Do you believe that things are connected for no scientific reason at all? For example, do you avoid saying the word "four" to avoid bad luck? If so, you have a superstition (迷信). And you're not alone – all kinds of people have them.

For example, Portugal's soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo always steps onto the pitch (球场) with his right foot first, according to The Telegraph. And sports players are not alone in having superstitions. A visitor once asked the Nobel Prize winning scientist Niels Bohr whether he really believed that the horseshoe he'd hung at his country home was lucky. "Of course not," the Danish physicist said. "But I understand it's lucky whether you believe in it or not."

One recent study found that even scientists at MIT and other top US schools tended to look for a meaning in natural events, similar to the connection between stepping on the pitch and playing soccer well, according to The Atlantic. When the researchers gave the scientists little time to answer questions, they were twice as likely to agree with statements such as "Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe" as they were when they had more time to think about their reply.

It seems that fear can make people think differently in this way, too. In a British study, students imagined meeting a "witch" who said she would cast (施魔法) an evil spell(符咒) on them. About half said a scientist should not be worried about the spell. Yet each of them said that, personally, they wouldn't let the witch do it to them.

So why are so many of us superstitious? Well, it seems to be our way of dealing with the unknown. "Many people quite simply just want to believe," Brian Crank, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University, said in a 2008 interview. "The human brain is always trying to work out why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre (古怪的) explanations."

    And these explanations aren't completely unhelpful. In fact, superstitions can sometimes work and bring real luck, according to psychologists at the University of Cologne in Germany in the May 2010 issue of the journal Psychological Science. They found that believing in something can improve performance on a task like an exam.

    So, what about you? What superstitions do you follow to keep you safe and successful?

Favorite Books for Kids

    Teenagers in America know that they'll possibly need technical skills to find good jobs, but a new survey reveals that interest in technology-related careers may be decreasing.

The percentage of boys aged 13 to 17 who are interested in science, technology, engineering and math —or STEM —careers dropped from 36 percent in 2017 to 24 percent this year, according to a survey by Junior Achievement USA. The amount of girls interested in STEM careers stayed unchanged at II percent.

    But the 1, 000 survey participants still named technology as one of two key skills that will be necessary to prepare them for their future careers.

    "Kids don' t understand how technology can be applied to careers in addition to computers, and maybe robotics, "said Tammera L. Holmes, president of aviation consulting firm AeroStar Consulting （航空资询公司）.“That's all they know, so they can't really translate that interest to career pathways."

    When Holmes was in high school, her mom sent her to an event that featured (以......为专题)the pilots from World War II. One of the pilots took her for a ride and let her take the wheel immediately that was the career for me." she said.

    Women remain outnumbered(超过) by men in fields like technology. For people working to increase the number of women in these areas, the lack of growth in girls interest in STEM careers is concerning.

    Teenage girls are more interested than their male classmates in running after careers in which they can help others, said Ed Grocholski from Junior Achievement. Even with all the programs aimed at increasing girls' interest in STEM, "I don't think we really talk that much about how we improve people's lives through STEM," Grocholski said.

    Society needs to do better at making those connections for kids, said Katherine Latham, founder of an engineering firm. She used civil engineering as an example of a career that will continue to be important.

    However, the fact that students know they will need tech skills in their future careers is encouraging.

    The second skill they said they need is relationship-building.

    "That's going to be the new type of engineers," Latham said.

    Right now, I am looking at a shelf full of relics, a collection of has-beens, old-timers, antiques, fossils. Right now, I am looking at a shelf full of books. Yes, that's right. If you have some spare cash (the going rate is about $89) and you are looking to enhance your reading experience, then I highly suggest you consider purchasing an e-reader. E-readers are replacing the books of old and I welcome them with open arms (as you should).

    An e-reader is a device that allows you to read e-books. An e-book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images or both, and produced on, published through and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book", but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent.

    E-readers put printed books to shame. E-readers are superior to printed books because they save space, are environmentally friendly and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not.

    The average e-reader can store thousands of digital books, providing a genuine library at your fingertips. What is more, the e-reader itself is very small. It is easy to hold and can fit in a pocketbook or briefcase easily. This makes handling wooden giant such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina a breeze. Perhaps the only drawback to the space-saving aspect of an e-reader is that it requires you to find new things to put on your shelves.

    In addition, e-readers are environmentally friendly. The average novel is about 300 pages long. So, if a novel is printed 1000 times, it will use 300,000 pieces of paper. That's a lot of paper! And for the super bestsellers, these figures increase dramatically. For example, the Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies. That's about 2 million trees! Upon viewing these figures, it is not hard to grasp the severe impact of printed books on the environment. Since e-readers use no trees, they represent a significant amount of preservation in terms of the environment and its resources.

    Finally, e-readers provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. The typical e-reader allows its user to adjust letter size, letterform and line spacing. It also allows highlighting and electronic bookmarking.

