A survey by an international temporary service agency found that U. S. managers believe that people with a sense of humour do better at their jobs, compared with those who have little or no sense of humour. In fact, about 96 percent of those surveyed said people with a sense of humour do better.

    The survey went on to point out that the results suggest that a sense of humour may help light-hearted employees keep their jobs during tough times. And, what's more, it may push them up the corporate ladder past their humourless colleagues. Why? It seems that those with a sense of humour are better communicators and better team players.

    Studies have shown that happy workers are more productive. In fact, a researcher at California State University found that humour could help the employees to release tension.

    Research done by psychologist Dr. Ashton Trice at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia showed that humour helps us think. When people feel stuck on important projects, they tend to feel angry or depressed.  According to Dr. Trice's research, taking time out to laugh can help us to get rid of negative feelings and allow us to return to a task or move on to another project unaffected by past defeat.

    If humour is really this important, then why don't we use it more often on the job? Most likely, the main reason is that many people are unaware of the positive effects of humour in the workplace. However, it is important to realize that some humour is not suitable for the workplace, and that it is often used at wrong times.

    Most people know that listening to music when they are feeling down or depressed can encourage their spirits.

    However studies have also shown that music, especially certain tones can reduce stress. Music can change brainwave patterns, deepen breathing, and bring on a totally stress-free and more open mindset（心态）. Using music to relax when considering a particular problem may not only raise your mood, but also could help you reach that "a-ha"moment and find a solution.

    Music has also been shown not only to make you feel good, but also, to be a great motivator. For example, during exercise, listening to music can keep you going, or get you to exercise more by helping you to ignore negative feelings of tiredness and focus on the pleasurable feelings you get from being absorbed in the music.

    Music is mainly used to record emotion. When we listen to a piece of music we share the artist's feelings on a visceral（本来的）level. That can be sad, and who among us hasn't put on a painful love song to share in the misery after a bad break-up? On the contrary, we can share in the delight of songs of joy and happiness, or any song or piece of music that reminds us of a particular happy time in our past.

    So next time you are feeling down, put on Beethoven' s Ode to Joy, I bet you will feel a lot better about whatever it was that was bothering you!

    Sports can help you keep fit and get in touch with nature. However, whether you are on the mountains, in the waves, or on the grassland, you should be aware that your sport of choice might have great influence on the environment.

    Some sports are resource-hungry. Golf, as you may know, eats up not only large areas of countryside, but also tons of water. Besides, all sorts of chemicals and huge amounts of energy are used to keep its courses（球场）in good condition. This causes major environmental effects. For example, in the dry regions of Portugal and Spain, golf is often held responsible for serious water shortage in some local areas.

    There are many environment-friendly sports. Power walking is one of them that you could take up today. You don't need any special equipment except a good pair of shoes; and you don't have to worry about resources and your purse. Simple and free, power walking can also keep you fit. If you walk regularly, it will be good for your heart and bones. Experts say that 20 minutes of power walking daily can make you feel less anxious, sleep well and have better weight control.

    Whatever sport you take up, you can make it greener by using environment-friendly equipment and buying products made from recycled materials. But the final goal should be "green gyms". They are better replacements（代替物）for traditional health clubs and modern sports centers. Members of green gyms play sports outdoors, in the countryside or other open spaces. There is no special requirement for you to start your membership. And best of all, it's free.

    The Lumière Brothers had their film shows, taken over 100 years ago, to 100 paying customers on December 8, 1985. One of their earliest films was a 30-second piece which showed a section of a railway platform. As the train approached, panic started in the theatre: people jumped and ran away. In their confusion, the audiences feared that a real train was about to crush them. That was the moment when cinema was born.

    Early cinema audiences often experienced the same confusion. In time, the idea of films became familiar, the magic was accepted — but it never stopped being magic. Film has never lost its unique power to embrace its audience and transport them to a different world.

    One effect of this realism was to educate the world about itself. Cinema makes the world smaller. Long before people travelled to America or anywhere else, they knew what other places looked like and how other people worked and lived. Undoubtedly, in the lives recorded in film people knew more about American life. Hollywood has dominated the world film market. American imagery — the cars, the cities, the cowboys became the primary imagery of film. Film carried American life and values around the globe.

    And, thanks to film, future generations will know the 20th century more familiarly than any other period. We can only imagine what life was like in the 14th century or in classical Rome. But the life of the modern world has been recorded on films. We shall be known better than any preceding generations.

    The “star” was another natural consequence of cinema. The cinema star was effectively born in 1910. Because everybody in the world seems to know who they are, they appear more real to us than we do ourselves. The star as magnified human self is one of cinema's most strange and enduring legacies(遗产).

    Cinema films originally were planned as short stories, because early producers doubted the ability of audiences to concentrate for more than the length of a reel. Then, in 1912, an Italian 2-hour film was hugely successful, and Hollywood settled upon the novel-length narrative that remains the dominant cinematic convention of today.

    And it has all happened so quickly. Almost unbelievably, it is only 100 years since that train arrived and the audience screamed and fled, perhaps, suddenly aware that the world could never be the same again — that, maybe, it could be better, brighter, more astonishing and more real than reality.

    When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform amazing feats of strategy, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords. But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science fiction writing and popular movies have shown us about artificial intelligence (AI) that exceeds the expectations of its creators and escapes their control, eventually outcompeting and enslaving humans or targeting them for extinction(灭绝).

    Even in the real word, not everyone is ready to welcome AI with open arms. In recent years, as computer scientists have pushed the boundaries of what AI can accomplish, leading figures in technology and science have warmed about the frightening dangers that artificial intelligence may pose to humanity, even suggesting that AI capabilities could destroy the human race.

    But why are people so frightened about the idea of AI?

    Elon Musk is one of the famous voices that have raised red flags about AI, In July 2017. Musk told attendees at a meeting of the National Governors Association, I have exposured to the very cutting-edge Al, and I think people should be really concerned about it. I keep sounding the alarm bell. But until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react, because it seems so impossible."

    Earlier, in 2014, Musk had labeled AI "our biggest existential threat," and in August 2017, he declared that humanity faced a greater risk from AI than the terrorists. Physicist Stephen Hawking, who died on March14, also expressed concerns about AI, telling the BBC in 2014 that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to name things, or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in terminology (术语). Such special dialects are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by those engaged or interested in the particular science or art, they have the accurateness of a mathematical formula (公式）. Besides，they save time in these kinds of discussions, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather in the suburbs of the English language.

Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other professions, like farming and fishery, which have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very central part of our language. Thus, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technical terms. In law, medicine, and philosophy, the special dialects have also become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet among these professions, each one still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned when they have served their turn. Most of the newly-invented terms are restricted to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.

Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close combination. Lawyers, doctors and men of science all communicate freely with others, not in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody familiar with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported online, and everybody is soon talking about it-as in the case of AI.