◆The Big Cake Show comes to the WestPoint Arena in Exeter, England, March 21-22. Hopefully, cakes of all sizes will be on sale and on show. An impressive list of famous people sharing their great knowledge and skill includes Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood and Gregg Wallace. Tickets, from ￡12, are available online (bigcakeshow.com).

    ◆From January 17 to March 8, RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, England has some special guests to brighten the winter: beautiful butterflies. The Glasshouse introduces a group of butterflies from other countries feeding on fruit and the juice-rich plants of the Exotic Zone. Tickets for adults are ￡13.20, for children are ￡6.60. For a family with 2 adults and 2 children, they should pay ￡32.75 in total. For groups of more than 10 adults, each should pay ￡10.80 (rhs. org.uk/wisley).

    ◆The week-long London Wine Week starts from May 18. Buy a ￡5 wristband to qualify for a pocket-sized guidebook and discounted wine around the capital. Partnering with London' s best bars and restaurants, we will be organizing events such as master classes and meet-the -maker time, plus offering discounts to wristband wearers (londonwineweek.com).

    ◆The World Shakespeare Festival begins in April, with everything from foreign productions of Shakespearean plays at Shakespeare's Globe to Shakespearean plays at the Royal Opera House. Plays will run until the end of the year in London, Birmingham, Newcastle and Gateshead. And there' s a programme of events such as director talks and family workshops. Prices start from ￡60 (worldshakespearefestival.org. uk).

    Have you ever seen a real night sky that looks like Van Gogh's Starry Night? I hope not! So, why would an artist paint the sky this way? Perhaps I can answer that with another question. When you're happy, why do you sing instead of speaking? Or when you're in love, why do you speak of roses and honey? When we do these things, we, too are artists. We're using something that goes beyond a mere scientific description in order to communicate our feelings more powerfully than straightforward words can. So consider for a moment that Van Gogh might not have been hallucinating on the night he painted this. Maybe he felt something so powerful that he had to go beyond the familiar to express it.

    I hope I'm reminding you of something you already know as I describe the experience of being outside at night under a crystal clear sky that makes everything seem clean and refreshing. So you look up. And suddenly you see the sky that you've seldom seen before. It's not just the same old dark night sky tonight. Instead, the blackness is a deep, rich blue that is more bottomless than any ocean. The stars are not spots of light but brilliant, magical diamonds that dance like tiny angels. In just this special moment, the sky is somehow alive, and it seems to speak to you silently about the meaning of infinity.

    Now look at the painting again. Can you see something of what makes this such a famous and well-loved image? But there's more here than that. Van Gogh painted this while he was quite struck down by a mental disease. It is natural to imagine that he frequently battled the fear that he would never escape his prison to true freedom. It is natural for us to imagine this because each of us has faced our own personal prison, whether it be disease, the loss of a loved one, serious financial problems … In such moments it is tempting to give up to despair and collapse in hopelessness.

    Looking at this painting, I imagine Van Gogh in just such a moment of despair, when he is struck by the memory of one of those amazing night skies. He recalls the sense that he is not alone, that there is a living, infinite world with rich colorful creatures and scenes all around.

    And so the sky flows across the canvas full of vitality and power. The stars don't just sparkle; they explode. Looking closer, we notice that the earth itself seems to respond to the movement in the sky, forming its own living waves in the mountain and rolling trees. In the sleepy village, the windows of the houses glow with the same light that brightens the universe. The giant trees at the left seem to capture the joy by stretching upwards toward the sky.

    What a tremendous message of hope there is in this masterpiece! Even if our troubles persist, the world around us assures us that life is worth living. That's what the angels sing about. Doesn't it make you want to sing, too?

    Easter (复活节) is still a great day for worship (崇拜), randy in baskets and running around the yard finding eggs, but every year it gets quite a bit worse for bunnies (兔子).

    And no, not because the kids like to pull their ears. The culprit is climate change, and some researchers found that rising temperatures arc having harmful effects on at least five species of rabbit in the US.

    Take the Lower Keys March rabbit, for instance. An endangered species that lives in the Lower Florida Keys, this species of cottontail is a great swimmer—it lives on the islands!—but it is already severely affected by development and now by rising levels. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ocean level rise of only 0.6 meters will send these guys jumping to higher ground and a 0.9-meter rise would wipe out their habitat (栖息地) completely.

    The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, has a color issue. Most of these rabbits change their fur color from white in the wintertime to brown in the summer, each designed to give them better cover from  predators (捕食者). As the number of days with snow decreases all across the country, however, more and more bunnies arc being left in white fur during brown dirt days of both fall and spring, making them an easier mark for predators. Researchers know that the color change is controlled by the number of hours of sunlight, but whether the rabbit will be able to adapt quick enough to survive is a big question. The National Wildlife Federation has reported that hunters have noticed their numbers are already markedly down.

