Sometimes it is difficult to talk to taxi drivers. They must give all their attention to the road as they work out the shortest way to the place where you are going. However, passengers from Wangfujing were in surprise when they took a taxi. The driver just would not stop talking in English.

    Organized by the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy, “Dare to Speak” examines if Chinese people will speak English in “real-life” situations.

    Matthew Knowles, an acting student from South Carolina at Beijing Film Academy, acted the part as the “driver”. He collected six passengers on Saturday morning, most of whom were female white-collar （白领）workers.

    “Of course they were surprised at first, wondering why I'm driving a taxi, and wondering whether this is a real taxi, but then most of them were pretty willing to speak,” he said. Knowles said he was also surprised by his “passengers”. “Apart from my first ‘passenger', who could speak very little English, all the rest spoke English very well, and it was fun to communicate with them,” he said, adding that some “passengers” were quite talkative.

    The “foreign taxi driver” project was just one of the “Dare to Speak” activities, which have been going on since the end of October. Other projects included a foreign store owner near a high school in Beijing, a cook in a Shanghai university canteen. They were testing the willingness of Chinese people, especially students and white-collar workers, to speak to foreigners in English.

    Rong Xin, senior manager of IELTS （雅思） with the British Embassy, said they hoped to let IELTS takers in China know that communication is the ultimate goal of IELTS.

    “We hope that more and more IELTS takers in China can realize the importance of communicating in English in real life, instead of just getting high test scores,” she said.

    Have you ever considered why you begin yawning too when you see someone yawn? Or how hard it is to be among people laughing and not laugh yourself? Well, apparently it's because we have mirror neurons (神经元）in our brains.

    Put simply, the existence of mirror neurons suggests that every time we see someone else do something, our brains imitate it whether or not we actually perform the same action. This explains a great deal about how, we learn to smile, talk, walk, dance or play sports. But the idea goes further: mirror neurons not only appear to explain physical actions, they also tell us that there is a biological basis for the way we understand other people.

    Mirror neurons can undoubtedly be found all over our brains, but especially in the areas which relate to our ability to use languages, and to understand how other people feel. Researchers have found that mirror neurons relate strongly to language. A group of researchers discovered that if they gave people sentences to listen to ( for example: “The hand took hold of the ball” ) , the same mirror neurons were triggered as when the action was actually performed (in this example, actually taking hold of a ball).

    Any problems with mirror neurons may well result in problems with behavior. Much research suggests that people with social and behavioral problems have mirror neurons which are not fully functioning. However, it is not yet known exactly how these discoveries might help find treatments for social disorders.

    Research into mirror neurons seems to provide us with even more information regarding how humans behave and interact. Indeed, it may turn out to be the equivalent (相等物）for neuroscience of what Einstein's theory of relativity was for physics. And the next time you feel the urge to cough in the cinema when someone else does — well, perhaps you'll understand why.

    You have never seen him,but they're with you every time you fly.They record where you are going,how fast you're traveling and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally.Their ability to withstand（经受得住）almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a magic book.They're known as the black box.

    When planes fall from the sky,as a Yemeni airliner did on its way to Comoros Islands in the India ocean June 30,2009,the black box is the best bet for identifying what went wrong.So when a French submarine（潜水艇）detected the device's homing signal five days later,the discovery marked a huge step toward determining the cause of a tragedy in which 152 passengers were killed.

    In 1958,Australian scientist David Warren developed a flight-memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction.That was the first mode for a black box,which became a requirement on all U.S.commercial flights by 1960.Early models often failed to withstand crashes,however,so in 1965 the device（装置）was completely redesigned and moved to the back of the plane-the area least affected bu impact-from its original position in the landing wells（起落架舱). The same year, the Federal Aviation Authority required that the boxes,which were never actually black,be painted orange or yellow to aid visibility.

    Modern airplanes have two black boxes: a voice recorder,which tracks pilots' conversations,and a flight-data recorder,which monitors fuel levels,engine noises and other operating functions that help investigators reconstruct the aircraft's final moments.Placed in an insulated ( 隔绝的) case and surrounded by a quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel,the boxes can withstand massive force and temperatures up to 2,000℉.When in deep water,they're also able to emit signals from depths of 20,000 ft.Experts believe the boxes from Air France Flight 447,which crashed near Brazil on June 1,2009,are in water nearly that deep,but statistics say they're still likely to turn up.In the approximately 20 deep-sea crashes over the past 30 years,only one plane's black boxes were never recovered.

