Having learned much about the War of Resistance against Japan, Mao Jingxin didn't like the Japanese when she was a child. “I thought they were cruel and rude,” said the 18-year-old girl from Hebei Province.

But she began to change her mind after she met some Japanese teenagers in a history museum six years ago. These fashionable high school students looked seriously at the history displays and talked to Mao in a friendly way. “I found that they are not bad as I thought,” she said.

Like Mao, many Chinese teenagers' are caught up in this confusion. A survey by 21st Century Teens shows about 51 per cent of Chinese teenagers say they dislike Japan. But most of them still want to have a Japanese friend. Also, Japan lies third on their list of Asian countries that they want to visit, following Singapore and South Korea.

Teens did a survey just before the 60th anniversary of the victory day of the War of Resistance against Japan, which fell on September 3. The survey aimed to encourage understanding and communication between young Chinese and Japanese. Teens also wanted to understand Chinese teenagers' attitudes towards Japan, and how much they actually know about the country.

    As Teens found, more than 60 per cent of Chinese teenagers learn about Japan through the media or books. Only 16 per cent have ever met a Japanese person.

     “Most of my friends hate Japan for what it did to China during World War II. But people should not live in hatred. I think the best way to figure it out is to have contact with the Japanese people myself,” Zhang Yuyua n, a Senior 2 girl, told us in the survey.

“Japan has done wrong to Asian countries including China and it has caused pain to everyone,” said Hikaru, a 17-year-old girl in Kawasaki (川崎市). Having visited China four times and learned much, she understands the importance of communication between the two peoples. She plans to join in an exchange programme with Chinese youth. “Welcome to Japan, my Chinese friends!” She says it with a smile.

    As an expert on the science of sleep and sleep disorders, Michael Twery believes “People have good understanding about the necessity of sleeping 7-8 hours in bed. But they undervalue the function of napping in day.”

    For example, many Americans do nap. But one-third of adults in the US are also frequently tired. Someone who naps as a way of paying off a sleep debt may not experience the same improvements from napping as a healthy, well-rested person would.

    Also, many people may not want to admit that they take a nap. That only children, the very old, sick or lazy people nap is a common opinion. In fact, Americans sometimes do very strange things. For those who claim they only sleep five hours a night, they may think they are somehow stronger than the average human—superhuman, if you will.

    Luckily, many offices now offer napping rooms in many U. S. cities. While resting in the middle of the work day may seem like a luxury to Americans, napping is very much part of a normal, everyday life in other parts of the world.

China, generally speaking, is a land of nappers. Researchers recently looked at information provided by nearly 3, 000 Chinese adults, aged 65 years or older. Based on their answers, researchers put them into four groups: non-nappers (0 minutes), short nappers (less than 30 minutes), moderate nappers (30-90minutes), and extended nappers (more than 90 minutes).

    The study found that the hour-long nappers did better on the tests than those who napped for shorter and longer periods. Keep in mind, however, that these are the findings for those over the age of 65.

    Michael Twery notes that an hour long nap may be too long for young, healthy adults. “Currently, 30 minutes is enough to remove the pressure to sleep and will help us feel more awake. If we nap longer, we will get trapped into sleep inertia—a very deep sleep period.”

    The Olympic Games are well known and always receive the world's attention, but there has been another little-known Olympic event in the UK for hundreds of years. And it's an event which some say helped start the Olympic movement in this country. The Cotswold Olimpicks take place every year on a Friday in spring. They are held in a village in England known as the Cotswold. It isn't clear when the first event took place but some say it was as early as 1612.

    The Cotswold Olimpicks were the idea of a lawyer called Robert Dover but no one knows exactly why he organized the games. Some people say he wanted to encourage people to support their king and country. Another explanation is that Dover was keen (渴望的) to bring people together, in particular the rich and poor from the local community. Whatever the reason, the yearly games quickly became popular. People competed in familiar activities such as horse-racing, running, jumping, and wrestling; famous people of the time attended it and poets wrote about the celebrations. It is even said that Shakespeare mentioned the Cotswold Olimpicks in The Merry Wives of Windsor, though the play may have been written some time before the first games.

    As the Cotswold Olimpicks grew in popularity, a group of people known as the Puritans(清教徒) started to object to them for religious reasons, saying they encouraged bad behaviour. The games came to an end at the start of the English Civil War but in 1660 they were re-introduced. Over time they became more and more popular and there are records of 30, 000 people attending in one year. However, the games also attracted people who were more interested in the celebrations than the sporting events. Finally, they came to an end once again in 1852. However, this was not the end of the Cotswold Olimpicks. They were re-introduced again in 1966 and have since been recognized by the British Olympic Committee. Out of respect to their history, the modem games are watched over by a man dressed as Sir Robert Dover, riding on horseback and accompanied by a representative of King James I. Unlike the real Olympic Games, the Cotswold Olimpicks has only about two hours and they are followed by celebrations in the village.

    Then the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?”

    “It's all right,”said Poole,” Open the door.”

    The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up/The whole of the servants, men and women, stood crowded together like a flock of sheep .At the sight of Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into crying hysterically but softly; and the cook, crying out” Bless God! It's Mr. Utterson,” ran forward as if to take him in her arms.” What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer impatiently.” Very irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased.”

    “They're all afraid,” said Poole.

    Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted her voice and now wept loudly.

    Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted her voice and now wept loudly.

    “I told your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a violent accent that proved his own anxiety; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her mourning, they had all started and turned towards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation.” And now,” continued the servant, addressing the knife-boy,” reach me a candle, and we'll get this through hands at once.” And then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow him, and led the way to the back garden.

