Electronic Mail During the past few years, scientists all over the world have suddenly found themselves productively engaged in task they once spent their lives avoiding—writing, any kind of writing, but particularly letter writing.Encouraged by electronic mail’s surprisingly high speed, convenience and economy, people who never before touched the stuff are regularly, skillfully, even cheerfully tapping out a great deal of correspondence. Electronic networks, woven into the fabric of scientific communication these days, are the route to colleagues in distant countries, shared data, bulletin boards and electronic journals.Anyone with a personal computer, a modern and the software to link computers over telephone lines can sign on.An estimated five million scientists have done so with more joining every day, most of them communicating through a bundle of interconnected domestic and foreign routes known collectively as the Internet, or net. E-mail is starting to edge out the fax, the telephone, overnight mail, and of course, land mail.It shrinks time and distance between scientific collaborators, in part because it is conveniently asynchronous (异步的) (Writer can type while their colleagues across time zones sleep; their message will be waiting).If it is not yet speeding discoveries, it is certainly accelerating communication. Jeremy Bernstein, the physicist and science writer, once called E-mail the physicist’s umbilical cord (脐带).Later other people, too, have been discovering its connective virtues.Physicists are using it; college students are using it; everybody is using it; and as a sign that it has come of age, the New Yorker has celebrated its liberating presence with a cartoon—an appreciative dog seated at a keyboard, saying happily, “ On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.“

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The workers finally called off the strikes. put off ended cancelled participated in

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In the situation comedy, a traditional format for television shows, the same characters appear repeatedly in humorous episodes. respectively again and again simultaneously briefly

Do not waste time on insignificant points. interesting dull unimportant boring

When Washington DC was burned in 1814, Dollety Madison rescued many official papers from the White House. stole filed hid saved

She was one of the leading writers in her age. successful major outstanding musical

Travelling Is My Life 1.I am very fortunate.I am now a much-travelled woman, but until I was 20 I had never been anywhere more remote than Londan.And coming from a country village in the far south I was struck by the architectural beauty of the capital.I understood immediately why foreign tourists descend on it in their thousands. 2.The first time I traveled abroad was when I went over to France on a cross Channel ferry.It was a school trip to Paris for a week,and I thought it was wonderful.The sights, the sounds,the smells,the language—they were all wonderful.I had never experienced anything like it, and the week had a profound effect on me. It gave me the travel bug! 3.As a young girl I was always shy of strangers.I certainly had no plans to travel a lot.I left school and trained as a journalist on a local paper, and somehow slowly began to concentrate on travel. I had a procession of jobs before I got this one with the magazine.Although I still write ar- ticles on other subjects,my main occupation now is writing travel and tourism. 4.I can appreciate now why tourists go halfway across the world to visit a place.I was brought up in the vicinity of a major British tourist attraction, but never went there myself and couldn’t understand foreign visitors.You read about something halfway across the world and want to see it for yourself.I remember that was just why I went walking in the Himalayas and looked up at Everest, and why I went on a strange but wonderful cruise in the Antarctic.You can read about a place,but it is totally different to be there, to see, feel, smell and hear everything yourself. 5.Perhaps not surprisingly I have been to a lot of popular tourist resorts in Europe, Africa, the Far East and the West Indies,for example.But I like to try and find those unknown,inaccessible places—not only for myself, but also for people who want something different.Sometimes it’s frightening.I remember visiting a village on the side of a steep hill in Bolivia where the inhabitants stood motionless as I walked in and didn’t move until I walked out. 6.The career of the previous travel writer on the magazine I work for now came to an abrupt end when he quite simply disappeared somewhere in South America.He was on a special journey and had told someone at his hotel that he had found a native to ferry him up a river to some remote villages in the jungle.Nothing has been heard from him since then.One day I’d like to try and find out what happened to him. A.The Tourist Mentality B.Always Looking For the Unexpected C.A Late Developer D.The Road to Being A Travel Writer E.A Sudden End to A Career F.The First Taste of Travel

“Salty“ Rice Plant Boosts Harvests British scientists are breeding a new generation of rice plants that will be able to grow in soil containing salt water. Their work may enable abandoned farms to become productive once more. Tim Flowers and Tony Yeo, from Sussex University’s School of Biological Sciences, have spent several years researching how crops, such as rice, could be made to grow in water that has become salty. The pair have recently begun a three-year programme, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to establish which genes enable some plants to survive salty conditions. The aim is to breed this capability into crops, starting with rice. It is estimated that each year more than 10m hectares (公顷) of agricultural land are lost because salt gets into the soil and stunts (妨碍生长) plants.The problem is caused by several factors.In the tropics, mangroves (红树林) that create swamps (沼泽) and traditionally formed barriers to sea water have been cut down.In the Mediterranean, a series of droughts have caused the water table to drop, allowing sea water to seep (渗透) in.In Latin America, irrigation often causes problems when water is evaporated (蒸发) by the heat, leaving salt deposits behind. Excess salt then enters the plants and prevents them functioning normally.Heavy concentrations of minerals in the plants stop them drawing up the water they need to survive. To overcome these problems, Flowers and Yeo decided to breed rice plants that take in very little salt and store what they do absorb in cells that do not affect the plants’ growth.They have started to breed these characteristics into a new rice crop, but it will take about eight harvests before the resulting seeds are ready to be considered for commercial use. Once the characteristics for surviving salty soil are known, Flowers and Yeo will try to breed the appropriate genes into all manners of crops and plants.Land that has been abandoned to nature will then be able to bloom again, providing much needed food in the poorer countries of the world.

