Will there be a time in our lives when cars don’t crash? When we can just sit back and relax and our cars will drive themselves. Auto technology experts say “yes”. And they say that some of those advances may happen quicker than you might think.

They will require the users to input the name of the destination or the complete address of the location that they want to go and the cars’ artificial intelligence takes them there automatically without a driver. They will run on solar power in the daytime and ethanol fuel (乙醇燃料) at night. Toyota, BMW and Honda will completely control the trade of driverless car business together and will have the cheapest driverless cars. Fossil fuels will be completely incompatible (不相配的) with these cars.

Driverless cars will not require a driver’s license of any grade to operate. Anyone with basic literacy and computer skills who are at least 16 years of age will be legally allowed to operate the vehicle with absolutely no limits.This would give the young users permission to operate the driverless cars on major highways as well as secondary roads without needing a separate classification. In addition to all this, drunken people will be able to use their own automobiles to return home because they are not “driving” the vehicle.

What’s more, car insurance will become obsolete(淘汰的) because there will be no more automobile accidents after the year 2025 This is because the driverless car will have all safety methods in place by the car’s artificial intelligence to prevent automobile accidents. Global positioning systems will become mandatory (强制的) in all newly-produced cars after 2010, and will be the most important part in the driverless car.

Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat  chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claws (爪) on its wings  when young. They build their homes about 4.6m above the river, an important feature (特征) for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin.       

In appearance, the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside. The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature, though, is only found in the young.       

Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip. Using these four claws, together with the beak (喙), they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive birds must have done. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly, they lose their claws.       

During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes. 

Every few years comes a fitness trend that has people scratching their heads in amazement. “Crunning” will probably be one of them. The “c” stands for “crawling(爬行)”. This new sport needs two-legged humans running on all fours!

The funny idea is the brainchild of Shaun McCarthy. The 34-year-old is convinced that it will revolutionize fitness as we know it. According to the sports enthusiast, “The only thing that crunning’s changed about fitness is that it’s changed everything about fitness. ”

McCarthy has no scientific evidence to prove that crunning is more efficient than traditional two-legged running. However, he believes it is a more effective way to exercise because it puts an emphasis on the shoulders and arms, providing a complete body workout. McCarthy also says crunning seems to tire him out more. He therefore concludes that the unconventional exercise is a bigger calorie burner than normal running.

While experts generally agree that crunning may provide a better workout, many are not sure if it is the right exercise for humans. Fitness coach Kevin Dean says we are not built to be on all fours and our wrists are therefore not as strong as our ankles. He believes crunning, which he calls a fad(时尚), could result in bad wrist and shoulder injuries, not to mention broken noses.

But McCarthy is not worried. Since the release of his crunning video a few weeks ago, many Melbourne residents have been seen scampering around on all fours. As it turns out they are not the only ones. In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, crawling, a much slower version of crunning, has been a favorite activity for many years. According to some enthusiasts, the light exercise that is believed to date back two thousand years to the Han Dynasty, is good for curing back and spine ailments.

Ready to give crunning a try? Then McCarthy recommends investing in some good shoes, hardy gloves and most important of all, a face mask!

  Fatty food, increased use of automobiles and a drop-off in cycling all have contributed to some side effects in China. The   (1)   government figures show roughly one fifth of the population is   (2)  overweight or obese.

  He Yifan weighed 157 kilograms when he arrived at the weight loss clinic two months ago. He says he lived an indulgent(纵容的) life at university and packed on the weight. Then he   (3)  ; he says it’s time to get rid of the kilos and fight off obesity.

  “My friends made   (4)   about me for being fat sometimes,” he said. “But this is more about myself. It’s hard to find a   (5)  , and it’s not good for my   (6)  .”

  Around one in five people are   (7)  or obese in China--more than 250 million people. It’s an   (8)  result of the country’s rapid economic development which has   (9)   a more sedentary (久坐的)lifestyle for many. World Healthy Organization’s China representative Dr Hans Troedsson agrees. “ With unhealthy diets and less   (10)  exercise, it creates this almost boom of obesity that we see in China today,” Troedsson said.

  The staff at the Aimin Weight loss Clinic keeps a   (11)   eye on exercise and diet. They tell He to eat less fatty food and more regulated portions.

  “ When I first came I was really   (12)  , but after a couple of weeks I got   (13)   to it. Now I eat less than the others because I have higher   (14)   for myself, and I want to   (15)   weight faster,” he said.

With diabetes and hypertension(高血压) on the   (16)   , the WHO   (17)   lifestyle diseases are becoming a   (18)   issue for this national’s healthcare system.

