People in the United States have many ways to get news, some of which are available 24 hours a day. In a recent survey（调查）, about 15 percent of American interviewees said that they spend less than one-half to two hours per day watching, listening to, or reading the news. News comes from every source, not only from printed ways, but from TV, radio, and the Internet as well.

    With the increased availability of news, serious questions have been raised about the role of the news media in society. Should the media report every detail about every story, even when the information does not seem timely or valuable? Some researchers are concerned that by focusing on everything at once, the media increasingly ignore the more important social, political and economic problems that we face. We cannot concentrate on what's important by reading about what is not. One extreme example of this is the type of information covered by the tabloid（小报）media, which focus on negative stories of violence and crime.

    How can people deal with all the news that is available to them? Some become “news resisters” and choose to turn their backs on news, resisting their desire to turn on the TV and read the paper every day. They argue that although daily news reports may provide us with many facts, they do not include the background or some information that we need to understand news events. They suggest that, instead of daily reports, we look for information that has more in-depth analysis of the news, such as monthly magazines.

    China has recently published its first artificial intelligence (AI) textbook for high school students, following a plan by central government last year to include AI courses in primary and secondary school.

    Under the joint efforts by the research center for MOOC at East Normal University and AI startup Sense Time Group, the nine-chapter textbook, named Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, was written by eminent scholars from well-known schools nationwide, Xinhua reported on Sunday.

    It includes the history of AI and how the technology can be applied in areas such as facial recognition, auto driving and public security.

    “The textbook focuses not only on basics of AI, also on practical use of AI in daily life,” said Chen Yukun, a professor at East China Normal University, who is also a contributor to the book. At present, about 40 high schools across the country have joined the first batch（批）of AI high education pilot program, by introducing the textbook in curriculum（全部课程）.

    “The AI sector is facing a talent shortage globally. The publication of the book is a breakthrough as it takes AI technology out of the 'ivory tower' and makes it part of high school learning,” said Lin Dahua, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

    As early as 2016, the governments had estimated that demand for AI professionals may suddenly increase to 5 million in the coming years.

    “Many industries in the future will benefits from AI technology, so the aim of the related courses should be to let students learn the basic idea and methods of AI,” Lin said.

    China has made significant progress in technological research and development in recent years. According to a report released by US-based venture capital（风险资本）database CB Insights in March, China has for the first time surpassed the United States in equity funding（股权融资）to AI startups.

    People who like travelling have their reasons. They believe that travelling can help them expand their field of view, especially in the geographical and historical sense. They also think that touring will give them more chances to enjoy different kinds of food and experience new things that would never be brought by other activities. But those who dislike travelling also have some reasons.

    Travelling, in my opinion, does more good than harm. Most importantly, it broadens  (使扩大) our mind. We can get in touch with other civilizations (文明), cultures, customs and ideas.

    Through history, most people travelled because of necessity (必要性)—not for pleasure. People travelled just in order to remain alive. They searched for food to eat or places to live in. They sometimes ran away from enemies. This is not to say that no one ever travelled just for the fun of it. In ancient times, for example, rich Romans travelled all the way to Greece to take part in the Olympic Games, and festivals. Of course, some people decided to travel just out of curiosity (好奇心). They wanted to find out what it looked like beyond the horizon (地平线). Also business travel has been going on for centuries. Traders could not only make money but also learn to speak several languages and be introduced to different cultures.

    So, travelling does enrich our mind and draw new ideas to us. There is no doubt that we can get much from it.

    Filled with much housework, meals and childcare at home, many people feel that being at work sounds more like having a picnic. Even for those who have a happy family life, they feel actually more stressed at home than at work.

    Recently, a study carried out by the researchers at a university in the USA found lower levels of hormone released in response to stress in a majority of subjects when they were at work compared to when they were at home. This was true for both men and women, and parents and people without children.

    Both men and women showed less stress at work. But women are more likely to report feeling happier there. Men were more likely to feel happier at home. Experts say there are other reasons why work is less stressful than home for many. “Paid work is more valued in society,” said Sarah Damaske, the lead researcher on the study, “Household work is boring and not particularly rewarding.”

