As health care costs continue to rise, a growing number of companies are working out programs designed to keep their employees healthy.

    Thomas Chapple is the senior vice president. “It's really important to us because medical costs are going up like crazy,” he says. “This company spends more than $ 200 million a year on medical costs for its employees around the country. The best thing we have seen as a way to control the medical cost is individual fitness.”

    “We have a fitness center,” Shawn Flaherty, director of public relations for Freddie Mac., says. “We have a health benefits plan that encourages people to work out three times a week, get cholesterol （胆固醇）checks, as well as 'do not smoke.' If they do that, it will cost them less for the health benefits.”

    Rachelle Clark works for Freddie Mac. “I feel great. You know the benefit is rewarding. I like to look good and feel healthy. I am just fortunate that I work for the company that provides some type of facility for the employees.”

    While on-site fitness centers are popular, some companies pay membership fees at local gyms for employees. The companies also offer classes such as boxing, yoga and dancing. Employees see those health programs as a valuable benefit.

    Tom Brook exercises five days a week. As a newspaper reporter he has a tight schedule, although Tom says it's not that difficult for him to make time for a workout. “It is great. It is right here where we work,” says Tom. “So everybody gets a chance to use it whenever they want to. I have lost weight and never been in better shape.”

    The programs may not be a magic cure for rising health costs, but they seem to have a positive impact on both employers and employees.

    James Cleveland Owens was the son of a farmer and the grandson of black slaves. His family moved to Cleveland when he was 9. There, a school teacher asked the youth his name.

    "J.C. "he replied.

    She thought he had said "Jesse", and he had a new name.

    Owens ran his first race at age 13. After high school, he went to Ohio State University. He had to work part time so as to pay for his education. As a second year student, in the Big Ten games in 1935, he set even more records than he would in the Olympic Games a year later.

    A week before the Big Ten meet, Owens accidentally fell down a flight of stairs. His back hurt so much that he could not exercise all week, and he had to be helped in and out of the car that drove him to the meet. He refused to listen to the suggestions that he give up and said he would try. He did try, and the results are in the record book.

    The stage was set for Owens' victory at the Olympic Games in Berlin the next year, and his success would come to be regarded as not only athletic but also political. Hitler did not congratulate any of the African American winners.

    "It was all right with me," he said years later. "I didn't go to Berlin to shake hands with him, anyway."

    Having returned from Berlin, he received no telephone calls from the president of his own country, either. In fact, he was not honored by the United States until 1976, four years before his death.

    Owens' Olympic victories made little difference to him. He earned his living by looking after a school playground, and accepted money to race against cars, trucks, motorcycles and dogs.

    "Sure, it bothered me," he said later. "But at least it was an honest living. I had to eat."

    In time, however, his gold medals changed his life. "They have kept me alive over the years, "he once said." Time has stood still for me. That golden moment dies hard."

    Thanks to exchange programmes an increasing number of young students are following educational courses in foreign countries. The Erasmus Programme, which started in 1987, is a European Union student exchange programme. It provides opportunities for young people from Europe to study in a foreign country for shot An intercontinental version of the programme, known as Erasmus Mundus, has existed since 2003, providing non-Europeans the opportunity to study in Europe.

    Thomas Hardy, probably the most searching and knowledgeable novelist of our time, was born on June 2, 1840, in Dorsetshire, England. He died on January 11, 1928. In his youth, Hardy read much and dreamt of becoming a poet, but he studied and practiced architecture as an assistant to a London architect, winning a prize for design. The fine descriptions of structure in his novels were probably somewhat due to his architectural training.

    For five years he worked hard to practise writing poetry, but when he was twenty-seven, Hardy turned to fiction. His first story was accepted two years later, but upon the advice of George Meredith he decided not to publish it. His first novel, Desperate Remedies, appeared in 1871. During the next twenty-five years he published fourteen novels and two collections of short stories.

    Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) he never surpassed (超越) in happy and delicate perfection of art. This and his next novel, A pair of Blue Eyes (1873), begin to show deep irony (讽刺) which is so obvious throughout Hardy's writings.

    Far from the madding Crowd (1874) was his first popular success. In it is shown Hardy's amazing power of describing nature as symbolic background for his characters, an organic part of the action of his story. This was the earliest of what he called his novels of character and environment, which included The Return of the Native, Tess of D'Urbervilles, his masterpiece, and Jude the Obscure. Not until he was fifty-eight years old was his first collection of poems published, and he was sixty-four when the first part of The Dymats, surprised the literary world.

    Want to explore new cultures, meet new people and do something worthwhile at the same time? You can do all the three with Global Development Association(GDA). Whatever stage of life you're at, wherever you go and whatever project you do in GDA, you'll create positive changes in a poor and remote community(社区).

    We work with volunteers of all ages and backgrounds. Most of our volunteers are aged 17-24. Now we need volunteer managers aged 25-75. They are extremely important in the safe and effective running of our programmes. We have such roles as project managers, mountain leaders, and communication officers.

    Depending on which role you choose, you could help to increase a community's access to safe drinking water, or help to protect valuable local cultures. You might also design an adventure challenge to train young volunteers.

    Not only will you help our young volunteers to develop personally, you'll also learn new skills and increase your cultural awareness. You may have chances to meet new people who'll become your lifelong friends.

    This summer we have both 4-week and 7-week programmes:

    GDA ensures that volunteers work with community members and local project partners where our help is needed. All our projects aim to promote the development of poor and remote communities.

    There is no other chance like a GDA programme. Join us as a volunteer manager to develop your own skills while bringing benefits to the communities.

    Find out more about joining a GDA programme:

    Website:www.glodeve.org

    Email:humanresources@glodeve.org

    As Artificial Intelligence(AI) becomes increasingly sophisticated(复杂的), there are growing concerns that robots could become a threat. This danger can be avoided, according to computer science Professor Stuart Russell, if we figure out how to turn human values into a programmable code.

    Russell argues that as robots take on more complicated tasks, it's necessary to translate our morals into AI language.

    For example, if a robot does chores around the house, you wouldn't want it to put the pet cat in the oven to make dinner for the hungry children. "You would want that robot preloaded with a good set of values," said Russell.

    Some robots are already programmed with basic human values. For example, mobile robots have been programmed to keep a comfortable distance from humans. Obviously there are cultural differences, but if you were talking to another person and they came up close in your personal space, you wouldn't think that's the kind of thing a properly brought-up person would do.

    It will be possible to create more sophisticated moral machines, if only we can find a way to set out human values as clear rules.

    Robots could also learn values from drawing patterns from large sets of data on human behaviour. They are dangerous only if programmers are careless.

    The biggest concern with robots going against human values is that human beings fail to so sufficient testing and they've produced a system that will break some kind of taboos(禁忌).

    One simple check would be to program a robot to check the correct course of action with a human when presented with an unusual situation.

    If the robot is unsure whether an animal is suitable for the microwave, it has the opportunity to stop, send out beeps(嘟嘟声), and ask for directions from a human. If we humans aren't quite sure about a decision, we go and ask somebody else.

    The most difficult step in programming values will be deciding exactly what we believe in moral, and how to create a set of ethical rules. But if we come up with an answer, robots could be good for humanity.