“I see you've got a bit of water on your coat,” said the man at the petrol station. “Is it raining out there?”“No, it's pretty nice,” I replied, checking my sleeve. “Oh, right. A pony(马驹) bit me earlier.”
        As it happened, the bite was virtually painless: more the kind of small bite you might get from a naughty child. The pony responsible was queuing up for some ice cream in the car park near Haytor, and perhaps thought I'd jumped in ahead of him.
        The reason why the ponies here are naughty is that Haytor is a tourist-heavy area and tourists are constantly feeding the ponies foods, despite sighs asking them not to. By feeding the ponies, tourists increase the risk of them getting hit by a car, and make them harder to gather during the area's annual pony drift(迁移).
        The purpose of a pony drift is to gather them up so their health can be checked, the baby ones can be stooped from feeding on their mother's milk, and those who've gone beyond their limited area can be returned to their correct area. Some of them are also later sold, in order to limit the number of ponies according to the rules set by Natural England.
        Three weeks ago, I witnessed a small near-disaster a few mils west of here. While walking, I noticed a pony roll over on his back.       “Hello!” I said to him, assuming he was j  ust rolling for fun, but he was very still and, as I got closer, I saw him kicking his legs in the air and breathing heavily. I began to properly worry about him. Fortunately, I managed to get in touch with a Dartmoor's Livestock Protection officer and send her a photo. The officer immediately sent a local farmer out to check on the pony. The pony had actually been trapped between two rocks. The farmer freed him, and he began to run happily around again.
      Dartmoor has 1,000 or so ponies, who play a critical role in creating the diversity of species in this area. Many people are working hard to preserve these ponies, and trying to come up with plans to find a sustainable(可持续的) future for one of Dartmoor's most financially-troubled elements.

    Does the future of filmmaking lie in virtual reality (VR) films?

    An ambitious team led by Yale senior Celine Tien might hold the answer to that question.

    Tien produced,directed and acted in Pippa's Pan,which she says is “one of the world's first live-action VR films.”The film,which was completed in April,mixes live action with VR sections.Some of the characters were created via animation（动画）and other techniques that distinguish the film from 360° VR videos like the ones frequently seen on YouTube.

    “360° VR videos are stagnant,which means you don't move with them and see a 360° view of whatever they're filming.”Tien explained.“What we're doing is immersive（沉浸式的）VR.When you put on the goggles (a kind of special glasses) you can physic.ally walk around in the space,pick up objects and engage with the environment.It's a huge difference.”

    The immersive VR film experience is different for everyone who interacts with the medium,but that doesn't mean the film's ending will change for each viewer.

    The film stars two Chinese-speaking actors."It's a love story about a woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease who is trying to bring back memories of her husband,"Tien said.

    The film has already been recognized by the VR industry.After handing in a short demo to the AT&T Developer Summit Conference,Tien and her team were invited to Las Vegas in January,where they came in third place.

    If you're dying to see the film already,your choices area bit limited: Pippa's Pan can't be seen in movie theaters unless they happen to have VR goggles available.According to Tien,many theaters in China will soon have the ability,which makes sense considering China is the film's target market.

    Pippa's Pan will be released in three languages: Chinese,English and Korean.“It can get spread in different ways: at film festivals with VR set ups and through HTC or Oculus headset stores,”Tien says.“If you have VR goggles you can download it and experience it yourself.We will also cooperate with movie theaters that have VR set ups.”

    An 8-year-old southeast Kansas girl is being praised for her quick, calm thinking. She grabbed the steering wheel(方向盘) and drove the family's SUV when her mother fell unconscious on their highway ride to school.

    Abby Porter and her mom, Shelly, were heading for her school in Riverton when Shelly had a medical emergency. She passed out(昏倒) behind the wheel.

    Abby is a second-grader whose father sometimes lets her drive their tractor. With her mother falling down heavily, Abby leaned over and took the wheel. At some point, Abby even successfully performed a U-turn on the four-lane highway, because she was going home to her daddy, according to Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont.

    "That was at 8:37 in the morning, and there was a lot of traffic," Delmont said. Officer Jimmy Hamilton noticed the SUV going about 20 mph and weaving a bit between the two lanes. He suspected someone was driving under the influence. As he got closer, he noticed the woman fell over in the driver's seat and saw Abby at the wheel.

    Hamilton tried to get in front of Abby's car to slow her down, but she kept switching lanes to avoid bumping into his car. Hamilton got alongside her and told Abby to stop the vehicle, but she didn't know how. He then told her she needed to bump into him to stop the car, but Abby said she didn't want to because she was afraid. He convinced Abby bumping into his car was OK.

    "I never saw her cry," Hamilton said. "From just the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, you could tell she was scared. But she stayed with it."

