The time may soon come when we say goodbye to most of the world’s languages. Today humans

express themselves in over 6,000 different languages. But that is quickly changing. Many scientists say that over half of these languages will disappear within the next 50 years. After 100 years, the languages

used in the world will not be more than 20.

     Why? It is because people from different cultures live and work together much more often than before. This brings changes. The languages of the world’s main cultures are replacing the languages of the smaller cultures. Most international trade takes place in world languages such as English. People respect their own cultures and traditions, but when it comes to getting a job, knowing a world language is often necessary. It may mean the difference between success and failure.

    People in different cultures think it good for them to share a popular language. They can quickly share ideas and work together. Knowing the same language means easier communication and is a basis for trust.

     Is the death of a small local language such a terrible thing? The answer is maybe. Many cultures may have words for many useful things we know nothing about. If their languages die, their valuable wisdom may be lost forever. The future of the world’s language depends on our actions now. Will we protect endangered languages or allow them to quietly disappear?  

Time will have the last word.

Like all big cities, Paris has a traffic problem: lots of cars, lots of traffic jams and lots of pollution from exhaust fumes (废气). So the city began a scheme (计划) to improve the situation.

Under the Velib scheme (‘Velib’ comes from vélo liberté, or ‘bicycle freedom’) people can take a bicycle, use it for as long as they want, and then leave it at the same or another bicycle station. The first half-hour on the bike is free, but if you don’t return it after 30 minutes, you have to pay. But it’s only −1 a day or −29 a year! The bicycles are heavy (25 kg), and they are all grey and have baskets. There are about 20,000 of them in the city, and around 1,450 bicycle stations. So there are a lot more Velib stations than the 298 subway stations!

Paris is not the first city to have a scheme like this. But not everybody thinks it’s a great idea. One Parisian said, “These bicycles are only for short journeys. If people want to travel across the city, they won’t use a bicycle — they’ll still use their cars.”

A city spokesman said, “The bicycle scheme won’t solve all our traffic problems, of course. But it might help reduce air pollution. Traffic, together with factory fumes, is a big problem. There aren’t any simple answers to traffic problems and pollution in cities. But unless we do something now, there will be more traffic jams and temperatures will continue to rise, so the problems in our environment will get worse. The bikes might help people to lead a healthier life, too.”

It is interesting to see that the force of only 6 or 7 people pushing in the same direction can cause up to 1,000 pounds of force-enough to break brick walls. During a deadly stampede(逃奔), people can even die standing up. People die when pressure is put to their bodies in a front to back direction, causing them not to be able to breathe.

If you are in a crowd, the first and most important thing is to make yourself familiar with your surroundings and find different exits. No matter where you are, make sure you always know how to get out. Make yourself aware of the type of the ground you are standing on, and know that in a crowd of moving people wet ground can cause you to fall.

When in danger, a few seconds can make a difference, giving you the possibility of making use of your escaping route. Always stay closer to the escape route. If you find yourself in the middle of a moving crowd, do not fight against the pressure, do not stand still or sit down, because you can easily get trampled（踩踏）. Instead, move in the same direction of the crowd; make use of any space that may open up to move sideways to the crowd movement where the flow is weaker.Keep your hands up by your chest, like a boxer-it gives you movement and protects your chest. If you fall, get up quickly. If you can’t get up because you are injured, get someone to pull you up. If you have kids, lift them up.

If you fall and cannot get up, keep moving in the same direction of the crowd, or if that is not possible, then cover your head with your arms; do not lie on your stomach or back.

 Chinese Language and Culture Summer Camp in China

Shanghai is the city which will present you how modernization meets tradition, and how western culture dances with eastern civilization. So it offers a best place for you to participate in Chinese language and culture summer camp.

Interactive Chinese Lessons

Our Chinese courses focus on developing speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in a well-balanced way, while each has its own focus. The teaching materials we use, offering 12 levels of classes, are written specially for our program. For beginners, speaking and listening abilities will be stressed while for advanced level students, the course will develop in depth their skills on Chinese characters recognition, long paragraph reading and writing, as well as fluent conversation.

Small Size Classes

Our students come from all over the world, mostly between 11 and 17 years old, having different Chinese levels. They will accept level assessment（评估） on the first day of camp, and be placed into different groups according to their language fluency. In a small-class setting each student can receive individual attention from teachers and achieve best studying result.

Traditional Culture Courses

We provide various culture courses to help students to develop interest in traditional Chinese culture, which will benefit their language learning. The culture courses include: Calligraphy, Traditional brush painting, Chinese Kong-fu, Tai-chi, Paper-cutting.

Day Camp

Day camp is designed for participants who have a host family in Shanghai. Day camp runs from Monday to Sunday, between 8:30 and 17:00.

Day camp package includes:  Chinese classes in the mornings;Lunch; Culture courses, field trip and sports activities in the afternoons;Others: Textbooks, studying materials, camp life souvenir

Day camp package NOT includes:Accommodation;Daily pick up and drop off;Breakfast, dinner

Field trip is optional.

