1 . Some documents have been making the rounds lately — where people who work various positions in different industries share how much they’re paid.

Bravo! It’s about time we blew up that old belief that salaries have to stay secret. This is not just a matter of curiosity. Having information about salaries can help narrow the gender wage gap, which has barely changed for more than a decade. Recently released date from the US Census Bureau shows that, on average, women working full time still are paid only 82 cents for every dollar paid to a man. And the gap is even wider for many women of color: Black women make 62 cents, and Latinas just 54 cents. What’s more, the pay gap even extends into her retirement. Because she earned less and therefore paid less to the social security system, she receives less in social security benefits.

Having greater access to salary information is helping to speed things up. A new research report by the American Association of University Women shows that the wage gap tends to be smaller in job sectors where pay transparency (透明) is a must. For example, among federal government workers, there’s just a 13 percent pay difference between men and women, and in state government, the gap is about 17 percent. But in private, for-profit companies, where salaries are generally kept under wraps, the gender wage gap jumps to 29 percent.

Fortunately, salary information is increasingly available on some websites. Certain companies and many human resources departments are pushing ahead with this practice. Of course, it’s going to take more than salary transparency to equalize earnings between women and men. But sharing salaries can and must be part of the solution. The more information women have about how jobs are valued — and what different people earn — the better they will understand their value in the labor market and be able to push for the pay they deserve.

3 . There have been countless books and television series on living with teenagers, yet parents don’t seem to have _________ how to get their children to pick up their clothes from the bedroom floor, or even clean their room occasionally. It might be difficult to accept, but a new approach to dealing with rude or difficult teenagers is for parents to look at their own _________.

“The key to getting teenagers to respect you is to respect them first,” says Penny Palmano, who has written a best-selling book on teenagers. “You can’t _________ to treat them the same way that you have been treating them for the previous 12 years: they have opinions that count. Imagine if you’d spent two hours getting ready to go out for the evening and someone said, ‘You’ve not going out looking like that, are you?’ You’d be very _________. You’d never say that to an adult, because it shows a total _________ of respect.”

Palmano, who has a daughter aged 19, has even allowed the girl to hold several teenage parties at her home. “I’ve found that if you have brought your kids up to do the right thing, and then _________ them to do it, usually they’ll behave well,” she says. “I make them sandwiches and leave them alone. But I make it clear that they have to clear up any mess. I’ve never had a(n) _________; in fact, the kitchen was sometimes cleaner than I’d left it.”

She agrees that teenagers can be annoying: enjoying a world that is free of responsibility, yet _________ for independence. She doesn’t think, however, that they are _________ to annoy you. Until recently, scientists assumed that the brain finished growing at about the age of 13 and that teenage problems were a result of rising hormones and a desire for independence. But it turns out that the region of the brain that controls judgement and emotions is not fully __________ until the early twenties.

“This would explain why many teenagers can’t make good decisions, control their emotions, priorities or concentrate on several different things at the same time. __________, they may find it difficult to make the right decision between watching television, ringing a friend, or finishing their homework. It means that they do not __________ do the wrong thing just to annoy their parents,” says Palmano.

The key to __________ for all, Palmano believes, is calm negotiation and compromise (妥协). If you want your teenagers to be home by 11 pm, explain why, but listen to their arguments as well. If it’s Saturday, you might __________ agreeing to midnight (rather than 1 am, which is what they had in mind). If they are up to 20 minutes late, don’t react angrily. __________, ask if they’ve had a problem with public transport and let it pass; they’ve almost managed what you asked.

4 . Google’s £ 400m acquisition of the UK artificial intelligence research company DeepMind in 20l4 was testimony to the quality of British scientific research. Furthermore, the insistence of the three UK co-founders that their company would not move to California was seen as evidence of London’s potential to become a successful centre for technology innovation. Four years later, the future of the UK capital’s tech aspirations and of DeepMind’s centre of gravity look a lot less certain.

