Film has properties that set it apart from painting, sculpture, novels and plays. It is also, in its most popular and powerful form, a story telling medium that shares many elements with the short story and the novel. And since film presents its stories in dramatic form, it has even more in common with the stage play: Both plays and movies act out or dramatize（使戏剧化）, show rather than tell, what happens.

    Unlike the novel, short story, or play, however, film is not handy（日语做的）to study; it cannot be effectively frozen on the printed page. The novel and short story are relatively easy to study because they are written to be read. The stage play is slightly more difficult to study because it is written to be performed. But plays are printed, and because they rely heavily on the spoken word, imaginative readers can bring mind at least a pale imitation of the experience they might have been watching a performance on stage. This cannot be said of the screenplay（电影剧本）, for a film depends greatly on visual（视觉的）and other non-visual elements that are not easily expressed in writing. The screenplay requires so much “filling in” by our imagination that we cannot really obtain the experience of a film by reading a screenplay, and reading a screenplay is worthwhile only if we have already seen the film. Thus, most screenplays are published not to read but rather to be remembered.

    Still, film should not be ignored because studying it requires extra effort. And the fact that we do not generally “read” films does not mean we should ignore the principles of literary of dramatic analysis when see a film. Literature and films do share many elements and communicate many things in similar ways. Perceptive（精辟的）film analysis rests on the principles used in literary analysis, and if we apply what we have learned in the study of literature to our analysis of films, we will be far ahead of those who do not. Therefore, before we turn to the unique elements of film, we need to look into the elements that film shares with any good story.

    Dividing film into its various elements for analysis is a somewhat artificial process, for the elements of any art form never exist in isolation. It is impossible, for example, to isolate plot（情节）from character. Events influence people, and people influence events; the two are always closely interwoven in any fictional（虚构的）, dramatic, or cinematic（电影的）work. Nevertheless, the analytical method uses such a fragmenting（碎片）technique for convenience. It does so with the assumption（假设）that we can study these elements in isolation without losing sight of their interdependence or their relationship to the whole.

    The Healthy Habits Survey(调查)shows that only about one third of American seniors have correct habits. Here are some findings and expert advice.

    ⒈How many times did you brush your teeth yesterday?

    Finding: A full 33% of seniors brush their teeth only once a day.

    Step: Remove the 300 types of bacteria in your mouth each morning with a battery­operated toothbrush. Brush gently for 2 minutes, at least twice a day.

    ⒉How many times did you wash your hands or bathe yesterday?

    Finding: Seniors, on average, bathe fewer than 3 days a week. And nearly 30% wash their hands only 4 times a day—half of the number doctors recommend.

    Step: We touch our faces around 3,000 times a day—often inviting germs(病菌)to enter our mouth, nose, and eyes. Use toilet paper to avoid touching the door handle. And, most important, wash your hands often with hot running water and soap for 20 seconds.

    ⒊How often do you think about fighting germs?

    Finding: Seniors are not fighting germs as well as they should.

    Step: Be aware of germs. Do you know it is not your toilet but your kitchen sponge (海绵) that can carry more germs than anything else? To kill these germs, keep your sponge in the microwave for 10 seconds.

    Most people know something about the greenhouse effect. Factories send gasses such as carbon dioxide, or CO₂, into the atmosphere, the air around the earth. In the past, this wasn't a problem because trees absorbed the CO₂. But now people in many countries are cutting down billions of trees all around the world. At the same time, factories are sending more CO₂ into the atmosphere. It's difficult to believe, but factories put billions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. One ton is over 2000 pounds, so it is a lot of pollution. There is too much CO₂ and there aren't enough trees, so the world is getting warmer. In other words, we have a greenhouse effect. This is terrible for the environment.

    What can we do about this? Firsts we can stop using so much coal and oil. We can learn to use different kinds of energy: the sun, wind, steam from volcanoes，and heat from inside the earth. Second, instead of cutting down trees, we should plant more trees. One tree can absorb ten pounds of carbon dioxide every year.

    The trees are good for the earth's atmosphere and for Guatemala (拉丁美洲国家危地马拉).In small towns and villages in Guatemala, most women are poor and have hard lives. Trees help them in three ways. First, the Connecticut factories pay them to plant the trees. Their pay is com, not money. The com is good for their children. Second, these women know a lot about their environment. They know where to plant when to plant, and what kinds of trees to plant. For example，they plant many fruit trees. The fruit gives them vitamins for their families^, diets. Other trees are good for firewood. In a few years, the women won't spend so much time looking for firewood. Third, all these trees are good for the soil. Now rain can't wash the soil down from the mountains so easily.

    This plan isn't enough to stop the greenhouse effect. However, it's a start. The woman of Guatemala are helping themselves and helping their environment.

    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 news 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? The team's date 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 environment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

    Students perform less well in final exams if smartphones are allowed in class, for non-academic (非学业的) purposes in lectures, a new study in Educational Psychology finds. Students who don't use smartphones themselves but attend lectures where their use is acceptable also do worse, suggesting that smartphone use damages the group learning environment.

    Researchers from Rutgers University in the US performed an in-class experiment to lest whether dividing attention between smartphones and the lecturer during the class affected students' performance in within-lecture tests and a final exam. 118 students at Rutgers University took part in the experiment during one term of their course. Smartphones were not allowed in half of the lectures and allowed in the other half. When smartphones were allowed, students were asked to record whether they had used them for non-academic purposes during the lecture.

    The study found that having a smartphone didn't lower students' scores in comprehension tests within lectures, but it did lower scores in the final exam by at least 5%, or half a grade. This finding shows for the first time that the main effect of divided attention in the classroom is on the length of time in keeping memory, with fewer things of a study task later remembered. In addition, when the use of smartphones was allowed in class, performance was also poorer for students who did not use them as well as for those who did.

    The study's lead author, Professor Arnold Glass, added: "These findings should alarm students and teachers that dividing attention is having a not obvious but harmful effect that is damaging their exam performance and final grade. To help manage the use of smartphones in the classroom, teachers should explain to students the alarming effect—not only for themselves, but for the whole class."

    This is the first-ever study in an actual classroom showing a relationship between losing attention from smartphones and exam performance. However, more researches are required to see how students are affected by using smartphones after school.

    While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

    Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize -which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture-on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

    Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus (校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

    The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves (曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

    Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements.

    Wang's works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

    Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

    "Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created, "he said.

    "Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are," said Wang.

    The study of traditions should be combined, with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.