What will power your house in the future？Nuclear, wind, or solar power？According toscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)in the US, it might beleaves—but artificial(人造的)ones.

    Natural leaves are able to change sunlight and water intoenergy. It is known as photosynthesis(光合作用). Nowresearchers have found a way to imitate this seemingly simple process.

    The artificial leaf developed by Daniel Nocera and hiscolleagues at MIT can be seen as a special silicon chip with catalysts(催化剂). Similar tonatural leaves, it can splitwater into hydrogen and oxygen when put into a bucket of water. The hydrogenand oxygen gases are then stored in a fuel cell, which usesthose two materials to produce electricity, located eitheron top of a house or beside the house.

Though the leaf is only about the shape of a poker card, scientistsclaimed that it is promising to be an inexpensive source of electricity indeveloping countries.“ One can imagine villages in India and Africa not longfrom now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology, ”said Noceraat a conference of the American Chemical Society.

    The artificial leaf is not a new idea. The first artificial leafwas invented in 1997 but was too expensive and unstable for practical use. Thenew leaf, by contrast, is made ofcheap materials, easy to useand highly stable. In laboratory studies, Nocera showedthat an artificial leaf prototype(原型)could operatecontinuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity.

    The wonderful improvements come from Nocera's recent discoveryof several powerful, new andinexpensive catalysts. These catalysts make the energy transformation insidethe leaf more efficient with water and sunlight. Right now, the new leafis about 10 times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a naturalone. Besides, the device canrun in whatever water is available；that is, it doesn'tneed pure water. This is important for some countries that don't have access topure water.

    With the goal to “make each home its own power station” and“give energy to the poor”, scientistsbelieve that the new technology could be widely used in developing countries, especially inIndia and rural China.

    Someone had given our name and phone number to a charity, and its staff were bringing us Christmas presents.

    I made sure the house was as spotless as it could be with four children living in it, as the due time drew near, I sat on the edge of the couch. Each time I heard a car, I jumped up to see if they were here. Each time it wasn't them, I was relieved, yet disappointed.

    Finally a huge car pulled into the driveway, and four people got out. Now I was embarrassed as well as grateful, excited and nervous. I greeted them with a smile. They made several trips and soon my living room was full of boxes and bags.

    I tried to say “thank you” but my throat suddenly closed up and tears welled up in my eyes.

    I watched through the window as they drove away, wondering what they thought of me. I had always donated, but not received. We weren't always like this. My husband had been out of work, and we were struggling. I'd wanted to say this to them, but the words wouldn't come out.

    I quickly put away the gifts before the school-aged children came home. I hid them in closets and under beds as quickly as I could. On Christmas morning I felt a little guilty as our four children tore open the boxes and bags with pleasure, thinking they were from us.

    My nine-year-old son opened a game box and taped inside the lid was an envelope. I opened it and read aloud: May the joy of Christmas be with you all through the year. At the bottom of the card, written in small, neat letters was a sentence, it said: Although the sea gets rough, no storm lasts forever.

    I was suddenly ashamed of being ashamed. I finally understood.

    In Chinese customs, red is the main color for weddings. It is used in different ways as it signifies love, joy and happiness. The bride's wedding gown（女礼服）is often red, the wedding invitations, gift boxes and envelopes are red and the bride and the groom's homes are decorated in red on the wedding day.

    Before the wedding, the married couples from the groom's family visit the bride's place with gifts in red baskets and boxes. One of those baskets has milk honey. Three days before the wedding, the women from the bride's family bring return-gifts to the groom's family.

    On the wedding day, the groom arrives at the bride's place on his way to the chapel（佛堂）. The groom has to give gifts in cash wrapped in red paper to the bride's friends for letting her go. The bride and the groom then leave for the chapel together.

    The wedding ceremony is attended only by the couple's immediate relatives. Just after the wedding ceremony, the bride serves tea to her parents in-laws as a tradition. The couples will then go to get wedding pictures. Then a reception（宴会）will follow.

    In the reception, a welcome speech is followed by a cake cutting ceremony. A Chinese wedding cake has many layers（层）, and each one represents a step to success for the newly married couples. So couples cut the cake from the bottom.