DeepMind’s announcement last week that it would transfer control of its health unit to a new Google Health division in California has raised questions about data privacy. The health unit has access to the records of 1. 6m patients of Britain’s National Health Service. After four years of relative operating freedom, the company is confronting the hard reality of being owned by Google. For Google, however, which has been patient so far about its return on investment, the time for DeepMind’s work to be commercialised-specifically a patient management App called Streams-appears to have arrived.

The UK Company founded by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman has repeatedly vindicated Google’s assessment of its world class artificial intelligence research. In2016, its AlphaGo programme beat the world’s best player of the fiendishly complex board game “Go” after thousands of practice games. In2017 its progeny, AlphaGo Zero, did it again---without any expert human input.

When algorithms beat humans at their own games it is impressive; when they start beating them at their work it becomes unsettling. This year, another DeepMind algorithm proved better than retinal specialists at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital at making referrals when tested on patient scans.

This was clear progress. DeepMind’s health work is what is most immediately relevant to Britons since, through a partnership with the Royal Free Hospital, it has access to the data of so many patients. The move to California has understandably raised privacy concerns at a time when big tech companies, including Facebook, are coming under growing scrutiny for the careless way they have exploited private data for commercial gain. Moreover, the transfer appears to contravene promises by DeepMind that “at no stage will patient data ever be linked or associated with Google accounts, products or services”. It is worrying that at the same time DeepMind’s independent review panel-set up to scrutinize its sensitive relationship with the NHS-is also being wound up.

DeepMind, which sees the move as a way of ensuring millions benefit from its work, claims that its contracts with the NHS are sufficient to protect patients’ data, which will remain under the strict control of Britain’s health service. Google has said nothing. There is a clear need for both companies to offer much greater assurances.

Last year, DeepMind set up an ethics and society department, whose independent advisers were selected for their integrity. They had a reputation for asking tough questions which set the company apart in the tech sector. If indeed the founders believed this culture would be unaffected by the gravitational pull of a buyer as powerful as Google, they were naive. WhatsApp and Instagram made the same mistake.

But for the sake of the NHS patients whose data are at issue, it is to be hoped that the same culture and integrity survives in California. The Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” might work for companies developing software. It has no place governing healthcare and technology.

6 . Wholesale prices for gas and electricity are increasing suddenly across Europe,raising the possibility of increases in already-high utility (公共事业）bills and further pain for people who have taken a financial hit fromCOVID-19.

Governments are struggling to find ways to limit costs to consumers as scant natural gas reserves present yet another potential problem, exposing the continent to even more price increases and possible shortages if it’s a cold winter.

In the U.K., many people will see their gas and electricity bills rise next month after the nation’s energy regulator approved a 12% price increase for those without contracts that lock in rates. Officials in Italy have warned that prices will increase by 40% for the quarter that will be billed in October.

There are multiple causes for the price increases, energy analysts say, including tight supplies of natural gas used to generate electricity, higher costs for permits to release carbon dioxide as part of Europe’s fight against climate change, and less supply from wind in some cases.

Analysts at S&P Global Platts say electricity prices have risen due to strong demand from places like data centers and electric cars, but above all because of the rise in the price of natural gas used in generating plants. Utility companies’ exposure to natural gas prices has increased as high-emission coal plants have been retired, while utilities face higher costs for carbon allowances required by the European Union’s emissions trading system, which is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

The tight gas market could bite even more sharply if there’s an unusually cold winter. That’s because European distributors did not refill reserves reduced during last winter as they typically had done in summer months. In March 2008, when the freeze named “the beast from the east” hit Europe, industrial users in the U.K got a notice that there was a risk of interruption, although it didn’t come to that.

Could Europe run out of gas? “The short answer is Yes, this is a real risk,” said James Huckstepp, an analyst at S&P Global Platts. “Storage stocks are at record lows and there isn’t currently any spare supply capacity that is exportable anywhere in the world.The longer answer is that it’s hard to predict how it will play out given that Europe has never run out of gas in two decades under the current distribution system.”

