Summer Badminton Camp
Our annual badminton camps are back this June holidays! Come and join us for some fun and action! All camps will be held at the Chestnut Sports Hall. There are a total of 4 fun-filled camps lined up for this amazing holiday. The aim is to allow them to understand and lift their game to the next level or just for recreation, at the same time adding fun elements in training to build a strong interest in the sport.
Camps Available
Beginner: For those who want to learn basic badminton skills. Date: 12 to 14 June 2024 Time: 9 a. m. to 12 p. m. Fees: $80 Ages: 5-8 years old only | Intermediate: For those who know the basics of playing badminton and want to improve their skills further. Date: 15 to 17 June 2024 Time: 9 a. m. to 12 p. m. Fees: $100 Ages: 7-12 years old only |
Advanced: For those who want to take up badminton as a competitive sport. Date: 19 to 21 June 2024 Time: 9 a. m. to 1 p. m. Fees: $150 Ages: 11-12 years old only | Recreation: For those who want to make new friends while staying active. Date: 12 to 14 June 2024 Time: 3 p. m. to 7 p. m. Fees: $60 Ages: 13-16 years old only |
Camp Highlight
Guest Speaker Badminton world champion, Adrian Goh, will address the participants at the start of each camp. He will share invaluable tips and his experience of playing badminton competitively. |
Special Camp Present All participants will receive our summer badminton camp sweater and water bottle. |
Early Bird Special First 20 participants to register will be given a pair of Yinex badminton bats. For more information, call Mr. Tan at 67892111 or visit our website at www.sbssummer camps.com |
Catherine Krestyn furnished （布置家具） her home mainly with hard rubbish, such as the chairs, doors and lamps, which have been collected from the street where she lives. And it's a way of life she's sharing with her community in the hope of making a difference.
Catherine leads a 6,000-strong online group called Boroondara Hard Rubbish Rehome, where members upload pictures of their hard rubbish piles for eager locals to find. She started the group in 2022 with her childhood friend Jennie Irving, hoping to build a community of thrift （节俭） where they lived. The pair have stopped more than 7,000 kg of hard rubbish going to landfill since they founded the group.
Some items are ready as they are, like chairs and lamps, and others take a bit of effort to clean up, like the old, wooden doors.
Local teacher Ruth Polgar discovered the group while surfing the Internet and has since decorated her classroom with second-hand items, including artwork she has rehomed from a neighbour. "We regularly take unneeded items from the group and use them for our school projects," she says.
Running the group can be really challenging for Catherine. But she doesn't resent those who have to let go of their possessions because of stressful circumstances. "If you're downsizing or if you're clearing an old house, quite often you're desperate for access to easy options," she says. "Hard rubbish piles are often that option."
All Catherine wants to do is give her community a way to reduce their waste, and to send a message to those in charge that things need to urgently change.
"The government has big targets around sustainable development leading into 2030. We want to start speeding that up even sooner," she says. "We're suffering from our own waste really, so anything that we can all do on a practical level helps. We should first make lifestyle choices and be prepared to go second-hand."
Scientists have been experimenting with playing sounds to plants since at least the 1960s, during which time they have been exposed to everything from Beethoven to Michael Jackson. Over the years, evidence that this sort of thing can have an effect has been growing. One paper, published in 2018, claimed that an Asian shrub known as the telegraph plant grew substantially larger leaves when exposed to 56 days of Buddhist music—but not if it was exposed to Western pop music or silence. Another, published last year, found that marigolds and sage plants exposed to the noise of traffic from a busy motorway suffered growth difficulty.
Plants have been evolving（进化） alongside the insects that eat them for hundreds of millions of years. With that in mind, Heidi Appel, a botanist now at the University of Houston, and Reginald Cocroft, a biologist at the University of Missouri, wondered if plants might be sensitive to the sounds made by the animals with which they most often interact. They recorded the vibrations made by certain species of caterpillars（毛毛虫） as they chewed on leaves. These vibrations are not powerful enough to produce sound waves in the air. But they are able to travel across leaves and branches, and even to neighbouring plants if their leaves touch.
They then exposed tobacco plant—the plant biologist's version of the laboratory mouse—to the recorded vibrations while no caterpillars were actually present. Later, they put real caterpillars on the plants to see if exposure had led them to prepare for an insect attack. The results were striking. Leaves that had been exposed had significantly higher levels of defensive chemicals, making them much harder for the caterpillars to eat. Leaves that had not been exposed to vibrations showed no such response. Other sorts of vibration—caused by the wind, for instance, or other insects that do not eat leaves—had no effect.
"Now speakers with the right audio files are more often being used to warn crops to act when insects are detected but not yet widespread," says Dr. Cocroft. "Unlike chemical pesticides, sound waves leave no dangerous chemicals."
A physical checkup often begins with a series of questions: What foods do you eat? Do you smoke? Getting any exercise? New research suggests another telling indicator could be added to that list: What was your college major? The study finds one's chosen field of college study is a statistically significant predictor of health in midlife.
The researchers find the four majors associated with the best midlife health are architecture/engineering, biology/life sciences, business, and—here's a surprise—communications/journalism. Perhaps chasing after big stories keeps us journalists in shape.
It has long been established that people with more education tend to be healthier. But does one's major matter? To find out, the researchers analyzed data from the nationally representative American Community Survey.
