Have you ever had the following experience? You have been given the task of organizing a conference, which includes a must-do list about a mile long. There is the conference site, the guest list, the materials, the technology and even the food and drink to think about and plan. If you are beginning to feel the stress, slow down and take a breath. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

    Write down your goals. You will need to clearly define what you hope to accomplish with this conference because this will shape the rest of your decisions.  {#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

    Develop your budget.  {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. Then break that budget into different parts such as conference site, materials and speakers' fees. Stick to your budget, and make sure your assistants are keeping their monetary limits as well.

     {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. When searching for locations, keep in mind the number of participants, the convenience of the location, parking and closeness to public transportation, airports and hotels. Your goal in finding a place to hold the conference should be making it as easy as possible for participants to attend.

    Seek help from the staff of the conference site. If you have chosen a site that is known for holding conferences, you can seek help from the staff there as organizing meeting is what they do every day.  {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. They should be able to answer any questions or concern and provide advice when needed.

    Of course, full preparations also include a walk-through. Go to the site and meet with the staff the day before to be certain that everything is in place and to take care of any small details.

  A. Decide on a schedule for the meeting

  B. Choose your conference site

  C. Read the following skills to figure out how to organize a conference

  D. Knowing what you want to achieve eases the stress of moving forward

  E. Make full use of this important resource

  F. You can do nothing without knowing how much money you have to spend

  G. Seek help from your colleagues to support every aspect of the meeting

    Maybe it has been the influence of the current scene: the type among urban biking. Apparently, urban biking requires entirely different bikes than suburban hiking does and therefore a Bike Design Project started where five design studios across five cities had to come up with a perfect urban bike. The winning bike will be manufactured for a limited run of 100 hikes and will be in stores next year. Industry, a Portland-based studio, came up with a very interesting bike: one that uses bluetooth and handlebars (车把手) that tell you when to stop or turn.

    Industry worked together with Ti Cycles to create a bike with a 3D printed titanium frame (钛框架). The hike is called Solid and can be connected to a smartphone APP: My Bike. This APP alarms a user when a light needs replacement and if something gets wrong with one's brakes. There is also software called Discover My City, which has a series of routes through Portland's most trendy neighborhoods, with suggestions about where to eat and shop.

    Nevertheless, the idea with cycling is that you need to focus on the road and not on your smartphone. This bike therefore uses integrated feedback on handlebars. Those handlebars tell a user when to turn, as they will buzz when a turn appears. As you are getting closer, they will buzz more frequently. And then there is the possibility to control your light via built-in sensors and change gears by pressing an electronic button.

    Although the bicycle looks highly interesting and can be seen as a piece of art for the designing world, we don't know if we would like our bike to have an automatic buzz when we are approaching a turn. On the other side, it could add some extra safety to traffic in general. Whether you like the bike or not, you have to admit the Portland-based studio brings the concept of urban biking to a whole new level.

    What's going on under Liverpool?
A Rainy Day in Liverpool

    Dark clouds appear over the River Mersey and a cold wind is blowing. A few rain drops are beginning to fall. We're in the famous city of Liverpool and we're going to spend this rainy day in the Williamson Tunnels.
  An Interesting Life Story

    Joseph Williamson was born into a poor family in 1769，but left home and went to work for a tobacco company aged 11. He began at the bottom, and finally became head of the business.

 An Unsolved Mystery

    Nobody knows why Williamson dug tunnels under most of Liverpool, but many think it was to create jobs. Perhaps half of Liverpool's population worked for him. The industry of war had made enormous amounts of money, but now Liverpool was in a terrible financial situation.

 The King of Edge Hill

    I went on a guided tour starting close to where his empire began in Edge Hill. In the tunnels, the steps leading from rooms below ground to those buildings, which no longer exist, seem particularly ghostly.

Incredible Engineering

    We go into the Double Tunnel. It's just been discovered that it's actually a triple tunnel - but nobody knows why the three tunnels were built on top of each other.

    We finish the tour and decide we'll have a coffee in the Williamson Tunnels Cafe Bar. There, I notice lots of flyers for bands and theater groups that are coming to play there.

Why Liverpool?

    Apart from the obvious attractions like the football clubs, or anything to do with the Beatles, Liverpool has a lot to offer. Princes Park and Croxteth Park were royal hunting grounds and the trees are 200 years old. Renshaw Street displays are an unusual mix of architecture styles. The nightlife is exciting. If you want to experience a part of the British Isles with a character entirely different from London, you should definitely come to Liverpool.

