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    This month, Germany's transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, proposed the first set of rules for autonomous vehicles(自主驾驶车辆). They would define the driver's role in such cars and govern how such cars perform in crashes where lives might be lost.

    The proposal attempts to deal with what some call the “death valley” of autonomous vehicles: the grey area between semi-autonomous and fully driverless cars that could delay the driverless future.

    Dobrindt wants three things: that a car always chooses property(财产) damage over personal injury; that it never distinguishes between humans based on age or race; and that if a human removes his or her hands from the driving wheel — to check email, say — the car's maker is responsible if there is a crash.

    “The change to the road traffic law will permit fully automatic driving,” says Dobrindt. It will put fully driverless cars on an equal legal footing to human drivers, he says.

    Who is responsible for the operation of such vehicles is not clear among car makers, consumers and lawyers. “The liability(法律责任) issue is the biggest one of them all,” says Natasha Merat at the University of Leeds, UK.

    An assumption behind UK insurance for driverless cars, introduced earlier this year, insists that a human “ be watchful and monitoring the road” at every moment.

    But that is not what many people have in mind when thinking of driverless cars. “When you say ‘driverless cars', people expect driverless cars.”Merat says. “You know — no driver.”

    Because of the confusion, Merat thinks some car makers will wait until vehicles can be fully automated without operation.

    Driverless cars may end up being a form of public transport rather than vehicles you own, says Ryan Calo at Stanford University, California. That is happening in the UK and Singapore, where government-provided driverless vehicles are being launched.

    That would go down poorly in the US, however. “The idea that the government would take over driverless cars and treat them as a public good would get absolutely nowhere here,” says Calo.

Does Fame Drive You Crazy?

    Although being famous might sound like a dream come true, today's star, feeling like zoo animals, face pressures that few of us can imagine. They are at the center of much of the world's attention. Paparazzi (狗仔队) camp outside their homes, cameras ready. Tabloids (小报) publish thrilling stories about their personal lives. Just imagine not being able to do anything without being photographed or interrupted for a signature!

    According to psychologist Christina Villareal, celebrities — famous people — worry constantly about their public appearance. Eventually, they start to lose track of who they really are, seeing themselves the way their fans imagine them, not as the people they were before everyone knew their names. “Over time,” Villareal says, “they feel separated and alone.”

    The phenomenon of tracking celebrities has been around for ages. In the 4th century B.C., painters followed Alexander the Great into battle, hoping to picture his victories for his admirers. When Charles Dickens visited America in the 19th century, his sold-out readings attracted thousands of fans, leading him to complain (抱怨) about his lack of privacy. Tabloids of the 1920s and 1930s ran articles about film-stars in much the same way that modern tabloids and websites do.

    Being a public figure today, however, is a lot more difficult than it used to be. Superstars cannot move about without worrying about photographers with modern cameras. When they say something silly or do something ridiculous, there is always the Internet to spread the news in minutes and keep their “story” alive forever.

    If fame is so troublesome, why aren't all celebrities running away from it? The answer is there are still ways to deal with it. Some stars stay calm by surrounding themselves with trusted friends and family or by escaping to remote places away from big cities. They focus not on how famous they are but on what they love to do or whatever made them famous in the first place.

    Sometimes a few celebrities can get a little justice. Still, even stars who enjoy full justice often complain about how hard their lives are. They are tired of being famous already.

    When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she fought to find a place to sleep on the street. But she beat these terrible setbacks（挫折） to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry （录入）into Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story”.

    Liz Murray, a 22-year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up with two drug-addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just l5 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died. She decided to do something about it.

    Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. “What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, and by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,” she wrote in her book Breaking Night.

    She admitted that she used envy （妒忌）to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that “next to nothing could hold me down”. She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. “I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time. ”

    Liz wants moviegoers（常看电影的人） to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.

    The fried foods, salty snacks and meat are major foods of the Western diet, which account for about 30 percent of heart attack risk across the world. Meanwhile, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, the so called "Prudent" diet, can lower the risk of heart attack, according to a study.

