On Christmas Eve, 1944, my grandmother urged my uncle, then 12 years old, to slip out of the concentration camp where they were imprisoned near 15 miles east of Vienna to go to Deutsch-Wagram. “People are charitable around Christmastime,” Grandma Lili said to her son, Gyuri. “Ask for some food. Anything they can spare. Tell them that we're on the edge of starvation. Tell them that your 3-year-old sister can not get off the bed because she's outgrown her shoes.”

    In the dark of that night, Gyuri secretly left the camp and walked nearly four miles to Deutsch-Wagram, the closest town. He happened upon a house and knocked on the front door. A woman opened that door. She was probably alone, her man far away, fighting in the war, her children asleep in their beds. The 12-year-old pieced together in German exactly what his mother had told him to say.

     “Come back tomorrow," whispered the woman. The next day, my uncle returned. The woman opened the door with a smile. She piled his hands with bread, clothing, a pair of shoes that her child had outgrown and a pair of socks. The woman had knitted warm socks for my mother. After putting on the socks and shoes that fit, my mother got off the bed in delight. Her ragged shoes were passed on to a younger child who was also living in the camp. They shared their unexpected harvest with the entire camp. It was a quiet celebration of human kindness around Christmastime.

    In April 1945, my mother, uncle and grandmother were liberated. And it was those very socks and shoes that my mother wore as she walked some 28 miles over two days to Bratislava on her walk to a new life.

    To the unknown giver, I thank you. In the desperation of a cold and snowy land, when many hearts were closed and death was more likely than life, especially for Jews, you gave them hope and comfort.

    Thousands of taxi drivers in Shenyang, Liaoning province, reportedly blocked streets with their vehicles on Sunday in protest against unlicensed vehicles using taxi-hiring apps and apps-based car rental companies providing passenger services, including high-end cars. Although the drivers also complained about the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy (补贴)by the government, their main complaint was the loss of business because of the rising number of Internet-based car services companies.

    On Wednesday, news reports came that Beijing transport authorities will take measures to stop the illegal “taxi business” of private cars through the newly rising Internet apps, following the footsteps of Shenyang and Nanjing.

    It is not yet clear how the Shenyang city government will handle the issue and whether it will declare the services offered by market leaders such as Didi Dache, a taxi-hiring app provider backed by Tencent Holdings, and Kuaidi Dache illegal. But Shanghai transport regulators (交通管理结构)have set a rule, by banning Didi Zhuanche, or car services offered by Didi Dache in December.

    Such regulations will cause a setback to the car-hiring companies and investors that are waiting to cash in on the potentially booming business. Just last month, Didi Dache got $700 million in funding from global investors, including Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, Russian investment company DST Global and Tencent. Besides, the market is uncertain that Kuaidi Dache is about to finalize its latest round of funding after getting $800 million from global investors.

    Regulatory uncertainties, however, could cast a shadow on the future of the Internet-based car-hiring services, which have become popular in most of China's big cities. To be fair, these companies' business model is anything but bad. For example, Didi Zhuanche works side by side with established car rental companies to provide high-end car service mainly for businesspeople through the Internet and mobile phone apps.

    Every link in this business model chain has legal companies and services. Hence, it is hard to define it as illegal and ban it.

    The students are having their chemistry class. Miss Li is telling the children what water is like. After that, she asks her students some questions, “Boys and girls! What is water? Can you tell me?" She waits for a few minutes, but no one answers her. Then Miss Li asks again. “Why don't you answer my question? I tell you what water is like, right?”

    Then a boy puts up his hand and says, “Miss Li, you tell us that water has no color and no smell. But I think that water is something that is black when I wash my hand in it.” All the students begin to laugh. Miss Li laughs too. Then another boy puts up his hand, Miss Li says “What do you think, Wang Bing?” The boy says:” Miss Li, where can we find water that has no color and no smell?”

    “Why do you say so?” Miss Li asks.

    “The water in the river behind my house is always black and it has a bad smell.” answers the boy. And most of the children think he is right.

 “I am sorry to hear that, children.” says the teacher. “Our water is getting dirtier. That is a problem. All of us must try our best to make it clean again.”

