Robert is nine years old and Joanna is seven. They live at Mount Ebenezer. Their father has a big property. In Australia they call a farm a property.

    Robert and Joana like school very much. At school they can talk to their friends, but Robert and Joanna can not see their friends. They live 100,perhaps 300,miles away and like Robert and Joanna, they all go to school by radio.

    Mount Ebenezer is in the centre of Australia. Not many people in “The Centre”, there are no schools with desks and blackboards and no teachers in “The Centre”.  School is a room at home with a two-way radio. When all students answer, lessons begin.

    Think of your teacher 300 miles away!

    It is quite reasonable to blame traffic jams, the cost of gas and the great speed of modern life, but manners on the road are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest man would become fierce tigers behind the wheel. It is all right to have a tiger in a cage, but to have one in the driver's seat is another matter.

    Road politeness is not only good manners, but good sense. It takes the most cool-hearted drivers great patience to give up the desire to beat back when forced to face rude driving. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards reducing the possibility of quarrelling and fighting. A friendly nod or a wave, or thanks in answer to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of good will and becomes so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such behaviors of politeness are by no means enough. Many drivers nowadays don't even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

    However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. Typical example is the driver who waves to a child crossing the street at a wrong place into the path of oncoming cars that may not be able to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they want to.

    An experienced driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if drivers learnt to correctly join in traffic stream without causing total jams that give rise to unpleasant feelings. Unfortunately, modern drivers can't even learn to drive, let alone master the roadmanship(驾车技能). Years ago, experts warned us that the fast increase of the car ownership would demand more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time that all of us took this message to heart.

    What's small, buzzes here and there and visits flowers? If you said bees or hummingbirds, you got it. You wouldn't be the first if you mixed the two up. Now a group of researchers even say we should embrace our history of considering the two together in the same group. The way scientists study bees could help them study hummingbird behavior, too.

    Scientists first compared the two back in the 1970s when studying how animals search for food. The idea is that animals use a kind of math to make choices in order to minimize the work it takes to earn maximum rewards. Researchers at the time focused on movement rules, like the order in which they visited flowers, and where flowers were located relative to others .It was “almost like an algorithm（算法）”for efficient searching, said David Pritchard, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Hummingbirds and bees had similar solutions.

    As the field of animal cognition（认知）appeared, hummingbird and bee research parted. Neuroscientists and behavioral ecologists developed ways to study bee behavior in naturalistic settings. Hummingbird researchers compared hummingbirds to other birds and borrowed methods from psychology to study their ability to learn in the lab. To be fair, hummingbirds and bees differ. For example, hummingbirds have more advanced eyes and brains than bees. Honeybees and bumblebees are social; hummingbirds typically aren't.

    But however they perceive（感知）or process information, they both experience similar information, Dr. Pritchard said. In day-to-day searching for food, for example, hummingbirds may rely on more of a bee's-eye view than a bird's-eye view. Like other birds, they rely on landmarks, distances and directions to make maps when travelling long distances, but they don't use these cues to find flowers. Move a flower just an inch or so away from where a hummingbird thought it was and it will hover over the flower's original location. Dr. Pritchard is investigating if, like bees, hummingbirds engage in view matching — hovering, scanning snapshots of a place to its memory and using those as references later.

    Every day I see advertisements in the newspapers and on the buses claiming that it is easy and quick to learn English. There is even a reference to William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens to encourage learners even more. When I see advertisements like this, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But many people must believe these ridiculous claims, or else the advertisements would not appear.

    Of course it is clear that students who go to England to learn English have a great advantage over others, but too many cannot afford to do so. Some go to the opposite extreme and think they can teach themselves at home with dictionaries. But it is wrong to assume that each word in English has a precise equivalent in another language, let alone produces good pronunciation and intonation.

    Most teaching is still based on behaviorist psychology. Behaviorists are fond of making students repeat phrases and making sentences. If we were parrots or chimpanzees, these methods might be successful. A large number of theorists seem to think it is a pity we aren't, because it would make it easier to use their methods.

