With the rapid development of China's economy, more and more foreigners begin to learn Chinese because they are beginning to realize the importance and growing influence of China. Pupils in Warwickshire will soon be learning Mandarin after new links were forged(建立联系) with a region in China.

    Head teachers from the county spent a week in Shenzhen in South-east China, making links with schools and touring different education establishments.

    Schools that took part are now looking to introduce Mandarin lessons. Pupils from schools in Warwickshire and Shenzhen are starting to write and e-mail each other and plans are being made to share lessons over the Internet.

The trip was arranged by Warwickshire County Council and funded by the British Council as the first stage of development of a range of ties with the economically booming city.

    International development officer Judith Young said: “We are entering an exciting period of school relation between Warwickshire and Shenzhen. There is a real appetite for sharing ideas among the Chinese. We were able to see the differences and similarities between the education systems and there are many areas in which our schools, teachers and pupils will be able to benefit from a different cultural perspective(观点) and links with a country that is becoming very important on the world stage.

    Throughout the high profile(引人注目) visit led by our county education officer, Eric Wood, our group was made to feel very welcome and attracted a great deal of interest. Our visit to a primary school was featured as the main news item on television that night. A mark of how highly the visit was valued is that plans are being made for a return visit to Warwickshire of civic leaders, senior education officials and school principals.”

    Amazon is breaking into physical retail(零售) in a new way. The online retail giant revealed a new kind of physical store concept in a video published on Monday.

    The store, called Amazon Go, doesn't work like a typical Walmart or supermarket. Instead, it's designed so that shoppers will use an app, also called Amazon Go, to automatically add the products that they plan to buy to a digital shopping cart by scanning a QR code. They can then walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line because Amazon will charge their Amazon account and send them a receipt(收据).

    The first Amazon Go store is located in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. For years, there have been rumors the e­commerce company would expand its dominance(主导地位) from digital to physical shopping. Amazon began experimenting with physical bookstores a year ago, but Amazon Go may mark its boldest(大胆的) bet on physical ones yet. By removing much of the staff needed to operate a store, Amazon keeps costs lower than traditional competitors. It's also in a strong position to bring together data on its customers' shopping habits online and offline to make better suggestions in all situations.

    However, the company could be thought of as being a threat to some of the 3.4 million Americans who work as cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, “He's using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed.”

    “Four years ago we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout? Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go?” The company says on an informational page about Amazon Go. For now, Amazon is starting slow. The Amazon Go is only open to Amazon employees in our Beta program, and is scheduled to open to the public in 2017.

    Let's face it. No one drinks diet sodas for the taste. People drink diet sodas in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it. Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study.

    Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn't drink diet sodas. ＂What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain,＂ said Sharon Fowler.

The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly 10 years.

    While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations.

    Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet sodas, they don't lose weight at all. ＂We weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us,＂ said Rogers.

    So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet sodas, and so over-compensate for the missing calories.

    A related study found some sweeteners (甜味剂) raised blood sugar levels in some mice. ＂Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky,＂ said Helen P. Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas's school of medicine. ＂They may be free of calories, but not of consequences.＂

    The carrier rocket sent a Shenzhou-ll spacecraft（航天器）with astronauts Chen Dong and Jing  Haipeng into space. The rocket was fired from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center{#blank#}1{#/blank#}the Gobi desert. After two days in Earth's orbit, the spacecraft{#blank#}2{#/blank#}(be) to link up with China's space  laboratory, called the Tiankong-2,{#blank#}3{#/blank#}name means“Heavenly Palace 2". The lab {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (place) into orbit last month.

    The astronauts will spend 30 days on the Tiankong-2. They plan to perform {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (science) and spacecraft-related experiments and test systems for a future space station. In{#blank#}6{#/blank#}words, the Tiankong

    2 laboratory will not be part of that space station. Its main goal is to practice the techniques and the{#blank#}7{#/blank#}(technology) that they will be {#blank#}8{#/blank#}(use)to build and operate that final space station.

    It is predicted that the Chinese space station will be built mostly by machine. China hopes to have the space station{#blank#}9{#/blank#} (complete) by 2022 and it is expected to operate for at least 10 years.

    China also plans to land a probe（探测器）on Mars by 2020. Until now, China has completed a total of five manned space missions. And, in 2003,it {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (successful)landed a probe on the moon.

    We know the famous ones — the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells — but what about the less famous inventors? What about the people who invented the traffic light and the windshield wiper（雨刮器）? Shouldn't we know who they are?

    Joan Mclean think so. In fact, Mclean, a professor of physics at Mountain University in Range, feels so strongly about this matter that she's developed a course on the topic. In addition to learning “who” invented “what”, however, Mclean also likes her students to learn the answers to the “why” and “how” questions. According to Mclean, “When students learn the answers to these questions, they are better prepared to recognize opportunities for inventing and more motivated to give inventing a try.”

    Her students agree. One young man with a patent for an unbreakable umbrella is walking proof of Mclean' statement. “If I had not heard the story of the windshield wiper's invention,” said Tommy Lee, a senior physics major, “I never would have dreamed of turning my bad experience during a rainstorm into something so constructive.” Lee is currently negociating to sell his patent to an umbrella producer.

    So, just what is the story behind the windshield wiper? Well, Mary Anderson came up with the idea in 1902 after a visit to New York City. The day was cold and stormy, but Anderson still wanted to see the sights, so she jumped aboard a streetcar. Noticing that the driver was struggling to see through the snow covering the windshield, she found herself wondering why there couldn't be a built-in device for cleaning the window. Still wondering about this when she returned home to Birmingham, Alabama, Anderson started drafting out solutions. One of her ideas, a lever（操作杆）on the inside of a vehicle that would control an arm on the outside, became the first windshield wiper.

    Today we benefit from countless inventions and innovations. It's hard to imagine driving without Garrett A. Morgan's traffic light. It's equally impossible to picture a world without Katherine J. Blodgett's innovation that makes glass invisible. Can you picture life without clear windows and eyeglasses?

    A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has found a clear link between the color of a taxi and its accident rate. An analysis of 36 months of detailed taxi, driver and accident data from two fleets of yellow and blue taxis in Singapore suggested that yellow taxis have fewer accidents than blue taxis. The higher visibility (能见度)of yellow makes it easier for drivers to avoid getting into accidents with yellow taxis, leading to a lower accident rate.

    The study was led by Prof Ho. To test whether there was a causal relationship between the color of a taxi and the number of accidents the taxi had, the research team analysed data collected by the largest taxi company in Singapore. The researchers found that yellow taxis have about 6.1 fewer accidents per 1,000 taxis per month.

    The researchers also studied the economic effect of changing the color of the entire fleet of taxis to yellow. The Singapore taxi company involved in the study owns about 16,700 taxis in a ratio(比例) of one yellow to three blue taxis. If a commercial decision is made to switch from blue to yellow taxis, 76.6 fewer accidents would occur per month or 917 fewer accidents per year. Assuming an average repair cost of $1,000 per car and a downtime of six days, switching the color of all taxis to yellow could produce an annual savings of $2 million.

    "We are eager to continue to validate(证实) the findings of our study by looking at the use of yellow in other types of public transport, such as school buses. For instance, we hope to compare the accident rates of yellow school buses against other colors to find out if yellow is indeed a safer color for school buses. Besides, we are also interested to look at private-hire vehicles and do a comparison of the accident rates of vehicles that are of different colors," explained Prof Ho.