Did you know that, in 2016, over 18 million people attended classical concerts in Germany? That's more people than those who went to main league football matches! Earlier this year, Germany continued its celebration of classical music with the opening of a new concert hall in the heart of Hamburg. Germans are incredibly proud of it  and it's the first thing I show to my friends when they come to visit.

    Known as the ‘Elphi' by the locals, the Elbphilharmonie is a beautiful tower of glittering glass sitting atop an old warehouse by the banks of the river Elbe. The plaza(露天广场)is open to the public and from the middle of he city's tallest building, you can gaze across the harbour, miles of rooftops and passing ships below.

    The main concert hall seats over 2000 people and is one of the most advanced music venues in the world. Two smaller concert halls are used for jazz, world and contemporary music. In addition, if you're unbelievably rich, you can buy one of the 45 luxurious apartments lying within the building.

    Construction began in 2007 with a budget of € 241 million and a two-year period. Fast forward ten years, the building eventually opened with a final price tag of over 800 million!

    I consider myself very lucky that the Elbphilharmonie opened during my time living in Hamburg, but unfortunately I haven't yet been able to attend a concert. Everything is sold out for six months! For now, I'm content to visit the plaza to enjoy the impressive views over the  docks and see the innovative architecture up close. Hopefully one day soon. I'll be lucky enough to grab a last-minute concert ticket!

    In a cold winter, a couple had to move out from the luxury villa because of bankruptcy. The husband worked day and night to support the family but with no care of his wife. So she thought, “he doesn't love me anymore, he just cares his business… not me”.

    One day, she began to take a bath, he stopped her at the door, “Let me take it first, OK?” “Why not let me shower first?” she asked. “I was tired, sweetie, you take it later, OK?” She was totally depressed.

    On a morose(闷闷不乐的）day, she found nothing to do and turned on his computer, a few words blurred her eyes...It was his diary:

    Today, I was quite sad, she asked me why I was always taking the bath first, and I said to her, I was exhausted. She was unhappy, in her mind, I treated her not as well as usual, but how can I do? I wasn't as rich as before! We moved to the small apartment, there was only a shower in such a freezing winter. But I found that if one person took the shower first, the room could get a little warm, so every time I rushed to the bathroom first. I was thinking that, when she took the shower, the room would get warmer, at least1℃, 2℃ or 3℃.

    Now I can't give her comfortable life, bring her the luxury restaurant, buy expensive dresses for her, but at least, I can give her 1℃ love.

Grizzly bears,which may grow to about 2.5 m long and weigh over 400 kg,occupy a conflicted corner of the American psyche—we revere(敬畏) them even as they give us frightening dreams.Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone National Park what they most hope to see,and their answer is often the same:a grizzly bear.

"Grizzly bears are re-occupying large areas of their former range,"says bear biologist Chris Servheen.As grizzly bears expand their range into places where they haven't been seen in a century or more,they're increasingly being sighted by humans.

The western half of the U.S.was full of grizzlies when Europeans came,with a rough number of 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans.By the early 1970s,after centuries of cruel and continuous hunting by settlers,600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the Northern Rockies.In 1975,grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Today,there are about 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the U.S.Their recovery has been so successful that the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service has twice attempted to de-list grizzlies,which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted.Both efforts were overturned due to lawsuits from conservation groups.For now,grizzlies remain listed.

Obviously,if precautions(预防) aren't taken,grizzlies can become troublesome,sometimes killing farm animals or walking through yards in search of food.If people remove food and attractants from their yards and campsites,grizzlies will typically pass by without trouble.Putting electric fencing around chicken houses and other farm animal quarters is also highly effective at getting grizzlies away."Our hope is to have a clean,attractant-free place where bears can pass through without learning bad habits,"says James Jonkel,longtime biologist who manages bears in and around Missoula.

In a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, Dieudonne Twahirwa looks nothing like the traditional African farmer. The 30-year-old owner of Gashora Farm knows what a difference that makes.

"You need more role models," he said, standing among knee-high rows of chili (辣椒) plants. "If you have young farmers, they have land and they drive to the farm and others may think, ‘Why can't I do that?"

Twahirwa, a university graduate, bought a friend's tomato farm six years ago for $150. He made $1,500 back in two months. "You have to link farming with entrepreneurship (创业精神) and real numbers," he said.

Many young Africans are quitting countryside areas, choosing not to work hard for a long time in the fields-a job made a lot tougher by climate change. But Twahirwa is one of a growing group of successful farmers working to improve agriculture's image on the continent. Some 1,000 farmers now produce chilies for him. He is starting a fourth farm of his own, and exports fresh and dried chilies and oil to Britain, the United States, India and Kenya.

Africa has the world's youngest population and 65 percent undeveloped farmland. Yet accessing land and loans is difficult, and African productivity is low with crop output just 56 percent of the international average.

"Agriculture is mainly connected with suffering and no young person wants to suffer," said Tamara Kaunda, an expert of FAO. She believes African agriculture needs a change to get rid of its old-fashioned image of extremely difficult and tiring work with a hoe (锄头). "Show young people with tractors, green fields, nice irrigation systems and smartphones," she said.

Getting young people involved in agriculture does not mean they have to work on a farm. For example, in coffee production, the beans go from the farm to the washing station, then to be separated from the outer coverings. There are people in the coffee value chain who just build washing stations and rent them out. You just have to find a place to plug in.

Life in the future will be very different from that today. Between then and now many changes will take place (发生), but what will the changes be?

The population is growing fast. There will be many people in the world and most of them will live longer than people now. Computers will be much smaller and more useful, and there will be at least one in every home. And computer studies will be one of the most important subjects at school then. 

People will work fewer hours than they do now and they will have more free time for sports, watching TV and travelling. Travelling will be much easier and cheaper. And more people will go to other countries for holidays. 

Work in the future will be different too. Robots(机器人) can do dangerous and hard work. Because of this, many people will not have enough work to do. This will be a problem.

Livestreaming (直播) through platforms such as Amazon Live and TikTok is an increasingly popular way to sell goods online. It usually lasts between 5 and 10 minutes, and someone promotes a product. Viewers can then readily buy it by just clicking on a link.

We analyzed (分析) 99, 451 sales cases on a livestream selling platform and matched them with actual sales cases. In terms of time, that is equal to over 2 million 30-second television advertisements.

To determine the emotional (情绪的) expression of the salesperson (销售员), we used two deep learning models: a face model and an emotion model. The face model discovers the presence or absence of a face in a frame of a video stream. The emotion model then determines the probability that a face is exhibiting any of the six basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear or disgust. For example, smiling signals a high probability of happiness, while an off-putting expression usually points toward anger.

We wanted to see the effect of emotions expressed at different times in the sales cases so we counted probabilities for each emotion for all 62 million frames in our database. We then combined these probabilities with other possible aspects (方面) that might drive sales — such as price and product characteristics — to judge the effect of emotion.

We found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, when salespeople show more negative emotions — such as anger and disgust — the volume of sales went down. But we also found that a similar thing happened when the salespeople show high levels of positive emotions, such as happiness or surprise.

A likely explanation, based on our research, is that smiling can be disgusting because it lacks true feelings and can reduce trust in the seller. A seller's happiness may be taken as a sign that the seller is gaining interests at the customer's expense.