Last year my summer holiday was spoiled by my bringing along a modern convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad. Instead of looking at nature, I checked my e-mail. Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed（推特简讯）. Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning. I was behaving as if I were still in the office. My body was on vacation, but my head wasn't.

    So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet. I knew it wouldn't be easy, since I'm bad at self-control. But I was determined. I started by giving the iPad to my wife.

    The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my at tempts at cheating an experience in frustration （沮丧）. I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan. Largely breaking away from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for the radio—and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what Ihad planned to do all along: read books.

    This experience has had a happy ending. With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem. I knew I had won when we passed a Star bucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi.“I don't need it,” I said．

    However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I'mback at work?

    There are times when the need to know what's being said right now is great. I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely. But I hope to resist the temptation to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two.

    I think a vacation is supposed to help you rest your brain to become more productive. Here I hope this one worked.

    A “virtual (虚拟的) cocktail” glass that lets you change the flavor (味道) of your drink using your Smartphone has been developed by scientists.

    Offering a customizable (定制的) range of drinks and tastes, the Vocktail can change a glass of water into a cocktail at the press of a button. The world's first technology tricks your brain into thinking it is experiencing a specific flavor by fooling your senses of sight, smell and taste.

    Developed by researchers at the National University of Singapore, the glass' three sensory components are controlled via a Smartphone App. Because the software can combine a number of smells, colors and tastes, the Vocktail can create almost any flavor.

    Developer Nimesha Ranasinghe said: “Our approach is to increase drinks flavor experience by overlaying outer sensory stimuli (刺激物). For example, in the Vocktail we overlay color, taste and smell sensations to create an adjustable flavor experience. Flavor is mainly how we feel food and that is achieved through the use of these senses. Therefore, by changing the color of the drink, using different smells and changing the taste through electricity, we are able to copy the flavor of a drink without it actually changing the liquid.”

    The glass houses three fragrance containers connected to micro-air pumps. The pumps release smell that change your feeling of the drinks, flavor. For example, a lemon fragrance will trick your brain into believing it is tasting lemon-flavored drink.

    On the outside edge of the glass are two electrode strips (电焊条) that send electric pulses into your tongue to stimulate your sense of taste and flavor differs with different pulses.

    One of the problems with passwords (密码) is that users forget them. In an effort to remember them, people use simple things like their dog's names and their birth dates — anything that will give them a clue to remember what their passwords are. But for a hacker(黑客), this is the same as locking your door and leaving the key under the doormat(门口地垫).

    To create a safe password that is easy to remember, follow these simple steps:

    You should never use personal information as part of your password. It is very easy for someone to guess things like your last name and your pet's name.

    With the help of today's computing power, it doesn't take long to try every word in the dictionary and find your password, so you'd better not use real words for your password.

    You can make a password much safer by mixing different types of characters. Use some capital letters along with small letters, numbers and even special characters such as & and %.

    In order not to create a password using different character types that is hard to remember or using a word from the dictionary, you can use a "passphrase(代码)". Think of a sentence from a song or a poem that you like and create a password using the first letters from each word. For example, instead of just setting a password like "yr$1Hes", you can take a sentence such as "I like to read the about.com Internet network security website" and make it a password like "il2rta!nsw" by using the number "2" for the word "to" and using "!" in place of "Internet". You can use many characters types and create a safe password that is hard to guess, but much easier for you to remember.

    Food is extremely important to us human beings and rice is one of the main food in the world. Australian researchers have discovered a way to genetically engineer rice which would provide significant health benefits to more than half the world's population.

    A study undertaken at the University of Tasmania, published in a respected journal of the National Academy of Sciences, discovered a method to increase the resistant starch (抗性淀粉）content in rice, making it more digestible and leading to lower rate of diabetes (糖尿病）and overweight.

    Steven Smith, the lead author of the study and a foreign expert for the Chinese government who has been appointed to work on crop improvement projects by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said increasing the higher resistant starch content gave this “designer” rice many added health benefits. “We have discovered that we can increase the amount of resistant starch in cooked rice, which could provide health benefits for a large number of people in Asia and beyond,” Smith said in a media release on Friday. “The same approach can be adapted for use in other cereals, including wheat. Not only can it have benefits for diabetes and obesity, but also for disorders of the bowel(肠）including cancer.”

    Rice is the main food for more than half the world's population, providing much of the world with most of their calories. Smith said that as the rate of diabetes and obesity in Asian countries continued to grow, his “designer” rice could provide a way to limit health problems.

    “Not only does resistant starch reduce the possibility of a 'sugar hit' but it also reduces the appetite and promotes the growth of the healthy germs.” Smith said.

Smith divides his time between the University of Tasmania and his research lab in Beijing where he hopes to make significant advance in sustainable (可持续的）living.

    When I was nine years old, I loved to go fishing with my dad. But the only thing that wasn't very fun about it was that he could catch many fish while I couldn't catch anything. I usually got pretty upset and kept asking him why. He always answered, "Son, if you want to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish." I remember being even more upset then because, "I'm not a fish!" I didn't know how to think like a fish. Besides, I reasoned, how could what I think influence what a fish does?

    As I got a little older I began to understand what my dad really meant. So, I read some books on fish. And I even joined the local fishing club and started attending the monthly meetings. I learned that a fish is a cold-blooded animal and therefore is very sensitive to water temperature. That is why fish prefer shallow water to deep water because the former is warmer. Besides, water is usually warmer in direct sunlight than in the shade. Yet, fish don't have any eyelids (眼皮) and the sun hurts their eyes. The more I understood fish, the more I became effective at finding and catching them.

    When I grew up and entered the business world, I remember hearing my first boss say, "We all need to think like sales people." But it didn't completely make sense. My dad never once said, "If you want to catch a fish you need to think like a fisherman." What he said was, "You need to think like a fish." Years later, with great efforts to promote long-term services to people much older and richer than me, I gradually learned what we all need is to think more like customers. It is not an easy job. I will show you how in the following chapters.

    Now, more than ever before, people are wondering what life is all about, and what it is for. Seeking material success is beginning to trouble large numbers of people around the world. They feel that the long-hours work culture to make more money to buy more things is eating up their lives, leaving them very little time or energy for family or pastimes. Many are turning to other ways of living and downshifting is one of them.

    Six percent of workers in Britain took the decision to downshift last year. One couple who downshifted is Daniel and Liz. They used to work in central London. He was a newspaper reporter and she used to work for an international bank. They would go to work by train every day from their large house in the suburbs, leaving their two children with a nanny(保姆). Most evenings Daniel wouldn't get home until eight or nine o'clock, and nearly twice a month he would have to fly to New York for meetings

    They both earned a large amount of money but began to feel that life was passing them by.

    Nowadays, they run a farm in the mountains of Wales, I always wanted to have a farm here, says Daniel, "and we took almost a year to make the decision to downshift. It's taken some getting used to, but it's been worth it. We have to think twice now about spending money in car repairs and we no longer have any holidays. However, I think it's made us stronger as a family, and the children are a lot happier."

    Liz, however, is not quite sure. "I used to enjoy my job, even though it was hard work and long hours. I'm not really a country girl, but I suppose I'm gradually getting used to looking after the animals. One thing I do like, though, is being able to see more of my children. My advice for other people wanting to do the same is not to think about it too much or you might not do it at all."