An autonomous vehicle designed for making local commerce deliveries was unveiled by Nuro. The vehicle is about the height of an SW but far narrower than a typical car. The electric car features four exterior compartments (暗格) — two on each side — to hold separate deliveries. Each compartment can be tailored to a specific use, such as cooking a pizza or refrigerating a package.

    “We can use self-driving technology to deliver anything, anytime, anywhere for basically all local goods and services,” Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson said. “Consumers used to be okay with two-week paid shipping. It became two-week free delivery, followed by one week, two days, and the same day. Now same-day delivery isn't fast enough for some customers.”

    Nuro isn't alone in building robots for local commerce deliveries. Earlier this month, Toyota, a Japanese car company, unveiled a concept vehicle that could be used for package delivery. A handful of startups — including Starship Technologies, Marble and Dispatch — are testing small robots for deliveries on sidewalks.

    Nuro's vehicle will likely face legal hurdles. Fully autonomous vehicles without a test driver aren't legal in California today, and many companies have shifted testing to states where regulators are more welcoming of autonomous vehicles, such as Arizona.

    Nuro expects to face fewer challenges because it doesn't carry passengers. Nuro's narrow size may also be helpful when navigating streets and avoiding pedestrians. The vehicle isn't equipped with any special features to communicate with pedestrians or other road users. Some companies have tested and patented solutions such as digital screens that signal the car's next move. Ferguson said his team conducted studies and found that such techniques could confuse people. Nuro believes it's better to make sure the car performs predictably, so that human drivers know what to expect from it.

    “We feel by creating this new technology that's going to enable this last mile delivery, we're going to be creating new markets and doing things that previously weren't possible,” Ferguson said. “This is not swapping out Jobs with robots. It's creating new markets. There will definitely be new employment opportunities.”

    You want to run across the street to catch the bus which is leaving soon? But wait! You'd better not. If a policeman sees you, you'll have to pay a fine. New traffic laws say that if people cross the street when the light is red, they can be fined as much as 50 yuan.

    Traffic accidents killed more than 100,000 people in China one year. Chinese cities have more cars than ever. Drivers and pedestrians must work together to make the streets safer.

    The law has new rules for drivers and pedestrians. Drivers have to slow down when they are close to crosswalks. If people are in a crosswalk, cars must stop to let them pass. There are rules for bus drivers, too. If bus drivers, smoke, drink or make phone calls while driving, they can be fined. Buses that carry too many people are also against the law.

    Pedestrians will have to walk more safely under the new law. They must cross streets at crosswalks. Also, they shouldn't climb over the fences (栅栏) along streets.

    Do you bike to school? It's not a good idea to carry classmates on the back. You could be fined 50 yuan. And stay in the bike lane (车道), when you' re riding. The big roads are for cars and buses.

    Do you like to ride your uncle's motorbike? When you put on your helmet (头盔), ask him to put one on, too. People on motorbikes must wear helmets, the new law says. If they don't, they'll have to pay 200 yuan.

    Do you ride in cars often? Don't forget to put on your seat belt (安全带), even if you're going for a short taxi ride. It could save your life.

    If you see a hit-and-run(肇事逃逸), tell the police. They may give you a reward (奖赏).And don't be afraid to help people to the hospital if they are hurt in an accident. Don't worry about money. The new law says that doctors must take care of them even if they can't pay right away.

    Although English is not as old as Chinese, it is spoken by many people around the world every day. English speakers are always creating new words, and we are often able to know where most words come from.

    Sometimes, however, no one may really know where a word comes from. Did you ever think about why hamburgers are called hamburgers, especially when they are not made with ham? About a hundred years ago, some men went to America from Europe. They came from a big city in Germany called Hamburger. They did not speak good English, but they ate good food. When some Americans saw them eating round pieces of beef, they asked the Germans what it was. The Germans did not understand the question and answered. "We came from Hamburger." One of these Americans owned a restaurant, and had an idea. He cooked some round pieces of beef like those which the men from Hamburger ate. Then he put each between two pieces of bread and started selling them. Such bread came to be called "hamburgers". Today "hamburgers" are sold in many countries around the world.

    Whether this story is true or not, it is certainly is interesting. Knowing why any word has a certain meaning is interesting, too. The reason, for most English words, can be found in any large English dictionary.

    Many high school students consider a college education useless. Therefore, they choose not to go to college. If you're one of them, think again. Here are some reasons why you should go to college and receive a good education there.

    Schools and universities are the first sources of knowledge. We take that knowledge later on to build our careers after graduation. More knowledge will be gained after you start working, but without an education, that job will not be within easy reach. Knowledge leads to knowledge.

    While limited within the walls of the educational institutions, we openly explore other cultures of the world. We come to know that ours is not the only culture. Other cultures have valuable insights to share, enriching our own. Education also makes us want to travel and interact with various cultures, broadening our horizons.

    When there's a downturn (衰退) in the economy, those who attended college will be more likely to find a new job than those who only finished grade school and have a limited skills set. The more education you have, the more chances you will get to improve the quality of your life as you have a better job and earn a higher salary.

    When you're skillful and knowledgeable, you get to “rub knees” with people of similar backgrounds and tastes. It means a good education leads to excellent networking. Good networking can benefit you a lot in your later life.

    A good education makes you a more interesting person. You can talk about ideas and events instead of just other people and what's on sale in stores. An educated person doesn't gossip, having a preference to discuss ideas and listen to what other people have to say.

    After decades of cat-and-mouse between athletes and the word anti-doping agency (WADA), athletes found what they must have believed to be the ultimate (终极的) doping agent: their own blood. To enhance athletic performance with your own blood, you draw your blood and store it in a freezer. Your body compensates by creating more blood. Then, months later, just before a competition, you can re-inject (注射) the old blood for a boost. As the red-blood-cell count goes up, so does an athlete's ability to absorb oxygen. The more oxygen you get with each breath, the more energy your body is able to bum and the better you are able to perform.

    Although the enhancement is small compared to actual drugs, it can be the difference between a gold medal and a silver medal. Best of all, "extra blood" was never something WADA tested for.

    But WADA wasn't going to sit by and be fooled. What it came up with in response might be a solution to stop doping once and for all: an athlete biological passport (ABP). The idea is to record some biological features of an athlete through testing done at regular intervals. The biological passport's partial implementation (实施)—recording blood and steroid levels—began in January 2014.

    When all necessary biological features are finally combined, WADA will no longer need to worry about finding new methods to detect a drug. It will only have to detect (检测) resulting changes in the body. In the case of blood doping, if the athlete's normal red-blood-cell count is, say, 47%, but then is found to be 51% after a competition, cheating may have been involved.

    WADA is confident that the biological passport could even prevent genetic changes—the ultimate, ever-lasting enhancement—which are surely coming next. If an athlete inserts a performance enhancing gene, it will probably leave detectable changes in the body, that would differ from the athlete's feature in the biological passport.

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can(垃圾桶)that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.