7 . Word on the street is that gossip is the worst. An Ann Landers（安·兰德斯, 知名专栏作家）advice column once characterized it as "the faceless demon that breaks ________and ruins careers" The Talmud（describes it as "three-pronged tongue" that kills three people: the teller, the ________, and the person being gossiped about. And Blaise Pascal observed, not unreasonably, that if "people really knew what others said about them, there would not be four friends left in the world."________as these indictments（控告）seem, however, a significant body of research suggests that gossip may in fact be healthy.

It's a good thing, too, since gossip is pretty common. Children tend to be seasoned gossips by the age of 5, and gossip as most researchers understand it--talk between at least two people about ________ others-accounts for about two-thirds of conversation.

Despite dodgy（躲闪）reputation, surprisingly ________share of it--as little as 3 to 4percent-is actually malicious（蓄意的）. And even that portion can bring people together. Researchers at the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma found that if two people share negative feelings about a third person, they are likely to feel closer to each other than they would if they both felt ________about him or her.

Gossip may even make us better people. A team of Dutch researchers reported that hearing gossip about others made research subjects more ________positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves. In another study, the worse participants felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, the more likely they were to say they had learnt a ________from it. Negative gossip can also have a prosocial（亲社会的）effect on those who are gossip about. Researchers at Stanford and UC Berkeley found that once people were ostracized（排斥）from a ground due to reputed selfishness, they reformed their ways in an attempt to regain the ________ of the people they had alienated.

By far the most positive assessment of gossip, though, comes from the anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. Once upon a time, in Dunbar's account, our primate ancestors ________ through grooming（梳毛）, their mutual back-scratching ensuring mutual self-defense in the event of attack by predators. But as hominids（原始人类）grew more intelligent and more social, their groups became too ________ to unite by grooming alone. That's where ________and gossip, broadly defined-stepped in. Dubar argues that idle chatter with and about others gave early humans sense of shared identity and helped them grow ________ of their environment, thus cultivating the complex higher functioning that would ________ yield such glories of civilization as the Talmud, Pascal, and Ann Landers.

So next time you're tempted to gossip, fear not-you may actually be promoting cooperation, boosting others self-esteem, and ________ essential task of the human family. That`s what I heard, anyway.

Sincerely,

Li Hua

9 . If you order a Burger King Stacker Quad,you'll be served with a hamburger with no trace of any vegetable in it,a fact boasted about in the TV ads that accompanied the launch of the product in the United States.The Stacker Quad may be extraordinary, but it is far from_________.Recent times have seen the launch of products that the industry calls"indulgent offerings"foods marketed specifically on the basis of how much meat and cheese and how few vegetables they _________, it is worth _________how strange these developments would have seemed just two years ago,when the _________ to fast-food was at its height. At that time,the American burger restaurant Wendy's added a fresh-fruit bowl to its menu.However, at the end of last year,the company quietly _________the menu,blaming a lack of demand for such healthy dishes."We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit,"a spokesman told the New York Times,"but apparently they _________ .

The industry's_________, it seems, had been to listen to the market researchers instead of the food psychologists. People tell researchers what they think they want to hear,or what the respondents want to believe about themselves. But we know,_________ recent psychological research, that people drink more than a third more fruit juice when they pour it into a short, wide glass instead of a narrow,tall one,and that people will eat more of a product if it comes in a bigger package.We know that people will report that 'Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake' taste better than"Chocolate Cake', even when the cakes themselves are exactly the same. _________, we know that just because people say they want to eat more healthily, it doesn't mean they really do want to.

Denny Marie Post,from Burger King, admits that the fast-food industry vastly __________the appeal of healthier product lines."Healthy eating is more a state of intention than it is of __________ ."she says.There is a very small percentage whose behaviour agrees with their intentions.Andrew Geier,a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recently conducted an experiment in which he placed a large bowl of sweets in the lobby of an apartment building.Eat your __________. Please use the spoon to serve yourself read a sign he placed next to the bowl.He left it there for 10 days in a row,with,on alternative days, either a teaspoon or a large spoon that held a quarter of a cup of sweets.When they were using the __________spoon, people on average took two thirds more sweet. This __________is known as'unit bias'-the way we tend to think that whatever quantity a product is sold in must be appropriate amount to __________.