If you want to learn anything at school, you need to listen to your teachers. Unfortunately, millions of kids can't hear what their teachers are saying. And it's not because these students are goofing off. Often, it's the room's fault. Building architecture and building design can create echo(回声)-filled classrooms that make hearing difficult.

    Children with hearing impairments（损伤）suffer most from noisy classrooms. They sometimes can't hear questions that other students ask in class. Compared with kids with healthy hearing, they have a harder time picking up new vocabulary words by hearing them in talking.

    Even kids with normal hearing have a harder time in the classroom when there's too much noise. Younger children in particular have trouble separating important sounds – like a teacher's voice – from background noise. Kids with learning disabilities and speech impediments（障碍）and kids for whom English is a second language also have a harder time learning in noisy situations.

    In recent years, scientists who study sound have been asking schools to reduce background noise, which may include loud air-conditioners and pipes. They're also targeting outdoor noises, such as highway traffic. Noise reduction is a big deal. Why? Because quieter classrooms might make you smarter by letting you hear your lessons better.

    “It's so obvious that we should have quiet rooms that allow for access to the lesson,” says Dan Ostergren, a hearing scientist. “Sometimes it surprises me that we spend so much time discussing this topic. I just want to go. Why is this hard for anyone to grasp?”

    Tim Richter and his wife, Linda, had taught for over 30 years near Buffalo, New York – he in computers, she in special education. "Teaching means everything to us," Tim would say. In April 1998, he learned he would need a heart operation. It was the kind of news that leads to some serious thinking about life's purpose.

    Not long after the surgery, Tim saw a brochure describing Imagination Library, a program started by Dolly Parton's foundation (基金会) that mailed a book every month to children from birth to age five in the singer's hometown of Sevier, Tennessee. "I thought, maybe Linda and I could do something like this when we retire," Tim recalls. He placed the brochure on his desk, "as a reminder."

    Five years later, now retired and with that brochure still on the desk, Tim clicked on imaginationlibrary.com. The program had been opened up to partners who could take advantage of book and postage discounts.

    The quality of the books was of great concern to the Richters. Rather than sign up online, they went to Dollywood for a look-see. "We didn't want to give the children rubbish," says Linda. The books – reviewed each year by teachers, literacy specialists and Dollywood board members – included classics such as Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day and newer books like Anna Dewdney's Llama Llamaseries.

    Satisfied, the couple set up the Richter Family Foundation and got to work. Since 2004, they have shipped more than 12,200 books to preschoolers in their area. Megan Williams, a mother of four, is more than grateful: "This program introduces us to books I've never heard of."

    The Richters spend about ＄400 a month sending books to 200 children. "Some people sit there and wait to die," says Tim. "Others get as busy as they can in the time they have left."

    The world's first luxury space hotel, Aurora Station, was announced Thursday at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. Developed by US-based space technology start-up Orion Span, the space station will host six people at a time, including two crew members, for 12-day trips of space travel. It plans to welcome its first guests in 2022.

    "Our goal is to make space accessible to all," Frank Bunger, CEO and founder of Orion Span, said in a statement." Upon launch, Aurora Station goes into service immediately, bringing travelers into space quickly and at a lower price point than ever seen before."

    While a$10 million trip is outside the budget of most people's two-week vacations, Orion Span claims to offer an authentic astronaut experience. "It has taken what was historically a 24-month training to prepare travelers to visit a space station and streamlined(精简)it to three months, at a fraction(小部分)of the cost," says Bunger. During their 12-day adventure, the super-rich travelers will fly at a height of 200 miles above the Earth's surface in Low Earth Orbit, where they will witness incredible views of the blue planet. The hotel will orbit Earth every 90 minutes, which means guests will see around 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

    Activities on board include taking part in research experiments such as growing food while in orbit, which guests can take home for a super-smug souvenir, and soaring over their hometown. Guests can have-live-video chats with their less-fortunate loved ones back home via high-speed wireless Internet access and, upon(return to Earth will be greeted with a specially arranged hero's welcome. While enjoying the thrills of zero gravity, the travelers will be able to float freely through the hotel, taking in views of the northern and southern aurora from the station's windows.   Deposits are already being accepted for future stays on the space hotel.

Baths in Japan

    In many western countries people do not bathe (沐浴) every day. Sometimes they bathe only once a week. Sometimes they bathe two or three times a week. They do not bathe often because the weather is cold or because hot water is expensive. They use electricity or wood to boil the water. Electricity and wood cost a lot of money. In cold countries people usually do not feel they are dirty if they do not have a bath.

    In Japan people bathe very often. Most people have a bath every day. When the weather is hot they sometimes have two or three baths a day. They bathe in very hot water. Usually the water is almost boiling. They believe that these very hot baths also stop them from falling ill.