Noise-cancelling audio instruments have been around for a while now，but one Berlin-based designer believes that blocking “visual noise” is as important，if not more so，as cancelling out unwanted sounds．To this end he has created a simple accessory（配件） called the Focus Cap．

Open work spaces definitely have their benefits，but they come with the drawback of offering employees little to no control over visual distractions(干扰)．With so many people around and so much going on，some of us can easily get disturbed by this information overload and lose focus in what’s really important．That’s where the Focus Cap comes into play．

“As we are still cavemen or mammals kept in an unnatural environment，I believe that only by reclaiming(收回) the normal，stress-free human state through simple tools and techniques can we finally release our actual creative potential and create our meaningful work for a brighter future，”says German designer Hannes Greblin，inventor of the Focus Cap．

After looking at other products designed at minimizing visual distractions，Greblin decided that most of them were either too expensive or too uncomfortable to become mainstream，so he decided to go with something much simpler —a simple cap with a retractable visor (可伸缩的帽沿)．

Greblin’s Focus Cap is really straightforward．You just wear it like a regular cap with the sides of the visor retracted，and just collapse the sides whenever you need to focus on what’s ahead of you．Whether you’re trying to focus on a task in an open work office, trying to study at university，or practicing yoga in a park and trying to ignore stares from strangers，the Focus Cap can help．

To be honest，this whole project sounds like a joke，but the Focus Cap does have its own website where people interested in this unusual accessory can actually sign up for updates on when it will go on sale．Greblin claims it will cost 30 euros($37) plus shipping．

Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri(MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

“To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density(密度)”，said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “The radioisotope(放射性同位素) battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries.”

Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, presently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro / nanoelectromechanreal systems (M/NEMS). Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said they are safe.

“People hear the word ‘nuclear’ and think of something very dangerous,” he said, “However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems.”

His new idea is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor(半导体). Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor.

“The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure(晶体结构) of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said, “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”

Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwon is working to build and test the battery. In the future, they hope to increase the battery’s power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.

Modern life can be stressful. It’s full of pressure and hardships, worries and annoyances. But after years of being dosed up by doctors and seeking solutions on the self-help shelves, can most common complaints be cured through your next holiday?

The festival doctor will see you now.

A horse named Nunki died in Bahamian forest in July 2015, marking the end of the Abaco Island horse. But thanks to 21^st-century technology, the extinction may be temporary. Two years on, Milanne Rehor, head of the Wild Horses of Abaco Preservation Society, has received approval from the Bahamian government for an ambitious plan: using Nunki’s DNA to clone the species back into being.

How horses came to the Abaco Islands remains a mystery, but their root can go back to the horses brought by Spanish explorers to the Americas 500 years ago. No Abaco Island horses were born after 1999. When Nunki died, the species disappeared.

“When you get down to the point where there are no more individuals alive of a species, cloning is your only chance,” says Katrin Hinrichs, a vet at Texas A&M University. Cloning extinct animals can work, though it comes with limitations.

Upon Nunki’s death in 2015, Rehor had a vet collect tissue and send the sample to a Texas cloning laboratory, ViaGen.

Cloning is hardly guaranteed, but it is possible. Hinrichs warns, however, that cloning will not save the Abaco Island horse in the long run. Even if it is too late to bring back a herd of pure Abaco Island horses, there’s still value in preserving Nunki’s genes.

Because clones keep genes alive, and cloned horses can breed（繁殖）naturally, “cloning offers an amazing opportunity to improve the gene pool of gene-limited species,” says Hinrichs, Saving Nunki’s genes could one day add outside genetics to a herd that is facing an evolutionary bottleneck. The precise benefits Abaco genes could give aren’t known, says Gus Cothran, a vet at Texas A&M University. However, when Cothran compared the Abaco Island horse’s DNA against a database of horse species, he found it had preserved its Old World genes, Thus, Cothran says, saving the genes is worth the effort. “It’s an insurance policy. You’re trying to keep insurance policy. You’re trying to keep something that you may need in the future, but you don’t yet know that you need it.”

From Mona Lisa in the 15^th century to Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s--- that’s over 500 years---Western artists describe beautiful women as strong with soft and white skin. Fat and white was considered beautiful in the West because it was a sign of having enough food to eat and enough money to stay out of hard work in the sun.

Now, thin models and actors are everywhere. But despite how it may feel from our media stream, being thin isn’t the only symbol of beauty in the world. On the border between Burma and Thailand, girls of the Kayan tribe(部落) from the age of five or six wear metal rings around their necks. The heavy rings push their shoulders down over time and their necks become long and beautiful.

Writer Le Ly Hayslip talks about her mother’s look in her book “When Heaven and Earth Changed Places”. The women in the Vietnamese villages admired her because her teeth were not white and her earlobes(耳垂) were long. In Mauritania, a country on the Atlantic Coast in West Africa, heavy women are considered beautiful because they signal wealth in a dry land. And that is the happiest thing there. The Brazilian girl in a song written in 1962 had a “guitar-shaped body”, and she was described in the song as “more than a poem, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

Beauty is a changeable concept. If you want to keep feeling good, you can stop at the mirror by the door and take a minute to put on one final touch--- a scarf, a bright hat, or a little of anything that makes you feel better. After all, feeling better is more important than looking better.

It’s especially important to get enough sleep during stressful times. However, if you sacrifice sleep when you’re stressed, you may end up getting sick as a result. Here are some steps you should take to get a satisfying sleep.

Work Out

Exercise relaxes muscles and relieves tension. Just make sure you don’t exercise too late in the day. A good rule to follow: Don’t exercise for at least two hours before you go to bed.

Set Your Internal Clock

It’s important to establish a consistent time for going to bed and waking up. Your body becomes used to hitting the sack (睡觉) at a regular time, and this helps you fall asleep more easily.

Divert Yourself

Once you get into bed, if you toss and turn (辗转反侧) for quite a while , go into another room and pick up a book for a while, or listen to some music. When you start feeling sleepy, head back to bed.

Have proper food

While you don’t want to go to bed hungry, be careful of what you eat close to bedtime. Spicy, greasy (辛辣的), or heavy foods may not digest well, and can cause you to wake up during the night with an unhappy stomach. Also avoid caffeine within six hours of hitting the sack. Better choices for before-bed snacks include foods high in carbohydrates（碳水化合物）, such as bread, which digests more easily. And a glass of warm milk really may contribute to a satisfying sleep.