2 . Americans with small families own a small car or a large one. If both parents are working, they usually have two cars. When the family is large, one of the cars is sold and they will buy a van.

A small car can hold four persons and a large car can hold six persons but it is very crowded. A van hold seven persons easily, so a family with three children could ask their grandparents to go on a holiday travel. They could all travel together.

Mr. Hagen and his wife had a third child last year. This made them sell a second car and buy a van. In the van, the sixth and seventh seat are used to put other things, for a family of five must carry many suitcases when they travel. When they arrive at their grandparents'home, the suitcases are removed from the two seats which can then carry the grandparents.

Americans call vans motor homes. A motor home is always used for holidays. When a family are traveling to the mountain s or to the seaside, they can live in their motor home for a few days or to the seaside, they can live in their motor home for a few days or weeks. All the members of a big family can enjoy a happier life when they are traveling together. That is why motor homes have become very popular. In America there are many parks for motor homes.

3 . Cruise and Waymo are two companies that have been developing self-driving taxis, sometimes called “robotaxis” (robot + taxi). Until recently, the cars have had a human in the driver’s seat, ready to take over if there was a problem. But the newest self-driving cars don’t have anyone in the driver’s seat. They are programmed to do everything on their own, including obeying the rules of the road, following speed limits, and avoiding people and other cars.

In early August, Waymo and Cruise were given full permission to operate their robotaxis. The companies were allowed to run as many driverless cars as they wanted, 24 hours a day. And the companies weren’t required to have safety drivers in their cars. The move was a big step for self-driving cars, and many people were excited about the change. The new rules also allowed the companies to charge for every ride, which meant that the robotaxis could finally start to earn money.

But almost immediately, there were problems. A Cruise car crashed into a fire truck, sending a person to the hospital. Later, a Cruise car stopped working in the middle of a crossroad, causing a traffic jam. As a result, Cruise was told to take half of its robotaxis off the roads.

In one recent example, a self-driving car got stuck in wet concrete because it didn’t know that wet concrete was different from a road. In another case, a robotaxi killed a dog. The self-driving system knew the dog was there, but didn’t know how to avoid it. One group that is upset about self-driving cars has found an unusual way to protest: putting traffic cones (圆锥体) on the robotaxis. The cone confuses the car’s driving system and leaves them unable to move.

In spite of the problems, both Waymo and Cruise are planning to expand their self-driving car service to other cities. Cruise has plans to bring their robotaxis to at least 15 cities. Waymo says its driverless system will soon be able to work “in any city, on any kind of vehicle”. Though the quality of self-driving cars is improving, it’s likely to be a while before most people view them as safe.

6 . Researchers recently studied 3,000 middle school students. Among them were 618 teenagers with one parent who lived away from home for long periods of time because of work.The researchers wanted to know how the work of these “fly-in, fly-out” parents might influence the health of their children.

A higher percentage (比例) of teenagers who experienced the long work absence of a parent had emotional (情感的) or behavioral problems compared with those whose parents worked more traditional hours. This supports earlier research finding high percentages of emotional problems in teenagers who often returned to an empty house after school or whose parents were seldom at dinner.

Findings also suggest that parents don’t have to be home all the time to be present in their children’s lives, but it helps to be home at certain times. And the best parental presence for a teenager may sometimes be like a potted (盆栽的) plant. Many parents of teenagers have known this to be true and find ways to be present without trying to start a conversation. One friend of mine quietly does housework each evening in the sitting room where her teenagers watch TV. They enjoy one another’s company (陪伴) without the need to talk.

In fact, many years of research suggest that children use their parents as a safe base from which to explore the world. Studies tell us that young children quietly follow their parents’ movements from room to room, even while carrying on with their own activities. Perhaps our teens, like babies, feel most at ease when their parents are still around. They don’t want to stay away from parents who allow them freedom.

A new school year is at hand, so as parents we could offer our teenagers a “potted flower” as a gift, whose quiet and steady (稳定的) presence will give them a great day.

9 . From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint or write. Many believe that music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by British and Swedish researchers is challenging that belief. Their findings indicate that music actually stymies creativity.

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music “significantly damaged” the participants’ ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity. The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects’ creativity. The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be “sun” (sundress, sunflower, sundial). Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or a room with 3 different types of music: music with unfamiliar lyrics (歌词), instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.

“We found strong evidence of damaged performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions,” says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.

Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes (干涉) with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, blocking creativity. Also, as far as the library background noises having seemingly no effect, the study’s authors believe that was the case because library noises create a “steady state” environment that doesn’t disrupt concentration. It’s worth mentioning that even familiar music with well-known lyrics damaged participants’ creativity, regardless of whether or not it caused a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.

10 . Facebook is widely used in the US, Britain and many other countries. But should children under 13 be allowed to use it? Well, whether children under 13 are allowed to use it or not, many of them are doing that. They use it to find out what shopping center to meet in after school tomorrow and what park to hang out in on Saturday afternoon. Under-13s might not have Facebook accounts, both here and in the US, but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of them from using dates of birth which are not true to start an account.

Yes, of course parents like me worry that means our kids are at risk of both being bullied (欺凌) and of bullying others. But the important thing to realize here is that bullying takes place in the school lunch hall or on the playground. No one is trying to stop under-13s from those places, right?

Some fear that their children are prey (受害者) for bad people on Facebook. Again, does your kid travel alone or go to a shopping center without you? Most children do from the time they go to high school. And just as you teach them the rules for staying safe when they’re out and alone, you teach them the rules for staying safe online.

Facebook is about what life is about, which is connecting with others. When children are young, we supervise (监管) them. As they get older, we trust them to connect without us around all the time. And what Facebook does is to teach our kids a language that will surely be important to their future, because today’s children are going to be interacting (互动) online with friends, and in the future business partners and customers for the rest of their lives. Why, when we’re trying to educate them in useful skills on other fronts, hold them back on this one?