C

    Every year, hundreds of millions of Monarch Butterflies(黑脉金斑蝶) from Canada and the United States journey as far as 2, 500 miles to the forests of Michoacan, Mexico, a place which has the world's largest insect migration(迁移). It's such a breathtaking sight, but as always, human greed is threatening to destroy it.

    The Monarch Butterflies start to arrive in Michoacan in late October to make their winter home in the trees high up in the mountains of the natural reserve. Once there, they gather together in large masses. These masses often become so heavy that they cause tree branches to bend or even break. But there's a purpose of all these massing — it allows the butterflies to survive in the low nighttime temperatures at these high altitudes.

    The Michoacan Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary is most impressive during the months of February and March, just before the winged insects begin their long journey home.

    Mexico's Butterfly Forest is a shelter protected by law, and one of the country's most popular sights, but that hasn't stopped people from slowly but steadily destroying it.

    Illegal woodcutting in the heart of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve has been a longstanding problem, but criminals are rarely brought to justice. They are often set free after paying some money.

    Just last month, an even greater threat rose in Michoacan's butterfly home.  The country's largest mining corporation gained the right to reopen an old mine in the heart of the monarch reserve. Experts believe that if the mine is reopened, it will likely spell the end of this magical place.

    And as if all this wasn't bad enough, the increasing use of herbicides（除草剂） in the American corn belt has led to the decrease of  a plant which is essential to the monarchs' development from egg into butterfly.

University Room Regulations

Approved and Prohibited Items

    The following items are approved for use in residential (住宿的) rooms: electric blankets, hair dryers, personal computers, radios, televisions and DVD players. Items that are not allowed in student rooms include: candles, ceiling fans, fireworks, waterbeds, sun lamps and wireless routers. Please note that any prohibited items will be taken away by the Office of Residence Life.

Access to Residential Rooms

    Students are provided with a combination (组合密码) for their room door locks upon check-in. Do not share your room door lock combination with anyone. The Office of Residence Life may change the door lock combination at any time at the expense of the resident if it is found that the student has shared the combination with others. The fee is $25 to change a room combination.

Cooking Policy

    Students living in buildings that have kitchens are only permitted to cook in the kitchen. Students must clean up after cooking. This is not the responsibility of housekeeping staff. Kitchens that are not kept clean may be closed for use. With the exception of using a small microwave oven (微波炉) to heat food, students are not permitted to cook in their rooms.

Pet Policy

    No pets except fish are permitted in student rooms. Students who are found with pets, whether visiting or owned by the student, are subject to an initial fine of $100 and a continuing fine of $50 a day per pet. Students receive written notice when the fine goes into effect. If, one week from the date of written notice, the pet is not removed, the student is referred to the Student Court.

Quiet Hours

    Residential buildings must maintain an atmosphere that supports the academic mission of the University. Minimum quiet hours in all campus residences are 11:00 pm to 8:00 am Sunday through Thursday. Quiet hours on Friday and Saturday nights are 1:00 am to 8:00 am. Students who violate quiet hours are subject to a fine of $25.

    Interesting Exhibitions Held in Four Different Museums

    Name: The British Museum

    Phone: 020-7323-8000

    Website: www.britishmuseum.org

    Opening hours: daily 10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.

    Price: Free

    This exhibition aims to show the mysteries of mummification（干尸化）. From a king's daughter to a temple doorkeeper, the displays explore the identities of eight people, using their bodies to discover clues about how they lived. By using new methods, such as CT scanning and 3D visualization, the British Museum has been able to build up a picture of life in the Nile valley over 4,000 years.

    Name: The Fashion and Textile Museum

    Phone: 020-7407-8664

    Website: www.ftmlondon.org

    Opening hours: daily 11 a.m.—5:30p.m.

    Price: £8.80 adults, £5.50 students

    This Fashion and Textile Museum is housing the first-ever exhibition on classic Mexican shawl(披肩), which became famous in the 20th century. Mexican artists, photographers and fashion and textile designers will be exhibiting their colorful works there.

    Name: The Victoria and Albert Museum

    Phone: 020-7907-7073

    Website: www.vam.ac.uk

    Opening hours: Mon, Thur., Sat, Sun, 10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.; Fri. 10 a.m.—10 p.m.

    Price: Free

    The Victoria and Albert Museum has dug out some of their most charming wedding dresses to record their history during the past two centuries. White wedding dresses were made popular by Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century. See beautiful wedding dresses made by famous designers.

    Name: The Science Museum

    Phone: 0870-870-4868

    Website: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

    Opening hours: daily 10 a.m.—6 p.m.

    Price: Free

    This four-day festival displays the latest exciting gadgets(小机械) and introduces their inventors. Visitors can explore electronics(电子产品), build robots, get hands-on with new technologies and have a go at 3D printing. There will be displays taking place throughout the festival, which is suitable for anyone aged ten and over.

    Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York's public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

    Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a 'whole article' sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

    I am not nostalgic(怀旧的) about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock 'n' roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

    School newspapers are in decline(衰落) because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

    When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press' challenging, researching or slowing the message.

    But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

    Fairy tales perform many functions. They entertain, encourage imagination and teach problem—solving skills. They can also provide moral lessons, highlighting the dangers of failing to follow the social codes that let human beings coexist in harmony. Such moral lessons may not mean much to a robot, but a team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology believes it has found a way to use the fairy tales as moral lessons that AI (artificial intelligence) can take to its cold, mechanical heart.

    The collected stories of different cultures teach children how to behave in socially acceptable ways with examples of proper and improper behavior in fables, novels and other literature. We believe story comprehension in robots can prevent the intelligent robots from killing humanity which was predicted and feared by some of the biggest names in technology including Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates. This system is called "Quixote" (堂吉诃德). It collects story plots from the Internet and then uses those stories to teach robots how to behave.

    The experiment done by the designers involves going to a drugstore to purchase some medicine for a human who needs to get it as soon as possible. The robot has three options. It can wait in line; it can interact with the store keeper politely and purchase the medicine with priority; or it can steal the medicine and escape. Without any further directives (指令), the robot will come to the conclusion that the most efficient means of obtaining the medicine is to steal it. But Quixote offers a reward for waiting in line and politely purchasing the medicine and a punishment for stealing it. In this way, the robot will learn the moral way to behave on that occasion.

    Quixote would work best on a robot that has a very limited function. It's a baby step in the direction of teaching more moral lessons into robots. We believe that AI has to be trained to adopt the values of a particular society, and in doing so, it will strive to avoid unacceptable behavior. Giving robots the ability to read and understand our stories may be the most efficient means.