Their sample consisted of 3.7 million United States-born adults between the ages of 45 and 64—the time of life when physical functioning problems start to appear. Participants noted whether they had difficulty walking or climbing stairs, dressing or bathing. A "yes" answer in any of those categories resulted in a grade of relatively poor health.
The researchers focused on the 667,362 participants who earned a bachelor's degree, but went no further in their education. They noted each person's college major, which they placed into one of 15 categories. They found substantial differences in health across majors. Two majors are particularly disadvantaged in midlife. The chances of poor health are 1.9 times greater among psychology /social work and law/public policy majors compared to business majors. The researchers argue this is likely due to several factors. Psychology majors tend to suffer from high unemployment and low earnings. Law/public policy majors often enter the field of law enforcement（执行）.
The researchers say that they have discovered associations, not proof of causality（因果关系）. But they make a convincing case that some majors lead people to live healthier lifestyles than others. Their findings might even inspire a warning country song: Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be psychology majors.
The philosophy that can help you keep your home organized
How can we clean up our space and keep it that way? That's a question that Star Hansen thinks a lot about. She's a professional organizer who teaches classes on home organizing. She believes that keeping your home neat and tidy is a continual process.___. Here are her tidying philosophy strategies to clean up your messes.
Understand your chaos
Hansen says everyone's chaos tells a personal story. What becomes chaos and where your chaos build up can say a lot about what's going on with you. If you have unwanted piles of stuff around your house, ask yourself: What's making it hard to throw them away? For example, a uniform that hasn't fit for years.___. When you understand the reasons behind your chaos, it's a lot easier to know what to keep and what to throw away.
Start small
When it comes to organizing, don't bite off more than you can chew. If you start with too big a goal, you might get discouraged if the job takes too long. So don't try to clean your entire garage in one afternoon.___. For example, you can tidy your cupboard first and save more complicated items, like your garage, for last. Setting realistic goals can help keep you invested in the process.
___
It's easy to be organized the day after tidying. But what happens when you come home from a trip and are too tired to unpack your luggage? Or when you get the flu and are too sick to clean up? The key to staying organized is to create practices that can be easily maintained. Make a system that works for you even when you've got a cold. For example, label storage containers on all four sides so they're easier to spot.___.
A. Make it easy to stay organized
B. Abandon the fancy storage boxes
C. Instead, start with something less challenging
D. Maybe it reveals a longing for your former profession
E. That attitude can help you let go of things you don't need
F. You have to take the time to create systems that work for you
G. Make sure your most used items are always the easiest to reach
In Jan. 2020, Teresa Hernandez was 35 weeks pregnant. One morning, she had a strange1 —the baby wasn't moving as it usually did. She decided to go to the hospital to 2 everything was OK.
When she got there, she learned that the baby's heart rate was 3 . The doctors told her that her baby needed to be delivered4 by an operation. Hearing that, Hernandez was in complete5 . After all, the baby was too little. But the doctors said if the baby was 6 , they wouldn't be able to help if something went wrong.
Hernandez was7 to the operating room. On the way, she suffered from great8 . She started to cry and have trouble breathing, and she knew she was having a 9 attack. That's when a nurse in the operating room 10 to help.
"This nurse, she took my hand and started pressing with11 . And then she 12 me while they were doing the operation. And then she 13 one hand on my cheek. And she started humming," Hernandez 14 ."I felt like my mom was there, holding me."
15 her husband, Hernandez had no family with her. But the nurse's act of warmth brought her 16 . It felt like her mom 17 her in the hospital.
"When your mom is there, you feel18 . You feel like you can do it. You feel like everything is going to be 19 . And that's what I felt with her," Hernandez said. "I'm really, really20 for what she did that day for me."
South Koreans have enjoyed their first close-up look of new baby giant pandas at a name-revealing ceremony which is also___early cerebration of the 100 days since the twins' birth.
What to name the twin sisters was widely discussed among netizens after they were born on July 7 in theme park Everland. The names were ___(ultimate) decided on through two public voting___(procedure). One is named Rui Bao, which means wise treasure, and the other is Hui Bao, shining treasure. Half a million panda lovers helped choose their names, with a handful of lucky fans ___(invite) to the ceremony. "They are even ___(cute) in real life than they appear onscreen," said a college student in attendance.
The baby pandas,___ have just begun teething and crawling, are very healthy. Everland has shared videos documenting the pandas' growth online. The twins' birth has gained 640,000 views since it ___(upload). "This feels like a great opportunity to call for better___(preserve) of pandas," said Donghee Chung, the head of the park's zoo. Chung noted that between 40% and 50%of panda births result___twins.
Everland said it would monitor the twins' health ___(determine) when the twins are ready to be open to the public.
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧)，并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；2.只允许修改10处，多者（从第11 处起）不计分。
I flew back to New York from a spring break. My flight landed lately in the evening. I decided to taking an airport bus to the downtown area so that I could find a faster and cheap taxi to get home. It turned out that a bus was full of passengers but I was chatting with a few of them. I told that it was unsafe to be waiting for in the street to catch a taxi at midnight. One of the woman in the bus said that her car was parked near the station. So she offered me a ride to my home, drop me safely and did not accept a penny in return. I was so thankful for his kindness.
注意：1.词数 100 左右；2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Jack,
……
Yours,
Li Hua