Your next car could have two seats, three wheels — two in front and one in the back and a top speed of more than 100 miles per hour. Elio Motors plans to make such a tiny car named the Elio. Its two seats sit front and back instead of side by side. The driver is positioned in the center with the passenger directly behind.

    The starting price for the car is just $6,800. It has only one door, on the left side, which cuts a few hundred dollars off the manufacturing costs. Having three wheels also makes it cheaper. It has air conditioning, power windows and door locks and an AM/FM radio. More features can be ordered through Elio's long list of suppliers. Elio will also sell the cars directly through its own stores and not through franchised dealers (特约经销商).

    Paul Elio dreamed as a kid that he would one day own a car company called Elio Motors. In 2008, tired of high gas prices, he started working on a car that burns gas in a more effective way. Equally important to him was creating U.S. manufacturing jobs and making the car inexpensive enough to attract buyers who might otherwise be stuck in their old, unreliable cars. “Whatever matters to you, this can move the needle on it,” he said.

    Already, more than 27,000 people have reserved (预订) one. Paul hopes to make 250,000 cars a year by 2016. So far, reservation holders are those who will use the Elio as a second or third car for work. Finally, though, he believes the car will interest high school and college students as well as used-car drivers who want something newer and more reliable.

    Family Fun in Canadian Museum of Nature

    Bring the whole family to rediscover our fully redecorated museum.

    WHAT TO SEE AND DO

    Check out What's On for all the events, educational activities and HD movies happening during your visit. Care for birds, dive down into the depths at the helm (舵柄) of a research submersible(潜水器) or explore a cave… on the first floor. Don't miss our gallery play areas on the third floor when visiting with kids. By visiting here, your children will learn more about nature. Check out Our Exhibitions which presents our special exhibitions and our galleries. Be sure to stop at our Nature Boutique on the second floor for a vast selection of games, books and nature-related souvenirs from 9:30 am until the museum closes for the day.

    HOURS, ADMISSION, SERVICES AND MORE

    The Canadian Museum of Nature provides a lot of information, images and videos on our websites about nature, such as http://www.nature.ca/en/family-fun and http://www.expeditionarctic.ca/. The museum also participates in several social networks. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

    Christmas is a time for eating great food, giving and receiving presents, and most importantly spending time with your family watching some classic Christmas movies.

The Grinch (2000)

    This is a Christmas must-watch and one of Jim Carrey's best performances. It was also originally a nursery tale book written by Dr Seuss. It's the story of a green monster who wants to ruin Christmas but who in the end discovers the power of love and generosity. I promise it's a great film with plenty of laughs along the way.

    Love Actually (2003)

    While this is not a personal favourite of mine, people in the UK absolutely love this film. It has many featuring actors and actresses. It might be a little difficult to follow as there are complex plots, so I recommend watching a translated version or enabling subtitles (字幕) in your native language. However, the heart-warming elements of the film make it worth watching.

    Home Alone (1990)

    This amusing masterwork is one of my favourite films of all time. It tells the story of a boy, Kevin, who is left alone in his house when his large family forgets to take him on vacation with them. While the families are away, burglars try to rob the house and Kevin must protect his home by setting traps. The trips, falls and traps will have you laughing out loud as you watch a 10-year-old boy beat two grown men.

    Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

    You can't have Christmas in an English-speaking country without watching this movie. It's not funny like Home Alone or The Grinch, but it is incredibly touching. It's about a man who claims to be Santa, but nobody believes him except a lawyer and a little girl. The story-line may seem a little childish but you can enjoy it at any age.

    Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three graduate students at Brown University in Providence built a company around sleep deprivation(睡眠不足).

    Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business and engineering schools. They began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest a night.

    The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time people spend in the most restorative(有恢复作用的) stages of the sleep cycle: REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing? Five years of research, 20 employees, $14 million and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.

    Their company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass, launched its product in June, 2009. The Zeo device uses a headband with tiny sensors(传感器) that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states-REM, light, deep and waking sleep. The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes you as you're not in REM sleep. In the morning you can upload the data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. Most of the feedback(反馈) comes in the form of Zeo's ZQ score showing how well you've slept.

    “Zeo allows people to unlock this black box of sleep,” says Dave Dickinson, a health-care CEO.

    Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 P.M.

    For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson also plans to spread it to countries such as Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches US levels.

    I did some research and examined how British English and American English changed between the 1930s and the 2000s. Take spelling, for example towards the 1960s it looked like the UK was going in the direction of not using the "u" in "colour" and writing "centre" as "center". But since then, the British have become more confident in some of their own spellings. In the 2000s, the UK used an American spelling choice about 11% of the time while Americans use a British one about 10% of the time. There is also no need to worry too much about American words, such as "vacation", "liquor" and "lawmaker" entering British English. There are a few examples of this kind of vocabulary change but they are mostly uncommon words and are not likely to change British English too much. The British are still using "mum" rather than "mom" and "petrol" rather than "gas".

    But when we start thinking of language more in terms of style than vocabulary or spelling, a different picture appears. Some of the bigger trends (趋势) in American English are moving towards a freer use of language. American sentences are usually one word shorter in 2006 than they were in 1931.

    Americans also use a lot more apostrophes (撇号) in their writing than they used to, which has the effect of turning the two words "do not" into the single "don't". "The hand of the king" becomes the shorter "The king's hand".

    However, in all these ways Brits are changing too—and in the same way as Americans. They're just about 30 years behind the trend that Americans seem to be leading.

    So this raises a question, is British English actively following American English or is this something that is simply a natural trend in language use? Perhaps the British would have gone in that direction even if America had been discovered? I'd like to agree with the second idea but because of the fact that British people learn plenty of American language through different ways, I think the first is more correct.