    “Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I want you to hear, and I don't want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask you in, don't go.”

    Mr. Utterson's nerves gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance; but he recollected his courage and followed the servant to the foot of the stair. Here Poole signed to him to stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting down the candle and making a great and obvious call on his determination, went up the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.

    “Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,”he called; and even as he did so,once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.

    A voice answered from within:” Tell him I cannot see anyone,” it said complainingly.

    “Thank you,sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumph（胜利）in his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and into the great kitchen.

    “Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “Was that my master's voice?”

    “It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look.

    “Changed? Well, yes, I think so,”said the servant, “Have I been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir; master's killed; he was killed eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who's in there instead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson!”

    “This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale, my man,” said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger,” Suppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been--well, murdered what could cause the murderer to stay ? That won't hold water; it is not reasonable.”

    “Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I'll do it yet,” said Poole. “All this last week（you must know）him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine . It was sometimes his way--the master's, that is --to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We've had nothing else his week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be taken in secretly when nobody was looking .Well, sir, every day, and twice and there times in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever, for.”

Prague VS Vienna: Which One to Visit?

    Prague and Vienna are both wonderful and exciting cities with modern cosmopolitanism and ancient history and culture. But if you've got a European vacation planned and are trying to decide which one of these amazing cities to visit, it can be daunting(困难)for sure.

    Sightseeing

    While both cities are rich in sightseeing adventures, Prague is definitely more beautiful as a city. You can walk along the Danube River for breathtaking views, sit in one of the many cafes that dot the urban landscape, and breathe in the amazing architecture  both old and modern that makes up this Central European metropolis(都市).Vienna is a hotbed of history, home to such great sites such as The Hofburg, Schonbrunn Palace and Gardens, and St. Stephen' S Cathedral.

    Shopping

    You most likely didn't travel all the way to Europe just to go shopping. But, if you happen to be a shopaholic, Vienna is definitely better. But be warned: fine goods you buy in Vienna will sometimes be three times more expensive than what they are in the United States or Canada.

    Cuisine

    When it comes to great dining, both cities are equally fascinating. Austrians are known for their love of sweets and pastries(糕点), which is reflected in the many bakeries, cafés, and restaurants scattered around Vienna. Some restaurants in either city offer local cuisine, though you're more likely to be eating a combination of Western European or even Americanized food. Bear in mind that Prague(being that it is in Central Europe)will be far less pricey than Vienna.

    Culture

    What do you hope to see on your trip? Palaces? Medieval Cathedrals? The Opera? How about museums? If you do happen to visit both cities, you'll find that culture equally as enriching. However, Vienna has more world—class museums which display the rich history of the area.

    Microsoft announced this week that its facial-recognition system is now more accurate in identifying people of color, touting (吹嘘)its progress at tackling one of the technology's biggest biases (偏见).

    But critics, citing Microsoft's work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, quickly seized on how that improved technology might be used. The agency contracts with Microsoft for cloud-computing tools that the tech giant says is largely limited to office work but can also include face recognition.

    Columbia University professor Alondra Nelson tweeted, "We must stop confusing 'inclusion' in more 'diverse' surveillance (监管)systems with justice and equality."

    Facial-recognition systems more often misidentify people of color because of a long-running data problem: The massive sets of facial images they train on skew heavily toward white men. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study this year of the face-recognition systems designed by Microsoft, IBM and the China-based Face++ found that facial-recognition systems consistently giving the wrong gender for famous women of color including Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama and Shirley Chisholm, the first black female member of Congress.

    The companies have responded in recent months by pouring many more photos into the mix, hoping to train the systems to better tell the differences among more than just white faces. IBM said Wednesday it used 1 million facial images, taken from the photo-sharing site Flickr, to build the "world's largest facial data-set" which it will release publicly for other companies to use.

    IBM and Microsoft say that allowed its systems to recognize gender and skin tone with much more precision. Microsoft said its improved system reduced the error rates for darker-skinned men and women by "up to 20 times," and reduced error rates for all women by nine times.

    Those improvements were heralded(宣布)by some for taking aim at the prejudices in a rapidly spreading technology, including potentially reducing the kinds of false positives that could lead police officers misidentify a criminal suspect.

    But others suggested that the technology's increasing accuracy could also make it more marketable. The system should be accurate, "but that's just the beginning, not the end, of their ethical obligation," said David Robinson, managing director of the think tank Upturn.

    At the center of that debate is Microsoft, whose multimillion-dollar contracts with ICE came under fire amid the agency's separation of migrant parents and children at the Mexican border.

    In an open letter to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella urging the company to cancel that contract, Microsoft workers pointed to a company blog post in January that said Azure Government would help ICE "accelerate recognition and identification." "We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits," the letter said.

    A Microsoft spokesman, pointing to a statement last week from Nadella, said the company's "current cloud engagement" with ICE supports relatively anodyne(温和的)office work such as "mail, calendar, massaging and document management workloads." The company said in a statement that its facial-recognition improvements are "part of our going work to address the industry-wide and societal issues on bias."

    Criticism of face recognition will probably expand as the technology finds its way into more arenas, including airports, stores and schools. The Orlando police department said this week that it would not renew its use of Amazon. com's Rekognition system.

    Companies "have to acknowledge their moral involvement in the downstream use of their technology,"

    Robinson said. "The impulse is that they're going to put a product out there and wash their hands of the consequences. That's unacceptable."