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Mia, 12, is now on a year-long trip with her parents and three younger brothers. Far from their home in Quebec, Canada, the family rode horses in Mongolia, kayaked in Cambodia, camped in Namibia and flew in a hot air balloon in Turkey, looking to collect as many once-in-a-lifetime memories as they could.

The memories really matter because unless science makes a breakthrough soon, three of the children will become blind, likely in adulthood. They have been diagnosed with a disease that has no effective treatment and no specific timeline as it gradually robs them of their sight.

The diagnoses came in 2015. Despite the grief, the parents were surprised to find Mia, then 7, was calm about it. She announced that she would need to start keeping her bedroom especially neat, with everything in its place. "In the future, I'll need to know where things are," Mia said.

"She's finding solutions on her own," the parents told each other. "We need to follow her lead." And so the idea of a yearlong trip was born, one that would show the kids the world, in person and at close range – while the kids could still see it. For the next two years, the parents saved money and researched places to visit. "How we adults see the world and how kids see the world are so different." says the mother, Edith. "It would have to be less about temples and museums and more about whatever caught their eyes."

By the time the trip began to wind down in early 2023, the family had traveled 52,000 miles and visited 18 countries. Mia grew taller and when entering adolescence, needed more independence. Her brothers became more confident and outgoing. The kids were very aware that they had learned a lot. "There's a lot of suffering, a lot of poverty, but lots of good and interesting things too. We should be positive." said Mia.

Class 4A will soon be leaving for this year's trip to Salzburg, Austria. We will depart the campus at 6 a.m. on January 18th to catch the 9 a.m. flight. Our return flight leaves at 8 a.m. on January 21st, and we will expect to arrive back at the campus by bus around 4 p. m.. For the entirety of the trip's duration, we will be staying all three nights at Hotel Salzburg. In addition to your personal belongings, you will be required to pack your passport and travel insurance certificate. Furthermore, remember to pack the appropriate winter necessities, especially if you plan to ski during your free time in the afternoons. Our scheduled morning events are detailed as follows. As Austria is a country of great importance in European history, learning more about its unique culture will be the foundation of your trip. Thus, your pre-trip assignment has been to investigate the last 60 years of Austrian history. To bring this unit to its conclusion, we've arranged a meeting in the hotel's conference room with several local retirement associations. Also taking place on hotel grounds are various workshops that we've arranged, hosting three local speakers. Please be sure to attend at least one of these. Upon return, use the information you obtained from the interviews and workshop(s) to write a 500-word reflection on a subject of your choice, worth 60% of your final grade. Of special focus should be the social and cultural impacts of World War II, with a secondary focus on how the modern Austrian government treats its senior citizens. Your report is due by 5 p.m. on January 25th.

"Mom, tell me the story about the black bull（公牛）, " I said when we were driving to my grandparents' farm.

"You know it better than I do. Besides, you can't be too careful when driving, " she answered.

"Yeah, but it's your story and I think that story can remind me to drive slowly. " When she didn't respond, I touched her arm gently.

"I'll start it for you: It was a late Friday afternoon, and you were rushing home from work because you, Dad, Shelby and I were going to Dad's parents' farm, and it was a four-hour drive. "

Mom carried on from there. 

"Once I got home, " she began, "we loaded up and headed out. It took about a half hour to get through the rush-hour traffic, but finally we reached the interstate and headed east. Because I was tired and eager to get to the farm and sleep, I drove as fast as the speed limit allowed—70 miles an hour. "

I rolled my eyes. Mom never drove the posted speed limit; she always went at least five miles over. But if I reminded her of that story, time would come to a stop. 

"Time passed, and it got dark. You girls fell asleep in the back, and Dad nodded off next to me. Seat belts weren't mandatory（强制的） at the time, so no one tied the belts. Hours later, I exited the interstate onto the little state road. The speed limit was 50, but I kept going70. There was no traffic after all, and I knew your grandparents were waiting up for us. "

I'd spent summers with my grandparents as a kid, and they did indeed go to bed early, as farmers do. 

"At last, I reached the turn that would take us to the farm. The road was a narrow, less maintained farm-to-market road that locals used. It was completely dark, and the only light was from my headlights. I pressed the pedal（踏板） harder and sped up."

This was the point in the story that always turned my blood cold. 

