“Did you hear what happened to Adam Last Friday?” Lindsey whispers to Tori.

       With her eyes shining,tori brags，“You bet I did, Sean told me two days ago.”

Who are Lindsey and Tori talking about? It just happened to be yours truly, Adam Freedom, I can tell you that what that what they are saying is (a) not nice and (b) not even true. Still, Lindsey and Tori aren't very different from most students here at Linton High School, including me. Many of our conversations are gossip(闲话)。I have noticed three effects of gossip: it can hurt people, it can give gossipers a strange kind of satisfaction, and it can cause social pressures in a group.

An important negative effect of gossip is that it can hurt the person being talked about. Usually, gossip spreads information about a topic-breakups, trouble at home, even dropping out-that a person would rather keep secret. The more embarrassing or shameful the secret is, the juicier the gossip it makes. Probably the worst type of gossip is the absolute lie. People often think of gossipers as harmless, but cruel lies can cause pain.

If we know that gossip can be harmful, then why do so many of us do it? That answer lies in another effect of gossip: the satisfaction it gives us. Sharing the latest rumor(传言)can make a person feel important because he or she knows something that others don't. Similarly, hearing the latest rumor can make a person feel like part of the “in group.” In other words, gossip is satisfying because it gives people a sense of belonging or even superiority(优越感).

Gossip also can have a third effect: it strengthens unwritten, unspoken rules about how people should act. Professor David Wilson explains that gossip is important in policing behaviors in a group. Translated into high school terms, this means that if everybody you hang around with is laughing at what John wore or what Jane said, then you can bet that wearing or saying something similar will get you the same kind of negative attention. The do's and don'ts conveyed through gossip will never show up in any student handbook.

   The effects of gossip vary depending on the situation. The next time you feel the urge to spread the latest news, thing about why you want to gossip and what effects your “juicy story” might have.

    Several Jobs That Will Be Automated By Artificial Intelligence(AI) And Robots

    Translator

    Image recognition software and voice recognition software are bringing some major advances to language translation．Applications like Google's Word Lens can translate words from signs and documents in real time and there ale a lot of translation apps that allow you to type in a word or phrase and will translate it for you．

    Some will even speak the phrase for you and raw word-to-word translation will be fully automated soon．

Fast food workers

    Automated ordering booths have already made their way into a few McDonald's restaurants around the world，and cooking positions could be removed next．The booths probably can't handle customer service problems well，so televideo systems could bring in an office employee to deal with complaints．

Field technician

    New advances in the Internet of Things could make this work obsolete ．

Low-cost sensors combined with high availability cellular／satellite communications and cloud technology are being started to automate and alarm these sites，and can be checked and maintained from a desktop or mobile device．

Sales representative

    But，e-commerce is changing how we make purchasing decisions，especially those where there isn't much differentiation among the major competitors．

    If you're selling a high-differentiation product and／or a high-price，low-volume product you have some job security，but if you're selling a high-volume，low-differentiation product，you better start polishing your resume，said Doug Camplejohn，CEO of Fliptop．“These kind of product sales are all moving online．”

    Mr. and Mrs. Gordon were sitting on the sand, reading their magazines. Mr. Gordon was too stingy (吝啬的) to rent (租) a chair. Their twelve-year-old daughter, Sandra, was playing at the water's edge. Suddenly a huge wave lifted Sandra up and carried her out to sea. Fortunately, a lifeguard (救生员) was on duty and he saw the wave carry Sandra away. He ran along the beach and dived into the sea. He swam quickly to where the girl was, with her head only just above the water, was shouting for help. She was very frightened. When the lifeguard reached her, she struggled with him, as drowning people often did. However, he was a skillful lifeguard and quickly took hold of her and swam with her back to the beach. By the time he reached it, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon had realized what had happened. They had run down to the water's edge. Neither of them could swim. They just stood in the shallow water, and worried about their daughter. Had the lifeguard reached her in time? Fortunately, he had. “That was quick work, young man,” Mr. Gordon said. He turned to his wife, “Give the lifeguard a dollar.” “A dollar!” Sandra cried. “Dad, how can you give him a dollar! He saved my life. I was half dead.” “Quite right, girl,”Mr. Gordon said, pleased by his daughter's awareness of the value of money. He turned to his wife again and said, “She's right. She was only half dead. Give him fifty cents.”

