China Daily—Last week, the Beijing municipal government released a list of 192 areas in the capital where spring blooms, including peach, magnolia, apricot and winter jasmine, can be enjoyed from March to May. The recommended spots cover an area of 22 square kilometers. Apart from admiring blooms, folklore performances, botany exhibitions and other activities will be put on. 20 travel routes for tourists looking to appreciate floral beauty in the countryside are issued in Hubei, too.

    South Korean drama Descendants of the Sun《太阳的后裔》 has collected more than 200 million views on iQiyi, the Chinese streaming website said Tuesday.

    "Descendants of the Sun", the first Korean show to premiere simultaneously in South Korea and China (中韩同步首播), is a love story between an Army captain (Song Joong-ki) and a doctor (Song Hye-kyo) who find themselves in a fictional war-torn country called Uruk, where both try to save lives.

    "The show has become the talk of the town everywhere. Some shows even had live phone conversations with viewers to discuss its popularity," a Chinese entertainment official said.

    To put things into perspective, a f ifth of South Korea's population is 10 million people. Just a little over that number tuned in to watch Descendants of the Sun.

    Enthusiastic customers snapped up(抢光) the first batch of tickets in just five minutes on Monday for the opening day of the Shanghai Disneyland park on June 16, temporarily crashing the official website.

"Within half an hour, clicks on the website (www.shanghaidisneyresort.com) reached more than 5 million. The massive volume resulted in our ticketing system temporarily malfunctioning."

    Your next ca might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now nearing the live phase. Last moth, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France, Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or before.

    Driverless cars will at first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant（统治的）are dense urban areas — precisely the spots most damaged by the automobile age. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cargo. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.

    Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That's big—the annual death toll on the world's roads is about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric. The old, otherwise they would stay at home most of the time and the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility.

    On the other hand, driverless cars will bring catastrophe. The best thing about the automobile age was that it employed tens of millions of people to make, market, insure and drive vehicles. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Carmakers are especially scared. The few cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imaging the impact on Germany, where the automotive sector is the largest industry.

    Dramatic change is coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have factored them into their long-term planning.

    A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. It has bought an epidemic of mass addiction. Let's hope we do a better job of handling the driverless car.

    Japan has long been known for both its strong traditions and being on the cutting edge of technology, and this new inn combining the classic Japanese surroundings with high-tech slippers and furniture is a perfect reflection of this.

    Nissan Motor Co. developed a system in which slippers park themselves at the entrance of the traditional inn, called “ProPilot Park Ryokan,” waiting for guests to use them upon arrival. When guests have finished using them, the slippers will drive themselves back to their original position. Each slipper features two tiny wheels, a motor, and sensors to drive it across the wooden floor.

    The same technology features in Nissan's all-battery electric Leaf car. High-tech sensors and cameras allow the vehicle to safely back into parking spaces without any input from the driver. Four cameras and 12 sensors assess the vehicle's surroundings. ProPilot Park handles the accelerator, braking and steering (转向) input when the car is parking. Drivers operate the system with the press of a button, which they must hold down the entire time. Lifting a finger off the button will result in the car stopping immediately.

    The inn, located in the resort town of Hakone, about 75 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, is currently most famous for its view of Mount Fuji. However, the new self-driving slippers, released by Nissan in March, is the unique feature of the high-tech inn.

    “The self-parking slippers are meant to raise awareness of automated driving technologies, and their potential, non-driving applications,” Nissan spokesman Nick Maxfield said in a statement.

    In addition to the slippers, office chairs, floor cushions and traditional low tables in the inn also wheel themselves back into place after use.

Drinks Have No Wings

    You may have heard that "Red Bull gives you wings". But while most people take the advertising slogan as a metaphor(隐喻), some Americans seem to have taken it very seriously.

    Benjamin Careathers had been drinking the drink for 10 years, expecting to at least feel more energetic, but nothing happened. Feeling fooled by the ad, he took the issue to court.

