Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably accomplish what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

    My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren't written until the final threat.

    I've been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working toward her master's degree in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student(技校学生). They're called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.

    When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”, I was shocked. “Hey, he's a good kid,” I wanted to say. “And smart, really.”

    I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don't often make school honor rolls(光荣榜).

    But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who labor in clean shirts in offices don't have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was estimated at $800. “Hey, I can fix it,” said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.

    My son ,with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts from a junkyard, and ability from vo-tech classes. The lost was $25 instead of $800.

    Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbors and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

    These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

    I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don't need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

    My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.

    Danielle Steel, America's sweetheart, is one of the hardest working women in the book business. Unlike other productive authors who write one book at a time, she can work on up to five. Her research before writing takes at least three years. Once she has fully studied her subjects, ready to dive into the book, she can spend twenty hours nonstop at her desk.

    Danielle Steel comes from New York and was sent to France for her education. After graduation, she worked in the public relations and advertising industries. Later she started a job as a writer which she was best fit for. Her achievements are unbelievable: 390 million copies of books in print, nearly fifty New York Times best-selling novels, and a series of "Max and Martha" picture books for children to help them deal with the real-life problems of death, new babies and new schools. Her 1998 book about the death of her work shot to the top of the New York Times best-selling list as soon as it came out. Twenty-eight of her books had been made into films. She is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for one of her books being the Times best-seller for 381 weeks straight.

    Not satisfied with a big house, a loving family, and a view of the Golden GateBridge, Danielle Steel considers her readers to be the most important resource and has kept in touch with them by e-mail. While she is often compared to the heroines of her own invention, her life is undoubtedly much quieter. But, if she does have anything in common with them, it is her strength of will and her inimitable (独特的) style. There is only one Danielle Steel.

    In France, franglais（英式法语）was seen as a national threat. Just as we took in thousands of French words in the Middle Ages, French speakers and writers today are taking in thousands of English and American expressions. By 1994, so many English words had made their way to French that the French government passed a law forbidding the use of English words where good French words existed.

    But the latest edition of the Academy francaise dictionary did admit about 6,000 new words to the French language, including, for the first time, a number of franglais words and expressions.

    However, this sort of thing is not just limited to traditional English – French Competition. Norway and Brazil have recently taken similar measures to keep English out.

    As English spreads around the globe, it has developed rich varieties. English has been spoken in Singapore since the early 19^th century, but after independence from Britain, Singapore went a step further and English was made the official language of business and government. But the day −to–day English that the people of Singapore actually speak is a far cry from the official English that the government wants them to learn. It has become an expressive dialect called “Singlish”, full of vocabulary and grammar borrowed from the Singapores' native languages.

    And this may be the irony（讽刺）of the global spread of English. The more widely it's spoken, the more it may change into local dialects, which are not easily intelligible. People will make English their own and, in doing so, will make it something else. This has happened before to Latin which broke into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. But English has always welcomed variety and change, and it still does.

    Scientists in Argentina have created the world's first cow with two human genes that will enable it to produce human-like milk.

    Genetic engineering was used to introduce the "mothers' milk" genes into the animal before birth, according to the National Institute of Agribusiness Technology in Buenos Aires.

    As an adult, the cloned cow "will produce milk that is similar to that of humans", which will prove "a development of great importance for the nutrition of infants(婴儿)", said the institute. "The cloned cow, named Rosita ISA, is the first in the world with two human genes that contain the proteins present in human milk," said the statement.

    In April, scientists in China published details of research showing that they had created dairy cows which produced milk containing proteins found in human breast milk. But the Argentine team said the Chinese only introduced one human gene, while their research involved two, meaning the milk will more closely resemble that of humans.

    “Our goal was to raise the nutrition value of cows' milk by adding two human genes, which do good to the immune system of infants,” said Adrian Mutto, from the National University of San Martin which worked with the institute.

    Cristina Kirchner, President of Argentina, said that the scientific institute made all Argentines proud. She also said that she had refused the "honor" of having the cow named after her. "They came to tell me that the name is Cristina, but what woman would like to have a cow named after her? It appeared to me to be more proper to call it Rosita.”

    People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

    Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

    "We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth."

    According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.

    The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

    It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."

    In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

Hot Technology Products at CES 2020

The consumer electronics show, or CES, presents new technology developments annually. Here are some latest products launched at CES 2020.

The Sero TV

Samsung introduced a TV that can be used to watch video designed for a smartphone. The Sero TV does this by turning itself from the normal TV position to an upright position that looks like the shape of a phone. The V can connect to mobile devices to play video directly from the phone.

Smart waste can

A company called TOWNEW presented; waste can designed for the home that does a lot of the dirty work on its own. When the can is full, the user touches a button to activate the machine's smart abilities. The device then completely closes off the waste bag inside, puts a new one in place, all by itself, and raises its top so the user can pick up and throw away the bag.

Invisible car hood(引擎盖)

Automobile industry company Continental showed off a new technology that seems to make the front end of a vehicle disappear. The technology, called "Transparent Hood," aims to make driving safer and easier. Cameras provide video of the area underneath the vehicle, permitting the driver to see objects and road conditions that might present danger.

Wearable air purifier

A company called Aō Air introduced a wearable air purifier. Designed to be a high-tech face covering to block pollution, the device pulls air through a filtration(过滤)system and then uses fans to create a small area of clean air at its front, allowing the air to be purified-without the need for a solid container.