French writer Frantz Fanon once said: ＂To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.＂ Since the world changes every day, so does our language.

    More than 300 new words and phrases have recently made it into the online Oxford Dictionary, and in one way or another they are all reflections of today's changing world.

    After a year that was politically unstable, it's not hard to understand the fact that people's political views are one of the main drives of our expanding vocabulary. One example is ＂clicktivism＂, a compound of ＂click＂ and ＂activism＂. It refers to ＂armchair activists＂ — people who support a political or social cause, but only show their support from behind a computer or smartphone. And ＂otherize＂ is a verb for ＂other＂ that means to alienate (使疏远)people who are different from ourselves — whether that be different skin color, religious belief or sexuality.

    Lifestyle is also changing our language. For example, ＂fitspiration＂ — a compound of fit and inspiration — refers to a person or thing that encourages one to exercise and stay fit and healthy.

    The phrase ＂climate refugee＂ — someone who is forced to leave their home due to climate change—reflects people's concern for the environment.

 According to Stevenson, social media was the main source for the new expressions. ＂People feel much freer to coin their own words these days,＂ he said.

    But still, not all newly-invented words get the chance to make their way into a mainstream (主流的) dictionary. If you want to create your own hit words, Angus Stevenson, Oxford Dictionaries head of content development, suggests that you should not only make sure that they are expressive (有表现力的) and meaningful, but also have an attractive sound so that people will enjoy saying them out loud.

    The Maldives faces the threat of extinction from rising sea levels, but the government said on Thursday it was looking to the future with plans to build homes and a golf course that can float.

An increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimeters would make the Maldives — a nation of a number of tiny coral islands in the Indian Ocean — not suitable for humans to live in by 2100, the UN's climate change experts have warned.

    President Mohamed Nasheed has declared a fight for survival, and last month he signed a deal with a Dutch company to study suggestions for a floating structure that could support a conference centre, homes and an 18-hole golf course.

    The company, Dutch Docklands, is currently building floating developments in the Netherlands and Dubai. Its website said it undertook projects that make “land from water by providing large-scale floating constructions to create similar conditions as on land”.

    The Maldives began to work on an artificial island known as the Hulhumale near the crowded capital island of Male in 1997 and more than 30,000 people have been settled there in order to ease crowdedness. The city, which has a population of 100,000, is already protected from rising sea levels by a 30-million-dollar sea wall, and the government is considering increasingly imaginative ways to fight climate change.

    Nasheed, who held the world's first underwater cabinet (内阁) meeting in October to highlight his people's serious and difficult situation, has even spoken of buying land elsewhere in the world to enable Maldivians to relocate if their homes are completely covered.

    He has also promised to turn his nation into a model for the rest of the world by becoming “carbon neutral (碳中和)” by 2020. His plan involves ending fossil fuel use and powering all vehicles and buildings from “green” sources such as burning coconut husks.

    Whenever we see a button, we are eager to press it because we know something will happen. This is true in most cases, for example on a doorbell and on the “on/off” button on the TV. But some buttons are actually fake, like the “close” button on a lift.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the “close” button because they don't have the patience to wait for the lift doors to shut. But lifts' “close” buttons are a complete scam(骗局), at least in the US-the doors will not close any faster no matter how hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the US, making sure that all lifts stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only US firefighters and repairmen can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys.

    But to normal lift riders, the buttons aren't completely useless. According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control.

    “Perceived (能够感知的)control is very important. It reduces stress and increases well-being,” Ellen J. Langer, a psychology professor, said, “having a lack of control is associated with depression.”

    Experts have revealed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, many offices in the US have fake thermostats(温度调节器) because people tend to feel better when they think they can control the temperature in their workspace.

    But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little “white lies”, they still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

    “That habit is here to stay,” John Kounios, a psychology professor, said“Even though I have real doubts about the traffic light buttons, I always press them. After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not press the button in the hope that this one will work?”

    If you walk through the doors of one of the Smithsonian Institution's museums in Washington, D.C., you may be greeted by an unusual guide. A Japanese tech company recently sent 25 humanoid robots to the Smithsonian. All of them are named Pepper.

    Each Pepper stands 4 feet tall and has a computer screen attached to its body. Built by SoftBank Robotics, the robots are programmed to share information about the museum in which they are based.

    "Pepper is basically an experiment," Goslins, director of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Museum, said. "The idea is to explore and see how a robot performs in this kind of environment."

    Museum visitors communicating with Pepper. The robot can tell stories and answer basic questions. People even take pictures and dance with it.

