How to Study Better

    If you want to study better, you should pay attention to learning methods, study skills and study habits. Developing them can help you learn better.

    Keep your study area tidy and organized. Papers, books, magazines, or pictures all over your work area may distract you from the work you have to do. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} If there are too many icons on your desktop, it is difficult for you to find what you need immediately.

    Maintain a quiet work area for yourself. Make sure your work area is free of distractions. There are too many distractions at home, such as a phone, music, TV, friends, or family members. Proper study space can usually be found in the public library, school library, or your bedroom. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} While learning, you need write, calculate and look up something. So it is very important and necessary to have all the necessary materials and tools that you need with you. In this way, you needn't be busy borrowing them.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} In addition to reading your textbook, it is helpful to read or view materials from other sources, such as newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and television programs. You can understand what you will learn in class better.

    Never forget to take notes carefully in class. Taking notes carefully can help to grasp the key parts. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} We can say that it is really a successful way to study.

    Good manners are important, but you can easily make a social blunder when you visit a foreign country, because sometimes good manners in one place are bad manners in other places.

    Suppose you visit some friends in Mongolia and they ask you to eat with them. What kind of manners do they want you to have? They want you to give a loud “burp” after you finish eating. Burping shows that you like your food. But in some other countries, if you give a loud “burp”, you are supposed to say, “Excuse me, please.”

    In many places people like to eat together. But in some parts of Polynesia it is bad manners to be seen eating together. People show their good manners by turning their backs on others while they eat.

    What are manners like in an East African town? The people try not to see you. When you are visiting a friend, he may not see you at all. If you are polite, you will sit down beside him. You will wait until he finishes what he is doing. Then he will talk to you.

    If you visit a friend in Arabia you should walk behind other tents until you come to his tent. If you pass in front of other tents, you will be asked into each one. The people will ask you to eat with them. And it is bad manners if you say no.

    Manners are different all over the world. But it is good to know that all manners help people show that they want to be friends.

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With the clicking of walking sticks and determined steps, a long line of walking group along the winding road is a fantastic sight. Almost each of the walkers is using some kind of fitness tracker. A few Fitbits, some Xiaomi wrist bands (手环), a couple of phone apps and some other pedometers (计步器) — and all, they say, are counting their steps.

    Fitness trackers are in. Sales figures for 2016 released by Internet Data Center (IDC) indicated 25% market growth compared to the previous year, with Fitbit taking the lion's share, followed by the brand Xiaomi.

    However, the wearables market has had a rollercoaster ride in recent months. Jawbone, once a popular fitness tracker brand, announced that it is leaving the consumer market. Microsoft has removed its Fitness Band on its online store although it is still available on retail (零售) giant Amazon. Fitbit remains a key brand name at the heart of the fitness tracker revolution. But it is recently reported to be cutting down on workers, and its founder James Park said it experienced “softer than expected” sales recently.

    Counting steps is probably the most common use of wearable devices (可穿戴设备), but recently experts have questioned whether the golden goal of walking 10,000 steps a day is actually worthwhile, and a US study concluded that health trackers did not aid weight loss.

Analyst Ben Wood from CCS Insight used to wear a fitness tracker on either wrist. Now, however, his concern is about users'experience — these devices don't tell you anything new after a while. There are also battery problems and many of the older and cheaper varieties aren't waterproof (防水的).

    Most people will answer a ringing phone. Usually you don't know who is phoning or how urgent their business is, so a ringing phone is difficult to ignore. In one experiment, a researcher wrote down the numbers of several public phones in stations and airports. Then he called the numbers. Someone nearly always answered. When he asked why, people usually said, "Because it rang."

    A few years ago in New Jersey, a man with a rifle killed 13 people. Armed police surrounded his house but he refused to come out. A reporter found out the phone number of the house and called.

    The man put down his rifle(步枪) and answered the phone. "What do you want?" he said, "I'm really busy right now."

    Imagine you're at work and the phone is ringing in someone else's office. Do you answer it or not?

