Grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the “rules” of a language; but in fact no language has rules. If we use the word “rules”, we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved (逐渐发展成) into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. What we call “grammar” is simply a reflection (反映) of a language at a particular time.

    Do we need to study grammar to learn a language? The short answer is “no”. Very many people in the world speak their own, native language without having studied its grammar. Children start to speak before they even know the word“grammar”. But if you are serious about learning a foreign language, the long answer is “yes, grammar can help you to learn a language more quickly and more efficiently.” It's important to think of grammar as something that can help you, like a friend. When you understand the grammar (or system) of a language, you can understand many things yourself, without having to ask a teacher or look in a book.

So think of grammar as something good, something positive, something that you can use to find your way—like a signpost(路标) or a map.

    Except invented languages like Esperanto（世界语）. And if Esperanto were widely spoken, its rules would soon be very different.

    World Expo 2010 will be held in Shanghai. It will last from May 1st to October 31st, 2010. The Expo site covers a total area of 5.28 km². It spans(横跨) both sides of the Huangpu River, with 3.93 km² in Pudong and 1.35 km² in Puxi. There are five functional zones marked A, B, C, D and E. Each of them has different functions.

    Zone A will host the national pavilions(国家馆) of Asian countries except southeast Asian ones.

    Zone B will be home to the China Pavilion(中国馆) and Oceania (大洋洲的) countries, Pavilions for International Organizations, Theme Pavilions(主题馆), Expo Centre, and Performance Centre etc.

    Zone C will host the national pavilions of European, American and African countries. A large public amusement park will be built at the entrance of this zone.

    Zone D is home to Corporate Pavilions(企业馆), the land is one of the original places of modern China's national industry. So some of the old industrial buildings will be kept and renovated(修复) into Expo pavilions.

    Zone E will host stand-alone(独立的) Corporate Pavilions, Urban Civilization Pavilion (城市文明馆), and Urban Best Practices Area.

    “The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is well spent,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook in January.

    If the tech firm succeeded, Facebook would end 2018 on a much better path. But the cracks in Zuckerberg's social media empire only grew as scandals(丑闻)about data misuse, security and even Facebook's leadership piled up.

    The social network has faced criticism many times since launching 14 years ago, but the public uproar reached new heights in 2018. Facebook's missteps, even as it tried to fix its problems, were yet another reminder of what happens when a company grows rapidly with little oversight(监管). They also set the stage for another showdown between the tech powerhouse and lawmakers who have their own ideas on how to manage a platform used by 2.3 billion people every month.

    “I think there's just a general growing consensus from both parties in Congress that self-policing is not going to work,” Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in an interview. Facebook pointed to a series of notes Zuckerberg published this year outlining what the tech firm has done to combat(战斗，争论)election meddling(好干预的), as well as hate speech, misinformation and other offensive content. The social network pulled down more than 1.5 billion fake accounts, launched a database of political ads and announced the creation of a Supreme Court like independent body to oversee content appals.

    But in many ways, Zuckerberg fell short of his New Year's resolution(决议). UN investigators said Facebook played a role in spreading hate speech that fueled ethnic cleansing(清洗)in Myanmar. Media outlets found loopholes(漏洞)and errors in Facebook's political ads database. Users questioned whether they should delete Facebook after learning that Cambridge Analytical, a UK political consulting firm with ties to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, gathered data on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their permission.

    In short, Facebook's problems ballooned out of the company's control.

“They created a platform where sharing was mindlessly easy and interacting with each other required almost no forethought at all,” said Woodrow Hertzog, a law and computer science professor at Northeastern University. “As a result, there was massive sharing, including leaking of personal information that put lots of people at risk.”

    What do you remember about your life before you were three? Few people can remember anything that happened to them in their early years. Adults' memories of the next few years also tend to be unclear. Most people remember only a few events—usually ones that were meaningful and distinctive, such as being hospitalized or the birth of a new baby.

    How might this inability to recall early experiences be explained? The passage of time does not account for it; adults have excellent recognition of pictures of people who attended high school with them 35 years earlier. Another seemingly reasonable explanation—that infants do not form enduring memories at this point in development—also is incorrect. Children two and a half to three years old remember experiences that occurred in their first year, and eleven month olds remember some events a year later.

