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    Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in March 14 at age 76.

    Hawking, whose 1988 book “A Brief History of Time” became an unlikely worldwide bestseller and cemented (奠定) his superstar status, dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of the Universe. He held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, which is a position that was once held by Sir Isaac Newton.

    Born in 1942 in Oxford, where his parents spent the final months of pregnancy to avoid the bombings of London, Hawking was said to have been a good student although it wasn't until he was in his 20s that his true potential began to really shine through. Having initially wanted to study Mathematics, Stephen Hawking chose, instead, to read natural sciences with emphasis on Physics.

    Having found University life boring, so much so that he joined the University rowing team to relieve the boredom, it was only following an oral examination that he was awarded a first class degree.

    While at Cambridge, Hawking was diagnosed with a motor neurone (神经元）disease. He was initially given two to three years to live. The illness gradually robbed him of mobility, leaving him confined to a wheelchair, almost completely paralysed and unable to speak except through his trademark voice synthesiser (合成器）.

    Stephen Hawking led an incredible and well documented life. He was referred to in many TV programs, films, and even songs, and appeared as himself in a number of programs including Red Dwarf and the Big Bang Theory. His genius and wit won over fans from far beyond the world of astrophysics (天体物理学）, earning comparisons with Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton.

    Standing desks have become common across Silicon Valley, offering health benefits to those willing to work on their feet. However, due to their high price, they have failed to catch on until now. Recently, Ikea has brought out Bekant convertible（可变换的） standing desk that can become a normal desk at the touch of a button. The $500 adjustable desk can transform from a standard desk to a standing one, and Ikea hopes it could make the standing desk mainstream.

    Experts say that changing from a seated to a standing desk can improve productivity. Similar desks have become a common sight at tech firms such as Google, where some employees have even installed treadmill (跑步机) and bicycle desks.

    The desk is not the first “convertible” on the market. As early as 2013, Stir Kinect brought out an adjustable desk. The $3,890 Stir Kinect desk has a motor to raise and lower itself, changing it into a standing desk or a traditional desk. The desk can even be programmed to move up and down slightly, making it appear to take a gentle breath to remind the user to change their positions. To move between sitting and standing positions, owners simply double tap on the screen. The desk can learn the user's preferences over time and suggest the best seating position.

    The Stir Kinect desk was created by a team of ex-Apple and Disney engineers. It has a built-in touch screen to control and track movement, and can tell users exactly how many calories they burn by standing during their working day. It also has devices containing power points and USB ports for charging phones, to keep cables hidden.

    “Ikea's height-adjustable desk is great for opening up the lower end of the market, '' said JP Labrosse, founder and CEO of Stir.

    On her first day in New York City, teaching students from low-income families at an after-school program, Alyssa Kapasi noticed so many kids were lining up for free sandwiches and fruit in the cafeteria. Many of these poor students don't get enough food to eat at home, so a free school lunch or a free after-school meal might be the most food they would get all day.

    Kapasi, who graduated from private school, was shocked. Therefore, she was determined to help. “I want other kids to understand that if they meet a problem, they don't have to wait to be an adult to salve it,” says Kapasi. She and a group of friends are now putting their programming skills ta work to create an app called Food for Thought, which will allow parents, students and even kind-hearted strangers to donate to a lunch account for a student in need at a nearby school.

    About 20 million American kids receive free lunches. Two million more quality for reduced-price meals, and those students' families may pay for part of their food. When they don't have the money on any day, the students might have to choose an “alternative meal” such as a free cheese sandwich.

    One clever feature of the app which is being supported by donation from companies and social investors—is that it provides anonymity (匿名) to lunch recipients and donors. To receive financial help, a family will need only a recommendation from a school administrator, and no one else knows.

    “I want to make the application a platform where all users feel no shame in using it,” says Kapasi. She hopes to test the app in a school district next month. And then, she will devote herself to charity.

    It's holiday season and time for shopping. There are a bunch of items on your shopping lists ranging from small gifts, toys and festive decorations to Christmas and New Year cards. What's your first reaction to products labeled "Made in China"? If you still tend to relate "Made in China" to poor quality, you need to update your ideas. China's ability to produce high-quality products has been recognized by a growing number of foreigners. It's a misunderstanding to associate low quality with "Made in China".

    Cameron Purdy, a Web user, says that China manufactures poor-quality products does not mean it cannot manufacture high-quality products. He explains that the poor-quality products one purchases in the US for example, are made in the quality that the American companies ask for. "The price that you pay for the product has no relationship to the cost of its manufacturing," suggested Purdy. For example, for an item priced at $20 in the US, the cost of manufacturing it paid by the American company is usually less than $1. To guarantee the room for profit, the Chinese co-manufacturer spends less than $1 to produce the item.