    In my personal opinion, no one can ever learn to speak English or any other language unless he is interested in it. Human beings, unlike parrots and chimpanzees, do not like making noises unless they understand what the noises mean and can relate them to their own lives. It is worth remembering that language is a means of communication. What they listen to and read cannot be a formula. It must be real.

    There is another relevant point worth mentioning here. We need other people to talk to and listen to when we communicate. They can work with us and practice the unfamiliar forms with us in real situations, talking to each other about real life language.

    Many Americans think of driverless cars as a futuristic technology that will revolutionize travel in cities and along state highways. But recent experiments are proving that autonomous vehicles also have the potential to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans underserved by traditional ways of transportation, such as the elderly and disabled, so long as lawmakers make smart policies that pave the way for innovation.

    A retirement community in San Jose, Calif, which has been transformed by a small fleet (车队) of driverless taxis, shows the potential of self-driving cars to transform people's lives. Built by a tech start-up called Voyage, the modified (被改进的) Ford Fusions are currently limited to a two-mile road, but residents are already having the benefits of these autonomous vehicles, which allow them to participate in social activities they would otherwise be unable to enjoy simply because they could not get to them.

    When the trial run finally expands to 15 miles of road, these residents—whose average age is 76—will also have a convenient and reliable new way to appointments. As these cars continue to serve residents there, it is easy to understand why California is moving to simplify regulations for the industry.

    In Michigan, forward-thinking policies have the potential to unlock other hidden benefits of autonomous vehicles, especially for those with physical disability. The Michigan Disability Rights Coalition has strongly advocated for the development of this technology, saying that it could give people with disabilities greater opportunities in the workforce and enable them to lead more fulfilling (满意的), independent lives.

    Many recognize that autonomous vehicles will be the future of transportation, but it is too often overlooked that this future cannot arrive fast enough for millions of Americans who are forced to depend on others for day-to-day travel. The policymakers should follow the lead of places like California and Michigan, and pass rules and regulations to unlock these hidden benefits of driverless cars.

    Nature calms our stressed-out soul. Nature is the best medicine, but new research is showing how little time we need to set aside to harvest the benefits.

    In one new study, researchers tried to find the most effective "dose" (药剂) of nature within the context of normal daily life. As more doctors prescribe (开药方) nature experiences for stress relief and other health benefits — sometimes referred to as a "nature pill"— the study's authors hoped to make the details of these treatments clear.

    "We know that spending time in nature reduces stress, but until now it is unclear how much is enough, how often to do it, or even what kind of nature experience will benefit us," says lead author MaryCarol Hunter in a statement. "Our study shows that for the greatest payoff, in terms of efficiently lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisone (压力荷尔蒙激素), you should spend 20 to 30 minutes sitting or walking in a place that provides you with a sense of nature."

    A nature pill can be a low-cost, low-risk way to curb the negative effects of urbanization and indoor lifestyle. To find the most efficient dosage, Hunter and her co-authors asked 36 city citizens to have nature experiences of at least 10 minutes three times per week over eight weeks.

    Every two weeks, the researchers collected saliva (唾液) samples to measure levels of the stress hormone cortisone, both before and after the participants took a nature pill. The data showed that just a 20-minute nature experience was enough to significantly reduce cortisone levels. The effect was more efficient between 20 and 30 minutes, after which benefits continued to increase but at a slower rate.

    That fits with the findings of another recent study, which found that spending 20 minutes in an urban park can make you happier, no matter whether you use that time to exercise.

    For this study, 94 adults visited 3 urban parks in Mountain Brook, Alabama, completing a questionnaire about their subjective well-being before and after their visit. An accelerometer (加速计) tracked their physical activity.

    A visit lasting 20 to 25 minutes showed the best results, with a roughly 64% increase in the participants' self-reported well-being, even if they didn't move a great deal in the park. That last point is particularly positive, since it means anyone can benefit from visiting a nearby park, whatever his or her age or physical ability.

    "There is increasing pressure on green space within urban settings," said a UAB professor Gavin Jenkins. "Planners and developers look to replace green space with residential (住宅的) and commercial property. The challenge facing cities is that there is increasing evidence about the value of city parks but we continue to see the disappearance of these spaces."