【推荐1】On average, cars sit, doing nothing, 96 percent of the time. That makes them ideal candidates for the sharing economy. The potential to reduce traffic jams is enormous. A handful of car-sharing systems are already having a major impact on the total number of vehicles in our cities. Scholars have estimated that every shared vehicle removes nine to 13 privately owned cars from the streets.

The benefits will grow greatly as autonomous vehicles, that is, self-driving cars, currently available in experimental forms, gain a notable portion of the market. “Your” car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family—or to anyone else in your neighborhood or social media community.

As a result, a single vehicle could go from one to 24 hours of use a day. A recent paper by our colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report s that, under such conditions, the mobility demand of a city like Singapore could be met with only 30 percent of its existing vehicles. In addition to vehicle sharing, autonomy could open up a new wave of ride sharing. Already applications such as Via, uberPOOL and Lyft Line allow different people to share the same ride, cutting operating costs and individual fares. Autonomy could boost ride sharing even more because all trips could be managed online. In cities, the potential for ride sharing is significant, based on analyses by our Sense able City Lab at M. IT.

New York City, for example, is obviously shareable. Our lab’s HubCab project gathered data from 170 million taxi trips involving 13,500 taxis in the city—specifically, the GPS coordinates (协调) for all pickup and drop-off points and corresponding times between the two. We then developed a mathematical model to determine the potential effect of ride sharing applied to those journeys. The project introduced the concept quantitative results revealed how taxi sharing could reduce the number of cars by 40 percent with only rainimal delays for passengers.

Combine car sharing and ride sharing, and a city might get by with just 20 percent the number of cars now in use, with its residents traveling on-demand. Of course, such reductions are theoretical. In real life, they would depend on how willing people are to share rides and adopt self-driving technology. But any drop in the number of vehicles could lower the costs and energy associated with building and maintaining our mobility infrastructure (基础建设). Fewer cars might also mean shorter travel times, fewer traffic jams and a smaller environmental impact.

【推荐3】I believe that people should stop texting while driving because it not only endangers themselves but others around them. Family members, friends and strangers can be hurt by a simple mistake; their lives can be overturned(倾覆) completely.

Before I participated in the Thumb Wars campaign, I used to put sticky(粘的) notes inside my car to advise any person that was within it not to text while driving. I posted a quote on my social pages that said, “Drive now text later.” The message especially caught my dad’s attention. Since he is on the road about three out of the seven days of the week, we are all worried about his safety. He decided to never use his phone while driving. When it comes to informing other people about the dangers of texting while driving, I usually bring up conversations about driving which then lead me to lecture them on why they shouldn't text while driving. Thumb Wars has given me a new way and opportunity to prevent people from texting while driving.

The era we live in today is all about technology, and there is always the urge to text. Thumb Wars is an inspirational campaign that fights against that. What I was trying to achieve was to not only change my life, but also try to influence the lives of others for the better. I believe that I can make people realize the consequences of texting while driving. They all know that it is not worth it and could change someone's life instantly. I believe that if there were more campaigns like Thumb Wars there would be fewer accidents because more people would be aware of the effects of texting while driving.

All a person needs is inspiration and efforts to avoid texting while driving. Thumb Wars is a good channel, which makes it the ideal campaign to help with others and make a difference in this world.

【推荐1】Dressed in a shiny metallic suit, Katia Krafft’s small frame is overshadowed by the red curtain of molten rock that bursts from the ground before her. The dramatic moment was captured (捕捉) in a photo taken atop Iceland’s Krafla volcano in 1984, during the final breathing of a multi-year-long eruption. Looking at the image, one can almost feel the volcano’s heat, hear its roar, and sense Krafft’s heart pounding as the volcanologist does what she loves most: bearing witness to our planet’s strong anger.

Katia Krafft was a fearless pioneer in volcanology, studying the explosive peaks at a time when there were few women in the field. She was born in the Rhine valley of northeast France in 1942, curing the height of World War II. The chaotic human world drove both Katia and her husband, Maurice Krafft, also a volcanologist, to seek comfort in nature. The moment a volcano exploded, they dropped everything to analyze and capture the beauty and mystery of each event.

