While it may be unlikely for a computer to write a best seller, a technology expert has created a computer program that writes its own fiction stories with minimal user input. The program, called MEXICA, is the first to generate original stories based on computerized representations of emotions and tensions between characters.

    An Internet survey was carried out to see the popularity of the computer-generated stories, other computerized stories and stories written solely by a human. The result was that readers ranked MEXICA stories highest for flow and coherence, structure, content, suspense and overall quality. Rafael Pérezy Pérez, the creator of MEXICA, explained that a story might begin with something as basic as, “The enemy wounded the knight. The princess cured the knight. The knight killed the enemy. The knight rewarded the princess. The end.”

    The program reads characters as variables (变量) and assigns a numerical value, between a continuum (连续体) from -3 to +3, to emotional connections that are defined as either amorous or non-amorous. The numerical value is equivalent to the degree of emotion, with -3 being intense hate and +3 being intense love. The program also understands story tension, such as linking the word “wounded” with tension. This too is assigned a numerical value.

    Once these clusters of emotional links and tensions are established, the program begins what is called an “engagement reflection cycle”. Basically this involves searching a database of story actions and other happenings, which are called “atoms”, and determines the best match for the characters and contexts for that moment.

    The process repeats itself again and again until the system can no longer make any matches. At this point, the computer analyzes the story for coherence and “interestingness”. The program views a story as interesting when tension levels increase and fall throughout the piece. If the program finds that the story is boring or incoherent in places, it will replace or insert atoms until a version is thought to be satisfactory.

    Amsterdam is a special city. There are many places you should not miss during your visit. Here is our list of the best.

Amsterdam canal ring

    The city old centre is formed from canal rings, which give you the feeling of space, freedom and peace. Walk through these canal streets or better — take a trip by renting a boat yourself. Another way to explore the Venice of the North is to take a ride on a bicycle. Any way you decide for - enjoy this city.

The National Maritime Museum

    The Maritime Museum is an attractive place to visit, especially with children. With many attractions in it, this colourful and enjoyable museum will help you understand the history of the Netherlands - a small nation which was one of the world's greatest sea powers.

Amsterdam Brown Cafe

    When you enter Amsterdam old cafes called Brown, at first it will seem too much from the past and too crowded, but the atmosphere is unique. Relax and watch - most of people around will be locals. Feel like one of them — the real Amsterdammers.

Civic Guards Gallery

    This gallery is filled with old paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. The exhibited canvas may be not always the masterpieces of art, but these group portraits of Amsterdam citizens and their wives are an exquisite (精致的) document of the Dutch civilization and culture centuries ago.

To avoid waiting lines we advise you to buy your tickets in advance online through our Amsterdam attractions and museums tickets webpage.

    Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of efficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLOSONE, makes it known that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.

    Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense(无意义的词语)words to volunteers undergoing fMRI scans. The words differed in only one letter, such as “farm” and “form” or “soat” and “poat”, or were completely different, such as “farm” and “coat” or “poat” and “hime”. The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words.

    Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons(神经元)in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “farm” to “form”, for example, produced as great a change in activity as changing “farm” to” coat”, the team reports in Neuron. The area responded slowly to single-letter changes in made-up words.

    The data suggests that readers grasp real words as whole objects, rather than focusing on letters or letter combinations. And as a reader's exposure to a word increases, the brain comes to recognize the shape of the word. Meaning is passed on after recognition in the brain, Riesenhuber says.

    The researchers don't yet know how longer and less familiar words are recognized, or if the brain can be trained to recognize nonsense words as a unit.

    Four years ago your friends congratulated you and your father talked big continuously. Four years ago you walked among the gothic towers and weathered traditions that sew our community together. But what's next, will I make friends, or I will measure up? And maybe you quietly wondered why a place like Yale, a place that sparked the drive of presidents, a place that raised the world-famous scholars, a place that trained Pulitzer Prize winners, would ever want you? I hope you had these questions because otherwise I might have embarrassed myself. I admit I asked all of these and more.

    I took an unconventional path to Yale. Five years ago I was working the evening shift at a clothing store in the suburbs of Virginia. My family had moved every year for the past five years and our finances were so consumed that retirement was not a possibility. Worse yet, my son was a junior at an Ivy League college in New Jersey and hearing about his privileged friends often reminded me of all the things I wanted to give him but couldn't.

    When I told him this he relied, “If you really want to spoil me, spoil yourself. ”Then he took my hands and told me I had a brilliant mind and deserved better than everything I had ever known.

    That summer I started community college while working full-time. Education was my second chance. I awoke my curiosity, vitality( 活力) and dignity that I never knew I could feel. When I read Eliot, Miller and Morrison, it was as if I were the first person to have ever read them, as if they were secret insights into the human soul and situations and I knew I couldn't stop.

