A survey has shown that what you do on a plane can be determined by which nationality is listed on your passport.

    According to the results of an international passenger survey, Australians are the biggest drinkers on board with 36 percent choosing to down the hatch, compared to 35 percent of Americans and 33 percent of Brits.

    The Airline Passenger Experience Association(APEX) spoke to around 1,500 people, aged 18 and older, who have travelled by plane at least once during the last three months and were living in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.

    The results found Chinese travelers are most likely to nod off once the seat-belt sign switches off. They are also the first to take out their credit card for some in-flight shopping and the biggest fans of gaming. Americans on the other hand like to use their time in the air more productively—when not drinking—choosing to work while flying at 35,000 feet.

    Meanwhile, Brits and Germans are the best at making chat with random strangers—spending 50 percent more time than any other nationality. Comparatively, Brazilians conduct their conversations online via email, messaging apps or social media.

    Despite plane food having a bad reputation, seven out of ten interviewees said they were happy to eat up on the selection of in-flight snacks and meals. In-flight magazines were also popular with four out of five passengers.

    The international flyers did however express their desire for better in-flight entertainment. “The industry has greatly improved the comfort, entertainment and on board service, and passengers are accepting those improvements” said Russell Lemieux, APEX executive director. “At the same time, passengers are demanding more from their air travel experiences which will drive more improvements touching all aspects of the journey. ” he added.

    A new family moved in next door and I got to meet the mother of the family, Lydia. Lydia is Korean, and her family moved to our city so her husband could go to graduate school. We started talking, and she was apologetic about how bad her English was, but I didn't care. I knew how hard it was to learn a second language. I enjoyed chatting with Lydia as we watched our kids play.

    It was what came next that challenged me: Lydia asked if I'd be willing to help her with her English. Now, I am not a teacher. I admire teachers, and I'm grateful for teachers, and it's because I admire what they do so much that I was very very sure that I couldn't do it myself.

    But Lydia was sure that she wanted my help. I was doubtful. I wasn't sure my "help" was even worth being called by that name. But because she asked me, I said "yes." And that was the beginning of a friendship. Lydia and I spent afternoons sitting together and reading the newspaper, and as we did, she asked me questions when she had them questions about language, yes, but also questions about the new culture she found herself in. In turn, I asked my own questions, growing curious about her home country and culture. We bonded over our shared faith and our struggles as mothers of kids with special needs, When I complimented（恭维） her cooking, she began to teach me about Korean food, eventually leading to a shared trip to explore the Korean grocery stores in our city. Because of Lydia, 1 learned more about my own hometown than I ever could have learned by myself. I'm still not sure that I'm any good as a teacher. But I'm grateful I said "yes" when my neighbor asked me to help her with her English. That meant spending extra time with my neighbor, and that extra time meant she didn't remain just my neighbor. She became my friend.

    Maybe ten-year-old Elizabeth put it best when she said to her father, "But, Dad, you can't be healthy if you're dead."

    Dad, in a hurry to get home before dark so he could go for a run, had forgotten to wear his safety belt－a mistake 75% of US population makes every day. The big question is why.

    There have been many myths about safety belt ever since their first appearance in cars some forty years ago. The following are three of the most common.

    Myth the Number One: It's best to be "thrown clear" of a serious accident.

    Truth: Sorry, but any accident serious enough to "throw you clear" is able to be serious enough to give you a very bad landing. And chances are you'll have traveled through a windshield(挡风玻璃) or door to do it. Studies show that chances of dying after a car accident are twenty－five times in cases where people are "thrown clear".

    Myth Number Two: Safety-belts "trap" people in cars that are burning or sinking in water.

    Truth: Sorry again, but studies show that people knocked unconscious(昏迷) due to not wearing safety belts have a greater chance of dying in these accidents. People wearing safety belts are usually protected to the point of having in these accidents. People wearing safety belts are usually protected to the point of having a clear head to free themselves from such dangerous situation, not to be trapped in them.

