My transportation was unexpectedly smooth and I arrived at the meeting half an hour earlier. I kept my eyes on the restaurant door. Several customers entered, but not my friend. At 6:00 pm, she sent me a text message:“Urgent work to finish. Will be 20 minutes late.”

I had left my book in the office, so I spent the time thinking of my experiences of being late in China. On my first visit in 1985, punctuality was deeply rooted in the Chinese hearts. There were no traffic jams then.

    As a teacher in Canada, I always insisted on punctuality. I would open the classroom door to a late student for the first time and the second, but not the third. During the six years I worked for CCTV, I had a Chinese friend whom I often saw at lunch time, or after work. We used to meet at the subway station nearby. He was always late by 10-20 minutes. To myquestion, “You were busy?” he would surprisingly answer, “ No.” Once I asked him to check the clock in his office, he smiled.

    In March 2015, I got permanent residence (居住权) in China.The ceremony was scheduled for 9:00 am at the Public Security Bureau on the Second Ring Road. I told my driver I had to get there by 8: 40 am. “No problem,”he replied. But he thought he had time to drop someone off at the airport before picking me up. I desperately waited for him. Then, to rub salt into my wound, he had to stop at the exit of a gas station. Finally, I entered the room at 9:07 am ── the last guest to arrive!

    The more hours that young children spend in child care, the more likely they are to turn out aggressive and disobedient by the time they are in kindergarten, according to the largest study of child care and development ever conducted. Researchers said this correlation (相关性) held true regardless of whether the children came from rich or poor homes, were looked after by a relative or at a center, and whether they were girls or boys.

    What is uncertain, however, is whether the child care actually causes the problem or whether children likely to turn out aggressive happen to be those who spend more hours in child care. It also remains unclear whether reducing the amount of time in child care will reduce the risk that a child will turn into a mean person. What's more, quality child care is associated with increased skills in intellectual ability such as language and memory, leading some academics to suggest that child care turns out children who are “smart and naughty”.

    The government-sponsored research, which has tracked more than 1,300 children at 10 sites across the country since 1991, is bound to cause the debate over child care again: How should people balance work and family? And how should parents, especially mothers. Resolve the demands that are placed on them to be both breadwinners and supermoms?

    That debate was already on display at a news briefing yesterday, where researchers themselves had different opinions about the data and its implications (含义). “There is a constant relationship between time in care and problem behavior, especially those involving aggression and behavior,” said Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College in London, one of the lead investigators of the study who has previously annoyed women's groups because of his criticisms of child care. “On behalf of fathers or mothers?” interrupted Sarah Friedman, a developmental psychologist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and one of the other lead scientists on the study. “On behalf of parents and families,” responded Belsky.

    “NICHD is not willing to get into policy recommendations.” said Friedman, contradicting her colleague. “There are other possibilities that can be entertained. Yes it is a quick solution—more hours in child care is associated with more problems. The easy solution is to cut the number of hours but that may have implications for the family that may not be beneficial for the development of the children in terms of economics.” In an interview after the briefing, Friedman said that asking parents to work fewer hours and spend more time with their children usually meant a loss of family income, which adversely(不利地) affects children.

    Scientists said that the study was highly reliable. But the researchers said they had no idea whether the behavioral difficulties persisted as the children moved to higher grades.

    The universe looks like a pretty quiet place to live. But the universe is filled with dangerous things, all struggling to be the one to wipe us off the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely, but if you wait long enough, one of them is certain to get us. But which one?

1). Death by Asteroid (小行星)

    Of all the ways we might meet our untimely death, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a universal shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I'd imagine they would tell you to take this seriously.

2). Death by Exploding Star

    When a huge star ends its life, it does so with a bang, which sends death spreading across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Many studies show that the bang would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars so close are able to do the deed.

3). Death by Dying Sun

    The sun is important to us; without it, we'd freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged, already halfway to running out of fuel, expanding into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then, it'll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans. Happily, that's a long time from now.

4). Death by Black Hole

    Black holes are misunderstood. They don't wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they turn around the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it's possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary paths would be disturbed, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be thrown out into deep space.

    Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don't have to worry too much about black holes.

    My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is concerned...and forever is a long, long time.