    A new app aims to help parents interpret what their baby wants based on the sound of their cry. The free app Chatter Baby, which was released last month, analyzes the acoustic (声学的) features of a baby's cry, to help parents understand whether their child might be hungry, fussy or in pain. While critics say caregivers should not rely too much on their smartphone, others say it's a helpful tool for new or tired parents.

    Ariana Anderson, a mother of four, developed the app. She originally designed the technology to help deaf parents better understand why their baby was upset, but soon realized it could be a helpful tool for all new parents.

    To build a database, Anderson and her team uploaded 2,000 audio samples of infant(婴儿) cries. She used cries recorded during ear piercings and vaccinations to distinguish pain cries. And to create a baseline for the other two categories, a group of moms had to agree on whether the cry was either hungry or fussy.

    Anderson's team continues to collect data and hopes to make the app more accurate by asking parents to get specific about what certain sounds mean.

    Pediatrician Eric Ball pointed out that evaluating cries can never be an exact science. “I think that all of the apps and technology that new parents are using now can be helpful but need to be taken seriously,” Ball said ,“ I do worry that some parents will get stuck in big data and turn their parenting into basically a spreadsheet(电子表格) which I think will take away the love and caring that parents are supposed to be providing for the children. ”

    But Anderson said the aim of the app is to have parents interpret the results, not to provide a yes or no answer. The Bells, a couple using this app, say it's a win-win. They believe they are not only helping their baby now but potentially others in the future.

    Have you ever pressed the pedestrian button at a crosswalk and wondered if it really worked? They're called "placebo(安慰剂）buttons"一buttons that mechanically sound and can be pushed, but provide no functionality.

    In New York City, only about 100 of the 1, 000 crosswalk buttons actually function. Crosswalk signals were generally installed before traffic jam had reached today's levels.

    But while their function was taken over by more advanced systems—such as automated lights or traffic sensors — the physical buttons were often kept, rather than being replaced at further expense. Other cities, such as Boston, Dallas and Seattle, have gone through a similar process, leaving them with their own placebo pedestrian buttons. In London, which has 6, 000 traffic signals, pressing the pedestrian button results in a reliable "Wait" light. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the "green man"— or "pedestrian stage" in traffic signal design profession — will appear any sooner.

    "We do have some crossings where the green light comes on automatically, but we still ask people to press the button because that enables accessible features,'' said Glynn Barton, director of network management at Transport for London.

    These features, such as blind tracks and hearable traffic signals, help people with visual disorder cross the road and only function when the button is pressed. As for the lights, a growing number of them are now combined and become a part of an electronic system that detects traffic and adjusts time frequency accordingly (giving priority to buses if they're running late, for example), which means that pressing the button has no effect.

    According to Langer, a Harvard psychologist, placebo buttons give us the illusion (错觉)of control — and something to do in situations where the alternative would be doing nothing. In the case of pedestrian crossings, they may even make us safer by forcing us to pay attention to our surroundings. "They serve a psychological purpose at the very least," she added.

    Whenever we're introduced to strangers, we make snap decisions about them according to our first impressions. Are they attractive or how much do they earn?

    For most Brits, simply asking someone how much they're worth' financially is considered very impolite. Thankfully, most people are kind enough to drop several hints (暗示)about their relative wealth or successful careers They always post on social media about flying to a meeting for work. They're always wearing clothes with labels big enough to silently scream about how rich they are and how well they're doing.

    It's a worrying trend, and I'm not immune to it. I've felt the warm happiness of knowing I earned more than somebody, and the baseless grey irritation of knowing that I earn less than another. I've checked into places while I know full well that anybody reading it will get jealous.

    It seems as though self-worth is increasingly being tied to the careers we choose and the money we earn. A study in 2013, for example found that nearly 17% of unemployed Americans were depressed compared to almost 6% of those who had a permanent job.

    We need to stop placing so much value on what a person earns. Don't get me wrong-being ambitious is not a fault, and achievements should always be celebrated. But when a person uses their success to judge you negatively it becomes a problem.

    If you want to know what you're really worth, here's a tip: It doesn't have anything to do with your bank account. It's about how many times you've been there for your friends. It's how many times you've been kind to a stranger It's every time you did something unselfish, or told your partner you loved him/her, or treated someone with respect no matter where they were in their own life.