1 . You may not pay much attention to your daily elevator (电梯) ride. Many of us use a lift several times during the day without really thinking about it. But Lee Gray, PhD of the University of North Carolina, US, has made it his business to examine this overlooked form of public transport. He is known as the “Elevator Guy”.

“The lift becomes this interesting social space where etiquette (礼仪) is sort of strange,” Gray told the BBC. “Elevators are socially very interesting but often very awkward places.”

We walk in and usually turn around to face the door. If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, according to Gray, lift users unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements. He told the BBC what he had observed.

He explained that when you are the only one inside a lift, you can do whatever you want — it’s your own little box.

If there are two of you, you go into different corners, standing diagonally (对角线地) across from each other to create distance.

When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle. And when there is a fourth person it becomes a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.

Newcomers to the lift will need to size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act decisively. Once in, for most people the rule is simple-look down, or look at your phone.

Why are we so awkward in lifts?

“You don’t have enough space.” Professor Babette Renneberg, a clinical psychologist at the Free University of Berlin, told the BBC. “Usually when we meet other people we have about an arm’s length of distance between us. And that’s not possible in most elevators.”

In such a small, enclosed space it becomes very important to act in a way that cannot be construed (理解) as threatening or odd. “The easiest way to do this is to avoid eye contact,” she said.

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2 . One of the most important things of the U. S. government’s routine in 2020 is to raise the federal (联邦) legal age for buying tobacco from age 18 to 21.

Beginning in the summer of 2020, it will be against the law to sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 21. Since 1990, the legal age permitted to buy cigarette is at least 18. The law also includes e-cigarette, not just traditional tobacco products like cigarettes and cigars, adding regulation to this industry, which has developed largely unchecked.

The use of E-cigarette has increased sharply among U. S. teenagers. According to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 27.5% of U. S. high school students have used e-cigarette in the past month. Raising the age one can buy tobacco is intended to avoid what many people are calling an epidemic, which is doing great harm to the health of American teenagers.

A recent outbreak of the disease related to e-cigarette has raised even more concern about e-cigarette products , although the disease is largely linked to cartridges (药筒) filled with addictive Vitamin E acetate sold in black market.

In a statement to TIME, the American Lung Association considered raising the age one can buy tobacco as an easy way to protect children’s health and prevent them from getting addicted to nicotine.

Those in favor of e-cigarette have made it clear that they support raising the legal age permission for buying and using tobacco, arguing that e-cigarette products are never designed for young people. Some anti-cigarette (反对吸烟) people have expressed their doubt of this opinion.

At present, twenty states have already raised the legal age to buy cigarette to 21.

3 . Some children are natural-born bosses. They have a strong need to make _________ , manage their environment, and lead rather than _________ . Stephen Jackson, a Year One student, “operates under the theory of what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine,” says his mother. “The other day I bought two new Star Wars Lightsabers(光剑). Later, I saw Stephen with the two _________ ones while his brother was using the beat-up ones.”

“ _________ the extended family, and you’ll probably find a bossy grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin in every _________ . It’s an inheritable trait,” says Russell Barkley, a professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. Other children who may not be particularly bossy can gradually gain dominance _________ they sense their parents are weak, hesitant, or in disagreement with each other.

Whether it’s inborn nature or developed _________ at work, too much control in the hands of the young isn’t _________ for children or the family. Fear is at the root of a lot of bossy behavior, says family psychologist John Taylor. Children, he says in his book From Defiance to Cooperation, “have secret feelings of weakness” and “a desire to feel safe.” It’s the parents’ role to provide that _________ .

When a “bossy child” doesn’t learn limits at home, he is to face lots of troubles __________ the family. The overly willful and unbending child may have trouble __________ teachers and coaches, for example, or trouble keeping friends. It can be pretty __________ as the top dog if no one likes your bossy ways.

“I see more and more parents giving up their __________ ,” says Barkley, who has studied bossy behavior for more than 30 years. “They bend too far because they don’t want to be as __________ as their own parents were. But they also feel less __________ about their parenting skills. Their kids, in turn, feel more anxious.

The idea of the youth hostel(旅社)started with one man: Richard Schirrmann(1874—1961), a German school teacher, who felt that there was a need for overnight accommodation for his students in order that they could see new things and have new experiences outside the     1     .

He felt that one learns by observing, and tried to make his dream come true in the year 1909, when he started providing accommodation for his students in inns, farmhouses and the like.

