相关试卷

Here are some activities you might be interested in.

Watermedia Showcase

Prize: $2,500 first prize, $1,250 second prize

Entry Fee: $35 per entry

Requirements: Open to international artists 18 years of age and older

The Watermedia Showcase awards original art created primarily with water-based media on a surface created for water media. Judged by the editors of Watercolor Artist, all winners and honorable mentions will have their works featured in the magazine.

Jackson's Painting Prize

Prize: £6,000 first prize

Entry Fee: £5 per entry

Requirements: Open to international artists of all ages

Jackson's Painting Prize was created to reward excellence in two-dimensional（维度的） works of fine art. Both painting and drawing media are accepted and in addition to the main prize, there are also awards for best watercolor, and people's choice.

The Lumen Prize for Digital Art

Prize: $4,000 first prize, with a $13,500 total prize fund

Entry Fee: $40 for two works ($ 32 for two works if submitted prior to March 24)

Requirements: Open to artists worldwide

This digital art competition is organized by Lumen Art Projects Ltd, a non-profit organization that's dedicated to providing new opportunities for digital artists around the world. The contest guidelines are relatively loose — the only requirement is that the submitted artworks must somehow engage with technology.

Animago Award

Prize: £3,000 cash prize for Best Young Production

Entry Fee: Free

Requirements: Open to artists worldwide

For over 20 years the Animago Award competition has spotlighted talent in the fields of 3D animation（动画）and stills, visual effects, visualization, and design. Organized by the German magazine Digital Production, all winners are announced at the annual Animago conference in Munich, Germany.

A Little Boy

A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and shabby and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did come out, he would not say hello to his neighbors or passers-by but simply just glared at them. 

The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man. The boy's parents told him to stay away from the house, and a lot of other neighborhood children were told the same thing from their parents.

Dusk found the boy lingering on and hesitating what to do. As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. "What do you want?" the old man said impatiently. The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota (定额) to meet for school with selling the magazines. So he got up the courage and said, "Uh, Sir, I am selling these magazines and, uh, I was wondering if you would like to buy one from me. "

The old man just stared at the boy without a word. The boy could see inside the old man's house and saw that he had dog figurines (小雕像) on the fireplace mantle. "Do you collect dogs?" The little boy asked. "Yes, I have many collections in my house. They are my family here and they are all I have. " The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul.

"Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors. It is perfect for you. I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much. " The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said, "No, boy. I don't need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye. "

The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the house that he owned. The boy went home and then had an idea. He had a little dog figurine that he got some years ago from an aunt. The figurine did not mean nearly as much to him since he had a real live dog and a large family. 

注意： 1. 续写词数应为150左右；2. 请按如下格式作答。

The little boy headed back down to the old man's house.

From that day on something changed inside the old man.

注意：1. 100词左右。2. 开头已给出，不计入单词总数。

Dear fellow students, 

It's my honor to be here to share my opinion . . .

Li Hua

Imagine for a moment that your unborn child has a rare genetic disorder. Not  at least vaguely familiar, such as sickle-cell anaemia or cystic fibrosis, but rather a condition  (bury) deep within the medical dictionary. Adrenoleukodys trophy, maybe. Or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. 

Would you, when your child is born, want to know about it? If effective treatments were available, you probably would. But if not? If the outcome were fatal, would your interest in knowing about it depend on whether your newborn had five years of life (look) forward to, or ten? Or 30?

Today these questions are mostly hypothetical. Precisely because they are rare, such disorders are seldom noticed at birth. They manifest (显现) themselves only gradually, and often with unpredictable severity. But that may soon change. Twenty years after the first human genome  (map), the price of whole-genome sequencing has fallen to a point  it could, in rich countries at least, be offered routinely to newborns. Parents will then have to decide exactly how much they want to know. 

Early diagnosis brings with it the possibility of early treatment. Moreover, sequencing the genomes of newborns could offer a lifetime of returns. A patient's genome may reveal drugs will work best in his or her particular case for conditions such as ADHD, depression and cancer. Combined with information about someone's way of life, it could highlight easily neglected health risks such as cancers and cardiovascular disease, leading to better preventive measures. A database of genomes, (match) to living people, would be a benefit to medical research. The fruits of that research, in turn, would make those genomes more useful to their owners as time goes on.

Such a powerful new technology create new dangers. Widespread screening for thousands of potentially harmful genes may be counterproductive: some results may worry parents unnecessarily, because some genetic variations, occasionally indicative of disease, are not strongly so. Parents may not want to unlock all the secrets that their newborn's genome might reveal. Some may indeed prefer not to know about conditions that cannot be treated. Adult-onset illnesses pose a different dilemma — a reasonable position is that it be up to the children themselves, once grown, to decide whether they want to look at their genomic information. A further concern is that data will not be kept secure, and may be leaked or otherwise misused some point in the future.

The expression, "Everybody's doing it, " is very much at the center of the concept of peer pressure. It is a social influence applied on an individual in order to get that person to act or believe in a(n) 1 way as a larger group. This influence can be negative or positive, and can exist in both large and small groups.