The Kraffts used their videos of explosive eruptions to explain the complex risks and uncertainties of these disasters. It changed the ability to communicate volcano science. Their videos are credited as one of the primary reasons that officials in the Philippines took the warning signs of Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 seriously. Yet the Kraffs didn’t live to see that eruption. The couple died less than two weeks earlier in Japan during a monstrous eruption, which claimed 41 other lives.

Katia’s impact on volcanology has reached far beyond her death and has encouraged many young women to study our restless planet. “Katia Krafft is definitely the reason why I’m doing this job,” says Carla Tiraboschi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minster, Germany. Tiraboschi first saw Katia in a documentary when she was just six or seven years old and has been crazy about volcanoes ever since. She now studies the processes at work deep below the volcanic peaks.

【推荐2】The Open Book, a bookstore, is the idea of American writer Jessica Fox, a former NASA employee who packed in her Californian lifestyle at the age of 24 after dreaming of another life in Wigtown—Scotland’s National Book Town. Fox fell in love with Wigtown and its bookshops. She never looked back.

“It’s not just me. I think the people who come to the Open Book have a very similar reaction to Wigtown,” said Fox, now in her 30s. “It’s a magical place, which has all the things you could hope for on a trip to Scotland.”

The idea for the Open Book was sparked (触发) by Fox’s love for Wigtown, which hosts the popular Wigtown Book Festival each September. “I’d never been to Scotland. I’d only seen it in films,” recalled Fox. “I went from a heavily populated place with a car, and stuck in traffic a lot, to a place with hardly any people, amazing scenery, and no car. I absolutely loved it.”

The community of Wigtown welcomed her as one of their own when Fox settled in the town. She realized she was living the fantasy that had formerly played in her head. “I thought I couldn’t be the only crazy American who dreams of working in a bookshop by the sea in Scotland. There has to be more of us,” she laughed.

While Fox was considering this idea, one of Wigtown’s bookstores announced it was closing shop. . It seemed serendipitous (偶然的). “Finn MeCreath, who is on the Board of the Festival, and I decided to take it over and try out my idea of having a bookshop holiday,” she said. Five years later, the Open Book is a runaway success. It’s booked up online until years ahead, and there’s an extensive waiting list.

【推荐3】The first time I lost my best friend, I thought it was the end of the world. I don’t mean that he died, he just went away, but I still measure all pain by how hurt I was when Danny left.

I was blessed with a happy childhood, one that most people would want to have. We lived in a small house in a tiny village in Scotland and we were a very close family. Our neighbours next door had a son named Danny, and we grew up together.

We spent long summer evenings in the pine forests, digging up worms for fishing, and collecting feathers left by the birds in the cages where they had been kept for the hunters. It was here that I discovered that I was allergic(过敏的) to the tiny flies which bit me and made my face swell. There were a few walnut trees above the village and we would chase the animals away and wait for them to ripen. Of course, it was too far north for a proper harvest. On windy days we’d slide down the stony slopes(斜坡) to the bay and feel the waves of the sea in our faces.

Danny was a good carpenter(木匠) too, and we made brooms out of branches, which we tried to sell in the village shop. We built a tree house, where we smoked our first cigar, and I was sick! Once I slipped on some damp leaves, fell out, cut my arms and the heel of my foot, so he washed my wounds in the stream. My mother simply blamed me for tearing my underwear.

We were on good terms with everyone in the village, and we even gave a salute(敬礼) to the local policeman as he passed on his bicycle. But in our imagination, he was an enemy soldier, and we were two spies looking for secrets.

It was the finest friendship anyone could have, and life seemed perfect.

And then at the age of 14, his parents moved to London, over 400 kilometres away. The pain was real, and I couldn’t forgive Danny for leaving me. I felt he had abandoned me.

It was the worst loss I have ever experienced.

I’m now back in touch with Danny, and it’s an honor to call him my friend. We’re both much more mature now, and we’re still very alike.

But while I miss the happy times we spent together many years ago, I’m ashamed of my feelings, and I don’t want to rewind the recording of my life and remember my loss and my pain.