Oliver is a host of a TV programme on food. He says food
1．(play) a big role in his life. "My mum was a great cook, and she'd sometimes let me have a try," he said. The first dish Oliver prepared for his family was fried chicken wings. He made it with his mum's help. Oliver says if you're
2．(luck) enough to have someone close to you who enjoys cooking, ask them
3．you can join in when it's possible.

Single-use plastic bags are used at most a few times before they
4．(throw) away. It takes them hundreds of years
5．(break) down. Many of these bags end up in the ocean where larger ones can trop sea creatures, such as turtles and dolphins. Over time, the bags fall apart
6．countless tiny pieces, and fish can accidentally eat some of them. Now, lots of
7．(country) and regions are taking action to ban the sale of such bags to stop people using them.

A piece of stone
8．(find) on a Dutch beach suggests that our extinct human relatives, known as Neanderthals, were cleverer than previously thought. The Neanderthals
9．（live）alongside human ancestors in Europe for tens of thousands of years, before dying out about 40, 000 years ago. They were much stronger than modern humans, but it's long been assumed that human ancestors were
10．（smart）than the Neanderthals. However, the stone tool made by Neanderthals suggests otherwise.

My faith in human nature has never been so great as it was last weekend after our family get-together in the town of Vail.

On Saturday, we all went to the market right in the middle of the town. Near the end, we all_________at the fountain near the bridge, and the kids waded（蹚水）around in the fountain until we_________. This is one of the busiest walking streets.

After we returned to the hotel late in the afternoon, my 7-year-old son Ponder_________that nowhere could he find his backpack, which_________his Gameboy and his watch. After a thorough_________we determined that he must have left it at the fountain.

Ponder has never_________anything. So we just take for granted that he needs no supervision（指导）for managing his_________.

He was upset, not about the Gameboy, but about the watch. "But Dad," he said, through massive_________, "they don't make that kind of watch anymore." We were all very_________.

Our dinner reservation was at a restaurant just on the other side of the bridge, so I__________him that we would not only search the area around the fountain when we went back for dinner, but we would also find the police and ask them if the backpack had been__________.

As we exited from the parking garage, we could see the fountain as we walked down the long staircase. I saw something black__________there, but it was right next to a woman standing by the fountain, so I could not__________what it was or if it was hers.

"See it, Dad?" Ponder shouted. "Don't get too__________because that may not be it," I said. But that was it. It had been five or six hours since we left the fountain, and it was__________there. There was no ID in it, and it looked like someone had looked through it and then set it right out where all could__________it.

I literally__________when we reached it and it was his！Everyone in our party was blown away by this "miracle（奇迹）". In my wildest__________, I would never have imagined that this could happen nowadays.

What a charmed life, eh? I believe this was a perfect__________for a child in losing something important…to lose it and feel the full__________of that loss, and then to miraculously get it back.

Lancom is a worldwide language learning app and a leader in the online language learning industry with millions of active subscribers. We house a broad range of experts united by the common goal of creating the best language learning tools possible. With advice from A I specialists, art designers and culture researchers, our multi-language experts endow Lancom with an enormous potential for innovation within the world of language leaning. Our courses, totalling 20,000 hours of content in 20 different languages, guarantee you language skills you can use right away.

At the core of Lancom is a world-class effective method that enhances language leaning with advanced technology.

Examples and dialogues are recorded with real native speakers instead of automatic computers. Lancom trains your brain to learn efficiently, so you absorb more information while in the app and continue leaning outside of it. The app makes our practical language lessons available wherever and whenever. We work directly for our leaners, not for any third party. And it's all supported by an efficient customer service team, available through telephone, email and online chat.

Millions of learners have their own stories and their own reasons for learning a new language. Lancom cares about you and addresses your individual learning type. Lancom is the only product to offer courses tailored to your native language, building on grammar and words you already know. Our content is about real-life topics that are relevant because we know what matters to you is what sticks best. You will, find it very rewarding to learn with Lancom.

Buy with confidence: 21-day money back guarantee! If you aren't satisfied, just write to Customer Service within 21 days.

Contact & Support: customerservice@lancom.com

Baggy has become the first dog in the UK—and potentially the world—to join the fight against air pollution by recording pollutant levels near the ground.

Baggy wears a pollution monitor on her collar so she can take data measurements close to the ground. Her monitor has shown that air pollution levels are higher closer to ground level, which has helped highlight concerns that babies and young kids may be at higher risk of developing lung problems.

Conventional air pollution monitors are normally fixed on lampposts at about nine feet in the air. However, since Baggy stands at about the same height as a child in a pushchair（婴儿车）, she frequently records pollution levels which are much higher than the data gathered by the Environment A gency.

The doggy data research was the idea of Baggy's 13-year-old owner Tom Hunt and his dad Matt. The English youngster noticed that pollution levels are around two-thirds higher close to the ground than they are in the air at the height where they are recorded by the agency. Tom has since reported the shocking findings to the government in an attempt to emphasise that babies are at higher risk of developing asthma（哮喘）.

Matt Hunt said he was "very proud" of his son because “when the boy gets an idea, he keeps his head down and gets on with it, and he really does want to do some good and stop young kids from getting asthma."

“Tom built up a passion for environmental protection at a very early age," Matt added. “He became very interested in gadgets（小装置）. About one year ago, he got this new piece of tech which is like a test tube. One Sunday afternoon, we went out to do some monitoring, and he said, why don't we put it on Baggy's collar and let her monitor the pollution？'So we did it."