    However, three other explanations seem more promising. One involves physiological changes relevant to memory. Maturation of the frontal lobes (额叶) of the brain continues throughout early childhood, and this part of the brain may be critical for remembering particular episodes in ways that can be recalled later. Demonstrations of infants' and very young children's long-term memory have involved their repeating motor activities that they had seen or done earlier, such as reaching in the dark for objects, putting a bottle in a doll's mouth, or pulling apart two pieces of a toy. The brain's level of physiological maturation may support these types of memories, but not ones depending on clear verbal descriptions.

    A second explanation involves the influence of the social world on children's language use. Hearing and telling stories about events may help children store information in ways that will endure into later childhood and adulthood. Through hearing stories with a clear beginning, middle, and ending children may learn to take out the idea of events in ways that they will be able to describe many years later. Consistent with this view parents and children increasingly engage in discussions of past events when children are about three years old. However, hearing such stories is not sufficient for younger children to form enduring memories. Telling such stories to two year olds does not seem to produce long-lasting verbalizable memories.

    A third likely explanation for infantile memory loss involves mismatch between the ways in which infants encode information and the ways in which older children and adults recall it. Whether people can remember an event depends critically on the fit between the way in which they earlier encoded the information and the way in which they later attempt to recall it. The better the person is able to reconstruct the perspective from which the material was encoded, the more likely that recall will be successful.

    A new "paparazzi-proof" scarf has got heatedly welcomed since launched. A new "paparazzi-proof" scarf could be a game-changer for celebrities who prefer to shy away from the stage light. The ISHU scarf is the creation of Dutch-born fashion entrepreneur Saif Siddiqui and is designed to "give people their right to privacy back". A host of celebrities including Cameron Diaz, singer Joe Jonas, Bayern Munich footballer Jerome Boateng and music producer Major Lazer have worn the ISHU after it was spotted at London Fashion Week last year.

    It works by reflecting the light back into a camera, effectively becoming "invisibility clothes" for celebrities who don't want their photos taken. Anyone wearing the scarf is protected from mobile flash photograph, with the fashion accessory's fabric (附件结构) effectively blocking out any unwanted pictures, although it doesn't stop no-flash photographs from being taken.

    The 28-year-old Siddiqui was inspired while visiting family in Amsterdam in 2009 when his friends attempted to take a photo of him using an iPhone in front of some bikes. "He noticed that the bike's reflector carried the flash of his mobile camera in a way that confused the faces of his friends in the picture." the ISHU website explains. "He immediately realized that if developed into the right product, this feature would be an ideal solution for his friends and is now available to the public who want to keep their private moments in public private. "Saif put together a team of experts who dug into the science of light and reflection, and how to blend technology with fashion."

    He told Decoded Magazine: "The ISHU scarf effectively allows an individual to control what pictures and videos are taken of him. "There are no more unwanted pictures and videos on Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook! Everyone carries a phone with them nowadays that has an amazing camera. So, it all made sense to me." More ISHU products are set to launch in August, with mobile phone cases set to launch in the next few weeks. The ISHU is currently sold out but you can pre-order it online for ￡289.

I stood outside my front door catching my breath. After a lazy Christmas holiday, I had to recover from climbing stairs with carry-on bags and a suitcase. I looked up — Red tape crossed the door. I didn't understand French, but the one English word said enough, "POLICE". Google Translate told me I would be caught if I entered, so I didn't.

Finally, I called my rental agent (收租人). He went to the police station for more details. The thief had taken a few items from the top drawer as well as a small amount of money in the bottom drawer. Not only were my files undisturbed, but so were the TV and printer. My agent also said something about fixing the locks tomorrow and making a list for the police.

Then one day, I remembered that I had left another jewelry box in the flat. My heart sank as I thought of a gold locket (项链坠) with a picture of my late Grandma inside. When I realized the box was missing, the whole experience seemed to crash down on me. I cried. At the end of January, I received a letter from the police. The thief hadn't been found, and the case was closed. I slept with my purse by my bed. I hid my laptop when I showered. And then another challenge came — I was unexpectedly fired by my company.

One July night, I reached into my third drawer to pull out my jean shorts. I heard something fall to the ground. I looked down: It was the tiny jewelry box I thought had been stolen six months earlier. Inside was the locket with honey Grandma smiling at me, being there for me, telling me not to give up. I started to cry. I knew that things were going to be OK.