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The Gata used to look annoyed when they received power bills that routinely topped $200. Last September the couple moved into a 1,500-square-foot home in Premier Gardens, an area of 95 "zero-energy homes" (ZEH) just outside town. Now they're actually eager to see their electricity bills. The grand total over the 10 months they've lived in the three-bedroom house: $75. For the past two months, they haven't paid a cent.

ZEH communities are the leading edge of technologies that might someday create houses that produce as much energy as they consume. Premier Gardens is one of a half-dozen subdivisions (住宅开发项目) in California where every home cuts power consumption by 50%, mostly by using low power appliances and solar panels.

Aside from the panels on the roof, Premier Gardens looks like a community of traditional homes. But inside, special windows cut power bills by blocking solar heat in summer and keeping indoor warmth winter.

The rest of the energy savings comes from the solar units. They don't just feed the home they serve. If they generate more power than the home is using, the excess flows into the utility's power grid(电网). The residents are billed by "net metering": they pay for the amount of power that they get from the grid, minus the kilowatts(千瓦) they feed into it. If a home generates more power than it uses, the bill is zero.

That sounds like a bad deal for the power company, but it's not. Solar homes produce the most power on the hot sunny afternoons when everyone rushes home to turn up the air conditioner. "It helps us lower usage at peak power times," says solar expert Mike Keesee. "That lets us avoid building costly plants or buying expensive power at peak usage time."

What's not to like? Mostly the costs. The special features can add $25,000 or more to the purchase price of a house. Tax breaks bring the cost down, especially in California, but in many states ZEHs can be extremely expensive. For the consumer, it's a matter of paying now for the hardware to save later on the power bill.

Soaring to 29, 035 feet, the famous Mount Everest had long been considered unclimbable due to the freezing weather, the obvious potential fall from cliffs and the effects of the extreme high altitude, often called "mountain sickness." But that was to be changed by Edmund Hillary.

When he was invited to join the British Everest expedition in 1953, Edmund Hillary was a highly capable climber. The glacier-covered peaks in his hometown in New Zealand proved a perfect training ground for the Himalaya. It was his fourth Himalayan expedition in just over two years and he was at the peak of fitness.

On May 28, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, an experienced Sherpa (夏尔巴人) set out and reached the South Summit by 9 a. m. next day. But after that, the ridge (山脊) slightly fell before rising suddenly in a rocky spur (尖坡) about 17 meters high just before the true summit. The formation is difficult to climb due to its extreme pitch because a mistake would be deadly. Scratching at the snow with his ax, Hillary managed to overcome this enormous obstacle, later to be known as the Hillary Step.

At 11:30 a. m, the two men found themselves standing at the top of the world. "Not until we were about 50 feet of the top was I ever completely convinced that we were actually going to reach the summit." Hillary later recounted, "Of course I was very, very pleased to be on the summit, but my first thought was a little bit of surprise. After all, this is the ambition of all mountaineers."

Emerging as the first to summit Mount Everest, Hillary continued by helping explore Antarctica, and establishing the Himalayan Trust (信托基金), through which he provided a number of beneficial services to the Himalayan peoples. He also a sizeable legacy that mountain climbers have chased ever since. As a young climber said, "It was not just Hillary and Tenzing that reached the summit of Mount Everest. It was all of humanity. Suddenly, all of us could go."

Writing anything imaginative and questioning usually comes down to one ordinary question: what if? What if there were ghosts who could move through the walls? What if a man were to turn into salt? What if there was a book of real predictions? These questions form clear starting points, while character, setting, and the beginning point are key parts. 

In this masterclass with Natasha Pulley, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and creative writing lecturer, you will be guided through the strategies that help craft magical realism, from story planning to the final completion. 

Combining practical writing exercises with theory and discussion, this masterclass will give you the tools and inspiration to build your ideas into a novel. 

Course content

Finding your ideas quickly and easily 

Extending the outline into more complex world-building 

How to use historical language to enrich your work 

How to think about novel structure 

Course Details

Date: Thursday 12 October 2023

Time: 6: 30 pm - 9: 00 pm 

You will be sent a link to the online class 24 hours prior to the start time. Please email masterclasses @theguardian. com if you do not receive the access link 24 hours before the scheduled start time. If you require any adjustments to enable your participation in this course, please get in touch with us through email as well.

English (become) the global language in the last few decades. In today's world, being able to speak English is how you stand out and get ahead.

However, learning English as a foreign language  (be) very difficult in the absence of a native language environment. We have little chance to live in an English-speaking country. Therefore, we have to rely on knowledge  we can learn at school. Teachers must make sure that there is  adequate amount of input in English conveyed to the students through  (vary) mediums. This input must be of high quality. After all, high quality output  (base) on high quality input.

To really get ahead, however, it means (put) in extra work outside of the classroom. Experts say that just 15 minutes of extra-curricular study a day can really speedup foreign language learning. Besides, you need to keep mind why you are learning English. Quite (simple), in today's world, learning English is one of major (factor) leading to a brighter future and a world of possibilities.

Lucas majors in classic linguistics. He is equal to recognizing a language in a 1  way no matter how unfamiliar it is. Last year, he 2  a shell with some totally strange 3  carved on it at a stall (小摊).

Based on his demanding 4  he knew it was from a small village. Besides, after 5  many related reference books, he had his point of view: the symbols were 6  as a variety of the writing system of Jiaguwen, a kind of writing system which dates back to 1500 BC.

Lucas had a 7  attitude to the discovery and applied to his university for a further research by visiting the village. With permission given, he visited it. He found the mother tongue of the villagers was a special dialect, whose vocabulary 8  from Mandarin (普通话) spoken by 1.4 billion people.

Despite many 9 , understanding the dialect and finding more shells helped him complete a report. The report was 10  where he gave a full description: The characters 11  by a small nation in the Shang Dynasty were passed down by means of bones and 12 . Afterwards, the nation went through ups and downs, 13  for hundreds of years. But it 14  disappeared due to some factors.

Lucas's report was a 15 in the academic field, attracting more people to these special characters.