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    This month, Germany's transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, proposed the first set of rules for autonomous vehicles(自主驾驶车辆). They would define the driver's role in such cars and govern how such cars perform in crashes where lives might be lost.

    The proposal attempts to deal with what some call the “death valley” of autonomous vehicles: the grey area between semi-autonomous and fully driverless cars that could delay the driverless future.

    Dobrindt wants three things: that a car always chooses property(财产) damage over personal injury; that it never distinguishes between humans based on age or race; and that if a human removes his or her hands from the driving wheel — to check email, say — the car's maker is responsible if there is a crash.

    “The change to the road traffic law will permit fully automatic driving,” says Dobrindt. It will put fully driverless cars on an equal legal footing to human drivers, he says.

    Who is responsible for the operation of such vehicles is not clear among car makers, consumers and lawyers. “The liability(法律责任) issue is the biggest one of them all,” says Natasha Merat at the University of Leeds, UK.

    An assumption behind UK insurance for driverless cars, introduced earlier this year, insists that a human “ be watchful and monitoring the road” at every moment.

    But that is not what many people have in mind when thinking of driverless cars. “When you say ‘driverless cars', people expect driverless cars.”Merat says. “You know — no driver.”

    Because of the confusion, Merat thinks some car makers will wait until vehicles can be fully automated without operation.

    Driverless cars may end up being a form of public transport rather than vehicles you own, says Ryan Calo at Stanford University, California. That is happening in the UK and Singapore, where government-provided driverless vehicles are being launched.

    That would go down poorly in the US, however. “The idea that the government would take over driverless cars and treat them as a public good would get absolutely nowhere here,” says Calo.

    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.

    If you do not use your arms or your legs for some time, they become weak. When you start using them again, they slowly become strong again. Everybody knows that. Yet many people do not seem to know that memory works in the same way.

    When someone says that he has a good memory, he really means that he keeps his memory in practice by using it. When someone else says that his memory is poor, he really means that he does not give it enough chance to become strong.

    If a friend says that his arms and legs are weak, we know that it is his own fault. But if he tells us that he has a poor memory, many of us think that his parents are to be blamed(责备), and few of us know that it is just his own fault.

    Have you ever found that some people can't read or write but usually they have better memories? This is because they cannot read or write and they have to remember things; they cannot write them down in a little notebook. They have to remember days, names, songs and stories; so their memory is the whole time being exercised. So if you want to have a good memory, learn from the people: practice remembering.

    Reintroducing beavers (海狸) to Britain could help clean up rivers, prevent flooding and minimise soil loss, an expert has claimed.

    Professor Richard Brazier, a researcher at the University of Exeter, said unpublished results from a trial area in Devon showed muddy water entering an area where beavers were living was three times cleaner when it left. "Our trial has shown that the beavers are able to dam our streams in a way that keeps soil in the headwaters of our catchment (流域) so it doesn't block up rivers downstream and pollute our drinking and bathing waters. If we bring beavers back it's just one tool we need to solve Britain's crisis of soil loss and agricultural pollution of waterways, but it's a useful tool," he said.

    Prof Brazier's claims were disputed by the National Farmers' Union (NFU), which warned that the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland had led to fields and forests becoming damaged. Spokesman Mark Pope said: "The knowledge of the impacts beavers have had on farmland, riverbanks and flood defences in Scotland is concerning. We await the results of the Devon trial and will analyse the outcomes then."

    Prof Brazier, an expert in Earth Surface Processes, insisted the animals could even play a useful role in preventing flooding. He told BBC News: "The public is currently paying people to build leaky dams to keep storm waters in the uplands. The beavers can do it free of charge and even build their own homes."

    However, Professor Jane Rickson, a soil specialist from Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, joined the NFU in sounding a note of caution. She agreed that in some places in the UK there was evidence of worrying soil loss, and said new policies were urgently needed. Beavers may in fact reduce the river channel and remove vegetation, exposing banks to greater erosion (侵蚀) and increasing, rather than decreasing, the risk of flooding, she warned. And she said beaver dams should be "leaky" to avoid build-ups of large volumes of water.

    HOLLAND & BARRETT

    Valerian capsules(缬草胶囊)

    A traditional herbal medicinal product used for the temporary relief of symptoms of mild anxiety and to aid sleep. This is based on traditional use only.

    Active Ingredients:

    Each capsule contains 337mg of extract (as dry extract) from Valerian root (Valerian officinalis L) (equivalent to 1683mg-2020mg of Valerian root).

    Dosage（剂量）:

    For oral use only.

    For adults and elderly:

    Mild anxiety — Take 1 capsule 3 times daily.

    To aid sleep — Take 1 capsule 30 minutes to 1 hour before bedtime with an earlier dose during the evening if necessary.

    Swallow the capsule with water. As the effects of this product may not occur immediately, the capsule should be taken continuously for 2-4 weeks.

    The maximum dose is 4 capsules per day.

    Duration of use: If symptoms worsen or do not improve after 4 weeks, a doctor or a qualified healthcare practitioner should be consulted.

    Warnings:

    Do not exceed (超过) the stated dose.

    Do not take this product if you are:

    Under 18 years of age

    Pregnant or breastfeeding

    Allergic to Valerian or any of the excipients (辅药)in this product

    Already taking a medicine for sleep or anxiety

    Storage: Store the capsules below 25℃.

    Keep the bottle tightly closed.

    Keep out of sight and reach of children.

    Registration Holder:  NBTY Europe Limited, Samuel Ryder House, Barling Way, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 7RH, United Kingdom

    A study based on data gathered by a NASA sensor has revealed China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are primarily responsible for making the Earth greener over the past two decades.

    The study, published on Feb 11 in the journal Natural Sustainability, has found that since 2000 the Earth's green leaf area has increased by over 5 million square kilometers. That's an area equivalent to the total of the Amazon rainforests. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, considering the general idea of land degradation (退化) in populous countries from overexploitation," said Chen Chi from Boston University, lead author of the study.

    The effect mainly comes from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries, NASA said in a statement. China is the source of a quarter of the planet's increase in forest area, despite having only 6.6 percent of the world's vegetated (固定植被的)area, according to the study. Forest conservation and expansion programs account for 42 percent of the increase, and another 32 percent come from intensive agriculture of food crops, NASA said. While raising their green leaf areas, China and India have also greatly increased their food production through" multiple cropping" practices, where a field is replanted and crops are harvested several time each year. "Production of grains, vegetable, fruits and more have increased by about 35 to 40 percent since 2000 to feed their large population," NASA said.

    Over the past decades, China has made great efforts to green the land. In 1978, the central government launched a national-level forestation project-the Three North Shelterbelt Forest Program. By the end of 2017, the forest coverage rate among the regions in the project reached 13.57 percent, compared to 5.05 percent 40 years ago. In a greening project, Kubuqi Desert, seventh largest in the country, has seen one-third of its area covered by vegetation during the past three decades thanks to forestation efforts.