“Indeed,” George Washington wrote in his diary in 1785, “some kind of fly, or bug, had begun to eat the leaves before I left home.” But the father of America was not the father of bug. When Washington wrote that, Englishmen had been referring to insects as bugs for more than a century, and Americans had already created lightning-bug(萤火虫). But the English were soon to stop using the bugs in their language, leaving it to the Americans to call a bug a bug in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

    The American bug could also be a person, referring to someone who was crazy about a particular activity. Although fan became the usual term, sports fans used to be called racing bugs, baseball bugs, and the like.

    Or the bug could be a small machine or object, for example, a bug-shaped car. The bug could also be a burglar alarm, from which comes the expression to bug, that is, “to install (安装) an alarm”. Now it means a small piece of equipment that people use for listening secretly to others' conversation. Since the 1840s, to bug has long meant “to cheat”, and since the 1940s it has been annoying.

    We also know the bug as aflawin a computer program or other design. That meaning dates back to the time of Thomas Edison. In 1878 he explained bugs as “little problems and difficulties” that required months of study and labor to overcome in developing a successful product. In 1889 it was recorded that Edison “had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug' in his invented record player.”

    Have you ever noticed how Americans fill up their entire glass with ice and then pour their beverage(饮品) in, but Europeans take their drinks at room temperature? In the U. S., we've created fridges that give you cold ice at the press of a button, but in Britain they typically serve their tap water warm.

    This tradition—if that's what you want to call it-dates back to the 19th century. During that time, it was already commonplace for most American homes to have an ice box. Ice would be harvested in northern America or Canada and shipped across the Atlantic and sold at a high price in British department stores. Can you imagine heading to Macy's to treat yourself to a block of ice?

    Putting ice in your drink started to become somewhat of a fashion(时尚) trend for the wealthy in Britain. Some would put a few cubes in their champagne and sip on their chilled drinks at high-class parties. But, like with any fashion trend, it eventually faded, mainly because the ice was just too expensive. And even once ice boxes began appearing in homes in Britain as well, Brits never took a liking to ice in their drinks.

    So, next time you travel overseas, don't feel offended(冒犯) when your server gives you an eye roll when you ask for ice water.

The Gift of Life

    Most couples demonstrate their love on February 14 with flowers or chocolates. But these four men and women have offered the ultimate loving gesture—the gift of life. Each sacrifice has enabled their loved ones to live full and active lives again after serious illness.

    I'D Do THE SAME FORHER

    Michele Johnson, 53, has been married to Gay, 57, for 26 years.

    With her husband suffering from a congenital(先天性的)kidney condition, in 2013 Michele  gave him one of him. Gay said: “I needed to be hooked up to a dialysis(透析)machine. I had no quality of life at all. However, I felt great as soon as I woke up after the operation. I told her I'd do the same for her.”

    I LOVE BRENDA TO BITS

    Brenda Green, 62, met her husband Keith, 63, when she was 24 and they married five years later. When Brenda was told five years ago she needed a kidney transplant, she cried. I Ⅱ give you mine.” Keith said without hesitation. “Brenda is my wife and I love her to bits.”

    MY WIFE'S MY HERO

    Stephen Heavyside, 61, and wife Patricia, 62, have been married for 40 years. Stephen said: “I was diagnosed with adult polycystic kidney disease five years ago. Patricia took good care of me and donated a kidney. This has brought us even closer.”

    He said “Patricia's gift changed my life. She is my hero.”

    DECISION WAS EASY

    Anna Stevens, 48, and husband Gary, 53, of Watford, Herts, have been wed for 23 years. Anna donated a kidney to her husband. She said of the transplant: “It was the easiest decision I've ever made.” Gary said. “There's only two words that I can use to describe her:  My angel.”

    A few months after Wu Xingu was congratulated by teachers for graduating from the university, the 23-year-old has been making his dream of relieving tens of thousands of teachers in China from drowning in marking papers(改卷) a reality.

    Yitiku, an online software system based on Wu's idea, eases the workload of teachers by doing many of the functions that they did, such as selecting the test questions, forming an exam paper, and preparing exercises for the students.

    The features of Yitiku may sound quite simple, but this idea won his company millions of dollars from China's Internet giant Tencent in January. The unexpectedly successful fund raising story became a popular conversation starter among the people in the education business.

    "I can say it's quite an achievement for me and our company. As far as I know, I'm the first CEO born after 1990s that Tencent has invested (投资) in, and we are the first online education company they have invested in." Wu Xingyu told China Daily.

Different from other online companies that treat students as clients (客户), Yitiku has chosen teachers as their focus. "We make the work of teachers easy. Usually it takes two to three hours for them to prepare a new exam paper. Now it's just three clicks." said Wu. He is quite satisfied with the major feature of the software.

    Sitting in his 10-square-meter office in Zhonguancun, a hub of innovation (创新) in Beijing, Wu looks confident and chatty when talking about his business. His fast-speed answers give people an impression that he has years of experience in the online education sector. The fact is that he had been putting most of attention in directing courses at an art college until about a year ago.

    My grandmother often said to me, "You can count the number of your true friends on the fingers of one hand." For a long time I thought this was true. However, I've now discovered my grandmother was only half right. Maybe we do only make a few "best" friends in our lifetime, but those aren't the only people that we can call friends. There are many different types. Let me tell you about a few of them.

    One type of friends is the type I call the "football mom friends". My neighbour Sally is a good example. We both have kids who play football in a football club, and someone has to take them to practise and pick them up. Sally and I and two other mothers do this. We meet sometimes and have tea and talk about what our kids are doing, but those are the only times that we meet each other. I enjoy being with these women, but we don't do anything else together.

    Another type is called the "hobby friend". That's the person you share an interest or a hobby with. Michael and Cater, who are brothers, are a good example of this type. We're all in a bird watching club. Every few weekends the members of the club go on a trip to watch different kinds of birds. There's nothing romantic about my relationship with Michael and Cater, of course. We just share interest in birds.

    Then there's the "other half the couple" type of friends. Jim is married to Rose, a friend that I have known since college. When Rose married Jim, I realized that I would have to be Jim's friend if I want to continue to be Rose's. Jim and I don't share so many interests, but we do have a friendly relationship.

    Being able to take advantage of truly unlimited data is a smartphone user's dream, but everyone I've talked to about 5G is more excited about the usage unlocked by next - generation wireless devices. From smart home security to self - driving cars, all the Internet - connected equipment in your life will be able to talk to each other at lightning - fast speed with reduced delay.

    "5 G is one of those forerunners, along with artificial intelligence, of this coming data age," said Steve Koenig, senior director of market research for the Consumer Technology Association. "Self - driving vehicles are emblematic in this data age - they show application of data completely. With one single task, driving, you have large amounts of data coming from the vehicle itself, and a variety of sensors (传感器)are collecting a lot of information to model its environment as it moves. It's pulling in data from other vehicles about conditions down the road. There's lots of data behind that task, which is why we need the speed and lower latency ((延迟).

    AR glasses and virtual (虚拟的)reality headphones haven't yet been inside the mainstream, but tech companies are joyfully saying that such equipment will eventually replace our smartphones. With 5G, that could actually happen. This is notable because companies such as Apple are reportedly developing AR glasses to improve - or even replace - smartphones.

    Ericsson showed at February's Mobile World Congress in 2019 how smart glasses could become faster and lighter with a 5G connection, because instead of being weighed down with components, the glasses could rely on outside equipment for processing power.

    But don't get too excited. There's still a lot of work to be done in the meantime, including some necessary testing to make sure the radio plays nicely with basic systems and service construction so that 5G isn^'t concentrated only in big cities.