Honey from the African forest is not only a kind of natural sugar, it is also delicious. Most people, and many animals, like eating it. However, the only way for them to get that honey is to find a wild bees' nest and take the honey from it. Often, these nests are high up in trees, and it is difficult to find them. In parts of Africa, though, people and animals looking for honey have a strange and unexpected helper—a little bird called a honey guide.

    The honey guide does not actually like honey, but it does like the wax(蜂蜡) in the beehives(蜂房). The little bird cannot reach this wax, which is deep inside the bees' nest. So, when it finds a suitable nest, it looks for someone to help it. The honey guide gives a loud cry that attracts the attention of both passing animals and people. Once it has their attention, it flies through the forest, waiting from time to time for the curious animal or person as it leads them to the nest. When they finally arrive at the nest, the follower reaches in to get at the delicious honey as the bird patiently waits and watches. Some of the honey, and the wax, always falls to the ground, and this is when the honey guide takes its share.

    Scientists do not know why the honey guide likes eating the wax, but it is very determined in its efforts to get it. The birds seem to be able to smell wax from a long distance away. They will quickly arrive whenever a beekeeper is taking honey from his beehives, and will even enter churches when beeswax candles are being lit.

University Room Regulations

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.

    If you're a fan of smart technology, you may have had some sleepless nights lately.

    That's because Alexa, the artificial intelligence (AI) behind US company Amazon's Echo smart speakers, has been "letting out an automatic, creepy (令人毛骨悚然的) cackle," for no apparent reason, according to BBC News.

    Many social media users shared their stories of Alexa scaring them with the seemingly unprompted laugh.

    "Every time Alexa laughs, an angel dies," Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk joked on social media.

    On March 7, Amazon released an update that fixed the problem, saying that the laugh was triggered (引发) by Echo devices mistakenly thinking that users had said the command "Alexa, laugh".

    However, what should have been a funny story raised the ongoing topic of man versus machine.

    With the rise of artificial and robotic technology, "Digital machines have started to demonstrate (展示) broad abilities in pattern recognition, complex communication, and other fields that used to only belong to human," wrote Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. They believe that AI will "do more and more, and our lives will get better".

    However, ever since the earliest days of AI, there have been concerns that some day, software will take over the world, leaving the fate of humans unknown.

    "With artificial intelligence we are summoning (召唤) the demon ," Musk told students during a meeting at MIT in 2014. "If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful."

    Many scientists have shared the same concern. The late British physicist Stephen Hawking said at a technology conference in Portugal in November that "computers can, in theory, imitate human intelligence, and exceed it… AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization." If creators are to safely control AI, however, Hawking suggested that they "employ best practice and effective management".

    "I am an optimist and I believe that we can create AI for the good of the world," he said at the conference. "We simply need to be aware of the dangers, identify them, employ the best possible practice and management, and prepare for its consequences well in advance."

    When school started on that warm August day, I threw myself into everything I did, including playing volleyball. I decided to become beautiful, or at the very least, skinny. I stopped eating completely. Soon I began losing weight, which thrilled me, and I even grew to love the tiredness and lightheadedness( 头晕)that came with my poor diet, for those feelings meant that I was winning.

    As the season progressed, things had become tense between my head volleyball coach, Coach Smith, and me. She felt that something was wrong with my health. She talked with me about my eating and was angry that I wouldn't listen to her when she tried to make me eat. She tried to persuade me in a determined way and so we fought constantly. Then my hunger started to affect my performance. I was so tired that practice and games were becoming a struggle. One afternoon, with hurt in her eyes, Coach Smith asked me what I had eaten and I told her nothing yet. She looked at me, disappointment in her eyes, knowing she couldn't make me stop, and walked away.

    A couple of weeks later I attended a formal dinner for our volleyball team. I stood there as my coach managed to say something nice about me. I realized then that I had ruined my senior year by being disrespectful, and I had probably ruined hers as well. So that evening I wrote her a letter apologizing and thanking her.

    Then one Saturday, as I was reading in the library, I felt someone gently take my arm and say softly, “Lynn Jones, how are you doing?” I looked up and saw the familiar face. “Thanks for the letter,” she said. “It meant a lot.” When I think of a coach, I think of someone above me, someone who gives instruction — not a friend. But Coach Smith is different, and, like any other good friend, she dealt with my problem in a determined way even when I hated her for it at that time. I didn't deserve her kindness, but she gave it anyway. I will forever be grateful for her help, and now for her friendship.

    Chrysanthemums (菊花) are to the fall what tulips are to the spring.

    In ancient China chrysanthemums (or 'mums' for short) were first planted thousands of years ago. People chose the chrysanthemum as their Flower for October a symbol of the rest and ease that followed the season's final harvest. Then they symbolized a scholar in retirement (隐居) and were one of the four noble(高贵的) plants along with bamboo, the plum flower(梅) and orchid(兰).

    The Japanese hold the chrysanthemum as a symbol of the sun. They consider the orderly unfolding of its petals(花瓣) to be a symbol of perfection. They also think that a single chrysanthemum petal placed in the bottom of a wine glass encourages a long and healthy life. The Japanese even have a National Chrysanthemum Day on September 9 known as the Festival of Happiness.

    In the United States during colonial times its popularity grew such that mums now reign as "Queen of the Fall Flowers." Mums remain the most widely grown pot plant in the country and the largest commercially produced flowers. Chrysanthemums generally represent cheerfulness and rest. So they are welcomed throughout the British Isles and North America for any occasion such as football games and parties.

    In other countries such as Italy Belgium and Austria however their association with the dead makes chrysanthemums acceptable only for funerals and graves.

Tests have shown robots can diagnose heart problems in as little as four seconds, as a review of artificial intelligence (AI) finds machines are now as good at spotting illness as doctors.

Analyzing a patient's heart function on a cardiac MRI (心脏磁共振成像) scan currently takes doctors around 13 minutes. But a new trial by University College London (UCL) showed an AI program could read the scans in less time with equal accuracy. There are approximately 150,000 such scans performed in the UK each year, and researchers estimate that fully using AI to read them could save 54 clinician-days (临床天数) at each cardiac centre per year. So it can make up for the shortage of doctors.

It is hoped that AI where computer systems are able to learn from data to identify new patterns with minimal human intervention will transform medicine by helping doctors spot diseases such as heart disease and cancer faster and earlier. However, most scans are still read by specially trained doctors.

Dr Charlotte Manisty, who led the UCL research, said, "Cardiovascular MRI offers in- comparable image quality for assessing heart structure and function. However, current manual analysis remains basic and outdated. Automated machine techniques offer the potential to change this and completely improve efficiency and accuracy, and we look forward to further research that could confirm the superiority to human analysis."

She added, "Our dataset of patients with a range of heart disease who received scans enabled us to demonstrate that the greatest sources of measurement errors arise from human factors. This indicates that automated techniques are at least as good as humans, with the potential soon to be 'super-human'—transforming clinical and research measurement precision."

Professor Alastair Denniston said, "Within those handful of high-quality studies, we found that by deep learning AI could indeed detect disease ranging from cancer to eye disease as accurately as health professionals. But it's important to note that it did not absolutely exceed human professional diagnosis. "