Two young giant-panda twins born in the United States have returned home to China, but are straggling to adapt to the language and food.

    The 3-year-old sisters, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, wens the first surviving panda twins to be born in the United States, and were returned to China from Zoo Atlanta on Nov. 5. But the pair still understand English belter than Chinese, and prefer American biscuits to Chinese bread.

    A zoo-keeper said that his main concern is that the pair are so addicted to American biscuits that everything they eat — from bamboos to apples — has to be mixed with biscuits. They even want to snack on (零食) biscuits when drinking water.

    The zoo -keeper is trying to wean them off their biscuit habit, gradually replacing the American food with Chinese bread. Mei Huan is adapting, but Mei Lun doesn't want to touch the unfamiliar bread.

    Mei Lun is the livelier of the two, often jumping onto the roof and hanging upside down from a rail, but her slightly younger sister Mei Huan is calmer, preferring to sit still, observe her new environment and occasionally snack on bamboo.

    A language barrier is also reported. While the pair respond to their own names, and understand some English phrases such as “come here,” they don't understand the Sichuan dialect of Chinese.

    The news caused some laughter on Chinese social media, with some users commenting that the pandas would soon get used to Sichuan's famously spicy cuisine.

    When you see someone you know, the easiest way to recognize them is by their face—but not everyone can do this. Many people have prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which is a neurological（神经病学的）condition where the part of the brain that recognizes faces fails to develop. It can stop people recognizing partners, family members, friends or even their own reflection. It was once thought to be caused by brain injury (acquired prosopagnosia) but now a genetic link has been proved (development prosopagnosia).

    Acquired prosopagnosia is a very rare but as many as one in 50 people may have developmental prosopagnosia. There's no specific treatment, but training programmes are being developed to help improve facial recognition.

    For many, the situation can be dangerous. I've heard stories of people being robbed by strangers claiming to be family members, or of children wandering off strange men.

    It was only is this century that researchers began to realize exactly how many people in this world were quietly living with the condition.

    Like a blind person who can recognize family members by their footsteps, prosopagnosics are forced to develop unusual ways of discovering who it is they're meeting or talking to. From the obvious markers like hair and voice, to the way one sits, stands or walks, they rely on dozens of means to get through ordinary life.

    Faces are an important part of identity. Not to be recognized feels terrible—it's as if you've been overlooked, like someone's saying you don't matter. But it's nothing to the pain of knowing that you're hurting people's feelings constantly, and yet being completely unaware that you're doing it in the moment. To be alienated（隔离的）from the world of faces is a strange position to be in, but I'm comforted by the thought that articles like this will do a little to help people forgive me and others like me.

    Congratulations on having been offered, and accepting, a place to study at Cambridge! This page offers some tips that will hopefully make your arrival at Cambridge as stress-free as possible.

    Before you arrive

    Your College or Department will send you all the information you need to prepare yourself for your time in Cambridge, including College information, for example, accommodation, course information, and similar related details. You will be sent an email asking you to complete the University's Student Registration exercise. It will only take a few minutes.

    Pre-arrival Freshers' Events this summer

    Around the world in August and September, Cambridge Alumni（毕业生）Groups will be hosting pre-arrival Freshers' Events for new students coming to Cambridge this autumn. These events are a great opportunity to prepare for university and make some friends before you arrive. There will be the chance to meet current students and alumni from whom you can get tips and advice for living and studying in Cambridge.

    Arrival and registration

    Most courses start in October. The term between October and December is known as Michaelmas Term in Cambridge. Officially, the first day of the Michaelmas Term is 1 October and this date will be shown on your offer letter. Your College or your Department will advise you about when to arrive. Ceremony activities begin around 1 October for most students. When you arrive in Cambridge, you should go first to your College. They will be glad to know that you have arrived safely and will advise you on what to do next.

    Matriculation

    Matriculation marks the formal admission of a student to membership of the University, and a College may not normally allow an unmatriculatied student to be a resident member of the College. Every freshman for matriculation must agree with the following belief by signing the Matriculation Registration Form:

    I promise to observe the Statutes and Ordinances of the University as far as they concern me, and to pay due respect and obedience to the Chancellor and other officers of the University.

