Bottled water has become the choice for people who are healthy and thirsty. Bottled water is all over the world. But some say the planet's health, and people's health may be suffering from it.

    The idea that bottled water is safer for humans may not be true. The Natural Resources Defense Council of America said, “There is no promise that because water comes out of a bottle, it is cleaner or safer than water from the tap.” Another New York City-based action group added that some bottled water is “really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes more clean, sometimes not.”

    It is not proven that bottled water is better than tap water. Nick Reeves from the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management said, “The high mineral content(含量) of some bottled water makes them not good for feeding babies and young children.” Also, most bottled water doesn't have fluoride(氟化物), which can make teeth stronger. Kids are drinking more bottled water and less fluoridated tap water, and some say that's behind the recent rise in bad teeth.

    Storing is another problem. Placed near heat, the plastic bottles can produce bad chemicals(化学物质) into the water.

    According to the Environmental Protection Agency, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used worldwide to bottle water each year. The plastic can take between 400 and 1,000 years to break down.

    In terms of energy use, plastic bottles are also not cheap. One report said that if water and soft drink bottlers had used 10 percent recycled materials in their plastic bottles, they would have saved about 72 million gallons of gas.

    So, if you are worried about the effect of bottled water on the Earth, you can take the following steps.

●Drink from your tap. Unless your government warns against this, it should be fine.

●Get a container(容器). Carry your tap water in a steel or a lined drinking container, and clean it between uses.

●Keep it cool. Don't drink from a bottle that has been sitting in the sun, don't store it near chemicals, and don't reuse plastic bottles.

●Choose glass containers over plastic if possible. When finished, recycle!

    Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new material that can move heat out of buildings and into space. The researchers say the material can cool buildings even on hot days. The cooling material is a very thin sheet with many layers that could be placed on a roof like solar panels(板). However, instead of turning sunlight into energy as solar panels do, the material turns heat into infrared（红外线的）radiation.

    Shanhui Fan is an electrical engineering professor at Stanford University. He says that the panels have a layer of material that is like sand. The panels act like a mirror. They take heat out of buildings and reflect the light from the sun. And he says both the heat and sunlight arc sent 100 kilometers into outer space. "It's a structure that cools itself without electricity input, even under the sun. So, what it does is basically radiate heat to outer space and also reflect the sunlight so it doesn't get heated up by the sun. Mr. Fan says it is like having a window into space. The heat is sent directly into space without increasing the air temperature

    He says buildings in developing countries that do not have electricity or air conditioning could use the panels. "In areas where electricity is out of reach for many people, there is a potential benefit for storing medicine or even food. In many of these situations, being able to reduce the temperature is important. And this would provide a way to do it.”

    The researchers say the main problem is creating actual cooling systems using the high-tech panels. They say it may be possible to develop a cooling spray(喷涂）that could be used on present solid structures. They believe the cooling spray technology could be developed in the next three to five years. They say as much as 15 percent of the energy used in the United States is spent providing power to air conditioning systems.

    2017 was an influential year for artificial intelligence (人工智能), not just in terms of the advancement of the technology itself, but also for the development of our understanding of AI's impact on our society.

    When we talk about AI, often we focus on the belief that it is going to take away certain types of jobs. However, we often ignore the fact that this technology will also slowly spread into most of our lives.

    Thanks to the development of AI, we are on the highway of IA, (human) intelligence augmentation (增强). Despite the great steps we've made in AI development and will continue to make in 2018, we are still years away from AI fully replacing human jobs. However, we are much closer to seeing the impact of AI spread into almost every job and the growth in human intelligence.

    Take a doctor for example: AI will soon be able to detect and diagnose common diseases more quickly and accurately than humans. Now, doctors can spend more of their time explaining the possible diagnoses, communicating with patients and developing unique, reliable treatment plans that are most effective for each specific patient.

    However, AI is so powerful and its adoption will only accelerate as it begins to help our work and allow us to focus on the parts of our job that are most important. But part of why AI is so attractive is also why it's so dangerous. That is, that same power allows AI that are making incorrect decisions to do so with greater speed and impact than humans have ever had.

    This is why, as AI becomes more useful in 2018, it will also become more closely examined. 2018 will be the year when companies purchasing AI products don't just ask about the power of AI—they will make sure that it is tested carefully in advance, minimizing their potential unexpected impact.

