Reading Comprehension

     A lawyer friend of mine has devoted herself to the service of humanity. Her special area is called "public interest law".
     Many other lawyers represent only clients who can pay high fees. All lawyers have had expensive and highly specialized training, and they work long, difficult hours for the money they earn. But what happens to people who need legal help and cannot afford to pay these lawyers’ fees？
     Public interest lawyers fill this need. Lisa, like older public interest lawyers, earns a salary much below what some lawyers can earn. Because she is willing to take less money, her clients need the help, even if they can pay nothing at all.
     Some clients need legal help because stores have cheated them with faulty merchandise. Others are in unsafe apartments, or are threatened with eviction (驱逐，赶出) and have no place to go to. Their cases are called "civil" cases. Still others are accused of criminal acts, and seeking those public interest lawyers who handle "criminal" cases. These. are just a few of the many situations in which men and women who are public interest lawyers serve to extend justice throughout our society.

Reading Comprehension     

     Computer technology is advancing so fast that old hardware quickly becomes completely obsolete. The electronic waster (e-waste) from this constantly growing field is polluting the environment, both here and abroad.
     Computers contain toxic materials such as lead. Despite the danger of throwing these hazardous materials in a landfill, that's exactly where tons of computers end up. Americans reuse or recycle only about 10 percent of the 50 million computers they replace each year, according to ABC News. Eighty percent is being stockpiled, which could create even bigger problems in the future, and the remaining 10 percent is landfilled. Throwing e-waste in landfills creates a potential for landfills are tougher in the United States than in many other countries, e-waste is often exported, especially to some developing countries.
     Some countries are creating policies to deal with the growing e-waste problem. In the Netherlands, you can bring your old computer to the seller when buying a new one, and the seller must by law accept it free of charge. Japan passed a law in 2001 requiring producers to recycle certain parts.
     In the United States, a movement called the Computer Take Back Campaign is demanding that producers take more responsibility for disposing of old computers, California and Massachusetts recently prohibited certain computer parts in landfills, while Apple and IBM take back computers for about a $30 fee. Gateway is one step ahead: They will pay you $50 for recycling your old computer when you buy a new one from them. Lastly, many nonprofit programs accept used equipment, and services have popped up that distribute old computers to schools and other organizations.

Reading Comprehension

     We all know that it is possible for ordinary people to make their homes on the equator, although often they may feel uncomfortably hot there. Millions do it, but as for the North Pole --- we know that it is not only a dangerously cold place, but that people like you and me would find it quite impossible to live there. At the present time only the scientists and explorers can do so, and they use special equipment. Men have been traveling across and around the equator on wheels, on their feet or in ships for thousands of years; but only a few men, with great difficulty and in very recent time, have ever crossed the ice to the North Pole. So it may surprise you to learn that, when traveling by air, it is really safer to fly over the North Pole than over the equator. Of course, this is not true about landings in the polar region (which passenger aeroplanes do not make), but the weather, if we are flying at a height of 5,000 meters above the Pole, is a delight. At 4,000 meters and more above the earth you can always be sure that you will not see a cloud in the sky as far as the eye can reach. In the tropics, on the other hand, you are not certain to keep clear of bad weather, even at such heights as 18,000 or 20,000 meters.
     Aeroplanes can’t climb as high or as quickly in cold air as in warm. Nor can clouds. In practice, this is an advantage to the aeroplane, which is already at a good height when it reaches the polar region and so does not need to climb, while at the same time cold air keeps the clouds down low.

Reading Comprehension

　　It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without memory．The meanings of thousands of everyday perceptions, the basis for the decisions we make, and the roots of our habits and skills are to be found in our past experiences, which are brought into the present by memory.
　　Memory can be defined as the capacity to keep information available for later use．It not only includes "remembering" things like arithmetic or historical facts, but also involves any change in the way an animal typically behaves．Memory is involved when a rat gives up eating grain because he has sniffed something suspicious in the grain pile. 
　　Memory exists not only in humans and animals but also in some physical objects and machines．Computers, for example, contain devices for storing data for later use．It is interesting to compare the memory storage capacity of a computer with that of a human being．The instant access memory of a large computer may hold up to 100, 000 "words"－string of alphabetic or numerical characters－ready for instant use．An average U. S. teenager probably recognizes the meaning of about 100, 000 words of English. However, this is but a fraction of the total amount of information that the teenager has stored．Consider, for example, the number of faces and places that the teenager can recognize on sight.
　　The use of words is the basis of the advanced problem-solving intelligence of human beings．A large part of a person's memory is in terms of words and combinations of words.

