Your next car might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now nearing the live phase. Last moth, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France, Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or before.

    Driverless cars will at first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant（统治的）are dense urban areas — precisely the spots most damaged by the automobile age. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cargo. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.

    Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That's big—the annual death toll on the world's roads is about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric. The old, otherwise they would stay at home most of the time and the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility.

    On the other hand, driverless cars will bring catastrophe. The best thing about the automobile age was that it employed tens of millions of people to make, market, insure and drive vehicles. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Carmakers are especially scared. The few cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imaging the impact on Germany, where the automotive sector is the largest industry.

    Dramatic change is coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have factored them into their long-term planning.

    A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. It has bought an epidemic of mass addiction. Let's hope we do a better job of handling the driverless car.

    Sunstroke (中暑) is a condition that can quickly go from dangerous to deadly, especially if proper care isn't given immediately.

    Sunstroke, sometimes called heatstroke, is a result of the body temperature rising above safe limits. This causes the body's necessary functions to stop working.

    It's usually pretty easy to avoid sunstroke, as long as proper action is taken. In that case, you need to act as quickly as possible to return that person's body to a safe temperature. Here are a few tips to help treat sunstroke.

Call for help

    Call to get an ambulance as quickly as possible. This should be the first thing you do, especially if the sunstroke person has fainted(昏倒). Also, call for help from anyone nearby if you're in a public place. If there's no one around, call someone nearby if they can get there sooner than an ambulance. Ask everyone to bring you as much water as possible, if there isn't much nearby.

Get the person to a cooler area

    If there's a building nearby, aim for that. Anywhere with plenty of air conditionings and water is perfect. If a building isn't available, bring the person to a well shaded area.

Get the water flowing

    If the person is still conscious, get him or her to drink water. If there's a bathtub available，fill it with cool water and put the person in it.

If your water supply is limited, you have to save it. Dampen a towel or shirt and put it on the person's body. Focus on the face, neck，and chest.

Fan the person

    Getting moving air over the person cools him or her down. Use anything, a towel or sheet, a shirt your hands，or a piece of board. This is where having many people around really helps, as they can combine to fan the entire body.

    No one is sure how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids near Cairo. But a new study suggests they used a little rock 'n' roll. Long ago builders could have attached wooden poles to the stones and rolled them across the sand, the scientists say.

    "Technically, I think what they're proposing is possible." physicist Daniel Bonn said.

    People have long puzzled over how the Egyptians moved such huge rocks. And there's no obvious answer. On average, each of the two million big stones weighed about as much as a large pickup truck. The Egyptians somehow moved the stone blocks to the pyramid site from about one kilometer away.

    The most popular view is that Egyptian workers slid the blocks along smooth paths. Many scientists suspect workers first would have put the blocks on sleds. Then they would have dragged them along paths. To make the work easier, workers may have lubricated the paths either with wet clay or with the fat from cattle. Bonn has now tested this idea by building small sleds and dragging heavy objects over sand.

    Evidence from the sand supports this idea. Researchers found small amounts of fat, as well as a large amount of stone and the remains of paths.

    However, phyficmt Josepn West thought there might have been a simpler way, who led the new study. West said, "I was inspired while watching a television program showing how sleds might have helped with pyramid construction. I thought, "Why don't they just try rolling the things?" A square could be turned into a rough sort of wheel by attaching wooden poles to its sides, he realized. That, he noted, should make a block of stone "a lot easier to roll than a square".

    So he tried it.

    He and his students tied some poles to each of four sides of a 30-kilogram stone block. That action turned the block into somewhat a wheel. Then they placed the block on the ground.

    They wrapped one end of a rope around the block and pulled. The researchers found they could easily roll the block along different kinds of paths. They calculated that rolling the block required about as much force as moving it along a slippery path.

    West hasn't tested his idea on larger blocks, but he thinks rolling has clear advantages over sliding. At least, workers wouldn't have needed to carry cattle fat or water to smooth the paths.

    When most people think of the word, “brand”, they think of the Nike Swoosh, Ford “blue oval,” McDonalds Golden Arches, or the “State Farm is There” jingle. They know what they will get with a well branded product or service as promised. Think of Volvo, for instance, and your first thoughts are probably something like “well built, comfortable, Swedish” and, most of all, “safety”.

