【推荐1】Leaders in the aviation （航空）industry plan to launch a campaign that they hope will work against what they call a " flight shaming（使蒙羞）” movement. They say flight shaming has weakened peopled demand for air travel in Europe . Some travelers there are increasingly concerned about the effects of flying on the environment. Activists have been calling for greater action against climate change. That includes avoiding air travel.

Flight shaming has affected air travel demand in many European countries, including Britain, France and Germany. The campaign will try to explain to the public how the industry is reducing its effect on the environment. Juniac, head of IATA, said the flight shaming movement gave off "misleading information"..

The International Air Transport Association （IATA） is organizing the plan through the Air Transport Action Group, a group of aviation industry organizations and companies. Juniac didn't say when the campaign would start, but noted that details would be available to airports and airlines.

Commercial flying is estimated to cause about 2.5% of worldwide carbon emissions（释放）. However, that number could rise as worldwide air travel increases.

The aviation industry says it has already cut carbon emissions by one-half since 1990. The improvements are mainly the result of aircraft that use fuel more effectively. The industry plans to cut emissions further by 2050. It has a goal of stopping the growth of carbon emissions by 2020.

Airlines also have warned of the harmful effects of the flight shaming movement. Some have criticized the industry for failing to explain itself Tim Clark，president of the airline Emirates，said that improvements in technology have reduced the environmental effects of passenger airplanes.

【推荐3】Life for almost anyone is increasingly influenced by screens. Not only are screens themselves cheap to make, but they also make things cheaper. Any place that can fit a screen in can cut costs. And any activity that can happen on a screen becomes cheaper. The physical experience of learning, living and dying is becoming smooth glass. All of this has led to a curious new reality: Human contact is becoming a luxury good (奢侈品).

“What we are seeing now is the luxury of human engagement,” Milton Pedraza, the chief of the Luxury Institute, said. Expected spending on experiences such as enjoyable travel and dining is outpacing spending on goods, according to his company’s research, and he sees it as a direct response to the rapid increase of screens.

Screens exposure starts young. And children who spent more than two hours a day looking at a screen got lower scores on thinking and language tests, according to early results of a landmark study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study focuses on brain development of more than 11,000 children. Most disturbingly, the study is finding that the brains of children who spend much time on screens are different. For some kids, their cerebral cortex (大脑皮层) would become thinner before expected time. In adults, one study found an association between screen time and depression.

There is also the reality that in our culture of increasing separation, in which so many of the traditional gathering places and social structures have disappeared, screens are filling a vital gap.

For normal people, running away from the screen becomes impossible. It’s not a luxury, and it’s easy to get. It is normal for more people to need the network constantly. In addition, it has become an important part of social interaction.

【推荐3】As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remembering less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know whether the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder(文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory(交互记忆)”.

According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.

【推荐1】Tabichi’s father,uncle,and cousins have all worked as teachers. He could see that his relatives were making a real difference to people’s lives and wanted to do the same. So for the past 12 years, Tabichi has worked as a math and science teacher in the hope that his lessons will give students a chance to improve their situations.

However,working at a remote village school in Kenya hasn’t been easy. The unique challenges and obstacles have forced Tabichi to find unique solutions for his students. The school only has one computer and unreliable Internet access. The school also has no library or laboratory. To make matters worse,there are not enough books for all the students and the school is desperately in need of more teachers. Most of the students are not able to concentrate, because they haven’t had enough meals at home.

One of the other major challenges that Tabichi faces is keeping kids in school as long as possible. So Tabichi spends most of his time outside of the classroom working on ways to keep kids in school. When the 36-year-old gets the feeling that a student is at risk of dropping out, he works to persuade families to put more value in education. To help those in poverty afford food,uniforms,and books, Tabichi also gives away 80 percent of his salary. Despite all the obstacles he faces, Tabichi is credited for improving the school and keeping much of the village’s youth in school. He has also managed to set up science clubs and addressed food insecurity issues.

Thanks to his tireless work,his students have excelled. In recent years,students have won national and international science competitions. In March of 2019, Tabichi was voted the best teacher in the world and won the prize of $1 million.

【推荐2】It was many years ago. I was a young dad sitting on the couch reading a fairy tale to my little girl. She sat next to me with her head on my arm as I told the tale. When it came to the end I finished with those famous words: “And they lived happily ever after.” As I looked over to her with her brown hair and big, innocent eyes, I could see the smile on her face and I never wanted it to end. Then I realized that the ending of the book was what I wanted for her. I wanted her to “live happily ever after”.

Still, deep in my heart I knew that this couldn't always be so. I knew that there would be times when her heart was broken. I knew there would be times when she cried in sorrow and I couldn't comfort her. I knew there would be times when all she felt was fear, sadness, sorrow, and despair. As I touched her hair and smiled at her I hoped that those times would be brief and that she would have joy in her life more often than not. Living happily ever after, though, seemed out of the question.

It takes me a lot of years to realize that it is possible to live happily ever after. You just have to do it “one day at a time”. Happiness you see isn't some reward that you get at the end of your journey. Happiness isn't something that depends on what life you own. Happiness is something you create in your life choice by choice and day by day.

The truth is happiness comes when you love. Love is a gift from God. It is love that mends broken hearts. It is love that heals grief. It is love that gives us joy. Choose to “live happily ever after, one day at a time”.

【推荐3】WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hungry pandas don’t particularly care whether there’s a partial government shutdown. The Washington National Zoological Park’s most famous residents still need to be fed, as do thousands of other animals, even as the facility closed its gates Wednesday.

