Each year the Pritzker Architecture Prize (普立兹克建筑奖) goes to a star designer with a long list of attractive buildings around the world. This year's winner is a little different.

    Shigeru Ban has designed museums, homes and concert halls. But Ban is best known for a more simple kind of work: the temporary (暂时的) buildings for people who became homeless after disasters.

    Ban may be the only designer in the world who makes buildings out of paper — cardboard paper tubes (管). Ban actually tested the strength of cardboard tubes, and said he was surprised by what he had discovered. He has used them to build temporary buildings in Japan, Haiti, China and elsewhere.

    “After a disaster, the building material is going to be more expensive,” Ban explains. “But the paper tube is actually not a building material. It is cheap and plentiful. We can get the material easily anywhere. And unlike costs for traditional building materials, the price of paper tubes doesn't jump after an earthquake or flood. The tubes are also lightweight, so you don't need heavy machines to work with them.”

    Ban started using cardboard paper tubes in the 1980s. At that time he had just graduated from the architecture school, and he was looking for a cheap substitute for wood. So he started reusing the paper cardboard tubes that were left over from rolls of paper in his office.

    Ban was born in Tokyo and studied architecture in the U.S. before moving back to Japan to start his practice. Some of Ban's temporary buildings have become permanent (永久的), like the paper church he built after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

    One of the hardest parts of living abroad is being away from your loved ones, especially your family. While my friends are so important to me, I've personally found it more difficult being away from family.

    However, I was fortunate that my mum and sister recently found the time to see me. Both my sister and I have major birthdays this year as she's tuming 18 and I'll be 21. My sister is a very big music fan and this year, I created my status as the best older sister by keeping an eye out for music concerts in Paris. In our home town of Leicester, we don't regularly get many well-known artists playing in our city. But in Paris, I managed to get the best 18th birthday present of all: tickets for all three of us to see my sister's favorite American rapper, Angel Haze.

    I will try to visit for my sister's actual birthday in June, the chance for my sister and my mum to visit became a birthday treat. The experience of finding our way together to the concert or getting to show them around the Paris sites such as the Eiffel Tower,the Arc du Triomphe and even my favorite ice cream place,Amorino, was an amazing memory for us all !Despite the fact that I felt the slight pressure to make sure the weekend went smoothly,even the heavy rain failed to dampen our mood.

    Therefore, while it can be difficult being away from home and potentially missing big family moments,there are ways to avoid the sadness and find a way to make the best of your situation to create an unforgettable memory. Just like the continuing rain while we went up the Eiffel tower, every cloud has a silver lining, because then we got the funniest photos ever!

    Although English is not as old as Chinese, it is spoken by many people around the world every day. English speakers are always creating (创造) new words, and we are often able to know where most words come from.

    Sometimes no one may really know where a word comes from. Did you ever think about why hamburgers are called hamburgers, especially when they are not made with ham? About a hundred years ago, some men went to America from Europe. They came from a big city in Germany called Hamburg. They didn't speak good English, but they ate good food. When some Americans saw them eating a round piece of beef, they asked the Germans what is was. The Germans didn't understand the question and answered, “We come from Hamburg.” One of these Americans owned a restaurant. He had an idea. He cooked some round pieces of bread and started selling them. Such bread came to be called “hamburgers”. Today, “hamburgers” are sold in many countries around the world.

    Whether this story is true or not, it certainly is interesting. Knowing why any word has a certain meaning is interesting, too. This reason, for most English words, can be found in any large English dictionary.

    PhoneSoap: Charge and Clean Your Phone

    You may charge your phone every day, but do you clean your phone as much? Whatever your hands touch, your phones touch. It has been discovered that some phones have 18 times more bacteria and viruses than any surface in a public restroom. So it probably won't surprise you that a 2011 University of London study found that one in six of our phones have bacteria and viruses on them—specifically, the bacteria called E. coli.

