E-reading and e-books are slowly conquering the world. Compared to traditional paper books, e-books in some schools and universities attract more interest because the information flow seems much easier to manage and comes in a greatly higher quantity.

    Japan is known for the reform-minded attitude towards the gadget(精巧装置)world and for the fact that it is one of the first countries that encouraged in the educational system the emailing of homework.

    The digital textbook looks like the logical step in the world of learning. It is natural but it is also completely untraditional.

    The plan of the largest publishing companies to get in line with the trend is to save a large quantity of paper and make the kids become interested in learning using a cool gadget. Many USA universities and colleges have made students be used to the procedure of downloading the courses and of course the procedure involves interactive software and also the chance of using the computer.

    The traditional education system is still unwilling when it comes to giving up books. The standard approach of information taught out of a book and Shakespeare read out of an old school novel makes studying English as traditional as it can be.

    In a world where kids would rather see the movie than read a book, the digital age has brought along a completely different flavor to reading. Bringing that flavor in school will make teaching a greener and also a completely different matter.

    Australia has promised to introduce the most comprehensive （全面的） carbon trading program outside Europe in 2010. The government in Canberra plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions (排放) by at least five percent by 2020, but it could make bigger reductions if other countries agree to tougher targets.

    The Australian government warns that without tough environmental measures the country could lose key industries and jobs. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says the economy is under threat and decisive action is needed.

    Central to the government's climate change plan is a carbon emissions trading program that will be introduced within two years. It would involve one thousand of the nation's biggest companies and would cover about three-quarters of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

    Many scientists believe that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, contribute to global warming. Many of them are released by burning fuels such as coal and oil.

    Companies will be required to buy permits for each ton of carbon they emit, although big polluting exporters will receive up to 90 percent of their carbon licenses free.

    Many business leaders want the government to delay the plan because of the current global financial crisis, which is slowing the Australian economy. Peter Anderson from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it is irresponsible to bring in a carbon trading plan now.

    Environmentalists, on the other hand, say Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has not properly addressed the threat of climate change. Activists had sought a minimum emissions cut of 25 percent.

    Instead, the Rudd government aims to cuts carbon emissions by at least five percent of 2000 levels by 2020. That amount could rise to 15 percent, if future global agreements set such a target.

    Ray Nias of the environmental group WWF says Australia will pay the price for low targets. “This is a deeply, deeply disappointing target,” Nias said. “It commits Australia to long-term climate change. It will make Australia's ability to negotiate (协商) global agreements very, very difficult. It is much lower than even we had imagined.”

    Australia has one of the highest per-person greenhouse emissions rates in the world because of its reliance on coal for electricity.

    Some scientists warn that the vast, dry Australian continent, which has been suffering a series of droughts in recent years, could be one of the region's hardest hit by global warming.

    Look to many of history's cultural symbols, and there you'll find an ancestor of Frosty, the snowman in the movie Frozen. It appeared on some of the first postcards, starred in some of the earliest silent movies, and was the subject of a couple of the earliest photos, dating all the way back to the 1800s. I discovered even more about one of humanity's earliest forms of life art during several years of research around the world.

    For example, snowmen were a phenomenon in the Middle Ages, built with great skill and thought. At a time of limited means of expression, snow was like free art supplies dropped from the sky. It was a popular activity for couples to leisurely walk through town to view the temporary works of chilly art. Some were created by famous artists, including a 19-year-old Michelangelo, who in 1494 was appointed by the ruler of Florence, Italy, to build a snowman in his mansion's courtyard.

    The Miracle of 1511 took place during six freezing works called the Winter of Death. The city of Brussels was covered in snowmen—an impressive scene that told stories on every street corner. Some were political in nature, criticizing the church and government. Some were a reflection of people's imagination. For the people of Brussels, this was a defining moment of defining freedom. At least until spring arrived, by which time they were dealing with damaging floods.

    If you fear the heyday of the snowman has passed, don't worry: I've learned that some explosive snowman history is still being made today. Every year since 1818, the people of Zurich, Switzerland, celebrate the beginning of spring by blowing up a snowman. On the third Monday of April, the holiday Sechselauten is kicked off when a cotton snowman called the Boogg is stuffed with explosive and paraded through town by bakers and other tradesmen who throw bread to the crowds. The parade ends with the Boogg being placed on a 40-foot pile of firewood. After the bells of the Church of St. Peter have rung six times, representing the passing of winter, the pile is lit. When the snowman explodes, winter is considered officially over—the quicker it is burnt down, the longer summer is said to be.

