Coolest Hotels in the World

Ariau Amazon Towers

    The Ariau Amazon Towers hotel lets you sleep in a tree house. Eight towers make up this hotel that offers over 300 rooms. If you really want to get into the spirit, book the Tarzan Suite which is large enough for a big family. You'll be thirty feet up in the air and can travel between the towers through their wooden walkways.

    Prices: starting at $300 one night for each person for a regular room and going all the way up to $3000 for the Tarzan Suite.

    For more information, visit the website: http://www.ariautowers.com

The Ice Hotel

    Every winter in Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, a special kind of hotel called the lee Hotel is built. Each year, world-famous artists are invited to design and produce works of art from the ice, many of which can be found in the rooms. You'll have your choice between hot or cold rooms but you will be well advised to stay at least one night in a cold room for a true experience.

    Prices: starting at $318 one night for each person for either a cold room or a warm one. For more information, visit the website: http://www.icehotel.com

Propeller Island

    Propeller Island City Lodge is a very special hotel that was designed by a German artist. Each room provides you with the possibility of living in a work of art. Every single piece of furniture in the thirty rooms of the hotel has been hand-made and each room is completely different. You'll be able to choose a room based on your own personal tastes.

    Prices: starting at just $91 a night, and an additional person for only 20 extra dollars. For more information, visit the website: http://www.propeller-island.com

    For information about other cool hotels in the world, visit the website: http://www.bahamabeachclub.com

    When the telephone rings late at night, most women guess it must be one of only four or five people calling. A sister? Maybe. An emergency? Possibly. A mother? Probably not at that time of night. Much more probably it is a close female friend calling to tell you that she has split up with her boyfriend again or perhaps simply that a good movie has just started on TV.

    At a time when families are spread far and wide and marriages often end in divorce, friendships are becoming more and more important. Erika, a 32-year-old lawyer, is strengthened by her ten-year friendship with her married friend Jane. “I was very sick one night, so I called Jane at about 3:00 a.m. to talk about it,” she says. “She was very supportive and even came over to take me to the doctor's the next morning.”

    As American TV shows like Friends, which follows the lives of a very close group of young friends, have become more popular, many of us are beginning to see the value of such friendships. TV shows like this tell us that our romantic relationships may not last, but we need to keep in touch with our close friends if we want to survive.

    A TV show called Real Women is about the lives and relationships of five former school friends. In this show, family, husbands, and work are all less important than friendships. One of its actresses says the show reflects her own experience. “Friendship is about commitment. I don't see some of my friends for ages but when we get together, it is as if time hasn't passed.”

    This is true of Erika and Jane's friendship. With Erika's family 200 miles away，it is Jane who keeps a spare set of keys to Erika's apartment and waters her plants whenever she is away. “Having Jane around gives me a certain amount of freedom. It is not the kind of thing that you could ask anyone to do, but she knows I would do the same for her.” Erika feels that because she no longer sees her family every day, she now enjoys a closer relationship with her best friend. Jane, who may move to a different city soon, is worried about leaving such a support system of friends. “My friends have more to do with my life than my parents and, therefore, I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining things to them. Friends are more up to date with what is happening.”

    Until recently, scientists had mapped only about 20 percent of the sea floor. But our knowledge of the deep seas is changing because of information from satellites. Scientists have produced a new map that provides a detailed picture of the oceans. The map is expected to help oceanographers (海洋学家), industry and governments.

    The new map is twice as detailed as the map made 20 years ago. David Sandwell is a geophysics professor at the University of California. He and other scientists worked on the mapping project. He says they turned to space to look deeper into the ocean.

    The scientists collected and studied information from two satellites. Some of the data came from the European Space Agency's Cryo-2 satellite. It was placed in Earth's orbit to watch sea ice. The other satellite is the American space agency's Jason-1. It is studying the surface of the oceans. Scientists combined the satellite data with images gathered by sonar (声波定位仪) equipment on ships. Sonar works by sending sound waves through the water. When the sound waves hit an object, its presence is confirmed.

    The new map shows the sea floor as it has never been seen before. It shows thousands of underwater mountains and places where continents pulled apart. It shows where earthquakes were active many years ago. They all are buried deep underneath the ocean floor.

    David Sandwell says the map is a powerful tool for fisheries, those interested in protecting the environment and for oil exploration.

    “The petrol exploration industry is interested in how to reconnect the continents, bring them back together tectonically so you can map the basins （盆地）on one continental edge—say, Africa—and use that to establish where the similar basin would be on the other continental edge in South America.”

    If scientists know that information, they may be able to find oil fields. The new data also will help scientists improve their estimates of ocean depths. This information can help ships travel safely and improve military operations and scientific projects worldwide.

    Mr. Sandwell thinks scientists will make many more discoveries as they examine the new map and the information it provides.

    Happy, angry, amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smart phones. That's why many of us now add little pictures to our texts to brighten up someone's mobile screen but we're also using them as a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling. Yes, emojis have become a vital tool for communication.

    Let's clear one thing up first—there are emojis and emoticons (表情符号). The latter are little images made using normal keys on a keyboard. For example, a colon, two dots, followed by the curved line of a close brackets is a “smiley face”.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese words for “picture” and “character”. The number of different images has dramatically increased since then and now we have a picture for every mood or situation.

