does candy-coating something mean? Well, some pills are covered with a coat of thin, sweet candy. The coating makes swallowing the pill easier, and it may hide a bad taste. So, candy coating a difficult truth or situation means you don't directly discuss its bad parts.

After talking about candy you may want to eat some candies. However, some people dislike things that are very sweet, especially adults. But even if you do not like candy, you can still be called a kid in a candy store. This expression means a person is very happy to do something or to simply be somewhere. Imagine a child going from one candy display to the next, not knowing which candy to choose!

Talking about children brings us to another expression: as easy as taking candy from a baby. Think about a small, helpless baby holding a piece of candy. Taking it would be very easy—mean, but easy. So, use this expression when you are talking about something that may be simple to do, but probably not right.

I had never really liked reading, and I thought it was a waste of time. But when my teacher told me to go to the library and find a book, I looked for one that I was actually interested in. I love basketball, so I picked out a basketball book which was called Hoops by Walter Dean Myers. It is an amazing story about a high school ball player named Lonnie. He is a great basketball player, and dreams of playing basketball in college someday, and of course in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Lonnie lives in Harlem, NY, and is struggling through poverty and other problems. He doubts his new coach, Carl, and doesn't think that he will be there for his new team. However, he soon realizes what the man has done in his past, and can completely connect with him. Carl soon makes a huge influence on Lonnie, but they face many challenges.

This book makes me think about how hard it would be to grow up in a rough city. I have realized that basketball is a great way to escape the struggles we face.

From this story, you will learn that the people around you really affect who you are, and how important it is to have the support of family and friends in your life. I have learned a lot from this book, and I think that anyone who reads it will too. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

I am now reading more Walter Dean Myers' books. A lot of his books are about growing up in Harlem, just like he once did. He has become my favorite author.

Where am I? What am I doing? If you're one of my 500 friends online, you'll always be the first to know. My phone and laptop are never out of touching distance, so I'm endlessly checking through all my social networking apps - whether I'm having a coffee, on my way to school, watching TV. . even when I'm in the shower. I have a never - ending flow of messages and updates from all the people I associate with online. Yet the truth of the matter is: I feel lonely

I'm not the only person who feels this way. According to research, over two-thirds of young people find it easier to make friends online than it is "in real life". I'm a shy person, but I'm wired up (上线) every day, like most of my friends. On the surface, phones bring us closer together. But in reality, my mind is always a million miles away.

I often feel depressed, dissatisfied and alone. Since I spend so much time socializing online, I even become a procrastinator (拖延者). I keep postponing things that are important in my real life: homework, tasks, connecting with my friends and family members in a meaningful way. It's funny that my friends and I chatter away online so much, but we end up having nothing to say when we meet.

What is rally worrying is that no one I know, including myself. could go cold turkey. I can't even imagine going without social networking for a week - think of all the important appointments, invitations and news updates you would miss! Alcoholics (酗酒者) who want to quit drinking can avoid drinks, but how do we give up our phones? After all, I need it for my studies because my teachers and classmates need to contact me at any time. So, that's the problem with social networking. We're hard-wired in, but we're more disconnected than ever.

Many of us love summer because it's the season when vegetables are in abundance. Fresh vegetables have almost all of the nutrients that our body requires.

Fresh cabbage is an excellent source of natural vitamin C. It also contains an adequate number of minerals. Sweet carrot is notably rich in antioxidants (抗氧化物)， vitamins and dietary fiber. Onion is a rich source of chromium (铬)， a mineral that helps cells respond appropriately to insulin (胰岛素) levels in the blood. As for me, tomato, juicy and delicious, is a wonderful gift to the world. Besides, it contains very good levels of vitamin A and vitamin C, and antioxidants, which are scientifically found to be protective against cancers.

Eat at least 5-7 servings of fresh vegetables every day. Seasonal vegetables should be encouraged. Whenever possible, go for organic farm vegetables to get maximum health benefits. Organic ones tend to be smaller but have rich flavour, possess some good concentration of vitamins and minerals and are loaded with numerous health benefiting antioxidants.

After shopping your choice of vegetables, the first thing you need to do is to wash them thoroughly, especially leafy green vegetables. Soak in salt water for a few minutes, and gently wash in cool water until you are satisfied with the cleanliness. This way you insure they are free from dirt sand and any chemical sprays. If you need to store them, then place inside plastic wrappings in order to preserve their nutrition for short periods until you use them. However, the best way is to use them early while fresh because, firstly, certain vegetables have a very short period of life and secondly, the health benefiting qualities of vegetables declines with time.