    Corporate culture is the values and beliefs a company develops over time. The role of corporate culture is to improve a company's mission and strategies, with long-term hopes of improvements in a company's profit. Mostly corporate culture comes from a company's top management.

    One role of corporate culture is to influence employee behavior, honesty, and compliance（服从）. A company does not have to necessarily create a direct influence for these actions. A direct influence may be a set of written regulations or other policies, and while these may be in place, the corporate culture is usually more of an indirect influence.

    While many companies try to create corporate culture through the use of written policies, its role is harder to define. The human factor has an influence on how corporate culture is expressed. The way uppermanagement acts and reacts to various situations defines how lower-level employees will act, and this aspect may be more important than any written policy.

    A company's corporate culture can also extend beyond the walls of the business. Consumers who believe a company to be honest and forthright（直率）may be more loyal in their buying behavior. Employees in a company's customer service department can also exhibit positive corporate culture to outside individuals. In this case, the culture creates a link between the company's employees and its customers. How customers react may be a direct result from the company's corporate culture.

    Product quality can also be influenced by a company's corporate culture. Companies that focus only on profits may decide to avoid high-quality materials in products, but try to suggest that the products are of higher quality than they really are. This negative culture can then result in lower brand loyalty with consumers.

    Pablo Picasso was an amazing painter who experimented with colour and shape. Picasso wanted to find ways to paint emotions. His paintings opened people's minds and showed there were many ways to express ideas.

    Born in Spain in 1881, Picasso learned to paint at an early age because his father was a painter. At fourteen, Picasso began attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelnoa. Although Picasso did well, his teacher wouldn't let him develop his own style. So he change schools. Though his new teachers praised his work, they still criticized it as being too different. Picasso made up his mind to express himself in his own way.

    Disappointed with his career in Spain, nineteen-year-old Picasso moved to Pairs, where he learned about abstract art. He started copying famous paintings so he could paint in any style. However, an important development in his own style came along when his best friend committed suicide（自杀）. Picasso was so upset that he painted only in blue and gray. He painted the poor and the disabled. This is known as his "Blue Period".

    In 1904, his painting style changed again when he fall in love with an artist's model. He began painting everything with colors of rose, red and pink. He mainly painted artists during this time, called his "Rose Period."

    Picasso's style went through style change as he began to learn African art and geometry（几何学）. Instead of painting with different colors, he used different shapes. His paintings made people surprise because they looked like they had been broken and put back together incorrectly. Everything was geometric and abstract. Picasso's new style became known as "Cubism." Cubism was so unique it became very popular.

Pablo Picasso in most remembered for his Blue, Rose, and Cubist periods. But Picasso never stopped experimenting with painting. His painting styles kept changing until his death at the age of ninety-two.

    Like infectious diseases, ideas in the academic world are epidemic (传染的). But why some travel far and wide while equally good ones has been a mystery? Now a team of computer scientists has used an epidemiological model to simulate (模仿) how ideas move from one academic institution to another. The model showed that ideas originating at famous institutions caused bigger "epidemics" than equally good ideas from less famous places, explains Allison Morgan, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

    "This implies that where an idea is born shapes how far it spreads," says senior author Aaron Clauset.

    Not only is this unfair— "it reveals a big weakness in how we're doing science," says Simon DeDeo, a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon university, who was not involved in the study. "There are many highly trained people with good ideas who do not end up at top institutions. They are producing good ideas, and we know those ideas are getting lost," DeDeo says. "Our science, our scholarships, is not as good because of this."

    The Colorado researchers first looked at how five big ideas in computer science spread to new institutions. They found that hiring a new faculty member accounted for this movement a little more than a third of the time--and in 81 percent of those cases, transmissions took place from higher – to lower-prestige (声望) universities. Then the team simulated the spread of ideas using an infectious disease model and found that the size of an idea "epidemic" depended on the prestige of the originating institution.

    The researchers' model suggests that there "may be a number of quite good ideas that originate in the middle of the pack, in terms of universities." Clauset says. There is a lot of good work coming out of less famous places, he says: "You can learn a huge amount from it, and you can learn things that other people don't know because they're not even paying attention."