The world consumes hundreds of billions of single-use plastic bags each year. They are difficult to recycle, wasteful and damage the nature. Environmental activists want to ban plastic bags or—as many communities have done —charge a fee for them. But the plastic bag industry defends their use, saying people reuse plastic bags, and industry officials argue recycling is a matter of personal responsibility and should not be forced.

    City officials say New Yorkers use 5.2 billion plastic bags each year. They are offered free with nearly every supermarket, or convenience store purchase. Many people like them, even if they sometimes feel guilty about using them. But what happens to those bags after they've been used in a huge environmental problem. They are found on beaches. They are caught in trees. They are swallowed by marine life.

    Plastic bags are made of petroleum products and natural gas, and do not biodegrade (分解). And they are difficult to recycle. So New York City spends nearly $ 10 million dollars a year to send 100—thousand tons of plastic bags to landfills out of state.

    In Washington, D.C., a five percent charge on all single-use bags led to about a 60 percent reduction and in Los Angeles County in California , a 10 cent charge on single-use bags led to a 95 percent reduction. With a 10 cent charge on bags, customers are much more likely to stop and think about whether they need a bag or not. And that's really all that these laws are doing.

C

    The main aim is a fully autonomous car that gets rid of the cause of most accidents: the driver, Hodgson points out, ＂For the sake of safety, the faster you can remove humans, the better, even if there are unfortunately a few accidents from new causes. It's a question of balancing the number injured or killed by autonomous vehicles with the people whose lives are potentially saved.＂

    It's a theme that Elon Musk, head of electric car company Tesla Motors, has long supported. His company is determined to be the first to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle to consumers. Last year, Musk announced that Tesla's 2017 goal was ＂to do a demonstration ( 示 范 ) drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York...and have the car park itself.＂

    However, even Tesla admits that there are problems to overcome — the software needs further confirmation and the appropriate regulatory (监管的) approval needs to be in place. Indeed, recent crashes of Tesla vehicles and Google cars confirm that the software isn't ready yet.

    The UK government appears determined to encourage the development of autonomous vehicles. It's supporting four city trials, publishing the Modern Transport Bill to reduce red tape around their introduction and adapting the legal system to take into account issues such as insurance liability when a human isn't in control of a vehicle.

    The insurance industry is similarly keen to promote increasing autonomy in cars. As the Association of British Insurers (ABI) points out: ＂More than 90 per cent of road accidents are attributed to human errors.＂ This costs motor insurers a surprising £20 per day in claims.

    Mom noticed that something was wrong when I started getting so thirsty. I'd have a lot to drink before bed, which was unusual for me. One time, I opened a big container of apple juice and kept refilling my glass. Before I knew it, I'd drunk the entire container! My mom called my doctor. I then had a few blood tests, and the results were certain — I had diabetes (糖尿病), which meant that the amount of sugar in my blood was very high. That can be dangerous, so I had to learn how to control my blood-sugar level.

    My eating habits had to change in a big way. With diabetes, I can't eat a lot of sugar or carbohydrates (碳水化合物). I have to figure out exactly how much sugar I plan to eat, and then I get an injection of insulin (注射胰岛素) before the meal to help my body process the food. Also, I test my blood-sugar level often. I'm always trying to keep my blood sugar at a healthy level. The level can drop when I exercise, but that doesn't keep me out of gym class or off the basketball court — I just keep some juice boxes around to boost my blood sugar if I need to.

    It's a lot of work and not a lot of fun to keep track of everything, but I've gotten used to my new habits. I was a little scared at first because I wasn't sure how my life would change. Once I knew what I needed to do, though, it wasn't a big deal. My life is different now from what it was before, but it has become completely regular to me.

    It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views (观点）of our President. A friend I was talking to agreed with me that it was, in his words, "a brilliantly (精彩地) written book". However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.

    And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven't. In the World Book Day's “Report on Guilty Secrets”. Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various author: which people have lied about reading, and as I'm not one to lie too often (I'd hate to be caught out), I'll admit (承认) here and now that I haven't read the entire (全部的) top ten. But I am pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one, George Orwell's 1984.I think it's really brilliant.

    The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven't read him, but haven't lied about it either) and Herman Melville.

    Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to "impress"（使留下深刻印象) someone they were speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in-depth!

    But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J. K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing the story (I'll come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so).

    Wilbur and Orville Wright were the two youngest sons of Bishop Milton Wright, Wilbur was born on a farm near Millville and Orville was born in August in the house the family would come to occupy for more than 40 years in Dayton.

    Orville would discover in later years that he and Wilbur's first interests in flight began when they were children, with powered rubber-band-helicopter toys that their father would bring home for them from trips around the country. Orville and Wilbur would build duplicates（复制品）of these toys and bounce them off the ceiling. They were just crazy about these things for the reasons that they did not yet understand.

    Both boys loved to solve problems that seemed difficult to others. The more difficult the problem was, the more they saw it as a challenge. Exploring the unknown was such a joy for then that Orville once said, "I can remember when Wilbur and I could hardly wait for the morning to come to get at something that interested us. That's happiness."

    Putting their gift to work, the boys entered the printing business soon after high school. Orville designed and then built a printing press（印刷机）for this enterprise. At first, they did contract printing for other people, and soon one of their customers during the early 1890s was Father Milton's church. They also tried the newspaper business, and although their two newspapers, the West Side News and The Evening Item were considered to be of high quality, Dayton already had daily newspapers, so the Wrights soon returned to contract printing.

    Branching out into other areas, they also opened a bicycle business. Bicycling was the fastest growing sport in the country at that time, and their repair shop soon led them into building bicycles of their own design, often with tools of their own construction, such as the lathe（车床）driven by a one-cylinder gasoline engine built by Orville. The bicycle shop would provide the livelihood（生计）that would allow them to carry out their experiments on airplanes.

    In the near future, IoT (Internet of Things) will drive huge innovation (革新) in the way our food is grown. Plants will have a "voice", not a human voice, but a voice based on data that can tell people, computers, and machines when, for example, they are thirsty, or need more sun, medicine, etc.

    Take vertical (垂直的) farms, for example. Farming is moving indoors where the growth of plants can be monitored and controlled. The facilities are built vertically, so growing areas can be put in piles. This greatly reduces the amount of land needed for farming.

    From an IoT point of view, vertical farms are connected in two ways. First, small sensors (传感器) in the soil or connected to plants tell a control system exactly how much light, water, and nutrients are needed to grow the healthiest crops. Sensors will also tell vertical farmers when crops are nearing their peak for harvesting at just the right time to make sure it's still fresh when it reaches its final destination.

    Second, vertical farms will be connected to other networks and information systems, including databases that track local demand. For example, local restaurants may input when they need fresh food supplies. And vertical farmers could get that information so they know which crops to grow in what quantities. This type of IoT system would have been unimaginable a generation ago.

    Today, vertical farms are being experimented. Yet, the numbers point to a bright future for the industry, especially as the world's population continues to grow. For example, Green Sense Farms in Chicago is able to harvest crops 26 times a year using 85 percent less energy, one-tenth the water, and no pesticides. A side benefit of lower energy use is lower CO₂ output of two tons per month, with the added benefit of creating 46 pounds of oxygen every day.