    Few of us haven't read Cinderella, the story of a young woman living in poverty who meets the prince of her dreams. Some might not want to admit it, but there is a hidden Cinderella in everyone's heart—we all wish we could achieve recognition or success after a period of obscurity or neglect.

    Mary Santiago has that secret dream, too. Her story is featured in Another Cinderella Story, a film set in a US high school.

    Mary is shy but loves to dance. Compared with other girls, she is invisible. However, her world changes completely when a famous teenager pop singer, Joey Parker, appears.

    Joey is everything that the rest of the boys in her class are not — kind, handsome and desirable. Mary and Joey's paths cross at a ball. They meet and fall in love with each other. But when Mary has to rush back home, she leaves behind her MP3 player, which becomes the only clue Joey has to find the girl of his dreams. Of course, there is a wicked(邪恶的) stepmother, who turns out to be Dominique Blatt and she takes in Mary after her dancer mother dies. Dominique treats Mary like a maid and does everything she can to make sure Mary doesn't get into the top dance school. Her two daughters are equally determined to stop Joey falling for Mary, even if that means embarrassing her.

    The story, though it mostly follows Cinderella, does add a few modern day twists to the classic fairy tale. Refreshingly, the film, unlike many high school films, does not focus on looks, although the actors are all beautiful. There is also a lot less materialism in Another Cinderella Story than in many similar movies.

    “The movie takes the Cinderella fairytale as its jumping off point,” writes the movie critic Amber Wilkinson. “The focus is firmly on following your dream.”

    Choosing where to live may be one of the biggest decisions you'll make when you move to Sydney, but you'll have plenty of help.

    Temporary arrival accommodation

    Before you move to Sydney, we recommend that you book a temporary place to stay. Once you get here, you can look for longer-term accommodation.

    --sydney.edu.au/accommodation/short-term

    On-campus-residential colleges (fully catered饮食全包的)

    The University has eight residential colleges on the Camperdown/Darlington Campus, including International House, a residential community of global scholars. Colleges provide comfortable, fully furnished single rooms and daily meals, along with sporting, cultural, leadership and social programs. They also include on-site tutorials(辅导课) in addition to campus-based classes.

    --sydney.edu.au/colleges

    On-campus residences (self-catered饮食自理的)

    The University has two self-run residences ­ Queen Mary Building (QMB) and Abercrombie Student Accommodation ­ on the Camperdown/Darlington Campus. Both just under a year old, they house up to 1000 students. These residences provide modern single-study rooms with large common living, learning and study spaces, shared kitchens, a theatre, gyms, soundproofed music rooms, art studios, sky lounges and rooftop gardens.

    --sydney.edu.au/campus-life/accommodation/live-on-campus.html

    Off-campus living

    More than 90 percent of our students live off campus. The University is close to many dynamic and multicultural suburbs such as Annandale, Newtown, Chippendale and Glebe. A great place to search is our large online database of properties.

    --sydney.edu.au/campus-life/accommodation/live-off-campus.html

Rosie, a first-year university student in Beijing, entered a classroom for her oral English exam and slid her topic across the table to Joe, a foreign teacher. My Story, it read. "In middle school, my classmates laughed at me for having deaf-mute parents," she began softly. "From that moment on, I decided not to tell anybody. But today…"

It's widely considered taboo(忌讳) in Chinese to discuss the details of an unhappy family life with anyone other than very close friends. However, as Joe has noticed, many Chinese students appear surprisingly comfortable discussing emotional moments from their lives when they speak with foreign teachers in a language different from their own.

"Speaking English," one of his Chinese students told him, "I feel like another person." When speaking Chinese, he is kind of reserved; in English class, he is more open. English, to the Chinese speaker, may be like a mask, creating a buffer(缓冲物)between speaking the truth and the listener's reaction. Students focus on how to speak rather than what is being said. If there's a misunderstanding, English can take the blame.

Another reason why Chinese students are more comfortable sharing their secrets during English class may be the distinct approach to teaching used by their foreign teachers. "I always try to come to each student, make eye contact, have a 20-second conversation and see how they are doing," Joe said. Classes taught by Chinese teachers, in contrast, are more formal. Many students said they had never been asked their opinion in class.

Rosie's English vocabulary is now extensive, but she still can't find the words to describe her feelings towards the English language. "English makes me feel I am different," she said. "English is beautiful."