Driverless technology will soon enter another major global industry: shipping. Several companies recently announced plans to launch self-sailing ships to improve safety and efficiency.

One of them is the Norwegian chemical company Yara International. Yara has teamed up with another Norwegian company, Kongsberg, to build an autonomous goods ship expected to be launched next year. Kongsberg developed the ship’s electrical technology and autonomous control systems. The ship is fully electric to reduce air pollution. It is designed to carry goods containers normally transported by truck. This means the ship will also improve road safety by replacing about 40,000 truck trips a year. The company plans to operate the ships by far-away control beginning sometime next year. By 2020, the ships should be loading and sailing themselves. While Yara’s ships will be limited to Norway at first, the company plans to greatly expand its autonomous shipping operations in the coming years.

Another company putting a high priority (优先) to self-sailing ships is the world’s largest mining company, Australia’s BHP Billiton. The company’s Vice President of Freight, Rashpal Bhatti, recently spoke about the technology in a website post. Bhatti believes automation will be one of the biggest changes for shipping in the future. He said, “Autonomous ships offer important opportunities to improve safety and provide more effective results to the supply chain of the sea.” He added that self-sailing ships could become a reality within the next decade.

Rolls-Royce, the British automobile and engine manufacturer (制造商), is also developing unmanned (无人驾驶的) shipping technologies. Oskar Levander is the company’s head of operations at sea. He said in a conference last year, “This is happening. It’s not if, it’s when.”

Levander said these autonomous ships could be controlled by far-away operators from anywhere. He added, “Because these ships will be designed to be unmanned, they can be built smaller, more efficient and environmentally friendly.”

   A new study says that the faces on Lego minifigures have become less happy and more often mad or sad. The study was designed to find out if the Lego characters have become grumpier over the years.

Christoph Bartneck works at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He loves Lego and even worked for the company in the 1990s. He worked with another researcher on the project. They looked at all of the 6,000 figures made between 1975 and 2010. They made a note of each figure’s facial expression: happy, grumpy, afraid, surprised or satL They discovered that while in 1980, all of the figures were described as “smiley”, and that by 1990, only about 80 per cent of them had been “smiley” . And by 2010, just 50 per cent of the figures had had a smile on their little plastic faces.

The researchers are wondering how the increasingly sad, angry and unhappy faces on the Lego figures will affect the children who play with them. “Children’s toys can have an important influence on children,” said Bartneck on the university’s website. While Lego hasn’t issued an official response to the study, Bartneck said he thought the reason why Lego was producing angrier-faced characters was that children wanted them. He said it was likely that people wanted Lego characters to have different expressions, rather than just being sunny all the time. He said most of the unhappy faces were on characters based on a specific theme such as Harry Potter or pirates (海盗).

Bartneck will present his findings at the International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction in Sapporo.

   Saja Pahad, a small village in Chhattisgarh, India, has been dealing with severe water shortages for as long as anyone can remember. With only two wells available, locals were barely able to secure enough water to feed their cattle, let alone irrigate their crops. Villagers didn’t know what to do and the government ignored their difficult situation, but one “crazy” teenager took matters into his own hands.

Shyam Lal was only 15 when he took it upon himself to solve his village’s water problem. He identified a spot in a nearby forest and decided to dig a pond to collect rainfall that could then be used by the entire village. Lal shared his idea with the rest of Saja Pahad, but instead of volunteering to help, they just laughed at his crazy plan and called him a lunatic (疯子). But the young man didn’t let the people’s reaction get him down. Instead, he grabbed a spade (铁锹) and started digging the pond himself. He kept on digging for the next 27 years.

Now 43, Shyam Lal is considered a hero by his community. That small hole he started digging nearly three decades ago is now a one-acre, 15-feet-deep pond filled with precious water that serves the entire village.

“No one helped me in my work, neither the government nor the villagers,” Lal told the Hindustan Times. “It was my dream to secure enough water for the whole village and their cattle.”

The story of Shyam Lal’s determination recently went viral in the whole of India, and prompted authorities in Mahendragarh district to finally acknowledge his achievement. A member of the government recently visited Saja Pahad and offered Lal a $ 156 prize for his contribution to the village.