    In October, the Austria-based company agreed to pay $ 6.5 million (39.7 million yuan) to customers who have bought the drink since 2002. People in the US can apply for a share through energydrinksettlement.com before March 2015.

    But is the case really that ridiculous?

    Red Bull said they had done nothing wrong and they only paid the money to save the cost and trouble of legal action.

    However, the suit(诉讼) told a different story. Even though there is no evidence that Red Bull energy drinks provide more benefit for consumers than a cup of coffee, the company markets their products as a superior source of energy that costs little.

    "Such conduct means that Red Bull's advertising and marketing is not just 'puffery' (吹捧) but is misleading and therefore actionable (可诉讼的) ," the suit said.

    The company said that the drink could promote healthy joints and reduce the risk of eye diseases. However, according to the organization, the product contains a lot of sugar, which could actually lead to many health problems.

    Coca-Cola agreed to pay $ 1.2 million in compensation in July. But to fully stop the company from linking the drink to health benefit, Truth in Advertising, another non-profit organization, took the issue to court again in late October.

    False advertisements have become a common problem around the world. China changed its consumer rights last year to ban advertising companies and media from making or publishing false advertisements. Celebrities are also made responsible if they endorse (代言) false or substandard products.

    In recent years, a growing body of research has shown that our appetite and food intake are influenced by a large number of factors besides our biological need for energy, including our eating environment and our perception（感知）of the food in front of us.

    Studies have shown, for instance, that eating in front of the TV (or a similar distraction) can increase both hunger and the amount of food consumed. Even simple visual clues, like plate size and lighting, have been shown to affect portion size and consumption.

    A new study suggested that our short-term memory also may play a role in appetite. Several hours after a meal, people's hunger levels were predicted not by how much they'd eaten but rather by how much food they'd seen in front of them—in other words, how much they remembered eating.

    This disparity (新旧研究的差异）suggests the memory of our previous meal may have a bigger influence on our appetite than the actual size of the meal, says Jeffrey M. Brunstrom, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol.

    "Hunger isn't controlled individually by the physical characteristics of a recent meal. We have identified an independent role for memory for that meal," Brunstrom says. "This shows that the relationship between hunger and food intake is more complex than we thought."

    These findings echo earlier research that suggests our perception of food can sometimes trick our body's response to the food itself. In a 2011 study, for instance, people who drank the same 380-calorie milkshake on two separate occasions produced different levels of hunger-related hormones （荷尔蒙），depending on whether the shake's label said it contained 620 or 140 calories. Moreover, the participants reported feeling more full when they thought they'd consumed a higher-calorie shake.

    What does this mean for our eating habits? Although it hardly seems practical to trick ourselves into eating less, the new findings do highlight the benefits of focusing on our food and avoiding TV and multitasking while eating.

    The so-called mindful-eating strategies can fight distractions and help us control our appetite, Brunstrom says.

Let's do something in our daily life for the environment and the earth.

An English teacher has introduced a play to her class.

Characters: Benny, Jerry, Susie, Grace

Time: One Sunday afternoon.

Place: By the river near their houses.

（The four teenagers have just finished the picnic. They are tidying up.）

Benny: Wow! That was a great picnic. I'm so full that I can hardly move.

Grace: That's no excuse for not tidying up, Benny. Come over here and help me pack（包装）up the leftover food. Jerry, please? And clean up the place.

Jerry: （Speaking unhappily to himself.）How can I always get the dirty and difficult jobs? It's not fair.

（Jerry throws a bit of water on the fire. Then he picks up the ashes（灰烬）with an old newspaper and wants to throw them into the long grass.）

Susie: （Sounding surprised）What are you doing, Jerry? That's d....

Jerry: Whoop...the paper has caught fire.

Susie: And the grass…Benny, Grace, help! Help!

（Benny and Grace come over quickly. They help put out the fire completely.）

Jerry: Oh, no. Oh, no! What have I done? 

Grace: You know that we should do everything carefully, don't you? 

Jerry: （With his head in his hands.）Yes. What have I done? What have I done?