Approved and Prohibited Items

     The following items are approved for use in residential (住宿的) rooms: electric blankets, hair dryers, personal computers, radios, televisions and DVD players. Items that are not allowed in student rooms include: candles, ceiling fans, fireworks, waterbeds, sun lamps and wireless routers. Please note that any prohibited items will be taken away by the Office of Residence Life.

Access to Residential Rooms

     Students are provided with a combination (组合密码) for their room door locks upon check-in. Do not share your room door lock combination with anyone. The Office of Residence Life may change the door lock combination at any time at the expense of the resident if it is found that the student has shared the combination with others. The fee is $25 to change a room combination.

Cooking Policy

     Students living in buildings that have kitchens are only permitted to cook in the kitchen. Students must clean up after cooking. This is not the responsibility of housekeeping staff. Kitchens that are not kept clean may be closed for use. With the exception of using a small microwave oven (微波炉) to heat food, students are not permitted to cook in their rooms.

Pet Policy

    No pets except fish are permitted in student rooms. Students who are found with pets, whether visiting or owned by the student, are subject to an initial fine of $100 and a continuing fine of $50 a day per pet. Students receive written notice when the fine goes into effect. If, one week from the date of written notice, the pet is not removed, the student is referred to the Student Court.

Quiet Hours

     Residential buildings must maintain an atmosphere that supports the academic mission of the University. Minimum quiet hours in all campus residences are 11:00 pm to 8:00 am Sunday through Thursday. Quiet hours on Friday and Saturday nights are 1:00 am to 8:00 am. Students who violate quiet hours are subject to a fine of $25.

    When Mark Levine, an English-language instructor at Beijing's Minzu University of China, was first invited to attend a Chinese colleague's wedding in Jiangsu Province in 2016, his second year in China, the California native was ready to present a small decorative gift for the new couple as he used to do in the United States.

    However, his gesture suddenly seemed inappropriate as he realized the Chinese at the ceremony had red envelopes filled with cash to present rather than a packed gift.

    "It's a little bit embarrassing when you present something that people didn't expect to receive on certain occasions," Levine told China Daily recently. "In the US, people do that as well but only for close relatives. People would normally give things as presents, while here in China red envelopes are more commonly welcomed."

    It was the first time that the 66-year-old had discovered the Chinese rules in gift giving. He was not alone.

    British Minister of State for Transport Baroness Susan Kramer presented a watch in January to Ko Wen-je, mayor of Taipei, when she visited the city, immediately sparking headlines as she broke a long-held tradition in Chinese culture.

    A clock or watch, or zhong in Mandarin, represents "the end" in Chinese, and many associate it with death. Therefore, giving someone, especially an elder, a clock or watch implies "your time is up".

    Kramer later apologized for the mistake, but Ko also came under fire for his response as he told reporters that he had no use for the watch and would sell it for cash.

    However, some foreigners in China stand by Ko in this particular debate, such as Mark Dreyer, a British citizen who has lived and worked in China since 2007."After all, 'don't give clocks or watches to your hosts' is on page l of most China travel guides. I'm embarrassed by the lack of respect shown by the British for not even reading about the customs beforehand."

    National Rankings: Best High Schools

    The U.S. News rankings include data on more than 22,000 public high schools in 50 states and the District of Columbia. Schools were awarded gold, silver or bronze medals based on their performance on state assessments and how well they prepare students for college.

    About the Awards

    Gold—Top 500 Schools based on highest college readiness.

    Silver—High-performing schools based on lower college readiness.

    Bronze—High-performing schools based on state exam performance,  listed alphabetically.

    Award Distribution

    Gold 2.4%

    Silver 10.3%

    Bronze 16.8%

    No Medal 70.5%

    HOW We Determine the Awards

    STEP 1 Students perform better than expected in their state.

    We looked at reading and math results for students on each state's proficiency(水平) tests and then factored in the percentage of economically disadvantaged students, who tend to score lower.

    STEP 2 Disadvantaged students perform better than state average.

    We compared each school's math and reading proficiency rates for disadvantaged students--black, Hispanic and low-income—with the state wide results for these student groups and then selected schools that were performing better than their state averages.

    STEP 3 Student graduation rates meet or are greater than a national standard.

    We left out schools from consideration if their graduation rates were lower than 75 percent--a starting point that is higher than a federal law that requires states to give extra resources to schools below 67 percent.

    STEP 4 Students are prepared for college-level coursework.

    We calculated a College Readiness Index,which is based or the school's AP participation rate and how well the students did on those tests. Tiebeakers were used to determine ranks of schools that achieved the same College Readiness Index.