Reading Comprehension

     It was not much fun to travel on one of the old sailing ships. Life was hard for both passengers and crew. 17th century sailing ships were small and rolled heavily in rough seas, so most of the passengers were seasick.
     There were no toilets, and the spaces below deck where passengers had to stay during gales were often not more than 5 foot high. Water was scarce and the little water they got was brown and smelt terrible.
     Food was a problem, too-there was only salted meat, ship’ s biscuits and cheese, but the cheese was so hard that sailors often made buttons out of it for their jackets and trousers. There were no vegetables or fruit, so the people on board often fell ill.
     The sailors, however, were a bit better off than the passengers. They each had a bottle of beer a day, and they needed. The work they had to do was hard and dangerous. Courage was needed, for the heavy sails had to be set and taken down in all kinds of weather, and quite often sailors were swept overboard in a gale. Almost the worst thing about the voyages was the time they took up to 70 days for the journey across the Atlantic. Not surprisingly, everybody was overjoyed when they at last approached land and stepped ashore. But some ships never arrived.

Reading Comprehension

     A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically “proved” by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to voice this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody should be excluded from the wealth Western industrialized countries, a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of subsistence in case of unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one step further and argue that, even if these conditions are not present, everyone has the right to receive the means to subsist, in other words, he can claim this subsistence minimum without having to have any “reason”. I would suggest, however, that it should be limited to a definite period of time, let’s say two years, so as to avoid the encouraging of an abnormal attitude which refused any kind of social obligation.
     This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think, our insurance system would have sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were entitled to receive minimum support, people would not work. This assumption rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature, actually, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work.
     However, the suspicions against a system of guaranteed subsistence minimum are not groundless, from the standpoint of those who want to use ownership of capital for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently interesting and attractive to induce one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possible only if both parties are free to accept and reject it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case.
     But such a system would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees, its principal advantage would be the improvement of freedom in inter-personal relationships in every sphere of daily life.

Reading Comprehension

     When the United States Congress created Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the goal was to set aside a place where Americans could enjoy the beauty of nature for years to come. Now, 142 years later, there are hundreds of national parks across the country, and technology is changing the way people experience them. Should park visitors be able to use cell phones, or should their use be restricted?
     "Connectivity presents a real challenge to all of us." Al Nash says. He is a public affairs officer at Yellowstone National Park. He says cell phone service at Yellowstone is available in parts of the park with stores and campgrounds. This makes it easy for visitors to share photos of their trip on social networking sites and to stay in touch with friends and family members. (80) If a nark visitor is hurt or in danger, cell phones make it easier to get help. Some say the ability to download applications that provide information about plants and animals in the park can enrich a visitor’s experience.
     Others say cell phones disturb people’s enjoyment of our national parks. In their view, cell phone towers are an eyesore, and they’d rather hear the sound of birds than the ring of an incoming call. Can you imagine looking out a peaceful lake or field of grass only to be disturbed by a person shouting into their phone, "Can you hear me now?"
     Nash says Yellowstone tries to strike a balance. "Ultimately, our job is to let visitors understand and enjoy nature better while protecting what people find special about Yellowstone, and one of those things that’s special is the ability to get away from the hustle and bustle of one’s daily life."

Reading Comprehension

     What do we mean by a satisfactory standard of living？ Obviously, it must include the basic necessities of life such as food clothing and shelter. To get these necessities on regular basis, a person must have a reliable income. But we have other needs which would probably also be included as basic, such as health and education facilities.
     We may think of all of these as our needs. Yet most of us would be far from satisfied if we had nothing more than these which are supplied for us. (78) We all enjoy extra income to spend on things like books, sports or hobbies. Sometimes we save some of this extra income to pay for future expense of this type on holidays. So we must add our wants to our basic needs. Our standard of living is the degree, to which these needs and wants are satisfied.
     But as time goes on, what we think of as our basic needs changes. Twenty years ago a television would have been a luxury, and still is in many countries now. Even now we cannot say it is a need in the same sense as food, clothing and shelter. Yet if most of the people of a country have one, it comes to be accepted as a need. It is possible therefore to have food, clothing and shelter and still be poor by the standards of our own society.

