After the creation of the Glacier National Park in Montana, the growing number of park visitors increased the need for roads. Eventually, the demand for a road across the mountains led to the building of the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

The construction of the Going-to-the-Sun Road was a huge task. After 11 years of work, the final section of the road was completed in 1932. The road is considered an engineering feat. Even today, visitors to the park marvel at how such a road could have been built. It is one of the most scenic roads in North America. The construction of the road has changed the way visitors experience the Glacier National Park. Visitors now can drive over sections of the park that previously took days of horseback riding to see. 

Just across the border, in Canada, is the Waterton Lakes National Park. In 1931, members of the Rotary Clubs of Alberta and Montana suggested joining the two parks as a symbol of peace and friendship between the two countries. In 1932, the United States and Canadian governments renamed the parks the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the world’s first. More recently, the parks have received several international honors. They were named as a World Heritage Site in 1995. This international recognition highlights the importance of this area, not just to the United States and Canada, but to the entire world.

Onions can be divided into two categories: fresh onions and storage onions. Fresh onions are available   21   yellow, red and white throughout their season, March through August. They can be 

  22   by their thin, light-colored skin. Because they have a higher water content, they are typically sweeter and milder tasting than storage onions. This higher water content also makes   23   easier for them to bruise. With its delicate taste, the fresh onion is an ideal choice for salads and other lightly-cooked dishes. Storage onions, on the other hand, are available August through April.   24   

fresh onions, they have multiple layers of thick, dark, papery skin. They also have an   25   flavor and a higher percentage of solids. For these reasons, storage onions are the best choice for spicy dishes that require longer cooking times or more flavor.

The high school prom is the first formal social event for most American teenagers. It has also been a rite of passage for young Americans for nearly a century.

The word “prom” was first used in the 1890s, referring to formal dances in which the guests of a party would display their fashions and dancing skills during the evening’s grand march. In the United States, parents and educators have come to regard the prom as an important lesson in social skills. Therefore, proms have been held every year in high schools for students to learn proper social behavior.

The first high school proms were held in the 1920s in America. By the 1930s, proms were common across the country. For many older Americans, the prom was a modest, home-grown affair in the school gymnasium. Prom-goers were well dressed but not fancily dressed up for the occasion: boys wore jackets and ties and girls their Sunday dresses. Couples danced to music provided by a local amateur band or a record player. After the 1960s, and especially since the 1980s, the high school prom in many areas has become a serious exercise in excessive consumption, with boys renting expensive tuxedos and girls wearing designer gowns. Stretch limousines were hired to drive the prom-goers to expensive restaurants or discos for an all-night extravaganza.

Whether simple or lavish, proms have always been more or less traumatic events for adolescents who worry about self-image and fitting in with their peers. Prom night can be a dreadful experience for socially awkward teens or for those who do not secure dates. Since the 1990s, alternative proms have been organized in some areas to meet the needs of particular students. For example, proms organized by and for homeless youth were reported. There were also “couple-free” proms to which all students are welcome.

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        A sense of humor is just one of the many things shared by Alfred and Anthony Melillo, 64-year-old twin brothers from East Haven who made history in February 2002. On Christmas Eve, 1992, Anthony had a heart transplant from a 21-year-old donor. Two days before Valentine’s Day in 2002, Alfred received a 19-year-old heart, marking the first time on record that twin adults each received heart transplants.  

        “I’m 15 minutes older than him, but now I’m younger because of my heart and I’m not going to respect him,” Alfred said with a grin, pointing to his brother while talking to a roomful of reporters, who laughed frequently at their jokes.

        While the twins knew that genetics might have played a role in their condition, they recognized that their eating habits might have also contributed to their heart problems. “We’d put half a pound of butter on a steak. I overdid it on all the food that tasted good, so I guess I deserved what I got for not dieting properly.”

        The discussion moved to Anthony’s recovery. In the five years since his heart transplant, he had been on an exercise program where he regularly rode a bicycle for five miles, swam each day, and walked a couple of miles. He was still on medication, but not nearly as much as Alfred, who was just in the early stage of his recovery.

