Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

    While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

    The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

    Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

    The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees.“We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.

    Rome, Paris and New York are the world's top fashion cities, all of which have produced some of the top trends, from fashionable skirts to the hottest new shoes. But have you ever wondered about the negative ideas that they have enforced?

    In April 2016, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in Britain banned an ad from Gucci that featured models dancing around and having fun, because they were all extremely skinny. Banning ads due to the models' extreme figures isn't new. The ASA banned an ad in 2015 for the same reason. In France, it has been ruled that models are to provide a doctor's no providing that they are at a healthy weight.

    So what is the healthy weight for models? Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23 less.

    People may think that being at an unhealthy weight will help them gain the benefits that the models do. This provides a standard of beauty, and therefore people who want to achieve those things may attempt to obtain them through unhealthy ways. People may think that they are overweight, due to the images of models' thin figures. They see something wrong with their bodies whether they are overweight or not. This is a key factor in a lowered body image, low self-esteem, depression and possibly even eating disorders.

    I'm not blaming the fashion industry by any means. It's not their fault that many people look up to the models and expect to live a life like theirs. I am glad that the ASA is raising its voices when discussing the growing issue of body images in the fashion industry. By banning photos and videos, speaking out against them and pushing for doctor's notes from the models, it's pushing for the ideas that the traditional fashion industry's body image demands should be changed and something more needs to be questioned.

    October 15th is the Global Hand washing Day. Activities are planned in more than 20 countries to get millions of people in the developing world to wash their hands with soap（肥皂）. For example, donators（捐献者）will give 150,000 bars of soap to schools in Ethiopia.

    Experts say people around the world wash their hands every day, but very few use soap at so-called important moments. These include after using the toilet, after cleaning a baby and before touching food.

    Global Hand washing Day is the idea of the Public-Private Partnership for Hand washing with Soap. Partners include the United Nations Children's Fund, American government agencies, the World Bank and soap makers Unlever and Procter and Gamble. The organizers say all soaps are equally effective at removing disease-causing germ（细菌）. They say the correct way to wash is to wet your hands with a small amount of water and cover them with soap. Rub it into all areas, including under the fingernails. Rub for at least twenty seconds. Then rinse well under running water. Finally, dry your hands with a clean cloth or wave them in the air.

    The Partnership for Hand washing says soap is important because it increases the time that people spend in washing hands. Soap also helps to break up the dirt that holds most of the germs. And it usually leaves a pleasant smell. The Partnership for Hand washing also says washing with soap before eating or after using the toilet could save more lives than any vaccine（疫苗）or medicine. Hand washing could also prevent the spread of other diseases. When people get germs on their hands, they can infect（传染）themselves by touching their eyes, noses or mouths. Then they can infect others.

    The World Happiness Report, a United Nations agency report, measures (估量) how happy people are, and why. Norway is the happiest place on earth—beating neighbour Denmark from the number one position.

    Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland are among the top five, while the Central African Republic came last. Western Europe and North America took up most of the places at the top of table, with the US and UK at 14th and 19th respectively.

    The World Happiness Report mainly depends on asking a simple question of more than 1,000 people every year in more than 150 countries. “Imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top,” the question asks. “The top of the ladder is the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder is the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

    The average (平均的) result is the country's score—from Norway's 7.54 to the central African Republic's 2.69. But the report also tries to explain why one country is happier than another. It looks at reasons including economic strength, social support, freedom of choice, and generosity.

    This year's report also has a text titled “restoring (恢复) American happiness”, which examines why happiness levels in the United States are falling, despite continually-increasing economic improvement. “The United States can and should raise happiness by solving American's social problems—rising inequality and distrust—rather than focusing mainly on economic growth,” the authors said.

    Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which published the report, said President Donald Trump's policies were likely to make things worse.

    Have you ever fallen for a novel and been amazed not to find it on lists of great books? Or walked around a sculpture known as a classic, struggling to see why it is famous? If so, you've probably thought about the question a psychologist, James Cutting, asked himself: How does a work of art come to be considered great?

    The direct answer is that some works of art are just great: of inner superior quality. The paintings that win prime spots in galleries, get taught in classes are the ones that have proved their artistic value over time. If you can't see they're superior, that's your problem. But some social scientists have been asking questions of it, raising the possibility that artistic canons(名作目录)are little more than old historical accidents.

