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    While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

    Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize — which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture — on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

    Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus(校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

    The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves(曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

    Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements(元素).

    Wang's works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

    Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

"Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created," he said.

    "Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are, "said Wang.

    The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

    Considering that Sundarbans National Park is situated in thetropics, Septemberto March is the ideal time to come here. April, May and June are too hot while July andAugust often bring heavy season winds that limit travel and don't make for avery pleasant sightseeing experience. You can really enjoy doing lots ofcharming things in the Sundarbans during September to March.

    Take a river tour

    Most tourists who explore the Sundarbans arrive in KhulnaCity first. Fromthere, youcan join a boat tour that travels south along the Ganges River through miles ofpreserved forest all the way to Kotka, where there is a beautiful beach alongthe Bay of Bengal.

    Visit a bird habitat

    This bird habitat is a nesting place for dozens of tropicalbirds found in the Sundarbans. The best way to observe these birds isclimbing up the Sajnekhali Watchtower. If you're lucky, you'll also catch the famed BengalTiger making its rounds through the swampy jungle.

    Visit the Mangrove(红树林)Interpretation Centre

    If you wish to spend some time indoors out of the sweatyheat, goto the Mangrove Interpretation Centre. This place is very educational withmany posters, mapsand exhibits showing the wildlife and varieties of mangrove plants found withinthe park. You'llalso get to see crocodiles in a small pool.

    Take a tour of local villages

    Experience village life that has largely remained unchangedfor centuries. Inthis vast tropical region, there are villages made up of variousethnic groups who rely on fishing, farming and working in the localthrough growing tourist industry for their livelihoods. The Sundarbans is a UNESCO worldheritage site where you can visit villages and talk to locals,who will gladly sharetheir culture with you.

    Last week, Vodafone started a test of the UK's first full 5G service, available for use by businesses in Salford. It is part of its plan to trial the technology in seven UK cities. But what can we expect from the next generation of mobile technology?

    One thing we will see in the preparation for the test is lots of tricks with the new tech. Earlier this year, operators paid almost £ 1.4 billion for the 5G wavelengths, and to compensate for that cash, they will need to catch the eye of consumers. In September, Vodafone used its bit of the range to display the UK's first hologram (全息) call. The Manchester City captain Steph Houghton appeared as a hologram in Newbury. It isn't all holograms, however: 5G will offer faster internet access, with Ofcom (英国通讯管理局) suggesting that video that takes a minute to download on 4G will be available in just a second.

    The wider application is to support connected equipment on the "internet of things" -not just the internet-enabled fridge that can reorder your milk for you, but the network that will enable driverless cars and delivery drones (无人机) to communicate with each other.

    Prof William Webb has warned that the technology could be a case of the emperor's new clothes. Much of the speed increase, he claims, could have been achieved by putting more money in the 4G network, rather than a new technology.  Other different voices have suggested that a focus on rolling out wider rural broadband access and addressing current network coverage would be more beneficial to the UK as a whole.

    Obviously, 5G will also bring a cost to consumers. It requires a handset for both 5G and 4G, and the first 5G-enabled smart phones are expected in the coming year. With the slow pace of network rollout so far, it is likely that consumers will end up upgrading to a new 5 G phone well before 5 G becomes widely available in the next couple of years.

    This year marks the 170th anniversary of Paul Gauguin's birth. He lived for just 54 years but he packed his brief life with activity.

    The French painter spent his early childhood in Peru before returning to France. As an adult, he continued to travel a lot. Most famously, he spent much of the last decade of his life in Tahiti, an island in southern Pacific Ocean. Indeed, Gauguin is best known for his colorful paintings of Tahitians and their culture.

    The restlessness of this great painter has been normal among modern artists since the middle of the 19th century. They're never satisfied for long with a certain style or way of life. Once something becomes conventional, it's turned down.

    The artistic culture that Gauguin developed from was that of Impressionism (印象派). Painters like Claude Monet had wanted to paint how they saw the world, not how their teachers taught them it should be seen. Gauguin, and similar artists like his friend Vincent van Gogh, moved even further away from "respectable" art than the Impressionists. For them, it was not simply a matter of seeing the world differently, but feeling and thinking about it differently, too.

