The book ABigFatCrisis: TheHiddenForcesBehindObesityEpidemic— andHowWeCanEndIt by Deborah Cohen, a senior natural scientist, is very popular now. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} But according to this book, the following are some misunderstandings of obesity or being overweight.

1)．If you're obese, blame your genes.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Yet, between 1980 and 2000, the number of Americans who are obese has doubled—too quickly for genetic factors to be responsible. At restaurants, a dollar puts more calories on our plates than ever before, because restaurant meals usually have more calories than what we prepare at home, so people who eat out more frequently have higher rates of obesity than those who eat out less.

2)．If you're obese, you lack self­control.

    Research shows that if we are faced with too much information, we have a tendency to make poor choices on diet. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Even, the most vigilant(警觉的)people may not be good controllers of themselves.

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    Although the US Department of Agriculture estimates that fewer than 5 per cent of Americans live in the “food deserts”， about 65 per cent of the nation's population is obese. For most of us, obesity is not related to access to more fresh fruits and vegetables, but to the choices we make in supermarkets.

4)．The problem is not that we eat too much, but that we don't exercise.

    Michelle Obama's “Let's Move” campaign is based on the idea that if kids exercise more, childhood obesity rates will decrease. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} In fact, although a drop in work­related physical activity may explain up to 100 fewer calories burned, leisure physical activity appears to have increased.

    Here are some tips that will help you get rid of anxiety over being phoneless or reduce your risk of phone addiction.

    Disable the Internet connection. Take up your courage to disable the Internet connection on your smartphone.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} Needless to say, you will save o lot of cash on it.

    Find your passion.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Find your dream job and you will leave your “best friend” at least for a while. If you have nothing to do at home, try a new hobby that will distract you from all those apps and social media.

    Purchase an ordinary phone. No smartphones. No iphones. Remember those times when we used phones in emergency situations only or when we wanted to invite someone to a party.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Don't let the fear control you. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Claim your joy. I can only speak for myself here, but I think that a smartphone is one of the worst inventions. It's useful and helpful at times, but it has ruined many happy lives and relationships. That's because we allow our phones to control us.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} The fear of being phoneless is a serious problem. It's like drug or cigarette addiction. If you want to change your life, sell your expensive smartphone, buy an ordinary one, and become a sociable person. There are so many wonderful people that can bring joy into our life. Chatting online is great, but chatting in real life is best.

A. Free your mind.

B. Choose other electronic devices.

C. Keep your mind sharp and alert.

D. Beat your social butterfly wings.

E. Those who love their jobs never feel exhausted and bored.

F. Thus, you'll spend less time with your phone and more time in real life.

G. I bet some of you remember times when few people had a phone at home.

    Taking a math test can be pretty stressful. Even if you know the material, you can still get the problem wrong. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Therefore you'll improve your grades, as well as your math skills.

    Write it out

    You can also check a math problem by writing everything out on paper. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Writing out math problems reduces your chances of missing anything to the lowest possible level, which is a common cause of incorrect answers.

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    Make sure your answers work by doing the opposite procedure of what your problem calls for, including the answer you got the first time around. In other words, you would use the opposite of this addition problem—subtraction (减法)—to determine whether your answer is the correct one.

    Plug in（代入）

    You may find that a variable isn't good enough or have a problem where you have to solve for a variable (变量). {#blank#}4{#/blank#} This is the only real way to assure yourself that the answer you've found is correct.

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    If the result of a problem seems to make no sense, it indicates that the answer is incorrect. For example, if you get an answer in the millions and you know it should be in the thousands, you've likely misplaced a point. Go back through the work on your paper to make sure all of your formulas and calculations are correct. If everything looks okay, do the problem again and compare the result of the second try to what you've got on the first try.

A. Do the opposite.

B. Correct the answers.

C. Plug the variable in the equation (方程) to check it out.

D. Knowing how to go through your math test and checking your work can save you from handing in a test full of mistakes.

E. It also helps you to figure out everything after you have already finished the test.

F. Check for a reasonable answer

G. This helps you to know what information you have and what information you need to solve.

    Robots make me nervous — especially the ones which seem to think for themselves. I was embarrassed to admit this till I heard that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, felt the same way.

Gates said in an interview with the social networking and news website Reddit: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern."

    Well, maybe I don't have to worry about my computer and kitchen equipment yet. After I use them I can always pull the plug. But in the future, machines might find a way to prevent us from switching them off. There's a terrible thought!

    Maybe the problem with computers too clever for us is not that they are evil like some we've seen in sci-fi movies. What could put us in danger is that they might be too efficient. That's what philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University believes. He says that machines are indifferent to humans and in pursuit of their own goals, the destruction of people might be just additional damage. Bostrom gives us an example: A machine which might have as its only goal to produce as many paperclips as possible might look at human bodies as extra material for paperclips and go after you. Because it is, well, a machine, it would not take pity on you.

    It's a good thing that American writer Isaac Asimov thought about how far robots can go and left us his three rules of robotics. They state that a robot may not hurt a human being or allow the human being to come to harm.

I'm glad my machines at home are "dumb". All my cleaner wants to take over is the carpet in my living room. Let's hope they don't create an appliance which wants to take over the world!

    The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups. Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, uneasiness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; thus efforts may be made to fill every gap(间隙) with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.

    Many Native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communicating among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thai persons do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what may be implied(暗示) is that the person wants the listener to think about what has been said before continuing. In these cultures, silence is a call for thinking.

    Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with disagreements among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions (指示，命令) are given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.

    Nurses and other care-givers need to notice the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal worries their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient's silence is not disturbed too early or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing(治愈) value of silence can use this understanding to help in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.

    Nowadays, most people have a device that features artificial intelligence (AI), with the likes of Siri always there to greet us with a friendly voice.

    But Microsoft's XiaoIce is different. Launched in 2014 for the Chinese market, "she" has a creative advantage over her competitors. While most AI assistants simply read out information they get online, XiaoIce has a "realness" that the others are short of. Indeed, if you asked nicely, she could read you a poem from the weekly column in China Daily.

    The newspaper has been printing XiaoIce's self-penned poetry each week since Aug 19, taken from her own book of poems, The Sunlight that Lost the Glass Window.

    To turn XiaoIce into a master of poetry, Microsoft scientists "fed" her the works of over 500 influential modern poets, reported China Daily.

    This led to her figuring out a writing style of her own and creating over 70,000 original poems. Most of the poems are so comparable to those written by humans that they cannot be easily distinguished, and XiaoIce's book even got good feedback from experts.

    "XiaoIce's work carries a strange taste. The more you chew on it, the more interesting it becomes," Scholar Zhang, a literature professor at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, told China Daily.

    However, it seems not everyone is a fan. "The poems dissatisfied me with their slippery tone and rhythm. The sentences were aimless, lacking the inner logic for emotional expression," Yunnan-based poet Yu told China Youth Daily. This isn't the first AI to attempt poetry. Last year, Google's Parsey McParseface made some poems of its own, although they were branded "wrongly" by reviewers. While it seems like AI is becoming more "intelligent" and less "artificial" all the time, when it comes to creativity, perhaps this is one job that software should leave to us humans.