Reaching Out to a New Friend in Starbucks

    I'm a single mom looking for a job.One morning I had grabbed my favorite spot at a local Starbucks and was going through the newspaper when I noticed a man in ragged clothing looking really untidy.I felt led to speak to this man and so I did.

    I learned that he was homeless and just wandered from place to place.Starbucks was nice enough to allow him to come in from the cold or the heat depending on the day.I also learned that he used to be an architect,but as we spoke I saw more and more that he wasn't at the fullest of mental capabilities,which made me even more upset that he didn't have a place to go.

    I sat with this man for a very long time in Starbucks calling different clinics,hospitals,shelters,police departments.He even gave me a beat up business card of a gentleman saying that was his son's phone number.It was an out-of-state number,but I called anyway but was not able to reach him.Unfortunately,all the places I called were unable to take him.

    I asked him if he was hungry and he said yes,so I went down the street to a deli（熟食店）and ordered a sandwich and drink.When I got back,my new-found friend became angry for a reason I was not aware of or maybe it was some sort of mental disturbance.All I could do was set the sandwich down and told him that I'll leave it there for him if he wanted it and I left.I walked around town for a couple of minutes and then headed back to see if he was still there.

    A man who was sitting in Starbucks most of the time when I was there came out and told me that the man ate the sandwich and that he was touched that I had sat with him like I did.It seems to me that no matter whether something goes awry（非正常的）on the surface,there is always something beautiful at a deeper level.

    I still remember my friend.I looked for him every time I was in town,but that was the last time I saw him.I hope that I had provided some glimmer of hope that he was not forgotten.

    Self-driving vehicles(车辆) will rely on cameras, sensors and artificial intelligence (人工智能) to recognize and respond to road and traffic conditions, but sensing is the most effective for objects and movement in the neighborhood of the vehicle. Not everything important in a car's environment will be caught by the vehicle's camera. Another vehicle approaching at high speed on a collision (碰撞) track might not be visible until it's too late. This is why vehicle-to-vehicle communication is undergoing rapid development. Our research shows that cars will need to be able to chat and cooperate on the road, although the technical challenges are still great.

    The usages of vehicle-to-vehicle communication contain vehicles driving together in a row, as well as safety messages about nearby emergency vehicles. Vehicles could alert each other to avoid collisions or share notices about passers-by and bicycles. From as far as several hundred metres away, vehicles could exchange messages with one another or receive information from roadside units（RSUs）about nearby incidents or dangerous road conditions through 4G network. A high level of AI seems required for such vehicles, not only to self-drive from A to B, but also to react intelligently to messages received. Vehicles will need to plan, reason, strategize and adapt according to information received in real time and to carry out cooperative behaviors. For example, a group of autonomous vehicles might avoid a route together because of possible risks, or a vehicle could decide to drop someone off earlier due to messages received, a foreseen crowding ahead.

    Further applications(应用) of vehicle-to-vehicle communication are still being researched, including how to perform cooperative behavior.

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language? According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

    Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.

    “Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists. It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn. Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and math skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的),” he said. “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”

    The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.

    Throughout history scientists have risked their health and their lives in their search for the truth.

    Sir Isaac Newton, the seventeenth century scientist, was very smart, but that didn't stop him from doing some pretty stupid things. In his laboratory in Cambridge he often did the strangest experiments. Once, while testing how light passes through lenses (晶状体), he put a long needle into his eye, pushed it to the back, and then moved it around just to see what would happen. Luckily, nothing long-lasting did. On another occasion he stared at the sun for as long as he could bear, to discover what effect this would have on his sight. Again he escaped suffering permanent damage, though he had to spend some days in a darkened room before his eyes recovered.

    In the 1750s the Swedish chemist Karl Scheele was the first person to find a way to produce phosphorus (磷). He in fact discovered eight more chemical elements including chlorine (氯), though he didn't get any praise for them. He was a very clever scientist, but his one failing was a curious habit of tasting a little of every substance he worked with. This risky practice finally caught up with him, and in 1786 he was found dead in his laboratory surrounded by a large number of dangerous chemicals, any of which might have been responsible for his death.

    Eugene Shoemaker was a respected geologist. He spent a large part of his life studying craters (火山口) on the moon, and how they were formed, and later did research into the comets of the planet Jupiter. In 1997 he and his wife were in the Australian desert where they went every year to search for places where comets might have hit the earth. While driving in the Tanami desert, normally one of the emptiest places in the world, another vehicle crashed into them and Shoemaker was killed on the spot. Some of his ashes (骨灰) were sent to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft and left there — he is the only person who has had this honor.

    Flying for a long time, you finally arrive at the place where you can relax—your hotel room. Now you throw your bag on the bed, turn on the TV and watch an international news programme on a satellite channel probably from UK or the USA.

    The main international broadcasters are BBC World and CNN. With an audience of over 1.5 billion people, these are popular channels that offer good-quality news programmes. In both companies, the journalists are experienced writers that produce journalism of a high standard.

    However, there are alternative news channels which people watch because they want a less traditional or non-Western view on world events. Russia Today and Al Jazeera International, an Arabic company, are international channels that broadcast in English. Both companies say they give a fresh view on big stories, and their experienced journalists often report from places where Western journalists do not work, and so they give us stories that we don't normally see.

    The Internet offers more variety. OneWorldTV is an Internet site where you can find stories about the developing world and human rights, rather than the usual stories about US politics and business. The writers for this company are often local people who write the stories for free. This non-professional journalism is increasing, and it certainly offers more choices.

    This increase in citizen journalism means that you can write the news, too. Main news broadcasters often use photographs and stories that members of the general public send to them, especially when there is a dramatic breaking news story. Besides this, some blogs are popular sources of news, and the website NowPublic lets you write stories using information you can get from anywhere, including sites like Youtube, Flickr and Twitter.

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