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    FLORENCE, Italy—Svetlana Cojochru feels hurt. The Moldovan has lived here seven years as a caregiver to Italian kids and the elderly, but in order to stay she's had to prove her language skills by taking a test which requires her to write a postcard to an imaginary friend and answer a fictional job ad.

    Italy is the latest Western European country trying to control a growing immigrant(移民) population by demanding language skills in exchange for work permits, or in some cases, citizenship.

    Some immigrant advocates worry that as hard financial times make it more difficult for natives to keep jobs, such measures will become more a vehicle for intolerance than integration(融合). Others say it's only natural that newcomers learn the language of their host nation, seeing it as a condition to ensure they can contribute to society.

    Other European countries laid down a similar requirement for immigrants, and some terms are even tougher. The governments argue that this will help foreigners better join the society and promote understanding across cultures.

    Italy, which has a much weaker tradition of immigration, has witnessed a sharp increase in immigration in recent years. In 1990, immigrants numbered some 1.14 million out of Italy's then 56.7 million people, or about 2 percent. At the start of this year, foreigners living in Italy amounted to 4.56 million of a total population of 60.6 million, or 7.5 percent, with immigrants' children accounting for an even larger percentage of births in Italy.

    Cojochru, the Moldovan caregiver, hoped obtaining permanent residence(居住权) would help her bring her two children to Italy; they live with her sister in Moldova, where salaries are among the lowest in Europe. She was skeptical that the language requirement would encourage integration.

    Italians always “see me as a foreigner,” an outsider, even though she's stayed in the country for years and can speak the local language fluently, she said.

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."

    For years now, I've been wanting to sell our house, the place where my husband and I raised our children. But to me, this house is much more than just a building.

    In the front room, there's a wall that has hundreds of pencil lines, marking the progress of my children's growth. Every growth stage is marked in grey, with each child's name and the date when they were measured. Most people I know have been featured on a wall like this, or at least had a wall like it in their home.

    Of all the objects and memories, it is this thing in a home that is the hardest to leave behind. Friends I know have returned home after work only to discover their wall of heights has been freshly painted over. A new paint job wouldn't normally be greeted by tears, but erasing that evidence of motherhood hurts more than it should. Our children grow in so many ways, but the wall is the physical evidence of their progress, right there for everyone to see.

    Over the years, I've talked about how much I would hate leaving that wall behind when I moved, even though the last marks were made 10 years ago when my children stopped growing.

    So one day, while I was at work, my children decided to do something about it. They hired Jacquie Manning, a professional photographer. She came to our house, and over several hours, took photos of the hundreds of drawings and lines, little grey fingerprints and old marks. Somehow, she managed to photograph all those years of memories perfectly. Afterwards, she put all the photos together into one image, changing them into a beautiful history of my family.

    Three weeks later, my children's wonderful gift made its way to me — a life-size photo of the pencil lines and fingerprints that represents an entire lifetime of love and growth.

    Songs that make our hearts happy can make them stronger too, US researchers reported on Tuesday.

    They found that when people listened to their favorite music, their blood vessels (血管) dilated in much the same way as when they are laughing, or taking blood medications.

    “We have a pretty impressive effect,” said Dr Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology (心脏病学) at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

    “Blood vessel diameter improved,” he said.“The vessel opened up pretty significantly. You can see the vessels opening up with other activities such as exercise.” A similar effect is seen with drugs such as statins.

    When blood vessels open up more, blood flows more smoothly and is less likely to form the clots (凝块) that cause heart attacks and strokes. “We are not saying to stop your statins or not to exercise but rather to add this to an overall program of heart health,” said Miller, who presented his findings to a meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans.

    Miller's team tested 10 healthy, non-smoking men and women, who were told to bring their favorite music.They spent half an hour listening to the recordings and half an hour listening to music they said made them feel anxious while the researchers did ultrasound tests designed to show blood vessel function.

    Compared to their normal baseline measurements, blood vessel diameter increased 26 percent on average when the volunteers heard their joyful music.Listening to music they disliked — in most cases in this group — blood vessels narrowed by six percent, Miller said.

    Miller said he came up with the idea after discovering that laughter caused blood to literally flow more smoothly. “I asked myself what other things make us feel really good, besides calories from dark chocolate of course.Music came to mind. It makes me feel really good,” he said.

    Most of the volunteers chose country music but Miller said the style is not so important rather than what pleases each individual.

    Keeping a busy social life among lots of friends may keep people thinner than spending hours doing some exercises, according to scientists. They say that socializing and meeting with friends help increase levels of brown fat in the body which burns calories to produce heat.

    Living in an exciting social environment was found to reduce fat in mice's belly by half over four weeks, even if they ate more.US researchers say that social excitement aids weight loss by turning white fat into brown fat. White fat stores calories and makes us fatter, while brown fat burns energy to produce heat. Turning white fat into brown fat is extremely difficult, normally requiring long-term stay in cold conditions or exciting part of the body's nervous system.

    However, scientists from Ohio State University now think that having a busy social life is an even more effective way of changing white fat into brown fat. The team came up with their theory by studying the effects of various living environments on mice. Those, who lived alongside a greater number of mice, had more space and toys to excite themselves and they lost far more weight over the course of the study than their “couch potato” fellows.

    Study's author, Dr Mattew During whose team's findings appear in the journal Cell Metabolism, said,“I'm still amazed at the degree of fat loss that occurs.” Explaining how new technology had threatened face-to-face socializing, he added,“It's not just a sedentary (久坐的)lifestyle and high calorie foods, but an increasing lack of social activities.” Co-author Dr Lei Cao said,“Loneliness is a potential factor for cancer and death; it's equal to cigarette smoking to a certain extent. Social activities are very vital.”

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive — an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. "We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are," he says. It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the drop calls for urgent attention. Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by an astonishing 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped less significantly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.

A warming ocean loses oxygen for two reasons; First, the warmer a liquid becomes, the less gas it can hold. That is why carbonated drinks(碳酸饮料) go flat faster when left in the sun. Second, as polar sea ice melts, it forms a layer of water above colder, more salty sea waters. This process creates a sort of lid that can keep currents from mixing surface water down to deeper depths. And because all oxygen enters the surface, less mixing means less of it at depth.

Ocean animals large and small, however, respond to even slight changes in oxygen by seeking refuge(避难所) in higher oxygen zones or by adjusting behavior, Oschlies and others in his field have found. These adjustments can expose animals to new predators or force them into food-scarce regions. Climate change already poses serious problems for marine life, such as ocean acidification, but deoxygenation is the most pressing issue facing sea animals today, Oschlies says. After all, he says, "they all have to breathe."

Aside from food web problems, animals face various other physiological challenges as their bodies adjust to lower oxygen levels. Chinese shrimp(虾) move their tails less vigorously to preserve energy in lower oxygen environments. Some creatures, such as jellyfishes, are more tolerant of low oxygen than others are. But all animals will feel the impact of deoxygenation because they all have evolved their oxygen capacity for a reason, says Oschlies. "Any drop in oxygen is going to damage survivability and performance," he says.