    Myth Number Three: Safety belts aren't needed at speeds of less than 30 miles per hour(mph).

    Truth: When two cars traveling at 30 mph hit each other, an unbelted driver would meet the windshield with a force equal to diving headfirst into the ground from a height of 10 metres.

    Micro-blog is no longer simply a platform for self-expression, gossip and networking, as it is becoming an increasingly fierce battlefield for businesses wanting to promote their products and services.

    Over the last year, micro-blogging has become wildly popular in China, with some 65 million China based micro-blog accounts registered(注册登记)by the end of 2010 and the number is growing by more than 10 million each month, according to Data Center of the China Internet(DCCI).

    At present, China's largest web portal Sina claims to have 5,000 company micro-blog users, including Starbucks, Channel, and IKEA. On the micro-blog pages of the companies, visitors can not only view advertisements, but also see consumer feedback(反馈)and even commentaries on hot social issues.

    E-commerce(电子商务)expert Lu Bowang says micro-blogging has opened a whole new dimension of marketing. Through micro-blogs, companies can quickly grasp the attention of potential consumers and interact with them on a regular basis so to develop a friendly link with consumers, Lu said.

    An Internet surfer nicknamed Xiaoben posted on his micro-blog page that he enjoyed drinking Puer tea, and within 10 minutes, a micro-blogger who owned an online shop selling Puer tea recommended his shop to Xiaoben. “It is a little bit like magic. I just make a wish, and then I get a micro-blog response.”

    However, with more and more people micro-blogging to make money, experts warn that marketing via micro-blog could be a double-edged sword.

    Huang Heshui, professor from Xiamen University says micro-blogging is highly personal and private, and that too many advertising messages can annoy micro-blog users leading them to dislike certain brands.

    Further, a brand can be as easily damaged as established through micro-blogging, as consumers' negative feedback about a certain product or company can be very quickly spread in the micro-blog community, Huang added.

    The micro-blog managers should set up some rules and regulation to supervise micro-blog marketing, and at the same time, business organizations need to strengthen self-discipline(自律)and try to build up an honesty-based business culture, e-commerce expert Lu Bowang suggested.

    Facebook says it is working on technology to allow us to control computers directly with our brains. It is developing "silent speech "software to allow people to type at a rate of 100 words per minute, it says. The project, in its early stages, will require new technology to detect brainwaves without needing invasive operation. "We are not talking about monitoring your random thoughts," assured Facebook's Regina Dugan. "You have many thoughts, and you choose to share some of them. We're talking about monitoring those words. A silent speech interface（界面）-one with all the speed and flexibility（灵活）of voice. "

    Ms Dugan is the company's head of Building 8, the firm's hardware research lab. The company said it intends to build both the hardware and software to achieve its goal, and has employed a team of more than 60 scientists and academics to work on the project.

    On his Facebook page, Mark Zuckerberg added, "Our brains produce enough data to stream four HD（高清）movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world-speech-can only send about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem. We're working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain about five times faster than you can type on your phone today. Finally, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be produced in quantity. "

    Technology is going to have to get a lot more advanced before we can share a pure thought or feeling. but this is a first step. Other ideas detailed at the company's developers conference in San Jose included work to allow people to "hear" through skin. The system, comparable to Braille, uses pressure points on the skin to pass information. "One day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Chinese, and you to feel it instantly in Spanish,"Ms Dugan said.

Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to name things, or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in terminology (术语). Such special dialects are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by those engaged or interested in the particular science or art, they have the accurateness of a mathematical formula (公式）. Besides，they save time in these kinds of discussions, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather in the suburbs of the English language.

Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other professions, like farming and fishery, which have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very central part of our language. Thus, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technical terms. In law, medicine, and philosophy, the special dialects have also become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet among these professions, each one still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned when they have served their turn. Most of the newly-invented terms are restricted to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.

Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close combination. Lawyers, doctors and men of science all communicate freely with others, not in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody familiar with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported online, and everybody is soon talking about it-as in the case of AI.