Japan's youth are losing interest in science and as a result, threatening the nation's industrial progress. According to Japan Science and Technology Agency, young Japanese are surrounded by high-tech devices(设备), but are not interested in how they work.

    Japanese businesses have succeeded partly because they've a great many engineers. A drop in interest could lead to a decline(减少) in their numbers and quality. "In the past, the young had a big interest in science and technology," said Hirano, director of the agency's policy department.

    There are two main reasons for the problem. The first is known as "black box syndrome" of modern technology.

    Electronic devices depend on tiny silicon chips（芯片）, which can only be made in big factories, whose workings can't be seen by the eyes. The devices, unlike machines of the past driven by gears and wheels, are simply boxes.

    Young Japanese, brought up on video games and at home with computers, enjoy using modern technology, but this is a passive interest and different from the interest in how things work. "You need an active interest to get interested in science. This is declining in the young," said Hirano.

    About two-thirds of Japanese in their 20s use PCs, twice the number of those in their 50s. But only 40% of those in their 20s say they are interested in news about science and technology, compared to 60% of the 50 to 60 year olds.

    "Another reason for it is that life in modern Japan is too comfortable," he said. "A wealthy society reduces people's desire to modernize and develop their country. To a degree, you can't avoid this when the fruits of science and technology are fully developed." Similarly, science in Europe and the US has also suffered a lack of interest.

“Birds” and “airports” are two words that, paired together, don't normally paint the most harmonious picture. So it really raises some eyebrows when China announces plans to build an airport that's for birds.

Described as the world's first-ever bird airport, the proposed Lingang Bird Sanctuary(保护区) in the northern coastal city of Tianjin is，of course，not an actual airport. Rather, it's a wetland preserve specifically designed to accommodate hundreds — even thousands — of daily takeoffs and landings by birds traveling along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Over 50 species of migratory (迁徙的）water birds, some endangered, will stop and feed at the protected sanctuary before continuing their long journey along the flyway.

Located on a former landfill site, the 61-hectare (150-acre) airport is also open to human travelers. (Half a million visitors are expected annually.) However, instead of duty-free shopping, the main attraction for non-egg-laying creatures at Tianjin's newest airport will be a green-roofed education and research center, a series of raised “observation platforms” and a network of scenic walking and cycling paths and trails totaling over 4 miles.

The proposed Bird Airport will be a globally significant sanctuary for endangered migratory bird species, while providing new green lungs for the city of Tianjin,” Adrian McGregor of Australian landscape architecture firm McGregor Coxall explained of .the design. Frequently blanketed in smog so thick that it has shut down real airports, Tianjin is a city — China's fourth most populous — that would certainly benefit from a new pair of healthy green lungs.

    The sixth mass extinction of life on the Earth is unfolding more quickly than feared, scientists have warned. More than 30 percent of animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — are declining in both range and population, according to the first comprehensive analysis of these trends.

    Around a decade ago, experts feared that a new range wipeout of species was appearing. Today, most agree that it is underway — but the new study suggests that the die-out is already growing fast.

    The loss of biodiversity has recently accelerated. Several species of mammals that were relatively safe one or two decades ago are now endangered, including cheetahs, lions and giraffes, the study showed.

    There is no mystery as to why: our own ever-expanding species — which has more than doubled in number since 1960 to 7.4 billion — is eating, crowding and polluting its planetary cohabitants out of existence. By comparison, there are as few as 20,000 lions left in the wild, less than 7,000 cheetahs, 500 to 1,000 giant pandas.

    The main drivers of wildlife decline are habitat loss, over-consumption, pollution, other species, disease, as well as hunting in the case of tigers, elephants, rhinos and other large animals prized for their body parts.

    Climate change is thought to become a major threat in the coming decades, with some animals — most famously polar bears — already in decline due to rising temperatures and changing weather patterns.

    Even nowadays there is a lot of misunderstanding between nationalities. Let's have a look at what the following people have to say.

    Maria Conti: I find the English people insincere, cold and unfriendly. They keep saying "Thank you", "I'm sorry" even when they don't know each other. They are even polite to their own relatives. Except for helping you find your way in the streets, they aren't really friendly and never invite you to their houses.

    Giannis Stinios: On the contrary I found them broad-minded and friendly.I was invited to people's houses and they all showed great interest in my ideas,Greek life and people.In England I learned that it was possible to be warm, friendly and polite at the same time.

    Judy Brown: I lived in both Italy and Greece for a few years.At first there were a few misunderstandings between my foreign friends and myself. For example, I once gave a Greek friend a present for her birthday party.I was rather sorry that she did not unwrap it immediately. What's more, she even didn't thank me until I asked her if she liked it.I've learned from different experiences that a lot of foreigners find our attitude to what we English people call politeness rather insincere. They feel that politeness isn't necessary between friends.

    When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine The family you have chosen decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation. I suggested that they should stay at 'bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought 'VACANCIES' meant 'holidays', because the Spanish word for 'holidays" is 'vacancies'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said 'VACANCIES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said 'NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word 'DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word 'DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hole.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris, when someone offered me some more coffee, I said "Thank you" in French. I meant that I would like some more. However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that "Thank you" in French means "No, thank you."

    Our society is generally becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, Nell-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and "human-relations" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.

    The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction of interesting life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.

    Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of obedience and independence. From the moment on they are tested again and again—by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.

    Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century "free enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system form a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption ends in a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities – those of all love and of reason—are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.