1 . In the last 50 years the media influence has grown increasingly with the advance of technology. First there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines, the television and now the Internet.

We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.

In our daily life, we rely on the media to get the current news and facts about what is important and what we should be aware of. We have put our trust on the media as an authority to give us news, entertainment and education. However, the influence of mass media on our kids, teenagers and society is so big that we should know how it really works.

Of all the media distribution channels the most influential has been the television. We are constantly exposed to thousands of images of violence, advertising, sex, celebrities and much more, in fact a child may be exposed to about 40,000 ads a year.

But who owns the media, which are the companies or people that shape our values, beliefs and decisions? In America, the media is basically dominated by five major companies. Those five companies own 95% of all the media that we get every day. They own the major entertainment theme parks, entertainment movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks and programming, video news and sports entertainment. They also own integrated telecommunications, wireless phones, video games softwares, electronic media, the music industry and more.

Years ago there was more diversity in companies, but they have been combined so now they are just a few and they have the power to shape our opinions and beliefs and those of our kids. So it’s important to be aware of what your kids are exposed to every day and you should also try to look at things from different perspectives and not just from the one the media gives you.

2 . Feeling controlled by your to-do list can certainly make you unhappy, but new research suggests that more free time might not be the magic elixir (灵丹妙药) many of us dream it could be.

In a new study shown last week, researchers analyzed data from two major surveys about how Americans spend their time. Together, the surveys included more than 35,000 respondents (受访者). The researchers found that people with more free time generally had higher levels of subjective well-being—but only up to a point.

People who had up to two hours of free time a day generally reported they felt better than those who’d had less time. But people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally said they felt worse.

So finally the free-time “sweet spot” might be two to three hours per day, the findings suggest. “While too little time is bad, having more time is not always better,” said Marissa Sharif, lead author of the paper.

Of course, most people know that being too busy can cause stress. But the new study is not the first to question whether more free time will actually make people as happy as they believe it will. Part of “sweet spot” has to do with how people spend the free time. Researchers conducted several smaller online experiments. In one they asked participants to imagine having 3.5 to 7 free hours per day. They were asked to imagine spending that time doing “productive” things (like exercising) or to imagine doing “unproductive” activities (like watching TV).

Study participants believed their well-being would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day—but only if they used it unproductively. Though that experiment was hypothetical (假设的), which is one limitation of the new research, it’s certainly in line with other research showing that being in a state of “flow” can be good for people’s mental health.

In other words, how people use their free time matters, Sharif said. Of course, what feels “productive” is up to you.

With the development of technology, more and more students prefers to use electronic products for taking notes and sending messages, rather than writing on the paper.Besides, our handwriting is not as well as it was in the past.Facing with the problem, we should do as follows:

First, we should reduce the use of electronic products while learning, in that case we can have more opportunities improve our handwriting.Also, we must form a habit of practising calligraphy every day. What’s more, it is better to write letter to our relatives and friends by hand instead of sending e-mails.

Beautiful and neat handwriting is of great beneficial to us students. So let’s take action right now! I’m sure our efforts will pay off!

4 . We seem to find out someone broke into a big company’s databases and left with millions of credit card numbers, passwords or other valuable information. Now a new kind of worry: someone could seize control of your wireless home network and steal your information from under your nose.

That’s the possibility raised by a couple of cyber security researchers from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The problem, they say, is a weakness in the very protocol meant to make wi-fi secure. That protocol is called Wi-Fi Protected Access II, WPA2. And WPA2’s weakness could allow an attacker within physical range of your wi-fi network to make a copy of that network that they could then control. The researchers call their approach a key reinstallation attack, or KRACK.

It’s important to know that a KRACK attack remains a possibility for now. The scientists realized the threat while investigating wireless security. They’ll present this research on November 1st at the Computer and Communications Security (CCS) conference in Dallas and in December at the Black Hat Europe conference in London.

In their KRACK assumption, wireless devices would be fooled into connecting to the false network. And the attacker would be able to access all of the information that devices send and receive while connected to that network — even if that information has been coded. Android and Linux would be especially easy to attack because of how their encryption keys (密钥) are set.

