Educational APP Store

    Busuu

    Busuu helps you learn English language on the go and the lesson's quality is guaranteed as it is based on CEFR language framework. Lessons range from beginners to advanced learners. Busuu is actually a great English app if you want to improve your spoken English by talking with native speakers.

    Duolingo

    Duolingo is one of the best English language apps today and highly recommended for English beginners. The system of the app helps you learn English quickly by spending twenty minutes a day. Duolingo structures your lessons that teach you about seven new words based on a topic and skill points being awarded for completing the lessons.

    Memrise

    Memrise uses some creative and easy ways to remember English words. The focus of this app is to help the users expand their vocabulary by learning English words in an effective way. Memrise also offers an offline mode to continue learning without Internet connection.

    Rosetta Stone

    Rosetta Stone is designed differently from average language apps on the marketplace today. It's trying to teach us English the way we'd learn it if we were children starting to learn the language, it has exercises designed to help you learn basic words. A variety of lessons are offered that Rosetta Stone has been using for years.

    British chemist David Evans has become an overnight celebrity on Chinese social media. His chemistry experiments have attracted over 2 million followers in just a few months. Evans is a chemistry professor at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The 60-year-old always wears a white lab coat, a pair of safety goggles (护目镜), and smiles often. Some web users say he looks just like the “grandpa of KFC”.

    Evans has posted videos of various experiments. His most popular experiments have attracted millions of hits on video-sharing apps. Excited children's cheers and shouts can be heard in his videos. “I hope my experiments can arouse people's interest in science,” he says.

    Evans has been interested in China since childhood. In the early 1970s, before the reform and opening-up, he viewed it as a “country full of mysteries”. He first visited the Chinese mainland in 1987 to attend a chemistry conference in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He quit his job in the United Kingdom and moved to Beijing in 1996. Many of his friends thought he was crazy. But Evans says they just saw China's challenges but not its potential.

    Since 2011, Evans has turned to the Internet to popularize science. He learned short-video apps are also popular in small cities and rural areas. And he realized this enables him to reach more students, who lack opportunities to perform fun experiments. But even a one-minute video requires a considerable amount of work. Still, he thinks it's worth it to fulfill his responsibility to popularize science.

    His experiments always fill schools' lecture halls with laughter. Some viewers call him “a Harry Potter-like magician”, but he disagrees. “A magician never tells the secrets behind his tricks, but a scientist always gives an explanation.” He sees himself as a teacher. He performs experiments to spread knowledge, inspire thinking, remove misunderstandings and show that science can create change. Evans says he looks forward to more “chemical reactions” with China.

    Pinewood Studios is located (位于) about twenty miles west of central London and named after the pinetrees in the grounds. Pinewood has been at the heart of both British and international film production. The house, Heatherden Hall, was bought by Charles Boot in 1934, and he and J. Arthur Rank became partners in the project to build the studios. Pinewood proved pioneering in its use of the "unit system" that allowed more than one film to be made at a time, and this enabled Pinewood to achieve the highest output of all the studios in the world. The first film to be completed at Pinewood was Talk of the Devil (1936, Reed) while the immediate postwar period saw six major productions including the praised Oliver Twist (1948, Lean) and The Red Shoes (1948, Powell and Press-burger).

    The 1950s saw countless productions including the Doctor series and medical comedy, which were the fathers to the Carry On films: the series started with Doctor in the House (1954, Thomas) and led to a further six films. Other notable films of the 1950s age include The Prince and the Showgirl (1957 Olivier) starring Marilyn Monroe, Carve Her Name with Pride (1958, Gilbert), North West Frontier (1959 Thompson) and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959, Thomas). The Thirty-Nine Steps was a reworking of John Buchan's novel originally filmed by Hitchcock in 1935. Because of its new ideas and skills, American production companies crowded to Pinewood and a major reinvestment (再投资) was required. During the 1960s, four new stages were built to accommodate every aspect of film and television production. This period also saw the start of the association between Pinewood and the James Bond series, which started in 1962 with Dr No (Young). The studios have continued to produce imaginative and technically challenging material such as Superman (1978, Donner), Superman Ⅱ (1980, Lester), Superman Ⅲ (1983, Lester), Superman Ⅳ: The Quest for Peace (1987, Furie),and Batman (1989,Burton).

    Are you sometimes a little tired and sleepy in the early afternoon? Many people feel this way after lunch. They may think that eating lunch is the cause of the sleepiness. Or, in summer, they may think it is the heat. However, the real reason lies inside their bodies. At that time—about eight hours after you wake up—your body temperature goes down. This is what makes you slow down and feel sleepy. Scientists have tested sleep habits in experiments where there was no night or day. The people in these experiments almost always followed a similar sleeping pattern. They slept for one long period and then for one short period about eight hours later.

    In many parts of the world, people take naps (小睡) in the middle of the day. This is especially true in warmer climates, where the heat makes work difficult in the early afternoon. Researchers are now saying that naps are good for everyone in any climate. A daily nap gives one a more rested body and mind and therefore is good for health in general. In countries where naps are traditional, people often suffer less from problems such as heart disease. Many working people, unfortunately, have no time to take naps. Though doctors may advise taking naps, employers don't follow it! If you do have the chance, however, here are a few tips about making the most of your nap. Remember that the best time to take a nap is about eight hours after you get up. A short sleep too late in the day may only make you feel more tired and sleepy afterward. This can also happen if you sleep for too long. If you do not have enough time, try a short nap—even ten minutes of sleep can be helpful.

    Moving flight times from night to day could reduce air travel's contributions to global warming, a new study suggests. Scheduling more (lay time flights may reduce the influence of contrails ——the visible lines of white steam that many planes leave behind them in the sky.

    The role of contrails in climate change is still being studied, but some scientists believe they contribute to the greenhouse effect by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

    Nicola Stuber, first author of the study, suggests that contrails' overall impact on climate change is almost as big as that of aircraft^? s carbon dioxide emissions (排放)over a hundred-year period. Aircraft are believed to be responsible for 2-3% of human carbon dioxide emissions. Like other high, thin clouds, contrails reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet. However, they also trap energy in the atmosphere and increase the warming effect.

    Stuber and other scientists believe that the effect of the contrails is big. "On average, the green-house effect controls the effects of contrails, said Stuber, a meteorologist at England's University of Reading." The warming effect is far greater for contrails left by night flights," Stuber added. "The cooling effect only happens (luring the day when the sun is up. During the night the greenhouse warming is no longer balanced and that is why the contribution of night-flight is so large."

    Most commercial airline traffic occurs during daylight hours. For example, only one in four United Kingdom flights is a night flight, but those flights create some 60% of the warming created by contrails, the study reports.

    The Huaqing Palace Heritage Site

    Address: At the foot of Lishan Mountain in Lintong, 30 kilometers east of Xi'an.

    Opening hours: From March to November: 7:00-18:00;

    From December to February: 7:30-18:30.

    Bus routes: 914, 915, U5, and 306.