    So now we have the option to give this new creation the visual “thumbs-up” but have you thought why we've become so addicted to using emojis? Professor Vyv Evans who has written a book called The Emoji Code says, “What we're finding is that digital communication is taking over from certain aspects of face-to-face interaction…One of the reasons emojis are so interesting is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively.”

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but tell a message in pictorial form so they can be easily interpreted whatever your native language.

    Emojis are a good way for showing empathy (共鸣)—they are a virtual hug or an adorable tease. But as linguist Neil Cohn says, “To many, emojis are an exciting evolution of the way we communicate while to others, they are linguistic (语言学的) Armageddon.” It does show there is a lot more to our communication than words alone but does this mean the decline in traditional writing?

    The City of Christchurch, New Zealand was struck by a 7.1­magnitude earthquake on the early morning of Saturday, September 4, 2010.

    No tsunami alert was reported. The country's army troops were on standby to assist victims and disaster recovery operation. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key, flew to the affected area to inspect and assess the situation of the damaged city. The Prime Minister said that the full assessment of the damages would possibly take months to know the severity of damages. Based from his assessment on what he saw in the area, it could cost at least 2 billion New Zealand dollars or US$1.4 billion for reconstruction.

    "An absolute miracle that no one died," Prime Minister John Key said. Two were seriously injured from this quake and thousands of local residents were awakened after being shaken at 4:35 a.m. of that Saturday.

    There were people trapped inside the damaged buildings but fortunately none were reported dead from the rubble of the damaged buildings.

    "We're all feeling scared—we've just had some significant aftershocks," a survivor told TV One News. "Tonight we're just people in the face of a massive natural disaster, trying to help each other and we're grateful we haven't lost a life."

    GNS Science reported 29 aftershocks within the 14 hours after the quake, with strength from magnitude 3.7 to 5.4.

    New Zealand is no stranger to earthquakes. The country experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year—but only about 150 are felt by people.

    "Many buildings here were built with earthquake protection measures. However, in most cities in developing countries, people build how they want to and there're no building controls to force them to build to a higher standard that's safe," Andrew Charleson, an architecture professor at Victoria University of Wellington told CNN.

    The 65-year-old Steve Goodwin was found suffering from early Alzheimer's (阿尔楚海默症). He was losing his memory.

    A software engineer by profession, Steve was a keen lover of the piano, and the only musician in his family. Music was his true passion, though he had never performed outside the family.

    Melissa, his daughter, felt it more than worthwhile to save his music, to which she fell asleep catch night when she was young. She thought about hiring a professional pianist to work with her father.

    Naomi, Melissa's best friend and a talented pianist, got to know about this and showed willingness to help.

    "Why do this?" Steve wondered.

    "Because she cares." Melissa said.

    Steve nodded, tears in eye.

    Naomi drove to the Goodwin home. She told Steve she'd love to hear him play. Steve moved to the piano and sat at the bench, hands trembling as he gently placed his fingers on the keys.

    Naomi put a small recorder near the piano, Starts and stops and mistakes. Long pauses, heart sinking. But Steve pressed on, playing for the first time in his life for a stranger.

    "It was beautiful." Naomi said after listening to the recording. "The music was worth saving."

    Her responsibility, her privilege, would be to rescue it. The music was sill in Steve Goodwin. It was bidden in rooms with doors about to be locked.

    Naomi and Steve met every other week and spent hours together. He'd move his fingers clumsily on the piano, and then she'd take his place. He struggled to explain what he heard in his head. He stood by the piano, eyes closed, listening for the first time to his own work being played by someone else.

    Steve and Naomi spoke in musical code lines, beats, intervals, moving from the root to end a song in a new key. Steve heard it. All of it. He just couldn't play it.

    Working with Naomi did wonders for Steve. It had excited within him the belief he could write one last song. One day, Naomi received an email. Attached was a recording, a recording of loss and love, of the fight. Steve called it "Melancholy Flower".

    Naomi heard multiple stops and starts, Steve struggling, searching while his wife Joni called him "honey" and encouraged him. The task was so hard, and Steve, angry and upset, said he was quitting. Joni praised him, telling her husband this could be his signature piece.

    Naomi managed to figure out 16 of Steve's favorite, and most personal songs. With Naomi's help, the Goodwin family found a sound engineer to record Naomi playing Steve's songs. Joni thought that would be the end. But it wasn't.

    In the months leading up to the 2016 Oregon Repertory Singers Christmas concert, Naomi told the director she had a special one in mind: "Melancholy Flower"

    She told the director about her project with Steve. The director agreed to add it to the playing list. But Naomi would have to ask Steve's permission. He considered it an honor.

    After the concert, Naomi told the family that Steve's music was beautiful and professional. It needed to be shared in public.

    The family rented a former church in downtown Portland and scheduled a concert. By the day of the show, more than 300 people had said they would attend.

    By then, Steve was having a hard time remembering the names of some of his friends. He knew the path his life was now taking. He told his family he was at peace.

    Steve arrived and sat in the front row, surrounded by his family. The house lights faded. Naomi took the stage. Her fingers. His heart.