    Colorado officials will stick to a plan to kill some mountain lions and bears to support the state's dropping mule deer (长耳鹿) population.

    Wednesday's vote permits organizations to kill up to 25 black bears and 15 mountain lions per year in the central and western parts of the state. The project will run for three years, to be followed by a six-year study of how deer populations respond to fewer predators(捕食者).

    The population of Colorado's mule deer has suffered a puzzling, years-long drop to about 450,000, which state officials said was about 110,000 fewer than there should be. A 2014 state study tied it to seven causes, including predators, whose number has greatly increased in recent years.

    Some experts, however, said the state should focus first on the human-led destruction(破坏) of mule deer habitat(栖息地). “The drop of the mule deer population is obviously not a simple problem with simple causes,” Brian Kurzel, director of the National Wildlife Federation, said. “By far, the greatest problem—the one that I think deserves the most attention in any science-based study—is habitat quantity and quality.”

    Kurzel pointed out that the U.S Bureau of Land Management recently agreed to create 15,000 new oil and gas wells somewhere in western Cororado, which was often called “the mule-deer factory”. There, the number of mule deer has fallen to about 30,000 from more than 100,000 in the early 1980s. Though state officials have known oil and gas development affects the population of mule deer, they didn't go against the plan.

    Other causes like building highways, population growth and human activities are also curbing the mule deer population, according to the study.

    State Parks and Wildlife officials don't necessarily disagree. They started a $4.5 million program as a way to gather research for later decisions.

    Electronic book publishing has many of the same risks and opportunities as electronic music publishing. By delivering text direct to the reader's computer screen, the e-book could cut down costs, and allow creators to deal directly with their audience, by passing (绕开) traditional publishers and traders. But it also raises the possibility of mass piracy (盗版). Phil Rance, founder and managing director of Online Originals, a London-based e-book publisher, sums it up, "No one wants Napster (在线音乐服务) to happen to books."

    Indeed, the most popular MP3may have put the frighteners on an industry that generally operates some way behind the "bleeding edge". The Meta Group, a leading US-based market researcher, says publishers are far too concerned about protecting their rights, "We believe all the recent legal control over Napster is like putting a finger in a river that is already overflowing. Publishers need to deal with reality and come up with new ways to develop wide electronic distribution, asking the question: How can we use the certainty of wide distribution to our advantage."

    At the moment, most publishers would like to limit the use of e-books to the person who bought them, or to the computer used to download them. If that can be done, e-books become just an extra income stream in a publishing industry that would continue to operate the way it does today, according to Terry Robinson, business manager for Adobe's e-paper group. "If you've cracked the digital rights aspect, you've cracked the market." He says.

    Robert Nichols, Books Director at BOL agrees, "Rights management is absolutely important. Publishers just say that 'until copyright is secure, we are not going to talk'."

    A disastrous fire surrounded Notre Dame(巴黎圣母院)completely and destroyed large parts of the Gothic(哥特式的) architecture on Monday.

    "Notre Dame is our history, our literature; part of our spirit, the place of all our great events, our wars, our liberations, the center of our lives" French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in front of the still burning Paris landmark and promised to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral.

    "Notre Dame is burning, and know the sadness and this tremble felt by so many fellow French people. But tonight, I'd like to speak of hope too, "he said, announcing the launch of a fundraising campaign.

    "Let's be proud, because we built this cathedral more than 800 years ago, we've built it and, throughout the centuries, let it grow and improve it. So I gravely say tonight: we will rebuild it together, "he added.

    The disastrous fire engulfed(吞没) the upper reaches of Paris' towering Notre Dame Cathedral as it was undergoing renovations(翻新).

    Tourists and Parisians looked on horrified from the streets below. France's Interior Ministry said firefighters might not be able to save the structure.

    The fire collapsed the cathedrals' spire(尖顶) and spread to one of its landmark towers "Everything is burning; nothing will remain from the frame, "Notre Dame spokesman Andre Finot told French media. The 12th-century cathedral is home to incalculable works of art and is one of the world's most famous tourist attractions, immortalized by Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

    The cause of the fire was not known, but French media quoted the Paris fire brigade(消防队) as saying the fire is "potentially linked" to a 6 million—euro($6. 88 million)renovation project on the church's spire and its 250 tons of lead. Officials opened an investigation as Paris police said there were no reported deaths. Some 400 firefighters were battling the fire well into the night.