The sharing economy has grown in recent years to include everything from apartment sharing to car sharing to community tool sharing. Since 2009, a new form of sharing economy has been appearing in neighborhoods throughout the US and around the world— Little Free Library. The libraries are boxes placed in neighborhoods from which residents can withdraw (取出) and deposit (存入) books. Little Free Libraries come in all shapes and sizes. Some libraries also have themes, focusing on books for children, adults, or tour guides.

    In 2009, Tod Bol built the first Little Free Library as a gift to his mother, who was a devoted reader. When he saw the people of his community gathering around it, exchanging conversation as well as books, he knew he wanted to take his simple idea further. “I think Little Free Libraries open the door to conversations we want to have with each other,” Bol said.

    Since then, his idea has become a movement, spreading from state to state and country to country. According to Little FreeLibrary.org, there are now 18,000 of the little structures around the world, located in each of the 50 US states and 70 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

    The Internet has helped to spread Little Free Libraries. But an Atlantic article says the little structures serve as a cure for a world of e-reader downloads. The little wooden boxes are refreshingly physical and human. For many people, the sense of discovery is Little Free Libraries' main appeal. “A girl walking home from school might pick up a graphic novel that gets her excited about reading; a man on his way to the bus stop might find a volume of poetry that changes his outlook on life,” says the Atlantic article. “Every book is a potential source of inspiration”.

    WeChat is a social mobile application with voice and text messaging timeline and several social features like ‘Message in a Bottle'. WeChat, a popular instant messaging tool run by Tencent Holdings, aims to help users access mobile services without downloading separate apps, which experts said may challenge the business of smartphone app distributors such Apple Store.

This new feature, named ‘Mini Programs', allows WeChat users to find a variety of services such as ticket buying by scanning a QR (quick-response) code, saving them the trouble of installing a number of different apps on smart devices, according to the transcript of a speech by Zhang Xiaolong, Tencent's senior executive vice president, on Wednesday. The new function is expected to come online on January 9.

    Zhang, known as the father of WeChat, emphasized that ‘Min Programs' is not a mobile app distributing function.

    Still, experts and app developers said that the rollout (推出) of ‘Mini Programs' on WeChat will erode the market share of app distributors like Apple Store in China.

     “‘Mini Programs' will attract lots of start-ups, because a program based on WeChat can help them build up businesses at much lower costs,” a Shanghai-based app developer, told the Global Times Wednesday.

    If a start-up wants to promote its business via a separate application, it has to hire a special team to develop two different apps— one each for iOS and Android.

    Lsiunched in 2011, WeChat has evolved to include services such as ‘Order Taxi', ‘Food Delivery', e-commerce and payments from just an instant messaging app.

    Do you usually feel you're working hard but still can't reach your study goals? Here are some quick tips to help you study better.

Study with a partner or in groups

    Rather than living in a cave with your nose in the books all day, grab a friend from your class and study with him.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Step into your teacher's shoes

    Ask yourself “If I were the teacher, what would I put on the test?”You have probably experienced a lot of your teacher's tests and quizzes by now.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Teachers have specific types of information that they want you to learn. The structure is usually the same.

Paint pictures on the paper

    You can build your knowledge structure in the form of pictures. It's harder to remember each piece of a puzzle individually than it is to recall the completed picture.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

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    A hungry brain is an ineffective one. Your brain needs the proper nutrients to keep it going. Because of this, what you eat and drink also play a huge role in how sharp your brain is. Healthy food provide nutrients to your brain cells to keep them energized.

Take breaks to relax your brain

    Your brain is like a muscle. It can be also tired if you overwork it,{#blank#}5{#/blank#}If you divide studying into 15 to 30 minutes blocks with quick breaks in between, your brain will feel refreshed, grateful and ready for the next challenge you throw at.

A. Feed your brain from time to time.

B. It needs exercise to make it stronger.

C. Relax your brain by eating and drinking.

D. You'd better learn from them for the next test.

E. It's necessary to have a long holiday and have nice food.

F. Find ways to connect what you are learning to real life or to other concepts.

G. Group studying helps you to engage and process the information more deeply

    Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claw s ( 爪) on its wings when young. They build their homes about 4.6m above the river, an important feature for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin.

    In appearance, the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside. The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature, though, is only found in the young.

    Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip. Using these four claws, together with the beak (喙), they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive (远古的) birds must have done. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly, they lose their claws.

    During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes.

    With the development of technology and economy, social media is becoming one of the fastest-growing industries in today's world. A study conducted by the US Pew Research Centre showed that 92 percent of teenagers go online daily. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Changing relationships.

    High school student Elly Cooper from Illinois said social media often reduces face-to-face communication. "It makes face-to-face relationships harder because people's attention is given to their phones instead of their friends," Cooper said.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Beth Kaplan from Illinois meets her long-distance friend through social media. He currently lives in Scotland, but they're still able to frequently communicate with each other. "I can feel close to someone that I'm talking to via FaceTime," Kaplan said.

    Wanting to be "liked".

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The 19-year-old Essena O'Neill announced on the social networking service Instagram that she was quitting social media because it made her unable to stop thinking about appearing perfect online. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Teenagers who get harmful comments can't help but feel hurt.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    However, Armin Korsos, a student from Illinois, takes advantage of the comments(评论) he receives over social media to improve his videos on the social networking site YouTube. "Social media can help people show themselves and their talents to the world in a way that has never been possible before," Korsos said.

A. Opening new doors.

B. Teenagers' attitude toward social media.

C. Unpleasant comments can also do great damage to a teenager's self-respect.

D. The wide spread of social media has changed nearly all parts of teenagers' lives.

E. Yet, the social media is beneficial to show people's talents.

F. The rise of social media has changed the way teenagers see themselves.

G. Yet, some people believe social media has made it easier to start relationships with anyone from anywhere.

Smoking is harmful.But as soon as you quit the habit, everything will be OK,right?Wrong.

New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes will stay there for a much longer time.In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people.Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers.Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed--a number that is one-third of known human genes.

According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes.Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.

When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years.

This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking.But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer.They can stay for as long as 30 years.It's almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)—it will always be there,even when you've walked away and when the cement becomes dry.

Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side:the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.