注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

注意：1. 写作词数应为80左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

Tap your fingers on the screen and your favorite books  （deliver） to your door within a couple of hours. Who would have thought that cultural  （consume） in China could become as easy as ordering a sandwich? 

The "Loving to read at home" program （launch） by the Chengdu Library allows readers to log on to a mini program of the same name linked to the library's official digital platform. Readers can then choose their favorite books and wait for them to be delivered to their door for just 6 yuan one to three books. Each user can borrow a maximum of eight books at a time for 30 days.

  total of more than 20, 000 books that come from 22 public libraries are ready for loan,（cover） a wide range of categories, with history, fiction novels and earth science books being the three   （popular） choices among readers. Books about philosophy, biology and agriculture can also be found online, many of  are from foreign authors. 

The Chengdu Library is not the only institution providing books-to-go services. There （be） more than 3, 300 public libraries providing this "library's new O2O（online to offline） path" so far, which reduces the "time cost" for readers （significant） and allows them "to realize that reading is a handy part of people's everyday lives".

Last year, Doctor Steve truly understood what it means to be at the right place at the right time. During a half-marathon, he found himself in the position to 1  not one, but two runners. Things had been going 2  up to 3-mile mark, but that's when Steve noticed a（n） 3  runner named Gregory. 

Gregory had just reached the peak of an incline（斜坡） and was 4  to see that he'd get to run downhill for a bit. This was the last thing he 5  before collapsing.

Meanwhile, Steve saw this happen, and he could tell it wasn't a simple 6  . Steve immediately stopped, performing CPR. Once it was 7  that Gregory was doing well and an ambulance took him away, Steve continued the race. 

The rest of the race itself was 8  but, when Steve crossed the finish line, his life-saving 9  was needed once more. A man named Michael began to feel dizzy moments after crossing the finish line. Then, just like Gregory, he 10  . 

"I never expected something like that in my whole life to happen again, let alone in the same 11 , " Steve said.

The 12  of this entire situation is truly remarkable. Had Steve not 13  to help Gregory, he would have crossed the finish line much sooner than Michael, 14  he wouldn't have been around to save him, too. Thankfully, the events had a happy 15  . Now the three men become good friends. 

Life's rarely boring if you're open to learning new things. No matter what you want to learn, the first step is noticing and seizing learning opportunities wherever you find them. Here are ways to develop the habit of learning. 

Get curious and make friends with your inner child.  This sense of curiosity is how you begin to learn, grow, and understand the world around you. As an adult, it's important to stay curious to remain open to possibilities and opportunities by making a habit of asking questions. 

  Spending time with people pursuing knowledge as intentionally as you are can encourage you to push through challenges to achieve your learning goals. And engaging with people who have different opinions and experiences can help keep your worldview flexible. Then you can continue to find new fields of knowledge to explore. 

Don't disregard the small stuff.  So feel open and willing to seize small chances each day to take in new knowledge. You could ask three people for their names and try to repeat them the next day or read the coffee-roasting brochure at your local café. No piece of knowledge is unimportant.  You just need to keep your eyes open. 

Schedule learning. Life is busy, so consider setting aside time to learn new things. This might mean spending ten minutes reading an article on your work break, or setting aside 30 minutes every evening to work on an online training course.  It also builds an expectation among those nearest to you that this is your time and they shouldn't disturb you. 

A. Surround yourself with fellow learners. 

B. Encourage yourself to brave challenges. 

C. Every kid's favorite question is "Why? "

D. You're surrounded by opportunities to learn. 

E. There's no better or worse hobby or information to acquire. 

F. Of course, scheduling learning isn't just limited to the ways mentioned. 

G. Adding a learning session to your timetable prevents you forgetting about it. 

Identifying common bird species through their song has never been easier, with numerous phone apps and software available to both ecologists and the public. But what if the identification software has never heard a particular bird before, or only has a small sample of recordings to reference? This is a problem facing ecologists and conservationists monitoring some of the world's rarest birds. 

To overcome this problem, researchers at the University of Moncton, Canada, have developed ECOGEN, a first-of-its-kind deep learning tool that can generate life-like bird sounds to enhance the samples of under-represented species. These can then be used to train audio identification tools used in ecological monitoring. 

