Many experts say that Billy Wilder changed the history of American movies. He is often called the best movie maker Hollywood has ever had. He was known for making movies that offered sharp social comment. Wilder was one of the first directors to do this.

    Billy Wilder was born in 1906 in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Billy Wilder started law school in Vienna, Austria. However, he began reporting for a Vienna newspaper after graduation. By the 1920s, he was writing movies in Germany. However, the Nazis had risen to power in the nation. Wider was Jewish, and he recognized that he had no future in Nazi Germany. In 1933, he went to Paris. There he directed a movie for the first time. It was called “The Bad Seed”. Then he received word that producers in the United States had accepted one of his scripts. Billy Wilder left Europe for America.

    In America he formed a writing team with Charles Brackett. The two writers created many films together. Wilder and Brackett wrote several successful movies. One was the nineteen thirty-nine movie, “Ninotchka”, starring Greta Garbo. Ernst Lubitsch directed the film. Wilder always praised this man as a friend and teacher whose humor and expert direction greatly influenced his works.

    In 1954, Billy Wilder became an independent producer. The nest year, Wilder's first movie as an independent filmmaker was a huge success. It was “The Seven Year Itch”. In 1959, Wilder made a funny movie that was very popular. I.A.L. Diamond joined Wilder in writing “Some Like It Hot”.

    By the 1980s, Wilder no longer was considered the most unusual, creative movie-maker in Hollywood. In recent years, however, Billy Wilder received many more awards and honors. Critics praised his gifts to movie making. In 1987, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. It is the highest award a producer can receive.

    CHICAGO -- New research on vegetables and aging gives mothers another reason to say "I told you so." It is found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline（下降） sometimes associated with growing old.

    On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

    The research in almost 2,000 Chicago-area men and women doesn't prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but it adds to mounting evidence pointing in that direction. The findings also echo（回应） previous research in women only.

    Green leafy vegetables including spinach（菠菜）, kale and collards （甘蓝） appeared to be the most beneficial. The researchers said that may be because they contain healthy amounts of vitamin E, an antioxidant（抗氧化剂） that is believed to help fight chemicals produced by the body that can damage cells.

    Vegetables generally contain more vitamin E than fruits, which were not linked with slowed mental decline in the study. Vegetables also are often eaten with healthy fats such as salad oils, which help the body absorb vitamin E and other antioxidants, said lead author Martha Clare Morris, a researcher at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

    The fats from healthy oils can help keep cholesterol（胆固醇）low and arteries （动脉）clear, which both contribute to brain health. The study was published in this week's issue of the journal Neurology and funded with grants from the National Institute on Aging.

    For tourists holding the Barcelona Card, the information below will be useful if you plan to admire some artworks or architectures there.

    Sagrada Familia

    Opening hours: 09:00-18:00(October-March); 09:00-20:00(April-September)

    Admission: 11, or 11, or 10 with the Barcelona Card

    The project's vast sale and its special design have made it one of Barcelona's top tourist attractions for many years.

    La Pedrera

    Opening hours: November-February: 09:00-18:30; March-October: 09:00-20:00

    Admission：$ 9.50. Save 20% with the Barcelona Card.

    It is a unique modernist building made of bricks and colorful tiles（瓦）. Visitors can see the amazing 800 square meters attic（阁楼）with 270 brick arches that give you a feeling that you are walking inside the skeleton of a whale.

    Barcelona FC Museum

    Opening hours: 6th April-4th October:10:00-20:00;the rest of the year. 10:00-18:30

    Admission：$8.50 for entry to the museum and $17 for a guided tour.

    When you buy your ticket you have two options: a ticket for the museum to see the football stadium or a special one for $15 where you get to see the stadium and the scenes at the club.

    Picasso Museum

    Opening hours: Check the website for details as they vary depending on the time of the year.

    Admission：$9 for main exhibition-extra for special showings. Save 50% with Barcelona Card.

    The museum has arranged Picasso's paintings from his early days to his final works. Arranging the paintings in this way gives you a fascinating insight into the development of Picasso.

    Are you a procrastinator（拖拉者）? It's a common problem. And it can be harmful, as previous research has shown that people who procrastinate have higher levels of stress and lower well-being, reported the Association for Psychological Science in the US. But a new study has found a way to deal with this problem: Be more connected to your future self.

    Psychologists think that each person believes that they are really two people: “Present Me” and “Future Me”. “People act as if they prefer their current selves' needs and desires to those of their future selves,” wrote psychologists Neil Lewis and Daphna Oyserman.

    Oyserman and Lewis decided to try to find a way to make “Present Me” imagine exactly how “Future Me” would feel the night before a big paper was due, though “Present Me” hadn't started yet. They made “Present Me” think about a far-off event as a number of days away, not months or years.

    Thinking about events in this way meant that something like a friend's wedding seemed 16.3 days sooner when considered in days rather than months and 11.4 months sooner when considered in months rather than years.

    The researchers also tried to find out whether people would take action sooner if they were told a certain event was happening in X days rather than years.  For example, participants imagined they had a newborn child, and that the child would need to go to college in either 18 years or 6,570 days. The researchers found those in the “days” condition planned to start saving four times sooner than those in the “years” condition.

    So if you think of your life in days instead of years, you may get things done quicker.

    Want a wonderful travel in London? Don't miss the following!

    Cartoon Museum

    This highly entertaining London tourist attraction covers the history and development of British cartoons from the 18th century to the present day. You can find a detailed collection of all types of cartoons in this museum including caricatures (讽刺漫画) and rare examples of cartoon art: it's an ideal place to entertain kids of all ages as well as a serious collection for animation enthusiasts.

    There are over nine hundred pieces on exhibit and the museum regularly holds events where both children and adults can participate. Booking for these events is recommended due to the popularity year round of this London Museum.

    Telephone: 020 7580 8155

    Chislehurst Caves

    Chislehurst in London is home to chalk caves that were mined by hand for over 8,000 years. A tour of these caves is an exciting way to see how British people have impacted on their environment over thousands of years.

    Telephone: 020 8467 3264

    The Old Operating Theatre Museum

    The Old Operating Theatre Museum is one London museum offering a fascinating insight into the medical profession of the past. This 300-year old herb garret (阁楼) is Britain's only surviving operating theatre, with a wooden operating table and an observation stand, from which visitors can witness surgery performed.

    Telephone: 020 7188 2679

    Curzon Mayfair Cinema Museum

    Recently voted one of London's best cinemas by Time Out readers, the Curzon Mayfair cinema is everything you would expect from this particular part of town: luxurious (奢华的) and tasteful. Showing mostly art-house and independent films, the Curzon Mayfair is unique in the world of London cinema for its role in screening these films for industry and press.

    Telephone: 033 3321 0104

    Your next car might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now on the way. Last month, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France. Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or earlier.

    Driverless cars will first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant（统治的）are highly populated urban areas. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cars. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.

    Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That's big—the annual deaths on the world's roads are about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric.

    On the other hand, driverless cars will cause problems. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Traditional carmakers are especially scared. The cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imagine Germany, where automobile making is the largest industry.

    Dramatic changes are coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have taken them into their long-term planning. A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. Now what about the driverless cars?