【推荐1】To be a great reader,it is not enough that you read. It’s also how you read. The following strategies guarantee that you’ll not only be a better reader but a better person too.

Stop reading books you aren’t enjoying. If you find yourself wanting to speed up the reading process on a particular book, you might want to ask yourself, “Is this book any good?”    1    My rule is 100 pages minus your age — so if you’re 30years old and a book hasn’t attracted you by page 70, stop reading it.

    2    You were young when you read The Great Gatsby for the first time. You were just a kid when someone told you the story of Odysseus. You’ve already read them or learned about them, so you’re done, right?    3    It’s why we have to read and reread. Because the world is constantly changing and we are constantly changing, therefore what we get out of books can also change.

Ask people you admire for book recommendations. If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.     4    Every time I met a successful or important person I admired, I would ask them, “What’s a book that changed your life?”And then I would read that book. If a book changed someone’s life — whatever the topic or style — it’s probably worth the investment. If it changed them, then it will likely at least help you,

    5    The path to wisdom is not a straight one. The journey is long with ups and downs, highs and lows. Maybe you’re in the middle of a low right now. This can be a scary place to be, because it can feel like you’ll be stuck there forever. A reading slump always pops up for me, for instance,during a book launch when it’s nearly impossible for me to concentrate enough to read. But I’ve found I’m able to get out of it by rereading something that has really spoken to me in the past.

【推荐3】Simple Ways to Improve Your Social Skills

Being friendly and social with your coworkers is a big part of most jobs.     1     , as you may not know them as well as close friends. Thankfully, there’s something you can do to improve your social skills at work.

Greet everyone with a smile. Try smiling at your coworkers and greeting them each day when you get to work. Even if you’re a little nervous, it only takes a few seconds, and it can make you seem more friendly and approachable.     2     , smile, and add a personalized hello to break the ice with your coworkers.

Use general conversation starters. Talk about the weather or something you notice in the room. This gives the conversation a nice starting point with whoever you're talking with.

● Any casual small talk is fine — the most important thing is to engage with the people around you.

● Remember to give people time to talk.     3     . If you’ve been doing most of the talking, pause so that your coworker can get a word in or share their opinion.

●    4    . If you notice a natural stopping point in the conversation, politely excuse yourself from the conversation and leave your coworker with an invitation to talk again soon.

Respect your coworkers’ boundaries.     5    . Everyone has their limits on how much they want to socialize. Read your coworkers’ body language to understand their boundaries, and respectfully give them the space they need.

【推荐1】Bee venom (毒液) is a highly sought and expensive ingredient for specialized medical treatments and now Australian scientists have discovered that when the industrious insects become annoyed, their venom becomes even more powerful.

Researchers at Curtin University have noted how behavioral and ecological factors can influence the quality of the venom which is used to treat degenerative and infectious diseases. Their study, published in the scientific journal PLOS, analysed protein found in the venom of western honeybees.

The more proteins found in the venom, the higher the potential quality and effect. To understand the protein diversity of venom and find out what impacted this, the researchers looked at a range of factors including the behavioral patterns of the bees.

“We classify the bees’ anger according to their response to the stimulating devices that collect the venom,” said Dr. Daniela Scaccabarozzi, who led the project.

The bee venom collector has a tiny charge that shocks any bees landing on it and they release information that forces the rest bees of the hive (蜂窝) to sting (螫). “Interestingly, we discovered that the ‘angry bees’ produced a richer, more protein-dense venom. And we found that there was no visible harm to the bees.” Scaccabarozzi said.

The team also confirmed that temperature impacted the venom’s strength. “High temperatures can be detrimental to bees’ activity in and out of the hives,” Scaccabarozzi said. “Of the 25 hives tested, we discovered that the sites with higher temperatures recorded lower venom production.” Further findings also revealed that geographical location had an impact on the composition of bee venom, as well as what stage the flowers were at during harvest when they were consumed by the bees.

Expecting the research to be useful to the medical field and the beekeeping business, Scaccabarozzi says further research will help beekeepers collect a standardized quality of venom to meet growing demand in clinical and therapeutic fields, as well as help design cost-effective strategies for venom harvest to secure its position in the global market.

【推荐2】If all goes well, a balloonwill soon rise from Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden. It will float highinto the upper atmosphere and then return to Earth. However, environmentalists have arrived to stop this from happening.

The campaigners are against the balloon because of what occurs in flight. The balloon will shoot dust into the Earths upper atmosphere, causing more sunlight to reflect back into space. The dust, known as stratospheric aerosolinjection(SAI), is part of a solar geoengineering (地球工程) program named SCoPex which is being conducted by Harvard University. The aim of the program is to purposely change the Earth's atmosphere to fight climate change.

Those who oppose worry about two things. Firstly, the moral risk-if solar geoengineering works, talks on reducing greenhouse gases will be challenged. The second concern is the amount of SAI in the atmosphere. To keep temperatures low, the need of the reflective dust tobel released high above Earth will be endless, and a sudden stop could result in rapid warming. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a physicist at Oxford University, says solar geoengineering is even tool risky to research beyond computer models.

Not all environmentalists are opposed to it. Since the world is unlikely to achieve the 1. 5 ℃ global warming target set in the Paris Agreement, some green organizations favour small-sized geoengineering research.

Regardless of the criticism, the research continues. Geoengineering is increasingly gaining international attention. A recent report about climate change suggested that SAI could help keep warming below 1. 5℃. The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the USA has developed a research plan for solar geoengineering and received governmental funding totaling $9 million. Both China and India have also launched research programmes of their own. Activists may oppose the experiments, but balloons will likely fly anyway.

【推荐3】Smartphones are getting boring. The new models are either a bit faster or have better cameras, but they are basically no different from the ones already in our pockets. This is why scientists are hoping, and working for something new, something that will change our lives just as greatly as smartphones do. At the moment, the next invention might be smart glasses.

Just imagine. Instead of having to pick up your phone and look at the screen, all of the information you need simply appears just in front of you, in your glasses. Satellite navigation (导航) directions would appear right there on the road. And your smart glasses could guide you to the right shelf in the supermarket!

Smart glasses could also be used in industry. They could show engineers the instructions they need to fix things more quickly. A doctor could carry out a difficult operation, guided in real time by someone on the other side of the world.

This may sound impossible. But most of the technologies to invent them are already there. For example, one key technology is called AR, which can make digital 3D objects appear as if they are part of the real world. We’ve used it a lot on our video calls. Similarly, huge progress has been made in spatial audio. This is when a sound is made to give it a sense of place, like what you hear in an empty room. Some high-end earphones can already do that. Future glasses will of course need to recognize (识别) your voice to do tasks. This technology has been widely used in our daily life.

So, why aren’t we all wearing smart glasses yet? So far, no one has invented a good way to send images (图像) of our world onto glasses. However, with the rapid development of technology, smart glasses could arrive much sooner than we think.