    Each house has its own bathroom but there are also big bathhouses for everybody. They are found everywhere in Japan. In the bathhouse there is one part for men and one part for women. The bath is usually three meters wide, three meters long and about one meter deep: halfway down there is a narrow (狭窄的) seat that goes all the way around the bath. Many people use the bath but it is not dirty. Before a person gets into the big bath, they wash themselves first, and then get into the big bath. The person stays there for a short time. When they get out of the bath, they wash their body with soap and water. After the soap is all washed away, the person gets into the big bath again. Soap is not used in the big bath.

    The water in the big bath is changed quite often. The water is also very hot. In some places people hit the water with sticks first. They do this to make the water cooler. Then the men get into the bath very slowly and carefully. When a man gets into a bath, he says. "Excuse me." He does this because most of the hot water comes directly out of the ground. In other places people boil the water with a big fire. In a small bath at home sometimes people light a fire under the bath. When the water is hot, people in the family take a bath one by one.

    Fashions have a lot of rules. Most of them, however, are just wrong. But there's one rule that goes beyond tradition and into the field of scientific study of the brain: Black clothes are slimming. It all comes down to how your visual system processes the light. The below holes in each square are the same in size, yet the white hole looks bigger than the black hole.

    In the 1500s, Galileo Galilei noticed that some of the planets looked larger when viewed with the naked eye than they did when viewed through a telescope, making the white light of Venus appear eight to ten times larger than Jupiter in the night sky. He knew something strange must be going on with his vision to cause this illusion, but he wasn't sure what it was. Luckily, scientists never stopped wondering, and in 2014, they figured it out.

    Our visual system operates via two main channels: "on" neurons (神经元) that are sensitive to light things and "off" neurons that are sensitive to dark things. When it came to the dark "off" neurons, the researchers found that they responded predictably to dark shapes on a light background the greater the contrast between the two, the more active these neurons were. But the light on" neurons behaved unpredictably. Even with the same amount of contrast, light objects on a dark background caused a greater response in these neurons.

    This phenomenon makes some sense, evolutionarily speaking. In the dark of night, you'd want to be able to take in every bit of light you can get, so a visual system that enlarges light objects on a dark background could be very useful. However, it's not that hard to see dark objects in the light of day. It has some effects in the colors of your clothes and in the appearance of the planets—the brighter appearance of Venus in the night sky makes it look bigger than the darker Jupiter.

Ad. 1

April fool's party

    On Friday, April 1, Inner Affair goes back to the days of funk! Classic Tunes from the 70's and 80's by DJs Den & Sion. 9 p. m. till late.

Tickets: Free entrance for those in costume, otherwise 50 yuan (US$6)

Time /date: 9 p. m., April 1

Place: Inner Affair, 1 /F Qiankun Dasha, 6 Sanlitun Xiliujie, Chaoyang District

Tel: 8454 0321

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Language in use

    Enjoy free in-house coffee, tea and beer as well as music and dancing. Practice your Chinese, make friends and have fun.

Time /date: 7 to 9 p. m., March 25

Place: Language In Use Club, 2 /F, Science Fortune Center, 8 Xueqing Lu, north of Xueyuan Lu, Haidian District

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The "worst" party

    Organized by ozone productions, the party is set to be "the worst ever", with the lamest music from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Special prizes will be awarded to the worst dressed or for bad fashion sense.

Tickets: Free entrance

Time /date: 9 p. m., April 1

Place: Pula Pula, Tianze Lu, Oriental Seven Colours Plaza, Chaoyang District

Tel: 6466 8575

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La Nuit Francaise

    Again on the 2nd Thursday of the month La Nuit Francaise will be held at Le Rendezvous. The monthly event is an opportunity for all French people and everyone interested in France or speaking French to gather together.

    The evening features three glasses of wine and canapes for participants and a special exhibition.

Time /date: 7 to 10 p. m., April 14

Place: Le Rendezvous, 3 Gongti Beilu, accross from the Pacific Century Plaza, Chaoyang District

Tel: 6462 9110

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Marco V

    Dutch DJ Marco V drops by Banana for a gig which is supported by Hong Kong's DJ Spark.

    Marco V has been around for many years, as an inventive, style blending deejay and a successful and devoted producer. His spinning is energetic, crowd pleasing and never sees an empty dance floor. He was ranked No. 15 in this year's international DJ MAG DJ Top 100.

Tickets: 40 yuan (US$4.80) in advance, 50 yuan (US$6) at the door, both include a free drink

Time /date: 10 p. m. to 4 a. m., March 31, April 1

Place: Banana, in the lobby of the Scitech Hotel, 22 Jianwai Dajie, Chaoyang District

Tel: 6528 3636