Not so long ago, a sailor sailing across the cold waters of the northern Pacific Ocean might have had every chance of being confronted by a sea cow. This cow would have measured 10 meters long, and weighed between five and ten tones. And it would spend most of its day cruising the seas, eating grass growing underwater. The cow in question was known as Steller's sea cow, which is now extinct.

    Today, many people are unaware that such an extraordinary creature once existed, or don't know its incredible story. But scientists have discovered many fundamental facts about this mystical animal.

    Surprisingly, the first recorded sighting of a Steller's sea cow didn't happen until 1741, when a sailing expedition was stuck on an uninhabited island, later named Bering Island. The sailor survived by hunting and eating the huge sea cow. Like its modern relatives, the sea cow lived in herds. That and its slow-moving behaviour made it easy to be caught.

    Those sailors that escaped Bering Island spread word of the bounty(大量) of meat to be found off its shores. As a result, more and more expeditions came to hunt the animals. One report stated that one sea cow could feed 33 men for a month.

    Incredibly, just 27 years after the island and species had been discovered by modern man, the last sea cow was reported killed. That makes the Steller's sea cow one of the few truly large mammals known to have been driven extinct in the modern age.

    The 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Mo Yan for his writing that mixes folk tales, history and the modern events with hallucinatory realism（魔幻现实主义）, the Swedish Academy announced.

    The 57-year-old is the first Chinese resident to win the prize. Only one other Chinese-language writer has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Gao Zingjian was honored in 2000. However, he is a French citizen.

    Mr Mo said he was “overjoyed and scared” when he learned he had won the award. He will receive his Nobel diploma, a medal and more than one million dollars at a ceremony in Stockholm in December.

    China is celebrating the victory of this native son. Minutes after the award was announced, millions of Chinese expressed pleasure and pride for Mo Yan on social media websites. Senior CPC leader Li Changchun has congratulated Mo Yan on winning the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize. Li says in a letter to the China Writers Association that Mo's winning of the prize reflects the prosperity and progress of the Chinese literature.

    His real name is Guan Moye. Mo Yan means “Don't Speak.” The writer said he chose the name to remember to stop his tongue from getting him in trouble. Mo Yan's novel “Red Sorghum” first became a cable hit on the big screen both at home and abroad in 1987. The film was directed by Zhang Yimou and marked the acting start of Gong Li.

    As a productive author, Mo has published dozens of short stories, with his first work published in 1981. Mo Yan's other major works include, “Big Breasts and Wide Hips,” “Republic of Wine” and “Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.”

    National Gallery of Canada

    Position:

    National Gallery (美术馆) of Canada

    380 Sussex Drive (大道)

    P.O. Box 427, Station A

    Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1N 9N4

    Telephone: 613-990-1985 or 1-800-319-ARTS

    Fax: 613-993-4385

    Directions:

    From Highway 417, take the Metcalfe exit (出口). Follow Metcalfe Street around the Museum of Nature and continue to the north until you reach the end of the street at Wellington. You will see Parliament Hill. Turn right onto Wellington Street and continue in the left-hand road until you reach Sussex Drive. As you approach Sussex Drive, you will see the Chateau Laurier hotel on your left-hand side. Make a left turn onto Sus-sex Drive and continue until you see the Gallery on your left-hand side, at the corner of St. Patrick and Sussex. The Gallery is a large glass building with two towers. Just beyond the St. Patrick / Sussex crossroads you will see the entrance to the Gallery's underground parking.

    Opening Hours:

    1 May — 30 September

    Open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, Thursdays to 8 pm.

    1 October — 30 April

    Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm; Thursdays until 8 pm. Closed Mondays.

    Closed Christmas Day, New Year's Day and 2 January 2012 (Monday).

    Tickets:

    $9: Adults

    $7: The elderly and full-time students (ID required)

    $4: Youth (12-19)

    $18: Family (2 adults, 3 youths)

    Free admission for children under 12 and members of the Gallery.

    Free admission Thursdays after 5 pm.

    When we have troubles we turn to our family. But what would we do if we lost our family? I want to share with you a touching film about an Indian child who loses his loved ones.

    The main character in the 2016 Australian film Lion is a child named Saroo. When he is 6 years old, he follows his brother Guddu to a job, but gets lost. Saroo ends up in a new city and is adopted by a kind Australian family.