    "The robot draws big crowds," said Allison Peck, director of marketing at the Hirshhorn. "People just love Pepper."

    According to the Smithsonian Institution's website: "Pepper gives our museum workers a new way to reach and serve visitors." For example, Pepper teaches Swahili words to visitors of the "World on the Horizon" exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art.

    Pepper also has the special ability to draw guests to less-visited areas of the Smithsonian's museum. When Pepper is placed in a spot, crowds are attracted to that place.

    When not educating museum visitors, Pepper stays in the Smithsonian offices, getting charged and programmed. After being charged, Pepper can run for about 8 hours at a time.

    Pepper plays an important role, but the robot "is not meant to take away human jobs at the museum," Goslins explained. "It is meant to give our visitors a more enjoyable experience while they are here with us."

    Imagine someone who has spent the majority of their life sitting with a sign on the side of the road and that very person giving someone their last 20 dollars. That's exactly what Marine Corps veteran (退伍军人) Johnny Bobbitt, 34, did in October in Philadelphia.

    Bobbitt served in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as a paramedic (医务辅助人员) in Vance County, N. C. before he became homeless. Nobody knew how he got to where he was because he was discreet about that.

    One night in October, Bobbitt was sitting roadside with a sign in Philadelphia as usual, when Kate McClure of Florence Township, N. J. was driving home down Interstate 95 and ran out of gas. Scared and nervous, she got out of the car to head to the nearest gas station. As McClure was heading to the nearest gas station, she ran into Bobbitt and he told her to get back in the vehicle and lock the door. Minutes later, he appeared with a red gas can. He'd used his last $20 to buy her gas.

    After that unexpected meeting, McClure and her boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, who both live in New Jersey, visited Bobbitt several times to deliver gift cards, cash, snacks and toiletries. They then decided to create a fund raising page so he wouldn't have to spend the holidays sleeping on the street.

    McClure started the GoFundMe page on November 10. With the page, the couple hoped to raise $10,000, enough money for his rent, a reliable vehicle and up to six months' expenses. Bobbitt's story ran in a local paper. By November 15，more than 10,000 local people had made donations through the GoFundMe page and more than $300,000 had been raised.

    On Thanksgiving, Bobbitt was resting in a hotel, his feet up on the bed, drawing up a grand plan for his new life, thanks to several thousand dollars raised to repay him for a good deed.

Accines (疫苗) may soon make their first film appearance. Led by expert Maria A. Croyle, researchers have developed a thin sheet that preserves vaccines for long periods without refrigeration. This means the carefully cooled small bottles now used to ship vaccines could potentially be replaced by lightweight films that can be mailed in an envelope and stored on a shelf.

Croyle's laboratory began developing the technology in 2007. Inspired by amber's ability to preserve the DNA of insects, the researchers set out to create their own version of the substance by mixing "a lot of sugar and a little bit of salt, much like hard candy," Croyle explains. The vaccine-containing film is administered by mouth—sweet news for many who dislike needles.

The film is tailored to suit each specific vaccine candidate and provide a protective coating. "We've learned over time that the key to really stabilizing whatever the film holds is to have it intermixed with all the components," Croyle says, adding that the process is quick and uses affordable, standard equipment. "We really wanted to come up with something that would be transferable to developing countries."

Immunization(免疫) programs depend heavily on keeping vaccines cold(2℃-8℃) as they are transported, sometimes over thousands of kilometers to far-away locations. Delivery can be difficult and costly, and transport disruptions can cause the vaccines to be ineffective.

But this new product can store live viruses, bacteria and antibodies for several months at 20℃. In a paper published in Science Advances, the scientists show that the live viruses in one vaccine were preserved in the film even after 36 months. They also find that a flu vaccine suspended in their film compares favourably with a traditional flu shot(流感预防针). "The study demonstrates early proof of concept for an exciting platform for vaccine product development," says Lisa Rohan, a pharmacologist, who was not involved in the study. She also notes that each vaccine type would need a custom formulation(配方) for future stages of development.

Finding partners to mass-produce for clinical trials is the researchers' most pressing problem, Croyle says. They are also exploring packaging methods to keep their films stable up to 40℃.

Size is a major advantage—a letter-sized sheet of the film can carry more than 500 doses(剂) of vaccine, about 1⁄900 the weight of the same amount of traditional doses. By making it easier and cheaper to ship and preserve vaccines efficiently, Croyle says, the technology could vastly improve immunization rates the world over, particularly in middle- to low- income countries.