Do you like the woolly mammoths from the movie Ice Age? Too bad they're extinct? Thanks to recent developments in biotechnology, the stuff of science fiction may soon become a reality through an attractive process called "de-extinction", which aims to bring the extinct species back. The resurrected species are functionally equal to the original extinct species, but they are not exact copies.

There are three primary techniques of de-extinction. One of them is that scientists deliberately select existing species with similar characters to the extinct species to produce later generation. This is a natural method. Another is cloning. A cloned animal is created by obtaining the DNA of the extinct animal. The later generation will be an identical copy of the extinct species. This is only applied to animals that are either endangered or have recently gone extinct, as it requires well-preserved eggs. The third is the newest technique, genetic engineering. It uses gene-editing tools to place selected genes from extinct animals in place of those present in its closest living relative.

If we refer to Jurassic Park, resurrecting extinct animals is a terrible idea. Thankfully, we don't have to worry about dinosaurs running wildly, as their DNA has disintegrated over the 65 million years since their extinction. DNA can survive for several million years at best under certain rare conditions, but does that mean we should do that?

De-extinction is more for ecology than for tourism. Ecologist Ben Novak said, "All animals perform critical roles in their ecosystem. Woolly mammoths, for example, were excellent gardeners. Their disappearance was followed by a loss in diversity and the Arctic grassland became a cold, ice field. If a resurrected animal is always going to be a zoo animal then it shouldn't be brought back. "

In New Jersey, there's a row of houses with a green lawn(草坪) that kids can't enjoy. "It's really frustrating. These lawns are useless to me, "Alice, a suburban mom in New Jersey said. She lives in a beautiful community full of green lawns.

It's the middle of summer, but there are no dandelions in sight. And that's the problem: the lawns are so green because they're full of pesticides, Warning signs urge parents to keep kids off the chemical-laden grass.

Alice says that most lawns and parks in her area are like this. There are plenty of them, but her kids can't play in them. "I just want to let my baby experience the grass," she said. " Also, I'm sure it's not good for animals. The other day, a woman found a dead deer in her backyard. "

In the 1940s, people often mixed clover with grass to keep lawns strong, which benefited the environment. But over the last few decades, pesticides have taken over. In 2012, the world spent $ 56 billion on pesticides. They go into farms, lawns, parks and just about anywhere where humans grow plants. These chemicals keep parks' grass and flowers perfect. They just make them useless as actual parks.

That may be more than just annoying. New research has shown that play is good for kids. It helps them discover the world and learn how to get along with other people. But it's hard to get enough play when there are so few public spaces where kids can play. And the few that exist are often covered in chemicals that make parents uncomfortable.

There are things to take the place of pesticides, like planting a lawn full of clover, Besides, maybe a dandelion here or there isn't the worst thing.

Many people believe that there is one form of their language that is more correct than others. They may believe for example that British English is more correct than other varieties; or that written English is more correct than spoken English; or that standard spoken forms are more correct than dialect forms. Often this belief is supported by reference books to grammars, usage guides or dictionaries: if something goes against a rule in a grammar, or if the word isn't in the dictionary, it "must be wrong". Since the reference books are most often based on observation of the standard written language, the argument is really circular: these books will naturally describe standard usage, because that is what they are for ;but this does not mean that there is anything wrong with other kinds of usage that are less often described.

A better way of looking at things is to say that usage is "correct in its place". Standard American English is correct in America, British English is correct in Britain, spoken grammar is accepted in casual speech, and formal written grammar is employed in formal writing. So this means there is no answer to the question: "What kind of English should learners study?" It depends on their purposes. For many learners, the best model is one or other of the two main standard varieties: British or American English. Neither of these is "better" than the other, and they are both used and understood worldwide.

People are also worried by language change. If younger people "break" the rules that older people have learnt, or use language in new ways, older people often feel disturbed: they are concerned that younger people no longer know their grammar, and that the language is going downhill. This is a needless worry: change is natural and inevitable, it cannot be stopped, and it does not generally affect a language's efficiency as a communicative tool. A great deal of modern English grammar would have been wrong three hundred years ago, and will perhaps be wrong again three hundred years from now.

The bad health effects of sleep loss during the week can't be repaid by longer weekend sleep, according to a new study.

