Sydney Cultural Festival – What's on today!

    European Art Show

    Location: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Today is the final day of the exhibition featuring 18th and 19th century paintings by some of the greatest European artists, such as Van Gough and Monet. Posters of these great works are available for purchase at the Visitors' Centre.

    Time: 8.30am –7pm

    Cost: $12 adults; $7 children and students

    Nature Walks

    Location: Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden. Come and celebrate our natural environment in one of the world's only nature parks inside a major city. Join our hourly guided tours, starting at the Eastern Gate, and enjoy breathtaking forests, stunning city escapes and the magnificent Sydney Harbour.

    Time: 9am – 4pm Cost: Free

    Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert

    Location: Sydney Opera House. Australia's most famous orchestra is best known for its performances of classical French and German music. But in tonight's concert, the world-famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang is the special guest artist and will perform a series of classic Chinese compositions including Yellow River.

    Time: 8.30pm –11.30pm

    Cost: $175 adults; $90 students and children

    Moonlight Cinema

    Location: Centennial Park. Sit on the grass and enjoy the latest movies or classics from the past under the stars at Australia's best and largest outdoor cinema. Tonight features the wonderful Australian film Red Dog. Besides the movie, there will be a display of classic Australian film posters.

    Time: 8pm – 10.30pm

    Cost: $19 adults; $14 children and students

    When I was about twelve, I headed to a restaurant for dinner with my family. It was winter, and on that night, the wind was really blowing hard.

    As my mom and I headed to the restaurant from our car, a girl about my age and her mother came up to us. They asked if we had any spare change. My mom right away asked where they lived. They pointed to an old car in a parking lot across the street. The girl said there were six of them living in that car.

    My mom said she had something to do after handing the people a few dollars. She sent me inside the restaurant with my dad and my three siblings (兄弟姐妹). But she didn't come. Later, I found out she had gone home and put all the food in our cupboards into a few bags. Then, she brought that food over to the car and handed the bags to the family. I wasn't there when that happened, but I can only imagine the joy it brought to those people.

    A few days later, when I actually found out about what she had done, I asked her why she helped those people. She told me that they were not lucky. I remember the face of that girl who had asked us for change. She was the same age as me, yet we looked so different.

    Here I stood, dressed in almost new clothes, headed to eat in a restaurant and then back home to the bedroom I shared with my younger sister. I remember thinking that the other girl didn't have any food to eat and she was heading back to a cold car shared with five other people.

    After painting this picture in my mind, I understood why my mom had done what she did. I will never forget what she did that night, and how she taught me one of the best lessons I ever learned.

Boston City View Bike Tour

    Boston City View Bike Tour offers an environmentally friendly and exciting bicycle tour of Boston—from historic places to strange neighborhood streets. The Boston City View Bicycle Tour is the classic tour for those looking to get a great introduction to Boston.

    Boston City View Bike Tour highlights（最精彩的部分）:

    Tour includes comfortable bikes, helmet and water

    Friendly tour guides

    One guide for every 6 riders for safety and the quality of the experience

    Comfortable pace

    All levels and ages are welcome

    Child seats are offered if asked

    This tour covers all of Boston's best sites:

    Historic Fenway Park

    The Christian Science Center

    The Freedom Trail

    The beautiful brownstones in Back Bay and the South End

    The Rose Kennedy Greenway—Boston's newest public park

    The Charles River Esplanade

    The North End—Boston's oldest Italian neighborhood

    Copley square, where you'll see the Boston Public Library & Trinity Church

    Please note:

    You don't need to be Lance Armstrong to enjoy the Boston City View Bike Tour—all levels of riders are welcome. About 70% of riding is done on city streets, mixed with cars. The remaining 30% of the tour covers the bike path on the quiet streets.

    The tour is 2.5-3.5 hours long and covers 10-12 miles. It is a great way to entertain guests and get a little exercise.

    Make your book today and get your e-tickets for the Boston City View Bike Tour online.

    This tour is seasonal and runs daily from April 1st through Nov. 30th.

