How to be more self-disciplined (自律)?

Self-discipline is the ability to control (控制) your behavior in a way that leads you to have better habits. Whether you are trying to study for a test, lose weight, or give up a bad habit, self-discipline always plays an important role. How to develop it?     1    

★ Share your goals (目标) with someone.

Telling your goals to people you respect is a better chance of achieving them. You can simply let your friends know that you decided to work on your self-discipline.     2     Sharing your ideas will give you more chances of succeeding.

★ Remove distractions (消除干扰)

You can’t get distracted by something that isn’t there.     3     For example, if you always want to watch TV during your study, you should turn off the TV and put the remote control (遥控器) in a different room.

★    4    

Don’t begin your daily work with self-discipline by trying to do something big. Instead, work on daily, weekly, and monthly small goals. You just need to make sure that they are moving you in the right direction (方向).

★ Forgive (原谅) yourself.

We are all common men, so perfection isn’t possible.     5     When you do something undisciplined, forgive yourself. Review why and where things went wrong, and if possible, change your environment so that it doesn’t happen again.

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Have you ever seen the symbol on the left? What is it?

It is read as pi. Pi is a very special irrational number (无理数). In the pi calculation (计算), no two same numbers show up next to each other. Pi isn’t just for math—it shows up in nature, too. You can find it in circles like the sun, the spiral (螺旋) of DNA and the eye’s pupil (瞳孔). We can also find pi in the rivers.

Every year on March 14, students celebrate Pi Day by enjoying pies. Can you guess why? The date marks the first three digits (数字) of pi—3.14.

In 2019, UNESCO set the day as the International Day of Mathematics. The day is to celebrate the beauty and importance of math.

Pi Day in China honors Chinese mathematician (数学家) Zu Chongzhi (429—500 AD). He calculated pi as being between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927. No one could work out a better calculation for it for over 800 years.

In 1988, US physicist (物理学家) Larry Shaw started the Pi Day celebration. During the first event, Shaw and his friends walked around a circular (圆形的) space because pi helps us know about calculations of circles. Nowadays, people celebrate Pi Day in fun and interesting ways. For example, students in the US usually eat pies and throw pies toward each other. In Japan, Fukuoka High School brings pi memorization (记忆) competitions into its Pi Day celebrations. “We compete to recite (背诵) as many digits of pi as we can. It shows our memory skills,” said Ai Akasaki, 16, from the school.

Some schools let students show their artistic (艺术的) side through artworks about pi. Recently, Johanna Elisabeth Senst, a 15-year-old German girl, built a building model with Lego about pi. She used different colored blocks to show each digit of pi, such as yellow for the number 1, blue for 3 and red for 5.

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Self-driving cars are usually considered to be more efficient and convenient. Like human drivers using eyes and ears to determine what is going on around us, self-driving cars use sensors including cameras, radar, and lidar to do the same job. But using the sensors to analyze what they see is complicated. In some cases, self-driving cars can’t make exact decisions any better than a human driver could, which may result in great danger.

The idea of building smart roads can help solve the problem. These smart roads will be able to communicate with self-driving cars. Scientists have imagined lots of different ways to connect cars with other vehicles on the road, traffic lights, the road itself, and more. One idea is using radio signals to connect cars with traffic lights so that they work together. These signals might tell cars about a red light and help ensure a safe stop. Another idea is building a possible network of control towers to deal with all signals and make overall arrangements. Signals from cars and roadways would all come to and from these towers, allowing communication among the entire network. Each crossroad can also act like a control tower, communicating with each other and able to route traffic to reduce traffic jams.

____ One possibility is that roads continue to have sidewalks and bicycle roads, as they do now. Crosswalks on smart roads could be designed with sensors so that traffic lights will be lighted up green or red, depending on if it is safe for pedestrians to cross. However, this could cause problems too. People might step into the road as they like and fast-moving cars would not have enough time to stop. Another possibility is that we design two separate systems: roads for self-driving vehicles and pathways for pedestrians and cyclists.

While on the way to realize the idea, technology is still needed to be developed. Another problem is the cost. The various sensors in self—driving cars built for smart roads can be more than $100,000 per vehicle. Smart roads would require to be improved too, which will also cost a lot. Though there are difficulties to overcome, researchers and scientists are making efforts to address these problems.