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参考词汇：World Book Day 世界读书日 注意：1. 词数 80 左右；2. 开头和结尾已给出，可以适当增加细节，使行文连贯。

Dear fellows,

……

English Club

July 20th

Terracotta Warriors exhibition opens in Spain

The Archaeological Museum of Alicante opened on Tuesdayunique exhibition of China's renowned Terracotta Warriors, known as the " (eight) Wonder of the World." The exhibition(title) "The Legend of China's Qin and Han Dynasties" and open to public between Wednesday and January 28, 2024, showcases more than 120pieces from nine

Chinese museums.

The exhibition is  divided into  three galleriesshowcase the history of  the unification of China by Emperor Qin Shi Huang, his tomb, and the(mystery) Terracotta Warriors. The museum uses advanced technology to create an immersive exhibition space(use) light, music, and scent.

Curator of the exhibition Marcos Martinon-Torres, an archaeologist and professor at the University of Cambridge, said the exhibition would provide an "unforgettable experience" for thousands of visitors.

The exhibition is part of a series of activities intendedthe China-Spain Year of Culture and Tourism. Apart from the 10 life-size Terracotta Warriors and horses, it also features gold and silver, bronze, pottery, and jade cultural relics.

At the opening ceremony on Tuesday, Carlos Mazon, president of Alicante provincial council, called the exhibition "a(history) moment." He said his province "will become a cultural center in Europe in the next ten months, it is the first time that the Chinese Terracotta Warriors(exhibit) abroad since the (COVID-19)pandemic."

Earlier this year, I moved into a suburb of Atlanta. I decided to1 the area on foot.

On my walks, as I admired the range of residential 2 , I also admired another type of house: Little Free Libraries. I'd seen them all over Atlanta and3 it'd be fun to build my own, but when I looked at the website's official map, it turned out there were already a handful nearby. 4 , I decided to seek each of them out.

I've since found six sites of these free book5 . Without them, I would never have been able to "meet" people in my community. I quickly6 my neighbors' reading tastes, sorting through their small boxes of books. Each library is unique and shows the7 of the person who built it, with8 colors and designs. These Little Free Libraries are also the perfect way to 9 conversations with strangers.

Since the pandemic began, Little Free Libraries have become a lifeline for many. They don't10 social distancing and everything is on an honor system. People11 a book in exchange and some libraries have even become12 food pantries (食品储藏柜) for people in need. In all the13 they've taken on, these libraries have brought people together in a sense, especially when it feels like everything is trying to14 us. Beyond conversation starters and personality15 , Little Free Libraries find common ground — a precious thing, pandemic or not.

Once upon a time, we were all question-asking experts. We started asking our parents numerous questions as kids. By preschool, our inquiries even reached the depths of science, philosophy, and the social order. Where does the sun go at night? Why doesn't that man have a home like we do? Why do rocks sink but ice floats?

Why does the child's urge to ask questions grow inactive in so many adults? An important factor is how the social environments surrounding us change as we age. Schools transform from a place for asking questions to one funded by our ability to answer them. And we recognize that society rewards the people who propose to have the answers.

  We can be braver about asking questions in public and encouraging others to pursue their curiosity, too. In that encouragement, we help create an environment where those around us feel safe to ask questions.

When it comes to how we phrase questions, we are advised to open with less sensitive questions, favor follow-up questions, and keep questions open-ended. We can also practice asking questions of and for ourselves by keeping a running list of questions in a journal.

Finally, we could set aside time to ask absurd questions like "How would you accomplish a week's work in two hours?" This type of questions forces us to break the boundaries of our comfort zone.

In the world that does not look much as it did years ago, we must ask questions.

Great questions can open up our capacity to change because they allow us to draw people in, opening them up to sharing knowledge, ideas, and opinions. And they are also our primary means of learning about the world. In short, asking questions is the best way to deepen our understanding of the things that matter to our life.

A．Then, at some point, our inquiring desires disappear.

B．It is a high-payoff behavior especially in times of change.

C．The questions we ask depend on our attitudes as well as the situations. D．But as we grow up, asking questions fills us with worry and self-doubt. E．As such, one way to renew our inquiring spirit is to change the atmosphere.

F．We learn to sell ourselves on the job market by what we know, not what we don't.

G．It not only removes the publicity from question asking, but offers us a place to experiment.

Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this "new norm" of skim reading is producing "an invisible, game-changing transformation" in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain's capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.

We shouldn't overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. "Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline," the American author Selvin

Brown wrote. "No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans."

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people's words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes "enthusiastic", "passionate" or "eager" reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.

