4 . Wouldn’t it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within ten years or so, we would be able to communicate with one another through small earpieces with built-in microphones. That’s because technological progress is extremely fast. It’s only a matter of time. Such is the belief among certain parents that the technology is imminent and they’re wondering if their kids should learn a second language.

It’s true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating “Noes Bueno dormer mucho” into “It’s not good to sleep too much”. Replacing a word with its equivalent (对等词) in the target language is actually the easy part of a translator’s job. But even this seems to be a difficult job for computers.

It’s so hard for computers because translation doesn’t — or shouldn’t — involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it’s about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, people need to understand a lot of information all at once. Think about all the related clues that help us understand what someone is trying to say: volume, gesture, situations, and even your culture. All are likely to convey as much meaning as the words you use.

Therefore, we should doubt a machine that can’t understand our world like we do. If people from different cultures can upset each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.

6 . How Many Cups of Coffee per Day Are Too Many?

For many people, coffee is a must-have to start the day.      1     However, a new study suggests too much coffee can be harmful.

This is what a recent study shows.      2     A study from the University of South Australia led by Elina Hypponen suggests a couple of cups to start your day probably won’t hurt—and may even be good for you. But drinking six or more cups of coffee a day can increase your risk of heart disease by up to 22%, the researchers found.

Knowing the limits of what’s good for us and what’s not is necessary.      3     About one in four deaths in the United States is due to heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. That’s why Elina set out to discover how much caffeine causes heart disease.     4    

Elina says her findings suggest that sipping two to three cups per day is pretty safe and possibly beneficial. She also notes that if you’re generally healthy, lots of evidence suggests that four cups per day shouldn’t be harmful.

    5     Even though the research says five cups of coffee are acceptable, each person should know his or her own limit. If we begin having difficulty sleeping or feeling nervous, we might have reached our limit for the day.

7 . Human beings are extremely diverse in many ways. People differ in opinions, races, nationalities, lifestyles and so on. Yet we are all human species, we feel pain and joy despite the differences. Today, it is impossible for any group of people to live without interacting with others outside their group.     1    .

Diversity creates richness in opinion. Some problems can’t be solved by a homogenous (同种类的) group of people.     2     . A diverse group will offer fresh ideas to solve problems. Diverse groups have been found to be creative and thus producing better solutions to problems.

Diversity makes us compassionate (有同情心的) about others. When we interact and try to understand others, we won’t judge them. This instead makes us compassionate about others.     3    . Compassion allows us to realize that all human beings are the same.

Diversity is a growing trend. Today, there is no country in the world that has only natives living there.     4    . In the process, people of different cultural backgrounds often find themselves going to the same schools, working in the same offices and so much more. As citizens of this world, we are therefore left with no choice other than to embrace our diversity.

    5     Through diversity, entrepreneurs (企业家) have been able to reach new markets. Today, we have multinationals setting up offices in different parts of the world. This further creates employment opportunities for people in those parts of the world.

8 . Tea culture is varied in different countries by the way tea is made and drunk, and by the places for tea drinking. How to make tea may be different. According to the ways of making tea, tea is classified (分类) into white tea, green tea, black tea, etc. And how to prepare tea may be different, too. In Tibet, tea is commonly boiled with salt and butter. People may drink tea at home or in public, for example, at tea houses.

As part of culture, tea has a relationship with history, health, education, communication and so on. It is commonly used at social activities. For example, afternoon tea is a British custom. Families or friends can communicate with each other while having afternoon tea.

Tea has remained a way of daily life in China and drinking tea has a lot of advantages. It makes people less tired, clears heat in the human body and helps people lose weight.

Chinese people are good at using tea to make other things delicious. Tea, originally (最初) served as a medicine in ancient times, is now not just a kind of drink, but also excellent seasoning (调味品). Here are two delicious dishes made with tea:

Tea Eggs: You can find them cooked and sold in street markets in almost every city in China. Dragon Well Tea Shrimp (龙井虾仁). It’s one of the most well-known dishes in Hangzhou. Before you drink tea, please check the following tips:

♦ Drink tea hot.

♦ The best time to drink is in between meals. It is bad for your stomach if you drink tea just before meals, during meals or soon after meals.

♦ Do not drink too much strong tea.

9 . Maybe your mom or dad has told you, “Turn that down before you go deaf!”     1    

Temporary (暂时的) hearing loss can happen after you’ve been exposed to loud noise. You also could have tinnitus (耳鸣), which is a medical term for ringing in the ears.     2    . Although your hearing often returns to normal, the dangerous part is that you can lose it permanently if you listen to loud noise or music over and over again.

If someone is exposed to loud noise over a long period of time, permanent hearing loss can occur. This means the person’s hearing won’t ever be as good as it once was.     3    

    4     Have you ever gone to a concert and realized your seats were right next to the booming speakers? That’s why you might notice that some of your favorite singers also wear hearing protection while they’re performing. Loud music causes damage to your hearing as well.

You can help keep your hearing in good shape on your own. Save your ears by wearing ear protection when you’re using machinery. You also might want to give your ears a rest once in a while if you like wearing headphones.     5    

10 . Is future you? It might seem like a strange philosophical question. But the answer to how you think about your future self could make the difference between decisions you ultimately find satisfying and ones you might eventually regret.

The brain patterns that emerge on an MRI (核磁共振成像) when people think about their future selves most like the brain patterns that arise when they think about strangers. This finding suggests that, in the mind’s eye, our future selves look like other people. If you see future you as a different person, why should you save money, eat healthier or exercise more regularly to benefit that stranger?

However, if you see the interests of your distant self as more like those of your present self, you are considerably more likely to do things today that benefit you tomorrow. A paper in the journal PLoS One revealed that college students who experienced a greater sense of connection and similarity to their future selves were more likely to achieve academic success. Relationships with our future selves also matter for general psychological well-being. In a project led by Joseph Reiff, which includes 5, 000 adults aged 20 to 75, he found that those who perceived a great overlap (重叠) in qualities between their current and future selves ended up being more satisfied with their lives 10 years after filling out the initial survey.     

So how can we better befriend our future selves and feel more connected to their fates? The psychological mindset with what we call ”vividness interventions“ works. We have found, for instance, that showing people images of their older, grayer selves increases intentions to save for the long term. Besides, you might try writing a letter to-and then from-your future self. As demonstrated by Yuta Chishima and Anne Wilson in their 2020 study in the journal Self and Identity, when high-school students engaged in this type of ”send-and-reply“ exercise, they experienced elevated (升高的) levels of feelings of similarity with their future selves.

Letter-writing and visualization exercises are just a couple of ways we can connect with our future selves and beyond, but the larger lesson here is clear: If we can treat our distant selves as if they are people we love, care about and want to support, we can start making choices for them that improve our lives-both today and tomorrow.