Before I studied psychology, I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that, I discovered there are lots of other psychological factors that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke, there will usually bemore than one reason that makes him laugh—and the more reasons there are, the more powerful the joke will be.

    I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt, and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets, everyone laughed their hearts out. The main reason those people strongly laughed was that almost allof them felt angry towards pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn't only funny, it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is, people were laughing both because ofthe funny joke and because of the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.

    The better a joke makes a person feel, and the more it includes other psychological factors, the more the person will like it. For example, if you envy one of your friends, and someone tells a joke that is funny and, at the same time, makes your friend seem stupid, then you will probably laugh atit louder than if you weren't jealous of him.

    In short, we don't laugh only when we hear something funny; we also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or belittling someone to make someone else laugh. All Iwant to explain is that if your joke supports a person's emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.

Welcome to the North Pole Adventure

    The North Pole Adventure is a one-of-a-kind interactive Christmas attraction for the entire family. Unlike other Christmas attractions, it is open from November 25 until Christmas Eve. It is not a guided tour. While elves (小精灵) are throughout the adventure to interact with your children, your kids can spend as much time in each area as they wish. The adventure features a replica(复制品) of the North Pole including everything you imagine at Santa's North Pole.

Santa's House

    Kids will experience what it's like at the North Pole and see first-hand what it takes for Santa and his elves to get ready for Christmas each year. The memories your children will take away from Santa's House will be ones they will remember for a life time.

Post Office

    All kids will be assisted by Santa's elves in writing a letter to Santa and then depositing it in Santa's magical mailbox. A few days before Christmas, they will receive letters at their own homes from Santa.

Elf University

    Elf University is the place where elves go to school. It's also the place where kids enjoy making Christmas presents, coloring Christmas pictures, and even filling out applications to become elves one day.

Admission：

    Buy your tickets online to avoid waiting in line. If the tickets sell out when you buy them online, there will still be tickets available at the ticket office.

    Computers have beaten human world champions at chess and, earlier this year, the board game Go. So far, though, they have struggled at the card table. So we challenged one AI to a game.

    Why is poker(扑克) so difficult? Chess and Go are “information complete” games where all players can see all the relevant information. In poker, other players' cards are hidden, making it an “information incomplete” game. Players have to guess opponents' hands from their actions—tricky for computers. Poker has become a new benchmark for AI research. Solving poker could lead to many breakthroughs, from cyber security to driverless cars.

    Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before AI once again vanquishes humans, hence our human-machine match comes up in a game of Texas Hold's Em Limit Poker. The AI was developed by Johannes Heinrich, researcher studying machine learning at UCL. It combines two techniques: neural(神经的) networks and reinforcement learning(强化学习).

    Neural networks, to some degree, copy the structure of human brains: their processors are highly interconnected and work at the same time to solve problems. They are good at spotting patterns in huge amounts of data. Reinforcement learning is when a machine, given a task, carries it out, learning from mistakes it makes. In this case, it means playing poker against itself billions of times to get better.

    Mr Heinrich told Sky News: “Today we are presenting a new procedure that has learned in a different way, more similar to how humans learn. In particular, it is able to learn abstract patterns, represented by its neural network, which allow it to deal with new and unseen situations.”

    After two hours of quite defensive play, from the computer at least, we called it a draw.

    We discuss the issue of when to help a patient die, which was not talked about openly and little was written about it.

    The best way to bring the problem into focus is to describe two patients whom I cared for. The first, formerly a nurse, had an automobile accident. And there she was: in coma, on a breathing machine. One day, her husband and son came to see me. They told me their wife and mother was obviously going to die; she was a nurse and had told her family that she never wanted this kind of terrible death, being maintained by machines. I told them that while I respected their view, there was nothing deadly about her situation. The kidney(肾) failure she had was just the kind for which the artificial (人造的) kidney was most effective. While possibly a bit reassured, they were disappointed. Here was the head surgeon seemingly determined to keep everybody alive, no matter what.

    Within a few days the patient awoke from her coma. About six months later, the door of my office opened and in walked a gloriously fit woman. After some cheery words of appreciation, the father and son asked to speak to me alone. As soon as the door closed, both men became quite tearful. All that came out was, "We want you to know how wrong we were."

    The second patient was an 85-year-old lady whose hair caught fire while she was smoking. She arrived with a deep burn; I knew it would surely be deadly. At the time, there was a class discussing medical ethics(道德). The instructor asked me if I had any sort of ethical problem I could bring up for discussion. I described the case and asked the students their opinion. After the discussion, I made a remark that was, when looking back, a serious mistake. I said, "I'll talk with the nurses before we decide." The instructor and the students were shocked: "You mean this is a real patient?" The teacher of ethics was not accustomed to being challenged by actuality.

    A day or two later, when the lady was making no progress and was suffering terribly, we began to back off in treatment. Soon she died quietly and not in pain. As a reasonable physician, you had better move ahead and do what you would want done for you. And don't discuss it with the world first. There is a lesson here for everybody. Assisting people to leave this life requires strong judgment and long experience to avoid its misuse.

 The recent opening of a new exhibition building at the Sanxingdui Museum, in Guanghan, in Sichuan province, made the place {#blank#}1{#/blank#} instant tourist hot spot. The bronze heads, golden masks, holy trees and various statues reveal the {#blank#}2{#/blank#} ( mystery) faces of a culture dating back more than 3,000 years.

 For those who cannot make it to Guanghan, where the extensive site of Sanxingdui is located, an immersive exhibition equipped with digital technology, {#blank#}3{#/blank#} ( title) Hello Sanxingdui, {#blank#}4{#/blank#}( offer) an alternative means to be awed by the magnificence of this Bronze Age culture. It is running at the Longfu Art Museum in Beijing until Feb 29.

 It provides a time- travel experience for both an educational and artistic appeal. The journey begins {#blank#}5{#/blank#} a brief timeline of texts, photos and videos, showing how Sanxingdui was first discovered in the 1920s,{#blank#}6{#/blank#} objects were found by farmers digging an irrigation ditch(灌溉沟渠); and it highlights the important moments in the past century's continued archaeological efforts, to reveal the myths surrounding Sanxingdui and the secrets yet {#blank#}7{#/blank#} ( uncover).

 On show {#blank#}8{#/blank#} ( be) life- size reproduction s of dozens of astonishing artifacts, supervised by Sanxingdui Museum, such as 2.6- meter bronze statues, 3.8- meter- wide bronze masks and" the holy tree" standing nearly 4 meters.

 Images of these objects found at Sanxingdui and their {#blank#}9{#/blank#} ( pattern) have been digitalized, animated and projected on screens, leading the audience into the ancient kingdom of Shu, a {#blank#}10{#/blank#}( civilize) that thrived for centuries in the southwest during the Zhou Dynasty, and disappeared suddenly, leaving many myths and legends.