The researchers found that adding artificial birdsong samples generated by ECOGEN to a birdsong identifier improved the birdsong classification accuracy by 12%on average. 

Dr. Nicolas Lecomte, one of the lead researchers, said: "Due to significant global changes in animal populations, there is an urgent need for autonomous tools, such as acoustic（monitoring, to track shifts in biodiversity. However, the Al models used to identify species in acoustic monitoring lack comprehensive reference libraries." With ECOGEN, you can address this gap by creating new instances of bird sounds to support AI models.

The researchers say that creating bird songs in this way can contribute to the conservation of endangered bird species and also provide valuable insight into their vocalisations, behaviours and habitat preferences. The ECOGEN tool can also be used to help conserve extremely rare species. For instance, it could be used to help conserve the critically endangered regent honeyeaters（摄政蜜鸟）, from which young individuals are unable to learn their species' songs because there aren't enough adult birds to learn from. 

The tool could benefit other types of animal as well. Dr. Lecomte added, "While ECOGEN was developed for birds, we're confident that it could be applied to mammals, fish, insects and amphibians."

As well as its versatility, a key advantage of the ECOGEN tool is its accessibility, due to it being open source and able to be used on even basic computers. 

Since the 1920s, a little-known policy called parking minimums has shaped many Americans' life. In major cities, this meant that any type of building needed to reserve a certain number of parking spaces to accommodate anyone who might visit. 

But as the country attempts to cut carbon emissions （排放）, we should rethink what transportation and public space look like, especially in cities. Earlier this month, the city of Austin, Texas, became the latest community to undo parking minimums. 

"If we want half of all trips to be in something other than a car, then we can't, as a city, in my opinion, demand that every home or business have at least one parking space for each resident or customer," said Zohaib Qadri, the Austin city council member who introduced the measure. Reducing dependency on cars was a huge push for the initiative in Austin. Qadri hopes the measure also will lead to a more sustainable city.

The undoing of this law could pave the way for cities to build denser （密集的）housing, increase public transit options, and reduce their carbon emissions, according to Donald Shoup, an engineer and professor. "It isn't just the housing crisis and climate change; it's a traffic jam; it's local air pollution; it's the high price of everything—except parking," said Shoup.

Climate change and air pollution are particularly costly outcomes, with both estimated to cost the US billions of dollars every year. Parking spots, meanwhile, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars to construct, with one estimate putting that figure at almost $30, 000 per spot. 

But undoing parking minimums does not mean that all parking will disappear overnight. It means that any off-street parking built will not need to meet any minimum standard. 

"Austin is the same city that it was two weeks ago," said Shoup. "It's going to take quite a while for that city to really get the benefits of their parking space reforms. And so it just removes a roadblock and a barrier to other reforms."

When 34-year-old Sourabh Jain first became a father to his daughter, his view on life changed. Like any parent, his daughter became his world. However, he struggled with establishing a close connection with her in the beginning. "She was so tiny and couldn't speak. That's when I realized that games and books are interactive and provide an opportunity to spend hours with her, " he recalled.

Thus he began the hunt for games and toys that not only helped him bond with his daughter but also contributed to her cognitive （认知的） development. During this search, he realized that not only are these toys and games hard to find, but they can also burn a hole in one's pockets. 

"Another realization was that it is very hard to make toys environmentally friendly. There is some amount of plastic always present and it is harmful to the environment and the little ones, " he says.

During changing family dynamics, Sourabh observed the increasing challenge for parents who juggle work and home responsibilities at the same time. While he desired to give his daughter the world, he also tried to leave behind a cleaner, greener, and more sustainable world for her. Today, he owns The EleFant —a toy rental company, or in Sourabh's words, "a labour of love".

The transition（过渡） from the corporate world for Sourabh was gradual. "The idea began taking shape in my mind in 2022, but I wanted a solid plan of action. I aimed to offer parents a reliable service and an effective subscription model, " he adds.

Sourabh also emphasized the importance of ensuring that the toys provided for children are not just enjoyable but also engaging and educational. In pursuit of this concept, Sourabh enlisted the expertise of a psychologist, a doctor and an ex-school principal to make sure the types of toys would be most beneficial for children. 

Currently, the company has a customer base of more than 250 subscribers with over 2, 000 downloads of the application per day.