If you've been to Europe a few times already, chances are that you've hit all the big destinations: London, Paris, Rome,Berlin.On your next trip you can either visit those same cities a second time,or instead you can take a chance and walk the streets of some cities that are a little bit smaller,a little bit less famous,but still full of European grace and charm.Here are four European cities to visit that you probably haven't been to yet.

    Besancon,France

    This hidden French city has had a long reputation for being a well-kept secret.It can be at once sleepy with few tourists but abundant galleries,restaurants,and a wonderful Beaux Arts museum whose collection is second only to the Louvre.The city is wound by the River Doubs and also touts (吹捧) its own UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Citadel,home to several small museums and a zoo.

    Seville,Spain

    For the tourist who is already tired of Barcelona and Madrid,Seville offers a different take (意见) on Spain. Located on the Southern coast,it keeps beautiful signs of the long period of Moorish rule,nowhere more than in the Alcázar palace building,just one of the city's UNESCO World Heritage Sites.Seville has over a dozen museums, tropical parkland,and probably the best tapas (餐前小吃) culture in all of Spain.

    Ghent,Belgium

    Ghent is a city that looks like it should be the setting for a fairy tale. All of the typical Belgium features abound here-waffles and beer.Every year from Saturday before July 21,Ghent hosts a ten-day festival.This music and theater festival draws almost 2 million visitors,as the city streets transform into performance spaces for performers,buskers (街头艺人) and musicians.

    Palermo,Italy

    Palermo is the capital city of Sicily,the southern island off the coast of mainland Italy.The city has an ancient history,and the various cultures that have controlled the island through the years have all left their marks on it. You can see winding street markets,antique (古玩) fairs,and open air nightclubs here.

    I arrived late one night on a business trip, so I decided to have dinner in the hotel I stayed in. As I was finishing my meal, an elderly couple came in. They were holding hands and had lovely smiles on their faces. They sat three tables from me. I was amazed at the love they showed for each other. It struck me because it was shortly after ending a 20-year marriage and I still had pain in my heart.

    My waiter was also their waiter. As I paid my bill, I asked what their bill was. He told me, and I gave him $40 to pay their bill. He asked if I knew them and I told him “No, I just wanted to repay them for the love that they were showing to each other,” and then I left. The next day I entered the restaurant again. After I had been seated, the waiter who served me the night before told me that the strangest thing happened after I left the restaurant. When the elderly couple went to pay for their meal, they were told that it had been paid. The waiter just told them what I said. They were amazed. They looked around, asked for the bill of two young couples who were seated together, paid their bill and left.

    I smiled and ordered my meal. About 45 minutes later, I finished my meal and was about to head out, but my waiter was nowhere to be found. I explained to the hostess that I needed to pay for my meal and hurry to the airport. She smiled and explained that I would not have to pay, because she felt she should pay for my bill because of the joy brought to the faces of the elderly couple and the amazement of the young couples.

    When I told her that they didn't have to do that, she said with a smile “Love creates Love.”

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

Why is poker 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. 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, so our human-machine match comes up in a game of Texas Hold's Em Limit Poker. The AI was developed by Johannes Heinrich, a 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.

    The Pope John XXIII Regional High School robotics team has brought about many crea-tions in its laboratories. Most of these creations have earned them prizes in their robotics leagues, articles in local media and praise from many people around the world. None of them, however, can equal to what they experienced during one of their most recent projects.

    The robotics team helped design and build an electrically during one of their most recent projects, girl during an event snonsored by the GoBabyGo program and Toyota. The goal of the disabled is to build an electncally opiated vehicle and meet the needs of a specific disabled child. After hearing about the program, the robotics team jumped on the opportunity.

    When they got to the hospital for the event，the team members joined forces with engi-neers from University of Delaware, Toyota employees and and doctors to help a girl named Jaleah.

    Using instructions provided on an iPad by GoBabyGo,they put together a plastic battery-oper-ated vehicle-one of 12 that were made at the event-that was bespoke to Jaleah. Her vehicle was a baby blue jeep that had designs from the hit Disney movie Frozen and was decorated with snowflakes (雪花)，butterflies and flowers.

    More importantly，the team rerouted the electrical system in the car so that Jaleah only needed to push a large button on the steering wheel to drive the car, giving her the freedom to move. In addition, they helped design special seating structure to keep Jaleah safely secured.

    When they completed the project, Jaleah and her parents' reactions took the PJ robotics members by surprise.“ It was really satisfying,” PJ junior Austin Fett said. “When she was riding it, she was having so much fun. It was a great feeling. ”

    While they are looking forward to their future projects and competitions in the FIRST Technology Challenge league, the robotics team will always remember the days they helped Jaleah become a mobile kid.

