Disposing(处理) of waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal problem becomes increasingly difficult.

    During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dumpsite. Residents or trash haulers(垃圾托运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically(定期的) some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.

    Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.

    Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential(住宅区的)neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.

    Awareness of pollution dangers has resulted in more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.

    Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 percent of a city's reusable waste.

    Hundreds of years ago, news was carried from place to place by people on foot or by horse. It took days, weeks and sometimes months for people to receive news. Now it is possible to send words and pictures around the world in seconds. Billions of people learn about news stories of their own country and all over the world every day, either by watching TV or reading newspapers.

    Newspapers have been an important part of everyday life since the 18th century. Many countries have hundreds of different newspapers. How do newspaper editors decide which news stories to print? Why do they print some stories and not others? What makes a good newspaper story?

    Firstly, it is important to report new stories. TV stations can report news much faster than newspapers. Yet, newspapers give more about the same story. They may also look at the story in another way, or they may print completely different stories to those on TV.

    Secondly, a news story has to be interesting and unusual. People don't want to read stories about everyday life as a result, many stories are about some kind of danger and seem to be "bad" news. For example, newspapers never print stories about planes landing safely, instead they print stories about plane accidents.

    Another factor (因素) is also very important in many news stories. Many people are interested in news in foreign countries, but more prefer to read stories about people, places and events in their own country. So the stories on the front page in Chinese newspapers are usually very different from the ones in British, French and American newspapers.

    Summer time is a great opportunity for kids to learn how to work and earn a little bit of spending money. If your child needs a summer job, here are a few options to consider:

Lemonade/Cookie Stand

Benefits

    Creates a concept of running a business: Your child will be his own boss, set his own price , and run the show. It's a great introduction to running his own business.

    Limited Start-Up Costs: The things used to make lemonade are cheap, so your child should be able to get back his investment with a handful of sales.

    What Kids Learn About Money: Your child will learn a very valuable lesson about pricing. The price of his lemonade will decide how much he can sell, if he will recover his investment and the amount of profit.

Yard Work

Benefits:

    Repeated Customers: If a homeowner needs help raking (耙地) this year, he'll probably want help again next year. Your child should be able to maintain a regular set of customers after one season.

    Safety: Yard work is generally safer than a lawn-mowing job. Without having to operate machines, your child will be much safer.

    What Kids Learn About Money: Because of the variability (变动) in pay, your child will need to learn how to negotiate(谈判) a fair price with homeowners if they ask.

Lifeguard

Benefits:

    Responsibility: Kids learn a lot about responsibility when lifeguarding. They are within rights to tell whether a certain activity is safe and are allowed to take action as they see fit.

    Exercise: Lifeguards need to be proficient at swimming and must exercise to stay in shape.

    What Kids Learn About Money: To be a lifeguard, one must be certified. Your child may have to pay for lifeguard training, although some employers provide it on-site.

    Every year, millions of people head to London's Trafalgar Square to see Nelson's Column, and the four lion statues that “guard” it. And last month, during the London Design Festival, a bright red lion sculpture was added to the collection.

    But this was more than just a statue: It had a large open mouth, with an LED screen inside it. At the same time, passersby could type in random words on a screen close to the lion, which were used to produce an AI-created poem. The most interesting part of the poems lies in their randomness, as the words that people choose to enter include many things, such as the time, the weather and their mood. In the daytime, the finished poem appeared on the LED screen, but at night, it was projected (投射) onto the lion's body and the famous Nelson's Column, in a 1ovely light display.

    Es Devlin, the sculpture's creator, was inspired by the history behind the four historic lion statues. Edwin Landseer, the designer of the lions, wanted them to look much more animated, but Queen Victoria refused his plan. This made Devlin wonder, "What if we could give a lion a poetic voice?" According to Devlin, although England has seen many poems about national identity in recent years, these works have been lacking imagination. "I wanted to make a piece that was poetic and collective" he told BBC News.

    After standing for almost 180 years, the purpose of Trafalgar Square has changed over the years. But thanks to the high-tech lion and its poetry, the square is standing the test of time.

    As we all know, there are plenty of different parks to visit in the UK. All theme parks in Britain have cafes, restaurants, picnic areas and gift shops, so you'll still have plenty to see and do when you and the kids have been on enough rides. There are usually smaller "funfair" rides and games as well, so younger children won't get bored. Several theme parks also have other attractions next to them, e. g. water parks often open all year round, unlike the theme parks.

    Whenever you are in Britain, there's likely to be a theme park within one or two hours' drive, bus ride or train journey. Several theme parks even have accommodation(膳宿)so you can stay for a day for two if you want to make a trip into a short holiday.

    Prices for UK theme parks vary considerably; some have an entrance price which allows you to go on all the rides, while in others you have to pay for every ride individually. It can also make a difference whether you go during peak time or not. For example, tickets always cost more during school holidays and weekends than they do during the weekdays.

    Theme parks always get very busy during the summer months, so if you don't like crowds it's usually a good idea to go earlier or later in the year!

    If you're thinking of visiting a UK theme park, it's worth having a look for special offers on tickets. Products such as chocolate bars and cereals sometimes have "buy one get one free" offers on theme park tickets, so keep a look out in shops and supermarkets.

Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's "Oshbot" robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees." We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us," said Breazeal.