Norway — Ten Chinese college students arrived at the country's Arctic（北极的） research base, the Yellow River Station, on Friday.

    On Saturday, the students are expected to witness the end of four months of darkness in the area, as the sun makes a rare appearance.

    During their four-day stay at the station, the students will meet and learn from some of China's leading polar researchers. They were welcomed at the station yesterday by its director, He Jianfeng, who is an expert on marine micro-ecosystems.

    The students will also visit the German and Norwegian stations and meet researchers there.

    As for entertainment, the visitors will get the chance to play ice hockey at the world's most northerly stadium.

    Among the visitors is Zheng Li, a student majoring in telecommunications at Dalian Marinetime University.

     “It is so exciting to see how the Chinese researchers work in the world's most northerly laboratory,” she said.

     “This opportunity is precious. Most people will never get the chance to travel so far from home and visit such an amazing place. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

    Wu Jinyou, head of the Polar Research Institute of China, and the group's leader, said, “I hope the students have not only a field trip to the Yellow River station, but are also touched by the devotion and spirit of the Chinese researchers here. I also expect in the future, some of them will choose to devote themselves to polar research and maybe even work with us.”

    The students have been in Norway since February 28, and were given Arctic training before moving to the station.

    The Arctic expedition is one of the several international cooperation and exchange activities forming the China Program for International Polar Year (2007- 2008). It was launched last March.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, March 8, 2008)

    It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views of our President. A friend I was talking to agreed with me that it was, in his words ,“a brilliantly written book” However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.

    And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven't. In the World Book Day's “Report on Guilty Secrets”, Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various authors, which people have lied about reading, and as I'm not one to lie too often (I'd hate to be caught out), I will admit here and now that I haven't read the entire top ten. But I'm pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one ,Gorge Orwell's 1984. I think it's really brilliant.

    The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austin Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven't read him, but haven't lied about it either) and Herman Melville.

    Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to “impress” someone they are speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in-depth!

    But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing this story (I will come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so.).

    You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson. Of the outstanding ladies listed below，who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

Jane Addams (1860－1935)

    Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addams helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community (社区) by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need. In 1931，Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rachel Carson (1907－1964)

    If it weren't for Rachel Carson, the environmental movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book SilentSpring raised awareness of the danger of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world's lakes and oceans.

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930－present)

    When Sandra Day O'Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952, she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator (参议员) and，in 1981, the first woman to join the U．S. Supreme Court. O'Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court.

Rosa Parks (1913－2005)

    On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgomery bus boycott. It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil ­ rights movement. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in，”said Parks.

    Not so long ago, most people didn't know who Shelly Ann Francis Pryce was going to become. She was just an average high school athlete. There was every indication that she was just another Jamaican teenager without much of a future. However, one person wants to change this. Stephen Francis observed then eighteen-year-old Shelly Ann as a track meet and was convinced that he had seen the beginning of true greatness. Her time were not exactly impressive, but even so, he seemed there was something trying to get out, something the other coaches had overlooked when they had assessed her and found her lacking. He decided to offer Shelly Ann a place in his very strict training seasons. Their cooperation quickly produced results, and a few year later at Jamaica's Olympic games in early 2008, Shelly Ann, who at that time only ranked number 70 in the world, beat Jamaica's unchallenged queen of the sprint(短跑).

    “Where did she come from?” asked an astonished sprinting world, before concluding that she must be one of those one-hit wonders that spring up from time to time, only to disappear again without signs. But Shelly Ann was to prove that she was anything but a one-hit wonder. At the Beijing Olympic she swept away any doubts about her ability to perform consistently by becoming the first Jamaican woman ever to win the 100 meters Olympic gold. She did it again one year on at the World Championship in Briton, becoming world champion with a time of 10.73—the fourth record ever.

    Shelly-Ann is a little woman with a big smile. She has a mental toughness that did not come about by chance. Her journey to becoming the fastest woman on earth has been anything but smooth and effortless. She grew up in one of Jamaica's toughest inner-city communities known as Waterhouse, where she lived in a one-room apartment, sleeping four in a bed with her mother and two brothers. Waterhouse, one of the poorest communities in Jamaica, is a really violent and overpopulated place. Several of Shelly-Ann's friends and family were caught up in the killings; one of her cousins was shot dead only a few streets away from where she lived. Sometimes her family didn't have enough to eat. She ran at the school championships barefooted because she couldn't afford shoes. Her mother Maxime, one of a family of fourteen, had been an athlete herself as a young girl but, like so many other girls in Waterhouse, had to stop after she had her first baby. Maxime's early entry into the adult world with its responsibilities gave her the determination to ensure that her kids would not end up in Waterhouse's roundabout of poverty. One of the first things Maxime used to do with Shelly-Ann was taking her to the track, and she was ready to sacrifice everything.