Reading Comprehension

     Concerning money or anything else, conflicts between husband and wife usually reflect a power struggle. Conflicts between parent and child often center around the same issue. As children enter adolescence, they begin to demand greater freedom to go where they please, do what they please, and make decisions without parental interference. Many American parents do not know how to deal with their teenagers and seek advice from books, lectures, and parent training courses. Parents want to maintain a friendly relationship with their teenagers and also want to guide them so that their behavior. will be whatever the parents consider proper and constructive.
But in a society of rapidly changing social and moral values, parents and children often disagree about what is important and what is fight.
     Arguments may concern such unimportant matters as styles of dress or hairdos. But quarrels may also concern school work, after school jobs, decisions, use of the family car, dating, and sex behavior. Some families have serious problems with teenagers who drop out of school, run away from home, or use illegal drugs. Because so much publicity is given to the problem teenager, one gets the impression that all teenagers are troublemakers. Actually, relatively few adolescents do anything wrong, and nearly all grow up into "solid citizens" who fulfill most of their parents’ expectations. In fact, recent studies show that the "generation gap" is narrowing. The vast majority of teenagers share most of their parents’ values and ideas. Many parents feel that they get along with their adolescents quite well.

Reading Comprehension

     In what now seems like the prehistoric times of computer history, the early postwar era, there was a quite widespread concern that computers would take over the world from man one day. Already today, less than forty years later, as computers are relieving us of more and more of the routine tasks in business and in our personal lives, we are facing with a less dramatic but also less foreseen problem. People tend to be over trusting of computers and are reluctant to challenge their authority. Indeed, they behave as if they were hardly aware that wrong buttons maybe pushed, or that a computer may simply malfunction(失灵).
     Obviously, there would be no point in investing in a computer if you had to check all its answers, but people should also rely on their own internal computers and check the machine when they have the feeling that something has gone wrong. Questioning and routine double checks must continue to be as much a part of good business as they were in pre computer days. Maybe each computer should come with the following warning: for all the help this computer may provide, it should not be seen as a substitute for fundamental thinking and reasoning skills.

Reading Comprehension

     Another thing an astronaut has to learn about is eating in space．Food is weightless, just as men are． Food for space has to be packed in special ways．Some of it goes into tubes that a man can squeeze into his mouth．Bite-sized cookies are packed in plastic． 

     There is a good reason for covering each bite．The plastic keeps pieces of food from traveling in the spaceship．On the earth very small pieces of food would simply fall to the floor．But gravity doesn’t pull them to the floor when they are out of the plastic in a spaceship．They move here and there and can get into a man’s eyes or into the spaceship’s instruments． If any of the instruments is blocked, the astronauts may have trouble getting safely home．
     As astronauts travel on longer space trips, they must take time to sleep． An astronaut can fit himself to his seat with a kind of seat belt. Or, if he wants to, he can sleep in a sleeping bag which is fixed in place under his seat．But be careful he must put his hands under the belt when he goes to sleep．This is because he is really afraid that he might touch one of controls that isn’t supposed to be touched until later．

Reading Comprehension

     Is that 6 a.m. workout getting in the way of good sleep? Don’t think your fat cells won’t notice. A new study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine (a medical journal) finds that inadequate shut-eye has a harmful effect on fat cells, reducing their ability to respond to insulin (胰岛素) by about 30 percent. Over the long-term, this decreased response could set the stage for type-2 diabetes (a medical condition in which someone has too much sugar in his or her blood), fatty liver disease and weight gain. 
   The study adds to a growing body of evidence that there’ “an intimate relationship between the amount of sleep we get and our ability to maintain a good, healthy body weight,” says sleep expert Helene Emsellem, director of the Center for Sleep and Wake Disorders in Chevy Chase, Maryland. But Americans don’t seem to be getting the message that we need seven to nine hours par night. More than 1 in 5 of us, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is getting six or fewer hours of sleep per night, on average. 
   So how did researchers study fat cells in the Annals paper? Matthew Brady of the University of Chicago and a group of colleagues selected and persuaded seven volunteers to take part in the research project. They were all young, thin and healthy and agreed to sleep for eight nights in a sleep lab. “For four nights they were allowed to stay in bed for 8.5 hours a night,” says Brady. Then, a month later, they came back for four additional nights——but this time they were allowed just 4.5 hours of sleep per night. And after each visit, researchers got a sample of their fat. Brady explains that the fat cells responded significantly to the loss of sleep. “I was very surprised to be honest,” he says. 
   Bad things can happen when fat cells become less responsive to insulin. “Fat cells are actually your friend,” he says. “They’re there to store lipids (血脂).” When lipids stay inside the cells, your body can utilize the fat when you’re exercising or sleeping or going about your day. “However, when fat cells stare to become insulin resistant, the lipids star to leach out of the fat cells and rise in the bloodstream,” Brady says.

