China's boss of table tennis Liu Guoliang was shocked at his first sight of Japanese teenager Miu Hirano who beat three top-ranked Chinese to claim a sensational victory of the women's singles at the Asian Table Tennis Championships.

    "She's much better than I had imagined," said Liu, on the conclusion of the continental tournament（锦标赛）. "When she came out the winner of last year's World Cup, I thought maybe she took advantage of the absence of the Chinese women paddlers. However, I changed my mind when I saw her play here. She's strong enough technically and mentally, and capable of beating any one in the world," added Liu.

    Hirano, who just turned 17 years old on Friday, stunned China's world No. 1 Ding Ning 3-2 in the quarterfinals before second-ranked Zhu Yuling 3-0 and finally seeing off world No. 5 Chen Meng, also 3-0, to smash the Chinese dominance（统治）of the tournament.

    "She's so young and has so many possibilities in the future," said Liu. "That makes her success more intimidating to our women's team."

    In Liu's opinion, the difficulties that China faced in these Asian championships reflected the changes of table tennis world map in recent years.

    "It's not just recently that Japan wants to beat China," he said. "By the end of the day, their efforts finally worked out."

    The head coach, however, refused to stand all by the Japan's side. "We do need to learn from the other associations, including the Japanese, who do an excellent job on youth training," Liu said. "But one failure should not lead to the whole denial to our own team. I think it's a good thing to have competitors who can pose real challenges, which makes our sport more competitive and more healthy," he added.

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    Tom Costello was once afraid of homeless Americans. “I was so afraid that if I saw a homeless person walking down the street, I'd cross the street,” he said.

    That changed seven years ago after his wife, Nancy, a volunteer at a homeless shelter, persuaded him to help with a holiday dinner for shelter residents. Tom remembered going to a store and buying socks for the residents. He knew many of them were in need of clothing.

    At the shelter, Tom said, he dropped a pair of socks into a bag for a woman. She asked him if she could have socks for a friend who wasn't with her that day. He gave her another pair. “She started to cry and told me that nobody had ever given her socks before,” Tom said, “Then she reached out and gave me a hug.” That experience at the shelter helped Tom end his fear of the homeless.

    It also led him to set up a group called “The Joy of Sox.”, which borrows from a name of a popular book. The group collects socks from donors and gives them mostly to shelters in the area where Tom and Nancy live. It has been expanding its reach and provides socks to homeless shelters in 21 states and other three countries now.

    Why socks? Tom explains that some Americans give food, coats and other clothing to shelters. But donating socks is not something most people think about. And, he said, socks are very helpful at keeping people warm, especially in cold weather. A man named Kiwi，who has lived in homeless shelters, said most of the time he could find enough food through shelters and soup kitchens. But socks were much more difficult to get, he noted.

    You can't always predict a heavy rain or remember your umbrella. But designer Mikhail Belvacv doesn't think that forgetting to check the weather forecast before heading out should result in you getting wet. That's why he created lampbrella, a lamp post with its own rain sensing umbrella.

    The designer says he come up with the idea after watching people get wet on streets in Russia. “Once, I was driving on a central Saint Petersburg street ad saw the street lamps lighting up people trying to hide from the rain. I thought it would be appropriate to have a canopy(伞蓬)built into a street lamp.” he said.

    In addition to the rain sensor, there's also a 360°motion sensor on the biberglass street lamp which detects whether anyone's using the lampbrella. After three minutes of not being used the canopy is closed.

    According to the designer, the lampbrella would move at a relatively low speed, so as not to cause harm to the pedestrians. Besides, it would be grounded to protect from possible lighting strike. Each lampbrella would offer enough shelter for several people. Being installed at 2 meters off the ground, it would only be a danger for the tallest of pedestrians.

    While there are no plans to take lampbrella into production, Belyacv says he recently introduced his creation one Moscow Department, and insists this creation could be installed on my street where a lot of people walk but there are no canopies to provide shelter.

    Dear friend, do you know the boy in the picture? He is Wang Yuan, a member of the Chinese boy band, TFBOYS. Do you want to know more about him? Follow me, please.

    Wang Yuan was born on November 8^th , 2000 in Chongqing. His English name is Ray, he is senior high school student now, he is good at singing, dancing and playing the piano. He can also write song alone. He and another two boys formed the boy band TFBOYS in 2013. They are very popular with the young girls and boys in China now.

    On February 10^th,2017,Wang Yuan made a short speech on good quality education(优质教育）in English at the United Nations in front of 500 people from around the world. It's great. As for middle school students, we should learn from Wang Yuan, and put our hearts into what we are doing to make a difference in our daily lives.

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    NASA's (美国宇航局的) newly announced space tourism program is possibly the biggest mistake in the agency's history.

    Beginning as early as 2020, NASA will offer visits to the International Space Station for $35,000 per night, not including transportation, to pretty much anyone who can pass a physical.

    The reason this is a mistake, and a big one, is that NASA has worked for generations to create an image of astronauts as extraordinarily skilled, highly trained, courageous heroes. For example, NASA invites grade schools to participate in creating experiments that are carried on the space station. The astronauts talk to kids from space, sending a message that if you study, work hard and learn math and science, you may reach these heights, too.

    According to one report, Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace is making plans to haul four tourists at a time to the space station on SpaceX rockets. U.S. taxpayers forked over a hundred billion dollars to build the International Space Station. It would be nice to try to preserve the image of it as an inspirational achievement, instead of turning it into a flying Howard Johnson's.

    NASA's press release about the space tourism program tries to cast it as a partnership with the private sector to "provide expanded opportunities" at the space station to "manufacture, market and promote commercial products and services." But it also states that one goal is "quantifying NASA's long-term demand for activities in low-Earth orbit."

    The space station has been costing U.S. taxpayers between $1.5 billion and $3 billion each year. If it's perceived as a private Disneyland for the top tax bracket, public support for the entire space program could be at risk.

    But worse, we will have degraded what once inspired us. Sometimes a nation needs stars in its eyes.