    However, one day Saroo is reminded of his original family. He knows immediately that he must find out as much about them as he can, so he racks his brains (绞尽脑汁)for all that he can remember.

    Lion is the most moving film that I have ever seen. When I saw the young Saroo trying to help his brother while they worked on a construction site at such a young age, I was amazed.

    In today's society，the poor are always looked down upon. But I saw in the eyes of young Saroo great courage and kindness that made me think differently. He has great qualities that help him survive in the strange city where he finds himself.

    When Saroo sees that people are kind he rewards them with the sweetest smiles and loves them with all of his heart. Saroo's goodness, I believe, allows him to live a happy life with his Australian foster (收养)family.

    It is unbelievably hard for Saroo to reunite with his original family. He can't even remember the name of his hometown. It takes him days to find the real one. In fact, he has to go through every alternative (供选择的东西)he can find on Google Maps.

I'm deeply impressed by Saroo's determination. It is why, when I saw the movie, I cried at the moment when he finally found his mother.

    Lion is full of moving and impressive details. There are so many that I can only mention a few of them here. But what stands out most to me is Saroo's commitment (投身)to finding his original family，and the fact that his search doesn't stop him from loving his foster family.

    I want to recommend this film to everyone. See it and you'll come to understand so much about family and love.

    Ride-hailing apps and robot cars promise to change how we get around and the effects are already being felt. Traffic in New York is slowing down. Jams are common in Manhattan, especially in its business districts. Daytime traffic in the busiest areas now moves almost 20% more slowly than it did five years ago.

    It seems a place ripe for wide use of ride-hailing apps that, you might think, would reduce some of the jams. However, those apps appear to be making things worse as traffic has slowed in line with the growing popularity of apps such as Uber and Lyft, a study by transport expert Bruce Schaller suggests.

    Over the four years of the study, the number of cars in Manhattan seeking ride-hailing fares increased by 81%. There are now about 68, 000 ride-sharing drivers across New York. That's about five times the number of the yellow cabs licensed to operate there, he found. There are so many drivers, his work suggests, who spend about 45% of their spare time just touring for fares. That is a lot of unused cars blocking a lot of busy streets.

    Simple physics explains why ride-sharing vehicles are causing, not curing jams, said Jarrett Walker, a public transport policy expert who has advised hundreds of cities about moving people.

    "Lots of people are deciding that, 'Oh, public transport is just too much trouble this morning,' or whenever, which causes a shift from it," he told the BBC. "That means moving people from larger vehicles into smaller ones, which means more vehicles to move the same people. Therefore, more traffic."

    Data gathered about ride-sharing drivers illustrates how they contribute to congestion (塞车), said Prof. Christo Wilson, a computer scientist at Northeastern University who has studied the services. "You can look at the traffic pattern for the Uber vehicles and it perfectly matches the peaks for the rush hour and the peak time of a day," he said. They are out there in force at the worst possible times.

    Do you know that junk food isn't healthy? Of course you do! Do you eat it anyway? Of course you do! But a new study shows teaching adolescents about the ways food companies fool them into thinking junk food is cool can encourage kids to fight back—by eating healthier.

    The pull of junk food can be super-strong. It's designed to tasty; which makes eating well one of the great health challenges of our time. Everyone from doctors to the government has been trying to handle it. Yet we keep eating junk food.

    Professor Christopher Bryan says, "Food companies want you to want junk food." They spend millions of dollars coming up with new ways to^ promote junk food consumption. They hire scientists to make new junk food almost irresistible. They might do this, for example, by adding more sugar. Rats fed junk food for six weeks will even walk across a floor that gives them electric shocks just to get more of such food.

    Food ads often make unhealthy junk food seem healthy by featuring professional athletes, fit-looking pop stars and smiling, active teens. "We thought when the students learned this, it would matter to them," Bryan says. He worked with 8th graders at a Texas school. Half of them got a lesson Bryan created. It focused on the ways junk food is advertised, or marketed. A second group received lessons that focused on health. These lessons informed students junk food is had, and that foods like apples or carrots are a better choice. The students learned a bad diet can lead to major weight gain, and that being overweight puts people at risk for serious diseases. They also learned how eating well now can keep you healthy when you're older.

    After the lessons, the kids in both groups were asked how they felt about junk food. Most didn't have positive feelings about these unhealthy foods.