    “We made something that she will love and use forever,” PJ senior Keith Johnson said.

    No one knew Prince Edward Street as well as Pierre Dupin. He had delivered milk to the families on the street for thirty years. For the past fifteen years a large white horse named Joseph pulled his milk wagon. Joseph was a gentle horse with beautiful spirit shining out of its eyes, so Pierre named him after Saint Joseph.

    Every morning at five, Pierre arrived at the milk company's stables to find Joseph waiting for him, Pierre would call, "Good morning, my old friend." as he climbed into his seat, while Joseph turned his head toward the driver. And the two would go proudly down the street. Without any order from Pierre, the wagon would roll down three streets. Then it turned right for two streets, before turning left to Saint Catherine Street. The horse finally stopped at the first house on Prince Edward Street. There, Joseph would wait perhaps thirty seconds for Pierre to get down off his seat and put a bottle of milk at the front door.

    Pierre knew every one of the forty families that got milk. The cooks knew that Pierre could not read or write; so, instead of leaving orders in an empty milk bottle, they simply sang out if they needed an extra bottle.

    Pierre also had a wonderful memory. When he arrived at the stable he always remembered to tell Jacques, the foreman(领班) of the stables, "The Pacquins took an extra bottle this morning; the Lemoines bought a pint of cream …" Most of the drivers had to make out the weekly bills and collect the money. But Jacques, liking Pierre, never asked him to do this.

    One day the president of the milk company came to inspect the early morning milk deliveries. Jacques pointed to Pierre and said："See how the horse listens and how he turns his head toward Pierre? See the look in that horse's eyes? You know, I think those two share a secret. I have often felt it. He is getting old. Maybe he ought to be given a rest, and a small pension."

    "But of course," the president laughed. "He has been on this job now for thirty years. All who know him love him. Tell him it is time he rested. He will get his pay every week as before."

    But Pierre refused to leave his job. He said his life would be nothing if he could not drive Joseph every day. "We are two old men," he said to Jacques. "Let us wear out together. When Joseph is ready to leave, then I too will do so."

    Then one cold morning Jacques had terrible news for Pierre. Jacques said,"Pierre, your horse, Joseph, didn't wake up. He was very old, Pierre." Jacques said softly. "He is over in his stall, looking very peaceful. Go over and see him." Pierre took one step forward, then turned. "No … no … I cannot see Joseph again. You … you don't understand, Jacques."

    For years Pierre had worn a large heavy cap that came down low over his eyes. It kept out the bitter cold wind. Now, Jacques looked into Pierre's eyes and he saw something that shocked him. He saw a dead, lifeless look in them.

    "Take the day off, Pierre," Jacques said. Pierre walked to the corner and stepped into the street. There was a warning shout from the driver of a big truck … there was the screech(尖锐的刹车声) of rubber tires as the truck tried to stop. But Pierre heard nothing.

    Five minutes later a doctor said, "He's dead … killed instantly."

"I couldn't help it," the truck driver said. "He walked in front of my truck. He never saw it, I guess. Why, he walked as though he were blind."

    The doctor bent down. "Blind？Of course, this man has been blind for five years."  He turned to Jacques, "Didn't you know he was blind？"

    "No …no …" Jacques said softly. "None of us knew. Only one … only one knew－a friend of his, named Joseph … It was a secret, I think, just between those two."

    Fashions have a lot of rules. Most of them, however, are just wrong. But there's one rule that goes beyond tradition and into the field of scientific study of the brain: Black garments are slimming. It all comes down to how your visual system processes the light. The below holes in each square are the same in size, yet the white hole looks bigger than the black hole.

    In the 1500s, Galileo Galilei noticed that some of the planets looked larger when viewed with the naked eye (肉眼) than they did when viewed through a telescope, making the white light of Venus (金星) appear eight to ten times larger than Jupiter (木星) in the night sky. He knew something strange must be going on with his vision to cause this illusion, but he wasn't sure what it was. Luckily, scientists never stopped wondering, and in 2014, they figured it out.

    Our visual system operates via two main channels: "on" neurons (神经元) that are sensitive to light things and "off" neurons that are sensitive to dark things. When it came to the dark "off" neurons, the researchers found that they responded predictably to dark shapes on a light background — the greater the contrast between the two, the more active these neurons were. But the light "on" neurons behaved unpredictably. Even with the same amount of contrast, light objects on a dark background caused a greater response in these neurons.

    This makes some sense, evolutionarily speaking. In the dark of night, you'd want to be able to take in every bit of light you can get, so a visual system that enlarges light objects on a dark background could be very useful. However, it's not that hard to see dark objects in the light of day. It has some effects in the colors of your clothes and in the appearance of the planets—the brighter appearance of Venus in the night sky makes it look bigger than the darker Jupiter.