Housework is a frequent source of disputes (争论) between lazy husbands and their hard-working wives, but women have been warned not to expect men to pull their weight any time soon.

    A study from Oxford University has found that men are unlikely to be doing an equal share of housework before 2050. Mothers, the researchers warned, will continue to shoulder the burden of childcare and housework for the next four decades, largely because housework such as cleaning and cooking is still regarded as“women's work”.

    The gap between the amount of time men and women spend on housework has narrowed slowly over the past 40 years. But it will take another four decades before true housework equality is achieved, the study concluded. The research found that in the Nordic countries, the burden of housework is shared more equally between men and women. In the UK, women spend an average of four hours and forty minutes each day on housework, compared with two hours and twenty-eight minutes for men. This is an improvement from the 1960s, when British women typically spent six hours a day on housework, while men spent just 90 minutes every day.

    But progress towards housework equality appears to be slowing in some countries. Dr Oriel Sullivan, a research reader from Oxford's Department of Sociology, said, “we've looked at what is affecting the equality in the home, and we have found that certain tasks seem to be given according to whether they are viewed as ‘men's work' or ‘women's work'.”Dr Sullivan said cultural attitudes taught at school may be responsible for the views of housework. “At school it is much easier for a girl to be a tomboy, but it is much more difficult for a boy to enjoy baking and dancing,” she said.

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    Six people are talking about the newly-built garden on the roof of their building.

    Jasmine: I loved the idea when Wilber first told me about it. We had lots of meetings with our neighbors, trying to make them understand why it's good to build a garden on the roof. Now people love coming here, and we have made a lot of friends!

    Wilber: The whole thing wasn't easy at first. But Jasmine helped a lot. And she was really good at making people happy to donate (捐赠) money for the roof garden.

    David: My kids love going up there. They sit there watching butterflies and birds. The roof garden brings them closer to nature.

    Samuel: You want something green? Visit the park! It's only one block away! After the roof garden was built, small insects started flying into my room! And the kids leave mud on the stairs when they come down from the roof!

    Rosie: Our building is now cooler in the summer. My baby sleeps well even on hot summer days!

    Flora: Guess where these tomatoes are from! Not from the supermarket. They're from our roof! It's wonderful, isn't?

    After a homeless man offered a college student in England all the money he had so she'd be able to get home safely, the woman is paying it forward—in a massive way.

    The story began in early December. It was about 3 a.m. and Harrison-Bentzen was panic. “I came out after a student night out and realized I didn't have any battery on my phone. I'd lost my friends,” the 22-year-old told BBC Radio 5. She'd also lost her bank card, she discovered, and she had no money.

    Just then, a homeless man, known only as Robbie, approached the young woman and asked her if she needed help. He reached into his pocket and pulled out all the money he had—loose change amounting to about $4.60. He insisted that Harrison-Bentzen take it to pay for a taxi so she'd get home safely.

    Harrison-Bentzen, a student at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England, says she refused to take Robbie's money and found another way to get home. But following her encounter（偶然相遇）with the generous man, she says she couldn't get him out of her mind.

    For the next few days, the student searched for Robbie, driving around the streets with her mom and using social media in an attempt to locate the man. In that time, Harrison-Bentzen says she learned more about Robbie and discovered that he actually had a reputation for helping strangers.

    Finally, after four days of driving around Preston, Harrison-Bentzen found Robbie. She was determined to do something to help change Robbie's life.

    So, earlier this month, the student launched a fundraising campaign in Robbie's name. She explained that she would be spending 24 hours on the streets, so as to “understand the difficulties” that the homeless face on a daily basis.

    Harrison-Bentzen says she had initially（最初）hoped to raise about $780 with her campaign. Her expectations, however, were quickly blown out of the water. As of Thursday morning, 4,800 people have donated almost $50,000.

    Edward Hibberd Johnson was an American inventor. He lived in New York City in the 1800s. In 1882, Johnson had an idea. It would change the look of Christmas forever.

