Avatar has become the most successful movie in 2009. It is about a soldier whose mind is set into the body of a giant blue alien. He was sent to a dangerous planet called Pandora. His mission（使命） is to find a rare mineral（矿物质）. The mineral is the key to solve the earth's energy crisis(危机).

    According to the latest figures（数字）, Avatar has become the fastest film ever to make more than 1 billion dollars in ticket sales around the world. When it had been shown in cinemas for several days, it became the most popular film ever made.

    Avatar knocked the movie Titanic off the international release top spot. But Titanic's director James Cameron probably won't be too upset, because Avatar is directed by him as well! Before Avatar was filmed, the best selling film ever was Titanic.

    James Cameron decided to make Avatar in 1999. However, the means（方法）to realize his vision（影像画面） did not exist yet. In 2002, The Lord of the' Rings: The Two Towers made him believe that CGI (电脑影像合成) effects had progressed enough to make this film. After several years of production, the 3D spectacular Avatar successfully showed us a fully immersive experience.

    A research has shown that nearly 90 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human errors. So our aim is a fully autonomous car that gets rid of the cause of most accidents: the driver. Researcher Hodgson points out, “For safety, the faster you can remove humans, the better, even if there are unfortunately a few accidents from new causes. It s a question of balancing the number injured or killed by autonomous vehicles with the people whose lives are potentially saved.”

It's an idea that Elon Musk, chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors, has long believed. His company are determined to be the first to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle to consumers. Last year, Musk announced that Tesla's 2017 goal was “to do an example drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York…and have the car park itself.”

However, even Tesla admits that there are problems to overcome—the software needs further validation and the appropriate regulatory approval needs to be in place. Indeed, recent crashes of Tesla vehicles and Google cars confirm that the software isn't ready yet.

The UK government appears committed to encouraging the development of autonomous vehicles. It's supporting four city trials, publishing the Modem Transport Bill to reduce red tape around their introduction and adapting the legal system to take into account problems such as insurance liability when a human isn't in control of a vehicle.

    The insurance industry is similarly eager to help increase autonomy in cars. As the Association of British Insurers (ABI) points out, “More than 90 per cent of road accidents are caused by human error.” This costs motor insurers a shocking £20m per day in claims.

    For more than fifty years, a worker was forced to sit on the back of a truck and slowly drop plastic barriers（障碍） to set out lanes（车道）on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Every day, their direction changes to control the traffic, meaning an employee had to go through the difficult task every twenty-four hours.

    But a new piece of machinery means the work can be completed in a matter of minutes. A new “zipper truck” has been introduced. The vehicle lays and moves a lane barrier as it drives over the bridge. Last weekend, the bridge was closed so the new safety barrier, designed to reduce the dangers of head-on crashes, could be set up.

    For the longest period in its nearly eighty-year history, the bridge was closed early Saturday to all but walkers, cyclists and buses to set up the barriers on the 1.7-mile bridge. A survivor of a 2008 head-on crash on the bridge spoke Sunday from a wheelchair to help introduce the new barrier, made of steel-clad concrete（铜包混凝土）blocks that can move across the bridge's six lanes to meet traffic needs.

    Gr. Grace Dammann pushed for a safer barrier since becoming unable to walk after the accident. She said she decided to drive near the middle of the bridge, which was called the “suicide（自杀）lane”, because she and her daughter were running late. Brian Clark, who was driving in the opposite direction, had just learned his father had cancer. “He suddenly lost control of the wheel, crossed over and hit my car,” Dammann said.

    She said she and Clark became friends as they persuaded（说服）the government to use the MYM30 million barrier. “I am so thankful,” said Dammann, who came to the ceremony with Clark.

    “Clark and I thank you.”

    These days, it seems that almost all of us are too serious. My older daughter often says to me, "Daddy, you've got that serious look again." Even those of us who are committed to non-seriousness are probably too serious. People are frustrated and anxious about almost everything—being five minutes late, witnessing someone look at us wrong or say the wrong thing, paying bills, waiting in line, overcooking a meal, making an honest mistake -- you name it, and we all lose perspective（理性判断）over it.

