You use her as a shoulder to cry on. She texts you back with casual jokes. But she, Xiaoice, is only a virtual chatbot（虚拟聊天机器人）.

    Xiaoice, Microsoft's latest artificial intelligence robot, was briefly released in 2014, and returned to WeChat in 2015, where she became a big hit. Millions of young Chinese now exchange messages with her daily, The New York Times reported. On WeChat, Xiaoice is an official account. After following it, users can start text-based conversations with Xiaoice.

    “Her incredible learning ability was why people loved to talk with Xiaoice,” Liu Jinchang, a researcher at High-tech Research and Development Center under the Ministry of Science and Technology, told China Daily. Apart from her ability to identify photos and send emojis（表情符号） in conversations, Xiaoice gains 45 percent of her knowledge from interacting with users, China Daily reported.

    Chatbot programs first appeared in the mid-1960s in the US. Driven by top tech companies, they are becoming smarter and more common. For instance, IBM's latest artificial intelligence program served as an academic consultant at Australia's Deakin University, answering students' questions about course schedules and financial aid. Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa have been used as voice assistants who can read news, play music and even make jokes for their users.

    These programs are expected to move beyond smartphones, into televisions, cars and living rooms, The New York Times pointed out. However, it may take decades before scientists develop a “Samantha”, the advanced chatbot seen in the fiction film Her. In the film, Samantha has a romantic relationship with her user played by US actor Joaquin Phoenix. Many viewers were enthusiastic about this fantasy of virtual soul mates.

    I was sure that I was to be killed. I became terribly nervous. I fumbled(摸索) in my pockets to see if there were any cigarettes, which had escaped their search. I found one and because of my shaking hands, I could barely get it to my lips. But I had no matches, they had taken those. I looked through the bars at the guard. He did not make eye contact with me. I called out to him “Have you got a light?” He looked at me, shrugged and came over to light my cigarette. As he came close and lit the match, his eyes unconsciously locked with mine. At that moment, I smiled. I don't know why I did that. Perhaps it was nervousness, perhaps it was because, when you get very close, one to another, it is very hard not to smile. In any case, I smiled. In that instant, it was as though a spark jumped across the gap between our two hearts, our two human souls. I know he didn't want to, but my smile leaped through the bars and caused a smile on his lips, too. He lit my cigarette but stayed near, looking at me directly in the eyes and continuing to smile.

    I kept smiling at him, now thinking of him as a person and not just a guard. "Do you have kids?" he asked. “Yes, here, here.” I took out my wallet and nervously fumbled for the pictures of my family. He, too, took out the pictures of his family and began to talk about his plans and hopes for them. My eyes filled with tears. I said that I feared that I'd never see my family again, never have the chance to see them grow up. Tears came to his eyes, too. Suddenly, without another word, he unlocked my cell and silently led me out. Out of the prison, quietly and by back routes, out of the town. There, at the edge of town, he released me. And without another word, he turned back toward the town.

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in the strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a faraway country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile(堆) of papers in their trash can(垃圾桶) that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents(文件). Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar(不熟悉的) papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.

    Kids are natural scientists. That may be why they ask so many questions.

    Younger kids take up science and math with amazing enthusiasm, yet as they get older they often lose their excitement. Children look on scientific exploration as play, but as they get older they start to connect it with big heavy books, long worksheets and a lot of really confusing words.

    What a tragedy! We had their attention, they were listening, they were participating, they were learning and then we lost it to boredom.

    We need our kids to play more. More play brings up basic scientific concepts(概念). Being familiar with basic scientific concepts brings about exploration which leads to research. Once they are researching, they are completely into the learning.

    My boys built a small 9­hole golf course next to our driveway one day. It was a great product of science. They dug out the holes and channels to guide the golf ball. They played with architecture(建筑学)with a series of pipes they had found in the garage. They tested speed and momentum(动量)by creating one of the holes across the driveway. They experienced biology when deciding which front yard plants could be used as a part of the course and which needed to be pulled up.

    If I had sent them out to the yard to build a 9­hole golf course, it would have never happened. It was because it was their idea that it worked. I try to tell them some of the concepts after the fact. When they ask about something, I try to relate it back to something they have built, experienced, or felt. I try to give them a vocabulary around what they already know.

    An afternoon can change the way kids look at the world. Not bad for a day of play.

    On April 8th, 2013, the world felt sorry because of the death of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who died at the age of 87. Besides being the country's longest leader (1979-1990) in the 20th century, she was the first woman to lead Britain. She worked hard and did well in her work, so she was called" Iron Lady".

    Whatever you think of Margaret Thatcher, the thing everyone does agree on is that she was a woman with great decisions. When she took over Britain in 1979, she led a country that was in economic trouble. She faced a lot of problems because of the poor economic position.

    In order to make the country become strong again, Ms. Thatcher had to make some hard and special decisions like raising interest rates and even taxes at a time when most British people were living a hard life. In this way she led Britain to run out of economic troubles.

    Early in her second term, just as things were looking a little better, she faced another problem — a strike by the British Miners Union. Once again, the Iron Lady stood her ground to stop the longest strike in the country's history.

    In 1982, Argentina said that they had owned the Falkland Islands since the 19th century. Britain, however, considered the islands to be one of their overseas dependent territories (领土). Margaret Thatcher tried to talk about the problem with Argentines. But Argentines didn't agree with her ideas, so Ms. Thatcher did what any strong leader would do — send in the British Army. It took 74 days, and on 14th June 1982, the Argentine army finally failed and Britain controlled the Falkland Islands again.

    When Ms. Thatcher resigned in 1990, she left behind a country that was very strong. Unluckily, during the last few years of her life, something was wrong with her mind. She hardly remembered anything that was happening around her and even what she had done during her wonderful lifetime.

    You're probably used to the regular upgrades in our cell-phone networks. There was 2G, which came along in 199l, replaced with 3G in 2001, followed by 4G in 2009. Now we're hearing about the coming of 5G.

    But 5G is a much bigger leap than before. 5G, of course, is much faster than 4G in the real world and a 5G phone in a 5G city will enjoy Internet speeds between 9 and 20 times as fast. The arrival of 5G also means enormous leaps forward in capacity－so much that every cell-phone plan will offer cheap, truly unlimited Internet access. "The consequences of that are huge," says Sherif Hanna, Qualcomm's director of 5G marketing. For example, apps will no longer degrade (降低) your video quality or postpone downloading when you're out of Wi-Fi range. In fact, you'll probably prefer to do your downloads when you're on cellular (使用流量) because 5G will be much faster than whatever service you've got at home or work.

    "However, not everyone is excited by the 5G development. The new standard gets its speed partly by using existing transmission(传输) frequencies more efficiently and partly by using the millimeter wave range. That's a big, juicy line of radio frequencies that are currently underused because millimeter wave is really hard to use," Hanna says.

    These frequencies are much higher than anything we've used for the cellular, which means they can offer unbelievable speed－but at the cost of range. Millimeter wave cellular towers have to be about 500 feet apart. Cell carriers not only will have to upgrade all their cell transceivers (called small cells) but will install(安装) a lot more of them as well.

    That's why the millimeter wave flavor of 5G, the superfast coverage, will be available only in densely populated cities such as New York and San Francisco. In suburban and rural areas, 5G will bring a speedup of "only" nine times faster.