Having experienced a shocking electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, James Franco's world became completely dark and quiet for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by lightning. Witnesses (目击者) thought he was dead but he woke up 20 minutes later, lying face down in muddy water. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw: a tree and a muddy road. When Mrs. Franco came running up to him, shouting to their neighbors to call for help, he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of James regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from lightning. However, none of them could give a compelling answer as to why this should happen. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since James lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

    We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning.

    We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it's not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers.

    Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem. It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay (传闻) and rumor.

    Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn't show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. Thai person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements arc compared. Typically, the original message has changed.

    That's what happens in daily life. The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story. Then, too, most people listen imperfectly. And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping it with their own personal style. Yet those who hear it think they know.

    This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be restated as fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts.

    Business administration is the most popular undergraduate major in U.S. colleges and universities, accounting for as much as one-fifth of all bachelor degrees awarded each year. Students naturally think of a business degree as the surest way to land a good job after graduation. Many international students agree. Twenty percent studied business last year-the second most popular major after engineering, according to the Institute of International Education.

    Below are descriptions of three of U.S. colleges and universities with strong offerings in business.

    Bentley College    Waltham, Massachusetts

    Bentley offers its 4,000 undergraduates a top-flight business education and an equally strong liberal-arts program that leaves them well-prepared to join the ranks of future business leaders. The college occupies a scenic campus only a shuttle-bus ride from Boston's Harvard Square. More than 90 percent of students seek career-oriented internships（实习）.

    Bucknell University    Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

    Bucknell's 3,500 undergraduates benefit from small classes and an engaging staff at this liberal-arts institution in a remote but beautiful campus in central Pennsylvania. Accounting and financial management are specialties in the introductory management course that create and sell a product and then donate their profits to charity（慈善）.

    University of Cincinnati        Cincinnati, Ohio

    This urban university with 21,000 undergraduates, located a mile from downtown Cincinnati, was the-birthplace of cooperative education over a century ago. Under this five-year “earn while you learn” program, more than 3,000 students alternate academic study with internships in local businesses and other organizations.

    Scientists from the University of East Anglia have identified four new man-made gases that are contributing to the damage to the ozone(臭氧) layer. Two of the gases are accumulating at a rate that is causing concern among researchers.

    Worries over the growing ozone hole have seen the production of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases restricted since the mid 1980s. But the precise origin of these new, similar substances remains a mystery.

    Lying in the atmosphere, the ozone layer plays a critical role in blocking harmful UV rays, which cause cancers in humans and reproductive problems in animals.

    Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey were the first to discover a huge “hole” in the ozone over Antarctica in 1985. The evidence quickly pointed to CFC gases, which were invented in the 1920s, and were widely used in refrigeration. Extraordinarily, global action was rapidly agreed to deal with CFCs and the Montreal Protocol to limit these substances came into being in 1987. A total global ban on production came into force in 2010.

    Now, the newly discovered four new gases can destroy ozone and are getting into the atmosphere from as yet unidentified sources. Three of the gases are CFCs and one is a hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), which can also damage ozone.

    The research has shown that four gases were not around in the atmosphere at all until the 1960s, which suggests they are man-made. The scientists discovered the gases by analyzing polar snow pack. Air from this snow is a natural archive of what was in the atmosphere up to 100 years ago. There searchers also looked at modern air samples, collected at remote Cape Grim in Tasmania.

    They estimate that about 74,000 tonnes of these gases have been released into the atmosphere. Two of the gases are accumulating at significant rates. However, they don't know where the new gases are being released from and this should be investigated. Possible sources include chemicals for insecticide (杀虫剂)production and solvents (溶液) for cleaning electronic components. The three CFCs are being destroyed very slowly in :the atmosphere—so even if emissions (散发)were to stop immediately, they will still be around for many decades to come.

    Of the four species identified, CFC-113a seems the most worrying as there is a very small but growing emission source somewhere, maybe from agricultural insecticides. We should find it and take it out of production.

    Self-driving vehicles have been proposed as a solution for the rapidly increasing number of fatal traffic accidents, which now cause 1.3 million deaths each year.

    While we have made great progress in advancing self-driving technology, we have yet to explore how autonomous vehicles will be programmed to deal with situations that endanger human life, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

    To understand how self-driving cars might make these judgments, the researchers looked at how humans deal with similar driving dilemmas.

    When faced with driving dilemmas, people show a high willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, make decisions based on the victim's age and turn onto sidewalks to minimize the number of lives lost. Ethical（伦理的）guidelines tend to disagree with human instincts（本能） in this case, saying that no life should be valued above another.

    “The technological advancement and adoption of autonomous vehicles are moving quickly but the social and ethical discussions about their behavior are lagging behind,” says lead author Lasse T. Bergmann from University of Osnabrück, Germany.

    Automated vehicles will eventually outperform their human counterparts, but there will still be circumstances where the cars must make an ethical decision to save or possibly risk losing a human life.

    The study is especially relevant considering earlier this year a self-driving Uber car struck and killed a passenger in Arizona, in an incident widely regarded as the first death resulting from an autonomous vehicle.

    An ethics commission launched by the German Ministry for Transportation has created a set of guidelines, representing its members' best judgement on a variety of issues concerning self-driving cars. These expert judgments may, however, not reflect human instinct.

    Bergmann and colleagues developed a virtual reality experiment to examine human instinct in a variety of possible driving situations. It was based on the well-known ethical thought experiment—the trolley problem.

    In this experiment, there is a trolley running down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up, unable to move, and the trolley is headed straight for them. A person is standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever（操作杆）.If he pulls this lever, the trolley will turn to a different set of tracks. However, there is one person tied up on the side track. Does the person choose to pull the lever and kill one person, or do nothing and let five people die?

    Bergmann recognized that the majority of people would not approve of the proposal made by the ethics commission that a passenger in the vehicle should not be sacrificed to save more people. “We find people chose to save more lives, even if this involves turning onto the sidewalk, endangering people uninvolved in the traffic incident,” said Bergmann, “Furthermore, subjects considered the factor of age, for example, choosing to save children over the elderly.” He also realized further discussion and research were needed. “Driving requires a complex weighing of risks versus rewards, for example, speed versus the danger of a critical situation,” Bergmann explained.

    Carri Kessler and her husband Will named their daughter Ottilie after a friend from the UK, who helped them a lot. However, right after their baby girl was born, the couple noticed a big problem: "No one could remember her name and no one could pronounce it, were going to keep having to introduce her!" Kessler told Today.com.

    The situation then grew worse as Kessler's grandmother admitted to sticking Post-it notes around the house to help remind her of Ottilie's name which can be pronounced either Ott-ill-ee or Oh-TEEL-ya. Three months after Ottilie was born, the Kesslers have decided to legally change their daughter's name. The couple came up with two possible names. They then settled on Margot after talking to a name expert.

    The Kesslers situation is not uncommon as an increasing number of parents experience the same as the Kesslers. According to Baby Center Canada, 11% of its users wish they could change their children's names due to being over popular mispronounced or simply unfitting. Parents care a lot more and think a lot more about names now than their parents.

    To deal with this, a number of name experts now offer services to help parents choose the right name. Couples have also looked for help from the Internet to choose their baby's name. However, parents can change their child's name in the event that they regret their choice. In Canada, the rules vary in each province. For instance, in Ontario, the child must have lived in the province for the past 12 months, or since birth if under the age of one. Each of the child's legal guardians(监护人)must also give permission.