    The research on bacteria and viruses led to the invention of PhoneSoap. It is not actually liquid like dishwasher soap. It is a phone charger that uses the electromagnetic radiation (辐射) used in hospitals to kill 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses, cleaning your phone while it charges.

    “There are really certain types of bacteria and viruses that we should not be in touch with, and they are really on our phones,” says Wes Barnes, the PhoneSoap co-founder. It all started while his cousin and co-founder, Dan LaPorte, was in his cancer research lab at college. “He realized he got the idea of getting rid of bacteria and viruses on the phones,” said Barnes. “In the lab they used UV-C light for destroying them. He realized this would be the fastest, most powerful way to kill any bacteria and viruses living on electronic machines.”

    PhoneSoap looks like a little metal suitcase. Your phone rests in to charge and get cleaned at the same time. Instead of plugging your phone into the wall, you'd plug it into the PhoneSoap charger box. The process only takes a few minutes but, Barnes says, “The idea is that you can leave it in there overnight if you want to keep charging. Reflective paint keeps the light completely around the phone so it cleans the phone fully.”

    The co-founders spent 2013 finding the right companies and they started shipping the product in late November. By last week's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, PhoneSoap was all grown-up. Both co-founders have left their previous jobs and are selling PhoneSoap nonstop. “We're shipping almost more than we can handle each day,” Barnes says. “It's been a great adventure.”

    It is not only praise or punishment that determines a child's level of confidence. There are some other important ways we shape our kids—particularly by giving instructions and commands in a negative or positive choice of words. For example, we can say to a child "Don't run into traffic!" or "Stay on the footpath close to me." In using the latter, you will be helping your kids to think and act positively, and to feel competent in a wide range of situation, because they know what to do, and aren't scaring themselves about what not to do.

    Actually, it is all in the way the human mind works. What we think, we automatically rehearse. For example, if someone offered you a million dollars not to think of a blue monkey for two minutes, you wouldn't be able to do it. When a child is told "Don't fall off the tree," he will think of two things: "don't" and "fall off the tree". That is, he will automatically create the picture of falling off the tree in his mind. A child who is vividly imagining falling off the tree is much more likely to fall off. So it is far better to use "Hold on to the tree carefully."

    Clearly, positive instructions help kids to understand the right way to do things. Kids do not always know how to be safe, or how to react to the warning of the danger in negative words. So parents should make their commands positive. "Sam, hold on firm to the side of the boat" is much more useful than "Don't you dare to fall out of the boat?" or worse still "How do you think I'll feel if you drown?" The changes are small but difference is obvious.

    Children learn how to guide and organize themselves from the way we guide them with our words, so it pays to be positive.

Ways to Build Resilience (适应力)

Being resilient isn't about avoiding misfortune, but rather how we respond to it. Resilience means doing well in the face of risk or difficulty. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Being resilient can help you manage stress, lower your chances of depression, and has even been proven to make people live longer. To build resilience, the experts suggest the following：

Start with reaching out for support. Lack of social support can lead to decreased resilience. While it's easy to let go of important relationships in our busy lives, {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Good relationships are a pillar (柱状物) of rock for resilience and are a source of support when the times get tough. And cultivating your sense of humor is also a plus. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Humor helps you to gain perspective during hard times. It also improves your sense of well-being through an increase in dopamine (多巴胺) levels in your brain, and can ultimately increase your overall health.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}Having goals and dreams increases resilience. A lack of purpose and goals reduces resilience and may leave you open to being taken advantage of, manipulation (操纵), and poor life choices；it reduces your sense of control over your life, which can easily lead to depression and anxiety.

Be a person of action. Being idle can lead to less resilience, but being active and tackling your problems head-on can promote your ability to deal with tough situations. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Instead, do something about the situation.

A.it is vital to make room for them.

B.Then find a sense of purpose in life.

C.it is exciting to embrace the unknown.

D.Hard times call for looking at the lighter side.

E.Try to avoid thinking deeply about negative thoughts or ideas.

F.It is also the ability to bounce back from tough situations.

G.Ask questions until you feel like you have a firm grasp of a situation.