Reading Comprehension

     No one knows how man learned to make words. Perhaps he began by making sounds like those made by animals. Perhaps he grunted like a pig when he lifted something heavy. Perhaps he made sounds like those he heard all round him—water splashing, bees humming, a stone falling to the ground. Somehow he learned to make words. As the centuries went by, he made more and more new words. This is what we mean by language.
     People living in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred different languages in the world. Each containsfour or five hundred thousand words. But we do not need all these. Only a few thousand words are used in everyday life. 

     The words you know are called your vocabulary. You should try to make your vocabulary larger. Read as many books as you can. There are plenty of books written in easy language. Your dictionary is your most useful book.

Reading Comprehension

     It was a cold winter day. A woman drove up to the Rainbow Bridge tollbooth (收费站). “I’m paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,” she said with a smile, handing over seven tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arriving at the tollbooth were informed, “Some lady up ahead already paid your fare.”
     It turned out that the woman, Natalie Smith, had read something on a friend’s refrigerator: “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” The phrase impressed her so much that she copied it down.
     Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase on a warehouse wall far away from home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said, explaining why she’d taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, “like a message from above.” Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his students, one of whom was the daughter of Alice Johnson, a local news reporter. Alice put it in the newspaper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn’t know where it came from or what it really meant.
     Two days later, Alice got a call from Anne Herbert, a woman living in Marin. It was in a restaurant that Anne wrote the phrase down on a piece of paper, after turning it around in her mind for days.
     “Here’s the idea,” Anne says. “Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.” Her fantasies include painting the classrooms of shabby schools, leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, and giving money secretly to a proud old lady. Anne says, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can.”
     The acts of random kindness spread. If you were one of those drivers who found your fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Like all great events, kindness begins slowly, with every single act. Let it be yours!

Reading Comprehension

     There was one thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. At present, we realize that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the east of the United States and brought health warnings in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be infected by air pollution. Some scientists consider that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil) is creating a “greenhouse effect”— conserving heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be in water.
     Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particular matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature — a result that would be equally disastrous. A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. Today we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen (though one recent government report drafted by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very possible). Perhaps, if we are lucky enough, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now. 

Reading Comprehension

     By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude．It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower．The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits．Their instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity．When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts．Thus the "ant-lion"whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as danger threatens, and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it．It knows no other mode of flight, "or if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions(as useless as cultivating an unsown field)or dies in helpless inactivity"． Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil．
     Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts．Such beings we know in the ants and spiders．But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man．Habits, instead of being born ready-made(when they are called instincts and not habits at all), were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who nOW cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm．
     This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important．But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth．For although fixed automatic responses like those of the insect-like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance．The ability to acquire habits can be conceivably inherited just as much as can definite responses to narrow situations．Besides, since a mechanism--is now,for the first time, created by which the individual(in contradiction to the species)can be fitted to the environment, the latter becomes, in another sense, less not more important．And finally,less not the higher animals who possess the power of changing their environment by engineering feats and the like, a power possessed to some extent even by the beaver,and preeminently by man．Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always―supplementary factors．

Reading Comprehension

     Increasingly, over the past ten years, people--- especially young people –have become aware of the need to change their eating habits, because much of the food they eat, especially processed food, is not good for the health. As a result, there has been a growing interest in natural foods: foods which do not contain chemical additives and which have not been affected by chemical fertilizers, widely used in farming today.
     Natural foods, for example, are vegetables, fruit and grain which have been grown in soil that is rich in organic matter. In simple words, this means that the soil has been nourished by unused vegetable matter, which provides it with vitamins and minerals. This in itself is a natural process compared with the use of chemicals and fertilizers, the main purpose of which is to increase the amount—but not the quality—of foods grown in commercial farming area.
     Natural foods also include animals which have been allowed to feed move freely in healthy pastures. Compare this with what happens in the mass production of poultry：there are battery farms, for example, where thousands of chickens live crowded together in one building and are fed on food which is little better than rubbish. Chickens kept in this way are not only tasteless as food; they also produce eggs which lack important vitamins.
     There are other sides of healthy eating which are now receiving increasing attention from experts on diet. Take, for example, the question of sugar. This is actually unnecessary food. It is not that sugar is harmful in itself. But it does seem to be addictive: the quantity we use has grown steadily over the last two centuries and in Britain today each person consumes an average of 200 pounds a year! Yet all it does is provide us with energy, in the form of calories. There are no vitamins in it, no minerals, and no fibre.

     It’s very important that nowadays fibre is considered to be an important part of a healthy diet .In white bread ,for example ,the fibre has been removed .But it is present in unrefined flour and of course in vegetables .It is interesting to note that in countries where the national diet contains large quantities of unrefined flour and vegetables ,certain diseases are comparatively not often seen .For this reason ,the importance is placed on the eating of wholemeal bread and more vegetables by modern experts on “healthy eating”.

