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My dad loved pennies, especially those with wheat. Those were the pennies he grew up with in Iowa and he didn’t have many.

When I was a kid, Dad and I would go for walks together. We’d spy coins along the way. Whenever I picked up a penny, he'd ask, "Is it a wheat?" It always thrilled him when we found one of those special coins produced between 1909 and 1958, the year of my birth. He told me he often dreamed of finding coins. “I have that dream too!” I told him. It told him. It was our secret connection.

Dad died in 2002. One grey day, not long after his death, I was walking down Fifth Avenue and I found myself in front of the oldest church in Manhattan, which my father had been attending. I was greeted in warmly. The song was Dad's favorite, one we’d sung at his funeral.

After the service, I walked out, stepped onto the sidewalk-and there was a penny. I picked it up, and sure enough, it was a wheat, a 1944, a year my father was serving on a ship in the South Pacific. Then, wheat pennies began turning up on the sidewalks everywhere. I got most of the important years: his birth year, the war years, the year he met my mom, the year they got married. But , no 1958 penny-my year.

The next Sunday, after the service, I was walking up Fifth Avenue and spotted a penny in the middle of the street. It was a busy street, but I risked my safety and got it.

A wheat! There was my birthday.

I found 21 wheat pennies on the streets of Manhattan in the year after my father died, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

【语篇导读】本文是一篇记叙文，属于生活类话题，文章是以一个硬币为线索联系起来的。

What happens inside the head of a soccer player who repeatedly heads a soccer ball? That question motivated a study of the brains of experienced players.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York selected 34 adults, men and women. All of the volunteers had played soccer since childhood and now competed year-round in adult soccer leagues. Each filled out a detailed questionnaire developed especially for this study to determine how many times they had headed a soccer ball in the previous year, as well as whether they had experienced any known concussions (脑震荡) in the past.

Then the players completed computerized tests of their memory and other learning skills and had their brains scanned, using a complex new M.R.I. technique which can find structural changes in the brain that can’t be seen during most scans.

According to the data they presented, the researchers found that the players who had headed the ball more than about 1,100 times in the previous 12months showed significant loss of white matter in parts of their brains involved with memory, attention and the processing of visual information, compared with players who had headed the ball less.

This pattern of white matter loss is “similar to those seen in traumatic (外伤的) brain injury”, like that after a serious concussion, the researchers reported, even though only one of these players was reported to have ever experienced a concussion.

The players who had headed the ball about 1,100 times or more in the past year were also generally worse at recalling lists of words read to them, forgetting or fumbling the words far more often than players who had headed the ball less.

【语篇导读】本文是一篇说明文，属于科普类话题，文章讲了研究表明用头顶足球，可造成大脑伤害。

When Dawn Bonfield, the former chief executive of the Women's Engineering Society, ran a stand recently at a big military air show, she was in for a shock.

There were around 900 Brownies among the crowd and Ms Bonfield says, "I'm saying to all these girls, 'Do you know about engineering, would you like to be an engineer, have you thought about engineering?' And in the whole day... probably five or six of them said yes. Every other one said no, just straight out no."

What surprised her most, she says, is that it wasn't that these eight and nine-year-old girls didn't know what engineering was. Simply that they had already switched off. They had lost interest in engineering. "So how much work does it take to change that?" asks Ms Bonfield. "I mean it's huge."

There's no shortage of data to back up her estimation of the scale of work required. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that women make up around just 8% of engineers in the UK. And this is at a time when the UK needs to produce thousands more engineers, so much so that the inventor, Sir James Dyson, is planning to open his own instituteto address the skills shortage.

Not enough female role models is well documented as a reason why girls don’t choose engineering.

The attitude of parents was also an important factor in career choices. For girls, perhaps unsurprisingly, mothers were particularly influential.

"My mum was a bit iffy about it at first because she was more like, 'Girls should do this and that and the other,' more like 'keep your posture up and be ladylike'," says middle school student Hannah. "But my dad used to build a lot of stuff and he got me into that. So after my mum saw how me and my dad interacted she said, 'Yeah, go for it' and she's kind of the one who supported me with this."

【语篇导读】本文是一篇说明文，属于调查报告类，作者通过调查得出“不重视工程”。

You’ll need to download free software to connect to our Secure Drop service. It’s easy to use and works like a web browser that you’re familiar with, like Firefox or Chrome.

Here’s how to get started:

1st,Visit TorProject. org, and follow the directions to download Tor.

2nd,Launch the Tor Browser, copy and paste the following URL into the address bar: http://3expgpdnrrzezf7r.onion/

From there, you can complete the instructions for how to send us files and messages. To protect your identity, you’ll receive a randomly generated code name. You’ll want to remember it in case you want to come back--- using the code name provide your name.

For greater security, you may want to use a public WiFi network, rather than your home or office internet connection. Using a USB drive, you can also temporarily boot your computer into the TAILS secure operating system, which includes the Tor Browser; more information is available on the TAILS website.

U.S Mail

You may also contact us via postal mail if you’re living within the United States. You should consider mailing your package from an unfamiliar letter box and not including a return address.

Our mailing address is:

The Associated Press

1100 13th Street NW

Suite 500

Washington, DC 20005

【语篇导读】本文是一篇说明文，属于科技类话题，文章介绍如何安全下载免费软件和发送文件。

I’m a 34-year-old man, married, lived in a nice house, and have a successful career as an educational consultant. But my life was not always so great. I had a learning disability from _ early age. I went to a special school where I got plenty of extra help. Still, I suffered the rest of my school bd_blank (days) in public schools.

My life improved remarkably when I discovered art. The art world gave me a chance to express myself _ words. I went to a workshop and _ (gradual) got good at making things with clay. Here I learned my first important lesson: disabled bd_blank I was in language. I could still be smart and well express _ (I) with clay. And my confidence came along.

Later I decided to apply my previous experience to _ (learn) how to read and write. Every day, I bd_blank (practice) reading and writing, which I used to avoid as much as possible. After two hard years, I was able to read and write.

_ (go) through the long process with art, rock climbing, and reading and writing, now I’ve got to a point in my life where I know I am smart enough to dive into an area that is totally _ (know), hard, but interesting.

【语篇导读】本文是一篇记叙文，是属于个人生活类话题，文章介绍了作者艰难的人生。