    So a brand is a lot more than a logo, icon, or slogan. Catchy as it may sound, it isn't the “brand” in the true sense—and it certainly isn't what makes the brand valuable. A company's brand is a promise. It's a description of the company's character. To some extent, it's a mission; it's how the company creates and delivers value. Also, it's the feeling the company conveys to its stakeholders. Successful brands meet various challenges and consistently deliver on their promises, which is how they create brand value. To illustrate it, here are some brand promises from three highly successful, world-wide brands: The NFL: “To be the premier sports and entertainment brand that brings people together, connecting them socially and emotionally like no other.” Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.” Virgin Atlantic: “To be genuine, fun, contemporary, and different in everything we do at a reasonable price.”

    Interesting. In none of the above cases does the brand promise describe what these companies do or provide. The NFL's brand promise says nothing about football. Coca-Cola doesn't talk about providing the best soft drinks in the world. And Virgin Atlantic's promise goes a lot farther than seating passengers in its aircrafts.

    Of course, a promise is nowhere near enough. The promise along with look, personality, time, money, and hard work combined can eventually help to build and maintain great brands and acquire a special patina(光泽) of what I call “me” appeal, showing my personal appetite. Apple has that patina. All of this can lead to sub-brands, like iPhone and iPad which acquire the glory of the parent brand.

    Sometimes a brand is memorable because of little things. TD Bank has a special place in their branches for you to deposit all those coins you collect in jars. It is called the Penny Arcade that turns depositing your coins into a fun game in which you can even win prizes. Years ago, Dime Savings Bank in New York had a small dime(十分硬币) carrier. It was given to kids and then they'd fill up its 50 slots (投币口) with a dime in each one and bring it to exchange for a $5 bill.

    A ten-year-old boy from Howell, Michigan is being praised as a hero thanks to his persistence (坚持) that led to saving the life of an elderly neighbor. The event happened late in an evening when Danny DiPietro was being driven home from hockey practice by his mom.

    That's when the young boy noticed an open garage (车库) and a figure that he believed was a dog outside an apartment building near his house. Given the freezing weather, the young boy got a feeling that something was not right. But instead of dismissing it like most kids at his age, he insisted that his mother, Dawn, find out what was going on. Dawn tried to make Danny believe that no one would leave a dog out in such cold weather, but he refused to take no for an answer.

    Dawn finally gave in and decided to drive to the area with the family dog and see if there was any truth in Danny' s hunch (直觉). Sure enough, as she got closer to the apartment building she noticed a garage that was wide open and someone waving madly for help. Upon getting there, she realized that it was not a dog the young boy had seen, but Kathleen St. Onge. The 80-year-old woman had fallen down on some ice in front of her garage and had been lying there for two hours, unable to get up.

    Dawn rushed home to get her husband to help and called 911. The two then returned with some blankets to cover Ms. St. Onge, while they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Though still in hospital, the elderly woman is recovering well and forever grateful to Danny for following his hunch!

    Did you ever have to say "no" to somebody? Such as a classmate who asks to go to lunch with you? New research suggests that, at least socially, a rejection (拒绝) should not include an apology. In other words, saying you are sorry does not make the person being rejected feel any better. In fact, it might make the rejected person feel worse. That is surprising. Many people consider it to be good manners to say they are sorry when they turn down a request.

    Gili Freedman is doing some related research at Dartmouth College. For her research, she asked over 1,000 people to respond to different examples of social rejection. In one example, the researchers asked people for their reaction (反应）after a person named Taylor asked to join a co-worker who went out to lunch every Friday. And Taylor was told "no". But in some cases, the person rejecting Taylor offered an apology. In other cases, the people doing the rejection did not say they were sorry. People were asked how they would feel if they were being turned down, just as Taylor was. Most said they would be more hurt by a rejection with an apology than a rejection without an apology.

    Freedman said the reason is that apologies make people feel like they need to say that the rejection was okay— even when they felt like it was not okay. Rejection without an apology lets them express their feelings of disappointment, hurt or anger more easily. Freedman also said that an apology often makes the person doing the rejection feel better—even as it makes the person being rejected feel worse.

    Her research deals only with social communication. A business situation might be very different. "If a manager rejects a job interviewee or a boss must tell an employee that he or she is being fired from a job," Freedman said, "reactions to apologies may be different."