Planning a visit to the UK? Here we help with ways to cut your costs.

    AVOID BIG EVENTS  Big sporting events, concerts and exhibitions can increase the cost of accommodation and make it harder to find a room. A standard double room at the Thistle Brighton on the final Friday of the Brighton Comedy Festival (19 Oct.) cost £169.15 at Booking.com. A week later, the same room cost £118.15.

    If you can be flexible and want to know dates to avoid—or you're looking for a big event to pass your time—check out sites such as Whatsonwhen.com, which allow you to search for events in the UK by city, date and category.

    STAYAWAY FROM THE STATION If traveling to your destination by train, you may want to find a good base close to the station, but you could end up paying more for the sake of convenience at the start of your holiday.

    Don't be too choosy about the part of town you stay in. Booking two months in advance, the cheapest room at Travelodge's Central Euston hotel in London for Saturday 22 September was £95.95. A room just a tube journey away at its Covent Garden hotel was £75.75. And at Farringdon, a double room cost just £62.95.

    LOOK AFTER YOURSELF Really central hotels in cities such as London, Edinburgh and Cardiff can cost a fortune, especially at weekends and during big events. As an alternative consider checking into a self-catering flat with its own kitchen. Often these flats are hidden away on the top floors of city centre buildings. A great example is the historic O'Neill Flat on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, available for £420 for five days in late September, with room for four adults.

    GET ON A BIKE London's ‘Boris bikes' have attracted the most attention, but other cities also have similar programmes that let you rent a bicycle and explore at your own pace, saving you on public transport or car parking costs.

    Among the smaller cities with their own programmes are Newcastle (casual members pay around £1.50 for two hours) and Cardiff (free for up to 30 minutes, or £5 per day).  (358 words)

    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.

    On a hot summer day in America a little boy decided to go for a swim in the old swimming hole behind his house. He dived into the cool water, not realizing that as he swam towards the middle of the lake, a crocodile was swimming toward him.

    His mother in the house was looking out of the window and saw the two as they got closer and closer. In great fear, she ran toward the water, shouting to her son as loudly as she could. Hearing her voice, the little boy became alarmed and made a U-turn to swim to his mother. It was too late. Just as he reached her, the crocodile reached him. From the shore, the mother grabbed her little boy by the arms just as the crocodile snatched his legs. That began an incredible tug-of-war (拔河) between the two. The crocodile was much stronger than the mother, but the mother was much too passionate to let go. A farmer happened to drive by, heard their screams, raced from his truck, took aim and shot the crocodile.

    Remarkably, after weeks and weeks in the hospital, the little boy survived. His legs were extremely scarred by the attack of the animal. And, on his arms, were deep scratches where his mother's fingernails dug into his flesh in her effort to hang on to the son she loved.

    The newspaper reporter, who interviewed the boy, asked if he would show him his scars(伤疤). The boy lifted his legs. And then, with obvious pride, he said to the reporter, “But look at my arms. I have great scars on my arms, too. I have them because my Mom wouldn't let go.”

    Never judge another person's scars, because you don't know how they were made.

    I fondly remember road trips as a child, sitting in the sunny backseat of my mom's car, daydreaming about other worlds and fantastic adventures. As I've grown older, my daydreams have become increasingly occupied less with fantasy but more with the reality of my past and future. Nearly everyone daydreams about their future and reflects nostalgically (念旧地) or negatively on moments of the past. These moments can provide inspiration, but if you spend too much time daydreaming in this fashion, you may be reducing your success in the present.

    If you've ever planned a vacation, you're familiar with the impatient days tapping at your desk, dreaming of the lazy, relaxing days to come. Unfortunately, sometimes you end up comparing the real vacation to your imagined one, and it doesn't live up to the standard. Reflecting nostalgically on the past can also prevent present enjoyment. It is equally fun to reflect on past achievements or fun events, but it's possible to be so consumed with happy memories that you miss opportunities to create more.

    We've all made mistakes that we're ashamed of; reflecting on them is an important step in correcting those mistakes and becoming a better person. But dwelling（细想）too long on your past can also be negative. If you dwell too long on a past mistake, you can begin to equate（使等同）yourself with your past and feel farther away from the person you want to be. Train your brain to think quickly about the past and future, and take only the information and inspiration that you need in order to be the best person you can without resting on your glory moments or your mistakes.

    If your identity is not dependent on the past or future, every experience is new and every day is a blank page for you to write. A fun mental exercise is to always tell yourself that you're experiencing things for the first time. So take advantage of each moment you're given.

    Three-day－old Oskar Lunde sleeps in a small bed at an Estonian(爱沙尼亚) hospital.

    Across the room, his father turns on a laptop computer. "Now we will register our child, "Andrei Lunde says as he lifts his identification card into the card reader. His wife, Olga, looks on. And just like that, Oskar is Estonia's newest citizen. No paper. No time spent standing in a line.

    Estonia has launched a project to make government administration completely digital. The goal is to reduce the size of the government work force, open up the decision-making process and fuel economic growth.

    Need medicine? Reach for a computer and send an email or text message to a doctor. Need help from the local government? Click on a link to the government websites…

    Estonia has created a system that supports electronic authentication(身份验证) and digital signatures. It provides paperless communications for both the government and private industry.

    However, there are a few things that one cannot do electronically in Estonia: marry, end a marriage or buy and sell property. That is only because the government has decided it is very important to show up in person for some big life events. When Estonia declared independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, it had to build a new economy. Government leaders looked for an industry where the country could compete. They decided on information technology and the Internet.

    When the poor country needed to replace a 1930s phone system, former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves rejected the offer of a free analog(模拟) system from Finland and argued for a digital one.

    Last year, information and communications made up 5.9 percent of the economy. The government hopes to increase that figure with an "e-residency" program that lets businessmen around the world register their businesses in Estonia, thus gaining a presence in the European Union. More than 51, 000 people from 167 countries have registered at a cost of only 100 euros, or＄114 each.

    When you think of batteries, you'll likely think about them powering up remote controls, cellphones, flashlights and toys. But some people carry a battery around in their body to power a pacemaker (起搏器). It isn't really pleasant and easy to carry batteries because they need to be replaced so often and they can leak poisonous chemicals. A battery-powered pacemaker may become a thing of the past, thanks to a new technology developed by UCLA researchers: A biological super capacitor (超级电容器) , which is thinner than several hairs.

    Teams of researchers at UCLA and the University of Connecticut published a paper in a journal explaining their new invention. The super capacitor is made from a carbon material, and coated with human-like proteins that act as electrodes (电极). But what makes the device different is that it is powered by an energy harvester that changes body heat and movement in the blood into energy.

    Those traditional pacemakers are six to eight millimeters(毫米) thick. They are much bigger. The new super capacitor, which, due to its lack of battery, is only one micrometer(微米) thick. This "little" feature could benefit the new pacemaker's energy efficiency, researchers stated. Also, unlike other batteries used in medical treatments, the super capacitor can bend and twist in the body without suffering damage.

    Though they've not been widely used in the medical world, super capacitors have the ability to serve as a safer and more efficient medical device than the traditional battery-operated devices, the researchers believe.

    "In order to be effective, battery free pacemakers must have super capacitors that can get, store and transport energy. However, commercial super capacitors are too slow to make them work", said Maher El-Kady, a UCLA researcher and co-author of the study. “Our research focused on the custom-designed super capacitor to capture energy effectively, and finding a way to make it exist together successfully with the human body."