    Emergency crews got Abby's mother to the hospital, but Delmont said he didn't know what caused her to lose consciousness.

    The police department in Galena, a town of about 3,000 residents about 150 miles south of Kansas City, planned to present Abby with a plaque(匾牌) for "outstanding bravery in a life-threatening situation".

    In 1800, only three percent of the world's population lived in cities. Only one city — Beijing — had a population of over a million. Most people lived in rural areas, and never saw a city in their lives. In 1900, just a hundred years later, roughly 150 million people lived in cities, and the world's ten largest cities all had populations exceeding one million. By 2000, the number of city dwellers exceeded three billion; and in 2008, the world's population crossed a tipping point — more than half of the people on Earth lived in cities. By 2050, that could increase to over two-thirds. Clearly, humans have become an urban species.

    In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many people viewed cities negatively — crowded, dirty environments full of disease and crime. They feared that as cities got bigger, living conditions would worsen. In recent decades, however, attitudes have changed. Many experts now think urbanization (城市化) is good news, offering solutions to the problems of Earth's growing population.

    Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, author of The Victory of the Cir, is one such person. Glaeser argues that cities are very productive because "the absence of space between people" reduces the cost of transporting goods, people, and ideas. While the flow of goods has always been important to cities, what is most important today is the flow of ideas. Successful cities enable people to learn from each other easily, and attract and reward smart people with higher wages.

    Another urbanization supporter is environmentalist Stewart Brand. Brand believes cities help the environment because they allow haft of the world's population to live on about four percent of the land. This leaves more space for open country, such as farmland. City dwellers also have less impact per person on the environment than people in the countryside. Their roads, sewers, and power lines need fewer resources to build and operate. City apartments require less energy to heat, cool, and light. Most importantly, people in cities drive less so they produce fewer greenhouse gases per person.

    So it's a mistake to see urbanization as evil; it's a natural part of development  The challenge is how to manage the growth.

    The term "crocodile tears" refers to insincere sadness. This term has an etymology dating back several centuries. As early as the fourth century, crocodile tears are referenced in the literature with the meaning of insincere sorrow. It is said that crocodiles weep while eating their hunted animals because they are sad; however, this sadness is not honest.

    The term crocodile tears became widely popular after it was documented in a fifteenth-century book titled The Voyage and Travel of Sir John Mandeville, Knight. A passage from the book reads: "These crocodiles kill men and they eat them weeping."

    As you may already know, crocodilians(鳄目动物) likely feel bad about little—especially feeding. However, the assumption of the crocodile-tears metaphor may be true. In a 2007 paper published in BioScience titled "Crocodile Tears: And they eat them weeping", researchers observed 7 crocodilians in cages during feeding time at a reserve (4 caimans and 3 American alligators). The researchers observed the crocodilians outside of water at feeding stations to better find out whether tearing developed.

    Five of the 7 crocodilians developed something like tears in their eyes before, during or after feeding. The researchers suggest that these crocodile tears occur because a crocodilian hisses (发出嘶嘶声) while it eats, and this hissing forces air through the spaces in the bone behind the nose and out the eye, in the process picking up nasolacrimal secretions (鼻泪管分泌物.)

    In humans, crocodile tears is a medical condition that causes a person to tear up while eating. Crocodile tears typically occur because of a temporary loss of facial control due to damage of the facial nerve. Specifically, when the facial nerve grows again, it does so incorrectly thus resulting in tears during chewing food.

On May 29,2021,a documentary film called One Day When We Were Younginvited 16 alumni(校友)—all famous scholars—{#blank#}1{#/blank#}(share) their stories about the National Southwest Associated University. It {#blank#}2{#/blank#}(bear) when Japan invaded northern China in 1937. To save their educational and intellectual heritage {#blank#}3{#/blank#} the Japanese invasion, the remaining students and faculty at Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University first retreated to Changsha in Hunan Province, and {#blank#}4{#/blank#}(late) headed south toward Kunming in Yunnan Province. The three universities joined together as the National Southwest Associated University, {#blank#}5{#/blank#} was also known as Xinan Lianda in Chinese.

Xinan Lianda had 5 colleges and 26 departments, with 179 professors. Students there could have a higher education {#blank#}6{#/blank#}(base) in large part on the American model. It sought to provide general education and {#blank#}7{#/blank#}(academy) freedom.

Though Xinan Lianda is {#blank#}8{#/blank#}(physical) gone and each school moved back to its original home in 1946, the experience of studying there had {#blank#}9{#/blank#} everlasting impact on students.

"The National Southwest Associated University set a good example for contemporary Chinese universities, and there are many treasured {#blank#}10{#/blank#}(legacy) for us to inherit, to cherish, and to share," Li Zhong, vice-president of the university's Beijing alumni association, told the Global Times.