To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenaciou     for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can't be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like "dead-tree" books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

From the moon to Mars, scientists have been hunting for alien life in the solar system for decades. However, Venus was not regarded as an ideal place because of its hot temperature and dry atmosphere. But a recent discovery of traces of a gas in the clouds of Venus has excited astronomers, as it may serve as a potential sign of life.

On Sept 14, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced that scientists have detected phosphine(磷化氢) in the clouds of Venus. Phosphine is a colorless, toxic gas that has an odor of garlic. Though toxic, it is viewed as a possible sign of life because on Earth the gas is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments.

"I was very surprised, stunned, in fact." astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales and lead author of the research, told MSN. "There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organism in the clouds of Venus."

This layer of clouds is about 48 kilometers above the Venus surface, with its temperature ranging from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (about -1 to 93℃). Scientists have inferred that if life exists on Venus, this cloud deck is likely the only place where it would survive.

Scientists went through every possibility that could have led to the formation of phosphine gas in Venus' clouds, including volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites(陨石)falling into the atmosphere. But they ruled all of them out. It was concluded that there is no explanation for the existence of this gas in Venus' clouds, other than the presence of life, USA Today reported.

Although the detection of phosphine is not strong evidence for life, this finding is great enough to change scientists' view on Venus, which is thought to be a completely inhospitable planet.

What signs of life we looking for?

⒈Liquid water: It can dissolve a huge range of molecules needed for life and facilitate their chemical reactions.

⒉Mild temperatures: Temperatures higher than 122 ℃ will destroy most complex organic molecules, and make it almost impossible for carbon-based life to form.

Frane Selak, a music teacher in Croatia, was born in 1929. He is probably the unluckiest and luckiest man in the world, whose story is so incredible that it will leave you speechless.

The first time he was on the verge of death was on a cold January day in 1962, when he was traveling by train to Dubrovnik. The train suddenly derailed in a frozen river, killing 17 passengers. He managed to escape with only a broken arm and a few scratches. A year later, he was flying from Zagreb to Rijeka, when suddenly a door came off and the teacher flew out of the plane. We don't usually hear much about survivors when it comes to plane crashes, as evidenced by the 19 people who lost their lives in the crash. With one exception — Frane Selak, who was lucky enough to land on a haystack and woke up a few days later in hospital with minor injuries.

The series of unfortunate events did not stop here. Or are they fortunate? In 1966, Frane Selak was traveling in a bus that crashed and fell into a river. There were four victims, but Selak cheated death again. In 1970, Selak was driving when suddenly his car caught fire. He was lucky to get out of the car just before it exploded. Three years later, another of Selak's cars caught fire. He lived moments of horror, caught fire, and lost almost all his hair, but again he survived without major injuries.

In 1995 he was in Zagreb and one day he was hit by a bus, but miraculously survived and was left with only a few injuries. The following year, Frane Selak drove into a fence to avoid a truck coming from the opposite direction. He was thrown out of the car and left hanging from a tree, only to see his car explode 100 meters below.

To make the picture complete and the character's luck unquestionable, in 2003, Selak won 1 million dollars in the Croatian lottery. In 2010, the 81-year-old retiree decided that "money can't buy happiness", and decided to live a modest life with his fifth wife.

Frane Selak is now world-famous for escaping death.

Sometimes, we need a little help and get back to a state of mindfulness when it comes to taking care of our physical and mental health. Wellness vacations are on the rise.

■ Ketanga Fitness

When: April 6 — 10

Where: Phoenix, Arizona

What: Sweat it out surrounded by the red rocks of Arizona's desert. P.E. Club owner Nedra

Lopez leads a mixture of high and low intensity workouts in the mornings and evenings.

During breaks, guests will have plenty of time to explore the desert. After your last workout class, you can hit the town for dinner and drinks.

■ Rksolid Retreat

When: April 15 — 22

Where: Oahu, Hawaii

What: What better excuses to relax yourself in Hawaii than a retreat led by Barry's Bootcamp star Rebecca Kennedy? During your week-long journey to Oahu, you'll surf, climb waterfalls, and hike the Stairway to Heaven trail. In between all those workouts, Kennedy creates a special stretch and recovery class so you won't skip a beat next day.

■ Wellness Immersion

When: August

Where: Amanbagh, India

What: The Amanbagh hotel offers 4-21 day programs focusing on immersion courses that focus on relieving stress from people's body. Activities include hikes overlooking beautiful gorges, yoga and meditation sessions, and meals made with organic, locally harvested produce.

■ Mile High Run Club

When: August 18 — 28

Where: Reykjavik, Iceland

What: After landing in Reykjavik, runners can work towards their best time in the annual marathon, half marathon, or 10K. After a race, you'll relax your muscles in the geothermal Blue Lagoon spa and hit the ground running again with guided runs through Thorsmork National Park. Do we even have to mention Skaftafell's crazy glacier views?