 China’s health officials say they want more people to follow in He’s steps and   (19)   up. If    (20)  , they fear millions of people will develop long term health problems, costing China billions of dollars and reversing some of the country’s economic gains of the last three decades.

We may think we’re a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices (装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment – and our wallets – as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.

To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life – from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation. Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.

As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn’t throw out our old ones. “The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids’ room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house,” said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We’re not just keeping these old devices – we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt’s team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (排放) more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.

So what’s the solution (解决方案)? The team’s data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

Healthy Snacks for College Student

A busy schedule and a tight budget don’t mean you have to survive on junk food while in college.    36    You can bring them easily with you as you rush between classes. Focus your snack choices on simple ingredients that take only minutes to prepare.    37  

Sandwiches

Make a sandwich when you need something to eat. Use whole grain bread.   38    Slices of meat and low-fat cheese are also healthy choices. Include vegetables for both the nutrient and fiber. Lettuce, tomatoes and green peppers are just a few options.

Fruits and Vegetables

    Slice vegetables ahead of time and keep them in small plastic bags.    39    Celery, carrots and broccoli taste good. Include a small container of hummus（鹰嘴豆泥）in the bags if you don’t like to eat your vegetables plain. Both whole and sliced fruits are a healthy snack when you need something sweeter.

Warm Snacks

A warm snack is a welcome addition to a late-night study session. Warm a pita（口袋饼）round in the microwave for 20 to 30 seconds. Add any other vegetables that you like to the pita. Baked potatoes are another cheap and healthy option for snacking. For a sweeter snack, cut an apple in half and remove the core and seeds. Top with one teaspoon of brown sugar.    40    Let the apple cool for an additional five minutes before eating it.

A. If you want to pack apple slices, use a teaspoon of lemon juice.

B. Top the pita with cream cheese and tomato slices.

C. Fill the sandwich with peanut butter.

D. Warm it in the microwave for five minutes.

E. Thus snack preparation doesn’t cut into the time you need for study.

F. Many healthy snacks are low-cost and what’s more, they’re portable（便携的）

G. This ensure that you can grab them quickly when hunger strikes.

What will man be like in the future — in 5,000 or even 50,000 years from now？We can only make guesses, of course, but we can be sure that he will be different from what he is today, for man is slowly changing all the time.

Let us take an obvious example. Man, even five hundred years ago, was shorter than he is today. Now, on average, men are about three inches taller. Five hundred years is relatively a short period of time, so we may assume that man will continue to grow taller. Again, in the modern world we use our brains a great deal. Even so, we still make use of only about 20% of the brainˈs capacity. As time goes on, however, we shall have to use our brains more and more, and eventually we shall need larger ones！This is likely to bring about a physical change to the head, in particular, the forehead will grow larger.

Nowadays our eyes are in constant use. In fact, we use them so much that very often they become weaker and we have to wear glasses. But over a very long period of time it is likely that manˈs eyes will grow stronger.

On the other hand, we tend to make less use of our arms and legs. These, as a result, are likely to grow weaker. At the same time, however, our fingers will grow more sensitive because they are used a great deal in modern life.

But what about hair？This will probably disappear from the body altogether in course of time because it does not serve a useful purpose any longer. In the future, then，both sexes are likely to be bald.

Perhaps all this gives the impression that future man will not be a very attractive creature to look at！This may well be true. All the same, in spite of all these changes, future man will still have a lot in common with us. He will still be a human being, with thoughts and emotions similar to our own.

J

Pollution inside homes and other buildings kills more than 4 million people each year. Many people die as a result of breathing smoke or from cooking over wood-powered or coal-powered stoves.

One way to reduce the number of deaths is through cooking equipment powered by the sun. Crosby Menzies, a solar power expert in a South African company, described his latest solar cooker called the “Sol-4”. “It is four square meters of mirrors, six to eight meters in length. It is quite a large cooker.”

The “Sol-4” works by reflecting(反射) light from the sun off large mirrors. The mirrors direct the light at a cooking pan. Then the light heats the pan with solar energy. Within two minutes, the pan is hot enough to cook sausages and onions. In just four minutes, water can be boiled. That is as fast as cooking with natural gas or electricity.

The cooker is also much “friendlier” than other models because people do not have to stand in the sun to use it. And people can prepare meals without having to collect firewood or spend money on coal. Such individuals would be less likely to have breathing illnesses from harmful smoke.

At present, the cooker only works when the sun is shining. But engineers are working on a way to make it work without sunlight.

Each cooker costs about $2,000, which is a large amount of money for most Africans. To solve that problem, Crosby Menzies has created a non-governmental organization called Solar Cookers for Africa. It plans to raise money through donations to provide poor people with solar cooking equipment.