    American pikas or rock rabbits, a relative of rabbits and hares, might be the firs' of these species to go extinct due to climate change. About 7-8 inches long, pikas live high in the cool, damp mountains west of the Rocky Mountains. As global temperatures rise, they would naturally migrate (迁徙) to higher ground - but they already occupy (占据) the mountaintops. They can't go any higher. The National Wildlife Federation reports that they might not be able to stand the new temperatures as their habitat beats up.

    The volcano rabbit has the same problem. These rabbits live on the slopes of volcanoes in Mexico, and recent studies have shown that the lower range of their habitat has already shifted upward about 700 meters, but there are not suitable plants for them to move higher, so they are stuck in the middle. Scientists are concerned about their populations.

    Native to the US, pygmy rabbits weigh less than 1 pound and live in the American West. They are believed to be the smallest rabbits in the world. Their habitats have been destroyed by development. Several populations, such as the Columbia Basin pygmy, almost went extinct and were saved by zoo breeding programs. Pygmy rabbits also rely on winter cover by digging tunnels through the snow to escape predators, but lesser snowfall is leaving them exposed.

    All of this gives new meaning to dressing up in a giant bunny costume (服装) this Easter.

    Cold weather during winter months may keep many people from leaving home and running in the open air.

    However, a new study shows that the drop in temperature is a good reason to run. In fact, researchers say, running in cold weather helps improve one's performance.

    Many people say running in the winter can be difficult. Two reasons are the low temperatures and bitter winds. Yet many runners might find it easier than running in hot weather.

    That could be because lower temperatures reduce stress on the body. When you run in cold weather, your heart rate and the body's dehydration (脱水) levels are lower than in warmer conditions. The body needs less water on a cold day than in warm weather.

    This information comes from sports scientists at St. Mary's University in London. John Brewer is a professor of applied sport science at St. Mary's.

    For this study, he and other researchers put a group of people into a room they called an "environmental chamber." The researchers then recreated summer and winter weather conditions in the room. The test subjects were asked to run 10,000 meters under both conditions. Brewer says he and his team recorded biological measurements of the runners.

    "We've got a group of subjects into the environmental chamber, we've changed the conditions to replicate the summer or winter and we've got them to run a 10km under both of those conditions and taken various measurements on each runner while they've been completing their 10km."

    Brewer says every movement runners make produces heat. He explains that one way in which we lose heat is by sweating. The body loses heat through droplets of sweat. He says the body also loses heat by transporting the blood to the surface of the skin.

    On her first morning in America, last summer, my daughter went out to explore her new neighborhood alone.

    Of course we were worried; we had just moved from Berlin, and she was just 8. But when she came home, we realized we had no reason to worry. She told us with pride how she had discovered the little park around the corner, and had made friends with a few local dog owners.

    When this story comes up in conversations with American friends, we are usually met with polite disbelief.

    A study by the University of California has found that American kids spend 90 percent of their free time at home, often watching TV or playing video games. Even when kids are physically active, they are watched closely by adults, either in school, at home, at afternoon activities or in the car. It seems that America's middle class has taken overprotective parenting to a new level, with the government even acting as a super nanny.

    Just take the example of the case of 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora Meitiv in 2015, in Silver Spring, Maryland, who were picked up by the police because their parents had dared to allow them to walk home from the park alone. The state's Child Protective Services said their parents were guilty.

    In reality, child abductions (绑架) by strangers in Silver Spring park are as rare as tiger attacks. Children are overprotected, which encourages dependency and affects their abilities to care for themselves and weigh risks. Mark Hemingway writes in The Federalist, "You know what it's called when kids make mistakes without adult supervision (监督) and have to struggle with the possible results? Growing up."

    At least, parents who want to give their children more room to walk around shouldn't be punished. Children are not easily damaged objects to be protected at all times.

    Over the past 40 years, China has helped more than 700 million rural residents out of being poor, and the poverty rate(贫困率) — the proportion of people living below the Chinese poverty line — had fallen among the rural population from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 3.1 percent at the end of 2017, official figures shows. China's achievements in poverty alleviation(扶贫) made the world look at China with admiration.

    "For me, it is unbelievable that over 40 years, that is, over the course of one working lifetime, China has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one that is about to eliminate(消除) absolute poverty," said Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council.

    Varaprasad Sekhar Dolla, a professor of Chinese studies at India's Jawaharlal Nehru University, also spoke highly of China's achievements in poverty reduction. "If global poverty came down greatly in the last three or four decades, it's partly because of the Chinese contribution to reducing poverty within its own national boundaries," said the Indian scholar.

    In the eyes of Khairy Tourk, a professor of economics with the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, "many countries look up to China to learn from its experience." "The Chinese experience is based on building a modern infrastructure(基础设施) and then on setting up special economic zones that would help underdeveloped countries to become more industrial," he added.

    In the government work report delivered at the opening of the annual NPC session (全国人大会议) on March 5, China promises to reduce its population of rural poor by over 10 million this year.