        “Right now I feel pretty young and I’m doing very well,” Anthony said. “I feel like a new person.” Alfred said his goal, of course, was to feel even better than his brother. But, he added, “I love my brother very much. We’re very close and I’m sure we’ll do just fine.”

(AB) … so he went abroad to study. 

(AC) … I stayed in bed an extra hour. 

(AD) … or she might miss the class.

 (AE) … he will fail the exam.

 (BC) … who changed him into a gentleman. 

(BD) … she had gone bankrupt.

 (BE) … is more likely to look young.

 (CD) … and is sure to have a healthy body.

 (CE) … I admired her most in the world.

 (DE) … I would have taken action right away.

Bill and Sam decided to kidnap the son of a banker to compensate for their business loss. They kidnapped the boy and hid him in a cave. They asked for a ransom of $2,000 to return the boy. _____16_____ , their plan quickly got out of control. Their young captive _____17_____ to be a mischievous boy. He viewed the kidnapping as a wonderful camping trip. He demanded that his kidnappers play tiring games with him, such as riding Bill as a horse for nine miles. Bill and Sam were soon desperate and decided to _____18_____ the little terror. They lowered the price to $1,500. Yet, knowing perfectly well _____19_____ a troublemaker his son was, the father refused to give them any money. _____20_____ , he asked the kidnappers to pay him $250 to take the boy back. To persuade the boy to return home, Bill and Sam had to tell him that his father was taking him bear-hunting. The kidnappers finally handed over the boy and $250 to the banker and fled town as quickly as they could.

    Some people call it a traveling museum. Others refer to it as a living or open-air museum. Built in Brazil to celebrate the quincentennial of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World, the Nina, a Columbus-era replica ship, provides visitors with an accurate visual of the size and sailing implements of Columbus’ favorite ship from over 500 years ago. 

   I joined the crew of the Nina in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in February 2013. As part of a research project sponsored by my university, my goal was to document my days aboard the ship in a blog. I quickly realized that I gained the most valuable insights when I observed or gave tours to school-age children. The field-trip tour of the Nina is hands-on learning at its best. In this setting, students could touch the line, pass around a ballast stone, and move the extremely large tiller that steered the ships in Columbus’ day. They soon came to understand the labor involved in sailing the ship back in his time. I was pleased to see the students become active participants in their learning process. 

   The Nina is not the only traveling museum that provides such field trips. A visit to Jamestown Settlement, for example, allows visitors to board three re-creations of the ships that brought the first settlers from England to Virginia in the early 1600s. Historical interpreters, dressed in period garb, give tours to the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. These interpreters often portray a character that would have lived and worked during that time period. Students touring these ships are encouraged to interact with the interpreters in order to better understand the daily life in the past. 

    My experience on the Nina helps substantiate my long-held belief that students stay interested, ask better questions, and engage in higher-order thinking tasks when they are actively engaged in the learning process. The students who boarded the Nina came as passive learners. They left as bold explorers.

   An ancient skull unearthed recently indicates that big cats originated in central Asia—not Africa as widely thought, paleontologists reported on Wednesday. 

   Dated at between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old, the fossil is the oldest remains ever found of a pantherine felid, as big cats are called. The previous felid record holder—tooth fragments found in Tanzania—is estimated to be around 3.8 million years old. 

   The evolution of big cats has been hotly discussed, and the issue is complicated by a lack of fossil evidence to settle the debate. 

   “This find suggests that big cats have a deeper evolutionary origin than previously suspected,” said Jack Tseng, a paleontologist of the University of Southern California who led the probe. 

   Tseng and his team made the find in 2010 in a remote border region in Tibet. The fossil was found stuck among more than 100 bones that were probably deposited by a river that exited a cliff. After three years of careful comparisons with other fossils, using DNA data to build a family tree, the team is convinced the creature was a pantherine felid. 

   The weight of evidence suggests that central or northern Asia is where big cats originated some 16 million years ago. They may have lived in a vast mountain refuge, formed by the uplifting Himalayas, feeding on equally remarkable species such as the Tibetan blue sheep. They then dispersed into Southeast Asia, evolving into the clouded leopard, tiger and snow leopard lineages, and later movements across continents saw them evolve into jaguars and lions. 

