Banks view online banking as a powerful “value-added” tool to attract and keep new customers while helping to avoid costly paper handling or teller（出纳员）interactions in an increasingly competitive banking environment.

    Today, most large national banks, many local banks and credit unions offer some form of online banking, variously known as PC banking, home banking, electronic banking or Internet banking. Online banks are sometimes referred to as “brick-to-click” banks, both to tell them from “brick-to-mortar” banks that haven't yet offered online banking, as well as from “virtual” banks that have no physical branches or tellers whatsoever.

    The challenge for the banking industry has been to design this new service channel in such a way that its customers will readily learn to use and trust it. Most of the large banks can now offer fully safe , fully functional online banking for free or for a small cost. As more banks succeed online and more customers use their sites, fully functional online banking will likely become as common as automated teller machines (ATM).

    Online banking has a lot of advantages. Unlike your corner bank, online banking sites never close; they're at hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they're a mouse click away. If you're out of state or even out of the country when a money problem appears, you can log on instantly to your online bank and take care of business. Online bank sites generally carry out and confirm deals at or quicker than ATM processing speeds. Many online banking sites now offer fashionable tools to help you manage all of your valuable items more effectively.

How To Study English In China

    English is obviously not the native language in China. Although many Chinese want to improve their English level to the amount needed in daily work, it's very hard when only a few people speak English around them. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Here are a few tips that might help.

Join a school with native teachers to guide you.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} The more exposure you can get to these foreign teachers, the faster and better you're going to learn English. If a school doesn't give students maximum exposure to native English speakers' classes, find one that does.

Read English daily.

    This means using websites that are permitted in China, accessing English texts, newspapers and books. Read short stories in English. When you come across words you don't know write them down immediately. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Find some English speakers.

    Spend time with them and share conversations. There is nothing better for learning any language than finding native speakers of the language to practice with. When you speak, you are practicing every aspect of the language(except writing) in the most efficient way possible.

Memorize vocabulary.

    Write new words in a notebook every week, with English definitions and a sample sentence, not a Chinese translation. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Carry it with you everywhere you go. Even if you have a question about something that you see and you don't know the English word, write it down in your own language with the plan to look it up later and learn that word in English.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} English is not well controlled by grammar rules. For every rule, there is an exception to that rule. Your time will be better spent in watching movies and learning from them than studying grammar for long hours. Find someone to write emails in English to or write a dairy every day.

    There are many other ways to improve your English. Come on!

A. Learn to write.

B. Watch an English film once a month.

C. What can you do to study more English?

D. There are many English speakers in China.

E. You can do this by writing in your notebook.

F. Follow a soap opera, comedy or radio program or TV drama.

G. You should be carrying a notebook with you everywhere you go just to write down something important.

    We have most friends at the age of 26 after having spent the first quarter of our lives building up our friendship circle, a new research has claimed.

    The research into friendship shows that our social circle peaks at 26 years and 7 months, at which we typically have five close friends.  Women are most popular at 25 years and 10 months, with men hitting the highest friendship point a little later at 27 years and 3 months.

    The research, by Forever Friends, shows that about a third of adults meet their closest friends when at school, with about a fifth saying they meet them at work.

    Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter now also play a major role in building new friendship. The research points out that 25 to 34-year-olds make 22 friends via Facebook, compared to 18 to 24-year-olds who make 12, and 35 to 44-year-olds who make just 4.

    Forever Friends' relationship coach Sam Owen says, “It is no coincidence that over a third of us meet our best friends at school.  It is a key time in our lives when friendship is growing through sharing notes, giving gifts, seeing each other regularly and laughing a lot.  As adults we can often forget how powerful these small things are and how the little things can make a difference. ”

    Later in life we find ourselves losing friends. Over half of us lose friendship through moving, while 36% say that over time they grow apart from close pals. Having children also causes 19% to drift away from childhood friends.  

    With growing pressures being put on friendship these days, it's important to make time for our friendship.