    There were no people on the park bench as I sat down to read beneath the branches of an old willow tree, with good reasons to sigh, for the world was dragging me down. At this time, a boy approached me. He stood right before me, and said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

    In his hand was a flower, and what a pitiful sight, with its petals (花瓣) all worn. Wanting him to take his flower and go off to play, I managed a smile and then turned to the other side.

    But instead of leaving, he sat next to my side and placed the flower to his nose and said firmly and clearly, “It really smells pretty and it's beautiful, too. That's why I picked it. Here it's for you.”

    The flower before me was dying or dead. But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave. So I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

    But instead of placing the flower in my hand, he held it in mid-air. It was then that I noticed that the boy was blind.

    I heard my voice quiver (轻微颤抖), and at the same time my tears shone like the sun. As I thanked him for picking the very best one, he smiled and said, “You're welcome.”

    And then he ran off to play, not knowing the influence he'd had on me.

    I sat there and wondered how he managed to see a self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree. Perhaps from his heart, he'd been blessed with true sight.

    Through the eyes of the blind boy, I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all of those times I had been blind. From now on, I promised to see beauty and appreciate every second. Then I held the flower up to my nose and breathed its fragrance and smiled as that young boy.

    Robots are now being employed not just for dangerous tasks, such as discovering mines or rescuing people in disasters. They are also finding application as household helps and as nursing assistants. As increasing numbers of machines, equipped with the latest artificial intelligence, take on a growing variety of specialized and everyday tasks, the question of how people see them and behave towards them becomes ever more urgent.

    A team led by Sari Nijssen of Radboud University and Markus Paulus, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU), have carried out a study to determine the degree to which people show concern for robots and behave towards them based on moral principles.

    According to Sari Nijssen, the study set out to answer the following question:" Under what circumstances would adults be willing to sacrifice robots to save human lives?" The participants were faced with a hypothetical (假设的) moral dilemma: Would they be prepared to put a single person at risk in order to save a group of injured persons? In the situations presented the intended victim was either a human, a humanoid robot that had been humanized (人性化的) to various degrees or a robot that was clearly recognizable as a machine.

    The study suggested that the more the robot was humanized, the less likely participants were to sacrifice it. Situations that included vivid stories in which the robot was described as a merciful being or as a creature with its own understandings, experiences and thoughts, were more likely to stop the study participants from sacrificing it in the interests of anonymous (无名的) humans.

    "This result indicates that our study group attached a certain moral status to the robot," says Paulus. "One possible suggestion of this finding is that attempts to humanize robots should not go too far. Such efforts could come into conflict with their intended function—to be of help to us."

The ancient Herculaneum scrolls (卷轴)are thought to contain works of important thinkers in ancient Greece. But the scrolls can't be unrolled (打开). Even a light wind threatens to reduce them to dust. The reason is that they were turned into carbon by a natural disaster in A.D. 79.

But now researchers from the University of Kentucky have found a way to look inside the scrolls without having to touch them. They first create a light that is 10 billion times brighter than the sun by taking advantage of a machine. Then they will use the light to go through the Herculaneum scrolls to study and finally read the words recorded on the scrolls. Researchers think it might take them six months to read the scrolls.

This isn't the first time researchers have tried to read the Herculaneum scrolls. Several years ago, scientists from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) worked on uncovering the mystery using an X-ray beam 100 billion times brighter than anything used in a hospital, This didn't allow scientists to actually read the scrolls, but it allowed them to make one surprising discovery. The scrolls were written in metallic (金属的) ink, a writing technology that scientists didn't know existed at the time the scrolls were penned.

"For a long time, we thought our studies have let us know everything about the ancient ink used to write on scrolls. Now we find it's not the case. This shows that we should tell ourselves it may not be true when thinking we fully know something once some research is done," said Daniel Delattre, one of the study's authors.

The finding wasn't just a historical curiosity. To learn just how special these scrolls are, consider that the thinker Chrysippus in ancient Greece is said to have written over 700 works; but all are lost, with the exception of a few works found in the Herculaneum scrolls. In other words, it's possible that these scrolls represent the only existing complete works left by this great thinker. And who knows what other great works could exist in the scrolls?