   The newly discovered felid has been called Panthera Blytheae, after Blythe Haaga, daughter of a couple who support a museum in Los Angeles, the university said in a news release.

Shoes are hugely important for protecting our feet, especially in places like Africa, where healthcare provision is limited. Unfortunately, shoes are not always readily available for people living in poverty, 21 shoes that are the right size. Almost as soon as a child receives shoes to wear, he/she is likely to have grown out of them. Then the child has to 22 with shoes that are too small. The Shoe That Grows, created by a charity called Because International, changes all this. It allows children to 23 their shoes’ size as their feet grow. 

The innovative footwear resembles a common sandal and is made of leather straps and rubber soles, a material similar to that used in tires. They come 24 two sizes, and can expand in three places. The straps on the heel and toe control the length of the shoe, 25 the two on either side allow for different widths. With this special design, the shoes can “grow” up to five sizes and last for at least five years.

        Flickering lamps can induce headaches. But if the flickering happens millions of times a second—far faster than the eye can see or the brain process—then it might be harnessed to do something useful, like transmitting data. This is the idea behind Li-Fi, or Light Fidelity. The term Li-Fi was coined by University of Edinburgh Professor Harald Haas in a 2011 TED Talk, where he introduced the idea of “wireless data from every light.” Today, Li-Fi has developed into a wireless technology that allows data to be sent at high speeds, working with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), an increasingly popular way to illuminate public areas and homes. 

        Using LED lights as networking devices for data transmission, Li-Fi has several advantages over WiFi (Wireless Fidelity). First, Li-Fi allows for greater security on local networks, as light cannot penetrate walls or doors, unlike radio waves used in Wi-Fi. As long as transparent materials like glass windows are covered, access to a Li-Fi channel is limited to devices inside the room, ensuring that signals cannot be hacked from remote locations. Also, Li-Fi can operate in electromagnetic sensitive areas such as aircraft cabins, hospitals, and nuclear power plants, for light does not interfere with radio signals. The most significant advantage of Li-Fi is speed. Researchers have achieved speeds of 224 gigabits per second in lab conditions, much faster than Wi-Fi broadband. 

        How could Li-Fi enrich daily life? Anywhere there is LED lighting, there is an opportunity for Li-Fi enabled applications. Li-Fi-enabled street lights could provide internet access to mobile phones, making walking at night safer. The LED bulbs in traffic lights could provide drivers with weather conditions and traffic updates. Li-Fi could help with tourism by providing an easier access to local information. At home, smart light could also provide parents with solutions to their children’s Internet addiction: Just turn off the lights and you’ve turned off their access. 

        When 14 billion light bulbs mean 14 billion potential transmitters of wireless data, a cleaner, a greener, and even a brighter future is on the way.

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   Angelfish, often found in the warm seas and coral reefs, are among the most brightly colored fish of the ocean. Brilliant colors and stripes form amazing patterns on their body. These patterns actually help the fish to hide from danger among roots and plants. At night, when these fish become inactive, their colors may become pale. Often, the young ones are differently colored than the adults. Some scientists believe that the color difference between the young and the old indicates their different social positions.

   Another interesting fact about angelfish is that they have an occupation in the fish world. Most of them act as cleaners for other fish and pick dead tissue from their bodies. This is not their food, though. Their diet consists mainly of sponge and algae.

   One particular kind of angelfish, the blackspot angelfish, has a special capability that allows it to change gender from female to male. However, the change is not made at random; it happens for a specific reason. Angelfish live in groups, and each group has one male fish, which is blue in color, and four female fish, which are yellow. The male angelfish is the strongest and largest member of the group. He is the one who protects and looks after the females. When the male dies, the group needs a new “security guard.” This is when the largest female in the group begins to change in appearance. She begins to grow larger in size, and after a week, she starts changing color, from yellow to blue. Slowly, her behavior toward the other fish also changes. She begins behaving like a male. Two weeks later, black stripes appear on her body, indicating the gender change is complete. She is now completely male!