The kids in this village wear dirty, ragged clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts made of sticks and mud. They have no school. Yet they all can chant the English alphabet, and some can make words.

    The key to their success: 20 tablet computers(平板电脑) dropped off in their Ethiopian village in February by a U.S. group called One Laptop Per Child.

    The goal is to find out whether kids using today's new technology can teach themselves to read in places where no schools or teachers exist. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers analyzing the project data say they're already amazed. “What I think has already happened is that the kids have already learned more than they would have in one year of kindergarten,” said Matt Keller, who runs the Ethiopia program.

    The fastest learner—and the first to turn on one of the tablets—is 8-year-old Kelbesa Negusse. The device's camera was disabled to save memory, yet within weeks Kelbesa had figured out its workings and made the camera work. He called himself a lion, a marker of accomplishment in Ethiopia.

With his tablet, Kelbasa rearranged the letters HSROE into one of the many English animal names he knows. Then he spelled words on his own. “Seven months ago he didn't know any English. That's unbelievable,” said Keller.

The project aims to get kids to a stage called “deep reading,” where they can read to learn. It won't be in Amharic, Ethiopia's first language, but in English, which is widely seen as the ticket to higher paying jobs.

    Australian cities can keep their native wildlife — but only if they can kick their habit of urban sprawl (扩展). That's the finding of a new study by leading Australian environmental researchers Jessica Sushinsky, Professor Hugh Possingham and Dr. Richard Fuller of The University of Queensland.

    “While urban development usually reduces the number of birds in a city, building more compact (紧凑的) cities and avoiding urban sprawl can slow these reductions greatly,” says lead author Jessica Sushinsky. “Compact housing development leaves birds' homes untouched, leading to fewer losses of birds.”

    The researchers surveyed native and wild birds in Brisbane's urban areas, including living and industrial areas, public parks and gardens, major roadways and airports. They then used statistical modeling to find out what will happen to the birds as the city grows. The first setting was compact growth — where multiple homes are built on land that previously had only one house. The second setting was sprawling growth — a familiar pattern where homes are built here and there beyond the city's current boundaries.

    The team's forecasts showed that a much greater diversity of species was lost over 20 years in the sprawling setting compared to the more compact setting. “Urban sprawl resulted in the disappearance of many urban-sensitive birds — birds that only live in areas where there is native vegetation (植被), such as parklands and woodlands,” Ms. Sushinsky says.

    “On the other hand, we found the city with the compact development attracted more birds because it kept more of its parks and green areas.”

    Now the Queensland Government has adopted the more compact urban growth strategy, which, Dr. Richard Fuller says, is good news for Australia's native birds. These birds are environmental specialists — they need a particular environment to do well. “While compact development means smaller backyards, it can also make our entire cities more biodiverse,” according to Dr. Fuller. “The study shows that we should hold on to our green spaces instead of clearing them for sprawling development.”

    This is the first time science has modeled the effects of different urban growth strategies on birds, the researchers say. “Statistical models like these are important because they help us to understand the ecological consequences of a particular decision,” says Dr Fuller.

    I've personally traveled through many countries that have had U.S. government warnings issued for them, and I've been perfectly safe. Specifically, in the last year, I have travelled safely to both the Philippines and Mexico, and traveled to many South Pacific islands during the tropical cyclone (热带气旋) season and only experienced two days of light rain in six months! This is, of course, anecdotal, so it's important that you do your research before booking your trip.

    One thing I recommend doing is checking for recent posts on travel forums (论坛), such as Lonely Planet's Thorntree, to see what people are saying about the country you'll visit in terms of safety. The U.S. government may make out that an entire country is extremely unsafe when in reality, it's a small part of it that tourists will be unlikely to visit. Read the travel warnings, too, to see which parts of the country the government recommends that you avoid.

    Additionally, it's worth speaking to your travel insurance provider before you leave to check that you'll be covered during your travels to these countries. Some insurance .companies won't cover you if there's a severe warning for the country, but some will. Travel insurance is a necessity, so it's definitely something to check out before you leave.

    Keep in mind that the U.S. government will help you with emergency evacuation (撤离) from a troubled country, but it comes in the form of a repatriation (归国) loan via the Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis Management (ACS), which can be called to rescue you from a bad situation abroad. Remember by heart that you'll have to wait overseas for the money to arrive and eventually repay the loan once you're home safely. Just another reason to get travel insurance!

    I have never forgotten the firm belief I had in the arrival through the chimney (烟囱) of the little Santa Claus (圣诞老人), the kind, white-bearded old man who at midnight left in my tiny shoe a present I found the next morning.

    Midnight! It's the perfect hour children don't know. What great efforts I made not to go to sleep before the little old man appeared!

    I had both a great desire and great fear of seeing him, but could never stay awake until then, and the next day my first look was for my shoe. He never failed to carefully wrap (包装) every present for me. I would run barefoot to get my treasure. It never was a very expensive present, for we were not rich. It was a cookie, an orange, or very simply a fine red apple. But it felt so precious that I barely dared to eat it. What a great role imagination plays in a child's life!

    I do not at all agree with the idea that the lies about Santa Claus should be stopped. Doubts and truth come all too soon on their own. I very well remember the first year, when I was five or six, I doubted that it was not Santa Claus who put the cookie in my shoe. Since then, it has never tasted as good as the first few years of my life.

    I noted that my son believed in him longer; boys are more naïve (天真的) than little girls. Like me, he made great efforts to stay awake until midnight. Like me, he loved the cookie baked in Heaven's kitchens. And like me, the first year of his doubts was the last year of the visit of the good old man.

    According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.

    Using Charles Dickens's nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd. Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens's own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.

    Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary（孤独的）reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduce literature to their children, and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud. Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.

    Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership. Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers. Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.

    Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens's readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus literacy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.

    A working class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens's popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.

    Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously,” to use Walter Benjamin's term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today's world. Modern audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some characteristics of traditional reading aloud—such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.

    These days, it seems like everything is going digital. You can find almost everything on the Internet.

    Many people find this way of life more convenient, because they can complete their daily chores（琐事） from the comfort of their own home.

    Firstly, online shopping can be far less stressful than hitting the high street shops. There are no huge crowds of people or boring long queues. With online shopping, it's just you and your computer. It's like you have the whole shop to yourself! Secondly, online stores don't have opening and closing times. This is perfect for anyone with a busy schedule. If you want to, you can even place an online shopping order at three o'clock in the morning!

    In the busy modern world, there are clearly many advantages to online shopping. However, in my experience, there are also several cons… With online shopping, you can't try before you buy, and that's a definite disadvantage for me. Often, when my new clothes arrive, I find they don't fit very well. It's always annoying when a dress is a little too big, or when sleeves are too short… Sometimes, the clothes are not what I was expecting. A piece of clothing might look great in photos online, but quite different in real life.

    In these cases, you want to return the item, but here lies the biggest problem with online shopping. You have to pay for your order's delivery, and for an item to be returned to the warehouse! These charges are often very expensive, which suddenly make online shopping seem a little less convenient… That's why I don't choose to shop online very frequently. For now, I will continue to find the time for a trip to a real shop, where I know exactly what I'm buying!