America is a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while — then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendships between us flower more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending (延伸) sometimes deeply into both families.

    Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept their hospitality (好客) easily.

    Another difficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they include us warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don't show their politeness to us if it requires a great deal of time. This is usually the opposite of the practice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes, we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends. The Americans, however, express their welcome usually at homes, but truly can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They will probably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. And they expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves treated hospitably.

    For the Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accept their hospitality at home!

    When I was three years old, I couldn't speak. It was a strange reality that none of the doctors I visited could understand.

    One day, I was shadowing my mother. She found herself looking in a mirror, and through it our eyes met. She began to speak to me through the reflection, and I slowly began to mimic(模仿)her mouth's movements until I formed a word.

    It turned out I'm deaf in my left ear, and have a slight problem in my right. Being hard of hearing has been difficult, but I've never lived in a state of self-hating sorrow. Imagine being able to shut out all sound as you lay your head down to sleep by simply rolling over onto one side. That's my reality when I sleep on my "good ear", and it makes me feel like a superhero sometimes.

    People call my deaf side my "bad ear", but when I wear my hearing aid, I have access to a range of features that some other deaf people don't. In cinemas, for example, with one click of a button I can enjoy a whole film as though it were whispered to me from the mouths of the actors.

    Owning a hearing aid hasn't always felt good, however. On the first day I got my aid, when I was eight, I took it to school for show-and-tell. As I explained how it worked to my classmates, a boy yelled out, "Aren't those for old men?" At that moment, I felt different. It took a long time for me to get over that sense of being so unlike my peers.

    But it's not just school kids who can make us deaf and hard-of-hearing people feel like burdens. Every video on social media that lacks subtitles(字幕), for example, means an entire community of deaf people is unable to enjoy it. Completely deaf people are excluded from enjoying many movies too, as subtitles in cinemas are almost impossible to find.

    And with hearing aids costing around $2,500 each, it can be hard for many people to afford to be able to listen to the things that others take for granted. As for me, I can listen to music, enjoy films, and catch conversations - I'm lucky. I'm deaf, but I can still hear everything. I've been blessed with wonderful life experiences, and I am human. And when it comes to sleeping, I'm even superhuman.

    Visit Nashville, Tennessee, the capital of country music and the home of the Grand Ole Opry. Forty -day bus tour starts from Pittsburgh.

    Departures August 23, September 13, September 27, October 11, October 25.

$185 per person based on double occupancy. Includes private motor coach from Pittsburgh, hotel rooms, reserved tickets for the Grand Ole Opry. Country Festival Friday and Saturday nights, sightseeing tour of Nashville, admissions to places of interest.

    For information, free booklets, and reservations, call 4212 — 6060. Travel and Tours, 2245 Market Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219. 14-day advanced booking required. Visa and Master Card payment welcome.

    When a terrible earthquake hit, many people were killed and many houses fell down. After the earthquake, all the newspapers reported many stories about some of the families who were in trouble.

    One Sunday, when I was reading a newspaper, a special picture touched me. It gave the clothing sizes of each family member. I thought that this would be a good chance to teach my children to help those who were less lucky than ourselves. I said to my seven-year-old twins, Brad and Brett, and three-year-old Meghan. "We have so much, and these poor people now have nothing. We'll share what we have with them."

    I filled a box with foods and clothes. While I was doing this, I encouraged the boys to choose their toys and donate some of their less favorite things. Meghan watched quietly as the boys took out their old toys and games and put them together. Then she walked away. A few minutes later she came back with Lucy, her much-loved doll. She put the doll on top of the other toys. "Oh, dear," I said. "You don't have to give Lucy. You love her so much." Meghan said, "Lucy makes me happy, Mommy. Maybe she'll make another little girl happy, too."

    I looked at Meghan for a long moment. She taught me a lesson. It's easy to give something that we don't want any more, but harder to give what we cherish (珍爱), isn't it?

    A new officer with the Huntington Park Police patrols (巡逻) local parks 24 hours a day seven days a week. He doesn't need rest, coffee breaks, a salary or medical insurance, and that is because it is a Robocop.

    The main function of the Robocop is to scan and film the surroundings. Besides cameras with night vision that report 360 degrees, it also has a distress button which is located here, so if somebody is to need assistance or they want to contact the communication center, they can do it by way of that distress button. There are people that are monitoring on the other end.

    This newest police employee is self-charging. It's easy to program it and make changes to the software if necessary. Its maintenance (维护) costs are roughly 75 thousand dollars a year. It travels the entire park. It is a programmed path, but the police are able to change the path and adapt it.

    The Robocop can record the license plates (车牌) of passing cars and check them against an online database of stolen cars. It can also help locate a lost iPhone because it is able to determine a smartphone's MAC address. The police can see from the robot if something wrong happens and then come and figure it out.

    The Robocop can't replace its human handlers. The whole goal is to give police more time to do things machines can't do. The police have been having some concerns about safety of the parks and want an extra set of eyes that will help patrol a 24/7.Robocop's creators believe this model known as K5 is best used for providing security at public places like hospitals, parking lots, parks and airports. So far, it seems to be working out just fine.

Video calls are a common occurrence, but have you imagined being able to touch the person on the other end of the line? Scientists are making this a reality.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, have invented a soft skin stretch device (SSD), a haptic device that can recreate the sense of touch. Haptic technology can mimic the experience of touch by stimulating localized areas of the skin in ways that are similar to what is felt in the real world, through force, vibration or motion.

Vibration is the most common haptic technology today and has been built into many electronic devices, such as one attached to the back of a trackpad in laptops. However, haptic feedback with vibration becomes less sensitive when used continuously. The existing technology also has great difficulty recreating the sense of touch with objects in virtual environments or located remotely.

The new technology overcomes issues with existing haptic devices. The research team introduced a novel method to recreate the sense of touch through soft, artificial "muscles".

It works like this: imagine you call a friend in Australia. You wear a haptic glove with the SSDs and your friend also wears a glove with 3D force sensors. If your friend picks up an object, it will physically press against your friend's fingers. And the glove with 3D force sensors will measure these interactions. The force signals can be sent to your glove so your device will generate the same 3D forces, making you experience the same sense of touch as your friend.

The haptic devices could be used in various fields, allowing users to feel objects inside a virtual world or at a distance. This could be especially beneficial during such times like the COVID-19 pandemic when people rely on video calls to stay connected with loved ones. Or it could be used in medical practices. Doctors can feel a patient's organ tissues without touching them.