Sometimes I really doubt whether there is love between my parents. Every day they are very busy trying to make money for my schooling.

    One day, my mother was sewing a quilt(缝被子). I silently sat beside her. "Mum, is there love between you and Dad?" I asked in a very low voice.

    With surprise in her eyes, she stopped her work for a while. Then she said, "Susan, look at this thread(线). It can hardly be seen, but it' s really there. It makes the quilt strong. If life is a quilt, love should be a thread. Love is inside. "

    I couldn' t understand her until the next spring. At that time, my father suddenly got sick seriously. My mother had to stay with him in the hospital for a month.

    After they were back, my mother helped my father walk slowly on the country road every day. They were so kind to each other and it seemed they were the happiest couple.

    After two months my father still couldn' t walk by himself. "Dad, how are you feeling now?" I asked him one day.

    "Susan, don' t worry about me," he said. "I just like walking with your mum. I like this kind of life." Reading his eyes, I knew he loves my mother deeply.

    Now I understand that love is just a thread in the quilt of our life. Love is inside, making life strong and warm.

    Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

    It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    ＂Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite,＂ Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. ＂What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital.＂

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. ＂The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,＂ says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, ＂just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,＂ says Moran. ＂For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,＂ says Moran, ＂so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.＂

    The medical world is gradually realizing that the quality of the environment in hospital may play an important role in helping patients to get better.

    As part of a nationwide effort in Britain to bring art out of the museums and into public places, some of the country's best artists have been called in to change older hospitals and to soften the hard edges of modern buildings. Of the 2500 national health service hospitals in Britain, almost 100 now have very valuable collections of present art in passages, waiting areas and treatment rooms.

    These recent movements first started by one artist, Peter Senior, who set up his studio at a Manchester hospital on northeastern England during the early 1970s. He felt the artist had lost his place in modern society, and that art should be enjoyed by a wider audience.

    A common hospital waiting room might have as many as 5,000 visitors each week. What a better place to hold regular exhibitions of art! Senior held the first exhibition of his own paintings in the outpatients waiting area of the Manchester Royal Hospital in 1975. Believed to be Britain's first hospital artist, Senior was so much in demand that he was soon joined by a team of six young art school graduates.

    The effect is striking. Now in the passages and waiting rooms the visitor experiences a full view of fresh colours, playful images and restful courtyards.

    The quality of the environment may reduce the need for expensive drugs when a patient is recovering from an illness. A study has shown that patients who had a view onto garden needed half the number of strong pain killers compared with patients who had no view at all or only a brick wall to look at.

    Black Friday-the day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States-signals the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Although it's not an official holiday, millions of employers give their employees the day off, and many people use that day to get a jump start on their holiday shopping. A similar day in Canada and the Great Britain is called "Boxing Day".

    Black Friday has become a marketing sensation in recent years. Since 2005, it has been the busiest shopping day of the year. To lure shoppers, retailers（零售商）routinely open their doors as early as 4 am and offer special sales and promotions to the shoppers that arrive early. Some of the special deals offered by stores are only available in limited quantities. That is why some shoppers intend on getting the best deals often camp out in front of stores overnight so that they will be the first in line when the doors open.

    But why Black Friday? Historians believe the name started in Philadelphia in the mid 1960s. Bus drivers and police used "Black Friday" name. In the early 1980s, a more positive explanation of the name began to ciculate. According to this alternative explanation, Black Friday is the day when retailers finally begin to turn a profit for the year. In accounting terms, operating at a loss is called being "in the red" because accountants traditionally used red ink to show negative amounts. Positive amounts were usuallay shown "in black ink". Thus, being in the black is a good thing because it means stores are operating at a profit.

    Recently, for those who are too busy to stop on Black Friday, or who just don't want to fight the crowds, the Monday following Black Friday has become known as Cyber Monday for shoppers can take advantage of the comfort of getting many online deals from their homes.

    Guide dogs are going to be available for the children who are unable to see normally in the UK for the first time, as the age limit is to be removed. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association is to begin training dogs to help blind people under the age of 16.

    The association says too many youngsters with impaired eyesight are lacking in independence. They have only a limited social life because of their disability. Giving some of them guide dogs at a younger age is intended to help them to widen their range of activities and to improve their sense of self-confidence and independence. Guide dogs for these teenagers will begin to be provided from next year. There has been an experimental project to test the use of guide dogs with younger people.

    Charlotte, aged 14, was among the youngest guide dog owners. She had been gradually losing her eyesight since the age of eight, and lost her eyesight completely this year. She has been assisted by a two-year-old guide dog. Charlotte used to have a long stick to help her move around, but having a guide dog allows her much more freedom and makes her feel safer.

    However, the association says there is a worryingly patchy supply of services for the young blind people across the UK, and it calls for a sharp increase in the number of guide dogs all over the country. As with adult blind people, only a small number of them are likely to be considered suitable for a guide dog. Most will continue to rely on extra help and training from education and social services.

    What will restaurants look like in the future？What would your dinner taste like if a robot cooked it？A robot restaurant in Tianjin may give you the answers.

    Covering an area of over 400 square meters with a total of 112 seats, the X Future Restaurant is a robot restaurant opened in November 2018. The restaurant has amazed customers with its fully-automated(全自动的)technology, which covers every step of the dining experience, from ordering to cooking to serving the dishes and even taking payment.

    Entering the restaurant, one can order dishes by simply scanning(扫描)the QR codes on the table. There are over 40 choices of dishes. After taking the order, "robot cooks"prepare dishes using fixed time, temperature and ingredients designed by famous Chinese cooks.

    "As the cooking is controlled by a computer system, the taste and quality of dishes can be good, "said Li Xiaokui, manager of the X Future Restaurant.

    Robots also complete the delivery of dishes. Without following any designed route, the robot waiters serve meals thanks to automated driving technology, which helps each robot timely change its route when something is in the way.

These eye-catching technologies have received wide praise from customers. "The dishes taste surprisingly good. I couldn't believe that they were made by robots, especially dishes that were difficult to cook" one customer said. "The application of robots has increased our efficiency(效率)and cut down our costs, "Li said, "I think robot restaurants will develop fast and have a bright future. "