Play Play is the principal business of childhood, and in recent years research has shown the great importance of play in the development of a human being.From earliest infancy, every child needs opportunity and the right materials for play, and the main tools of play are toys.Their main function is to suggest, encourage and assist play.To succeed in this they must be good toys, which children will play with often, and will come back to again and again.Therefore it is important to choose suitable toys for different stages of a child’s development. In recent years research on infant development has shown that the standard a child is likely to reach, within the range of his inherited abilities, is largely determined in the first three years of his life.So a baby’s ability to profit from the right play materials should not be underestimated.A baby, who is encouraged and stimulated, talked to and shown things and played with, has the best chance of growing up successfully. In the next stage, from three to five years old, curiosity knows no bounds.Every type of suitable toy should be made available to the child, for trying out, experimenting and learning, for discovering his own particular ability.Bricks and jigsaws (七巧板)and construction toys; painting, scribbling (涂鸦) and making things; sand and water play; toys for imaginative and pretending play; the first social games for learning to play and get on with others. By the third stage of play development—from five to seven or eight years—the child is at school.But for a few more years play is still the best way of learning, at home or at school.It is easier to see which type of toys the child most enjoys. Until the age of seven or eight, play and work mean much the same to a child.But once reading has been mastered, then books and schools become the main source of learning.Toys are still interesting and valuable, they lead on to new hobbies, but their significance has changed—to a child of nine or ten years, toys and games mean, as to adults, relaxation and fun.

A Powerful Influence There can be no doubt at all that the Internet has made a huge difference to our lives. Parents are worried that children spend too much time playing on the Internet, hardly【C1】______doing anything else in their spare time.Naturally, parents are【C2】______to find out why the Internet is so attractive, and they want to know if it can be【C3】______for their children.Should parents worry if their children are spending that much time【C4】______their computers? Obviously, if children are bent over their computers for hours, absorbed【C5】______some game, instead of doing their homework, then something is wrong.Parents and children could decide how much use the child should【C6】______use of the Internet, and the child should give his or her【C7】______that it won’t interfere with homework.If the child is not【C8】______to this arrangement, the parent can take more drastic【C9】______dealing with a child’s use of the Internet is not much different from【C10】______any other soft of bargain about behaviour. Any parent who is【C11】______alarmed about a child’s behaviour should make an appointment to【C12】______the matter with a teacher. Spending time in front of the screen does not necessarily【C13】______a child’s performance at school.Even if a child is【C14】______crazy about using the Internet,he or she is probably just【C15】______through a phase, and in a few months there will be something else to worry about!

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Want to Be 100? Listen to These 5 Centenarians(百岁老人) Five neighbors at a central Missouri retirement community who are all centenarians get asked all the time:“How did you live to be 100?“ If you want to live to 100 or more, this rare group of five golden girls says the key to longevity (长寿)is working hard at a job you love and taking care of your body while you’re at it. Even though an estimated 70,000 people in the country are currently at the century mark or beyond in age,it is unusual to find five 100-year-olds living in one place. The average life-span(寿命) of Americans is about two or three years short of an 80th birthday party.And most people don’t want to cut out coffee, soda, alcohol, cigarettes, and eat healthy food. “People tell me all the time, ’ I don’t want to live to be 100,’“said Mildred Leaver, who turned 100 in June. “I think that’s just sad.Aging is attitude and I don’t feel old,“said Leaver,a former educator who still drives her Buick around town. It doesn’t take long to see that Leaver and her neighbors Mildred Harris, Grace Wolfson, Gladys Stuart and Viola Semas, have a lot more in common than their longevity and lifelong healthy habits.All are 100 except Stuart,who is 101. Even though their sight and hearing aren’t what they used to be, they’ve all avoided illnesses that many elderly people are stricken with.It’s been 50 years since Leaver beat cancer for the first and only time. The common thread that connects these women is the decades of service to jobs each loved as a farmer,designer, school principal, bookkeeper and secretary.In the early years of their lives, gainfully employed women like them were just as rare as 100-year-old are today.

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The reasons given below about the popularity of E-mail can be found in the passage except

How is the Internet or net explained in the passage?

What does the sentence “ If it is not yet speeding discoveries, it is certainly accelerating communication“ most probably mean?

Why is a dog sitting before a computer keyboard in a cartoon published by the New Yorkers?

What will happen to fax, land mail, overnight mail, etc according to the writer?