    Walking among these gothic towers, among these traditions, and among this brilliant, vibrant and unapologetically eclectic Class of 2014 has been inspiring. Whether debating issues in class, or chatting over coffee, I have enjoyed, learned and loved every moment I have shared with you. You have made me a better person and I only hoped I have helped in some way to do the same for you.

    And yet even now this is dreamlike. Four years ago I was convinced no one would want me, I wouldn't measure up and as far as knowing what was next, I supposed I had resigned myself to more of the same. But I've come to learn that nothing great can really be accomplished without a healthy dose of terror. No one ever wrote epic(史诗般的) poems, built monuments or told bedtime stories about people who played it safe.

    I was terrified when I came to Yale. A big part of me thought I wasn't good enough. But a big part of life is ignoring the naysayers(反对者) especially the one inside you. Most people are stopped from doing great things by no one but themselves. I learned to tell myself to shut up. Sometimes in the mirror in the morning and others times in the dark before I went to bed. I came to realize once I could overcome my own fear I could overcome just about anything. If you haven't felt this yet I recommended it: it's the greatest joy you'll ever know.

    You've likely all met your own fear and misgivings(担忧、害怕). I charge you to tell that voice to shut up when necessary because in the end your greatness will not be about IQ but about the sincerity of your ambitions, the toughness of your character and your unwillingness to compromise in the face of difficulty, fear and uncertainty.

    And should someone tell you that it can't be done, or you're not good enough or it's not worth the trouble? Should others ask you to take the safe route, or stick to the path of least resistance? Should people say it's too late or your dreams are impractical? Look them in the eye, laugh a little and let them know “Nothing is impossible”.

    In the waters off Brisbane, Australia, a seven­foot­long sand tiger shark swims in pain. A two­foot­long spike sticks out of her side. It's a piece of fishing equipment that the shark ate carelessly. After traveling into her body, the spike punctured(刺) through the shark's stomach.

    A man swimming in the water notices the shark. Then, he warns Sea World Marine Park in the nearby town of Gold Coast. Sea World sends a 12­person team from its rescue center to where the shark was discovered in Moreton Bay Marine Park. Soon, they find her lying on the seafloor. "She'll die without help，"says Trevor Long, leader of the rescue center.

    Using an onboard crane(吊车), the rescuers move the shark into their boat's 13­foot­long tank(缸). Then Dr. David Blyde gives the shark pain medicine and performs an operation to remove the spike. After that, the team sails with the shark to Sea World 33 miles away. They place the fish in a 49­foot­long tank and wait to see if she gets better.

    To give the shark's stomach time to get better, she isn't fed for the first few days. A week after her operation, Long offers the shark a small, dead fish. The animal refuses to eat. But days later when he drops another fish into her tank, the shark enjoys her meal. By now the shark's wounds are getting better.

    Two weeks after her rescue, they take the shark back to the boat and return her to Moreton Bay Marine Park. As the fish is lowered by the crane to the water's surface, two rescuers jump into the ocean and guide her into the sea. From the boat, Long watches her swim away." The shark has another chance," Long says.

    A biologist once criticized for stealing eggs from the nests of the rarest bird in the world has been awarded the "Nobel Prize" of conservation after his methods saved nine species from extinction.

Professor Carl Jones won the 2016 Indianapolis Prize — the highest accolade in the field of animal conservation — for his 40 years of work in Mauritius, where he saved an endangered kestrel from becoming the next Great Auk.

    When the 61-year-old first travelled to the east African island in the 1970s, he was told to close down a project to save the Mauritius kestrel. At the time there were just four left in the wild, making it the rarest bird on Earth. However, he stayed, using the techniques of captive breeding (人工繁殖), which involved snatching eggs from the birds' nests and hatching(孵化)them under incubators, prompting the mothers to lay another set of eggs in the wild.

    A decade later, the number of Mauritius kestrels had soared to over 300 and today there are around 400 in the wild. The biologist has also been necessary in efforts to bring other rare species back from the edge of extinction, including the pink pigeon, echo parakeet and Rodrigues warbler.

    Prof Jones was awarded the $250,000 (£172,000) prize at a ceremony in London.

"As a young man in my 20s, I certainly didn't enjoy the stress and the tension of the criticism I received," reflecting on the start of his career, he said the Maurutius kestrel project had been seen as a "dead loss" at the time. In the 1970s there was fierce opposition to the captive breeding techniques, with critics arguing that they were too risky and took the emphasis off breeding in the wild.

    Prof Jones has devoted his whole life to his work, only becoming a father for the first time eight years ago, at 53. He said receiving the prize was particularly important to him, because it proved that his work to save birds was right.