China's largest search engine Baidu has said it will make its latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology accessible to developers and businesses as part of the company's latest move into AI, big data and cloud computing.

    AI solution "Tianzhi" was launched at a cloud-computing summit held in Beijing Wednesday. It includes services in three fields: sensing technology, such as image and voice processing, machine learning, and deep learning, an advanced form of machine learning, said Zhang Yaqin, CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company, at the summit.

    Developers can access facial or voice recognition, algorithms(演算法) for data analysis and projections, and deep learning applications, Zhang said, adding that the technology could help users innovate in their sectors.

    "With more devices connected to the cloud, enterprises will use cloud computing and AI more frequently," said Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, "Open AI technology can play a bigger role."

    The company also revealed a plan to invest 10 billion yuan (1.45 billion U.S. dollars) in cloud computing in the next five years and establish an innovation center, which will serve 10 million enterprises.

    Recent summer temperatures in parts of Australia were high enough to melt asphalt. As global warming speeds up the heat and climatic events increase, many plants may be unable to cope. But at least one species of eucalyptus tree can resist extreme heat by continuing to “sweat” when other essential processes stop, a new study finds.

    As plants change sunlight into food, or photosynthesize (光合作用), they absorb carbon dioxide through pores on their leaves. These pores also release water via transpiration(蒸腾), which circulates nutrients through the plant and helps cool it by evaporation(蒸发). But exceptionally high temperatures are known to greatly reduce photosynthesis—and most existing plant models suggest this should also decrease transpiration, leaving trees in danger of fatally overheating. Because it is difficult for scientists to control and vary trees' conditions in their natural environment, little is known about how individual species handle this situation.

    Ecologist John Drake of the S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry and his colleagues grew a dozen Parramatta red gum (Eucalyptus parramattensis) trees in large, climate-controlled plastic pods that separated the trees from the surrounding forest for a year in Richmond, Australia. Six of the trees were grown at surrounding air temperatures and six at temperatures three degrees Celsius higher. The researchers withheld (扣留) water from the surface soil of all 12 trees for a month to imitate a mild dry spell, then induced a four-day “extreme” heat wave: They raised the maximum temperatures in half of the pods（three with surrounding temperatures and three of the warmer ones）— to 44 degrees ℃.

    Photosynthesis ground to a near halt in the trees facing the artificial heat wave. But to the researchers' surprise, these trees continued to transpire at close-to-normal levels, effectively cooling themselves and their surroundings. The trees grown in warmer conditions coped just as well as the others, and photosynthesis rates bounced back to normal after the heat wave passed, Drake and his colleagues reported online in Global Change Biology.

    The researchers think the Parramatta red gums were able to effectively sweat — even without photosynthesis — because they are particularly good at tapping into water deep in the soil. But if a heat wave and a severe drought (干旱) were to hit at the same time and the groundwater was exhausted, the trees may not be so lucky, Drake says.

    Other scientists call the finding encouraging. “It's definitely good news,” says Trevor Keenan, an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who was not part of the study. “It would be very interesting to know how this translates to other species,” he adds. Drake hopes to conduct similar experiments with trees common in North America.

    The values of artistic works, according to cultural relativism（相对主义）, are simply reflections of local social and economic conditions. Such a view, however, fails to explain the ability of some works of art to excite the human mind across cultures and through centuries.

    History has witnessed the endless productions of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world. It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert halls, as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries. Unique works of this kinds are different from today's popular art, even if they began as works of popular art. They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

    In a 1757 essay, the philosopher David Hume argued that because “the general principles of taste are uniform（不变的）in human nature,” the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent. He observed that Homer was still admired after two thousand years. Works of this type, he believed, spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

    Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art. For example, evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction. The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before. Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.

    I remember the day when I first learned to ride a bike. It was a frightening, yet fun experience. My granddad was the one who taught me, and he helped me when I got hurt. The first time I got on a bike, I had no idea what I was doing, and just about everything went wrong. My granddad told me to just put my feet on the pedals and start, pedaling(骑自行车). He also told me he would hold onto the back of the bike the whole time, yet he didn't.

