选择知识点

A

Choose Your One-Day Tours

Tour A----Bath & Stonehenge including entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge-￡37until 26 March and￡39 thereafter.

Visit the city with over 2,000 years of history and Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Costute Mtsan.Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5,000 years.

Tour B----Oxford & Stratford including entrance fees to the University St Mary’s ChurchTower and Anne Hathawayˈs house一￡32 until 12 March and￡36 thereafter.

Oxford: Includes a guided of England’s oldest university city and colleges. Look over the “city of dreaming spires(尖顶)” from St Mary’s Church Tower. Stratford:  Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.

Tour C—-Windsor Castle & Hampton Court including entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace--£34 until 11 March and£37 thereafter.

Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court,  Henry Mill’s favourite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle（entrance fees not included）. With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze(迷宫)where it is easy to get lost!

Tour D----Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great - ---£33 until 18 March and £37 thereafter.
 Includes a guided tour of Cambridge, the famous university town, and the gardens of the 

18th century.

Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents (洋流). Most do it using satellites and other high-tech equipment. However, ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way — by studying movements of random floating garbage. A scientist with many years’ experience, he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the northwest coast of the United States.

Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes — about 60,000 in total — fell into the ocean in a shipping accident. He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back. As expected, the company told him that they didn't. Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment. If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed, he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents.

The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's best areas for beachcombing (海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here, and as a result, there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area. Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed. In a year he collected reliable information on 1, 600 shoes. With this data, he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer program designed to model ocean currents, and publish the findings of their study.

As the result of his work, Ebbesmeyer has become known as the scientist to call with questions about any unusual objects found floating in the ocean. He has even started an association of beachcombers and ocean experts, with 500 subscribers from West Africa to New Zealand. They have recorded all lost objects ranging from potatoes to golf gloves.

Giulia Pugliese is a typical teenager. She likes to look good. And she's particular about what she wears. But when the 15-year-old girl from Long Island went on a back-to-school shopping trip with friends, she left a Nike store empty-handed--- even though Nike is one of her favorites. The reason?
  "I buy on sale because it's stupid to buy a pair of shorts for $60," said Pugliese, who instead looks for the "Swoosh" logo in discount stores like Marshalls.
   Teens are shopping like their parents during the back-to-school season. When they shop, they spend less. When they do buy, they're less likely to get anything that's not on sale. Today's kids recycle more clothes from the previous school year, mixing and matching the old with the new for different looks.
  Teens' behavior is an extension of how their parents learned to shop since 2008 when retailers pushed discounts to entice people to buy during the downturn. That helped absorb shoppers. But it also got them addicted to deals. The shift made it difficult for stores to make money because discounts cut into profits.
  Such behavior has cut into sales from July through September, the second biggest shopping period of the year behind the winter holidays. Sales during that period were 24.9 percent of total sales annually last year, down from 25.8 percent in 2003, according to The Retail Economist.
  "Consumers are sending a message to retailers that says 'the back-to-school shopping season just isn't that important any more,'" says Deloitte's Alison Paul.
  The shift is changing how stores market to teens. Whereas stores' promotions would end around Labor Day, they're now extending them through September. They're also pulling together complete outfits from different brands in stores to make it easier for teens to buy and choose. And they're using social media campaigns to be more easily discovered by teens.

   C

Drunk driving(醉驾) has become a serious problem in China. According to the Ministry of Public Security(公安部), the police caught more than half a million drunk drivers in 2010. On the night of May 9,2011,musician Gao Xiaosong ran his car into three other cars in Beijing because he drank too much wine. He was punished(惩罚) under China’s new drunk driving law that came into use on May1,2011.

The new law sees drunk driving as a crime(犯罪). In the west, drunk driving is also a crime. In the US, for example, if the police catch a drunk driver, the driver will pay a fine, lose his or her license and even go to prison. If the driver wants to drive again, he or she has to do public service, and take part in educational programs.

You may think: drunk driving is crime? Isn’t this law too unkind? But experts say: not at all. They think it is to protect people’s rights of life and health. Drunk driving is very dangerous!

B

   Free Apps to Manage Exam Stress
It’s nearly exam time, so check out some of the best free apps around to help you manage the stress of

exams and ensure you are studying effectively over the coming weeks.
Exam Countdown
    Do you avoid thinking about exams? Do you pretend you still have weeks and weeks to prepare? If that sounds familiar, this app can help. It tells you how many days, hours, and minutes you have until your exam. This can help motivate you to hit the books before it’s too late.
Block The Internet
   Are you constantly checking Facebook when you should be writing an essay? Or perhaps you are distracted by a battle in League of Legends? Download this app to get rid of online distractions by temporarily blocking Internet sites on your mobile. Simply add the websites you want to block and the period of time to block them for. Guarantee to get you focused on that assignment.
CBT-I Coach
   We all know that a good night’s sleep is essential for learning and performing at our best at university. But all too often when life gets stressful, our sleeping quality suffers.
   The US Department of Veterans Affairs developed the app, CBT-I Coach, to assist with insomnia (失眠) and to help people who would like to improve their sleeping habits.
   It provides several key parts: information about sleep and insomnia, strategies for improving sleep, relaxation skills such as guided imagery, schedule worrying time) and a helpful sleeping diary. It is one of the most helpful apps available for sleeping difficulties. To get the most benefit, make sure you have practiced these skills before exam time comes around.
YOGA
   Ever feel sore or stiff after countless hours of studying? Yoga has great health benefits both for the mind and body and will help you to perform at your best while at university.
   Download a YOGA app and have your own personal yoga instructor in your living room. You can choose from short or long workouts and have a qualified instructor teaching you how to do each pose. Choose from a variety of yoga routines and watch the instructional videos. Go on, stretch out those sore muscles.