    It didn't take long for Shelly-Ann to realize that sports could be her way out of Waterhouse. On a summer evening in Beijing in 2008, all those long, hard hours of work and commitment finally bore fruit. The barefoot kid who just a few years previously had been living in poverty, surrounded by criminals and violence, had written a new chapter in the history of sports.

    But Shelly-Ann's victory was far greater than that. The night she won Olympic gold in Beijing, the routine murders in Waterhouse and the drug wars in the neighboring streets stopped. The dark cloud above one of the world's toughest criminal neighborhoods simply disappeared for a few days. “I have so much fire burning for my country,” Shelly said. She plans to start a foundation for homeless children and wants to build a community centre in Waterhouse. She hopes to inspire the Jamaicans to lay down their weapons. She intends to fight to make it a woman's as well as a man's world.

    As Muhammad Ali puts it, “Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them. A desire, a dream, a vision.” One of the things Shelly-Ann can be proud of is her understanding of this truth.

    The annual World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland, in Jan. 23-26, 2018. What did Chinese entrepreneurs(企业家)speak in the forum? Are there some quotable quotes for you?

    ★Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group

    "I think globalization cannot be stopped — no one can stop globalization, no one can stop trade. If trade stops, the world stops. Trade is the way to dissolve (结束) the war not cause the war," said Ma in Davos, "Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba — we are the luckiest companies of this century. But we have the responsibility to have a good heart, and do something good."

    ★Richard Liu, founder and chief executive officer of JD

    "Business is not only a way to make money but also a way to contribute yourself, to help people," Liu said in a speech in Davos. "How can we face the fractured (分化的) world? That's the topics of the Davos this year. I think a very important thing in business is cooperation. If we can unite, work together, if we work very closely, I think we can bring more hope to the people and we can build more trust between the people, countries and companies and partners," he said.

    ★Jane Sun, CEO of Ctrip

    "Tourism is a sunrise industry. Since I entered Ctrip, every year there are new comers, which, first of all, shows that tourism is booming." Sun told Sina.com in Davos. "We invested heavily in ABC.A refers to AI, B is big data, and C is cloud computing. As we continue to expand overseas, these three will be very good weapons for us. So we think those mean opportunity," she said.

    ★Hu Xiaoming, president of Aliyun

    "In 2018, people will see the development in various countries more closely connected with cloud computing. More manufacturing enterprises and financial institutions will start to use 'cloud', and cloud computing will increase the efficiency of technology and finance," Hu told Xinhua in Davos.

    For many of us, summertime means road trips to the beach or mountains, or at the very least some additional dust and bird poop on the exterior of our vehicles. The extra dirt leads us to do one of two things: wash our car in the driveway or head to the car wash. But which choice is better for the environment?

    The main concerns with either choice are the amount of fresh water being used and the types of chemicals used to remove the dirt. Both of these concerns can be closely monitored when washing the car at home, says Katy Gresh, spokeswoman for the Southwest Region of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. She advises car owners to put aside a set amount of water for the entire wash. "It's just like brushing your teeth," she says, "You don't want to leave the water running of more than you need for the job." But even following this advice comes with an environmental risk: Washing your car in the driveway or street flushes the dirty water into storm drains.

    John Schombert, executive director of 3 Rivers Wet Weather, his organization works to educate the public about storm sewers (下水道) and water runoff, keeping this untreated water from entering the Allegheny region's waterways. "We ask people to, consider washing their cars on lawns or other permeable (透水的) surfaces where the water gets absorbed," Schombert says. "Soil can break down and help filter (过滤) those things," Schombert says. "Storm sewers are not made for waste disposal." Even when car owners use natural soaps to wash their cars, which Schombert says are probably ineffective at breaking down grease anyway.

    The commercial car wash down the street knows full well the rules regarding wastewater in storm sewers. According to the International Carwash Association (ICA), professional car washes must use water reclamation systems. These mandated processes not only keep the dirty water out of storm sewers and regular water treatment systems, but they also work to reduce water usage at commercial facilities.