   For years considered as a foxy politician, Thomas Cromwell has been greatly rehabilitated (恢复……的名誉) by Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). It’s true that he planned Anne Boleyn’s fall, and made a large fortune in a dishonest way, but he was also a good husband and father, charming and modest, a self-made man.

Certainly, he is one of the outstanding figures from Henry VIII’s court. Extremely hard-working, he was a productive reporter. It was not unusual for him to start work as early as 5 am and finish well after midnight.

Yet in researching the biography of Cromwell, I have discovered frustrating gaps in sources, particularly in relation to his early life.

The man who would one day become the most powerful in England was raised from such humble (卑微的) origins that nobody knows when or where he was born. As the son of a blacksmith, he suffered a miserable childhood.

I had the portrait (肖像), which now hangs in the Frick Collection in New York, of a thoughtful but rather bad-tempered official in mind. It seems to describe a cruel man of business, which was what I thought before I read Wolf Hall. But Mantel’s portrait of a rude but intelligent man who was as loyal to his family and friends as he was cruel to his enemies is really convincing.

His last letter to Henry VIII, written from the Tower in June 1540, is desperately moving. “Most gracious Prince,” he wrote with his trembling hand, “I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy !” Henry was said to have read the letter three times. But it was not enough to save Cromwell from the axe.

Within weeks of Cromwell’s death, his royal master was regretting the loss of “the most faithful servant”. But Henry’s daughter Mary destroyed all of that. Debate has taken place ever since — among historians, novelists and film-makers alike — as to who was the real Cromwell.

Close your eyes for a minute and imagine what life would be like if you couldn’t see. Imagine 【小题1】 (have) to read this page, not with your eyes but with your fingers. How do you feel, then?

With 【小题2】 (medicine) knowledge and skills today, two-thirds of the world’s 42 million blind people are not 【小题3】 (necessary) to suffer. Sadly, only rich countries have such knowledge and skills.

Orbis is an international charity organization, 【小题4】 goal is to help fight blindness all over the world. Inside an airplane, there is a teaching hospital, 【小题5】 (equip) with a television room and a classroom, in which doctors 【小题6】 (teach) the latest technology of helping the blind get sight again.

Orbis helps those developing countries by providing sight-saving training. It 【小题7】 (train) over 35,000 doctors and nurses so far. They treat thousands of blind people every year. They have traveled around the earth 3 times, visited 76 countries 【小题8】 treated over 20,000 blind people. They need your help to continue their work and free people 【小题9】 blindness. You can help by donating money to the organization. Your love and 【小题10】 (kind) can help those blind people open their eyes to the world.

   Nowadays it is necessary to be reasonable and flexible enough to avoid conflicts as much as possible and live in peace with others. 【小题1】 If you have done all your best to avoid conflicts but you are still arguing, then read these effective tips on how to avoid conflicts.

1. Don’t get in the center of the conflict.

Sometimes people can get in the center of conflicts because they want to help. Frankly speaking, it is very risky, because it can make you the main figure of the conflict. 【小题2】 You should focus on your own life issues.

2. Be kind.

【小题3】 Life is full of conflicts and disagreements, and that’s why you should find more conservative ways of dealing with them. For example, kindness can lessen the conflict.

3. Try to be a peacekeeper.

Peacekeepers tend to cooperate with people without bad emotions which usually lead to arguments and even conflicts. “【小题4】” This saying is the life motto of a natural born peacekeeper. Don’t worry if you are not a natural born peacekeeper. You can gain this skill during life.

4. Walk off.

When the conflict is gathering pace and you can’t manage to keep yourself, you should choose to handle the situation in another way. By all means, try to keep yourself away from stress. 【小题5】 You should get away from the situation for a while.

Have you heard from Singles’ Day (November 11) in China? Many people stay up lately, shopping online to get big savings. Well, the US has something like it calling Black Friday.

Black Friday is one of the bigger shopping days in the US. It always fell on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday. On Black Friday, stores will offer special deal, just like Singles’ Day in China. Shoppers will often wake up very early to wait in the line at stores after they open. Sometimes, the crowds will be such big that it is impossible get inside the store. People sometimes fight over things because there are only a few left.