One measure of protection against such an attack would be to make sure they you’ve installed the most up-to-date versions of your apps, browsers and wireless router software. Updated software is most likely to include the security patches (补丁) needed to avoid falling victim to a KRACK attack, because chances are that KRACK won’t remain simply a proof-of-concept for long.

5 . My elephant adventures began in 1984 when, with our one-year-old daughter, my husband and I crossed the jungle in a jeep, sticking behind a lorry for comfort and company. The elephants standing like watchers on either side of the forest highway had us praying for our safety. One elephant made loud noise and angrily pawed the ground, warning us off. We raced away before they could attack.

It was wise to keep elephants at a distance. We heard stories of tourists whose jeeps were overturned, and a couple of photographers were killed because they moved too close. Elephants are misleading animals. They give people an impression of being quiet and kind, so tourists think it’s safe to picnic in the jungle. Yet angry elephants have knocked them down in seconds before they could take off.

Elephants might make life unpredictable and dangerous. It’s difficult for inexperienced environmentalists to even, begin to grasp this reality. I’ve heard city people say “We humans are encroaching (侵害) on their forests.” But what’s the solution?

When a poor farmer borrows heavily to plant a crop, he’ll do anything to protect it. His life depends on it. Elephants ruining an about-to-be-harvested corn field cannot expect to be welcomed like special guests. The battle between beasts and farmers is violent.

Experts are working on solutions to human-elephant conflicts. Some are sure to fail to like the plan to build electric fences around human settlements. Elephants rapidly figure them out and come in, around and over them.

There are more questions than answers, for sure. But as my husband said, “More people die in car accidents every single day, in every city on the earth. But they won’t take cars off the roads, will they?” So we need to seek practical ways of preventing elephant accidents.

Hanfu is one of the traditional types of Chinese clothing. The term “Hanfu”, created in recent years by Internet users,     1     (describe) the Han people’s clothing during the Han Dynasty. But it was banned at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty.

When people talk about Hanfu, it     2     (usual) means a long robe (长袍) with loose sleeves and a belt at the waist. The materials for making the clothes were carefully     3     (choose), such as damask silk, cotton and so on.

Hanfu is     4     symbol of traditional Chinese culture. It also has a far-reaching influence on the clothing in other neighboring Asian countries, such as the Japanese kimono (和服)     5     the Korean Hanbok. Having been       6     of fashion for more than 400 years, Hanfu is reconstructed by many Chinese people as part of a trend     7     the public should be proud of their Chinese culture. Many supporters believe that     8     (wear) Hanfu brings them a strong sense of national identity.

Many     9     (university) in China have a Hanfu Society whose members wear Hanfu     10     (celebrate) traditional Chinese festivals, and they use that opportunity to introduce their Hanfu to others.

9 . Large numbers of employees in the United Kingdom will begin a four-day work week from Monday without cutting their pay in the largest trial of its kind. The pilot, which will last for six months, involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies, ranging from providers of financial services to a fish-and-chip restaurant.

During the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity. The program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy, a think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford3 University and Boston College.

Sienna O’Rourke, brand manager at Pressure Drop Brewing, an independent brewery5 in London, told CNN Business that the company’s biggest goal was to improve the mental health and well-being of its employees. “The pandemic has made us think a great deal about work and how people organize their lives,” she said. “We’re doing this to improve the lives of our staff and be part of a progressive change in the world.” Given the company manufactures and ships products, workers have less flexibility about when and where they work, O’Rourke said. But any difficulties in navigating holiday and sick leave would be tackled as a team.

Until now, Iceland had conducted the biggest pilot of a shorter working week between 2015 and 2019, with 2,500 public sector9 workers involved in two large trials. Those trials found no corresponding drop in productivity among participants, and a dramatic increase in employee well-being.

Calls to shorten the working week have gathered steam in recent years in several countries. As millions of employees switched to remote work during the pandemic — cutting onerous commuting time and costs — calls for greater flexibility have only grown louder.

Government-backed trials are set to take place in Spain and Scotland later this year, the 4 Day Week Campaign said in a press release.Joe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, said that the workers have shown they can work “shorter and smarter.”