Tom said, "Most of the time, Baggy is just like any other dog. But for the rest of the time she is a super dog, and we are all really proud of her."

For the past five years, Paula Smith, a historian of science, has devoted herself to re-creating long-forgotten techniques. While doing research for her new book, she came across a 16th-century French manuscript（手稿）consisting of nearly 1,000 sets of instructions, covering subjects from tool making to finding the best sand.

The author's intention remains as mysterious（神秘）as his name; he may have been simply taking notes for his own records. But Smith was struck mainly by the fact that she didn't truly grasp any of the skills the author described. "You simply can't get an understanding of that handwork by reading about it," she says.

Though Smith did get her hands on the best sand, doing things the old-fashioned way isn't just about playing around with French mud. Reconstructing the work of the craftsmen（工匠）who lived centuries ago can reveal how they viewed the world, what objects filled their homes, and what went on in the workshops that produced them. It can even help solve present-day problems: In 2015, scientists discovered that a 10th-century English medicine for eve problems could kill a drug-resistant virus.

The work has also brought insights for museums, Smith says. One must know how an object was made in order to preserve it. What's more, reconstructions might be the only way to know what treasures looked like before time wore them down. Scholars have seen this idea in practice with ancient Greek and Roman statues. These sculptures were painted a rainbow of striking colours. We can't appreciate these kinds of details without seeing works of art as they originally appeared-something Smith believes you can do only when you have a road map.

Smith has put the manuscript's ideas into practice. Her final goal is to link the worlds of art and science back together: She believes that bringing the old recipes to life can help develop a kind of learning that highlights experimentation, teamwork, and problem solving.

Back when science—then called “the new philosophy”—took shape, academics looked to craftsmen for help in understanding the natural world. Microscopes and telescopes were invented by way of artistic tinkering（修补）, as craftsmen experimented with glass to better bend light.

If we can rediscover the values of hands-on experience and craftwork, Smith says, we can marry the best of our modern insights with the handiness of our ancestors.

Certain forms of AI are indeed becoming ubiquitous. For example, algorithms (算法) carry out huge volumes of trading on our financial markets, self-driving cars are appearing on city streets, and our smartphones are translating from one language into another. These systems are sometimes faster and more perceptive than we humans are. But so far that is only true for the specific tasks for which the systems have been designed. That is something that some AI developers are now eager to change.

Some of today’s AI pioneers want to move on from today’s world of “weak” or “narrow” AI, to create “strong” or “full” AI, or what is often called artificial general intelligence (AGI). In some respects, today’s powerful computing machines already make our brains look weak. AGI could, its advocates say, work for us around the clock, and drawing on all available data, could suggest solutions to many problems. DM, a company focused on the development of AGI, has an ambition to “solve intelligence”. “If we’re successful,” their mission statement reads, “we believe this will be one of the most important and widely beneficial scientific advances ever made.”

Since the early days of AI, imagination has outpaced what is possible or even probable. In 1965, an imaginative mathematician called Irving Good predicted the eventual creation of an “ultra-intelligent machine…that can far surpass all the intellectual (智力的) activities of any man, however clever.” Good went on to suggest that “the first ultra-intelligent machine” could be “the last invention that man need ever make.”

Fears about the appearance of bad, powerful, man-made intelligent machines have been reinforced (强化) by many works of fiction — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Terminator film series, for example. But if AI does eventually prove to be our downfall, it is unlikely to be at the hands of human-shaped forms like these, with recognisably human motivations such as aggression (敌对行为). Instead, I agree with Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom, who believes that the heaviest risks from AGI do not come from a decision to turn against mankind but rather from a dogged pursuit of set objectives at the expense of everything else.

The promise and danger of true AGI are great. But all of today’s excited discussion about these possibilities presupposes the fact that we will be able to build these systems. And, having spoken to many of the world’s foremost AI researchers, I believe there is good reason to doubt that we will see AGI any time soon, if ever.

Many people think that positive thinking is mostly about keeping one's head in the sand and ignoring daily problems, trying to look optimistic. In reality it has more to do with the way an individual talks to himself. Self-talk is a constant stream of thoughts of a person, who is often unaware and uncertain of some events, phenomena, people, or even the person himself.
46．Meanwhile, positive thinking can help to stop negative self-talks and start to form a positive view on an issue. People who regularly practise positive thinking tend to solve problems more effectively. They are less exposed to stress caused by external factors. They tend to believe in themselves and in what they do.

47．People who think positively demonstrate increased life spans, lower rates of depression and anxiety, better physical and psychological health, reduced risks of death from heart problems. Positive thinking also contributes to one's ability to deal with problems and hardships.
48．For example, researchers have found that in the case of a crisis accompanied by strong emotions, such as a natural disaster, positive thinking can provide a sort of buffer against depression and anxiety. Resilient people who think positively tend to treat every problem as a challenge, a chance for improvement of any kind, or as an opportunity for personal growth. Pessimists, on the contrary, tend to perceive problems as a source of additional stress.
49．

In conclusion, positive thinking is a powerful and effective tool for dealing with hard times and improving the quality of one's life. It doesn't have anything to do with ignorant optimism when an individual refuses to notice a problem.
50．

Thinking in a positive, self-encouraging way brings about many benefits to one's physical and mental health.

Yours,

Li Hua