    “At almost any given age, most of us are getting better at some things and worse at others, ”Joshua Hartshorne, an MIT cognitive(认知的)science researcher and the lead author of a study looking at how intelligence changes as we age, told Business Insider. His team quizzed thousands of people aged 10—90 on their ability to do things like remembering lists of words, recognizing faces, learning names, and doing math. Their results suggest that no matter your age, there's almost always a new peak on the horizon.

    The human brain has a remarkable capacity to recognize and identify faces, and scientists are just beginning to learn why. On average, we know that our ability to learn and remember new faces appears to peak shortly after our 30th birthday.

Having trouble focusing? The study suggests that our ability to maintain attention improves with age, reaching its peak around age 43.While younger adults may excel in the speed and flexibility of information processing, adults approaching their mid-years may have the greatest capacity to remain focused.

    Dating is tough. One of the reasons could be that we're generally bad at reading other people's emotions until we reach our late 40s.That's according to one component of Hartshorne's study, which involved showing thousands of people images of faces cropped tightly around the eye area. Participants were asked to describe the emotion the person in the photo was feeling. Performance peaked for people aged around 48.

    Many people believe that their math skills decline after they leave school and stop practicing arithmetic. But the next time you try to split up a check, keep this in mind: your ability to do basic subtraction and division doesn't reach its apex until your 50th birthday.

    Ever wonder why you always lose at Scrabble? Good news: Your best days may be ahead. According to people's scores on multiple—choice vocabulary tests, most of us don't reach our peak wordsmithing abilities until we're in our late 60s or early 70s.

    I decided to ski to the North Pole. It was after I saw an advertisement in a newspaper looking for people to join a team to ski 350 miles to the North Pole. Back in 1996, there had never been a woman from the UK who had accomplished this challenge. I wondered what it would be like to survive in temperatures cold enough to freeze your flesh in seconds, so I sent off for the application form.

    The application form full of pictures of male explores arrived. The words "Are you man enough for the ultimate（极限的）challenge?" made me angry and even more determined to get on the team.

    Over 500 individuals applied for a place in the team, and the selection process included physical and psychological tests designed to pick the best group. In one test, there was a huge rope ladder we had to climb, and I froze at the top because I have a fear of heights. I thought my hopes were fading as most other applicants sailed past, leaving me behind. But two others helped me over, and later I found out that the organizers were not looking for amazing individuals, but great team players, and this moment had shown them who would take care of others in the team.

    I had revealed（显示）my weakness, and in a place like the Arctic, you have to be yourself, as there is nowhere to hide. These personalities of asking for help and showing weakness are necessary for women to master.

    I realized that by being myself, I could succeed. I was selected for the team. I realized that I could achieve more than I ever imagined — more importantly, by sharing my story with others, I could inspire them to take a step into the new world and reveal more of their abilities.

    If you are in charge of a project, the key to success is getting everyone to want to help you. As a director, I point, I suggest, I gently push the actors in the direction I want them to go. In the 1986 movie, "Nothing in Common", Jackie Gleason's character, Max Basner, gets fired from his job as a clothing salesman. The scene, shot on a boat, shows Max's despair about being out of work. I was looking for some gesture that would allow Max to show his feelings.

    Jackie had far more experience at everything than I did, and at first I was frightened. What could I possibly tell "The Great One" about acting? Out of fear I decided to direct by suggestion, and I sat down with Gleason to talk about the scene. "So Max is sad, right?" I said.

    Gleason nodded.

    "And he's probably still carrying his pens with his name on them—the ones he used to hand out to his customers, right?"

    Gleason nodded.

    "So what would you want to do with the pens after you were fired?"

    He was silent for a moment. "Why don't I throw them overboard?"

    I stood up and turned towards the crew. "Hey, everybody, Jackie has a wonderful idea. Let's shoot it."

    After filming the scene, Gleason called me over and said with a smile. "Garry, what kind of wonderful idea am I going to have tomorrow?"

    You and your team can discover the answers to problems together. When there are no prizes or gold stars for those who get the solution first, you'll all benefit when everything turns out right.