    Cutting, a professor at Cornell University, wondered if a psychological pattern known as the "mere­exposure effect" played a role in deciding which paintings rise to the top of the cultural league. Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch(直觉). Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintings canonical, included in art­history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group liked the canonical ones best. Cuttings students had grown to like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more.

    Cutting believes his experiment casts light on how canons are formed. He reproduced works of impressionism today bought by five or six wealthy and influential collectors in the late 19th century. Their preferences given to certain works made them more likely to be hung in galleries and printed in collections. And the fame passed down the years. The more people were exposed to, the more they liked it, and the more they liked it, the more it appeared in books, on posters and in big exhibitions. Meanwhile, academics and critics added to their popularity. After all, it's not just the masses who tend to rate what they see more often more highly. Critics' praise is deeply mixed with publicity. "Scholars", Cutting argues, "are no different from the public in the effects of mere exposure."

    The process described by Cutting show a principle that the sociologist Duncan Watts calls "cumulative advantage": once a thing becomes popular, it will tend to become more popular still. A few years ago, Watts had a similar experience to Cutting's in another Paris museum. After queuing to see the "Mona Lisa" at the Louvre, he came away puzzled: why was it considered so superior to the three other Leonardos, to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention?

    When Watts looked into the history of "the greatest painting of all time", he discovered that, for most of its life, the "Mona Lisa" remained in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the "Mona Lisa" It was only in the 20th century that "Mona Lisa rocketed to the number­one spot. What brought it there wasn't a scholarly re­evaluation, but a theft. In 1911 a worker at the Louvre walked out of the museum with the "Mona Lisa" hidden under his coat. Parisians were shocked at the theft of a painting to which, until then, they had paid little attention. When the museum reopened, people queued to see it. From then on, the "Mona Lisa "came to represent Western culture itself.

    The intrinsic (本质的) quality of a work of art is starting to seem like its least important attribute. But perhaps it's more significant than our social scientists admit. Firstly, a work needs a certain quality to reach the top of the pile. The "Mona Lisa" may not be a worthy world champion but it was in the Louvre in the first place, and not by accident. Secondly, some objects are simply better than others. Read "Hamlet" after reading even the greatest of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and the difference may strike you as unarguable.

    A study suggests that the exposure effect doesn't work the same way on everything, and points to a different conclusion about how canons are formed. Great art and mediocrity (平庸)can get confused, even by experts. But that's why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The more were exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference.

    It was May 23, 2016. Arnot, the 32-year-old mountain guide, reached the top of Everest without the use of oxygen (O2) equipment. It was achieved after seven years, three previous attempts, and fourteen straight hours of climbing.

After 15 minutes at the top, Arnot began her descent (下坡). Eight hours later, she reached the camp at 7, 600 meters and became the first American woman-and only the seventh woman ever—to successfully reach Mount Everest without oxygen equipment.

    "There are so many reasons for her impressive achievement, especially the physical and emotional efforts that she has put forth over the years to make this happen," says the professional climber and photographer Richards, "The mental courage that it requires is something very few people have."

    Arnot didn't start climbing until she was 19 years old. Money was tight in her family, and climbing mountains never occurred in her mind. After graduating from college, Arnot was invited by her friend to climb a mountain. "It totally changed my life," says Arnot. I always know that if you want something, you can achieve it, but knowing what you want is a whole different thing," she says. "I am athletic but not competitive. After my first climbing, I knew immediately that mountains are what I want—as that is where I felt home for the first time in my life."

    After that first climb, she devoted herself to learning how to climb and move through mountain. It was during her second trip to Everest in 2009 that she first set her sights on a no-oxygen attempt. However, while hiking into Everest Base Camp that year, she hurt her leg and wasn't able to climb without oxygen. In 2013 she nearly made it to the top, but was forced to take oxygen at 8,504 meters while helping another climber.

    When Arnot finally stood at the top Everest, she called her best friend, "I reached the top and I'm not using any oxygen." Then, tears began to stream down from her eyes. So much of Arnot's life has been about pushing the limits of her abilities, and in this case, she's also pushed up against the outer limits of the human spirit.