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    In 2006，Paul Letourneau of Worcester，Mass，lost his parents，his home and his pet dog.And that August，his life­long mild depression took a turn for the worse as he became suicidal(有自杀倾向的)．

    “I said I didn't want to be alive anymore，”Letourneau,67，recalled telling his best friend.

    He and his friend had gone for a walk when Letourneau stopped and asked his friend about ways to die painlessly.His friend advised him to admit himself to a hospital.

    “When I went back home，physically，I was shaking so much－and emotionally，I couldn't stop，”Letourneau said，“I knew I had to get help.”

    For many men，it takes a lot more than feeling down to recognize that they are depressed and then step through the doors  of a hospital，or a friend's or relative's home to ask for help.Men who are depressed usually refuse to get appropriate treatment，depression experts and patients say.

    “When men get depressed，the depression can be quite severe，”said Dr.lan Cook，professor of psychiatry at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.“The challenge is getting men to acknowledge that they're depressed.”

    Depression affects about 15 million people in the United States，according to the National Institutes of Mental Health，and men get depressed about half as often as women.

    “It's unclear how much of this is a reporting bias，”Cook  said.“The stigma(耻辱)issues are somewhat different for men than they are for women.”

    “Men intend to consider that asking for help is a sign of  weakness，but when they can't complete the task of bringing themselves to the Promised Land，they become at risk.” said  Steven Lappen，who was once a depression patient.

    What's more exciting than having a fresh hot pizza delivered to your door? How about having it brought to you by a robot? Thanks to Domino's Robotic Unit or DRU, that just became a reality! On March 8, the three-foot tall robot delivered its first pizza to some lucky residents in Brisbane, Australia.

    The fully autonomous DRU is the result of a cooperation between Domino's Pizza Australia and Marathon Robotics.The 450-pound machine that travels at a maximum speed of 12.4 miles an hour can traverse a distance of up to 12 miles and back, before requiring a battery recharge. LIDAR, a laser-based sensor technology similar to the one used in self-driving cars, enables DRU to detect and avoid obstacles, while traditional sensors, much like those used in vacuum robots ensure its path is safe as it heads to its destination.   

    The robot can fit up to ten pizzas and even has a separate cold area to accommodate drink orders.To access their fond, customers have to enter the unique code provided by the company.This is not only ensures that they pick up the right pizza, but also prevents the pies from getting stolen.

    Scientists expert additional DRU's to be ready for service in their various Queensland locations within the next six months. But don't expect these super cute robots to replace humans anytime soon. According to Domino's the DRU still needs extensive testing, which the company believes could take up to two years.

    And then there is also the issue of regulations.The public use of autonomous vehicles is still banned in most countries.But Don Meij, the CEO and Managing Director of Domino's Pizza Australia New Zealand Ltd, is not worried.He is “confident that one day DRU will become an   integral part of the Domino's family.”

    Housework is a frequent source of disputes (争论) between lazy husbands and their hard-working wives, but women have been warned not to expect men to pull their weight any time soon.

    A study from Oxford University has found that men are unlikely to be doing an equal share of housework before 2050. Mothers, the researchers warned, will continue to shoulder the burden of childcare and housework for the next four decades, largely because housework such as cleaning and cooking is still regarded as “women's work”.

    The gap between the amount of time men and women spend on housework has narrowed slowly over the past 40 years. But it will take another four decades before true housework equality (平等) is achieved, the study concluded.

    The research found that in the Nordic countries, the burden of housework is shared more equally between men and women. In the UK, women spend an average of four hours and forty minutes each day on housework, compared with two hours and twenty-eight minutes for men. This is an improvement from the 1960s, when British women typically spent six hours a day on housework, while men spent just 90 minutes every day.

    But progress towards housework equality appears to be slowing in some countries. Dr Oriel Sullivan, a research reader from Oxford's Department of Sociology, said, “we've looked at what is affecting the equality in the home, and we have found that certain tasks seem to be given according to whether they are viewed as ‘men's work' or ‘women's work'.”

    Dr Sullivan said cultural attitudes taught at school may be responsible for the views of housework. “At school it is much easier for a girl to be a tomboy, but it is much more difficult for a boy to enjoy baking and dancing,” she said.

    The human brain contains 10 thousand million cells and each of these may have a thousand connections. Such enormous numbers used to discourage us and cause us to dismiss the possibility of making a machine with human-like ability, but now that we have grown used to moving forward at such a pace we can be less sure. Quite soon, in only 10 or 20 years perhaps, we will be able to assemble a machine as complex as the human brain, and if we can we will. It may then take us a long time to render it intelligent by loading in the right software (软件)or by altering the architecture but that too will happen.

    I think it certain that in decades, not centuries, machines of silicon (硅) will arise first to compete and then do better than their human ancestors. Once they do better than us they will be capable of their own design. In a real sense they will be able to reproduce themselves. Silicon will have ended carbon's long control. And we will no longer be able to claim ourselves to be the finest intelligence in the known universe.

    As the intelligence of robots increases to match that of humans and as their cost declines through economies of scale we may use them to improve environments. Thus, deserts may bloom and the ocean beds be mined. Further ahead, by a combination of the great wealth this new age will bring and the technology it will provide, the construction of a vast, man-created world in space, home to thousands or millions of people, will be within our power.

    LONDON-A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake(假冒的) bomb detectors（探测器） to 10 years in prison, saying the man hadn't cared about potentially deadly consequences.

    It is believed that James McCormick got about $77.8 million from the sales of his detectors-which were based on a kind of golf ball finder--to countries including Iraq, Belgium and Saudi Arabia.

    McCormick, 57, was convicted(判罪) of cheats last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London.

    “Your cheating conduct in selling a great amount of useless equipment simply for huge profit promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death and injury to innocent people,” Judge Richard Hone told McCormick. “you have neither regret, nor shame, nor any sense of guilt.”

    The detectors, sold for up to $42,000 each, were said to be able to find such dangerous objects as bombs under water and from the air. But in fact they “lacked any grounding in science” and were of no use.

    McCormick had told the court that he sold his detectors to the police in Kenya, the prison service in Hong Kong, the army in Egypt and the border control in Thailand.

    “I never had any bad results from customers,” he said

    She was returning from teaching out in a small community. It was a black, moonless night, and a heavy snow was falling.

    She thought back to the time when she had first started teaching out in small communities. During those days she had always picked up hitchhikers (搭便车者), until the day her sister told her that one of her friends had been shot in the head by a hitchhiker, all because she had stopped out of kindness to help him during a storm.

    Her family didn't stop worrying about her safety over the hitchhikers until the family heard the promise: “No more hitchhikers!” The snow that night was making her think back to this.

    Then she saw a man waving. She slowed down for him, but as he ran toward the car in the dark, she shook with fear. Yet she thought that if he was truly in need, she couldn't leave him here in this storm.

    The stranger explained that his car was dead, and she told him to get in. They drove for an hour into the next city and she took him to a convenience store. She waited until he had made a call. When he reported back to her that a family member would soon come to pick him up, she wished him well and then left.

    Tears fell on her cheeks as she drove away. It felt as though she had been holding her breath for an hour.

    “I hope they'll understand why I had to break my promise,” she thought.