    Travour.com describes and provides information on the wedding traditions of the Chinese and around the world. Below are some wedding traditions performed in Italy.

    Many of the world's most successful people were once successful failures. Here are the stories of a few of them.

    Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

    Abraham Lincoln was one of America's greatest leaders, taking the country through the Civil War (from 1860 to 1865). However, his life was never easy. He started numerous businesses that failed, he went bankrupt twice, and was defeated in 26 campaigns for public office. He later said, “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content and satisfied with your failure.”

    Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

    Van Gogh is one of the most famous and influential painters in the history of Western Art. He's famous for paintings such as The Starry Night, The potato Eaters and Sunflowers. However, during his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting for a very small amount of money. Despite this, he carried on painting, sometimes even going without food so he could complete his collection of over 800 known works.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

    Albert Einstein won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1921. However, he wasn't always considered a genius. He didn't speak until he was four, and couldn't read until he was seven. His teachers and parents thought he was slow, so he was driven from school and couldn't get into the Zurich Polytechnic School. He later famously said, “Success is failure in progress.”

    Stephen King (1947-2018)

    Stephen King is one of the best-selling authors of all time, but his first book, Carrie, was rejected by about 30 publishers. Finally, Stephen threw it into the bin, but his wife fished it out and encouraged him to resubmit it, which he did and succeeded this time!

    Have you ever found yourself in this situation: You hear a song you used to sing when you were a child — a bit of nostalgia (怀旧) or “blast from the past,” as we say. But it is not a distant childhood memory. The words come back to you as clearly as when you sang them all those years ago.

    Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied the relationship between music and remembering a foreign language. They found that remembering words in a song was the best way to remember even one of the most difficult languages.

    Here is what they did. Researchers took 60 adults and randomly divided them into three groups of 20. Then they gave the groups three different types of “listen-and-repeat” learning conditions. Researchers had one group simply speak the words. They had the second group speak the words to a rhythm, or beat. And they asked the third group to sing the words.

    All three groups studied words from the Hungarian language for 15 minutes. Then they took part in a series of language tests to see what they remembered.

    Why Hungarian, you ask? Researchers said they chose Hungarian because not many people know the language. It does not share any roots with Germanic or Romance languages, such as Italian or Spanish. After the tests were over, the singers came out on top. The people who learned these new Hungarian words by singing them showed a higher overall performance. They did the best in four out of five of the tests. They also performed two times better than those who simply learned the words by speaking them.

    Dr. Katie Overy says singing could lead to new ways to learn a foreign language. The brain likes to remember things when they are contained in a catchy or memorable tune.

    Dr. Ludke said the findings could help those who struggle to learn foreign languages. On the University of Edinburgh's website Dr. Ludke writes, “This study provides the first experimental evidence that a listen-and-repeat singing method can support foreign language learning, and opens the door for future research in this area.”

    There are campus museums all over China that offer various collections and make for eye-opening visits.

    Beijing Air and Space Museum at Beihang University

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday and Saturday, 9:00 am -12:00 pm

    Highlights: Included among the more than 300 historic aircraft and space artifacts are one of the two Northrop P - 61 Black Widows in the world and China's first light airliner, Beijing 1.

    Fudan University Museum

    Admission: free

    Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Highlights: A unique collection of native artifacts from the Gaoshan aborigines in Taiwan. Some of them, such as pearl vests, are rarely seen even in Taiwan.

    China Ichthyic Culture Museum at Shanghai Ocean University

    Admission: 10 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 am - 11:30 am and 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm

    Highlights: In this collection of more than 40,000 specimens of about 3,000 ocean-dwelling species, the most eye-catching one is an 18. 4-meter-long sperm whale skeleton.

    Yifu Museum of China University of Geosciences

    Admission: 40 yuan; half price for students

    Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am - 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm; weekends and holidays, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm

    Highlights: It houses a collection of more than 30,000 mineral and rock specimens, more than 2,000 of which are rare ones like the museum's well-known dinosaur fossils.

    China Academy Museum at Hunan University

    Admission: 50 yuan

    Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 8: 00 am - 6: 30 pm in summer and 8: 30 am - 6:00 pm in winter

    Highlights: China's only museum to feature the history of academies and cultural education in the country.