Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park is now mapping self-guided hikes to its more of — the — beaten — path destinations, in part to remind visitors that the parks are theirs to roam. In August, a new field institute will begin offering classes led by geologists, photographers and other experts. And next year, look for electric vehicle charging stations to appear at the north and south entrances of the park.

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite is all about restoration this year. This month the park's main corridor is being repaired. The park's gallery reopened to the public in April after remodeling to allow full accessibility for the disabled. Even John Muir, known as the father of the national parks, is being revived by the actor Lee Stetson, who will answer audience questions about the park and its history at the Yosemite Theater.

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is to begin managing a new campground on Maine's Schoodic Peninsula this fall. The site will offer almost 100 R.V. and tent sites, as well as new hiking and biking trails connecting to Gouldsboro Village and existing park trails leading to the peninsula's tip.

Wetherill Mesa

Wetherill Mesa will have an extended season this year （through mid-October）, giving cyclists ample time to enjoy new access to the park's six — mile Long House Loop, a paved path formerly used for tram service, and the backcountry routes on the park's most popular hike. Naturally, plans are in the works to open an on-site bike rental operation within the year.

Eileen Kushner had always had trouble with reading and simple math, and while she was growing up in Detroit, her fellow students didn't make life easy on her. Later, she'd be diagnosed with a learning disability, but at the time, she just had to suffer the slings and arrows of her peers. When she got married right out of high school and had three kids, she hoped that her life as a stay-at-home mom might hide her learning problems.

Things didn't work out that way. Raising the kids, they had no extra spending money. So, at the age of 31, she went down to the local McDonald's and applied for a job. She got it, too. But then came trouble. In those days, McDonald's employees couldn't rely on computers to do their calculations for them. They had to add up the prices of orders themselves, manually. For Eileen, who had been doing well in other aspects of her work, this posed a problem.

She remembered what it was like for her as a student. She couldn't bear the thought of dredging up (追忆起) those frustrations to experience again. She wanted to quit, because she didn't want them to know that she didn't know how to count the money back.

Larry tried to help. He went and got a bunch of cash-ones and fives and change — and broke it out for a bit of practice. He'd play a customer, while she would work at the math.

Day by day, they worked with these bills. Gradually, with Larry's help and Eileen's hard work, those numbers began to come just a bit easier to her.

It has been more than 30 years since those early days at McDonald's, and in that time, Eileen says she has come to feel an affinity with Thomas Edison.

She explains, "After he invented the light bulb, a young reporter asked him, How did it feel to foil over 2,000 times?' Edison said. 'I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process.' And this is what my life has been," she adds. "More than 2,000 steps—but I made it.”

Almost everyone gossips. And a new study finds that people spend about 52 minutes per day, on average, talking to someone about someone else who is not present.

But here's the surprise: Despite the assumption that most gossip is trash talk, the study finds that the vast majority of gossip is nonjudgmental chitchat.

"People love to talk about other people," says Jeremy Cone, a psychologist at Williams College. "Think about your own conversations with a family member or friend: You talk about everyday things that keep you connected. You share that your daughter got her driver's license or your uncle has a kidney stone. Much of it is just documenting facts."

And, of course, the study also finds that some gossip is negative or mean-spirited. About 15% of the snippets of gossip that the researchers analyzed included some types of negative judgements.

But even negative gossip can serve a purpose, as more research has found.

"I think gossiping can be a smart thing to do," says Elena Martinescu, a researcher at King's College London who has studied gossip in the workplace. "It allows people to keep track of what's going on and form social alliances with other people."

Research has shown that gossip can help build group cohesion and cooperation. "When you gossip, you can keep track of who is contributing to the group and who's being selfish," Martinescu explains. "And by sharing this information, you can exclude those group members who are social loafers."

"We also found that negative gossip makes people likely to repair the aspects of their behavior that they were criticized for," Martinescu says.

So, say, for instance, you were criticized for always arriving at work late. Hearing that gossip about yourself may motivate you to want to be on time.

Of course, this isn't a license to be a loose lips or to repeat baseless claims that can damage someone's reputation unfairly. But confiding (吐露个人隐私) in your friends and colleagues and sharing impressions about another person-even when they're negative-may be helpful.

A new review article, from an international team of material scientists, is suggesting a leather-like material made from mushroom has the potential to be cheaper and more environmentally sustainable than animal leather of its plastic derivations (衍生物) .

Non-animal derived forms of leather have traditionally been willingly accepted by sustainability advocates. While these types of "vegan textiles" sidestep many issues found when producing traditional leather, these synthetic (合成的) materials have their own host of dilemmas. As well as relying on harmful chemicals for production, synthetic leathers come up against the same non-biodegradable problems faced by most plastic products.

Leather made from fungi (菌类) is a relatively new innovation. The little mushrooms that we see pop out of the ground are only a small part of any given fungus. Under the ground is an often sprawling web of branching, threaded growths known collectively as the mycelium. It is from this mycelium structure that leather can be produced.

Bismarck and colleagues suggest advances in making processes have resulted in fungi-derived leather being able to now meet the "functional and aesthetic (审美的) expectations of consumers". They think fungi-derived leather overcomes the ethical (伦理的) issues facing animal leather and the environmental issues facing synthetic leathers.

In addition to being more environmentally sustainable to produce than leather and its synthetic alternatives, pure fungi — biomass — based leather substitutes are also biodegradable at the end of their service life and cheap to make.

Scaling the production of fungi leather up to industrial levels is perhaps one of the remaining hurdles facing this nascent industry. But this may not be a problem for too much longer. Just last year a team from Finland revealed the development of what they claimed was a novel industrial process that can scale up production of fungi leather.