After twenty-two years raising three children, I was introduced to a concept: the empty nest. Apparently, this was now my time to 1  into new experiences. Why, then was I not excited, but 2 ?

For a job opportunity, my husband and I moved to another state. One day, I discovered a trail only a short 3  from our apartment, I was thrilled and began to use it regularly. The trail meandered along a river lined with bushes and towering trees. Ducks 4  on the riverbanks; Canada geese flew overhead; small rabbits bounded across the pathway, 5  into the bushes. These small peaceful scenes provided me with a(n) 6 , but only slightly lifted me out of my loneliness.

Still, I continued to walk the path. I 7  something new: couples, young and old, holding hands, chatting as they walked; a father 8 his daughter to ride her two-wheeler; a woman doing Tai Chi. They all 9 the trail. I became fascinated with the lives of these strangers, yet still wondering if any of them feel 10 ?

One morning, an elderly woman holding the handles of her walker came into view. She sailed by me in the 11 direction like a marathon runner. I turned around to catch another glimpse of this one-woman wonder. She was 12 moving forward, not letting anything hold her back. That's when it 13 me. Nobody was.

As I walked toward my car, remembering the elderly woman's energy and 14 , I made a decision. I would fill my empty nest with 15 . I was ready for the bright future that stretched before me.

Ways to improve Innovation Skills

In your professional life, innovation skills play a vital role. Here are steps and tips to improve them.

Improve reasoning (推理) skills. Reasoning skills form the ability to think about a particular way to work in a sensible and result-oriented manner. You can implement reasoning for innovative ideas and enhance them further.  You will also be able to come up with the ideas that have higher chances to become result-driven.

Be a good listener. You should listen to others and try to think about their ideas and concepts.  Also, adaptability increases innovation. It would help if you tried adopting newer versions of solutions for the betterment of your company.

Actively participate in team activities. A team is a body that functions the best in togetherness. Team activities like brainstorming sessions are conducted to enhance the team spirit and develop the thinking skills of the team members.  Such activities will improve the innovation skills.

Make decisions based on judgments. From the inferences of team activities or other tasks, you can make judgments about the current situations.  These will help with innovation. Innovative ideas must be useful, and decisions based on judgments help in ensuring this.

Problems are faced at every point, and every problem has a solution. So, if you develop the desire to solve every problem by a strategic plan, you will aim to find a best solution that is new and innovative. With problem-solving skills, you will always long for new and effective ways to solve a problem in lesser time.

A. Develop problem-solving skills.

B. Be open to absorbing other points of view.

C. But if some ideas do turn true, they can be miraculous.

D. Decisions based on these judgments should be realistic.

E. You will get to know about different other forms. of ideas and possibilities.

F. If you successfully create an efficient design, that will stand as your innovation.

G. These skills are instrumental in enabling you to be more productive with your decision making.

Excessive (过度的) smartphone use is a distinctly 21st century issue, but that doesn't make it any less problematic. Countless people spend their days endlessly scrolling from one social media feed or app to the next. Many argue there's an easy solution: place it in silent mode (模式).

Now, however, researchers from Penn State find that this approach can actually backfire for certain people. Study authors report people checked their phones more often when their devices were in silent mode. Notably, participants who scored high in "fear of missing out" and "need to belong" personality tests checked their phones the most after placing them on silent. In some cases, these individuals stayed on their phones for longer as well.

This work is based on data collected from the screen time monitoring tool of 138 iPhone users. Researchers focused on how two distinct psychological traits may influence how people act in response to placing their phones on either silence or vibrate. More specifically, study authors analyzed people who tend to be especially preoccupied (专注) with gathering information from others(fear of missing out, or FOMO), and people with a strong desire to maintain interpersonal relationships(need to belong).

Incredibly, in comparison to audio-alert or vibrate modes, each participant checked their phones more often when it was in silent mode. When the phone's sound and vibration was on, the groups checked their devices 52.9 times daily on average. When their phones were silent, that average rate nearly doubled to 98.2 times a day. Volunteers identified as having high levels of FOMO checked their phones roughly 50 times daily when their device was on vibrate, while in silent mode, they checked their phones about 120 times daily, and they also tended to keep scrolling significantly longer if their phones were in silent mode.

Participants with high levels of the need-to-belong trait actually didn't check their phones more in silent mode, however, they did stay on their phones longer if the devices were in either silent or vibration-only mode.

At the end of the day, smartphone use habits come down to the individual. Researchers conclude the first step toward developing healthier tech habits for everyone is understanding that different people react to apps, notifications, and various tech features differently.