The four best films in China in the first quarter of 2018

    Quite a few films both at home and abroad have brought a wave of heated discussions on the Internet in the first three months of 2018.

    If you're looking for some good films to see, here are some recommendations. While the subjects of these films are different，they all have fascinating storylines, a star-studded cast and thought-provoking themes. Let's take a look at them.

    Wonder

    Country: United States

    Release Date: Jan 19, 2018

    Genre: drama

    Starring: Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay

    Director: Stephen Chbosky

    Recommendation Index: ★★★★★

    On the theme of “We all are different and want to be treated with kindness,” the film earns its tugs at the heartstrings. The movie was praised by audiences for hitting the soft spot as a heartwarming story that manages to avoid turning too sentimental.

    Forever Young

    Country: China

    Release Date: Jan 12, 2018

    Genre: drama

    Starring: Zhang Ziyi, Huang Xiaoming, Wang Leehom

    Director: Li Fangfang

    Recommendation Index: ★★★★

    The film, once planned as a tribute to mark the centenary celebrations of Tsinghua University in 2011, weaves four stories set in different eras to look at the history of the college.

    Secret Superstar

    Country: India

    Release Date: Feb 16, 2018

    Genre: musical drama

    Starring: Zaira Wasim, Aamir Khan

    Director: Advait Chandan

    Recommendation Index: ★★★★

    The film deals with social issues including feminism, gender equality and domestic violence. From Dangal to Secret Superstar to the latest comedy-drama film Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Indian films have developed a solid fan base in China.

    The Ex-File: The Return of the Exes

    Country: China

    Release Date: Dec 29, 2017

    Genre: romantic comedy

    Starring: Han Geng, Zheng Kai

    Director: Tian Yusheng

    Recommendation Index: ★★★

    The Ex-File: The Return of the Exes, the finale of the hit romance franchise produced by Huayi Brothers and New Saint Film Studio, revolves around bittersweet stories of two young businessmen who break up with their girlfriends. It is the first movie in 2018 that has achieved huge success at the box office.

    A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore(NUS)has found a clear link between the color of a taxi and its accident rate. An analysis of 36 months of detailed taxi, driver and accident data from two fleets of yellow and blue taxis in Singapore suggested that yellow taxis have fewer accidents than blue taxis. The higher visibility (能见度)of yellow makes it easier for drivers to avoid getting into accidents with yellow taxis, leading to a lower accident rate.

    The study was led by Prof Ho. To test whether there was a causal relationship between the color of a taxi and the number of accidents the taxi had, the research team analysed data collected by the largest taxi company in Singapore. The researchers found that yellow taxis have about 6.1 fewer accidents per 1,000 taxis per month.

    The researchers also studied the economic effect of changing the color of the entire fleet of taxis to yellow. The Singapore taxi company involved in the study owns about 16,700 taxis in a ratio(比例) of one yellow to three blue taxis. If a commercial decision is made to switch from blue to yellow taxis, 76.6 fewer accidents would occur per month or 917 fewer accidents per year. Assuming an average repair cost of $1,000 per car and a downtime of six days, switching the color of all taxis to yellow could produce an annual savings of $2 million.

    “We are eager to continue to validate(证实) the findings of our study by looking at the use of yellow in other types of public transport, such as school buses. For instance, we hope to compare the accident rates of yellow school buses against other colors to find out if yellow is indeed a safer color for school buses. Besides, we are also interested to look at private-hire vehicles and do a comparison of the accident rates of vehicles that are of different colors,” explained Prof Ho.

    "I'm the smartest kid in class." We all want our kids to be self-confident, but unrealistic perception(认知) of their academic abilities, a new study finds, damage a child's relationship with others in the classroom: The more one student feels unrealistically superior(更好的) to another, the less the two students like each other.

Katrin Rentzsch of Bamberg University in Germany first became interested in the effects of such self-perception when she was studying how people became labeled as nerds(书呆子). "I really got interested in the question of whether it's OK to boast(吹嘘) about achievements," she says.

    This line of thinking led her towards something psychologists call "self-enhancement" －when a person feels unrealistically superior to someone else. So Rentzsch and her colleague Michela Schroder-Abe decided to take a closer look at how such self-enhancement affects relationships, so they turned to the eighth-grade classroom, somewhere they could measure differences between actual academic performance, and social popularity. The 358 students came from 20 eighth-grade classes in schools in southeast Germany.