Researchers have long known that sleep deprivation (剥夺) can cause weight gain and increase other health risks. But for those who force themselves out of bed every weekday after too few hours of shut eye, they hope turning off the alarm on Saturday and Sunday will repay the weekly sleep debt and remove any ill effects.

The research, published in Current Biology, crushes those hopes. Despite complete freedom to sleep during a weekend recovery period, people in a sleep lab who were limited to five hours of sleep on weekdays gained nearly three pounds over two weeks and experienced disorders that would increase their risk for diabetes over the long term. While weekend recovery sleep had some benefits after a single week of sleep loss, those gains were wiped out when people fell right back into their same sleep deprived schedule the next Monday.

''If there are benefits of catch-up sleep, they're gone when you go back to your daily schedule. It's very short lived'', said Kenneth Wright, director of the sleep and chronobiology lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder. ''These health effects are long term. It's kind of like smoking once was-people would smoke and wouldn't see an immediate effect on their health, but people will say now that smoking is not a healthy lifestyle choice. I think sleep is in the early stage of where smoking used to be.''

Wright said that the study suggests people should put sleep in the first place cutting out the ''sleep stealers'' such as watching television shows or spending time on their phones. Even when people don't have a choice about losing sleep because of child-care responsibilities or job schedules, they should think about getting sleep in the same way they would get a healthy diet or exercise.

My little grandson Nolan just turned four last week. He loves playing with toy cars. He even sleeps with cars in his hands. So I knew he'd be excited about the car that my husband and I bought him for his birthday.

I talked to Nolan the day I bought his present and told him that Grandmama had something he was really going to like. For the week and a half after that, it was all he could do to wait. He asked if it was big and guessed what it was over and over. And I gave him some strange suggestions. He'd say, "Grandmama, it's not that!"

The day of his party arrived and as people gathered at Nolan's house, the pile of presents got bigger and bigger. Nolan came to where I was sitting in the kitchen and said, "Grandmama, did you bring my present?" I told him I did, and we walked into the living room so I could show the wrapped box to him. It was almost as big as he was. A few minutes later, I heard a loud sound and when I looked, he was trying to drag the heavy box into the kitchen. He looked up at me and said, "Can I open it now?" I told him he'd have to wait just a little bit longer until after everyone ate.

He had such a hard time waiting, but when his mama said it was time to open presents, Nolan tore (撕) into that big box and discovered that it was worth waiting.

It's sometimes the same way in our lives. We know something great is to come. But when it doesn't arrive right away, we're just like little Nolan. And then when it still doesn't arrive, we get impatient. But just as Nolan learned, it's finally worth the wait.

Imagine that your friend is cutting the cake to share with all the guests at the birthday party. The first three guests are handed large pieces of cake, while you are handed a teeny-tiny one. How would you feel? Is this fair? Most of us have a clear sense of what is fair and what is not, but where does this come from? Scientists try to study fairness in primate species (灵长类物种) to understand how fairness came about.

Fairness often involves equal outcomes (平等的结果)

Do monkeys behave in ways that lead to equal outcomes? To find out, scientists give monkeys choices about how to share food. Scientists ask a monkey to choose between two options—to provide a piece of food just for themselves, or to provide food for another monkey nearby, as well as for themselves (Figure 1). If monkeys are trying to achieve equal outcomes, they would give food to both themselves and another. Do they? Sometimes.

（Figure 1）

Whether monkeys favor equal outcomes seems to depend on the species. The species which live in groups will prefer equal outcomes, but not all the time.

What else might be influencing whether monkeys create equal outcomes? If the two monkeys are friends, one is more likely to share food with the other. It also seems that monkeys would make the equal choice when they cannot see the actual food—some scientists use pictures of food.

But wait, does effort matter?

Scientists have developed a way to test whether monkeys prefer everyone to be paid equally for doing the same work. In this study, monkeys are trained to work for food by exchanging small coins with a scientist. To determine if and how monkeys respond to unfairness, scientists have two monkeys take turns exchanging coins and give them different food—their favorite food or a less-preferred food (Figure2). If the monkey getting the less-preferred food refuses to keep exchanging coins, scientists conclude the monkeys respond to unfairness.

（Figure 2）

The results of the study have suggested differences across monkey species. Generally, monkeys living in groups do not respond to unfairness, while other monkeys do respond to it. However, monkeys do not appear to mind if they get a better food than others.