    Johnson worked as a boss at a technology company. In 1871, he hired a young man to work for him. The man's name was Thomas Edison. Edison was a great worker. He came up with many new ideas. Later, Edison left to start his own company. Johnson followed him. Johnson started turning Edison's ideas into money. In 1880, Edison invented the light bulb. No one knew how much it was worth. At the time, most homes did not have the electricity to power it. However, Johnson helped start a company to sell the bulbs.

    Before long, Mr. Johnson had a bright idea. Christmas trees were very popular. They were so beautiful because of their candles. Flickering (闪烁的) flames were perfect for Christmas. But they were also dangerous. They could easily start a fire.

    Mr. Johnson thought of a way to fix this. He set up a Christmas tree by one of his windows. Then he took 80 colored light bulbs and hung them around it. The lights were red, white and blue. People on the street stopped to look. They admired the shining Christmas tree. It was so popular that Johnson made it a tradition. Each year he added more lights. In 1884, there were 120 light bulbs on his tree. The lights were not cheap. In 1900, a string of 16 bulbs cost $12. That was a lot of money back then, because people made less. In today's money, that is about $350. But over time, they started to cost less. By the 1930s, colored light bulbs were everywhere.

    Today millions of light sets are sold in America each year. They light 80 million homes. Some of them are now used for other holidays too. They are used on Halloween and Valentine's Day. But it all started with Johnson's Christmas tree.

    Twenty-five years ago, most young Britons wanted a career in law, to be a doctor, or, if they were creative enough, to take up singing. But today, things stand differently.

    According to a survey by Tesco Mobile, a UK company, the “dream job” of young people aged between 16 and 25 in the UK is a video blogger(博客), or “vlogger(视频博主)”. The survey, carried out among 1,002 people, found that as much as 40 percent of them put vlogger as their number one choice on a list of ideal careers.

    This change is undoubtedly as a result of the Internet and social media. They have made it so much easier to reach audience of the world, without having to enter a career in show business in the traditional way.

    In the past, the biggest stars were trained by the Hollywood studios; now, anyone with a computer camera can become a star. Vloggers are the big stars of today because they are normal people interacting(互动) with their fans about everyday life.”

    However, what people see is only the bright side of being a vlogger and they fail to notice the fact that only those who are successful earn fame and fortune. For every success there are hundreds of others who never get off the starting line. There are the dreams that come true and the dreams that remain dreams forever.

    Although being vloggers is popular, some young people choose to follow careers that don't necessarily earn them fame, but allow them to make good use of the Internet to share their hobbies. Young Israeli David Leshaw, for example, runs a business called the Finishers Club. It's an online platform(平台) for runners to keep a record of their races. His job allows him to express his enthusiasm, and is always a learning experience. And that's enough for him.

    There are two kinds of secrets: secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspect of the physical world. Secrets about people are different: they are things that people don't know about themselves or things they hide because they don't want others to know. So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?

    It's easy to assume that natural secrets are the most important: the people who look for them can sound authoritative (权威的).This is why physics PhDs are difficult to work with—because they know the most basic truths, they think they know all truths. But does understanding electronic theory automatically make you a great marriage counselor? Does a gravity theorist know more about your business than you do? At PayPal, I once interviewed a physics PhD for an engineering job. Halfway through my first question, he shouted, "Stop! I already know what you're going to ask!" But he was wrong. It was the easiest no-hire decision I've ever made. Secrets about people are relatively overlooked. Maybe that's because you don^'t need a dozen years of higher education to ask the questions that uncover them: What are people not allowed to talk about? What is forbidden or taboo?

    The best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking. Most people think only in terms of what they've been taught; schooling itself aims to spread basic wisdom. So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven't been standardized? Physics, for example, is a real major at all major universities, and it's set in its ways. The opposite of physics might be astrology, but astrology doesn't matter. What about something like nutrition? Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed (有缺陷的). The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and large amounts of grains was probably produced by Big Food(美国著名食品公司)than real science; its chief impact has been to worsen our obesity(肥胖)problem. There^'s plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of far away stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could produce secrets.