The first youth hostel was opened in Schirrmann’s own school in Altena, after which it was     2     by a permanent hostel in Altena Castle. Schirrmann went on to     3     the German Youth Hostel Association in the year 1919. By this time, the idea of the youth hostel had     4     far and wide, all over the lands of Europe and further.

And then, in the year 1932, a(n)     5     organization called the International Youth Hostel was founded in Amsterdam, which consisted of youth hostels from Switzerland, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Britain, Ireland, France, Czechoslovakia, Denmark and Belgium. Richard Schirrmann became its chairman in 1933.

The idea of the youth hostel is for young people who are on nature trips to get     6     accommodation in exchange for some money and a helping hand with the domestic chores(家务活). These hostels were said to build character and a sense of independence, as the youth who stayed in them got the     7     to see how other people lived as well as to help to do work.

Youth hostels are also places to meet and make new friends. They have no class     8     and everyone has to do their share. Here, wealth and position does not help you gain     9     , but friendliness does. The friendlier you are, the more you learn from the     10     of staying in a youth hostel.

6 . According to a report from the Ministry of Public Security. Yichen (奕辰) and Yinuo (一诺) are the most popular names for newborns in 2020. More than 14,000 boys were named Yichen while over 24,000 girls were given the name Yinuo.

More and more parents are giving their babies longer names to make their names stand out. There are around 3 percent of people with four or more characters in their names.

To help avoid too common names, new parents are able to check how many people are using a certain name on the website of the Ministry of Public Security.

As to the ranking of surnames (姓), the largest group of newborns shared the surname Li, with 726,000 new babies have this surname. Wang, Li, Zhang, Liu and Chen are the top five common surnames in China in 2020, the same as in 2019. 30.8 percent of the total population in China has these five surnames.

Although the common practice is to adopt (采用) the surnames of their fathers, more children have taken their mothers’ surnames because of the country’s second child policy. In 2020, about 7.7 percent of the 10 million newborn babies used their mothers’ surnames.

7 . We lead very busy lives and we too easily forget how hard it was for us to focus on homework when we were in school. Now that we have jobs to do, food to buy and cook and other errands to run, even I sometimes think it would be a welcome change to have to sit down and quietly read and write with no distractions. But, in case you don’t remember — homework is pretty much every child’s least favorite thing to do. In the age of Netflix, Snapchat and wifi, the distractions are almost endless. It can sometimes almost be too hard to even keep up with all the new tech advances our kids are using, so how can we make sure that those advances take a back seat to our children’s education? Here are some ideas.

There’s no point in stopping the reality that young people are going to focus on their phones and tablets instead of other things at times. Your best way is to accept, actually the tech sector continues to be the most profitable and fast-growing industries and that’s unlikely to change fast. There are ways to use technology to help your kid do homework. Ask your teacher and school staff what apps and websites they’re using to teach lessons and supplements them with at-home activities as well.

Even though technology has changed, the basics haven’t. If you want to read, write and think properly, you need to have peace and quiet and the ability to focus, right? Well, your kids are just the same. Try and find a space in your home to enable your kids to do work away from televisions, the Internet or other distractions. Let me be clear: this shouldn’t be a prison. I feel like I’m my most productive working alone in an office or at a busy cafe with my headphones on. Getting lost in other realities helps my creativity grow. Placing kids in isolation can often have a harmful effect and doesn’t always equal being more productive.

I feel like “getting engaged” is always a big part of my advice for parents on just about everything. How can you make sure your children are being successful if you have no idea what they’re doing? How can you be sure they’re doing it right if you don’t know what is the correct answer? What do they need? You should be in touch with their teachers, have a sense of where the lessons are going, what kinds of tasks are being given and what success looks like in the classroom. Knowing all of that is key to your child’s success, especially when matched with some encouraging praise and helpful tips on how he can keep going. Thinking about how your child is best   motivated by other things and using those methods here reasonably isn’t a bad idea.

And if by chance you’re having trouble solving that Math problems or understanding a sentence, don’t fear — you’re not alone. Use the school staff, other parents or friends as your support. Better to seek help than do nothing.

We all know that homework isn’t exactly the most entertaining way anyone spends their time. And sometimes we can’t help but feel that since we left school, we’re done with homework forever. But the circle of life plays out in all times and it’s up to us to make sure that we pass on the lessons we’ve picked up and that while homework might seem dull, it’s how we build skills, learn real lessons and get on the road to greatness. That greatness is on the inside, it’s up to us as adults to enable the young people to bring it out. The key to achieving greatness is to take a lifelong learning.