Living in a modern society has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that you often have to live closer to other people than you would like to. Sometimes, your neighbors make a noise that you are not comfortable with.

    The best way to solve this problem is to talk with your neighbor first. You should be very polite and ask your neighbor if he knows how thin the walls of your homes are. This way doesn't criticize (批评) his behavior; it simply points out that he may not realize how far his sound travels. Tell him that you know that sometimes you make noise as well, but that you do your best to keep it down. Often this will solve the problem right away, but sometimes the neighbor may become angry.

    If your neighbor becomes angry with you, there are some more steps you can take. You might write a letter to the neighborhood committee（居委会）. Make sure you write down the source of the noise and the time in the letter. They will review the situation and decide whether your neighbor is out of line. Some noise is considered to be reasonable, even if it bothers you. So you may prepare a good pair of earplugs (耳塞).

    Even if your neighbor makes too much noise, you don't have to live your life in discomfort. It's always a good idea to be friendly with your neighbors. You may clean the rubbish in front of his door. He's sure to appreciate behavior like this and be more open to your suggestions about noise level.

    Cassie Warren and Jesse Jones will always have a great story to tell their kids about the kindness of strangers and how one stranger in particular made their wedding planning that much sweeter.

    A few weeks ago, as Warren was addressing wedding invitations for her upcoming wedding, she mistakenly used an old address for her aunt and uncle in nearby Eugene, Oregon. But when a stranger received the misaddressed mail, she didn't just throw it in the garbage like many people would have done. Instead, she returned the invitation, along with a sweet note and $20 as a wedding present.

The sender also wrote "Live long and prosper." on the comer of the card—words from "Star Trek", probably because the young couple's wedding invitation shows Jesse holding a light knife from "Star Wars" and Cassie holding a wand (魔杖) in a nod to the "Harry Potter" books.

    The generous stranger also included $20, probably as a little gift for the wedding. The young couple put the money to good use by going out to dinner with a friend who wouldn't be able to attend the wedding.

    Warren said that she was at first confused by the returned wedding invitation. "But after I saw the note, I was just surprised and blessed that she/he would do that for a stranger," Warren said. "Jesse was confused at first, too-he wondered why someone had sent us money, then I read the message to him, and he was shocked and grateful."

    Warren and Jones still don't know the name of the kind stranger, but Warren sent a thank-you note to the same address to let the sender know how much her/his generosity was appreciated. The young couple plan to marry in June and thanks to the kindness of a stranger, their marriage is already off to a sweet start.

    “The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is well spent,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook in January.

    If the tech firm succeeded, Facebook would end 2018 on a much better path. But the cracks in Zuckerberg's social media empire only grew as scandals(丑闻)about data misuse, security and even Facebook's leadership piled up.

    The social network has faced criticism many times since launching 14 years ago, but the public uproar reached new heights in 2018. Facebook's missteps, even as it tried to fix its problems, were yet another reminder of what happens when a company grows rapidly with little oversight(监管). They also set the stage for another showdown between the tech powerhouse and lawmakers who have their own ideas on how to manage a platform used by 2.3 billion people every month.

    “I think there's just a general growing consensus from both parties in Congress that self-policing is not going to work,” Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in an interview. Facebook pointed to a series of notes Zuckerberg published this year outlining what the tech firm has done to combat(战斗，争论)election meddling(好干预的), as well as hate speech, misinformation and other offensive content. The social network pulled down more than 1.5 billion fake accounts, launched a database of political ads and announced the creation of a Supreme Court like independent body to oversee content appals.

    But in many ways, Zuckerberg fell short of his New Year's resolution(决议). UN investigators said Facebook played a role in spreading hate speech that fueled ethnic cleansing(清洗)in Myanmar. Media outlets found loopholes(漏洞)and errors in Facebook's political ads database. Users questioned whether they should delete Facebook after learning that Cambridge Analytical, a UK political consulting firm with ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, gathered data on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

    In short, Facebook's problems ballooned out of the company's control.

“They created a platform where sharing was mindlessly easy and interacting with each other required almost no forethought at all,” said Woodrow Hertzog, a law and computer science professor at Northeastern University. “As a result, there was massive sharing, including leaking of personal information that put lots of people at risk.”

Babies made from three people approved in UK

    Babies made from two women and one man have been approved by the UK's fertility regulator. The historic and controversial move is to prevent children from being born with deadly genetic diseases.

    Doctors in Newcastle—who developed the advanced form of In Vitro Fertilization or IVF (人工授精)—are expected to be the first to offer the procedure and have already appealed for donor eggs. The first such child could be born, at the earliest, by the end of 2017.

    Some families have lost multiple children to incurable mitochondrial (线粒体的) diseases, which can leave people with insufficient energy to keep their heart beating.

    The diseases are passed down from only the mother, so a technique using a donor egg as well as the mother's egg and father's sperm has been developed.

    The resulting child has a tiny amount of their DNA from the donor, but the procedure is legal and reviews say it is ethical (伦理的) and scientifically ready.

    "It is a decision of historic importance," said Sally Cheshire, chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). "I'm sure patients will be really pleased by what we've decided today."

    But some scientists have questioned the ethics of the technique, saying it could open the door to genetically-modified (转基因) 'designer' babies.

    The HFEA must approve every clinic and every patient before the procedure can take place. Three-person babies have been allowed only in cases where the risk of a child developing mitochondrial disease is very high.