    The researchers asked each student to rate their classmates, in terms of their likability and of their feelings of academic superiority. They then compared those ratings with the students' grades in math, physics, German and English. Importantly, they conducted the analysis at two different social levels: "habitual"－the way people act in general, and "relationship"－the way someone acts around a specific individual.

    In future work, Rentzsch would like to look at these effects on adults, perhaps specifically in team work. She's also interested in self-enhancement beyond academic achievements, for example physical attractiveness. And another question to explore is why students overestimate their academic abilities. Perhaps it is because of too much praise from their parents or teachers.

    Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician at NASA (美国宇航局), began working on the space program in the 1950s. Many of NASA's first missions were made possible by her amazing calculations (计算).

    As a child, she loved to count. Her father placed great importance on education and insisted all four of his children go to college, working overtime to pay for it. Johnson said this atmosphere was important to her success. "I was always around people who were learning something. I liked to learn." She said.

    Johnson graduated from high school at 14 and college at 18. In 1953, Johnson started to work for NASA, doing the math that powered engineers' work. Then, because of her outstanding talent, she was moved to work on rockets with an all-male flight research team. As for Johnson, her calculations contributed to many of NASA's most important projects. In 1961, with the help of Johnson's work, Alan Shepherd became the first American to go into space. Johnson also lent her unbelievable talent to the success of the Apollo 13, which had trouble getting back to earth. She worked hard to calculate a safe path back to Earth for the astronauts.

    Johnson retired in 1986, but her huge contribution to the space program has only been reaching the public attention for the past few years. Part of that is because, as she is the first to admit, science is based on collaboration. "I never took any credit because we always worked as a team, it was never just one person," she said in a 2010 interview.

    Earlier this year, NASA named a new data center after her. She was also given a Silver Snoopy award, which recognizes "outstanding performance, contributing to flight safety and mission success."

    Have you ever heard someone say "You totally look like you're a Jessica" or something similar? People seem to think that they know what kind of person a "Jessica" or a "Michael" looks like. Why is this?

    According to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, humans tend to associate people's names with their appearances, and can even guess someone's name based on how they look.

    Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, collected thousands of photos of people's faces. They labeled (贴标签于) each photo with four names. Then, they asked volunteers to guess which of the four names was correct.

    The volunteers were able to guess the right name 38% of the time. It seems that certain characteristics of faces give them clues about someone's name, Reader's Digest reported.

    However, this only worked when the volunteers looked at names from their own culture. In addition, the volunteers were not as good at guessing the real names of people who used nicknames(昵称)more often than their real names. This may show that a person's appearance is affected by their name only if they use it often.

    "This kind of face-name matching happens because of a process of self-fulfilling prophecy (预言), as we become what other people expect us to become," Ruth Mayo from tile university told science news website EurekAlert.

    Earlier studies have shown that gender (性别) and race stereotypes (刻板印象) can affect a person's appearance. The researchers believe there are also similar stereotypes about names. For example, people tend to think that men named Bob should have rounder faces because the word itself looks round. People may think that women named Rose are beautiful. They expect them to be "delicate" and "female", just like the flower they are named for.

Yesterday, I went to the bookstore to pick up a present for my mother's upcoming birthday. I found one of the books I wanted, but not the other one my mother had discussed with me the other day. When I went to pay. I asked the clerk behind the counter if I could order the second book.

A lady was standing in line behind me at the checkout. The clerk said she could order the book. but asked if I would mind letting the lady behind me pay for her purchases first. The lady behind me said no and that it was fine to wait.

It took nearly 15 minutes to put my order through! The lady behind me chatted agreeably with us for the entire time. When it finally came time for me to pay, I placed two $10 off cards on the counter. The clerk informed me the offer was only valid(有效) for the book I was purchasing in-store and wouldn't work for the book I'd ordered. This meant that I'd have one $ 10 card left.

"You can come back and purchase another book." the clerk smiled. "The offer is valid until the end of the week."

I thought about this for a millisecond and then turned around to face the lady behind me who'd been so patient, kind, and charming through the very long wait at the checkout. "Here." I gave her the $10 off card. She was very surprised and said. "Really?"

The gift didn't cost me anything. I knew I wouldn't be back before the end of the week and it rewarded someone whose attitude left a smile in my heart. Most definitely a win-win moment.