    The research which looked at dietary habits in 52 countries, found people who ate a Western diet had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack, compared to those who ate little or no fried foods and meat. Those who followed a "Prudent" diet had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack, compared to those who eat little fruits and vegetables.

    The authors also looked at an "Oriental" diet, rich in tofu, soy and other sauces (酱类), and found it did not increase or decrease the risk of a heart attack.

    Previous studies have reached similar conclusions about the "Prudent" and Western diet in the United States and Europe, but did not include the Oriental pattern of eating. While some food of the Oriental diet may protect against heart trouble, the higher sodium (钠)content of sauces counter(抵消) that benefit.

    "This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in Western countries exist in different regions of the world, "a professor of medicine at McMaster University said.

    Canadian researchers analyzed risk factors in food choices and the risk of heart attack in about 16, 000 people in 52 countries. Almost 6, 000 people had heart attacks, while the rest had no heart disease.

    Forests are always losers at the Olympics, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

    For the winter games in PyeongChang, South Korea, virgin forest was destroyed on Mount Gariwang to accommodate ski runs. For the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a ski run is set to wipe out part of the Songshan National Nature Reserve And let's not forget the 240 acres of Atlantic Forest that were leveled for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro to make way for a golf course.

    For the upcoming Tokyo games, environmental and human rights advocates have been raising alarms about the use of tropical wood to build the New National Stadium. Activists have fought against such environmental destruction. The damage is often permanent, threatens endangered plants and animals and, in some cases, causes conflicts with native people But frequently the country's organizing committee, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have found ways to make it reasonable—despite a paragraph in the Olympic Charter that states that the IOC's role is to "encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues."

    As it stands now. the IOC has little authority over a city's local organizing committee, which finally plans the event, Chappelet, professor of public management at the University of Lausanne, told Earther. "Even if the IOC is dissatisfied with the way host cities have prepared for the games, they have no built-in systems to supervise (监督) them so that they strictly follow the Olympic Charter. The only thing they can do if they're not happy is to withdraw the right to organize the game. But the IOC could include more enforcement (执行) systems into the contract (合同) they make with the host city, he added. That contract must be signed and obeyed by everyone. Those who break it could be fined.

    Boykoff, the author of several books on the Olympics, suggested a similar solution. "The IOC could insist that host cities prioritize their ecological promises, but instead they look the other way, time and time again," he said.

    Tiredness, coughing, a runny nose and a sore throat—among all sicknesses there is probably none more common than the flu (流感), which we all get now and then. However, bird flu is a completely different story.

    In 2003, the H5N1 bird flu swept across 15 countries, including China, with sufferers reporting chest pain, difficulty breathing, fever and severe coughing. More than 600 people were infected, and about 60 percent died. Now, another type of bird flu hit Shanghai and three neighboring provinces, and this time the virus is called H7N9. By the afternoon of April 11, the new virus had taken nine lives out of 35 infected, according to Xinhua News Agency.

    The "H" and "N" in the virus' name refer to two kinds of proteins (蛋白质) on the surface of the virus. Any change of the numbers of the two proteins indicates a new mutation(变异). Most of the mutations only affect birds, such as chickens and pigeons, and don't normally spread to humans. But once they do, the results can be disastrous.

    "Any time an animal influenza virus crosses to humans, it is a cause for concern, " Malik Peiris, virologist (病毒学家) at the University of Hong Kong, told Nature magazine. Take the SARS epidemic (传染病) in 2003 as an example. The virus behind the disease is thought to have jumped to humans from animals. The virus was a complete "stranger" to human bodies, which hadn't developed an immunity (免疫力) against it.

    But there is something more about the new H7N9 bird flu. Unlike the H5N1 bird flu, which causes severe sickness in birds, the H7N9 has been evolving under the radar(悄悄地) since it travels between birds without causing noticeable illness. That makes it difficult to keep track of the disease.

    The good news is that there's so far no sign that the virus is spreading from person to person. But since there is no vaccine (疫苗) for the disease yet, the World Health Organization recommends that you wash your hands after meeting with sick people and before and after you eat or prepare food, and they also suggest avoiding contact with birds or their eggs.