China Merchants Bank Co Ltd has teamed up with ride-hailing major Didi Kuaidi to provide automobile financing and expand its reach in China's booming mobile payment industry.

    The two have inked a comprehensive partnership, which includes a strategic investment by the former in the latter. Under the partnership, CMB will become the first bricks-and-mortar bank that can offer in-app credit card payments to Didi users. At present, users of Didi can only choose third-party payment solutions like WeChat Payment and Alipay to pay cab fares.

    Zhao Ju, vice-president of CMB, said the cooperation with Didi was an important step in its mobile Internet finance strategy. “CMB's mobile payment is going to enter a new chapter by leveraging Didi Kuaidi's vast user base," he said.

    According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center earlier this month, Didi holds 87.2 percent of China's private car hailing market. The company said it has received 1.43 billion car-hailing requests on its platforms in 2015, which means 1.43 billion payments were made via smartphones.

    CMB is expected to use Didi to reach the core users of China's mobile payment market. Jean Liu, president of Didi, said many of the expats prefer payment by credit card rather than Alipay or WeChat. "The new partnership will help improve service quality and customer loyalty," she said. The investment makes CMB part of Didi's existing investors, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Investment Corporation. Both of the companies declined to reveal the actual amount of the investment.

    Liu, who showed up on Tuesday for the first time in public after her treatment for breast cancer, said the cooperation with CMB is for the long run and "the capital investment is only part of it".

    Under the partnership, CMB and Didi will cooperate on a wide range of initiatives on financial services and online-to-offline cooperation. Apart from the in-app credit card payments, the two companies are going to launch joint credit cards in late February and automobile financing services for Didi's car owners. CMB's branches across China are expected to help Didi recruit more drivers.

    "There is a lot of room for imagination in our partnership," Li said, adding in future people may use their CMB credit card reward points to pay for the ride on Didi.

    Li Chao, an analyst with iResearch Consulting Group, said the partnership may not significantly boost CMB's mobile payment business. "Didi has educated the market for three years and its customers have formed the habit of paying by WeChat or Alipay. So I think CMB can only turn a very smart proportion of Didi users into its payment customer," he said. "But the move shows that China's traditional banking industry is finally thinking out of the box and looking for outside partners in Internet finance competition," he said.

    Statistics from Big-Data Research showed that more than 90 percent of China's 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.41 trillion) worth of third party mobile payment market is donated by Alibaba and Tencent.

    The ability to speak more than one language certainly has its special benefits.It enables you to work in another country or interact with people whose language is different from your mother tongue.Cognitive（认知的）  psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism（双语能力）shapes the mind for almost a century.There are those who suggest that in order to speak one language,bilinguals have to suppress（抑制）the influence of the other.In the past three decades,research had argued that this unique form of language processing trains the brain in the use of abilities known as "executive（执行的）functions" such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention. Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual（单语的）peers when performing cognitive tasks demanding these abilities.Furthermore,it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset（发作）of symptoms associated with dementia（痴呆）.

    But the scientific community recently has become increasingly skeptical of the bilingual advantage.One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive functions are not always apparent.It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point.We need to pursue a new approach to understand,beyond those individual examples of executive functions,how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performances.This ability is called meta cognition and is associated with other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage.

    In our research,we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots.Sometimes the difference was obvious,making the decision easy,while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example,one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49).Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.

    During the course of two experiments,we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots.However,monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong.In other words,bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals.This went against our initial predictions,as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in meta cognitive processing.These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.

    The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

    Author: Stephen King

    US author Stephen King is well-known for creating contemporary horror, supernatural fiction and science fiction stories. His latest book delivers a generous collection of stories with hidden connections. The master storyteller also includes insight into why and how he came to write them.

    Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

    Author: Rick Riordan

    A troubled kid named Magnus Chase has lived alone on the streets of Boston since his mother's mysterious death. His life changes when he meets Uncle Randolph, a man his mother warned him about. Randolph reveals that Chase is the son of a Norse god. Chase is then tasked with searching for a lost weapon to save the world from monsters.

    Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living

    Author: Jason Gay

    There are always moments in our lives when we feel doomed（注定） to be imperfect. In this collection of humorous essays，Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay tells us that, when we mess things up，we should just give ourselves a break and celebrate the things we did right.

    Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

    Author: Randall Munroe

    Have you ever been puzzled by complex terminology (术语）？ Has it prevented you from learning about science? This fascinating book provides simple explanations and line drawings to explain essential science concepts. The book's author is the man behind the popular science blog -- What If.

                                                                                         The University of Sheffield

    Back to its origin

    The University of Sheffield is a research university in the city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. It is one of the original “red brick” universities, which are a group of top and famous old universities. The University of Sheffield was originally formed by the combination of three colleges. The Sheffield School of Medicine was founded in 1828, followed in 1879 by the opening of Firth College by Mark Firth, a steel manufacturer (制造商), to teach arts and science subjects. Firth College then helped to provide money for the opening of the Sheffield Technical School in 1884 to teach applied science. In 1897 the three institutions were joined together to form the University College of Sheffield, which in turn became the University of Sheffield by Royal Charter (特许) in 1905. This university is famous for its good education and boasts a number of Nobel Prize winners among its former students.

    More information

    System: The University has five departments: Arts and Humanities; Engineering; Pure Science; Social Sciences; Medicine, Dentistry and Health. Sheffield also has many research programs in fields including aerospace, environmental science, psychology, and biology.

    City show: Sheffield is a lively city in the north of England. Sheffield is known as the greenest city in Europe because of its 2 million trees. As a result, there are many parks and woods throughout the city and beyond. Sheffield is the greenest city in England with 150 woodlands and 50 public parks within the city. Once, in Sheffield, the folk hero—Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest with 150 of his loyal friends. And Charlotte Bronte, the English writer noted for her novel Jane Eyre was born in Sheffield.

    Nowadays six Amazon Scout delivery robots rolled out in a pilot program in Snohomish County, Wash. The robots carry meals, groceries and packages to homes and offices in this region just north of Seattle. They have appeared on the sidewalks of London, Beijing and other cities and communities worldwide. These machines must overcome pedestrian legs, naughty dogs and broken pavement, which raises some questions.

    These services are gaining attraction as a growing number of city residents expect immediate or scheduled delivery for just about everything. Between 2017 and 2018 online retail sales in the U.S. increased by 16 percent. On the final step of all these deliveries, called the last mile, humans on bicycles, motorized scooters (电动车) or large delivery trucks typically deliver packages. All the vehicles compete for space on busy urban streets. "Deliveries are trending upwards in all crowded city centers, and if city and state leaders don't start thinking about creative solutions like robot deliveries, we can expect even worse traffic jams," says Paul Mackie, director of a transportation policy research center in Arlington.

    A study by this center found 73 percent of delivery vehicles in Arlington were parked outside of authorized areas, often blocking bike lanes and crosswalks. By moving the last step of deliveries from the road to the sidewalk, cities could reduce traffic jams and solve the parking problem entirely, Mackie says.

    Companies such as Amazon are not developing this delivery technology simply to clear up urban traffic. Self-driving vehicles and sidewalk robots could cut down last-mile delivery costs in cities by as much as 40 percent, according to a 2018 report by a consultancy firm. A delivery robot can cost thousands of dollars to manufacture, and most currently require human management and conservation. But in the long run companies that use autonomous delivery vehicles in the next several years could end up saving billions of dollars, the report stated.