Your mobile is now much more than just a communication device - more like a remote control for your life. You still call it a "mobile" from habit, but it is an organizer, entertainment device, payment device and security（安全） center, all developed and manufactured by engineers.

    What we do need is better mobiles and more intelligence. Because it knows your travel timetable it can check for problems on the roads or with the trains, giving you the best route into work. It can control your home, reprogramming the central heating if you need to get up earlier and keeping an eye on your home by connecting your mobile with the home security system. It is your payment system—you can pay for tickets for journeys or buy items in shops by placing the phone near a sensor(感应器). With an understanding of location, the mobile can also provide directions, or even tell you if your friends or family are nearby.

    Usually it will start work even before you wake. It will work with your home entertainment system while you sleep to find programmes that will interest you and download them as a podcast to watch on the train or in other spare moments. It will intelligently work out what to do with incoming phone calls and messages. Because it knows your diary it will also know, for example, to direct voice calls to voicemail when you are in a meeting, perhaps providing a discrete text summary of the caller and the nature of their call.

    With its understanding of almost all aspects of your life; many new services become possible. For example, a “Good Food” meal planning service could send daily suggestions for your evening meal based on learned preferences, previous selections made and the likely contents of your refrigerator.

    Ten years ago the mobile was purely a device for making voice calls. Now it is a camera, MP3 player, and texting device. This is only the start of an evolution that will turn it into our trusted and indispensable companion in life.

    A peer is a person who is about the same age as you. Peers affect your life, whether you know it or not, just by spending time with you.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Maybe another student in your science class taught you an easy way to remember the planets in solar system. Maybe you got others excited about your new favorite book and now everyone's reading it. However, sometimes peers affect one another in another way{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Maybe a kid in the neighborhood wanted you to steal with him.

    Some kids give in to peer pressure because they want to be liked, to fit in, or because they worry that other kids may make fun of them if they don't go along with the group.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} The idea that “everyone's doing it” may influence some kids to leave their better judgments or their common senses behind.

    Peer pressure can be extremely strong and hard to get rid of. Experiments have shown how peer pressure can influence someone to change her/his mind from what she/he knows for sure is a correct answer to the incorrect answer-just because everyone else gives the incorrect answer!{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Paying attention to your own feelings and beliefs about what is right and wrong can help you know the right thing to do. Inner strength and self-confidence can help you stand firm, walk away and resist doing something when you know better.

A. Peers can have a good effect on one another.

B. Peer pressure is the direct influence on people by peers.

C. Good peers may give you a hand when you are in trouble.

D. That holds true for people of any age in peer pressure situations.

E. Maybe one kid in school tried to get another to cut class with him.

F. It can be hard to walk away from peer pressure, but it can be done.

G. Others may go along because they are curious to try something new that others are doing.

    Our series The Genius Behind will take you inside the minds of people who are making the impossible possible. Whether it is designing the fastest ever land vehicle, helping the blind to see or creating space history, success relies levels of knowledge to new heights . What can we learn about genius from minds? Based on the people and the projects outlined in the series, we've come up with five lessons.

    Lesson one: New challenges require new ways of thinking

    Bloodhound SSC aims to be the first vehicle to break the 1,000 mph barrier. One of the key challenge has been to design the wheels. Thinking twice, Mark Chapman, chief engineer decided to change the way they were trying to solve problems and came up with a wheel design, part car, part jet fighter and part spaceship, which would hold together and was strong enough.

    Lesson two: Let evidence share your opinion

    Geophysicists widely believed that water on Earth originated from comets. But by studying rocks, Steven Jacobsen discovered water hidden inside, suggesting that the oceans gradually made its way out of the planet's interior many centuries ago. “Unfortunately, I had a pretty hard time convincing others,” he admits. Only time can tell whether the new theories are true.

Lesson three: It really is 99% efforts

    Sheila Nirenberg at Cornell University is trying to develop a new prosthetic device(假肢器官)for treating blindness. “Sometimes I'm exhausted and I get burnt out,” she adds. “But then I get an email from somebody saying that they can't see their own children's faces, and it is like, 'How can I possibly complain? Once I thought of this, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep—all I wanted to do was work'. It gives me the energy to just go back and keep doing it.”

    Lesson four: The answer isn't always what you expect

    Sylvia Earle has spent decades trying to see the ocean with new eyes. Her “dream machine” is a submarine that could take scientists all the way to the bottom of the deepest ocean floor what sort of material could best withstand the types of pressure y would encounter thousands of miles below the ocean surface?” It could be steel, it could be titanium, it could be some sort of ceramic, or some kind of aluminium system,” says Earle. “But glass is the best choice.”

    Lesson five: A little luck goes a long way

    It was considered as one of the biggest success stories in the history of space exploration—20 years of planning ended earlier this year with the Philae lander landing safely Comet 67P over 300 million miles(480 million kilometers)away from Earth, though Philae's anchoring harpoons(锚定鱼叉)didn't fire as planned.

    As a matter of fact, genius is difficult to define. “Genius is a funny word,” says Nirenberg. “I just sort of ignore it and just go on with life. You just do what you do regardless of whatever label's attached to you. I don't know really how else to explain it.