    What's small, buzzes here and there and visits flowers? If you said bees or hummingbirds, you got it. You wouldn't be the first if you mixed the two up. Now a group of researchers even say we should embrace our history of considering the two together in the same group. The way scientists study bees could help them study hummingbird behavior, too.

    Scientists first compared the two back in the 1970s when studying how animals search for food. The idea is that animals use a kind of math to make choices in order to minimize the work it takes to earn maximum rewards. Researchers at the time focused on movement rules, like the order in which they visited flowers, and where flowers were located relative to others .It was “almost like an algorithm（算法）”for efficient searching, said David Pritchard, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Hummingbirds and bees had similar solutions.

    As the field of animal cognition（认知）appeared, hummingbird and bee research parted. Neuroscientists and behavioral ecologists developed ways to study bee behavior in naturalistic settings. Hummingbird researchers compared hummingbirds to other birds and borrowed methods from psychology to study their ability to learn in the lab. To be fair, hummingbirds and bees differ. For example, hummingbirds have more advanced eyes and brains than bees. Honeybees and bumblebees are social; hummingbirds typically aren't.

    But however they perceive（感知）or process information, they both experience similar information, Dr. Pritchard said. In day-to-day searching for food, for example, hummingbirds may rely on more of a bee's-eye view than a bird's-eye view. Like other birds, they rely on landmarks, distances and directions to make maps when travelling long distances, but they don't use these cues to find flowers. Move a flower just an inch or so away from where a hummingbird thought it was and it will hover over the flower's original location. Dr. Pritchard is investigating if, like bees, hummingbirds engage in view matching — hovering, scanning snapshots of a place to its memory and using those as references later.

    A Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens. The first 6,000 copies of the book were sold out in a week. And the book has inspired many plays and movies. The first play was put on in 1844. The first two movies were silent films made in 1901 and 1908. Since then, the story has been remade more than 60 times for television and cinema. What makes such a tale so attractive? Audiences have always loved a good plot, a villain(反面人物)who harms other people or breaks the law, and the ending of right over wrong. The book offers all three.

    The book tells the story of a man named Ebenezer Scrooge. He is mean and cruel(残忍的)to his clerk and turns away his only living relative. One night, Scrooge is visited by three spirits. The first shows scenes from Scrooge's youth that led to this present state. The second takes him to the homes of his clerk and his nephew. Here Scrooge sees that people can be happy without lots of money. The spirit also shows him the desperate poor people of London. The third spirit shows Scrooge will die alone, and no one will care if he continues to live as he has. At last the message is understood, and Scrooge repents. He becomes generous and caring to all around him, especially to his clerk's sick son, Tiny Tim.

    Every year, thousands of people watch A Christmas Carol. Why? They may be touched by its lessons on the true meanings of wealth and happiness. They may enjoy the special effects and feelings or watching every year may be just a habit. Viewers never seem to grow tired of the old miser(守财奴), Scrooge, and his dramatic message of hope and change.

Yesterday morning I was having breakfast in the 37th floor club lounge(休息室) at the InterContinental Bangkok, quite enjoying my conversation with Julia. She is a lovely Bavarian lady who works in the club lounge. Suddenly I felt really dizzy(晕眩的). I hadn't drunk anything the night before and had got a great night of sleep, so I found that a bit strange. But it continued. After a few moments I realized what was going on -- I wasn't dizzy, but it was an earthquake. For over 20 seconds the club floor was shaking.

Julia tried to remain calm and asked us to go down the stairs. When I walked past the rooftop pool, I saw water rushing out of it, which terrified me even more. I skipped down the 37 flights of stairs as if I were taking part in the Olympics.

However, as I was trying to get to the ground floor, I found it strange that nobody else was escaping. Eventually I made it to the ground floor. Again, I had never been in an earthquake before, so I had no sense of what it was like during an earthquake. I was kind of expecting disorder on the streets, a thousand people in the hall, and a general Armageddon style setting.

Sure enough I hurriedly got through the doors on the first floor and went straight to the reception desk, thinking the girl at the desk knew what was going on. But she looked quite confused, not knowing what I was talking about. Then I asked another one but I got the same response. I believed the world was coming to an end, while everyone looked at me as if nothing had happened.

Well, as it turned out, nothing did happen to them. Clearly there was an earthquake in Myanmar, and it was only felt at the top of some of the taller buildings in Bangkok.

Julia kept the club lounge closed for safety for some time, while I was happy just to be on the ground level.