    Gauguin saw, felt and thought differently from most members of European society. He thought that European culture was too fancy and not spontaneous. This is why he turned to the traditions of other parts of the world, like Africa, and, eventually, Tahiti. Artists like Gauguin used the word "primitive" for these cultures, but not as a negative term. For him, Europe, in becoming modem, industrial and scientific, seemed less natural than other parts of the world.

    In truth, Gauguin's paintings may be unconventional but they are certainly not "primitive". They are the work of a painter with great awareness of what he was doing. It was this awareness that made him such an important painter for those that came after, in the 20th century. When we look closely at the works of Gauguin we begin to understand Pablo Picasso, and especially Henri Matisse, a little better.

    If a person who lived 200 years ago was treated for a seizure(癫痫)today, they would be surprised by the treatment's freshness. That's because doctors in the 1800s were influenced more by original medical beliefs than science.

    Rather than thinking the brain caused seizures, people in the 1800s still thought they were the result of strange forces. They associated seizures with the work of evil spirits. Others felt that the seizures had a cosmic or lunar cause. They believed that the cycles of the moon and stars could make someone have a seizure.

    During a process to treat a patient who has seizures, doctors would force the patient to pray for the grace of the God. They thought if the patient did this, then the patient would rid themselves of the evil spirits causing the seizures.

    The arrival of modern psychiatry(精神病学) occurred during the 1800s. At that time people who suffered from seizures were placed in psychiatric hospitals. They were treated like they were mad. However, none of the out-of-date treatments worked.

    It wasn't until the late 1850s that the causes of seizures were understood. We know today that these causes are related to the brain. Misfired signals from the brain cause a jerking reflex(反射) in the body. These usually occur when someone is very tired.

    Once the causes of seizures were known, definitive treatments were developed. Today, treatments range from taking pills to having surgery. Treatment is personalized according to the type of seizure the patient has.

    Even today, some people are unsure about seizures. Their most common mistake is thinking that a person having a seizure will swallow their tongue. They often push some implement roughly in the person's mouth. However, this doesn't help. The implement often blocks the airway and prevents the person from breathing. Yet most of the public no longer fear people who have seizures. Instead, they can now help and comfort a person if they have a seizure.

    A new study suggests some language learning can take place during sleep. Researchers from Switzerland's University of Bern say they discovered people were able to learn new language words during deep levels of sleep.

    Much of the earlier research found that memories made when awake were strengthened during sleep. This supported the idea that information learned while awake is replayed and deeply embedded in the sleeping brain.

    The researchers theorized that, if replay during sleep improves the storage of learned information while awake, the processing and storage of new information should also be possible during sleep.

    They carried out experiments on a group of young German­speaking men and women, which centered on periods of deep sleep called "up­states". They identified these slow­wave peaks as the best moments for sleep­learning.

    The researchers observed individuals in a controlled environment during brief periods of sleep. Brain activity was recorded as pairs of words were played for the study subjects. One word in the pair was a real German word. The other was a made­up foreign word. For later identification purposes, the German words chosen were things clearly larger or smaller than a shoebox.

    Each word pair was played four times, with the order of the words changed each time. The word pairs were played at a rhythm that is similar to actual brain activity during deep sleep. The goal was to create a lasting memory link between the false word and the German word that individuals could identify while awake.

    When the subjects woke, they were presented with the false language words­both by sight and sound. They were then asked to guess whether the false word played during sleep represented an object smaller or larger than a shoebox. Results of the study found that a majority of subjects gave more correct answers about the sleep­learned words than would be expected if they had only guessed at random.

    The researchers said they measured increased signals affecting a part of the brain known as the hippocampus. This brain structure is very important for building relational memory during non­sleep periods. The researchers also said memory was best for word pairs presented during slow­wave peaks during sleep.

    The study suggests that memory formation in sleep appears to be caused by the same brain structures that support vocabulary learning while awake. The researchers say more studies are needed to support their findings. However, the experiments do provide new evidence that memories can be formed and vocabulary learning can take place in both conscious and unconscious states.