Choose Your One-Day-Tours!

    Tour A - Bath &Stonehenge: including entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge -￡37 until 26 March and ￡39 thereafter.

    Visit the city with over 2,000 years of history and Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Costume Museum, Stonehenge is one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5,000 years.

    Tour B - Oxford & Stratford  including entrance fees to the University St Mary's Church Tower and Anne Hathaway's -￡32 until 12 March and ￡36 thereafter.

    Oxford: Includes a guided tour of England's oldest university city and colleges. Look over the "city of dreaming spires(尖顶）"from St Mary's Church Tower. Stratford: Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.

    Tour C - Windsor Castle &Hampton Court including entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace -￡34 until 11 March and ￡37 thereafter.

    Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court, Henry VIII's favorite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle (entrance fees not included).With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze (迷宫)where it is easy to get lost!

    Tour D -Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great -￡33 until 18 March and ￡37 thereafter.

Includes a guided tour of Cambridge, the famous university town, and the gardens of the 18th century.

    James Cook, at the age of forty, was sent by England to explore the Pacific Ocean. On his third voyage, as captain in charge of two ships, the Discovery and the Revolution, he came upon a group of unknown islands which he named the Sandwich Islands after his friend, the Earl (伯爵) of Sandwich. Today the islands are known at the Hawaiian Islands.

    When Cook sailed into a protected bay (海湾) of one of the larger islands, the natives greeted him with curiosity and respect. Some historians said that the islanders welcomed him, believing he was the god, protector of peace and agriculture.

    The islanders were short, strong people with a very well-organized social system. The men fished and raised crops. The women prepared for the children and made clothing for the men and short skirts for the women.

    If you are a recent social science graduate who has had to listen to jokes about unemployment from your computer major classmates, you may have had the last laugh. There are many advantages for the social science major because this high-tech "Information Age" demands people who are flexible (灵活) and who have good communication skills.

    There are many social science majors in large companies who fill important positions. For example, a number of research studies found that social science majors had achieved greater managerial success than those who had technical training or pre-professional courses. Studies show that social science majors are most suited for change, which is the leading feature (特点) of the kind of high-speed, high-pressure, high-tech world we now live in.

    Social science majors are not only experiencing success in their long term company jobs, but they are also finding jobs more easily. A study showed that many companies had filled a large percentage of their entry level positions with social science graduates. The study also showed that the most sought-after quality in a person who was looking for a job was communication skills, noted as "very important" by 92 percent of the companies. Social science majors have these skills, often without knowing how important they are. It is probably due to these skills that they have been offered a wide variety of positions.

    Finally, although some social science majors may still find it more difficult than their technically trained classmates to land the first job, recent graduates report that they don't regret their choice of study.

    A survey has shown that what you do on a plane can be determined by which nationality is listed on your passport.

    According to the results of an international passenger survey, Australians are the biggest drinkers on board with 36 percent choosing to down the hatch, compared to 35 percent of Americans and 33 percent of Brits.

    The Airline Passenger Experience Association(APEX) spoke to around 1,500 people, aged 18 and older, who have traveled by plane at least once during the last three months and were living in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and Brazil.

The results found Chinese travelers are most likely to nod off once the seat-belt sign switches off. They are also the first to take out their credit card for some in-flight shopping and the biggest fans of gaming. Americans on the other hand like to use their time in the air more productively—- when not drinking—- choosing to work while flying at 35,000 feet.

Meanwhile, Brits and Germans are the best at making chat with random strangers—-spending 50 percent more time than any other nationality. Comparatively, Brazilians conduct their conversations online via email, messaging apps or social media.

    Despite plane food having a bad reputation, seven out of ten interviewees said they were happy to eat up on the selection of in-flight snacks and meals. In-flight magazines were also popular with four out of five passengers.

    The international flyers did however express their desire for better in-flight entertainment. “The industry has greatly improved the comfort, entertainment and onboard service, and passengers are accepting those improvements” said Russell Lemieux, APEX executive director. “At the same time, passengers are demanding more from their air travel experiences which will drive more improvements touching all aspects of the journey.” he added.

    What makes a person a giver or taker? The idea "give vs. take" takes shape in all interactions (互动) and relationships of our lives. We're either giving advice, making time for people, or we're on the receiving end. We keep changing between the two based on different situations on a daily basis, if not an hourly one.

    According to Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, most people are matchers. They make careful observations on takers and make it a point for them to pay something back. They hate to see people who act so generously towards others not receive any rewards. Actually, most matchers will try hard to promote and support givers so that they can get the good they deserve.

    Is there a gender factor (性别因素) that plays a part in this?

    A study led by Hannah Riley Bowles, a professor at Harvard University, focused on this question. She asked 200 senior managers to sit down in pairs where one person would act as the boss and the other as an employee to discuss salary promotions. Male "employees" asked for an average salary of $146k while the females asked for only $141k. But why did they not bargain as hard as the men? Simply because they were more likely to be givers.

    As a woman, I do enjoy the act of giving up my time, my knowledge, and my care and my attention to others. I don't expect anything in return, but I do tend to pull myself away when I feel like I'm being taken for granted. I also tend to get upset when I see a loved one's continuous actions of kindness go unnoticed. So, it's safe to say I'm 50% giver, 35% matcher and 15% taker.

    I do know someone, however, who is 99% giver. They're constantly devoting their time, sharing valuable insights (洞察力) and going out of their way for everyone who crosses their path. Although they're changed the lives of many people, they rarely see any of it returned. But the universe is slowly repaying them; they're now extremely successful, well known for what they do.

    About one million adults in the USA need someone to help them eat. Researchers at the University of Washington are working on a robotic system that can help make it easier. After identifying different food on a plate, the robot can decide how to use a fork to pick up and deliver the desired bite to a person s mouth.

    "Being dependent on a caregiver to feed every bite every day takes away a person's sense of independence," said the researcher. "Our goal with this project is to give people a bit more control over their lives the idea was to develop a feeding system that would be attached to wheelchairs and feed people whatever they wanted to eat.

    "When we started the project, we realized there are so many ways that people can eat a piece of food depending on its size, shape or consistency(坚实度)," said the researcher, "So we set up an experiment to see how humans eat common foods. "

    The researchers arranged plates with about a dozen different kinds of food, ranging in consistency from hard carrots to soft bananas. Then the team gave volunteers a fork and asked them to pick up different pieces of food and feed them to a model. The fork contained a sensor to measure how much force people used when they picked up food.

    To design a feeding strategy that changes based on the food item, the researchers combined two different algorithms (算法). First they used an object-detection algorithm called Retina Net, which scans the plate, identifies the types of food on it and places a frame around each item. Then they developed SPNet, an algorithm that examines the type of food in a specific frame and tells the robot the best way to pick up the food.

    The team is currently working with the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology to get advice from caregivers and patients on how to improve the system to meet people's need.