    One of the biggest social issues in Japan is the increasingly low marriage rate among young people and the small birth rate, which led to an aging and eventually shrinking（萎缩） population. Most young Japanese women simply don't seem interested in having many children.

    Now what began in Japan is happening globally. As David Brooks wrote, birth rate is becoming smaller in much of the world, from Iran — 1.7 births rate per woman — to Russian, where low birth rates connected with high death rates mean the population is already shrinking. And this includes US, which has long had higher birth rates than most developed nations. Aging countries will face the burden of caring for large elderly populations without a larger resource of young workers.

    It's true that global aging is going to present some major challenges. Who will take care of the elderly? Will an older world be less active and slower to change and adapt? It's all true. Sometimes I worry about a coming generational war over resources, just as I worry about how I will take care of my own parents in their old age, just as I worry about who might take care of me.

    But here's the thing: an older world may have less pressure on the environment. As we all know, the environment is the real victim of overpopulation.

    So maybe a world that grows slower and grows older will put less pressure on the environment, and buy us a few more years to ensure our energy use, along with our birthrates, reaches a sustainable（可持续的）level. After all, we're supposed to get smarter as we got older. Hopefully that holds true for the planet as well.

We all love eating out.But,is it bothering you because you are on a diet and have to dine with a friend?Sure,you will be concerned about the amount of calories,fat or salt in a restaurant's menu items. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Choose the right place.

Always plan ahead when you know that you have to dine out.Look for the restaurants that serve delicious meals that are low in fat.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} You're more likely to overeat there.Once you've decided the place,get familiar with their food menu.Decide what you're going to order before you go.

Start with a soup.

One easy approach to stick to your diet when eating out is starting with a soup.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} This will keep you from sitting hungry and filling you up.A soup is the first course that you order when eating out.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

Salt improves food's flavour and is often used heavily in restaurant meals.When you dine out,ask the attendant to prepare food without added salt.Ask about the ingredients to see if there are items that may be higher in salt.Moreover,it is better to limit the use of condiments(调料)such as mustard,ketchup,pickle and sauces as they may contain salt that you don't need.Instead of salty appetisers(开胃小吃),choose fruit and vegetable salad.

Don't eat it all.

{#blank#}5{#/blank#} To avoid overeating,you can split a meal with a companion or put half the meal in a plate and leave the rest.

Sticking to a healthy diet doesn't mean you have to turn down everyone's offer when asked to eat out.

A.You have to be very particular about serving sizes when dining out.

B.Just make sure you make healthier choices.

C.Avoid eating at places that offer all-you-can-eat buffets(自助餐).

D.Here are four tips for eating out while you are on a diet.

E.Cut the salt intake.

F.Avoid eating too much.

G.Order vegetable or bean-based but avoid cream-based soups.

Imagine a school where students are taught by the best teachers in every subject, regardless of location. Imagine a school where students could go on safe field trips to the Amazon rainforest or Everest base camp. Well, such schools are already being built: in virtual(虚拟的)reality. 

Last year, Optima Academy Online, an all-virtual school, delivered courses that aim to improve the hearts and train the minds of young people. These courses are of different levels, attracting 170 full-time students from all over Florida. In the progress of home-schooling, students use headsets for about three hours a day for formal lessons and then do course work independently with digital check-ins. 

Future versions(版本)of VR will doubtless be widely used in education, but the only questions are: for what purpose and at what speed? There are enough reasons to doubt whether VR schools represent the future of education. Sticking a child in their bedroom with a heavy VR headset fastened to their face and no physical social interaction with other kids will fill many of them and their parents with horror. 

A recent report concluded that digital education could significantly improve the quality and equality of schooling systems. But if managed poorly, it could have the opposite effect, turning a digital divide into an educational one. There is growing evidence to suggest that is happening. In Mexico, only 24 percent of 15-year-old students in poor schools have access(使用)to a home computer for schoolwork compared with 87 percent in rich ones. 

Used properly, technology can be great for enabling self-motivated students to access learning resources and connect with fellow students and teachers all over the world, says Beeban Kidron, a member of the UK's Digital Futures Commission. The trouble is that Edtech is too often seen as a shiny new toy that will solve all problems and save money rather than being viewed as a different way to learn, she adds.