Happiness begins from appreciation

    If you are feeling that life just cannot be any worse for you, it can be challenging to think positive. When stressed, depressed, upset or otherwise in a negative state of mind because you are aware that misfortune keeps occurring, it is important to shift those negative thoughts to something positive. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    It is often very hard to think positive when so many things are negative, but be sure that someone, somewhere is worse off than you. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} If you start with one small, positive thing and appreciate it during the course of your day, you will begin to move into a more positive situation and people will start showing up in your life. With appreciation, you will find that over time, you will change your outlook and choose to be happy, regardless of the events around you. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Begin and end each day with a “Thank you for this wonderful, glorious day!”

    When you see the rise of gas prices, say “I am so glad to have a vehicle in which to get around.”

    When your boss is too hard on you, say “I am grateful for my job as I know that many don't have one.”

    If you are having health problems, be grateful for what does work: “I really do appreciate it that my eyes see, my ears hear, my mouth tastes, my legs walk, my arms lift and my mind thinks and everything else works.”

    Write down what you're grateful for each day. In moments when you're feeling really down, read loud what you wrote previously. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If you practice this regularly, you will find your list getting longer and longer.

    The key is to move yourself into a positive thought and keep it there long enough to make it a moment of appreciation. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. This will certainly help uplift your spirits.

B. If not, you will only attract more misfortune.

C. It is of great importance to learn to be grateful.

D. The more you appreciate, the happier you'll be.

E. If you have made some achievements in your career.

F. Here are a few common examples for you to practice.

G. You can choose to think differently by beginning with the smallest of steps.

    “Urgent action required”, “Do you still want to hear from us?”, “We've updated our privacy policy”, “Should we stop sending you updates? If not, act now!”

    Many of us will have received emails like this during the past few weeks. Triggering this flood of emails is something called GDPR that comes into effect in just under two weeks' time. Often the emails warn that if you don't respond, you will be removed from the company's database, which raises a lot of questions. What action, if any, do you need to take? Could it affect you financially?

    GDPR, which stands for General Data Protection Regulation, has been described as the biggest overhaul（彻底检查）of online privacy since the birth of the internet. It is designed to give all EU citizens the right to know what data is stored on them and to have it deleted, plus protect them from privacy breaches（破坏）. It comes into effect on 25 May.

    The new rules encourage the requirement for explicit and informed consent before data is processed. As a result, companies and organizations around the world are contacting users to check they are happy to carry on receiving their emails.

    However, many of us seem to be going down with “GDPR fatigue（厌倦）”: one article last week claimed that the “reconfirmation rate” - the proportion of people saying they want to continue receiving a company's emails - at UK micro-businesses was averaging just 10%, which meant “they could lose 90% of their subscribers - the life-blood for their business”. So it's no wonder some firms have adopted policies such as offering to enter people into a prize draw in return for them going in and updating their communication preferences.

    The average adult is said to have about 100 “data relationships” — companies and organizations that hold our personal data. Meanwhile, the reason why the company that occasionally emails you newsletters is now asking for your consent is perhaps because you never explicitly gave it permission to send you stuff. Maybe you only get its emails because you went to an event it organized ages ago or you once downloaded something from its website. Under the new regime, that almost certainly wouldn't count as explicit and informed consent, hence it's getting in touch now.

    The bottom line is that if it is a company or organization that you want to continue hearing from, you should probably click the button or log in to ensure you keep getting its emails. If it doesn't hear from you, it may decide to take you off its database.

    Do you know the look of wonder and joy that children get on their face when they listen to someone reading them a story？Schools across the nation are bringing in volunteers to guide children in this very way. If you simply enjoy spending time with children, being a reading volunteer can be a great way to help support the upcoming generation of readers.

    Reading volunteers work with elementary school age children to promote reading. They may read books to children, listen to children read aloud, or distribute books to school children. Reading volunteers promote the activity of reading, rather than focusing on teaching reading skills. They may read to a whole class of children, to a small group, or be assigned a child to read to one-on-one. During the time they spend with new readers, reading volunteers encourage them to learn to read.

    Almost anyone who knows how to read can be a reading volunteer. High school students, college students, parents, grandparents, and police officers are just an example of the kinds of people who become reading volunteers. Being able to read and wanting to spend time inspiring children to read are the only skills needed to be a successful reading volunteer.

    Several educational research studies show that children who are involved in programs with adult reading volunteers improve their school performance levels. For example, in 1998, researcher Sara Rimm-Kaufmann found that first graders involved in a program with an adult reading volunteer three times a week had better letter recognition and reading skills than similar first graders who hadn't been involved in such groups. In 2000, the Eugene Research Institute found that fifth graders who had been in "SMART", an adult volunteer literacy program, were 60% more likely to have grade-level scores in standardized reading tests. Moreover, a 2006 study by Brian Volkmann showed that children who were read to by adult volunteers had improved school attendance, which is a major predictor of high school graduation rates.

    In addition, reading volunteers themselves can gain a lot of benefits that range from expanding their personal networks to adding valuable skills to their resumes. They also enjoy the special time they get to spend with young children. Many volunteers have heart-warming stories to share with the children they read to. The volunteers know that they are inspiring young children with a proved educational strategy. So, if you have time, energy, and skill to support children's literacy, it is a good idea to sign up to be a reading volunteer.