Andrew Jackson has been sitting pretty on the $20 bill for 87 years. Is it time to bring some new blood to the banknote?

    The non-profit organization called Women on 20s is campaigning to put a woman's face on American money. Barbara Ortiz Howard, the company's founder, would like to see a woman on the $20 bill by 2020.That year marks the 100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

    Howard got the idea when she realized that her daughter had no everyday reminders of famous women in history. She asked her friend Susan Ades Stone, a journalist, to join her cause. “Part of the aim is to educate as many people as possible about as many women as possible,” Ades says. “We want to see how many people we can reach.”

    American money values the successes of former presidents and founding fathers. Currently, there are only two women on money: Susan B. Anthony is the face of the rare dollar coin, and Sacagawea can be seen on the gold dollar coin. There are no women on paper bills.

    With help from writers and historians, Howard and Stone came up with a voting list featuring 15 important women. Ades says there is a standard for choosing candidates. They look at the women's contributions to our world, and at what challenges they faced.

    More than 72,000 people have voted so far in the poll. Ades says the competition has narrowed to a “very close race”, but won't say who's in the lead. After two rounds of voting, Women on 20s will send their campaign to the White House for consideration. The final decision is up to the Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew. Lew is unlikely to make a change without the president's approval. But last year, when a little girl asked the president why there aren't any women on US currency, he said that adding a woman is a “pretty good idea”.

    Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high-tech devices, while driving, walking, shopping, even sitting in toilets. When connected electronically, they are away from physical reality.

    People have been influenced to become technology addicted. One survey reported that “addicted” was the word most commonly used by people to describe their relationship to iPad and similar devices. One study found that people had a harder time resisting the allure of social media than they did for sleep, cigarettes and alcohol.

    The main goal of technology companies is to get people to spend more money and time on their products, not to actually improve our quality of life. They have successfully created a cultural disease. Consumers willingly give up their freedom, money and time to catch up on the latest information, to keep pace with their peers or to appear modern.

    I see people trapped in a pathological(病态的) relationship with time-sucking technology, where they serve technology more than technology serves them. I call this technology servitude. I am referring to a loss of personal freedom and independence because of uncontrolled consumption of many kinds of devices that eat up time and money.

    What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the vital question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what people need to ask themselves if we are to have any chance of breaking up false beliefs about their use of technology. When we can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then we can regain control and personal freedom, become the master of technology and discover what there is to enjoy in life free of technology. Mae West is famous for proclaiming the wisdom that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” But it's time to discover that it does not work for technology.

    Richard Fernandez, an executive coach at Google acknowledged that “we can be swept away by our technologies.” To break the grand digital connection people must consider how life long ago could be fantastic without today's overused technology.

    Ten minutes of gentle exercise can immediately change how certain parts of the brain communicate and coordinate (协调) with one another and improve memory function, according to an encouraging new study.

    The scientists invited 36 people of different ages to the lab and had them sit quietly on a fixed bicycle for 10 minutes or, on a separate visit, pedal the bicycle at a pace so gentle that it barely raised their heart rates. It also was short, lasting for only 10 minutes. Immediately after each session of the sitting or slow pedaling, the people completed a computerized memory test during which they would see a brief picture of, for instance, a tree, followed by a variety of other images and then a new image of either the same tree or a similar one. The people would press buttons to show whether they thought each image was new or the same as an earlier shot. The test is difficult, since many of the images closely resemble one another. It requires rapid, skillful scanning recent memories to decide whether a picture is new or known. Next, the scientists had each people repeat this process--riding or sitting on the bike for 10 minutes and then completing memory testing--but the testing now took place inside an M. R. I. machine(磁共振成像仪)that scanned the people's brains while they responded to the images.

    Then the researchers compared results. The effects of the exercise were clear. The people were better at remembering images after they had ridden the bike, especially when the images most closely resembled one another. In other words, the harder their memories had to do their best, the better they performed after the exercise. The M. R. I. scans showed that memory parts of each people's brain lit up at the same time with parts of the brain associated with learning, indicating that these physically separate parts of the brain were better connected now than when the people had not first exercised.

    The Japanese have always been at the forefront at deploying (利用) robots to perform jobs that are traditionally done by humans. Over the past year, humanoid robots have been seen helping customers at the Mitsubishi Bank and even filling in for human science communicators at museums. Therefore, it is not surprising to hear that the country has the world's first hotel that is staffed almost entirely by the Androids!

