Better think twice before choosing a password for email, online bank or shopping. Simple passwords are easy to be stolen.

    A password is like a key to your home. If someone steals it, he'll get chances to steal something else. We use passwords everywhere in our life. We are so used to passwords that we don't pay any attention to them until we lose or forget one.

    A study of 28，000 passwords recently stolen from a popular website showed that people often do the easy thing. It found that 16% took a first name as a password. Another 14% used the easiest keyboard combinations such as “12345678” or QWERTY. 5% of the stolen passwords were names of television shows or stars popular with young people. 3% of the passwords expressed feelings like “I don't care，” “Whatever，” “I love you，” or their opposite, “I hate you.”

    Robert Graham, who did the study, advises people to choose a password that is longer than eight characters with one capital letter and one symbol.

    Of course, safe passwords don't mean those hard to remember. Forgetting your password is sometimes a big headache for you. Maybe, the perfect password is easy for you and hard for others.

    Do you know a kind of bird called tawny owl? Where does it come from? It comes from Finland (芬兰). What color is it? It is brown. Are all the tawny owls brown? No. Tawny owls come in two colors: pale gray and brown. And in Finland, it often snowed in winter. Many tawny owls were pale gray. But as the Finnish (芬兰的)winters get warmer, there are more brown ones. Why is that?

    The University of Helsinki team tries to study tawny owls. They find that tawny owls get the color from their parents. The gray owls could get food easily in the snow in the past. But now the winter is warmer. There is little snow so the brown owls can live well, too. The number of the owls is getting bigger.

    The leader of the team, Dr Patrick Karell, said that the birds change their color to meet the weather. We are sure the weather change can do something to the animals.

All in the memory…

    Many people complain that their memory is bad, especially as they get older. Phone numbers, names, facts we studied only a few days ago – life would be so much easier if we could remember them all effortlessly. So how can we improve our memory?

    Many people think that repeating things is the best way to remember them. While this undoubtedly helps short-term memory (remembering a telephone number for a few seconds, for example), psychologists (心理学家) doubt whether it ca help you to remember things for very long. The British psychologist Ec Stanford seemed to prove this point when he tested himself on five prayers (祈祷文) that he had read aloud every morning for over 25 years. He found that he could remember no more than three words of some of them! More helpful, especially for remembering numbers, is grouping the information. The following numbers would be impossible for most of us to remember: 1492178919931848. But look at them in chunks, and it becomes much easier: 1492 1789 1993 1848.

    So what about “memory training”? We've all heard about people who can memorize packs of cards by heart—how is this done and can anyone learn how to do it? According to experts, there are many ways of training your memory. Many of them involve forming a mental picture of the things to be memorized. One method, which may be useful in learning foreign languages, is to create a picture in your mind connected to a word you want to remember.

    Another method is to invent a story that includes all the things you want to remember. In experiments, people were asked to remember up to 120 words using this skill; when tested afterwards, on average, they were able to recall 90% of them!

    However, not all of us are interested in learning long lists of names and numbers just for fun. For those studying large number of information, psychologists suggest that the best way to form meaningful connections is to ask yourself lots of questions as you go along. So, for example, if you were reading about a particular disease (疾病), you would ask yourself questions like: “Do people get it from water?”, “What parts of the body does it influence?” and so on. This is said to be far more effective than time spent “passively” reading and re-reading notes.

What is your dream job, a pilot or a policeman? What do you hope your job is like? Read the following stories and find more at www.cambridge,org/aw/cambridgeenglish.

My home town is Dalian. It is an important city in Liaoning Province in the northeast of China. It has a population of over six million with a history of more than 100 years. It has a lot of beautiful beaches such as the Tiger Beach and the Bangchui Island Beach. Many people go there for holidays and for swimming every year. Dalian is famous for Dalian Discoveryland Theme Park and Xinghai Square. They are very interesting and lots of tourists go to visit them. It is warm in winter and hot in summer in Dalian. The temperature doesn't change very much and it is usually sunny. I think it is a great city. But you'd better bring an umbrella with you.

Mr and Mrs Brown are going to have a vacation. Miss Green，a travel agent（旅行代理人），has made a full schedule(日程) for them. They arrive in Chicago on July 3rd and stay there for three days. It's two nights and three days altogether. They have plenty of time for shopping and sightseeing.（看风景）

Then they are leaving for（动身去） New York City at 11：30 a.m. on July 5th by train. They have accommodations（住宿） for two nights at the New York Sheraton on 7th Avenue. After that，they are visiting Washington. They have two days there before they fly to Montreal. There's a meal served （提供）on that flight. They can have some sandwiches and desserts（甜点），and of course the usual beverages（饮料）：coffee，tea or soft drinks. They will have a good time in Montreal，too. It's a full schedule（日程表），but they'll have plenty of time to relax and enjoy themselves.