Did you know that, in 2016, over 18 million people attended classical concerts in Germany? That's more people than those who went to main league football matches! Earlier this year, Germany continued its celebration of classical music with the opening of a new concert hall in the heart of Hamburg. Germans are incredibly proud of it  and it's the first thing I show to my friends when they come to visit.

    Known as the ‘Elphi' by the locals, the Elbphilharmonie is a beautiful tower of glittering glass sitting atop an old warehouse by the banks of the river Elbe. The plaza(露天广场)is open to the public and from the middle of he city's tallest building, you can gaze across the harbour, miles of rooftops and passing ships below.

    The main concert hall seats over 2000 people and is one of the most advanced music venues in the world. Two smaller concert halls are used for jazz, world and contemporary music. In addition, if you're unbelievably rich, you can buy one of the 45 luxurious apartments lying within the building.

    Construction began in 2007 with a budget of € 241 million and a two-year period. Fast forward ten years, the building eventually opened with a final price tag of over 800 million!

    I consider myself very lucky that the Elbphilharmonie opened during my time living in Hamburg, but unfortunately I haven't yet been able to attend a concert. Everything is sold out for six months! For now, I'm content to visit the plaza to enjoy the impressive views over the  docks and see the innovative architecture up close. Hopefully one day soon. I'll be lucky enough to grab a last-minute concert ticket!

    Camping is a good way to spend time along with your kids and to show them how wonderful nature can be. Through camping, children can discover new things about nature, such as flowers, birds, and other small animals. Camping gives kids time to get away from all the electronics (电子) of today's culture. So it is necessary to plan exciting and enjoyable family camping trips with your children while they are young.

    When planning your family camping trip, consider the activities your kids like: games, hiking, swimming, boating, bicycling, etc. Select a camping place that has some of the activities the kids are interested in. Meal planning is an important part of your camping trip. Plan the meals together, and kids love to choose what they want to eat.

    When starting to pack for your trip, let the kids pack their own items (物品) . Each person should have his/her own sleeping bag with a luggage (行李) bag to put it in. Personal items should be packed with their sleeping bags. Encourage the kids to put their items in a certain place and always return it when they have finished using it.

    When you have arrived at your campsite, make all the camping activities a family activity, which will help children to realize how important team-work is. Everyone can have his/her own job sitting up the campsite. Meal time can be a fun time. So let the older ones help with the cooking on your outdoor camping stove while the younger ones get the picnic table ready.

    Science is always advancing over time. A self-driving car from the Google may be coming to a street near you. However, you won't be able to buy it now. “We're working to build the world's most experienced driver,” Kraft, director of the project, said. “Everything that we learn in one of our cars gets passed to all of our cars. But you may need to get over the idea of traditional car ownership along the way.”

    Google's software has already driven 5 million miles in U.S. cities, including an “early rider” test in Phoenix last April. Since then Google has grown confident enough to remove the “auxiliary wheel”: a human “safety driver”. Powering the vehicle's self-driving functions is a series of cameras, radars and sensors on the car's roof, which detect everything nearby from other vehicles and passers-by to cyclists.

    Kraft stressed that Google's cars aren't connected—they don't need a 5G wireless link to go anywhere. “The car has everything it needs to drive on the car itself.” He said, “There are no signals coming from outer space or something telling it to turn right.” The resulting ride may not be too exciting but safe. Kraft added. “We can see three football fields down the road, we would come to a stop before we ran into these crowds.”

    Google's system has a major advantage over the semi-autonomous（半自主的）systems of Tesla and Cadillac, both of which need continued human attention. Kraft said Google plans to have service in every major city by 2028 with thousands of cars driving themselves.

    Once an old man rose early to read each morning. His grandson wanted to be just like his grandfather, so tried to emulate him every way he could.

    One day the grandson asked, “Grandpa, I try to read just like you do, but I don't understand most of it, and I forget whatever I do understand immediately I close the book. So what good is it for me to read?”

    The grandfather, who was putting coal on the fire, said, “Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water.”

    The boy did as told to, but the water leaked out before he could get the basket home.

    The grandfather laughed, saying, “You'll have to move a little faster.” This time he ran faster, but again the basket emptied. Out of breath, he decided it was impossible to carry water in a basket, and he went to get a bucket（桶）. But the grandfather said, “I want a basket of water instead of a bucket of water. You're just not trying hard enough.”

    The boy knew what he was trying to accomplish was impossible. However, he decided to show his grandfather a third time.

    The boy dipped the basket into the river and ran as hard as he could. With the empty basket, he gasped（喘气说）, “See Grandpa? It's useless!”

    “So you think it useless?” the old man asked. “Then look at the basket.” To his surprise, the boy found it washed clean of the dirty coal stains and now clean inside and out.

    “My child, that's what happens when you read the book. You might not understand or remember everything, but the words will change you inside and out. That is the work of reading in our lives.”

    Art museums are places where people can learn about various cultures. The increasingly popular “design museums” that are opening today, however, perform quite a different role. Unlike most art museums, the design museums show objects that are easily found by the general public. These museums sometimes even place things like fridges and washing machines in the centre of the hall.

    People have argued that design museums are often made use of as advertisements for new industrial technology. But their role is not simply a matter of sales—it's the honouring of excellently invented products. The difference between the window of a department store and the showcase in a design museum is that the first tries to sell you something, while the second tells you the success of a sale.

    One advantage of design museums is that they are places where people feel familiar with the exhibits. Unlike the average art museum visitors, design museum visitors seldom feel frightened or puzzled. This is partly because design museums clearly show how and why mass－produced products work and look as they do, and how design has improved the quality of our lives. Art museum exhibits, on the other hand, would most probably fill visitors with a feeling that there is something beyond their understanding.

    In recent years, several new design museums have opened their doors. Each of these museums has tried to satisfy the public's growing interest in the field with new ideas. London's Design Museum, for example, shows a collection of mass－produced objects from Zippo lighters to electric typewriters to a group of Italian fish－tins. The choices open to design museums seem far less strict than those to art museums, and visitors may also sense the humorous part of our society while walking around the exhibits.

    Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed new artificial intelligence(AI) software to recognize and follow up the faces of chimpanzees(黑猩猩)in the wild. The new software will allow researchers and wildlife conservationists to significantly cut back on time spent analyzing videos, according to the new paper published in Science Advances.

    For species(物种)like chimpanzees which have complex social lives and live for many years, getting photos of their behavior taken from short-term field research can only tell us so much," says Dan Schofield, researcher and DPhil student at Oxford University's Private Models Lab, School of Anthropology. "By taking advantage of the power of machine learning to unlock large video files, it makes it possible to measure behavior over the long term."

    The computer model was trained using over 10 million images(影像):from Kyoto University s Primate Research Institute(PRI) video files of wild chimpanzees in Guinea, West Africa. The new software is the first to continuously track and recognize individual a wide range of poses, performing with high accuracy in difficult conditions such as low lighting and poor image quality.

    "Access to this large video file has allowed us to use deep neural networks to train models to a degree that was previously not possible," says Arsha Nagrad, co-auther of the study and DPhil student at the Department of Engineer Science, University of Oxford." Additionally, our new software differs from previous primate face recognition software in that it can be applied to videos with limited manual intervention(人工干预), saving hours of time."

    The technology can be potentially used to monitor species for conservation Although the present application focuses on chimpanzees, the AI software provided will be applied to other species, and help drive the adoption of AI systems to solve(解决)a range of problems in the wildlife sciences.