A telescope, called Gaia, is being designed by astronomers in Europe, and it couldn't be more different from Pan-STARRS, which is another telescope being designed. While Pan-STARRS will be looking for asteroids (小行星) and comets headed for Earth, Gaia will be looking at our entire galaxy (银河系).

    Gaia is designed to draw a map of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Just as a map of your town gives you a picture of where things are located, Gaia's map of the galaxy will tell astronomers where the stars are. Over five years, Gaia will observe (观察) about a billion stars and other objects in our galaxy. Each object will be observed about 70 times.

    Gaia will be sent into space connected to a rocket. It contains two telescopes, each focused at a different angle (角度). These two telescopes act like Gaia's “eyes”. The reason why humans can see things in 3D is that we have two eyes focused on the same object, at slightly different angles. By using two telescopes like eyes, Gaia can produce the first 3D map of the positions of the stars it views.

    Gaia, which is to be sent into space, will be a powerful telescope. If you were to use it on Earth, for example, you could stand 600 miles away from your best friends and still get a clear picture of their hair.

    Gaia is one of more than a dozen telescopes being designed by scientists right now. The next generation of telescopes will reveal new parts of our universe that will seem surprising. The universe, with all its planets, stars and other strange objects, is a puzzle with pieces that we can see by using powerful telescopes.

    Enjoying a musical performance no longer requires a costly ticket or a trip to a theater. These days, musicians are performing in private homes,at haircutting shops,at airports...even on ferry boats.

    Musicians like house concerts. At music clubs, they often have to perform over loud conversation or deal with people who have had too much alcohol.People at house concerts are more focused on listening to the music.

    Just a few hours before the Bombadils started singing at the O' Hair Salon,Lindsay was cutting hair and Tamera was doing facials.Then,they moved chairs and microphones to create a small performance space.The Bombadils made music in the front part of the hair salon,near the hair dryers and make-up table.

    "This is our first show at a hair salon,"Sarah Frank of the Bombadils told concertgoers at last week's performance.Frank said she and band members Luke Fraser and Kaitlyn Raitz had a great time "interacting" with the audience.

    Concerts in people's homes, or small businesses such as O' Hair's,are becoming more popular,musicians say. "There is a more relaxed atmosphere,"said Domenic Cicala,a musician who opened up his O' Hair Salon to concerts. "People really get to know the artists."

    At house concerts,people get time before and after concerts to meet the performers.Often,the hosts or guests will provide food and drink.

    "People really like listening to music in the living room of a friend,"said Matt Hart,with Aubrey Zoli making up Local Strangers,a folk-rock group based in Seattle.At many such concerts,the musicians do not need microphones. Yet,every word of their songs can be heard.

    My mother loves flowers. As soon as warm weather comes around, you will find her planting, watering and weeding over everything. For many years we lived next door to each other, and she spent as much time in my garden as she did her own. After the flowers became plentiful each summer, she would cut colorful bouquets (花束) to enjoy inside the house－both hers and mine. I would often come home from work and find a beautiful arrangement (布置) of fresh flowers on my coffee table.

    Shortly before Christmas one year, a local flower shop offered a bouquet month special. It seemed to be a great way to thank her for all of the flowers she had given me through the years. After the holidays, in early January, I drove her to the flower shop to pick up her first month's bouquet. The small fresh colorful bouquet would hardly fill a small vase (花瓶).

    I was so embarrassed(尴尬的). However, after we returned home, she began to arrange the flowers she had received. “Mom, I'm sorry,” I told her. “I can't believe how skimpy that bouquet is.” She looked at me and smiled. “It's okay,” she said. “It allows me to better enjoy the beauty of each one.”

    Mom's words helped me to realize something bigger and more important－when we have too many good things, we often fail to enjoy the beauty of each one.

      Thanks, Mom, for helping me understand that less is sometimes more.

    Like all big cities, Paris has a traffic problem: lots of cars, lots of traffic jams (阻塞) and lots of pollution from exhaust fumes (废气). So the city began a scheme (计划) to improve the situation.

    Under the Velib scheme ('Velib' comes from vélo liberté, or 'bicycle freedom') people can take a bicycle, use it for as long as they want, and then leave it at the same or another bicycle station. The first half-hour on the bike is free, but if you don't return it after 30 minutes, you have to pay. But it's only €1 a day or €29 a year! The bicycles are heavy (25 kg), and they are all grey and have baskets. There are about 20,000 of them in the city, and around 1,450 bicycle stations. So there are a lot more Velib stations than the 298 subway stations!

    Paris is not the first city to have a scheme like this. But not everybody thinks it's a great idea. One Parisian said, 'These bicycles are only for short journeys. If people want to travel across the city, they won't use a bicycle—they'll still use their cars.'

    A city spokesman said, "The bicycle scheme won't solve all our traffic problems, of course. But it might help reduce air pollution. Traffic, together with factory fumes, is a big problem. There aren't any simple answers to traffic problems and pollution in cities. But unless we do something now, there will be more traffic jams and temperatures will continue to rise, so the problems in our environment will get worse. The bikes might help people to lead a healthier life, too."

