Think of a seed buried in a pot. It's dark down there in the potting soil. There's no light, no sunshine. So how does it know which way is up and which way is down? It does know. Seeds send shoots up toward the sky, and roots the other way. Darkness doesn't confuse them. Somehow, they get it right.

    More surprisingly, if you turn a seedling (秧苗) or a whole bunch of seedlings upside down, as Thomas Andrew Knight of the Royal Society did around 200 years ago, the tips and roots of the plant will sense, “Hey, I'm upside down. Look! I. will turn my way to the right direction and do a U-turn.”

    How do they know? According to botanist Daniel Chamovitz, Thomas Knight about 200 years ago guessed that plants must sense gravity. Knight proved it with a crazy experiment involving a spinning plate.

    He attached a bunch of plant seedlings onto a disc. The plate was then turned by a water wheel powered by a local stream at a speed of 150 revolutions (旋转) per minute for several days.

    If you have been at an amusement park in a spinning teacup, you know that because of centrifugal force (离心力) you get pushed away from the center of the spinning object toward the outside.

    Knight wondered, would the plants respond to the centrifugal pull of gravity and point their roots to the outside of the spinning plate? When he looked, that's what they'd done. Every plant on the disc had responded to the pull of gravity, and pointed its roots to the outside. The roots pointed out, and the shoots pointed in. So Thomas Knight proved that plants can and do sense the pull.

    People in South Korea who feel they can no longer bear the stress of everyday life now can choose to stay in a prison to relax and think deeply.

    In a society where pressure to do well in school and find highly-paid jobs is intense, a former lawyer came up with an extreme relaxation idea. Kwon Yong-seok created the "Prison Inside Me" —a stress-reduction center with a punishment theme. People come here to cut themselves off from the outside world and pay to be kept in 60-square-foot (5.6-square-meter) cells (囚室).

    Located on the outskirts of Hongcheon, about 58 miles (93 km) northeast of Seoul," Prison Inside Me" came to life after Mr. Kwon voluntarily asked to spend time behind bars for" healing reasons," but his request was turned down." I didn't know how to stop working back then," he said." I felt like I was being swept away against my will, and it seemed I couldn't control my own life." So, Kwon and his wife Roh Ji-hyang decided to take matters into their own hands, and designed and built a prison-like spiritual center. The construction was completed in June last year and cost about 2 billion won ($19 million).

    The facility includes 28 cells, furnished with only a toilet, a sink and a small table, where guests can spend time alone, thinking about life and enjoying private thinking periods. Moreover, guests can also join group thinking periods in the hall, where they are given instructions on how to free themselves from what Mr. Kwon calls the "inner prison" to find inner peace.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of stressed South Koreans are checking in at the stress-reduction facility to think about their lives and regain control of it. A two-night stay at" Prison Inside Me" costs 150,000 won ($146).

    Mr. Kwon and his wife explained that at the beginning they had a different plan for the" relaxation center," and imagined a longer stay for their guests, but, given that people weren't able to take more time off, they had to reduce the length of stays to just two days.

    Park Woo-sub, a guest at" Prison Inside Me," said the experience helped him a lot." This is my third time in prison. Being kept in a prison makes me hard to breathe, but it also offers time to focus only on me and spend some quiet time with myself."

    Others said the experience would have been more helpful if the conditions had been poorer, like in a real prison.

    When I graduated from high school, I wanted to major in comparative literature. But, once I found out my friends were going into "real" majors, like marketing, nursing, and engineering, I figured I needed to do the same to ensure a good career. So I changed my mind and chose Business Management as my major. I forced myself to believe that I would enjoy it and succeed in the future, but eventually I exhausted myself understanding the economy and trying new marketing techniques. Coming out of this experience, I realize it is ok to be different from others and to study things like art history and other majors offered in the College of Humanities(人文学科)!

    The worries most people have about a Humanities degree and finding a career afterwards are that the majors are too abstract, and one will not obtain any applicable skills. Actually ideas discussed in Humanities classes, which are occasionally different from what people commonly believe, offer a broad perspective(视角). How could one effectively be an unbiased(无偏见的)writer with only a knowledge of the popular opinion of society? How could one speak persuasively with closed minds? Only seeing the world through a single perspective leads to missed learning, missed friendships, and missed growth! With a broader perspective, we'll be freer, more open-minded, and less limited in what we can become!

    STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates learn actual skills in their studies, while humanities majors learn “soft skills” like communicating effectively through writing critically and speaking persuasively, synthesizing(综合)ideas through gathering and interpreting information, and developing cultural awareness. Do those soft skills sound useless and inapplicable to you? Think of it. How often do you communicate with others? Produce ideas? Encounter people from other cultures? Every day. Every SECOND of every day. So why not master these skills?

    If you choose a major in the College of Humanities, you will be needed. The job market is quietly creating thousands of openings a week for people who can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. Your skills will be valuable to any workplace you hope to be in. Chase after your dream major with all your energy, no matter what other people think.

    Hip-hop dancing(街舞) is popular with many young people today. They like it because they can invent their own moves. They use this dance to show their love for life. It also shows that they are not afraid of problems.

    Hip-hop dancing has a history of more than 20 years. It first began in the 1980s in the US. In early times, it was seen in New York and Los Angeles. At that time, many young black people often danced to the music in the streets. They used their legs, arms, heads and even shoulders to dance. Many young people still use most of these moves today.

    Hip-hop dancing became popular all over the world because of the 1983 movie Flash dance. Some people performed Hip-hop dancing in the movie. People enjoyed their performance. They began to dance like them. Then it became popular. There are two kinds of Hip-hop dancing: new school and old school. More and more young people are learning Hip-hop dancing. People believe that it is a good way to exercise their bodies, and that it is good for their health.

    Google previously announced successful tests of machine learning systems designed to assist doctors. In one case, Google reported AI had examined eye diseases with equal accuracy to doctors. Other tests showed that machine learning can be used to study large amounts of patient data to predict future medical events.

    Now the company has published two new studies showing a high level of success in identifying metastatic breast cancer. Metastatic means that cancer has spread from its main area to other parts of the body. Metastatic breast cancer is one of the deadliest, causing about 90 percent of all breast cancer deaths worldwide.

    In metastatic breast cancer patients, the cancer often travels to nearby lymph nodes（淋巴结）. Usually doctors examine lymph node tissue under a microscope to see whether cncer is present Google notes that previous studies have shown that up to one-fourth of metastatic lymph node classifications end up being changed after a second examination. In addition, studies show that small metastatic material can be missed up to 67 percent of the time when examinations happen under extreme time restrictions.

    Google says it created a mathematical algorithm(算法).The algorithm, called Lymph Node Assistant, is trained to find characteristics of tissue affected by metastatic cancer. When the system examined tissue images (图像), it was able to differentiate between metastatic cancer and non-cancer 99 percent of the time. In addition, the Lymph Node

    Assistant is highly effective at finding the positions of the cancers. Some of these positions would be too small for doctors themselves to identify. The research also showed that the algorithm method can reduce the usual time needed to examine the disease by about 50 percent.

    But Google makes clear the Al-based system is not meant to replace the work of medical professionals. Instead, it is designed to reduce the number of false identifications and help doctors work faster and more effectively.