    There was a gardener who looked after his garden with great care. To water his flowers, he used two buckets(水桶). One was a shiny and new bucket. The other was a very old and dilapidated one, which had seen many years of service, but was now past its best.

    Every morning, the gardener would fill up the two buckets. Then he would carry them along the path, one on each side, to the flowerbeds. The new bucket was very proud of itself. It could carry a full bucket of water without a single drop spilled (溢出). The old bucket felt very ashamed because of its holes: before it reached the flowerbeds, much water had leaked（泄漏）along the path.

    Sometimes the new bucket would say, “See how capable I am! How good it is that the gardener has me to water the flowers every day! I don't know why he still bothers with you. What a waste of space you are!”

    And all that the old bucket could say was, “I know I'm not very useful, but I can only do my best. I'm happy that the gardener still finds a little bit of use in me, at least.”

    One day, the gardener heard that kind of conversation. After watering the flowers as usual, he said, “You both have done your work very well. Now I am going to carry you back. I want you to look carefully along the path.”

    Then the two buckets did so. All along the path, they noticed, on the side where the new bucket was carried, there was just bare (光秃秃的) earth; on the other side where the old bucket was carried, there was a joyous row of wild flowers, leading all the way to the garden.

    A six-wheeled robot travels underground in Hefei to discover warning signs of faults inside the pipeline network, "It looks like a toy car at first, but it's much more complicated than that," said Xu Mao, the robot's operator.

    The pipeline robot, developed by Wuhan Easy-Sight Technology, is made up of four parts — crawler, camera, cable reel, and controller. A full charge can enable the robot to work for four to five hours, covering a distance between 800 and 1,000 meters in the underground p ipeline.

    The robot made its appearance last month in Shushan District. It will carry out inspections of the underground pipeline network stretching 150 kilometers." Whether the pipe is leaking, damaged or blocked, we can clearly see its situation through high-definition(高清晰度的)cameras fixed into the robot, " said Qi Chuanshuai from the provincial construction engineering and testing institute.

    The real-time data including video images of the pipe will be up loaded and displayed on a computer. "If we find any problems, we stop the robot and record the flaws," Xu said. "We report the faults to local government, who will arrange the repair as soon as possible."

    With the rapid develop merit of cities, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage underground pipelines. Among all the difficulties, discovering faults in the sewage (污水)and rainwater pipelines comes first. Many other cities such as Wuhan, Nanjing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are using the robots to inspect their pipelines, the robot's developer said.

    Equipped with environmental detection sensors, the robots can monitor temperature and damp, poisonous gases, oxygen levels and smoke density, while providing color diagram in real time. "Compared with human workers, robots are able to enter smaller pipes and are immune (有免疫力的)to poisonous gases in sewage pipes," said Ge Shengli from Shushan District' s city management company." No digging is required and there is no need to interrupt traffic," Ge added.

    Over the past couple of days, on our local Freecycle page there have been a lot of wanted posts, all from the same person, basically asking for everything you'd need to set up a house from scratch.

    One of the things they asked for was a queen-sized bed. At that time we just happened to have an extra one, so I messaged them. They immediately came in the afternoon. The people who came, two ladies and a man, are actually friends of another woman named Jenny who owned a young boy. This woman has escaped from a dangerous, violent relationship and these friends of hers are helping her and her son start over again, with everything from furniture to toothbrushes on their list of needs.

    While they were here, I also gave them one of our spare bookcase and some coffee cups. I even asked them to keep in touch in case they needed anything else—I have a way of connecting people with things. I offered the woman a cupboard we had as well; her friends just needed to see if there was a place and/or a need for it in their friend's new home.

    I was so excited to meet those loving people, who were obviously willing to help their friend. It was clear how protective they felt of this woman and her boy, how much they love her and wanted her to have a happy and safe life, and to spend even a few minutes with people like that is an experience I'll remember for a long, long time.

    A quick thank-you to all who have sent more donations over the last couple of days, as well as lovely messages of thanks and blessings. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with it all, but it's a problem I'm happy to have.