“Birds” and “airports” are two words that, paired together, don't normally paint the most harmonious picture. So it really raises some eyebrows when China announces plans to build an airport that's for birds.

Described as the world's first-ever bird airport, the proposed Lingang Bird Sanctuary(保护区) in the northern coastal city of Tianjin is，of course，not an actual airport. Rather, it's a wetland preserve specifically designed to accommodate hundreds — even thousands — of daily takeoffs and landings by birds traveling along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Over 50 species of migratory (迁徙的）water birds, some endangered, will stop and feed at the protected sanctuary before continuing their long journey along the flyway.

Located on a former landfill site, the 61-hectare (150-acre) airport is also open to human travelers. (Half a million visitors are expected annually.) However, instead of duty-free shopping, the main attraction for non-egg-laying creatures at Tianjin's newest airport will be a green-roofed education and research center, a series of raised “observation platforms” and a network of scenic walking and cycling paths and trails totaling over 4 miles.

The proposed Bird Airport will be a globally significant sanctuary for endangered migratory bird species, while providing new green lungs for the city of Tianjin,” Adrian McGregor of Australian landscape architecture firm McGregor Coxall explained of .the design. Frequently blanketed in smog so thick that it has shut down real airports, Tianjin is a city — China's fourth most populous — that would certainly benefit from a new pair of healthy green lungs.

    When you're on the go, your best friend and resource can be your phone. In the age of smart phones, apps are like guiding stars: They can point you in the right direction for a hotel, list expenses, send postcards, and much more. When used together, these apps can be the basic travel tool, placing a wealth of information at your fingertips no matter where you are on the planet. U.S. NewsTravel has picked the essential travel apps, known for their utility and reliability. Best of all, they cost absolutely nothing.

Trip It

    Your Personal Travel Agent

    Be your own travel agent and plan every detail of your trip—from car rental to accommodating restaurants—with Trip It. You can make travel schedule by hand, or simply forward the email confirmations of your flight, rental car, train tickets, and hotels to plans.

Weather Free

    Your Go-To Meteorologist(气象学者)

    Stop trying to explain the weather forecast on the evening news (particularly when it's in a foreign language). The Weather Free app informs you (in English) of the climate in various locations. It features the local weather, and other key factors that will inform your decision about what to wear before stepping outside.

Goby

    Your Event Guru

    When you're in a foreign city, you sometimes look around and ask: Where are all the people? Goby has the answer. This app pinpoints the neighborhood hot spots (including museums, hotels, eateries, and more) in your neighborhood. But its true value comes in finding nearby events. You'll discover concerts, plays, and more right around the corner.

    Kendrick Lamar hasn't had much luck when it comes to winning a Grammy. But that's OK： The US rapper(说唱歌手) has just won a Pulitzer Prize for his music.

    In 2014, in 2016, and again this year. Lamar was nominated (提名)for an album of the year Grammy. Each time, he was beaten out, first by Taylor Swift, next by Daft Punk, and most recently by Bruno Mars.

    But the Pulitzer Prize committee was inspired enough by Lamar's 2017 album, Damn, to award the 30-year-old its Pulitzer Prize in music on April 16. It's an amazing album that documents the real life of modem African-Americans in South Los Angeles with wildly accomplished beats and rhythms.

    Lamar's win is considered to be historical. 'The Pulitzers have long displayed their preference toward high art rather than the pop culture of the masses. So it's not just that no rapper has ever won a Pulitzer: no pop music maker has ever won one in the award's 75-year history.

    But Lamar is not just a singer—he's clever at using language. Like the best writers, his music describes small moments that illustrate (阐明) larger points. His songs are about his experience as a black man who grew up in California, struggled, got into trouble, and found his way out by working hard and making sense of the history and reality of racial problems in the US.

    “He's an artist who challenges idea,” said Ryan Coogler, director of the blockbuster(大片) hit Black Panther, for which Lamar created music. "One big theme in our film of,' What does it mean to be African?' Kendrick in his music is very exactly and directly challenging that question."

    Good artists entertain us, great artists make us think, and exceptional artists help us empathize (感同身受) .

    There are a lot of good, great, even exceptional artists in rock, pop, country, and hip-hop. But only Lamar has a Pulitzer Prize.

    Beyoncé Knowles can do something that many humans struggle with: sing and dance at the same time. But, it turns out this great ability is not unique to humans. The superb lyrebird, already known to be a gifted singer, can perform coordinated(协调的)song­and­dance routines(一套舞蹈动作)that put most humans to shame.

    The superb lyrebird is one of only two lyrebird species living in Australia, the other named Albert's lyrebird. Male lyrebirds have tails in the shape of an ancient musical instrument when spread out. Like most animals with beautiful body parts, the males use their tails to attract females. Each one sets up a small mound(小丘)on the forest floor, where he walks around proudly and sings. He also shows his tail by holding it over his head.

    Lyrebirds are gifted mimics(模仿者), so their songs combine their own calls, the songs of other species, and sounds they have heard in the forest. That would be enough showing off for other animals, but male superb lyrebirds also dance.

    Anastasia Dalziell of the Australian National University in Canberra filmed 12 lyrebirds in the wild. She found that males only danced during four song types, and that each song type was accompanied by a specific move. “Lyrebirds match different dance styles to different types of songs, ”she says. For example, when the male sang a series of rapid notes he also stepped to the side and held his tail wide. Another song type was accompanied by jumping and moving up and down, with the tail held narrow.

    “Our results suggest that the coordination between song and dance—like movements we see in humans can occur in other animals,” says Dalziell. Female lyrebirds might prefer males that are better at coordinating song and dance, although there is no evidence of that yet.

    China has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. The Chang'e-4 probe (探测器) has also made the first lunar landing since 1972. It has the task of exploring the side of the moon that never faces the earth. The dark side of the moon is older and has a thicker surface than the visible side. It takes the moon as long to go around on its own axis (轴) as it does for one complete orbit around the Earth.

    The Chinese probe landed in a huge crater 2500 km in diameter and 13 km deep. The crater is one of the oldest parts of the moon and our solar system.

    Scientists hope to learn more about the geology of the far side of the moon. The craft has two cameras on board which will send images back to earth. It will also attempt to send signals to distant regions of space, something that cannot happen on earth because of too much radio noise.

    Chang'e-4 also has instruments on board to examine minerals as well as a container with seeds which will try to create a miniature (微型的) biosphere (生物圈).

Communication with the spacecraft is not easy. Images and other data must be transmitted to a separate satellite because no direct communication with the earth is possible.

    For China the Chang'e-4 mission is an important achievement, because the country has successfully done something no other nation on earth has. It wants to become a leading power in space exploration and has announced plans to send astronauts to the moon and set up its own space station.

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census's measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic wellbeing, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.

While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.

The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.

In 2005, as the authors observe: real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France's consumption with the U.S.'s overstates the gap in economic welfare.

Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97 % of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%. The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy's performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.

Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.