【推荐1】HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN A NEW ENVIRONMENT?

Perhaps, you are a smart person with good knowledge and creative ideas, but when you move to a new environment or have to work with some new people, it is not always easy for them to recognize you or respect you immediately. How can you get along with others?     1    

    2    Moving to a new working environment, you may need to deal with things that don’t belong to your own field. In such a case, people who are more willing to learn new things can become more flexible and be able to meet new requirements in their job.

Have a good sense of judgement on important aspects. Learning or working in a new environment, you need to have a good sense of judgement when joining a discussion or making a decision.    3    

Be confident and make eye contact when talking to people. When you go out and meet people, it is important to look confident.     4    Before you walk in, think to yourself, “I own the room.” Then, walk in holding your head high and smile. Remember to look other people in the eye — it’s the key to creating a connection with people. Soon, you will feel as confident as you look.

Set clear goals to accomplish.    5    Let people know what you stand for. You need to find out which ideas can really unite people and then express those ideas clearly. Also, treat your team members respectfully as equals.

Be helpful to others. When working, don’t focus on what is your work and what isn’t. After doing your own work, always be ready to help others.

【推荐2】“No pains, no gains.” gives the impression that we ought to be suffering while we study. It seems that the only way to know if we’re putting in enough work is how much hardship we bear. We are totally taken up with study, shutting ourselves away for a big exam. Is that necessarily true?

When we haven’t taken the time to come up with another idea, we just shut ourselves in a room with a book. It’s no surprise that we find revision boring and difficult. Just as children learn from playing, we can learn from doing, or at least from study techniques that interest us, rather than make us switch off. Shutting ourselves away can make us learn to hate studying, leading to a situation where instead of being able to concentrate on our work, we are troubled by how unfair it is that we must study. This can be part of a vicious cycle(恶性循环) that traps us into ineffective revision, your poor progress fueling further annoyance.

Thankfully, working in the company of other people really helps fight against that. We just need to learn how to deal with distractions. It’s not necessary to avoid all company, just idle(懒散的)company. People, who are bored and looking to be distracted, are terrible to work around. They constantly try to keep others in conversation. While studying in the same room with someone who is ironing or working out is perfectly possible. Of course, it’s also a good idea to avoid the company of people involved in activities where you would rather be playing than study. Working while sitting next to someone playing video games is most likely to end with a new high score in games rather than productive revision.

If being around others means working in a noisy environment, a pair of headphones and some background music can block out noises. They also act as a psychological barrier, so that people think twice before interrupting you. Besides, we should know friends and family can lessen feelings of isolation(孤立). And connecting with other people makes us happy, so it’s important not to give that up and to make sure that we take the time to socialize.

【推荐1】What’s in a logo?

What attracts customers?    1     It is not only the image provided by the packaging that counts but the whole corporate identity (企业形象) of the company.

There are now many products and services on the market which are similar in content though produced by different companies. It is important, therefore, for a company to distinguish itself from its competitors by having a strong company image which is immediately recognizable.

Logos are part of this image.    2     The logo establishes a visual identity for the company, just as different groups of young people express their identity through hairstyles and clothes. All groups from all cultures and throughout the ages have used colours and symbols to show their identity.

    3     Some colours may be connected with coldness in one culture and with warmth in another; some colours represent life in one culture but death in another. International companies have, therefore, to make sure that their logos will not be misunderstood or misinterpreted in different countries.

The logos of large international companies are instantly recognizable throughout the world.    4     The design of the words “Coca Cola” has not changed since 1886, although the surrounding design has been changed from time to time.

Companies need to have a strong corporate identity. The logo helps to promote this image and to fix it in the minds of the consumers.    5    

【推荐2】Saving Money

Where you save your money often depends on what you are saving for. If you are saving to buy a dictionary or to go to a concert, then you probably keep your money somewhere in your room.

If you are saving for a big purchase like a mountain bike or a school trip, where would you save your money?

One place to save money is the bank. Putting your money in a savings account will help your money earn more money. If you put your money in a piggy bank (猪形储蓄罐子), one year later you'll still have the same amount of money you put in. If you put your money in a savings account, one year later, you'll have more money than you put in. Why?

When you keep your money in a bank, your money earns interest. Interest is the amount of money a bank pays you to use your money. The bank uses your money (and the money of other people, too) to loan money to people and businesses.

The bank will send you a statement several times a year. A bank statement tells you how much money there is in your account. It also tells you how much interest you have earned. If you leave your money in the bank, you can watch it grow!

Another way you can save money is to buy a certificate of deposit or CD. If you have some money that you don't need to use for a long time, this is a good way to make your money grow.

You can buy a CD at a bank. You agree not to use the money for a certain period of time. That period might be from six months to five years. You can't touch your money during that time. If you do, you must pay a penalty, or fee.

Since the bank is using your money for that time period, it will pay you interest. You will earn more interest with a CD than in a savings account. Can you guess why? It's because you promise to leave your money in the bank for a certain period of time. Banks pay different rates of interest. So, you may want to compare rates in newspaper ads before buying a CD.

【推荐3】Twenty years ago, crises like the California’s wildfires and Hurricane Laura that occurred last year could have been described as “natural disasters”. Thanks to climate change, this is no longer the case. Around mid-August last year, the temperature in Death Valley once reached the highest ever recorded on Earth. A hotter, drier California is much more likely to burst into flames. The Gulf of Mexico too is heating up. Hurricanes draw their energy from the warmth of the surface waters and so are becoming stronger and more likely to increase. Perhaps we should call these events in a new term, “man-made natural disasters”.

People now play such an important role on the planet. By cutting down forests and digging mines and building cities, we’ve changed half of the ice-free land on Earth. With our advanced tools, we move around more earth than all the world’s rivers and streams. As a result, all sorts of disasters extend across the line between man and nature. Many earthquakes, for example, are now caused by human activity. Meanwhile, as the climate continues to warm, wildfires will grow even larger and storms more damaging.

What’s to be done? According to some scientists, the best way to deal with human intervention in the natural world is to intervene better. Old technologies got us into this situation; new ones will get us out. Supporters of this view note the striking advances that are being made all the time, in fields ranging from computing to material science. To prevent climate change, engineers have built machines that take CO₂ out of the air. Today the numbers are limited, but perhaps one day they’ll be as common as telephones.

As for me, I think that the choice we face is not whether to change the world; that decision unfortunately has been made. The decision going forward is how are we going to change it. Over the years I’ve interviewed scores of scientists, inventors, and industrialists, and I’m continually impressed by how clever humans are as a species. But then the wind blows in smoke from 3,000 miles away, and I’m reminded of how dangerous we are as well.