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    Carlos had been in New York for five months now, and he detested it. He would never forget the day when the plane landed. His parents had big smiles on their faces as they discussed the wonderful new life they would have in this great city. His older sister and brother looked in wonder and excitement at the buildings. Uncle Miguel and Aunt Esperanza thought of the good jobs they would get. Grandmother and Grandfather told him what a lucky boy he was to come to this wonderful city. But Carlos was lonely. The city looked big, cold, and dirty to him.

    They lived in an apartment in Manhattan. There were stores and cinemas close to their home. But Carlos didn't want these things. He loved his home in the country in Puerto Rico; he loved the green fields, the hot sun, and the lovely beaches.

    He didn't want to go to school because it made him think of his friends at home. And he didn't want to learn a new language that could never describe the world as beautifully as his own.

    He began to go down to the dock(码头), because this made him feel closer to Puerto Rico. He sat down and watched the ships. He would often find a man also sitting there looking at the sea. The man was Eric-a taxi driver who came there to escape from the noisy traffic.

    Eric noticed the young boy and felt his sadness. One day he said, “Yes, it's hard to leave your homeland. I remember when I left Norway 15 years ago. I know it's hard to start a new life in a new country, but let's face it. I did it and you can do it, too.”

    From then on the taxi driver and the young boy began to develop a deep friendship.

    The British live on a small island. They are surrounded by the sea, so it is not surprising that the sea has always played an important role in their lives. After the development of large, ocean­going sailing ships in the fifteenth century, the sea became even more important to the country's development. Ships setting sail from England determined to extend Britain's territories, its wealth and its knowledge of the world. Ships returned to England bringing goods, people and new ideas from foreign places. By the nineteenth century, Britain had the largest, most powerful navy in the world.

    The great sailing ships were so much a part of British life that they even affected the language. Many English expressions we use today were originally nautical (航海的) terms, although most people no longer realize this. For example, people commonly describe an honest and fair business deal as being "above board". This expression was originally used in sailing ship times when secretive, dishonest ship's business would be carried out below decks (below the boards) out of public view. On the other hand, honest business was always conducted on deck (above the boards), in the open where everyone could see what was going on.

    "Pipe down!", meaning "Be quiet!", is another common expression that has nautical origins. The ship's boatswain (水手长) would blow a whistle, or pipe, at the end of the day to indicate (表明) to the sailors it was time to quieten down and go to sleep.

    Most native English speakers have heard the expression "not enough room to swing a cat", but few know that the "cat" does not refer to a small furry animal with four legs and a tail. The "cat" is actually a short form of "cat of nine tails" — a whip with nine, knotted (打结的) tails. A boatswain needed a lot of space in order to swing the whip properly when lashing (鞭打) a poor sailor under his control!

    Don't put it off, do it now!

    Why do we spend so much time not doing the work we should do, or putting off small jobs that have piled up to create a big problem? Procrastinating, as putting things off like this is called, is in our character we have naturally since birth; we avoid dull or difficult jobs until it's too late to do anything else.

    "We often put things off although we know it will make life more stressful," says Dr. Steel, an authority on the science of motivation. "If these tasks were fun, we'd just do them now. We put off what is difficult or unpleasant, such as the paperwork that needs doing before leaving the office or cleaning the bits of your home that people can't see. But the fact is, the less people procrastinate, the more money they have, the better relationships they have, and the healthier they are." This is obvious when you look at the couples who don't argue about whether anyone has cleaned the kitchen, and the people who simply go for a run instead of endlessly rescheduling it in their heads.

    Of course, there are the rest of us, who feel the small jobs piling up around us daily. "We've evolved to respond to the moment, and not to set our sights too far in an uncertain world," Dr. Steel adds. "We are not set up to appreciate long-term rewards, whether it's the benefit of a four-year degree, doing exercise or dieting. We usually feel the cost now and the reward comes much later." According to Dr. Steel, we have two decision-making systems. They are the limbic, which is responsible for the short term, and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with the future. We bounce between long-term goals and short-term temptations, so we need goals that will translate our plans for the limbic system.

    Let's take the example of students' writing essays. They should set themselves targets and word counts per day. These are thus turned from seemingly endless tasks into something concrete with measured progress. Dr. Steel recommends such techniques, or "pre-commitments", adding that leaving you a month before the "deadline" makes it more likely a task will be completed. The benefit is that you'll avoid the embarrassment of not following up on something people are expecting you to do—telling everyone you are going to take up jogging makes you more likely to do so.

    Overcoming procrastination finally comes down to planning, which, if you're not careful, becomes procrastination in itself. But it is worth making sure you have everything in place. "Successful people don't pretend they don't procrastinate," Dr. Steel says. "People who pretend they have willpower are less successful." Instead, plan for procrastination: make your work environment a temple of productivity by cutting out what stops you paying your attention, so you can really focus on moving forward.

    The human face is a remarkable piece of work. The astonishing variety of facial features helps people recognize each other and is vital to the formation of complex societies. So is the face's ability to send emotional signals, whether through an unconscious red face or the artifice of a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives reading faces, for signs of attraction, hatred, trust and fraud. They also spend plenty of time trying to hide true feelings or intentions.

    Technology is rapidly catching up with the human ability to read faces. In America facial recognition is used by churches to track worshippers' attendance; in Britain, by retailers to spot past shoplifters. In China, it confirms the identities of ride-hailing drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple's new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the home screen.

    Set against human skills, such applications might seem incremental(增值的). Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the Internet, obviously transform human abilities; facial recognition seems merely to encode(编码)them. Although faces are unique to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, interfere with something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyze images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to bring about fundamental changes to opinions of privacy, fairness and trust.

    Start with privacy. One big difference between faces and other biometric data, such as fingerprints, is that they work at a distance. Anyone with a phone can take a picture for facial-recognition programs to use. Facebook's bank of facial images cannot be used by others, but the Silicon Valley giant could obtain pictures of visitors to a car showroom, say, and later use facial recognition to serve them ads for cars. Law-enforcement agencies now have a powerful weapon in their ability to track criminals, but at enormous potential cost to citizens' privacy.

    The face is not just a name-tag. It displays a lot of other information—and machines can read that, too. Again, that promises benefits. Some firms are analyzing faces to provide automated diagnoses of rare genetic conditions, far earlier than would otherwise be possible. Systems that measure emotion may give autistic(孤独症的)people a grasp of social signals they find difficult.

    The world's insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a "catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems", according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles.

    "It should be of huge concern to all of us, for insects are at the heart of every food web,  they pollinate the large majority of plant species, keep the soil healthy, recycle nutrients, control pests, and much more. Love them or loathe them, we humans cannot survive without insects," said Prof Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex in the UK.

    The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides. Urbanization and climate change are also significant factors.

    One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects. A small number of adaptable species are increasing in number, but not nearly enough to outweigh the big losses.

    Matt Shardlow, at the conservation charity Buglife, said: "It is gravely sobering to see this collation of evidence that demonstrates the pitiful state of the world's insect populations. It is increasingly obvious that the planet's ecology is breaking and there is a need for an intense and global effort to stop and reverse these dreadful trends."