Imagine you're standing in line to buy a snack at a store. You step up to the counter and the cashier scans your food. Next, you have to pay. but instead of scanning a QR Code（二维码）with your smart phone, you just hold out your hand so the cashier can scan your fingerprint. Or, a camera scans your face, your eyes or even your ear.

    Now, this type of technology might not be far away. As technology companies move away from the traditional password, biometric（生物特征识别的）security, which includes fingerprint, face and voice ID, is becoming increasingly popular.

    In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5s, one of the first smart phones with a fingerprint scanner. Since then, using one's fingerprint to unlock a phone and make mobile payments has become commonplace, bringing convenience to our lives. And since 2016, Samsung has featured eye-scanning technology in its top smart phones, while Apple's new iphone X can even scan a user's face. But despite its popularity, experts warn that biometrics might not be as secure as we imagine. “Biometrics is ideally good in practice, not so much,” said John Michener, a biometrics expert.

    When introducing the new iPhone's face ID feature, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president, said. “The chance that a random person in the population could look at your iPhones X and unlock it with their face is about one in a million.” But it's already been done. In a video posted on a community website Reddit, two brothers showed how they were each able to unlock the same iPhone X using their own face. And they aren't even twins.

    “We may expect too much from biometrics,” Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University, told CBS News. “No security systems are perfect.”

    Earlier last year, Jain found a way to trick biometric security. Using a printed copy of a thumbprint, she was able to unlock a dead person's smart phone for the police, according to a tech website Splinter. “It's good to see biometrics being used more,” Jain told CBS News, “because it adds another factor for security. But using multiple security measures is the best defense.”

    I remember the first time I got on a horse. When I was a little boy aged two, my mom agreed to let me take a short ride and that was it! From then on, I drove my parents crazy begging for a horse.

    When I was four, I had mutism, in which children stop speaking in certain social situations. I went days, weeks, months without a sound at school. At most, I might quietly whisper to a friend. I suffered silently through school until I was ten when a psychologist had an idea. He asked me what I wanted more than anything else in the world. He explained I was going to be given an opportunity to work for that. And I was permitted to whisper the answer in my mother's ear, “A horse.”

    I was to get a horse, but I had to finish many weekly tasks. I had to answer the phone five times per week, something I had never done before. I had to say one word to my teacher at school and the list went on. For a child with mutism, saying one word to someone can be like climbing Mount Qomolangma. I did everything that was asked of me and the day came. His name was Sequoia, whom I fell in love with immediately. When I was with Sequoia, I forgot all about my problems and felt strong and secure.

    I am participating in society these days. My horse and I made it through a master's degree. I feel I owe my life to the horse and I try to give it back to him every day. He has given me the best gift I could ever imagine, my life.

    Last week, Donna Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel prize for physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou. It's the first time in 55 years that a woman has won this famous prize, but why has it taken so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists — past and present — who actually deserve the prize.

    Jocelyn Bell Burnell

    Perhaps the most famous snub(冷落): then student Bell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a PhD student at Cambridge. The Nobel prize that recognised this landmark discovery in 1974, however, went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish. Recently awarded a £2.3m Breakthrough Prize, which she gave away to help under-represented students, she joked to the Guardian: "I feel I've done very well out of not getting a Nobel prize."

    Lene Hau

    Hau is best known for leading the research team at Harvard University in 1999 that managed to slow a beam of light, before managing to stop it completely in 2001. Often topping Nobel prize prediction lists, could 2019 be Hau's year?

    Vera Rubin

    Rubin discovered dark matter in the 1980s, opening up a new field of astronomy. She died in 2016, without recognition from the committee.

    Chien-Shiung Wu

    Wu's "Wu experiment" helped disprove the "law of conservation of parity". Her experimental work was helpful but never honoured, and instead, her male colleagues won the 1957 Nobel prize for their theoretical work behind the study.

    Lise Meitner

    Meitner led groundbreaking work on the discovery of nuclear fission. However, the discovery was acknowledged by the 1944 Nobel prize for chemistry, which was won by her male co-lead, Otto Hahn.

    Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May the 14th, 1984. He is the creator of the social media site Facebook. He was a star student at school, winning prizes in astronomy, maths and physics. He was also good at Classical studies. He studied Psychology and Computer Science at Harvard University, which is where he created Facebook. His invention led to his becoming Time magazine's Person Of the Year for 2010.

    Zuckerberg excelled in everything he did in his youth. He was captain of the school fencing team, spoke many languages and was a highly skilled computer programmer. While other kids played computer games, he designed them. He created his first network while in high school to connect all of the computers - in his father's dental surgery. He also built a media player which attracted the interest of Microsoft and AOL.

    Zuckerberg started at Harvard in September 2002. In his first year, he created Facemash, a Facebook predecessor (前身), which let students select the college's best looking people from a selection of photos.

    He launched Facebook from his Harvard room in February 2004. It was the start of a rollercoaster ride that would connect half a billion people worldwide and make him the world's youngest billionaire.

    Mark Zuckerberg is now one of the most influential people on the planet. He has dined with the president of the USA and regularly attends global economic summits and technology conferences. He stated: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open." In 2010, Zuckerberg signed a promise, in which he promised to donate at least half of his life wealth to charity.

    It is widely accepted that nightmares (噩梦) are a reaction to negative experiences that happen during waking hours. However, some scientists believe that nightmares do have some real benefits. One 2017 study, for example, found that frequent nightmare sufferers rated themselves as more empathetic (有同理心的). They also displayed more of a tendency to unconsciously mirror other people through things like yawning People who have constant nightmares also tend to think further outside the box on psychoanalysis tasks. Some other researchers have found support for the idea that nightmares might be linked to creativity.

    People seeking cure for nightmares were not necessarily more fearful or anxious, but rather had a general sensitivity to all emotional experience. Sensitivity is the driving force behind intense dreams. Heightened sensitivity to threats or fear during the day results in nightmares, whereas heightened passion or excitement may result in positive dreams. And both these forms of dreams may feed back into waking life, perhaps increasing suffering after nightmares, or promoting social bonds and empathy after positive dreams.

    The effects go further still. This sensitivity overflows into awareness and thoughts －people who have a lot of nightmares experience a dreamlike quality to their waking thoughts. And this kind of thinking seems to give them a creative edge. For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative talent and artistic express and people who often have nightmares also tend to have more positive dreams than the average person.

    The evidence points towards the idea that, rather than disturbing normal activity, people who are unfortunate in having a lot of nightmares also have a dreaming life that is at least as creative, positive and vivid as it can be distressing and terrifying. What's more, this imaginative richness is unlikely to be limited to sleep, but also is filled with waking thoughts and daydreams. Even after people wake up and shake off the nightmare, in other words, a mark of it stays behind, possessing them throughout the day.

    Two of the hardest things to accomplish in this world are to acquire wealth by honest effort and, having gained it, to learn how to use it properly. Recently I walked into the locker room of a rather well­known golf club after finishing a round. It was in the late afternoon and most of the members had left for their homes. But a half­dozen or so men past middle age were still seated at tables talking aimlessly and drinking more than was good for them. These same men can be found there day after day, and, strangely enough, each one of these men had been a man of affairs and wealth, successful in business and respected in the community. If material prosperity were the chief necessity for happiness, then each one should have been happy. Yet, it seemed to me, something very important was missing, else­there would not have been the constant effort to escape the realities of life through scotch and soda. They knew, each one of them, that their productivity had ceased (停止). When a fruit tree ceases to bear its fruit, it is dying. And it is even so with man.

    What is the answer to a long and happy existence in this world of ours? I think I found it long ago in a passage from the book of Genesis which caught my eye while I was looking through my Bible. The words were few, but they became memorably impressed on my mind. "In the sweat of the face shall you eat the bread."

    To me, that has been a challenge from my earliest recollections (memories). In fact, the battle of life, of existence, is a challenge to everyone. The immortal words of St. Paul, too, have been and always will be a great inspiration to me. At the end of the road I want to be able to feel that I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.