The zoo will remain closed to the public. On Wednesday, the normally bustling (熙熙攘攘的) Connecticut Avenue gateway was locked tight. Just behind the fence, a statue of a giant panda that would normally be covered in climbing children sat alone and neglected. The zoo’s animal care staff will use the downtime to conduct comprehensive medical checks on the animals.

The partial government shutdown began on December 22. President Donald Trump’s demand for money for a border wall with Mexico has been the sticking point in passing funding bills for several government departments. Trump said Wednesday that the shutdown will last "as long as it takes."

With no signs that the shutdown will end soon, Washington’s tourism officials are working to ensure that tourists don’t cancel their trips entirely. The mayor’s office and Washington’s tourism bureau (旅游局) have released a list of private museums and off-the-beaten-path attractions for visitors including the Newseum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Museum of the Bible, Ford’s Theatre and DAR Constitution Hall.

“We know that federal government shutdowns cause many disruptions for both residents and visitors, but we want to remind everyone that while the federal government might be closed, D.C. is open for business,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser.

The pandas were not available for comment.

【推荐1】Microsoft PowerPoint is the world’s most common presentation tool. It emerged from software company Forethought Inc in the 1980s. Bob Gaskins was the man behind it.

“I knew in the early 80s that there were as many as a billion, a thousand million presentation slides being made per year just in America,” Gaskins says，“ but they were all made by hand and almost nobody was using computers to do them.

“It was clear to me that here was a huge application worth billions and billions of dollars a year that could be done on computers as soon as there was a revolution in the kinds of computers that we had.”

Gaskins was onto something, but it was a hard sell at the time. The software wouldn’t run on any existing personal computers. Anyone wanting to use it had to buy a new machine. Even so, people bought personal computers for the first time in order to be able to use PowerPoint, says Wired magazine journalist Russell Davies.

Davies explains that before PowerPoint, people used slides to convey information to groups --- but anyone creating a presentation had to send away to get their materials made. It took a long time to do, was difficult to make changes and because it was so expensive, only the most senior people in an organisation got to do it.

“ PowerPoint，” Davies says，“made it possible for everyone in an organisation to stand up and say their piece.”

PowerPoint has helped turn us all into presenters --- but it’ s also been accused of over-simplifying ideas and distracting (干扰)us from clear thinking.

Sarah Kaplan is a management professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. She has noticed that, rather than people asking for new analysis or insights in meetings, they were asking for more PowerPoint slides.

Kaplan says that some CEOS, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, have banned its use. “He felt, and I think many people feel, that PowerPoint became such an object of the process that they lost the ideas inside of it and that is the risk.”

【推荐2】You feel happiest when you create a healthy balance between giving and receiving. If you give and give without making time to fill your own needs, then it's likely you will burn out, or feel upset. When you take and take without giving anything back, you never feel a sense of achievement, so you are always searching for ways to fill the feeling of emptiness in your life.

The way to create a healthy balance between giving and receiving so as to achieve real happiness is to know and then live by your values. I break values up into two groups which I call “being” and “having” values. Your “being” values are the character traits（特征）of the ideal person you would like to be. An example of some "being" values are: kind, loving, generous, inspiration-al, peaceful, wise and even powerful. By acting on these values, you give to others through your actions and you inspire others by "being" a positive role model. Mastering these “being” character traits becomes your life purpose.

Your "having" values are the feelings you need to create in order to be happy. These could be companionship, achievement, support, "being" valued or financial security. This is what you receive. You take responsibility for filling your own needs by taking steps to create these feelings and conditions in your life.

When you make a commitment to live by your “being” values, it becomes easier to make conscious choices rather than reactionary（保守的）ones. If your usual habit is to complain about your problems, you could choose to think and act like a calm person. A calm person might go for a walk, meditate（沉思）, or set a time limit before responding. If your usual pattern is to worry, you could choose to act like a responsible or wise person. In other words, you would act like the person you choose to be-this is the key to personal power.

When you choose to act on your values, you not only feel good about yourself, but you reinforce（增强）your chosen beliefs. Over time acting in this way changes how you see the world, and in turn the way other people think of you.

【推荐3】Delivery Robots May Soon Be Knocking at Your Door

With self-driving vehicle technology rapidly advancing, many companies are turning to autonomous robots for the final leg—the so-called last mile—of the delivery process, from the store or local distribution center to the customer. The latest to join the trend is Amazon. Following a successful eight-month test run in Snohomish County, Washington, the company’s Scout robots have been making the rounds of Irvine, California, since August 6, 2019.

The six-wheeled Scout is about the size of a large cooler with the ability to carry small or medium-sized packages. The battery-powered vehicle, which moves at a regular walking pace, has been programmed to avoid pedestrians, animals, and unexpected obstacles（障碍）, such as garbage cans. Its powerful sensors（传感器）can also detect the movement of a car backing out of a driveway.

While Amazon is focusing on home deliveries, San Francisco-based Starship Technologies has its eyes set on universities. On August 20, 2019, the company announced plans to use thousands of robots to deliver food and other things to students at college campuses across the country. Unlike Scout, Starship’s robots are seasoned workers. They have been tested in over 100 cities in 20 different countries and successfully completed over 100, 000 deliveries.

Meanwhile, food and grocery delivery company Postmates’ robots are currently making their rounds along the busy San Francisco streets. Also in testing, the robots can carry up to 50 pounds and travel 30 miles on a single battery charge.

Though the eco-friendly robots will help free our streets of bicycles and large delivery trucks that typically send packages, they have some limitations. They are unable to climb stairs or open gates, which means that they can only reach consumers who live on the ground level. Additionally, the robots are unable to leave packages at the front door if the customers are not home. Whether these problems get solved remains to be seen. For now, it appears that humans will still be needed to meet the ever-growing demand for home and office deliveries.