    The root of being anxious is our unwillingness to accept life as being different, in any way, from our expectation. Very simply, we want things to be a certain way but they're not a certain way. Life is simply as it is. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Our limited perspective, our hopes and fears become our measure of life, and when circumstances don't fit our ideas, they become our difficulties." We spend our lives wanting things, people, and events to be just as we want them to be—and when they're not, we fight and we suffer.

    The first step in recovering from over-seriousness is to admit that you have a problem. You have to want to change, to become more easygoing. You have to see that your own anxiety is largely of your own creation—it's made up of the way you have set up your life and the way you react to it.

    The next step is to understand the link between your expectations and your frustration level. Whenever you expect something to be a certain way and it isn't, you're upset and you suffer. On the other hand, when you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you're free.

    A good exercise is to try to approach a single day without expectation. Don't expect people to be friendly. When they're not, you won't be surprised or bothered; if they are, you'll be delighted. Don't expect your day to be problem-free. Instead, as problems come up, say to yourself, "Ah, another barrier to overcome." As you approach your day in this manner you'll notice how elegant life can be. Rather than fighting against life, you'll be dancing with it. Pretty soon, with practice, you'll lighten up your entire life. And when you lighten up, life is a lot more fun.

    Before the 1830s, most newspapers were sold through annual subscriptions in America, usually $8 to $10 a year. Today $8 or $10 seems a small amount of money, but at that time these amounts were forbidding to most citizens. Accordingly, newspapers were read almost only by rich people in politics or the trades. In addition, most newspapers had little in them that would appeal to a mass audience. They were dull and visually forbidding. But the revolution that was taking place in the 1830s would change all that.

    The trend, then, was toward the "penny paper"-a term referring to papers made widely available to the public. It meant any inexpensive newspaper; perhaps more importantly it meant newspapers that could be bought in single copies on the street.

    This development did not take place overnight. It had been possible(but not easy)to buy single copies of newspapers before 1830,but this usually meant the reader had to go down to the printer's office to purchase a copy. Street sales were almost unknown. However, within a few years, street sales of newspapers would be commonplace in eastern cities. At first the price of single copies was seldom a penny-usually two or three cents was charged-and some of the older well-known papers charged five or six cents. But the phrase "penny paper" caught the public's fancy, and soon there would be papers that did indeed sell for only a penny.

    This new trend of newspapers for "the man on the street" did not begin well. Some of the early ventures(企业)were immediate failures. Publishers already in business, people who were owners of successful papers, had little desire to change the tradition. It took a few youthful and daring businessmen to get the ball rolling.

    HANGZHOU — Chinese internet giant Alibaba on Tuesday opened a hotel loaded with artificial intelligence (AI) and robots, automating a series of procedures like check­ in, lights control and room service.

    FlyZoo Hotel, opened in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, where Alibaba is headquartered, is known as the company's "first future hotel". Customers can check into the hotel by simply scanning their faces. The facial recognition system installed in the hotel also enables customers to use their faces as key cards to open doors and access another hotel service. Users can also control the lights, televisions and curtains in the room via Alibaba's voice­activated digital assistant, while robots are deployed to serve dishes, cocktails and coffee. Hotel bookings and check­out can also be done with a few clicks on mobile through an app. "The AI­based solution can help customers save time and relieve hotel employees from repetitive work," said Wang Qun, CEO of FlyZoo Hotel. The hotel is the latest example of Chinese tech companies' attempt into traditional industries such as the hotel industry.

    E­commerce giant JD.com announced in October its strategy to put smart home and electronic devices sold on its platform into hotels, in an effort to improve online sales.

    In July, Baidu teamed up with Intercontinental Hotels Group in Beijing to allow guests to use its voice­ controlled assistant to adjust room temperature and order room service at ease.

    Before that, social media giant Tencent introduced QQfamily, a similar tech solution for hotel operators, in the southern city of Zhuhai last year.

    "We want to install a 'smart brain' for hotels," said Wang. "In the future, we will continue to make hotels smarter and more automated, as well as create more personalized experiences for consumers."