British English may have come first, but around the world, the American way of spelling is now far more popular.

    A recent examination of the English language shows that publications now largely use the American version swapping words like “centre” for “center” after the 1880s. To get data, researchers used Google's Ngram Viewer to analyze the words found in all English-language publications from 1800 to 2000. Entering a word into the viewer will show how frequently it occurs within the massive corpus(语料库)of books around the world.

    According to the data, this shift was further strengthened around World War I. Since then, English-language publications have preferred “gray” and “flavor” instead of “grey” and “flavour”. The American spelling has continued to grow over the years, with “liter” passing “liter” around 1900, and “center” becoming the more common choice over “centre” in 1913. “1913 marked a turning point in British spelling, as the American alternative became more frequently used in literature,” the post explains, in regard to “center”. This was just a year before the beginning of World War I, which many views as a key period in America's rise to superpower status.

    Though this switched again between 1920s and the late 1930s, the American, spelling took over for good around 1940, during which time the spelling “airplane” shifted dramatically over “aeroplane”.

    Ever since the middle of the 19th century, even the British Isles have slowly rejected the old spelling. The future is gray for British English.

    It seems that no one can live a happy life without friendship. While a great number of people expect others to be their friends, they don't give friendship back. That is why some friendships don't last long. To have a friend, you must learn to be one. You must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you. Learning to be a good friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous; be understanding.

    Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you do not tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven't been honest, you may lose your friend's trust. Good friends always depend on one another to speak and act honestly.

    Generosity means sharing and sharing makes a friendship grow. You do not have to give your lunch money or your clothes. Naturally you will want to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to a friend. They tell your friend what is important to you. By sharing them, you help your friend know better.

    Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and help with each other. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend can be a first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend's place so that you can understand the problem better.

    No two friendships are exactly alike. But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friends, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.

    There's a new frontier in 3D printing that's beginning to come into focus: food. Recent development has made possible machines that print, cook, and serve foods on a mass scale. And the industry isn't stopping there.

    Food production

With a 3D printer, a cook can print complicated chocolate sculptures and beautiful pieces for decoration on a wedding cake. Not everybody can do that—it takes years of experience, but a printer makes it easy. A restaurant in Spain uses a Foodini to" re-create forms and pieces" of food that are" exactly the same,” freeing cooks to complete other tasks. In another restaurant, all of the dishes and desserts it serves are 3D-printed, rather than farm to table.

    Sustainability(可持续性)

    The global population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and some analysts estimate that food production will need to be raised by 50 percent to maintain current levels. Sustainability is becoming a necessity. 3D food printing could probably contribute to the solution. Some experts believe printers could use hydrocolloids( 水解胶体)from plentiful renewables like algae(藻类) and grass to replace the familiar ingredients(烹饪原 料). 3D printing can reduce fuel use and emissions. Grocery stores of the future might stock "food" that lasts years on end, freeing up shelf space and reducing transportation and storage requirements.

    Nutrition

    Future 3D food printers could make processed food healthier. Hod Lipson, a professor at Columbia University, said, "Food printing could allow consumers to print food with customized nutritional content, like vitamins. So instead of eating a piece of yesterday's bread from the supermarket, you'd eat something baked just for you on demand."

    Challenges

    Despite recent advancements in 3D food printing，the industry has many challenges to overcome. Currently, most ingredients must be changed to a paste( 糊状物)before a printer can use them, and the printing process is quite time-consuming, because ingredients interact with each other in very complex ways. On top of that, most of the 3D food printers now are restricted to dry ingredients, because meat and milk products may easily go bad. Some experts are doubtful about food printers, believing they are better suited for fast food restaurants than homes and high-end restaurants.

    Starbucks will stop using plastic straws from its stores globally by 2020, in a nod to the growing push for businesses to be more environmentally friendly. The Seattle-based company said on Monday it will instead use straws made from other materials, and lids designed not to need straws. McDonald's also recently said it would switch to paper straws in the UK and Ireland by next year, and test alternatives to plastic straws in some US locations. In February, Dunkin' Donuts said that it would refuse polystyrene foam (塑料泡沫) cups from its stores by 2020.

    Environmental activists have been pressuring businesses to ditch plastic straws because they can end up in the ocean and hurt marine life. The push gained great support after a video in 2015 showed rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose in great detail. Local governments have also been looking at the issue. Last week, Seattle's ban on single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service outlets took effect, and Starbucks says it already offers alternative straws there. Similar proposals are being considered elsewhere, including New York and San Francisco.

    While straws have become a highly-concerned issue, they make up only about 4% of the plastic trash by number of pieces, and far less by weight. Straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9m tons of plastic waste that hits waters each year.

    Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines' Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones, But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just about one thing-shopping. And that can be a big problem.

    "In a way, over -consumption(过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems" Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It's hel on the day, which is known as Black Fridny -a famous shopping day in the US and Canada. You can see the irony(讽刺)here.

    Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever, It's just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean-seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

     The latest example is the Singles' Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record, But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters. "Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste." And it was reported that last year the Singles' Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins dictionary has also just named "single-use" its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there're too many things we tow out after only using them once.

    So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it's not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun "with people we care about" rather than wasting money on useless things.

    On a comfortable sunny Sunday, I was going to meet an old university friend I hadn't seen for years, and was really excited to hear all his news. My train was running a little late, but that was no big problem — I could text him to say I would be delayed. He would understand. But.. . where was my mobile phone? I had that familiar sinking feeling. Yes, I'd left it at home.

    No mobile phone . I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling anxious, on edge and worried when I don't have my phone with me. In fact, I know I'm not alone: two-thirds of us experience this " nomophobia".

    That's according to a study which surveyed 1,000 people in the UK about their relationship with mobile phones, which says we check our mobile phones 34 times a day, that women are more "nomophobic" than men, and that 18-24-year-olds are the most likely to suffer fear of being without their mobiles: 77% of them say they are unable to be apart from their phones for more than a few minutes.

    Do you have "Homophobia"?

    •You never turn your phone off.

    •You obsessively (着迷似地)check for texts, missed calls and emails.

    •You always take your phone to the bathroom with you.

    •You never let the battery run out.

    It's funny to think that around 20 years ago the only people with mobile phones would be business persons carrying their large, plastic "bricks". Of course, these days, mobile phones are everywhere. Its subscriptions has outnumbered people across the world.

    And when there are more phones than people in the world, maybe it's time to ask who really is in charge? Are you in control of your phone, or does your phone control you? So, what happened with my university friend? When I arrived a few minutes late he just laughed and said: "You haven't changed at all — still always late!" And we had a great afternoon catching up, full of jokes and stories, with no interruptions and no nagging (唠叨的)desire to check my phone.

    Not having it with me felt strangely liberating. Maybe I'll leave it at home on purpose next time.