    In one survey on telephone use, 51% of participants told researches that they did. We can't ignore the phone and for the reason, it forces its way into our lives. It interrupts what we are doing and on top of that, the caller is often someone we don't really want to talk to. However, in the survey, 58% said they never took the phone off the hook, and 67% didn't mind if someone called during a television programme. For 44% it wasn't a problem if someone rang during a meal, while only 28% were annoyed or upset.

    If someone phoned in the middle of the night, 40% told researchers that they got nervous or frightened, while around 30% got angry.

    Of course, when someone is really annoying, you can choose to hang up on him/her. This is in fact one of the rudest things you can do on the phone, but 79% said they were prepared to do it in some cases. Only 6% told researchers they never hung up on people.

    Anyone watching the autumn sky knows that migrating birds fly in a V formation, but scientists have long debated why. A new study finds that these big－winged birds carefully position their wingtips and flap(拍动) at the same rate, probably to catch the upward movement of air and save energy during flight.

    There are two reasons birds might fly in a V formation: It may make flight easier, or they're simply following the leader. Squadrons(中 队) of planes can save fuel by flying in a V formation, and many scientists suspect that migrating birds do the same. Models that treated flapping birds like fixed－wing airplanes show that they probably save energy by drafting off each other, but currents created by airplanes are far more stable than those coming off of birds.

    Just as aerodynamic(气动力) calculations would predict, the birds positioned themselves to fly just behind and to the side of the bird in front, timing their wing flaps to catch the uplifting eddies(涡流). When a bird flew directly behind another, the timing of the flapping reversed(相反) so that it could minimize the effects of the downdraft coming off the back of the bird's body. “We didn't think this was possible,” Usherwood says, considering that the difficult achievement requires careful flight and incredible awareness of one's neighbors. “Perhaps these big V formation birds can be thought of quite like an airplane with wings that go up and down.”

    The findings likely apply to other long－winged birds, such as pelicans and geese, Usherwood says. Smaller birds create more complex wakes(尾波) that would make drafting too difficult. The researchers did not attempt to calculate the birds' energy savings because the necessary physiological measurements would be too invasive for an endangered species. Previous studies show that birds can use 20% to 30% less energy while flying in a V.

    Scientists do not know how the birds find that aerodynamic sweet spot, but they suspect that the animals line themselves up either by sight or by sensing air currents through their feathers. In future studies, the researchers will switch to more common birds, such as pigeons or geese. They plan to investigate how the animals decide who sets the course and the pace, and whether a mistake made by the leader can ripple through the rest of the flock to cause traffic jams.

    There aren't many actors around the world who have enough self confidence to turn down an offer from Steven Spielberg. Maybe that was why Juliette Binoche gave him a choice. She said she'd be happy to be in Jurassic Park as long as she could play a dinosaur. Of course he turned her down and it was probably a good thing. It's difficult to imagine Juliette ripping people apart with her teeth. However, her decision doesn't seem to have done her career any harm. She has gone on to make a string of hits, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient (for which she won an Oscar) and Chocolat.

    Success in the United States has not been so easy for other foreign stars. Gerald Depardieu is a good example. Since his first film in 1967, his filmography (影片集锦) lists 172 acting credits. But he has struggled on the other side of the pond. While some of his films have been popular in the US, they have usually been French films that travelled. One possible exception was Green Card, directed by Peter Weir, where he plays a French immigrant who goes through a fake wedding in order to stay and work in the United States. This is a predictable but sweet romantic comedy which typecasts (分配同一类型角色) its lead actors in terms of national stereotypes. While some reviewers were kind, others shredded both the film and Depardieu's performance.

    While Monsieur Depardieu hasn't received the recognition he would have liked in the United States, one Mexican actor has achieved almost instant success. Gael Garcia Bernal first gained recognition in Amores Perros in 2000 and a year later in Y tu mama tambien. Since then he has appeared with hometown hero, Brad Pitt in Babel and, under the direction of top producer and director, Jim Jarmusch, he starred in Limits of Control. He hasn't picked up an Oscar yet, but he was nominated for a BAFTA (英国电影电视艺术学院奖) in 2005 for his performance as the South American hero revolutionary Che Guevara, in Motorcycle Diaries. In the same year he played American music icon Elvis Presley in The King.