    The aptly (巧妙地) named Henn-na ("strange" in Japanese) Hotel which opened its doors on July 17 is located at Nagasaki's Huis Ten Bosch theme park. It is the idea of Hideo Sawada, a Japanese businessman who is fascinated by the possibility of replacing humans with robots. His aim is to have this futuristic hotel be run mainly by the intelligent humanoids.

    Guests checking-in are welcomed by a family friendly English-speaking robot wearing a bow tie and bell-hop (侍者) hat. Though experienced at his job, he does request guests not to ask him "a difficult question" since he is after all, "just a robot!" Those seeking a more "regular" experience, can approach the human-like Japanese-speaking robot.

    When ready, visitors can request the robot "porters" to help carry belongings to their room. Those that need to stow away valuables can hand them to a helpful robot who will place them inside an individual safe box in exchange for a small fee. A one-foot-high concierge (管理人) is available to provide information about the hotel's amenities (便利设施), nearby attractions, and even order a taxi if needed.

    So how much does it cost to live in this crazy cool hotel? It depends on when you decide to go. During the low season, guests can get away with paying as little $60 a night for a basic room. However, during the peak season when rates, are determined by an online auction, the price can get as high as $153.

    Four teenage girls from Minnesota, US. 120 hours of non-stop togetherness. No cellphones. This is not a reality show, but an adventure journey.

    "It was really perfect," said Julia Ruelle of her recent adventure to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with three of her childhood friends. "By unplugging, we had an amazing time."

    Last year, the 16-year-old took part in an essay contest and carried off a prize. The award was a 5-day canoe and camping adventure with up to three friends. No parents or guides would be there. So Julia invited her friends Anna Wander, Madeline Wilson and Julianna Torelli.

    The four Minnetonka High School juniors arrived in Ely for training the day before they began the journey. They set out the next day at 7 a.m., quickly developing a routine.

    "We were done paddling by noon," Julia said. "We ate lunch at the campsites and then it was time for hammocks (吊床), reading, making friendship bracelets (手镯) and talking."

    The girls had all had experience in the outdoors before.

    Anna had been to the Boundary Waters with her family. "I love how you are separated from everything in your life, especially technology," Anna said. Without her phone, she said, "I'm less worried about things." Madeline, too, had been to the Boundary Waters a few years back. "But this time, I had to paddle right and set up camp," she said. The girls made fire and cooked meal together. No one was ever hungry or homesick, but they were nervous the final night as they waited out a thunderstorm. They left wet sleeping bags in one tent, and squeezed into another for the night. "Every thunderstorm in the Boundary Waters feels huge," Julia said.

    On the car ride home, they were all on their phones catching up with friends. "It was a little at a loss turning my phone on," said Anna. "Mental health can be improved so much in the Boundary Waters. It really helps to get away and reconnect with yourself."

    We discuss the issue of when to help a patient die, which was not talked about openly and little was written about it.

    The best way to bring the problem into focus is to describe two patients whom I cared for. The first, formerly a nurse, had an automobile accident. And there she was: in coma, on a breathing machine. One day, her husband and son came to see me. They told me their wife and mother was obviously going to die; she was a nurse and had told her family that she never wanted this kind of terrible death, being maintained by machines. I told them that while I respected their view, there was nothing deadly about her situation. The kidney(肾) failure she had was just the kind for which the artificial (人造的) kidney was most effective. While possibly a bit reassured, they were disappointed. Here was the head surgeon seemingly determined to keep everybody alive, no matter what.

    Within a few days the patient awoke from her coma. About six months later, the door of my office opened and in walked a gloriously fit woman. After some cheery words of appreciation, the father and son asked to speak to me alone. As soon as the door closed, both men became quite tearful. All that came out was, "We want you to know how wrong we were."

    The second patient was an 85-year-old lady whose hair caught fire while she was smoking. She arrived with a deep burn; I knew it would surely be deadly. At the time, there was a class discussing medical ethics(道德). The instructor asked me if I had any sort of ethical problem I could bring up for discussion. I described the case and asked the students their opinion. After the discussion, I made a remark that was, when looking back, a serious mistake. I said, "I'll talk with the nurses before we decide." The instructor and the students were shocked: "You mean this is a real patient?" The teacher of ethics was not accustomed to being challenged by actuality.

    A day or two later, when the lady was making no progress and was suffering terribly, we began to back off in treatment. Soon she died quietly and not in pain. As a reasonable physician, you had better move ahead and do what you would want done for you. And don't discuss it with the world first. There is a lesson here for everybody. Assisting people to leave this life requires strong judgment and long experience to avoid its misuse.