All in all, monkeys' sense of fairness does not seem to be as well-developed as our own. By studying their preferences for fairness and responses to unfair situations, we can learn more about how these values developed in humans. And this also helps us to better understand the natural world and how to care for animals as well.

Welcome to the pumpkin weigh-off at Half Moon Bay (半月湾), California. The event has always been very popular among most pumpkin growers. Thousands of people line up along the city's High Street and watch the proud pumpkin owners from across the country. Each pumpkin is carefully picked up by forklifts (叉式升降机) and placed on a digital weighing scale.

Organizers are offering $30,000 in total prize money for a new record pumpkin entering Half Moon Bay. But in order to receive the "New Record Prize"， the grower will have to bring a pumpkin heavier than the 2,624-pound one grown by Mathias Willemijns in 2017. If the heaviest pumpkin in the contest is unable to surpass (超过) the record, its owner will receive $6 for every pound it weighs.

When: Monday, October 9, 2018. Weighing will begin at 7 am and will end at 11 am Growers will start lining the street as daylight breaks by 7 am

Where: I. D. E. S. Grounds, 735 Main Street, Half Moon Bay, California.

Prize Money: New Record Pumpkin: $30,000 (in total)

1st Place：$6 per pound

2nd Place：$2,000

3rd Place：$1,500

4th Place：$1,000

5th～10th Place: $500 each

11th～20th Place: $100 each

Special Prizes：$500 for the most beautiful pumpkin, judged by the audience (color, shape and size).

The top five pumpkins will be on display for the thousands of visitors to Half Moon Bay's famous Art and Pumpkin Festival that will take place on October 14－15, 2018.

I dropped a Crock-Pot(炖锅) on my bare feet. More accurately, I slipped down the back steps of our house on a rainy night while carrying a Crock-Pot. Consequently, my feet got hurt, for which I had to wear slip-on house shoes instead of traditional footwear.

From then on, my daily routine slowed to a crawl because I had to walk at a snail's pace. And I had to cancel unimportant outings and appointments. At first, I hated the interruption in my plans but I soon realized my injury had given me a gift: spare time. I rediscovered long-forgotten joys I'd thrown aside because I was too busy for such "luxuries". I read a book for pleasure. I spent time in silence. I experimented with my watercolor set. And my spirit came alive again.

I had been living at such a crazy pace for so long: get up early, bury myself in my tasks at work, do housework, and collapse in the evening with no recollection of what I'd actually done in the past twelve hours. When I was forced to slow down, I realized how unhealthy my life-style had been. Something had to change, or I'd suffer from the consequences.

Finding a healthier balance has been an ongoing process, and now I've been able to see improvement. I've stopped filling my schedule with back-to-back meetings and obligations. I try to leave some margin(余地) in my time so I can breathe and think. I pay attention to my emotions especially those that tell me I "should" do something. Overall, I make time for the activities that bring me joy.

That encounter makes me realize the importance of slowing down and living with purpose. I make sure my schedule isn't overloaded. I remember to ask for help when I need it.

If your image of a computer programmer is a young man, there's a good reason. Data from many big tech companies have shown how few of their employees working in programming and technical jobs are female. Google has the highest rates: 17% of its technical staff is female.

It wasn't always this way. Decades ago, it was women who pioneered computer programming. But too often, that's a part of history that even people in the computing industry don't know.

Last week, I took a trip to the birthplace for today's computer revolution, Stanford University, and randomly asked over a dozen students if they knew who was the first computer programmer. Only one student, Cheng Daofan, got close. "It's a woman," she said, searching her mind for a name. "It's not necessarily an electronic computer. I think it's more like a mechanic computer."

She's probably thinking of Ada Lovelace, who was born in England on December 10,1815. Lovelace was Lord Byron's child, and her mother, Lady Byron, did not want her to turn out to be like her father, a romantic poet. So Lady Byron used mathematics to keep her from becoming a poet.

But Lovelace saw poetry in math. At 17, she met Charles Babbage, who showed her his plans for the Analytical Engine that he believed would be able to do complex mathematical calculations. He asked her to write about his work for a scientific journal. In the article, Lovelace expressed a vision for the machine that went beyond calculations.

"A computer could do anything. Letters of the alphabet, musical notes and even the positions on a chess board could be represented by numbers," wrote Lovelace. She even gave an example on how to load an instruction into the machine.

Babbage's machine was never built. But his designs and Lovelace's article were read by people building the first computer a century later. In 1979, a new computer language was named "Ada" in recognition of her pioneering work with Charles Babbage.