    Prof Mary Herbert, from the Newcastle Fertility Centre, said, "It is enormously pleasing that our many years of research in this area can finally be applied to help families affected by these devastating diseases".

    "Now that we are moving forward towards clinical treatments, we will also need donors to donate eggs for use in treatment to prevent affected women transmitting disease to their children."

    Prof Sir Doug Turnbull, the director of the Welcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, said, "We are delighted by today's decision. We will also provide long-term follow up of any children born."

    NHS England has agreed to fund the treatment costs of the first trial of three-person IVF for those women who meet the HFEA criteria, as long as they agree to long-term follow up of their children after they are born.

    Do you know that junk food isn't healthy? Of course you do! Do you eat it anyway? Of course you do! But a new study shows teaching adolescents about the ways food companies fool them into thinking junk food is cool can encourage kids to fight back—by eating healthier.

    The pull of junk food can be super-strong. It's designed to tasty; which makes eating well one of the great health challenges of our time. Everyone from doctors to the government has been trying to handle it. Yet we keep eating junk food.

    Professor Christopher Bryan says, "Food companies want you to want junk food." They spend millions of dollars coming up with new ways to^ promote junk food consumption. They hire scientists to make new junk food almost irresistible. They might do this, for example, by adding more sugar. Rats fed junk food for six weeks will even walk across a floor that gives them electric shocks just to get more of such food.

    Food ads often make unhealthy junk food seem healthy by featuring professional athletes, fit-looking pop stars and smiling, active teens. "We thought when the students learned this, it would matter to them," Bryan says. He worked with 8th graders at a Texas school. Half of them got a lesson Bryan created. It focused on the ways junk food is advertised, or marketed. A second group received lessons that focused on health. These lessons informed students junk food is had, and that foods like apples or carrots are a better choice. The students learned a bad diet can lead to major weight gain, and that being overweight puts people at risk for serious diseases. They also learned how eating well now can keep you healthy when you're older.

    After the lessons, the kids in both groups were asked how they felt about junk food. Most didn't have positive feelings about these unhealthy foods.

    Fred Rogers was a curious man, six feet tall and without pretense (虚伪). He liked to pray, to play the piano, to swim, and to write, and he somehow lived in a different world than I did. We became friends for some 20 years, and I made lifelong friends with his wife, Joanne. I remember thinking that it seemed as if Fred had access to another realm (领域) like the way pigeons have some special magnetic compass that helps them find home.

    Fred died in 2003, somewhat quickly, of stomach cancer. He was 74. "Just don't make Fred into a saint (圣人)," That has become Joanne's refrain (叠句). 91 now, still full of energy, she lives alone in the same roomy apartment, in the university section of Pittsburgh, that she and Fred moved into after they raised their two boys. Throughout her 50-year marriage to Fred, she wasn't the type to hang out on the set or attend production meetings. That was Fred's thing. He had his career, and she had hers as a concert pianist. For decades she toured the country with her college classmate, Jeannine Morrison, as a piano duo; they didn't retire the performance until 2008.

    "If you make him out to be a saint, people might not know how hard he worked," Joanne said. Disciplined, focused; a perfectionist — an artist. That was the Fred she and the cast and crew knew. "I think people think of Fred as a child-development expert," David Newell, the actor who played Mr. "Speedy Delivery" McFeely, told me recently. "As a moral example maybe. But as an artist? I don't think they think of that." that was the Fred I came to know. Creating, the creative impulse (冲动), and the creative process were our common interests. He wrote or co-wrote all the scripts for the program — all 33 years of it. He wrote the melodies. He wrote the lyrics. He structured a week of programming around a single theme, many of them difficult topics, like war, divorce, or death.

    I don't know that he cared whether people saw him as an artist. He seemed more intent (急切的) that people not see him at all. The focus was always on you. Or children. Or the tiny things. It was hard to see Fred.

    I like you just the way you are. One day he told me where that core message came from. His grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely, who like the rest of the Rogers family lived in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. "He was a character," he said. "Oh, a lot of me came from him."

    His grandfather represented a life of risk and adventure, the very things Fred's boyhood lacked. He was a lonely kid, an only child until he was 11, when his sister came. He was bullied. Here comes Fat Freddie! He was sickly. He had asthma. He was not allowed to play outside by himself. He spent much of his childhood in his bedroom.

    He had music, and he had puppets to keep himself amused. He didn't need much. He was expected to fill his father's shoes, become his business partner at the brick company. "My dad was pretty much Mr. Latrobe," he told me. "He worked hard to accomplish all that he did, and I've always felt that that was way beyond me. And yet I'm so grateful that he didn't push me to do the kinds of things that he did or to become a miniature (缩小的) version of him. It certainly would have been miniature."

    Fred wanted to be like his grandfather. "He taught me all kinds of really neat stuff!" he told me. "I remember one day my grandmother and my mother were telling me to get down, or not to climb, and my grandfather said: ‘Let the kid climb on the wall! He's got to learn to do things for himself!' I heard that. I will never forget that. What a support that was. He had a lot of stone walls on his place." "I think it was when I was leaving one time to go home after our time together," Fred told me, "that my grandfather said to me: ‘You know, you made this day a really special day. Just by being yourself. There's only one person in the world like you. And I happen to like you just the way you are."