2 . The Stanford marshmallow (棉花糖) test was originally conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s. Children aged four to six at a nursery school were placed in a room. A single sugary treat, selected by the child, was placed on a table. Each child was told if they waited for 15 minutes before eating the treat, they would be given a second treat. Then they were left alone in the room. Follow-up studies with the children later in life showed a connection between an ability to wait long enough to obtain a second treat and various forms of success.

As adults we face a version of the marshmallow test every day. We’re not tempted by sugary treats, but by our computers, phones, and tablets — all the devices that connect us to the global delivery system for various types of information that do to us what marshmallows do to preschoolers.

We are tempted by sugary treats because our ancestors lived in a calorie-poor world, and our brains developed a response mechanism to these treats that reflected their value — a feeling of reward and satisfaction. But as we’ve reshaped the world around us, dramatically reducing the cost and effort involved in obtaining calories, we still have the same brains we had thousands of years ago, and this mismatch is at the heart of why so many of us struggle to resist tempting foods that we know we shouldn’t eat.

A similar process is at work in our response to information. Our formative environment as a species was information-poor, so our brains developed a mechanism that prized new information. But global connectivity has greatly changed our information environment. We are now ceaselessly bombarded (轰炸) with new information. Therefore, just as we need to be more thoughtful about our caloric consumption, we also need to be more thoughtful about our information consumption, resisting the temptation of the mental “junk food” in order to manage our time most effectively.

3 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”

And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.

Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.

Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.

5 . Japan’s biggest airline is betting that the future of travel isn’t traveling at all. For the last month, a married couple has been interacting with a robot—called an Avatar—that’s controlled by their daughter hundreds of miles away. Made by ANA Holdings Inc., it looks like a vacuum cleaner with an iPad attached. But the screen displays the daughter’s face as they chat, and its wheels let her move about the house as though she’s really there.

“Virtual travel” is nothing new, of course. Storytellers, travel writers and artists have been stimulating the senses of armchair tourists for centuries. It’s only in recent decades that frequent, safe travel has become available to the non- wealthy.

Yet even as the world’s middle classes climb out of the armchair and into economy-class seat, there are signs of a post-travel society emerging. Concerns about environmental sustainability cause loss to airlines which release much carbon. And the aging of abundant societies is both restricting physical travel and creating demand for alternative ways to experience the world. For the travel industry, virtual reality offers an attractive response to these trends.

Of course, new technologies encourage far-out claims. ANA doesn’t plan to start selling Avatars until next year. Profits, too, will probably be difficult to make: By one estimate, the global market for this kind of technology will be worth only about $300 million by 2023. By contrast, ANA’s traditional travel business brought in more than $19 billion last year.

But if the business value for virtual vacations is still weak, the market for technologies that bridge physical distances between families and coworkers seems likely to only expand. ANA’s robots may not replace its airplanes any time soon, but they’ll almost certainly be a part of travel’s high-tech future.

7 . Researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) published their latest report. When men expressed their opinions with anger, people considered them more believable. But when women expressed anger, they were viewed as more emotional (情绪化) and, thus, less trustable. In other words, a man could benefit from using anger in power and persuasion. A woman, however, could be ignored or hurt by her group if she expressed anger.

The study was based on the responses of 210 students. They were shown evidence online from a murder (谋杀) trial. A man was said to have murdered his wife. The students were asked to decide if the man was guilty or not. Before making their decisions, the students discussed the case online with five jurors (陪审员). But these jurors were computers responses and comments. Some of the jurors had male identities. Others had female identities.

Some male jurors were angry about the verdict (裁决). When this happened, the students reacted by doubting their own decisions about the case. Confidence in their responses on the verdict dropped. However, when female jurors seemed angry, the students became more confident in their original verdicts.

Jessica Salerno, a psychologist and co-author of the study, said, “Our results provide something important for any woman who is trying to have an influence on a decision in her workplace and everyday life.”

In a political debate, a female candidate might have less influence if she shows anger. In the entertainment world, actor Jennifer Lawrence recently wrote that women and men in Hollywood get the opposite reactions when expressing their opinions angrily. “All I hear and see are men speaking their opinions,” she wrote. “When I give mine in the quite similar manner, you would have thought I said something annoying”.

9 . There are many people in the world now. There will be even _______people later this century. The earth will be crowded and there will be very little room _______each person. Maybe there will be only_______room on the earth in 600 years. That will be a very serious problem, so man is taking some_______to solve the _______

The moon is the satellite of the earth. Maybe man will go to live on the moon one day. ___________ , Americans and Chinese have_______there. But there is no air, no plants, and no life. So___________are doing experiments(实验)in many ways. They _______find a solution to these problems________man can live on the moon. I’m sure our dream will come true by the end of this century.