People are social creatures by nature, and so it is hardly 2 that some part of their self-respect comes from the approval of others. This instinct explains why the approval of peers, and the fear of 3 , is such a powerful force in many people's lives. This instinct drives people to dress one way at home and another way at work, or to answer a simple "fine" when a stranger asks "How are you?" even if it is not necessarily true. There is a(n) 4 aspect to this: It helps society to function efficiently, and encourages a general level of self-discipline that 5 day-to-day interaction between people.

For certain individuals, seeking social acceptance is so important that it becomes a(n) 6 : in order to satisfy the desire, they may go so far as to 7 their sense of right and wrong. Teens and young adults may feel forced to use drugs, or join gangs that 8 criminal behavior. Mature adults may sometimes feel 9 to cover up illegal activity at the company where they work, or end up in debt because they are unable to hold back the desire to buy a house or car that they can't afford in an effort to 10 the peers.

However, peer pressure is not always negative. A student whose friends are good at contests may be 11  to work harder and get good grades. Players on a sports team may feel driven to play harder in order to help the team win. This type of 12  can also get a friend off drugs, or to help an adult take up a good habit or drop a bad one. 

Although peer pressure is sometimes quite obvious, it can also be so 13  that a person may not even notice that it is affecting his or her behavior. For this reason, when making important decisions, simply going with a(n) 14  is risky. Instead, people should seriously consider why they feel drawn to taking a particular action, and whether the real 15  is simply that everyone else is doing the same thing. 

As the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has gone global, we've watched professionals fail as they try to improve their emotional intelligence because they either don't know where to focus their efforts or they haven't understood how to improve these skills on a practical level. In our work consulting with companies and coaching leaders, we have found that if you're looking to develop particular EI strengths, it helps to consider areas for improvement others have identified along with the goals you want to achieve, and then to actively build habits in those areas rather than simply relying on understanding them conceptually.

The first step is to get a sense of how your self-perception (how you see yourself) differs from your reputation (how others see you); . For example, most of us think that we're good listeners, but very often that's really not the case. Without this external reality check, it will be difficult for you to identify the ways that your actions affect your performance. Getting feedback from others can also provide proof of the necessity of shifting our behaviour and motivation to do so.

To give you the best sense of where the differences lie between your self-perception and reputation, you should use a 360-degree feedback assessment that takes into account the multiple facets of EI; . Secondly, when you get your feedback from an assessment, let that inform what you want to improve. But also consider what your goals are. When it comes to cultivating strengths in emotional intelligence, . Your emotional intelligence is so tied up in your sense of self that being intrinsically motivated to make the effort matters more when changing long-standing habits than it does when simply learning a skill. 

That means the areas that you choose to actively work on should lie at the crossroads of the feedback you've gotten and the areas that are most important to your own aspirations; as you do the work of strengthening your emotional intelligence.

Once you've determined which EI skills you want to focus on, identify specific actions that you'll take. If you're working on becoming a better listener, for example, you might decide that when you're conversing with someone you'll take the time to pause, listen to what they have to say, and check that you understand before you reply. Keep it specific:.

By starting to change your routine reactions, you'll be well on your way to figuring out the old habits that aren't serving you well and transforming them into new, improved ones that do.

A. you're at a huge disadvantage if you're only interested because others said you should be

B. bearing your goals in mind is so helpful to improve the positive impact of your current EI habits

C. you should also take every opportunity to practice the skill you are developing, no matter how small

D. understanding the impacts of your EI habits relative to your goals will keep you going over the long run

E. the key is to find one that guarantees no personal information of those giving you feedback will be leaked

F. how others see you will to some extent decide how you see others and help you become a good listener

G. this is true because we can be blind to how we express and read the emotional components of our interactions

Some ants have figured out how to avoid getting lost: build taller anthills, according to a recent study. 

Desert ants living in the hot, flat salt pans of Tunisia spend their days looking for food and reach as far as 1.1 kilometers from their nests. To find their way home, desert ants use a navigation system, relying on the sun's position and counting their steps to track their location relative to their nest.

But this system becomes increasingly unreliable as the distance from the nest increases. "We realized that, whenever the ants in salt pans came closer to their nest, they suddenly pinpointed the nest hill from several meters distance, " says Markus Knaden, a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. "This made us think that the hill serves as a nest-defining landmark. "

So Knaden and colleagues captured ants from nests in the middle of salt pans and from along their shorelines. Only salt-pan nests had distinct hills, up to 40 centimeters tall, whereas the hills on shoreline nests were lower or barely noticeable. Next, the team removed any hills and placed the captured insects some distance away from their nests. Salt-pan ants struggled more than shore ants to find homes. Shore ants relied on the shoreline for guidance and weren't affected by the hill removal, the researchers concluded.

The team further conducted another study to see if desert ants were deliberately building a taller hill when their surroundings lacked any visible landmarks. So, the researchers removed the hills of 16 salt-pan nests and installed (安装) two 50-centimeter-tall blocks near eight of them. The other eight nests were left without any artificial visual aid. After three days, the researchers found that seven ants from the unaided nests had rebuilt their hills. But only two ants from the nests with man-made blocks nearby had bothered to rebuild. 

