How to Manage Your Phone's Data Use

    Smart phones give you access to a wealth of information and media, but most networks put a limit on the amount of data you can use each month. A typical phone contract includes a data allowance of between 500MB and 10GB per month. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} You see, your usage can mount up surprisingly quickly – watching a film on the phone is about 700MB in SD, an hour of streaming TV is around 500MB or 60-140MB for the same of radio, chatting on Skype for an hour is around 40MB. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    If possible, wait until you can connect to free Wi-Fi before using your phone's data features.

    When you are on the road, use your car's GPS, not your phone, to find the way. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} But maps are preloaded in a GPS, making this free to use.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Many of these are funded by ads that pop up on your screen. Every ad has to download through your network, using up your data allowance.

    If you regularly need to use a lot of data on your phone, consider a data-compressing(压缩) app, such as Onavo(www.onavo.com). {#blank#}5{#/blank#} So you use less of your monthly allowance. You may have to subscribe to such compression services, so you'll need to weigh up whether it's worth the cost.

    “Can't hold a candle to” is a popular expression. When there wasn't electricity, someone would have a servant light his way by holding a candle. The expression meant that the person who cannot hold a candle to you is not fit even to be your servant. Now, it means such a person cannot compare or compete.

    Another expression is “hold your tongue.” It means to be still and not talk. “Hold your tongue” is not something you would tell a friend. But a parent or teacher might use the expression to quiet a noisy child.

    “Hold out” is an expression one hears often in sports reports and labor news. It means to refuse to play or work. Professional football and baseball players ''hold out” if their team refuses to pay them what they think they are worth.

    The expression “hold up” has several different meanings. One is a robbery. A man with a gun may say, “This is a hold-up. Give me your money.” Another meaning is to delay. A driver who was held up by heavy traffic might be late for work. Another meaning is for a story to be considered true after an investigation. A story can hold up if it is proved true.

    “Hold on” is another expression, which means waiting or stopping. As you leave for school, your brother may say, “Hold on, you forgot your book.” It is used to ask a telephone caller to wait and not hang up his telephone.

    Our final expression is “hold the line”. That means to keep a problem or situation from getting worse—to hold steady. For example, the president may say he will “hold the line on taxes”. He means there will be no increase in taxes.

    What makes a sense of humor is a difficult thing to tell. Different people find different things funny, and what may seem hilarious to some, will be highly rude to others. However, having some kind of sense of humor is important for reducing stress and getting along with others. Therefore, it's important to think about ways to improve your sense of humor.

    Look for the funny side of situations. While it can be difficult at times to find the funny side in unfortunate events when you're having a bad day, try to think about how the situation might look like to other people, and attempt not to get too angry. Laughing over minor accidents, trips and falls will help you in preventing the loss of temper that you will regret later.

    Learn some basic jokes. Some people find it hard to remember jokes, and feel left out when others are telling them. It's worth trying to learn a few jokes that you can pull out the bag when you need to, or regularly think about how you can turn a funny situation that occurs in daily life into an entertaining anecdote(趣闻) for later.

    Look at joke or humor cards. There are many different kinds of funny cards available, which can be a great inspiration for finding ways to improve your sense of humor. Giving an appropriate funny card to friends and family on the right occasion will show that you have a good sense of humor and are thinking about them.

    Learn from friends. Look at friends that you think have a great sense of humor. How do they deal with situations, and what kind of jokes do they make? Is there anything you can take away from their actions?

    How do young children learn to have good values? How can parents teach their children about the importance of kindness and patience? At a time when more and more parents worry about the violent images(暴力形象) their children see on TV, some are turning to fairy tales(童话).

    It is believed that fairy tales have a great influence on children because they describe the two sides of good and evil(邪恶) very clearly. When children hear the stories, they learn to care about others' feelings. In each tale, they can see that there are many different kinds of people in the world and that we all have a choice about what kind of person we want to be. We can choose to do good actions, rather than bad ones, in our lives.

    What kind of values can children learn from fairy tales? In The Princess and the Pea(《豌豆公主》), a poorly dressed girl, who insists she is a princess, is given a difficult test by the Queen. When she passes the test, we learn that her dream comes true because she stays true to herself. In The Little Mermaid(《小美人鱼》), the mermaid, who lives under the sea, wishes to be with the humans on land. Through her experiences, we learn about the importance of living with and accepting other cultures. In Pinocchio, a wooden puppet(木偶) turns into a boy when he finally learns how to tell the truth.

    Teaching values is the reason most often given for encouraging children to read stories. These fairy tales can teach children lessons about human relationships that are accepted around the world for many countries. This might be the reason why they have been around for so long and will not disappear any more soon.

    As any plane passenger will confirm, a crying baby is almost impossible to ignore, no matter how hard you try. Now scientists believe they may have worked out why. A baby's cry pulls at the heartstrings（扣人心弦）in a way while other cries don't, researchers found.

    Researchers found that a baby's cry can trigger unique emotional responses in the brain, making it impossible for us to ignore them—whether we are parents or not. Other types of cries, including calls of animals in great pain, fail to get the same response, suggesting the brain is programmed to respond specifically to a baby's cry.

A team of Oxford University scientists scanned the brains of 28 men and women as they listened to a variety of calls and cries. After 100 milliseconds — roughly the time it takes to blink (眨眼) —two parts of the brain that respond to emotion lit up. Their response to a baby's cry was particularly strong. The response was seen in both men and women—even if they had no children.

    Researcher Dr Christine Parsons said, “You might read that men should just notice a baby and step over it and not see it, but it's not true. There is a special processing in men and women, which makes sense from an evolutionary(演化的）view that both men and women would be responding to these cries.” The study was in people who were not parents, yet they are all responding at 100ms to these particular cries, so this might be a fundamental response present in all of us regardless of parental status.

    Fellow researcher Katie Young said it may take a bit longer for someone to recognize their own child's cries because they need to do more “fine-grained analysis”. The team had previously found that our reactions speed up when we hear a baby crying. Adults performed better on computer games when they heard the sound of a baby crying than after they heard recordings of adults crying.

    Grown-ups are often surprised by how well they remember something they learned as children but have never practiced ever since. A man who has not had a chance to go swimming for years can still swim as well as ever when he gets back in the water. He can get on a bicycle after many years and still ride away. He can play catch and hit a ball as well as his son. A mother who has not thought about the words for remember the story of Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

    One explanation is the law of overlearning, which can be stated as follows: Once we have learned something, additional learning trials increase the length of time we will remember it.

    In childhood we usually continue to practice such skills as swimming, bicycle riding, and playing baseball long after we have learned them. We continue to listen to and remind ourselves of words such as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and childhood tales such as Cinderella and Goldilocks. We not only learn but overlearn.

    The multiplication tables(乘法口诀表)are an exception to the general rule that we forget rather quickly the things that we learn in school, because they are another of the things we overlearn in childhood.

    The law of overlearning explains why cramming (突击学习)for an examination, though it may result in a passing grade, is not a satisfactory way to learn a college course. By cramming, a student may learn the subject well enough to get by on the examination, but he is likely soon to forget almost everything he learned. A little overlearning, on the other hand, is really necessary for one's future development.