    In 2007, the editors of the Oxford Junior English Dictionary, convinced that their reference work “needed to reflect the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.”banned a group of old terms used less today describing the natural world. They inserted newer and supposedly more useful words describing the digital fields that young people in habit today.

    Thus they say goodbye to “acorn”, but say hello to “attachment”. “Beech” and “bluebell” come out of the dictionary. While “blog” and “broadband” come into it. And they say farewell to “catkin” and “cowslip” because here come “celebrity” and “chat room”.

    It's possible, of course, that those Oxford editors had a good reason for their vocabular cleansing. Perhaps they had read the Cambridge University study revealing that most young children can identify Pokémon(神奇宝贝)species far more easily than they can name real-life sparrows.

    But is this simply another fight in the language war, an ongoing battle between people? Some people argue that a dictionary should model how language works best, while some people insist that it should capture how language works now.

In Britain, some citizens felt justified in fighting back against the decision of the Oxford editors. The protest of the thinning of the word herd almost immediately attracted more than200, 000 signatures.

    Susie Dent, author of Modern Tribes：The Secret Languages of Britain, is doing everything in her power to guarantee “the old markers of time”. “Fortnight”(fourteen nights, or two weeks)is among her cherished favorites.

    Thanks to them, I can now show off my knowledge that a “snollygoster” is a “shrewd person, especially a politician”.

    News anchors(主播) must have been reluctant to read out the following news: Xin Xiaomeng began working as the world's first female artificial(人工的) intelligence news anchor at Xinhua News Agency on Sunday, three months after a male robot joined the profession.

    Unlike previous news robots though, Xin does not read news like a cold machine; she reads it almost like a human being. The muscles on her face stretch and relax-and her reactions change-as she continues reading. That's why many news anchors were worried: Will AI replace us in the near future?

    To find the answer, we have to analyse the technologies that support Xin at her job. Three key technologies are used to support Xin. First, samples of human voices are collected and synthesized (合成). This is followed by the collection and synthesis of human muscle movement samples. And third the voices and movements are married in a way that when the Al news anchor reads, the micro -electric motors behind her face move to make her expressions seem more human.

    Yet we need a thorough knowledge of deep leaning technology to make a robot imitate a person's voice. The developer needs to collect tens of thousands of pieces of pronunciations, input them into the machine and match them with the text or the Al to lean and read. The process for imitating facial movements is similar. The developer has to analyse the movements of the 53 muscles in the human face, make a model set from the collected data for the AI news anchor to lean, and imitate the movements of facial muscles via programs

    Both the technologies used to make Xin's performance impressive are mature. The real difficulty lies in the third -the technology to match the pronunciations with facial movements so that Xin expressions vary according to the content of the news report. In fact, Xins expressions don't always change according to the content. As a result, her expressions look anything but human. Actually. AI is still no match for human qualities.

    One day a poor man was begging with an old wallet in his hand. As he felt sad at his own bad luck, he kept wondering why some wealthy people were never satisfied and were always wanting more.

    "Here," said he, "is the master of this house—I know him well. He is a wealthy businessman. He should have turned over his business to others, and then he could have spent the rest of his life happily, but he didn't. Instead, he sent his ships to sea to trade with foreign lands. However, there were great storms on the water, so his ships were destroyed and his treasure disappeared in the sea. As for me, if I had only enough to eat and to buy clothing, I would not want anything more."

    Just at that moment, Fortune came down the street. She saw the poor man and stopped. She said to him, "Listen! I want to help you. Hold your wallet, and I will pour this gold into it, but only on this condition: all that falls into the wallet shall be pure gold, but every piece that falls upon the ground shall become dust. Do you understand?"

    "Oh, yes," said the poor man.

    "Then be careful," said Fortune. "Your wallet is old, so do not load it too heavily."

    The beggar was so glad that he quickly opened his wallet, and a stream of yellow dollars poured into it. The wallet grew heavy.

    "Is that enough?" asked Fortune.

    "Not yet."

    "Isn't the wallet cracking (裂开)?"

    "Never fear."

    The beggar's hands began to tremble. Ah, if the gold would only pour forever!

    "You are the richest man in the world now!"

    "Just a little more, add just a handful or two."

    Another piece was added, and the wallet cracked. The treasure fell upon the ground and turned to dust. The beggar had nothing now but his empty wallet. He was as poor as before.