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.

    If you feel yourself turning into an old grouch(脾气坏的人), don't worry — happiness is just around the bend. A survey has found that although happiness dips in those in their 30s and 40s, people start to feel more content with life after the age of 50.

    However an economist found that older people will never again regain the excitement of youth. Rather it is thought that with age, individuals become more pragmatic about the ups and downs that life brings and accept their fortune.

    He questioned those in Britain, Switzerland and Germany and applied the findings to people's life cycle.

    Mr. Van Landeghem, 29, said:“A happiness curve does not necessarily imply that a 65-year-old prefers his own life to the life of a 25-year-old.”

    “Both the 25-year-old and 65-year-old might agree that it is nicer to be 25 than to be 65. But te 65-year-old might nevertheless be more satisfied, as he has learned to be satisfied with what he has.”

    It was suggested the mid-life happiness dip is because this is when people have the most responsibilities — taking care of a family, paying a mortgage (抵押贷款) and having a demanding career. The middle-aged dip in happiness was also compared to that of losing a close relative or suddenly becoming unemployed.

    The study is just one of many put forward as an indicator of what makes for a happy life.

    Psychologists concluded that having money makes you happier, but only if you have a lot more than your friends and neighbors. At the same time, you'd better have enough tie to enjoy yourself instead of spending all your time on making money.

    Separate research found that owning the house of your dreams, the car you always longed for and having millions in the bank doesn't stop that desire to keep up with the Joneses (攀比). And if the Joneses have more than you do, you'll be miserable. It seems envy at being lower in the social pecking order (权势等级) reduces the satisfaction of being well off.

    If you just do what you love and you are good at, which society also values much, you may have a higher probability to be happy. But if your job pays less, how can you stick to it in disregard of responsibilities? Happiness means different things from different points of view, and point of view grows from one's experience and knowledge. Perhaps it comes with you when you don't need to think about adult problems or when you are wise enough to understand what satisfaction is.

    Travelling to China is like travelling to another world. Its many famous beautiful places will make you lose yourself in them. However, it is usually not enough for a traveller only to visit these nice places. If you have time to see the local people, talk with them and even have dinner with a local family, it would be a wonderful experience, to know more about the local people's life style at home in China.

    New Hope Travel Agency will arrange (安排) a family visit to Xi'an, an ancient historic city in China. We especially have chosen typical local families to host this activity in which you can see the true living style of Chinese people. Most of the hosts retired (退休) at home, so they are happy to see visitors from different countries to come to their homes.

    Not only can we arrange to visit the local family but we can arrange to taste the true home cooked dishes. Our tour guide will ask you for advice about the food you want to eat. Just enjoy the locally cooked dishes. It'll be quite a different and exciting experience.

    Our agency also provides a good opportunity for you to learn to cook Chinese food. We have a general cooking class in the local family. If you'd like to learn to cook one or two Chinese dishes, please go to our Chinese Food Cooking Class to choose your favorite dishes.

    Don't wait. Welcome to China.

    In 2010 I left the United States for the first time to fly over 9,000 miles to Uganda, a country in recovery from civil war. I was going there to help the local kids learn soccer.

    As I played soccer with some kids, the sun burned my skin. I took many breaks to drink from my water bottle before realizing I was the only one who did that. All the energetic children running around never stopped to get water. After looking around, I realized there was NOWHERE for them to get water, and there was no well or water pump in sight.

    I asked a man who was traveling with us why the kids didn't ever stop to drink water. He told me that they would have to walk all the way to the pump in the next village and they didn't want to miss out on playing soccer with a real ball. The kids seemed happy but it was not fair that to get a drink of water meant they would miss out on such a rare occurrence of playing with an actual soccer ball.

    When I got home, I spoke with other people about kids in Uganda. They told me to do something to help them. That sounded like a great idea, but how? I spoke with my friends about helping kids in Uganda. We decided that we could try to solve their most urgent problem—water. And we decided to organize soccer camps to collect money.

    It has been three years since our first camp and we have successfully run two more and funded two water filtration (净化) systems as well as 60 water pumps for farmers. We have been able to improve the health of thousands of Ugandans.

    The other day I was shopping at the local Chinese grocery store. There was a line at the fish counter, but only one staff person was there to take care of the customers. Some customers ordered quite an amount of fish for that staff person to work on. At last I was the second in line; all I wanted was a couple of crabs and should get out of there in no time.

    Noticing it was very busy at the fish counter, another staff person came over to help. I was ready to be served,  but the staff person went to the end of the line and began to help a couple of ladies with snails （蜗牛）.The customer in front of me, being served, turned around and looked at me sympathetically, and the customer behind me called to the staff person, "You should start her, "pointing at me. He was, well, ignored.

    If someone asked me, "What is the most important rule to follow in America？"I would reply without hesitation, "Wait your turn at all times." Wherever you go here in this country, you will find people waiting in a line quietly to get anything: whether in the supermarkets, department stores, bus stops, or gas stations, it's just a matter of waiting your turn. In a larger sense, "wait your turn" is more than just a guideline﹣it is a very basic norm （准则）that reflects the fundamental value of the western cultures. But in some situations your turn does not always come based on when you get there and how long you have waited in line, just like my case at the store. Even though this did not often happen, it did make me feel upset.

    The problem of robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don't know. By next year, half of the calls we receive will be scams(欺诈). We are finally waking up to the severity of the problem by supporting and developing a group of tools, apps and approaches intended to prevent scammers from getting through. Unfortunately, it's too little, too late. By the time these "solutions"(解决方案) become widely available, scammers will have moved onto cleverer means. In the near future, it's not just going to be the number you see on your screen that will be in doubt. Soon you will also question whether the voice you're hearing is actually real.

    That's because there are a number of powerful voice manipulation(处理) and automation technologies that are about to become widely available for anyone to use. At this year's I/O Conference, a company showed a new voice technology able to produce such a convincing human-sounding voice that it was able to speak to a receptionist and book a reservation without detection.

    These developments are likely to make our current problems with robocalls much worse. The reason that robocalls are a headache has less to do with amount than precision. A decade of data breaches(数据侵入) of personal information has led to a situation where scammers can easily learn your mother's name, and far more. Armed with this knowledge, they're able to carry out individually targeted campaigns to cheat people. This means, for example, that a scammer could call you from what looks to be a familiar number and talk to you using a voice that sounds exactly like your bank teller's, tricking you into "confirming" your address, mother's name, and card number. Scammers follow money, so companies will be the worst hit. A lot of business is still done over the phone, and much of it is based on trust and existing relationships. Voice manipulation technologies may weaken that gradually.

    We need to deal with the insecure nature of our telecom networks. Phone carriers and consumers need to work together to find ways of determining and communicating what is real. That might mean either developing a uniform way to mark videos and images, showing when and who they were made by, or abandoning phone calls altogether and moving towards data-based communications—using apps like FaceTime or WhatsApp, which can be tied to your identity.

    Credibility is hard to earn but easy to lose, and the problem is only going to get harder from here on out.