Electric devices can seem like a “third party” in some relationships because some partners spent more time on them than with each other.

    When Amanda Gao, a 26-year-old white collar worker in Beijing, went to a hotpot restaurant with her boyfriend on Friday night several weeks ago, she expected that they would have a good time together. To her disappointment, however, it did not turn out that later. As soon as they were led to their seats and she began to order dishes, he buried himself in his mobile phone.

    “It seemed that his phone was making its way between us. A date that should have belonged to us turned into one where my boyfriend dated a third party and I felt left out.” Gao said. Some people, like her, have found electronics have been sabotaging(破坏) their romantic relationships.

    A study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, in April, 2017, questioned nearly 200 college aged adults who were in committed(真诚的) relationships to report on their and their partner's smartphone dependency. The results showed people who were more dependent on their phones were less sure about their relationships, and people considered their partners excessively(过度地) dependent on their devices were less satisfied in their relationship.

    Lin Yuan, a relationship advisor in Beijing, noted that as more and more electronics come out and spice up people's lives, they are at the same time becoming a third party in relationships, especially for young people.

    Lin said she knew of some people who suggest that electronics should be kept out of bedrooms, which she considered challenging and hard to be put into practice for most couples. She recommended that if people are feeling neglected in their relationship, they need to respectfully let their partners know their feeling. “Communication is always the best and the most efficient way.” she said.

    International Children's Day is coming up on June 1st. Here we have chosen some films from around the world that are most worthy for children to see.

    E, T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

    Director: Steven Spielberg

    Country: United States of America

    Storyline: A group of aliens are visiting the Earth at night. But one of the visitors from space is left behind and finds himself all alone on a very strange planet. Fortunately, he meets Elliot, a lonely boy himself, and slowly makes friends with Elliot's older brother Michael, his sister Gertie. Meanwhile government officers work day and night to track down the little alien. Elliot and others try their best to help the alien go home.

    Children of Heaven (1997)

    Director: Majid Majidi

    Country: Iran

    Storyline: Ali takes his little sister Zahra's shoes to the shoemaker to be repaired but loses them on the way home. There is no money to buy another pair. Ali makes a plan to share his shoes: Zahra will wear them in the morning and hand them to Ali at midday so he can attend school classes. Ali then enters a children's racing competition in hopes of receiving the third prize, a new pair of shoes.

    Kes (1969)

    Director: Ken Loach

    Country: United Kingdom

    Storyline: Bullied (欺凌) at school and getting little attention at home by his mother and older brother, Billy Casper, a 15-year-old boy from a working-class family, finds peace in his pet falcon (猎隼), Kes. With encouragement from his English teacher, Billy eventually discovers a positive purpose to his unfortunate life, until some bad thing comes.

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can(垃圾桶)that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.

    Japanese researchers made a botanical announcement on Monday that quickly circled the world. They had developed a banana with an eatable peel (皮)—the Mongee banana.

    The technique used by scientists at D&T Farm is called "freeze thaw awakening". The process involves starling banana trees out in an environment that's nearly minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit, then moving the trees with their still-ripening bananas to a climate of around 80 degrees - an environment banana trees typically grow in the entire time. The extreme temperature change puts the banana's growth into a superfast-speed mode. In this case, the fruit ripens before the skin can catch up. The result is soft and thin skin that hasn't fully developed.

    The banana has been produced only in small amount so far, so customers face a steep bill to save themselves the bother of peeling their banana: it is currently priced at 648 yen ($6) a piece. There's also the question of whether a banana peel is actually worth eating and whether regular banana peels had, rather suddenly, become too big a problem for people who slip on them to bear anymore.

    And what about shipping? For most of the fruit's history, the peel has provided protection, allowing it to travel long distances from where it's grown to nearly every country on Earth. A softer banana would be a step back from regular banana varieties that travel thousands of miles.

    But the banana in the news is arguably good, particularly for a fruit that rarely receives its share of attention. Bananas are the most  consumed fruit in Japan, and also in the U.S. So even if eatable-peel bananas don't ensure plentiful bananas, or even necessarily nutritious bananas, they still look great on Instagram, which probably ensures them a future in Japan's famous luxury (奢侈) fruit markets.

    I used to be crazy about the hunting season. The excitement of waiting for a prey(猎物)and the pride of showing off the kill fascinated me. However, everything changed after that cold morning.

    Early on that day of the late fall, I set off alone for the woods, packing a gun, a bottle of hot coffee and three thick sandwiches. After finding the fresh deer's tracks in the snow, I settled down behind a little bush.

I sat there for about an hour. It was then that I saw him. A deer, a big beautiful deer! There was no cover nearer to him than 30 yards. Surely I couldn't miss! I waited for him to realize I was there. I waited for him to be shocked and run away. But he fooled me completely. He came towards me! He was curious, I suppose, or maybe lie was stupid—how else can you explain it? Well, that deer walked right up to where I was sitting. Then he stopped and looked at me!

    What happened next is hard to believe, but it's true. And it all seemed quite natural. Just as when a friendly young deer comes near you, I reached up and scratched his head. And he liked to be scratched. In fact, he practically asked for more. Then, I fed him my sandwich! Yes, I know what a deer eats, but that deer ate my sandwich. Well, he finally went his way, down the hill and up the deer trail. Shoot him? Not me. You wouldn't have either, not after that. I just watched him go.

    When I was about half way back, I heard two shots, followed by a dull slam(撞击)a few seconds later. Those two shots usually mean a kill. I had forgotten there were other hunters that day.

    Those hunters would never know they could have scratched his head.

(2023年·广州二模)

In 1977, Irene Pepperberg, a Harvard graduate, decided to investigate the thought processes of another creature by talking to it. To do this, she would teach a one-year-old African gray parrot(鹦鹉), Alex, to reproduce the sounds of the English language.

Pepperberg bought Alex in a pet store, where she let the store's assistant choose him because she didn't want other scientists to say that she had intentionally chosen an especially smart bird. Given that Alex's brain was just the size of a walnut, most researchers thought Pepperberg's communication study would be futile(徒劳的).

But with Pepperberg's patient teaching, Alex learned how to follow almost 100 English words. He could count to six and had learned the sound for seven and eight. But the point was not to see if Alex could learn words by heart. Pepperberg wanted to get inside his mind and learn more about a bird's understanding of the world.

In one demonstration, Pepperberg held up a green key and a green cup for him to look at. "What's the same?" she asked. "Co-lour," Alex responded without hesitation. "What's different?" Pepperberg asked. "Shape," Alex quickly replied. His voice had the sound of a cartoon character. But the words—and what can only be called the thoughts—were entirely his. Many of Alex's skills, such as his ability to understand the concepts of "same" and "different", are rare in the animal world. Living in a complex society, parrots like Alex must keep track of changing relationships and environments.

During the demonstration, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird's brain, Alex spoke up. "Talk clearly!" he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching mispronounced the word "green". Alex knew all the answers himself and was getting bored. "He's moody," said Pepperberg, "so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be difficult." Pepperberg was certainly learning more about the mind of a parrot, but like the parent of a troublesome teenager, she was learning the hard way.