In England, people often talk about the weather because they can experience (经历) four seasons in one day. In the morning the weather is warm just like in spring. An hour later black clouds come and then it rains hard. The weather gets a little cold. In the late afternoon the sky will be sunny, the sun will begin to shine, and it will be summer at this time of a day.       

    In England, people can also have summer in winter, or have winter in summer. So in winter they can swim sometimes, and in summer sometimes they should take warm clothes.     

    When you go to England, you will see that some English people usually take an umbrella (伞)or a raincoat with them in the sunny morning, but you should not laugh at them.     

    If you don't take an umbrella or a raincoat, you will regret (后悔) later in the day.     

    Now many young people are traveling around the world on their own, not because they have no one to travel with, but because they prefer to go alone.

    Kristina Wegscheider from California first traveled alone when she was at college and believes that it is something everyone should do at least once in their life. “It opens up your mind to new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone.” Wegscheider has visited 46 countries covering all seven continents.

    In foreign countries, with no one to help you read a map, look after you if you get ill, or lend you money if your wallet is stolen, it is challenging. This is what drives young people to travel alone. It is seen as character building and a chance to prove that they can make it on their own.

    Chris Richardson decided to leave his sales job in Australia to go traveling last year. He set up a website, The Aussie Nomad, to document his adventures. He says he wished he had traveled alone earlier. “The people you meet, the places you visit, or the things you do, everything is up to you and it forces you to grow as a person,” said the 30-year-old man.

    Richardson describes traveling alone like “a shot in the arm”, which “makes you a more confident person that is ready to deal with anything”. He said, “The feeling of having overcome something on my own is a major part of what drives me each day when I'm dealing with a difficult task. I walk around with my head up because I know deep down inside that nothing is impossible if you try.”

    The great 19^thcentury explorer John Muir once said, “Only by going alone in silence can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

    There is no doubt that many parents want to mold (塑造)their child to be better, faster, smarter and more skilled. Even though human parents can't do that, a robot that builds its own children can. Scientists at the University of Cambridge in England have created a mother robot that not only creates its own children, but tests out their performance.

    The mother robot analyzes(分析)the performance of each of the “children” it creates, and passes down good characters to the next generation

    For example, as the mother creates them and puts them to work, she measures how they're behaving, and she uses data from this behavior to create the next generation of robots.

    The mother robot can actually build hundreds of child robots and see the performance of these child robots. And if their performance is good, keep their design for the next generation. And if bad, just let it go.

    “We program the robots based on some functions that define(规定)the reward the robots are going to get, depending on the construction that they make. They cannot change their own reward. For the child robot, the longer the distance the robot walks, the better the reward it receives,” said Fumiya Iida, the lead researcher.

    After several generations, the “children” were running twice as fast.

    “The mother robot produced 500 robots to see which one is good and which one is bad,” said Iida.

    The researchers believe that the machines can be used in a car factory, for example, where robot cameras examine each ear in production line, find out any mistakes, and then design a better car.

    On Friday, Germany's telecom regulator(电信业管理者), the Federal Network Agency, announced that a number of children s smartwatches, designed for ages 5 to 12, can allow someone to remotely tap into the watch s microphone and secretly spy from remote places. The regulator isn't just worried about the potential of people spying on children-it's worried the devices(设备) can be used to spy on anyone.

    And in Germany, it's illegal to record private conversations without permission. "According to our investigations, parents were using the watches, for example, to listen in on their children during class, said Federal Network Agency President Jochen Homann in a statement.

    Smartwatches that make phone calls, like the Apple Watch, are legal in Germany. The problem with many of the children's smartwatches, however, is that the devices have a classic spying function, similar to a baby monitor, which can be easily activated (激活) just by using an app.

    The German regulator is so serious about destroying these devices. It's asking citizens to document the watches' destruction and file evidence online. Once the watches are destroyed, the regulator will provide a "certificate of destruction," confirming the deed was done.

    This isn't the first time the Federal Network Agency told German citizens to destroy a consumer device. The regulator once prohibited the doll "My Friend Cayla", which was fitted with radio transforming technology that could allow children to be spied on.

    Remind tech producers: The German government won't just ban devices that can spy on anyone, they'll demand the devices be destroyed with hammers (or whatever means of destruction one prefers) — even if they're dolls.

    Students in a college French class have helped fill the empty bookshelves of a very poor Haitian(海地的) school by writing 90 books. Although many children in Haiti speak Creole(克里奥尔语) at home, French is taught in classrooms and used by the government , and students are asked to know the language in order to get further education. Therefore, the class hoped to provide resources to help the young students learn French well.

    The project, called Little French Books, was headed up by Jennifer Shotwell, a French professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Shotwell had visited Haiti with a group of students in 2013 to support a Haitian student and give books to a new library. Following the trip, Shotwell brought the experience back to her classroom.

    "My students have a chance to use the French language in a special way by writing children's books," Shotwell said. "Though some learners don't think they can produce much with a new language, my students are learning to express themselves and create entertaining stories that we finally share with disadvantaged children who are also learning French."

    Shotwell had sent French books to Haitian schools, but they were printed on cheap paper that could be easily broken. So she started a Kickstarter, which collected more than $1,000 to make books with durable covers.

    The books, which included stories about princesses, dinosaurs and exciting experiences, were given to the St.Gabriel's school in Lascahobas.

    "Each time a child gets into a new book, he will no doubt get new knowledge and new understanding. The Little French Books means a lot to our students, said Gardy Myrtil, a teacher at the school.

Year-12 student Noah Little has already sat his first Chinese-speaking exam and said it was "the easiest exam I've ever done". That view is not surprising given that the Wagga Wagga High School student loves language—so much that he has built a Chinese translation app.

Noah said his love of language was encouraged by his community. "Wagga Wagga is a place full of people from different cultures, and sometimes when I meet new people who have trouble speaking English, I like to talk to them in their own language," he said. "I also have a few Chinese friends so I think it will be cool to talk to them in their language."

The 17-year-old started teaching himself Chinese around five years ago, before taking distance education courses at the start of Year 11. His language ability was also useful in his part-time job at a local Chinese restaurant, where he translated orders for the cooks and customers.

Noah said he also had a basic knowledge of seven other languages. It was while teaching himself the languages that Noah got the idea of the translation tool. "I decided to make my own app because there weren't many around—all the other apps were full of advertisements (广告) and the translation feature (专题节目) wasn't powerful enough," he said.

His app also includes a word of the day feature, lessons on how to write Chinese characters (汉字) and a news feed of important Chinese news.

He said learning computer programming to build the app had been like studying another language. With the end of school around the corner, Noah said he would like to pursue (追求) both his interest in computer programming and languages. "I'm planning to work for a year and save so I can go on to university as I really want to make a career (事业) out of one of these two topics."