"It implies that ants regularly assess the complexity of their environment and change their decisions based on their conclusion" says ecologist Judith Bronstein of the University of Arizona.

We may weep for the dodo, but could and should we bring this lovely bird back from the dead? De-extinction is the science of restoring lost species and it has been in the news for decades. 

The story in modern times began in 1990 when Michael Crichton published his science fiction novel Jurassic Park, in which he imagined a world where scientists were able to bring dinosaurs back to life. Crichton imagined that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology could be a way to amplify (放大) tiny quantities of dinosaur DNA and thus build a living embryo. 

Sadly, biologists soon realized that DNA in fact breaks down super-fast; even after 100 years, DNA from museum skins of dodos was decayed (腐烂) beyond repair. They could be sequenced (测定序列) using massive computational power, but then only with considerable uncertainty. And even if you capture a DNA sequence, there's still the problem of how you get living cells to read that sequence and express proteins that make the dinosaur or the dodo.

But why would anyone want to see mammoths, or something like them, roaming (漫游) present-day Siberia? Well, they were undoubtedly amazing beasts. As well as hunting them, our distant ancestors painted their likenesses in caves across Europe. Fascinating as they may be, there's some ecological justification for the project too. 

It was this diversity of land surface, broken up by heavy limbs and randomly fertilised by faeces (排泄物), that supported so much flora (植物群). Without the mammoths, that diversity disappeared. Return them and landscapes would once again be with a variety of species, including flowers and bushes. 

True, it's not de-extinction in the sense of bringing a long-dead species back to life. Instead it's more like making a "dodo" by engineering a modern pigeon, its closest relative, to become huge and flightless. The result would be a big, fatty pigeon that, whether it looked like a dodo or not, would probably fulfil some of its ecological roles.

As a palaeontologist, I would of course love to see living dinosaurs, mammoths and dodos. In some ways, though, I am relieved that the optimistic claims for cloning and genetic technologies have not been borne out. The slowdown gives us time to consider the outcomes—and hopefully avoid some of Michael Crichton's more fevered imaginings.

Is future you? It might seem like a strange philosophical question. But the answer to how you think about your future self could make the difference between decisions you ultimately find satisfying and ones you might eventually regret. 

The brain patterns that emerge on an MRI (核磁共振成像) when people think about their future selves most like the brain patterns that arise when they think about strangers. This finding suggests that, in the mind's eye, our future selves look like other people. If you see future you as a different person, why should you save money, eat healthier or exercise more regularly to benefit that stranger?

However, if you see the interests of your distant self as more like those of your present self, you are considerably more likely to do things today that benefit you tomorrow. A paper in the journal PLoS One revealed that college students who experienced a greater sense of connection and similarity to their future selves were more likely to achieve academic success. Relationships with our future selves also matter for general psychological well-being. In a project led by Joseph Reiff, which includes 5, 000 adults aged 20 to 75, he found that those who perceived a great overlap (重叠) in qualities between their current and future selves ended up being more satisfied with their lives 10 years after filling out the initial survey.  

So how can we better befriend our future selves and feel more connected to their fates? The psychological mindset with what we call "vividness interventions" works. We have found, for instance, that showing people images of their older, grayer selves increases intentions to save for the long term. Besides, you might try writing a letter to-and then from-your future self. As demonstrated by Yuta Chishima and Anne Wilson in their 2020 study in the journal Self and Identity, when high-school students engaged in this type of "send-and-reply" exercise, they experienced elevated (升高的) levels of feelings of similarity with their future selves.

Letter-writing and visualization exercises are just a couple of ways we can connect with our future selves and beyond, but the larger lesson here is clear: If we can treat our distant selves as if they are people we love, care about and want to support, we can start making choices for them that improve our lives-both today and tomorrow. 

If you really want a taste of Dutch life, a bike tour through Amsterdam is the way to go. 

What is included in an Amsterdam bike tour

The bicycle is of course provided and included in the price of the tour. Some tours offer coffee and tea after the tour finishes. Every tour especially has its own theme and route (路线). You can compare them by visiting webpages about a particular tour. 

Amsterdam bicycle tour basics

These tours are usually between one and two hours long. They are guided by friendly and knowledgeable tour guides who are well capable in human interactions and Amsterdam information. What's more, the tour guides usually know many languages and are used to dealing with communication barriers (障碍).

If it rains, no worries, you can choose to cancel your tour free of charge. This applies of course also in case of (万一) other bad weather or in case you simply don't feel like taking the tour. The cancellation is easy, without question, and free.

Important during the bicycle tour of Amsterdam

Please don't become so Dutch that you disregard the traffic laws. It is a fact that some Amsterdammers often cross a street or a bridge when they feel like doing it. That is why staying alert (警惕的) and a little bit of biking experience can help you to cross the small city streets during an Amsterdam bike tour. Also, unless you are 100% sure that the weather will be plenty sunny, you'd better bring a jacket. When you start moving on the bike, the Amsterdam's air can get quite cold.