C

    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.

    Many people turn to doctors or self-help books, but they ignore a powerful thing that could help them fight illness: their friends.

    Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship in health. A 10-year Australian study found that old people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk  for obesity (肥胖) among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could improve brain health as we age.

    “In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn't well realized,” said Rebecca, a professor at the University of North Carolina. “Friendship has a bigger effect on our psychological health than family relationships.”

    While many friendship studies are about the close relationships of women, some research shows that men can benefit, too. In a six-year study of 736 middle-aged men, having friendships reduces the risk of heart attack. Only smoking was as important a risk factor (因素) as having little social support.

    Exactly why friendship has such a big effect isn't entirely clear. While friends can send a sick person to the hospital or pick up medicine, the benefits go well beyond physical assistance. Friendship clearly has a big psychological effect. “People with stronger friendships feel like there is someone they can turn to,” said Karen, a doctor. "The message of these studies is that friends make your life better.”

    There are numerous amusement parks all over the world. A famous magazine, Amusement Today, does a survey among park lovers every year both in the US and overseas, based on which, “Top 5 List of the Best Amusement Parks in the World” has come out as follows:

    Disneyland, California

    Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California, the US. More than 515 million guests have traveled to this American landmark from around the world since the park first opened to guests on July 17, 1955. The park consists of many world-famous sections, such as Main Street, Adventure Land, New Orleans Square, and so on.

    Magic Kingdom, Disney World, Florida

    Magic Kingdom is a theme park within the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, near Orlando opened on October 1, 1971. It is the most famous theme park in Florida. The park's design and attractions don't make much difference from Disneyland Park in Anaheim.

    EPCOT, Disney World, Florida

    EPCOT is the second theme park built at the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida. The park opened on October 1, 1982, and was named EPCOT Center from 1982 to 1993. It was the largest Disney theme park in the world until 1998, when Disney's Animal Kingdom opened.

    Disney-MGM Studios, Florida

    MGM's streets are the home for some great movie-themed attractions with a history of less than 30 years. With the addition of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and the Rock and

    Roller Coaster, the park is now home to Disney World's most thrilling rides.

    Universal Studios, Florida

    Go behind the scenes, beyond the screen and jump right into the action of your favorite movies at Universal Studios, the number one movie and TV theme park in the world.

    Hobbs was an orphan(孤儿). He worked in a factory and every day he got a little money. Hard work changed him thin and weak. He wanted to borrow a lot of money to learn to paint pictures, but he did not think he could pay off the debts.

   One day the lawyer said to him, "One thousand dollars, and here is the money." As Hobbs took the package of notes, he was very dumbfounded (惊呆的). He didn't know where the money came from and how to spend it. He said to himself, "I could go to find a hotel and live like a rich man for a few days; or I give up my work in the factory and do what I'd like to do: painting pictures I could do that for a few weeks, but what would I do after that? I should have lost my place of the factory and have no money to live on. If it were a little less money, I would buy a new coat, or a radio, or give a dinner to my friends. If it were more, I could give up the work and pay for painting pictures. But it's too much for one and too little for the other."

    "Here is the reading of your uncle's will," said the lawyer, "telling what is to be done with this money after his death. I must ask you to remember one point. Your uncle has said you must bring me a paper showing exactly what you did with his money, as soon as you have spent it."

    "Yes, I see. I'll do that." said the young man.

    Nancy Ballard, 60, went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary. She had just completed her master's in botanical illustration. In fact, she was canting a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. “It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy(化疗)rooms, ”the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

    She was shocked by what she found. The walls were bare, and the paint was chipping(剥落).She could tell where old artwork had hung because of the naked nails. It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients had chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. She couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that. As it happened, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

    She wrote to 20 local interior designers and asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr. Hufford's rooms each. Six of them wrote back almost immediately. Each of them ultimately chose a theme: The dragonfly room, for example, now features bright artwork and dragonfly wall ornaments. Most rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork, and furniture. Each room cost about $5, 000.

    Dr. Hufford was delighted.“ All the patients feel soothed by it.” he noted. He even said that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

    Ballard was so encouraged that she created a nonprofit to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. She once went to Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting, and a woman there was on her third battle with cancer. When she saw what Ballard had done, she said, “I'm gonna beat it this time.I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it.”

A pair of researchers with Leibniz University of Hannover has demonstrated the means by which robots might be programmed to experience something similar to pain in animals. As part of their demonstration at last week's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation held in Stockholm, Johannes Kuehn and Sami Haddaddin showed how pain might be used in robots, by interacting with a BioTac fingertip sensor on the end of a Kuka robotic arm that had been programmed to react differently to differing amounts of pain.

The idea of developing an artificial robot nervous system may seem contrary to all expectations, but Kuehn says doing so is important in the same way that it is good for humans to feel pain. "Pain is a system that protects us, "says Kuchn. "When we avoid the source of pain, it helps us not get hurt. "So when robots can feel and react to pain, they will become smart enough to avoid it. The more dangerous the robot registers the threat to be, the faster it will withdraw and avoid the source of danger. Additionally, Kuehn and Haddadin say humans working alongside robots that feel pain, especially those in heavy machinery, will be protected around them.

They have tested out some of their ideas using a robotic arm with a fingertip sensor that can detect pressure and temperature. It uses a robot-tissue patch(小片)modeled on human skin to decide how much pain should be felt and thus what action to take. For example, if the arm feels light pain, it slowly withdraws until the pain stops, and then returns to its original task; severe pain, meanwhile, causes the arm to go into a kind of lockdown mode until it can get help from a human operator.

Such robots are likely to raise a host of questions, of course, if they become more common —if a robot acts the same way a human does when touching a hot plate, are we to believe it is truly experiencing pain? Only time will tell of course, but one thing that is evident, Kuehn and Haddadin's work could lead to robots that are more human-like than ever.