World famous physicist(物理学家) Stephen Hawking died peacefully at his home in Cambridge on March 14th, 2018.

    Hawking was born in Oxford, England on January 8th, 1942. He went to school in a small city near London. As he himself admitted, he wasn't very serious about studying. He did very little work, he was never top of his class. However, he still achieved good marks. After leaving school, Hawking first went to Oxford University to study physics. Then he went to Cambridge University to study cosmology(宇宙学).

    At the age of 21, Hawking noticed something wrong with him. He had a bad illness that stopped him from moving and talking. He couldn't communicate except by blinking(眨眼). He sat on a wheelchair with a computer by his side. To communicate with others, he moved two fingers to control the computer's mouse. He chose his words from the screen, which were then spoken by a voice synthesizer(音响合成器). "I've had the disease for most of my life," Hawking once said, "Yet it has not stopped me from being successful at my work."

    Although Hawking was a disabled man, he made great achievements. He received many awards and prizes for his work, including the Albert Einstein Award—the highest achievement in physics.

    Hawking worked at Cambridge University as a professor. His story shows that nobody, however bad their situation is, should lose hope. "Life is not fair." he once said, "You just have to do the best you can in your own situation."

    When scientist Jessica Wade realized how hard it was to find information about women scientists, she decided to help solve that problem. She has now added the stories of over 300 female scientists to Wikipedia.

    Dr. Wade has always been interested in science. But as she kept going in science and learned more about amazing women scientists, she was surprised to learn that they didn't have Wikipedia pages.

    Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia, and the world's 5th most popular website. What makes it special is that anybody can add to or change it. But even though Wikipedia has close to 6 million articles. Dr. Wade noticed that "It doesn't have the stories of many amazing women in science." She says that 83% of the biographies on Wikipedia are about men.

    So, in January. 2018 she decided to write one Wikipedia article about a female scientist every day. She doesn't get paid, but it has become her second job. So far, she has created 306 Wikipedia pages.

    Dr. Wade will keep writing her articles, but she also wants to teach other people how to add articles to Wikipedia. She would like to create a website to keep track of all of the biographies. She wants to turn them into a teaching tool.

Have you ever seen people building houses? To build a house, you need workers. They use their hands, tools (工具) and machines to put things together. Building the International Space Station (国际空间站) is the same. The difference is that the workers are astronauts. They walk in space and use robots' arms and hands to do the work.

In the space station, astronauts are comfortable. The temperature there is about 21℃. But outside of the station, it can be too hot or cold for people. In the sunlight (暗处) of the station, it's about -85℃. So when astronauts walk in space, they have to wear heavy clothes—spacesuits.

These suits also keep astronauts safe from flying rubbish in space. Each time people go into space, they leave rubbish there. So astronauts should be careful because there's a lot of rubbish, and some rubbish goes many times as fast as a plane!

Space walking is not easy, and it can be dangerous. So getting ready for it takes a lot of time to learn. Astronauts will need to do 160 space walks to finish their work in the space station. That will take about 1,900 man-hour work.

Every month, Zhang Lingling holds a party with her friends in a KTV room. At the party, all the people wear hanfu—a type of dress worn by the ancient Han people—and sing songs that are accompanied (伴奏) by traditional instruments or inspired by ancient poems.

"I'm really interested in clothes and songs based on traditional culture. I'm not buying the items just because they are Chinese—they just satisfy my aesthetic (审美的) needs," she told China Daily.

Like Zhang, there are many young people who have a passion for traditional Chinese culture. Looking for the reason behind this fascination with traditional culture, a professor Ji Fangfang said it's because traditional culture is the best way for young people to distinguish (区分) their national identity. They want to tell the world who they are. 

"Younger people know the world well through the Internet, and they need to express their uniqueness," Ji said.

While some prefer inheriting (传承) traditional Chinese culture, others are putting twists on it. Pop culture designer Yu Yang is one of them. When he made a series of products featuring the ancient God of Fortune, the god wore fashionable Chinese shoes and a cap, and had a microphone in his hand. "Pop culture is a universal language. I hoped more people would accept and love my work and know Chinese culture through my art pieces," he said in an interview.