    Furthermore, it grants users the ability to get an overview of a book and then jump to a specific location based on that overview. While these are all nice features, perhaps the most helpful of all is the ability to get dictionary definitions at the touch of a finger. On even the most basic e-reader, users can find instant definitions without having to hunt through a physical dictionary.

    It can be seen that e-readers are superior to printed books. They save space, are environmentally friendly and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. So what good are printed books? Well, they certainly make nice decorations.

    China will soon issue licenses for the commercialization(商业化) of 5G, as the country has already established(建立)a competitive advantage in the superfast wireless technology.

    The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said 5G is entering a critical period of commercial deployment(部署)globally and China's 5G industry has established a competitive advantage through a combination of innovation(创新) and open cooperation.

    Many foreign companies, including Nokia and Intel, have participated in China's technical 5G tests. These foreign companies have already participated in three phases of tests organized by China to get their 5G products and solutions ready for commercial use in the country.

    "With joint efforts of all parties, China has built a foundation for commercialization of 5G," the ministry said, adding it will issue commercial 5G licenses in the near future, a clear sign China will soon officially enter the first year of 5G.

    China's big three telecom carriers are forecast to spend 900 billion to 1.5 trillion yuan ($134 billion to $223 billion) in total on 5G network construction from 2020 to 2025, according to a report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. In comparison, Chinese telecom operators spent 720 billion yuan on 4G network construction from 2014 to 2018.

    In 2019, China Mobile plans to build 30,000 to 50,000 5G base stations this year, while China Telecom is looking to have 20,000.

    The strand bookstore is a New York Institution, and Fred Bass was a part of it almost from the moment he was born until the day he died. Every day, dozens of sellers arrive armed with piles of books, and every day thousands of buyers browse through the 18 miles of shelving, squeezing through narrow, dark aisles towered over by high, cramped shelves.

    Film studios wanting a line of books for a backdrop rent them from the Strand by the foot; interior designers looking for books with the same color spine will order a job lot; and hosts wishing to impress dinner guests will order the latest tomes(巨著) to replace on their coffee tables. Some even might be read.

    "You never know what someone is going to walk in with," Bass told The Villager magazine in 2010, adding that there was nothing he loved more than the "treasure hunt". Many books came from critics keen to add to their income by offloading review copies, they came from large estates, fellow bookshops and even publishers quietly offloading surplus(过剩的) stock. One visitor spoke of Bass as a character who could have come from a book. "I remember sensing in Bass, beyond a slightly gruff look, a man of great passion, a man who knew the innumerable and shifting current of the book trade the way that an old sailor knows the changeable sea," wrote Tom Vanderbilt in the New York Review of Books.

    Bass himself took a kind, almost paternalistic(家长式的) approach to the business. Some employees remained with him for decades.  When Greg Farr, a dissatisfied member of staff, published a novel that was critical of the store's management and the unions he still had his job, furthermore, the Strand sold his book.

Fred Bass was born in Manhattan in 1928, the year after his father, Benjamin, a Lithuanian immigrant, founded the Strand bookstore on Fourth Avenue, which was then known as "Book Row". His mother, Shirley, a Polish immigrant, died from cancer when Fred was six. His father remarried, to Esther, a bookkeeper who was involved in various civil rights causes.

    As a child young Fred swept the floors and by 13 he was working behind the counter on Saturdays. He recalled going on buying trips with his father and hauling back bundles of books on the subway, all tied with rope that cut into his hands. The family lived in the Bronx and young Fred studied English at Brooklyn College in the mornings and worked in the shop in the afternoons. His only extended period of time away was two year' service with the US armed forces, but even then he used his leave from the Korean War to work at the shop. In 1957, a year after taking over the business, Bass moved the store from Fourth Avenue to the corner of 12th Street and Broadway, where it stands to this day.

In 1952, Bass, who could eventually afford to purchase an apartment in Trump Tower, married Patricia Miller. They had a son, Stephen, who died in 2001, and a daughter, Nancy, who married Ron Wyden, a senator from Oregon. Since her teens she has worked with her father, developing the store, remodeling the space and adding air conditioning ("I hated it," said Bass). Since 1986 the Strand has run a "Books by the Foot" department, which creates custom book collections based on readers' literary tastes or preferred colors.

    In 1996, after seven decades as tenants(房客), the Bass family bought their building for $8.2 million. Until then they had negotiated the lease with their landlord at the nearby Knickerbock Bar and Grill; now Bass had to deal with himself." When I want to negotiate my own lease I have go to the bar myself", he joked. Even in his late eighties Bass was making buying trips, though no longer by subway.

Time and the Internet have not been kind to booksellers. "Book Row" is now only the Strand, which itself has been redesigned to be more "userfriendly". T-shirts, postcards, fridge magnets and other gifts now account for about 15 per cent of the Strand's turnover. Satellite stores have been set up and new books have joined the traditional secondhand commodities. "I make less money, "Bass said," but it's a little bit more scientific".

    Perhaps the most unusual part of management at the Strand book store was the book quiz­matching authors and title­that job applicants since the 1970 have been required to take.