    I was reading these interesting stories behind a group of great logos in the world. Personally Nike is my favorite one—it's so simple. And I like the stories behind them, which made me forget all other things. McDonald's, Apple, Mercedes Benz and Adidas own great logos as well, and they are among my favorites.

    Nike

    In the Greek myth, Nike is the goddess of victory and the source of inspiration for soldiers. This logo represents the wing in the famous statue of the Greek goddess. Nike's logo was designed by Carolyn Davidson in 1971 for $35, and was registered as a trademark in 1995.

    McDonald's

    The logo was designed in 1962 by Jim Schindler to resemble the arch-shaped(拱形的) signs on the side of the company's then walk-up hamburger stand. Later on, the two golden arches were combined together to form the M. The McDonald's name was added to the logo in 1968.

    Apple

    There are different stories behind Apple's logo. The first logo was a reference to the religious story of Adam and Eve, in which the apple represented the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One year later, the second logo was designed in 1977 by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, and it described Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. This logo didn't stay long. One year later it was replaced almost immediately by graphic designer Rob Janoff's "rainbow apple", a rainbow-colored silhouette(轮廓) of an apple with a bite taken out of it. And then the rainbow-colored apple was replaced by the one-colored logo in 1998. It has not been changed so far.

    Mercedes Benz

    The Mercedes Benz logo, which was originally created by Gottlieb Daimler in 1909, consists of a simple description of a three-pointed star that represents its rule of the land, the sea and the air. The company was founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Mercedes is the name of Maybach's elder daughter, while Benz came as a result of a combination with Benz, Cie and DMG in 1926.

    Adidas

    The Adidas logo, which was created by the founder of the company Adi Dassler, represents mountains, pointing towards the challenges that are seen ahead and goals that can be achieved. The logo was used for the first time in 1967.

    Last week, Vodafone started a test of the UK's first full 5G service, available for use by businesses in Salford. It is part of its plan to trial the technology in seven UK cities. But what can we expect from the next generation of mobile technology?

    One thing we will see in the preparation for the test is lots of tricks with the new tech. Earlier this year, operators paid almost £ 1.4 billion for the 5G wavelengths, and to compensate for that cash, they will need to catch the eye of consumers. In September, Vodafone used its bit of the range to display the UK's first hologram (全息) call. The Manchester City captain Steph Houghton appeared as a hologram in Newbury. It isn't all holograms, however: 5G will offer faster internet access, with Ofcom (英国通讯管理局) suggesting that video that takes a minute to download on 4G will be available in just a second.

    The wider application is to support connected equipment on the "internet of things" -not just the internet-enabled fridge that can reorder your milk for you, but the network that will enable driverless cars and delivery drones (无人机) to communicate with each other.

    Prof William Webb has warned that the technology could be a case of the emperor's new clothes. Much of the speed increase, he claims, could have been achieved by putting more money in the 4G network, rather than a new technology.  Other different voices have suggested that a focus on rolling out wider rural broadband access and addressing current network coverage would be more beneficial to the UK as a whole.

    Obviously, 5G will also bring a cost to consumers. It requires a handset for both 5G and 4G, and the first 5G-enabled smart phones are expected in the coming year. With the slow pace of network rollout so far, it is likely that consumers will end up upgrading to a new 5 G phone well before 5 G becomes widely available in the next couple of years.

    Have you ever been afraid to talk back when you were treated unfairly? Have you ever bought something just because the salesman talked you into it? Many people are afraid to speak out for their rights. Dr Robert Albert, author of Stand Up, Speak Out, and Talk Back thinks it's because their self-respect is low.

    But Albert and other scientists are doing something to help people help themselves. They offer "assertiveness training" courses A. T. for short. In the A. T. Course people learn that they have a right to be themselves. They learn to speak out and feel good about doing so. They learn to help themselves without hurting other people.

In one way, learning to speak out is to get rid of fear, a group taking an A. T. Course will help the shy person to lose his fear. But a. T. uses an even stronger motive— he needs to share. The shy person speaks out in the group because he wants to tell how he feels. Whether or not you speak up for yourself depends on your self-respect. If someone you face is more "important" than you, you may feel less of a person. You start to doubt your answers to problems. You can get to feel good about yourself. And once you do you can learn to speak out.