    We get better at our job with time and the increased competence means less stress and more rewards. Yet none of us, no matter how long we've been doing it, ever truly feels like an expert at parenting or even at marriage.

    The support and friendship of co-workers also offer stress relief. At home, meanwhile, stress spreads and increases quickly. “That's the reason why most housewives wish they were the bread earners,” Dr. Damaske says.

    Much of the advice to families and couples includes the warning to “leave work stress at office” and even to change our mind-set from work to home, for example, a walk around the block. The recent findings, though, suggest our home life, not our attitude, might be due for some change.

    Depression(抑郁) can be a destructive illness, plaguing millions of people worldwide with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and fatigue. Despite numerous antidepressant drugs, as many as a third of patients don't respond to medication. This has forced doctors to be more creative in finding different treatments for the condition.

    In the past two decades, researchers have tied depression to a seemingly unrelated condition: inflammation(炎症), the body's natural response to stress. It could rise from injury or inflection, or even emotional issues like an unhappy marriage or problems at work. Some amount of inflammation is generally beneficial, as it increases production of cytokines(致癌因子)，proteins that help us heal and protect us from the effects of overwork.

    But excessive cytokine levels, and the inflammation they bring on, could come at a cost—a number of studies suggests that high levels of cytokines could contribute to depression.

    Cytokines can reach the brain several ways: directly through the blood-brain barrier or indirectly by binding to nerve fibers elsewhere, which send signals to the brain to produce the inflammation molecules. In the brain, cytokines can disturb the production and release of several important signaling chemicals, including serotonin, dopamine and glutamate, which help control emotion, appetite, sleep, learning and memory. It's though that a lack of serotonin activity in the brain causes depression; most antidepressants increase the activity. But cytokines also have been shown to activate stress hormone signaling in the brain, which man also serve to develop depression.

    With all the evidence implicating inflammation in depression, doctors have been anxious to test anti-inflammatory drugs as a potential treatment. Four small studies published between 2006 and 2017 by research groups in Europe and Iran found that adults diagnosed with depression who took aspirin or another anti-inflammatory drug called Celecoxib, along with an antidepressant, got more relief from feelings of sadness, hopelessness, guilt and fatigue compared with those taking an antidepressant alone. However, Andrew Miller, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, thought something was wrong in these small, limited studies. None of them looked at whether the participants had to have high levels of cytokines before they'd see a benefit from anti-inflammatory drugs.  "Unfortunately, much of the field has fallen into the trap of viewing inflammation as the be-all, end-all," Miller says. He and his colleagues wanted to see whether the effect of these drugs was limited to the depression patients with high cytokine levels, or if it helped all people diagnosed with depression.

    My grandmother often said to me, "You can count the number of your true friends on the fingers of one hand." For a long time I thought this was true. However, I've now discovered my grandmother was only half right. Maybe we do only make a few "best" friends in our lifetime, but those aren't the only people that we can call friends. There are many different types. Let me tell you about a few of them.

    One type of friends is the type I call the "football mom friends". My neighbour Sally is a good example. We both have kids who play football in a football club, and someone has to take them to practise and pick them up. Sally and I and two other mothers do this. We meet sometimes and have tea and talk about what our kids are doing, but those are the only times that we meet each other. I enjoy being with these women, but we don't do anything else together.

    Another type is called the "hobby friend". That's the person you share an interest or a hobby with. Michael and Cater, who are brothers, are a good example of this type. We're all in a bird watching club. Every few weekends the members of the club go on a trip to watch different kinds of birds. There's nothing romantic about my relationship with Michael and Cater, of course. We just share interest in birds.

    Then there's the "other half the couple" type of friends. Jim is married to Rose, a friend that I have known since college. When Rose married Jim, I realized that I would have to be Jim's friend if I want to continue to be Rose's. Jim and I don't share so many interests, but we do have a friendly relationship.