"Substantial advances in fungi-based leathers and the growing number of companies that are producing them suggests that this new material will play a major role in the future of ethically and environmentally responsible fabrics," says Bismarck.

It's up to parents and coaches to help kids draw out life lessons from sports. Sometimes we think kids will simply absorb the lessons that are obvious to us as adults.  Here's a parent's guide to watching the Olympics with your kids.

 If you see poor sportsmanship, you might ask, "What would you have done differently there?”  On the more positive side, we often see Olympians thanking the officials after a competition. It can be a wonderful time to remind our kids to thank people who often go under-appreciated, such as food servers, bus drivers, and teachers.

We often see Olympians picking up their teammates and perhaps even an opponent after a loss or disappointing performance. Talk with your kids about times when their classmates, friends and/or teammates are down and what they can specifically do to pick them up. .

Also keep a close eye on the medal ceremonies.  For example, if a sorely disappointed Silver medalist can overcome narrowly missing Gold and share sincere congratulations, that is an opportunity to talk with kids about times they were disappointed with an outcome.

One last thing to keep in mind is the Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger." But why is this not "Fastest, Highest, Strongest?" This is a huge lesson for our kids. In life, our focus should be on giving our own best personal performance-comparing ourselves to ourselves, not just to those around us.

A. But that is not often the case.

B. Kids will learn a lot from the Olympics.

C. Keep your eye out for both positive and negative life lessons.

D. This might be in the middle of a performance or just after it's over.

E. The reason is that the Olympic spirit calls on athletes to achieve excellence.

F. Use the sports you watch on the Olympics to encourage your child to get fit.

G. That's when you'll see the opportunity for life lessons in winning and losing gracefully.

Back in 1999, Lawrence Anthony opened the gates of the reserve to wild elephants. He accepted them because if he didn't 1 the elephants, they would be killed. They were a difficult group, known for escaping other enclosures (围场) and acting 2. But he could see a lot of 3 in them too. They'd had a tough time and were all scared, and 4they were looking after one another, trying to protect one another.

Lawrence started treating them like children. He used words to 5 them, and he would also use gestures to show that they were perfectly 6 with him. He mainly focused on the matriarch, Nana, in order to 7 with the rest of the elephants. Therefore, Lawrence would go down the fence and beg Nana not to break it.

One early morning, Nanato reached out to Lawrence as she put her trunk through the 8and towards Lawrence. He realized that she wanted him to 9 her and that indicated the start of their beautiful relationship. The elephants then grew very 10 of Lawrence. They thought him "life, loyalty and freedom''. In fact, they became so 11 that the elephants thought that Lawrence's house is their home too.

For many, many years, the herds and Lawrence shared a great 12 with each other, but unfortunately, the conservationist 13 in May, 2012. Upon the passing of Lawrence, these majestic beasts 1412 hours to pay their respects. They stood for two days outside of

Lawrence's house 15 returning to their regular lives in the bush.

Chinese engraved block printing is considered one of the most essential inventions in the progress of human civilization. The technique  (include) in the representative list of UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

The engraved block printing technique requires the (cooperate) of dozens of craftsmen possessed of printing expert skills and team spirit. The blocks themselves, made from the fine-grained wood of pear or jujube trees,  (cut) to a thickness of two centimetres and polished with sandpaper  (prepare) them for engraving.

Drafts of the  (desire) images are brushed onto extremely thin paper and examined for errors before they are transferred onto blocks. The inked designs provide a guide for the craftsman  cuts the picture or design into the wood, producing raised characters that will   (ultimate) apply ink to paper. Block engraving may be used to print books in a variety of  (convention) styles.

The Guangling ancient book engraving press, established in 1958, is responsible  the complete preservation of the entire set of the technique. However, the skill is dying out, and there is urgent need to protect it.

1）活动目的；2）时间和地点；3）展示的作品。

注意：

1）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。

Dear James,

……

Yours,

Li Hua

It was the swim season, but Elizabeth didn't like swim meets. She got horribly nervous but not because she wanted to win. Her nerves came from the possibility that she would do something horribly wrong and let everyone down. The day of a meet, she would be scared all day.

Recently, Elizabeth's team announced a special swim night: Members 11 and older would swim a timed 50 meters in all four strokes and then have pizza. It wasn't exactly a meet, because it would involve only team members. Elizabeth countered that it absolutely was a meet because there would be races and timers and so on. But her mother really wanted her to go. She fought back furiously but finally agreed.

When the day of the special swim night arrived, Elizabeth was nervous. When she got to the pool with her parents, she became even more nervous.

Her first race was the 50-meter freestyle. She swam her backstroke and breaststroke without incident. It wasn't fun for Elizabeth. Her butterflies just kept flapping.

Then it was time for the T-shirt relay, which works like this: One person from each relay team puts on a T-shirt, a pair of socks, and a swim cap; swims 50 meters; and gets out of the pool. She takes off the clothes and puts them on the next person, who then swims 50 meters. This continues until everyone on the team has completed a lap.

For some unknown reason, Elizabeth's relay team chose her to swim the anchor leg (最后一棒). The team dressed her in socks and a T-shirt. And then she was off. She seemed to swim faster in the T-shirt and socks than she did when she wasn't wearing them.

Approaching the halfway mark, she was still in the lead. Then somebody noticed that one of

Elizabeth's socks had fallen off and was floating in the pool. "She has to get that sock on before the end of the race," a swimming official told Elizabeth's team, "or you will be disqualified."

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。

Everybody on her team started screaming, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Stop! Get the sock!"

……

By now, the girl in lane two was about to pass Elizabeth.