    The new social robots, including Jibo, Cozmo, Kuri and Meccano M.A.X., bear some similarities to assistants like Apple's Siri, but these robots come with something more. They are designed to win us over not with their smarts but with their personality. They are sold as companions that do more than talk to us. Time magazine cheered for the robots that "could fundamentally reshape how we interact with machines." But is reshaping how we interact with machines a good thing, especially for children?

    Some researchers in favor of the robots don't see a problem with this. People have relationships with many kinds of things. Some say robots are just another thing with which we can have relationships. To support their argument, roboticists sometimes point to how children deal with toy dolls. Children animate (赋予…生命) dolls and turn them into imaginary friends. Jibo, in a sense, will be one more imaginary friend, and arguably a more intelligent and fun one.

    Getting attached to dolls and sociable machines is different, though. Today's robots tell children that they have emotions, friendships, even dreams to share. In reality, the whole goal of the robots is emotional trickery. For instance, Cozmo the robot needs to be fed, repaired and played with. Boris Sofman, the chief executive of Anki, the company behind Cozmo, says that the idea is to create "a deeper and deeper emotional connection ... And if you neglect him, you feel the pain of that." What is the point of this, exactly? What does it mean to feel the pain of neglecting something that feels no pain at being neglected, or to feel anger at being neglected by something that doesn't even know it is neglecting you?

    This should not be our only concern. It is troubling that these robots try to understand how children feel. Robots, however, have no emotions to share, and they cannot put themselves in our place. No matter what robotic creatures "say", they don't understand our emotional lives. They present themselves as empathy machines, but they are missing the essential equipment. They have not been born, they don't know pain, or death, or fear. Robot thinking may be thinking, but robot feeling is never feeling, and robot love is never love.

    What is also troubling is that children take robots' behavior to indicate feelings. When the robots interact with them, children take this as evidence that the robots like them, and when robots don't work when needed, children also take it personally. Their relationships with the robots affect their self-esteem (自尊). In one study, an 8-year-old boy concluded that the robot stopped talking to him because the robot liked his brothers better.

    For so long, we dreamed of artificial intelligence offering us not only simple help but conversation and care. Now that our dream is becoming real, it is time to deal with the emotional downside of living with robots that "feel".

My dearest daughter,

    As I looked across at you sitting on the sofa watching The X Factor, I noticed that you are no longer a child, and that having just celebrated your 14th birthday, you are now a young woman starting a journey into becoming an adult woman. As I looked at you, I remembered myself at 14, and the vastly different places we are beginning this journey from.

    Your identity as a mixed-race young woman, with an English father and a Pakistani mother, has already influenced how you place yourself in this world. As yet, you are unaware of the personal struggles that I took at the age of 25 to marry. How it felt when my mother refused to come to my wedding. The sharp criticisms of the Asian community that such marriages do not work out and always end in divorce (离婚). The confidence I had to grow, as we chose to live in a multicultural community, as I refused to be shamed into living in the white suburbs (郊区).

    Then, at the age of 30, I became your mum with all the joys and struggles this brought, as I refused the Asian traditions for a new baby's arrival. From your birth, your life could not have been more different from mine. I was brought up on a council estate (地方政府建的住宅群), within a close extended Muslim family, through which poverty, racism and neglect were mixed. I was never given the freedoms or the opportunity to experience new things. Now, as I hear you play your piano, I am grateful that you have these chances.

    So many doors were closed to me as a young person, and as I fought for small steps of freedom, I soon learned that it was better to do what I wanted without the knowledge of my parents, and so lies and tricks became part of my life too. The pressures to obey, to be a "good Muslim" girl and keep the family honor, were choking. Behind closed doors at home, the neglect and abuse (虐待) took place. It was hidden, I felt the shame, lived with the fear and suffered together with my sister and two younger brothers. Oh, the power we thought our parents had over us! I was convinced that one day my father would indeed beat us so hard that leaving us for dead, he would, as his threats said he would, bury us in the large back garden, and tell the school he had taken us back to Pakistan for good. My sister and I longed for a different blue sky to live under.

    As a daughter of immigrant (移民) parents, I carried their hopes of a better education for their children—my own veins (血管) pulsing with the hard-work ethic (道德) and need to be grateful for the opportunity of a free education. And it was education that provided me with the strength to find my own blue sky. I fought to leave home to go to university at the age of 18, and never returned to live with my parents again.

    Now as you explore your mixed-race heritage, which I hope we have supported you to do with visits to Pakistan and ensuring you go to multi-cultural schools, I want you to take the very best of all that is Asian with you as you become a woman.

    The struggles of identity (身份) and belonging will come but I hope that we have given you a strong foundation from which to explore these struggles. All the chances and freedoms that I only dreamed of as a young woman, I have offered you. I have chosen a different path of loving you as my daughter, with an unconditional love that many consider "western".

    I want you to know that although your journey has been vastly different, I am excited as I watch you standing on the threshold (门槛) of becoming a woman for all the adventures and possibilities the future holds for you.

    May you fly your blue sky with grace, confidence and hope as you find your place in this beautiful and crazy world.

    Loving you now and always. Mommy