Reading Comprehension

     Half of the world's coral reefs （珊瑚礁）have died in the last 30 years. Now scientists are racing to ensure that the rest survive. Even if global warning were to right now, scientists predict that more than 90% of corals will die by 2050. If no major steps are taken to address the problem, the reefs may be headed for total extinction（灭绝）.
     The planet’s health depends on the survival of coral reefs. They described as “the rainforests of the sea", because they provide shelter for a wide variety of sea life. In addition, the reefs serve as barriers that protect coastlines from the full force of powerful storms.
     Coral are used in medical research for cures to diseases. They are key to local economies as well, since the reefs attract tourists, the fishing industry, and other businesses, bringing in billions of dolllars.
     Corals are particular sensitive to changes in temperature. A rise of just 1 to 2 degrees can force the corals to drive out the algae（水藻）. Then the corals turn white in a process called “bleaching”. Corals can recover from short-term bleaching, but long-term bleaching can cause permanent damage. In 1998, when sea surface temperatures were the highest in recorded history, coral reefs around the world suffered the most severe bleaching. It is estimated that even under the best of conditions, many of these coral reefs will need decades to recover. 

     Although reefs face other threats from pollution, industrial activities, and overfishing, it is global climate change that most concerns scientists. Scientists remain hopeful that it’s not too late to save the reefs, and some are moving ahead on experiments to accomplish that goal. 

Reading Comprehension​

     Extensive new studies suggest that the world has made extraordinary progress in reducing poverty in recent decades. The research suggests that the pace of economic progress has been rapid and continued for decades, built on the foundations of relative political stability, rising trade, and economic liberalization (自由化) after two world wars. One new study, published recently by the Institute for International Economics in Washington, find that the proportion of the 6.1 billion people in the world who live on $1 a day or less shrank from 63 percent in 1950 to 35 percent in 1955and 12 percent in 1999. By some other measures, the progress has been more modest. Still, economists agree that poverty has plunged in key nations such as India and especially China, thanks to slowing population growth as well as economic freedom. "This is a huge success for the world as a whole," says Harvard University economist Richard Cooper. "We are doing something right. "
     The news comes as the World Bank is about to open its annual meeting in Washington an event that has been troubled in recent years by protests that the Bank and its sister Institution, the International Monetary Fund(IMF 国际货币组织） have done too little for the world’s poor. The new economic research will not put an end to that dispute. Vast populations remain poor, and many still question the wisdom of World Bank policies. Nonetheless, the research findings are helpful to understand what policies should be followed by those institutions and hundreds of other development groups working very hard to hasten the pace of world economic progress. If dramatic gains are under way, the present policies calling for open tharkets, free business activities, and tight monetary control are working and correct.
     But critics of IMF and World Bank policies maintain that such economic success stories as Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore are rooted in more than just "free" markets. These nation shave managed to grow rapidly, and thereby reduce poverty, by limiting imports when their domestic industries were young, pushing exports to rich nations, and putting controls on purely international financial flows. The have been open to foreign owned factories but have often insisted that those investors share the knowledge and skill on modern technologies.

Reading Comprehension

     People say that money cannot buy happiness. This was true for Howard Hughes. He was one of the richest and most powerful men of his time. He bad everything: good look success, power, and a lot of money. But he didn’t have lave or friendship because he couldn’t buy them. All his life he used his money to control everything and everyone around him. In the end, he lost control of everything, even himself.
     Howard Hughes was born in 1905 in Houston, Texas. His father started the Hughes Tool Company. He was a workaholic（工作狂）and made a lot of money. He bought everything he wanted. He even gave money to schools so Howard could get into them. From his father, Howard learned to be a successful but merciless businessman. Hughes’s mother, Allene also had a big influence on his life. Howard was her only child. She protected him and gave him everything. Unfortunately Allene had mental problems. She was afraid of germs and diseases. She was obsessed with Howard's health，and he became obsessed win it too.
     Allene died when Howard was 16 years old. Two years later his father died. Hughes inherited the Hughes Tool Company. Then he married Ella Rice. He and Ella moved to Los Angeles, California. It was there that Howard Hughes began to become a legend. Hughes began to invest his money in movies. He became an important producer soon after he moved to California. He worked hard, but he also played hard. He became obsessed with power and control. When he couldn’t get something legally, he gave money politicians and businessmen so they would help him. He owned a lot of businesses, including airplane companies, a movie studio, Las Vegas hotels, gold and silver mines, and radio and television stations. Once he bought a television studio so he could watch movies all night He also bought a hotel because he wanted to stay in his favorite room for one weekend.