    As soon as I started trying to balance myself, he let go. I happened to look back just then.  I was scared to death that I was going to fall and hurt myself. When I was scared, my mind went blank from pedaling, and I just wanted off. I forgot how to use the brakes(车闸) and fell right off the bike. My granddad kept encouraging me to get up and try again, and after about 15 minutes, I finally stopped crying, got up and tried again.

    As soon as I started pedaling again, my pants got caught in the chain, and I fell flat on my face and hit my nose. Since that happened, my granddad decided to call it a day and try again the next morning. The next morning I woke up bright and early, and was very eager to try to ride my bike. My nose felt better, so I wasn't that afraid of falling anymore.

    Though I knew there were a lot of difficulties on the way to mastering the skills in riding a bike, l believed I could do well with my granddad's help. After all, riding a bike was what I wanted to do eagerly.

    The surface of Venus（金星）has never seemed very hospitable. Temperatures change around 470℃（900℉）, the result of a runway greenhouse effect，and the pressure of its atmosphere, thick with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, is some 90 times that of Earth's. Lead（铅）would flow like water on Venus, and water cannot have existed in liquid form for perhaps a billion years.

    Now NASA'S Magellan spacecraft seems to have found one more horror in the nasty landscape: active volcanoes. Last week the space agency released the first detailed map of Venus and the most dramatic images ever made of its surface. The picture offer the best evidence to date that a planet once assumed dead is actually a lively pot of geological change.

    The most amazing image is of Venus's second tallest mountain, Maat Mons, which rises 8km（5 miles）. Most of the planet's many peaks, including 9.5-km-（6-mile-） high Maxwell Montes, look bright in the radar pictures Magellan takes from its orbit above the permanent could cover. That means they are strong reflectors of radar waves. But Maat Mons is dark; like the Stealth bomber, it absorbs much of the radar falling on it.

    This interesting fact, say project scientists, is a strong hint that the mountains has recently been covered with lava. Rock that sits on the surface of mountaintops appears to weather quickly in the hot，chemically reactive atmosphere, creating a soil that is rich in iron sulfide（硫化铁）• It is this mineral, the scientists believe, that can easily be seen on radar. If Maat Mons doesn't have any, it has probably been resurfaced, perhaps within the past few years.

    Such resurfacing has undoubtedly taken place in Venus lowlands: earlier images of the planet showed vast areas that are remarkably free of craters（火山坑）.That would be easy to explain on a Planet like Earth, where cratering from meteor strikes is erased by steady erosion. But while there is some evidence of wind erosion on Venus, the best explanation for the lack of cratering is periodic lava flow. Magellan has found direct evidence of such flows, including domelike upwellings and hardened streamed of rock trailing down the sides of Venusian peaks. There are also signs of other geologic activities, including dramatic faulting and several distinct incidents of mountain building. But the evidence can't indicate whether they really occurred millions of years ago. The case for active Venusian volcanoes is not yet proved, but Magellan, which is now well into its second complete survey of the planet's surface, may eventually settle the issue.

    If you are planning on travelling, there are few simple rules about how to make life easier both before and after your journey.

    First of all, always check and doublecheck departure(出发) time. It is surprising how few people really do this carefully. Once I arrived at the airport a few minutes after ten. My secretary had got the ticket for me and I thought she had said that the plane left at 10:50. When I arrived at the airport, the person at the departure desk told me that my flight was closed. Therefore, I had to wait three hours for the next one and missed an important meeting.

    The second rule is to remember that even in this age of credit cards(信用卡), it is still important to have some local money in cash(现金). Once I arrived at a place at midnight and the bank at the airport was closed. The only way to get to my hotel was by taxi but because I had no dollars, I offered to pay in pounds instead. "Listen! I only take real money!" the driver said angrily. You can image how terrible I felt at that moment.

    The third and the last rule is to find out as much as you can about the weather at your destination before you leave. I feel sorry for some of my workmates who travel in heavy suits and raincoats in May, when it is still fairly cool in London or Manchester, to places like Athens, Rome or Madrid, where it is already beginning to get quite warm during the day.