As the audience got larger, thetechnology got better. Television sets became more reliable through the 1960s. The reception (接收效果)improved. The picture improved. The major networks started broadcastingprograms in color.

    Even greater improvements were comingaccording to Sanford Brown, who wrote an article for the Post in 1967.Surprisingly, just about every prediction he made in the article became areality. For example: All sets in the not-distant future will be colorinstruments. He also predicted that TV sets would become smaller, simpler, morereliable and less expensive and may forever put the TV repairman out of work.Smaller sets do not, of course, mean smaller screens. TV engineers expectscreens to get much bigger. However, today's 3-D TV is even farther away, if it's coming at all. There is some doubt whether the public would be eager topay for it, in view of people's cold reception given to 3-D movies.

    But the technology with the greatestpotential, according to Brown, was cable television (有线电视), whichwas still in its early stages then. As he predicted, the future of cabletelevision was highly interactive (互动的). It wasn't cable television that gaveAmericans their electronic connection to the world, however. It was theInternet. He even foresaw the future office: using picture phones, big-screentelevisions for conferences, and computers providing information at the touchof a button.

    Brown ever said, “The future oftelevision is no longer a question of what we can invent. It's a question ofwhat we want.”

    A new generation addiction is quickly spreading all over the world. Web holism, a twentieth century disease, affects people from different ages. They surf the net, use e-mail and speak in chat rooms. They spend many hours on the computer, and it becomes a compulsive （强迫的，强制的） habit. They cannot stop, and it affects their lives.

    Ten years ago, no one thought that using computers could become compulsive behavior that could affect the social and physical life of computer users. This obsessional behavior has affected teenagers and college students. They are likely to log on computers and spend long hours at different websites.

    They become hooked on computers and gradually their social and school life is affected by this situation. They spend all free time surfing and don't concentrate on homework, so this addiction influences their grades and success at school. Because they can find everything on the websites, they hang out there. Moreover, this addiction to websites influences their social life.

    They spend more time in front of computers than with their friends. The relation with their friends changes. The virtual life becomes more important than their real life. They have a new language that they speak in the chat rooms and it causes cultural changes in society.

    Because of the change in their behavior, they begin to keep themselves apart from the society and live with their virtual friends. They share their emotions and feelings with friends who they have never met in their life. Although they feel confident on the computer, they are not confident with real live friends they have known all their life. It is a problem for the future. This addictive behavior is beginning to affect all the world.

    For centuries, elephants have played a big role in the world's economies, culture and religion. The African elephant used to be found all over Africa and the Asian elephant moved from Syria to China to Indonesia. Nowadays, elephants are found in small groups in the south of the Sahara Desert and scarcely in Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and India.

    In the early twentieth century, there were close to ten million elephants, and now the elephant number is as low as 252,000 and expected to drop down to 160,000 by 2025. Between 2007 and 2014, the elephant population fell by at least 30%, or 144,000 elephants. As researchers have traveled over the African plains, they only spotted one herd of 36 elephants in an area like the size of Mexico. It is clear that these gentle mammals are disappearing right before our eyes.

    There are many reasons why the elephant population has been decreasing, one of which is their habitat. Humans are competing with elephants for living space, and as more and more humans clear the land that is being used by elephants, the elephants have less space. Elephant hunting or “poaching” has been a major factor for the disappearance of this species, and they are killed only for their valuable ivory tusks. Although the trade of tusks is illegal, it is still a common practice in many places.

    Often, all the local people living among elephants would be farmers, and found that they could make more money by selling the tusks of one elephant, than doing manual labor for twelve years. That alone makes it really hard to prevent them from killing the elephants.

    Some places such as Botswana, have put in extra effort to protect their wildlife from poachers by founding their Botswana Defense Force, which is made up of around 700 specially-trained soldiers that are stationed in 40 different areas. You may feel worried about the present situations elephants are in, but there are ways to help. To find out how you can help elephant conservation, adopt an elephant, or donate, click here.

    Imagine the tallest building in the United States. Fill that giant building 44 times with rotten fruits and vegetables. Now you know how much food Americans waste every year.

    It is hard to believe, right? About 133 billion pounds of food get thrown away. That's one-third of all the food we produce. And a lot of it is thrown away for one simple reason: It's ugly.

    The problem is that nature isn't perfect. Apples can get scarred (留下疤痕) by storms. Cucumbers grow in C shapes. Carrots change into unusual fork-like forms. Watermelons get too big to fit on a refrigerator shelf. These crazy-looking fruits and vegetables may taste great. But most grocery stores refuse to sell them. Store owners say people judge food by how it looks. No one wants a tomato that looks like a two-headed monster. But what if you could buy that tomato for half-price?

    A new movement is trying to make people see the “beauty” in ugly food. Some stores are selling ugly produce. It tastes the same. And you pay less for it because the food doesn't look perfect.

    Usually, the stores find a nicer word than “ugly”. A Canadian chain uses “naturally imperfect”. In some US stores, it's “misfit produce”. Whatever you call it, ugly food helps many people. Fanners get paid for food they were going to have to throw away. Shoppers get cheaper fruits and vegetables. The ugly-food movement will also help some of the 44 million Americans who don't have enough to eat. Many groups give the ugly produce to hungry people.

    So really, who cares if that carrot looks a little… ugly?

    A man came home from work late, tired, to find his 5-year-old son waiting for him at the door.

    “Daddy, how much money do you make each hour?”

    “If you must know, I make ＄20 each hour.”

    “Oh,” the little boy answered, with his head down. He thought for a moment, looked up and said, “Daddy, could you lend me ＄10?”

    The father was furious, “If you asked for the money to buy a toy or some other rubbish, go straight to your room and think about why you are so selfish (自私)！”

    The little boy went to his room with no words and shut the door. After a short while, the father calmed (平静) down, and started to think, “Maybe he really needs to buy something and he didn't really ask for money very often.” So he went to the little boy's room.

    “Sorry！Maybe I was too hard on your just now.” said the man, “Here's ＄10.”

    “Oh, thank you Daddy！” he said happily. Then the boy took out some coins. When the father found that the boy already had money, he got angry again.

    “Why do you want more money since you already have some?” the father shouted angrily.

    “Because I didn't have enough, but now I do.” The little boy replied, “Daddy, I have ＄20 now. Can I buy one hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you. ”

    Chinese scientists recently have produced two monkeys with the same gene, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using the same technique that gave us Dolly the sheep. These monkeys are not actually the first primates(灵长类)to be cloned. Another one named Tetra was produced in the late 1990s by embryo(胚胎)splitting, the division of an early-stage embryo into two or four separate cells to make clones. By contrast, they were each made by replacing an egg cell nucleus(原子核)with DNA from a differentiated body cell. This Dolly method, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer(SCNT), can create more clones and allows researchers greater control over the edits they make to the DNA.

    Success came from adopting several new techniques. These included a new type of microscopy to better view the cells during handling or using several materials that encourage cell reprogramming, which hadn't been tried before on primates. Still, the research process proved difficult, and many attempts by the team failed. Just two healthy baby monkeys born from more than 60 tested mothers. This leads to many researchers' pouring water on the idea that the team's results bring scientists closer to cloning humans. They thought this work is not a stepping stone to establishing methods for obtaining live born human clones. Instead, this clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.

    But the scientists involved emphasize that this is not their goal. There is now no barrier for cloning primate species, thus cloning humans is closer to reality. However, their research purpose is entirely for producing non-human primate models for human diseases; they absolutely have no intention, and society will not permit this work to be extended to humans. Despite limitations, they treat this breakthrough a novel model system for scientists studying human biology and disease.