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     Readingcan be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

      Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    Your next Saturday night takeaway could be brought to you by a robot after a major food delivery company announced plans to use automated vehicles to transport meals. Europe's biggest online takeaway food company Just Eat has partnered with Starship Technologies to deliver food with robots on the streets of London later this month. “Nobody has ever done deliveries with land-based robots,” said Allan Martinson, the chief operating officer of Starship.

    The robot courier can travel up to 4 miles per hour for about 10 miles. It uses a GPS signal and nine cameras to navigate(确定方向). Instead of a person arriving at their door, customers could find themselves receiving a notification(通知) on their phone that says a robot is on its way and a code to unlock the automated courier. “Put the code in, the robot opens up, and there's your food,” said David Buttress, chief manager of Just Eat.

    The robot, which has so far been tested in Greenwich, Milton Keynes and Glastonbury, costs ￡1 to transport within 3 miles, compared with the ￡3 to ￡6 it costs for a human courier. To date 30 robots have driven nearly 5,000 miles without getting into an accident or finding themselves picked on by passers-by. They have driven in more than 40 cities around the world, including London and Tallinn, Estonia.

    An initial worry was how the public would react to robots. But Martinson said the public has been calm when passing the delivery machine on the streets. “The most surprising reaction has been the lack of reaction,” said Martinson.

    Another significant fear was that people would disrupt(扰乱) the robots, or try to steal them and their contents. To prevent this, the robot is fitted with nine cameras, two way audio, and movement sensors that send a warning if it is lifted off the ground. And it opens only with a pass code provided to the customer via a notification. “It's much easier to shoplift than it is to steal a robot,” said Martinson.

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    Junxi “Emma” Yang played Carnegie Hall before she got to high school. But her piano skills may have to take a back seat to her programming skill.

    According to World Journal, a US-based Chinese media organization, Emma, a 14-year-old student at the Brearley School in Manhattan, New York started coding when she was 6. Four years later, her beloved grandmother began developing Alzheimer's.

    When Emma's family moved to New York from Hong Kong in 2014, she became passionate about programming. By the time she was 10, her grandmother had already developed the disease.

    Emma got right to work. With her coding skills, she had a smartphone app created before long, designed to help people suffering from Alzheimer's.

    “Now, 'Timeless' has moved to the second stage of design,”says Emma.

    Emma hopes her grandmother can benefit from the artificial intelligence technology built into “Timeless,” the app Emma developed, to overcome her memory loss.

    Emma's newly finished app has gained support from Dr. Melissa Kramps, an Alzheimer's specialist, and from Kairo, a developer specializing in artificial intelligence.

    Timeless uses facial recognition to remind someone with Alzheimer's of vital information about the person whose photo they are looking at on their screen. It also signals whether they have just called somebody.

    The app also allows for the photo-talking, then moves to identify the people on the screen.

    The Timeless project is featured on the website Indiegogo for fundraising. Emma is hoping to raise $50,000 and work alongside professional programmers to have Timeless launched by the end of 2018.

    Many people have hailed Emma for her efforts. Bill Gates voiced his support, commending her on her bid to help bridge the gap between people with Alzheimer's and the ones they love.

    Most people can't live to 100. Those who do live so long can hardly walk, let alone take part in any activities. A few people, however, take part in dangerous activities even though they are more than 100 years old. They keep going and going! There is a great grandmother who likes challenging herself although she is 101 years old this year.

    Mary Hardison believes that people should always be cheerful and more importantly, take on all kinds of adventures while they physically still can. So, instead of celebrating her 101st birthday with a boring party, she decided to go paragliding（滑翔跳伞）﹣an idea she got from her 75﹣year﹣old son who recently took it up as a hobby.

    So on her birthday, cheered on by her big family, she tied herself up together with expert instructor Kevin Hintze, and jumped down fearlessly from the sky near her home in Ogden, Utah. And, it was not just a simple jump either. According to Kevin Hintze, the grandmother encouraged him to turn around, as they made their way down.

    This is not the first time that Mary has done something "wild" and "crazy". For her 90th birthday she rode all the adult rides at Disneyland. And, she is not done yet﹣ For her 102nd birthday she hopes to go down the 3,000 feet Alpine Slide at Utah's Park City Mountain Resort!

    Not surprisingly, this great action has made Mary Hardison very famous and also earned her a place in the Guinness World Records where she broke a 2007 record set by a 100﹣year﹣old British woman. What an amazing lady!

    The Bermuda Triangle is an area in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, near Florida in the USA, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared mysteriously.

    ①The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article. Two years later, published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19. Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine. In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water. Nothing seems right. We don't know where we are." In the February 1964, the article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were just part of strange events in the area.

    ②Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural ideas to explain the events. One explanation refers to leftover technology from the mysterious lost continent of Atlantis. Some of the Triangle writers related the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which the lost Flight 19 aircrews were taken by aliens.

    ③But there are also some explanation relating to nature. For example, laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles containing natural gas can sink a large ship by decreasing the density(密度) of the water. Because it has been assumed that the eruption of volcanoes(火山)may produce much natural gas, making large areas of bubbles under sea so that water is no longer able to provide enough supporting power for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without any warning.

    ④Violent weather is likely to be another reason. Powerful storms forming in tropical(热带的)waters have caused thousands of deaths and caused billions of dollars in damage. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.

    People speak English in different parts of the world. The same words can be used in different ways, depending on where you live. People can also have completely different ways of saying the same thing.

    The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is asking the public to help it add new words. Editors want to find the regional differences in English around the world. They want to expand its record of the language.

    Last year, the OED, BBC Radio and the Forward Arts Foundation teamed up to find local words in the United Kingdom. It resulted in more than 100 regional words and phrases being added to the dictionary. One was "cuddy wifter", which means a left-handed person.

    Now, the OED is widening its search to English speakers around the world. Eleanor Maier, an editor at OED, said the response has been great. Editors are listing a bunch of suggestions to include in the dictionary.

    These include Hawaii's "hammajang", which means "in a disorderly state". Another is the word for a swimming costume, "dookers" or "duckers". It is used in Scotland.

    The OED also might include the word "frog-drowner", which Americans might use to describe a downpour of rain. Another possibility is "brick". It means "very cold" to people in New Jersey and New York City.

    The dictionary has already found that, depending on location, a picture hanging off center might be described as "agley". It might also be called "catawampous" or "ahoo".

    "The OED aims to cover all types of English," Maier said. That includes scientific words, slang and regional language. Maier also said that it can be difficult for the OED's editors to identify regional words. The terms are more often spoken than written down.

    The appeal is called Words Where You Are. It is looking for more suggestions. "We were surprised and pleased by the number of regional words we were able to include," said Maier.