    Amanda Wu, who lives in Shanghai, noted that many top brands have manufacturing factories located in China, and the most convincing example of China's manufacturing quality is Apple products. On the back of the iPhone, one can find the product is Made in China—"Designed by Apple in California. Assembled (装备) in China. "Chinese and foreign Web users commented that some Chinese products with good reputations around the world are Haier, Lenovo, GREE, Huawei and China Railway High-speed.

    On the other hand, foreign misunderstandings can sometimes affect Chinese people's minds. For instance, when Chinese people travel abroad, some would still avoid buying products Made in China. It's time for the world to stop relating Made in China with low-quality products. Just remember, you get what you pay for.

    DO THANH, Vietnam-The last remains of the 39 Vietnamese who died while being carried illegally in a truck to England last month were sent back to their home country on Saturday. Photos by the official Vietnam News Agency showed the arrival at the Hanoi airport of 16 bodies and seven urns (骨灰盒), which had been flown from London. They were loaded into ambulances on a foggy morning for a trip to their hometowns in several provinces in northern and central Vietnam.

    The bodies were found Oct 23 in the English town of Grays, east of London. Police said the victims were aged between 15 and 44. While no cause of death has been officially confirmed, the circumstances suggested asphyxiation (窒息). The 31 men and eight women are believed to have paid human traffickers (人贩子) for their entering England secretly. Several people have been arrested in the UK and Vietnam.

    Shortly after noon on Saturday  the body of one victim, 19-year-old Bui Thi Nhung, arrived at Phu Tang church in the village of Do Thanh. More than 100 villagers and family members waited for the body's arrival at a highway leading to the village. They held white flowers, standing by the side of the road as the ambulance carrying the body passed. After 15 minutes at the church, the mourners moved to Nhung's home nearby. One of Nhung's nieces held her portrait to lead the procession.

    Nhung's coffin was placed in the middle of the living room of the one-story house, with the family weeping by the sides. Relatives and neighbors came into the home to place incense (香). A funeral will be held for Nhung at her home on Sunday, followed by a ceremony at the church before she was buried.

    An initial (最初的) group of 16 bodies were handed over to their families on Wednesday, and funerals were held the following day.

    The impoverished villages the victims were born in have largely been left out of the economic development that has turned urban centers in Vietnam such as Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi into boom (繁荣) towns, sending many on a risky journey looking for a better life abroad.

    Over the past few months huge groups of locusts (蝗虫), one of which occupied an area more than three times the size of New York City, have eaten up crops across the Hom of Africa and the Middle East, leaving an estimated 20 million people at risk of famine (饥荒). The first generation's eggs are starting to hatch, and now even bigger swarms (虫群)are forming threatening countries from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and India, "representing a threat to food security and livelihoods," says the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Desert locusts' populations explode when weather conditions are right. That explosion can create huge swarms that can travel great distance-more than 90 miles in a day—in search of food Warm weather and unusually heavy rains in the Horn of Africa at the end of 2019 provided the moist (湿润的) soil necessary for hatching eggs From there, the insects spread rapidly, resulting in one of the worst outbreaks the region has seen in more than 70 years

    A typical swarm numbering 4 billion to 8 billion locusts, can consume in one day the same amount of food as 35 million people. Some swarms have been so thick in parts of Kenya that they have prevented planes from taking off. Governments have used widespread aerial spraying of pesticides when available; in poorer regions, where aircraft are unavailable, soldiers battle the swarms with handheld spray pump.

    The FAO has appealed for $138 million to support affected communities, If the locusts are not stopped before the next generation hatches, the impact could be terrible: the FAO guesses that an additional 25 million people across the region could lose their crops. Scientists in Kenya hope a new computer-assisted tracking program that combines satellite data with weather-mapping software will help predict the swarms 'next destination, buying-regional authorities enough time to prepare a response. Buy coronavirus- related travel restriction have delayed relief efforts as well as response mechanisms. The locusts have/no such travel limitations.

    The executive committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency(WADA，世界反兴奋剂组织) agreed to a series of tough measures against Russia on December 9. According to The Washington Post, it is the most severe punishment to date in the years-long Russian doping saga (兴奋剂事件).

    Russia is prohibited from participating in all major international sports events in the next four years, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The country will also be banned from hosting any major sports events.

    The reason for such severe punishment is that WADA believes the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) did not actively cooperate with its investigation. WADA also claims that the sample data submitted by the Moscow laboratory in January 2019 was incomplete and untrue. A great deal of data was deleted and changed.

    Under the four-year ban, the Russian flag and anthem (国歌) are also prohibited from being displayed at major events. Only ''clean'' Russian athletes will be allowed to participate in international competitions under a neutral flag if they can provide the necessary proof.

    Several countries and organizations have already upheld (支持) WADA's decision. The International Olympic Committee states that the decision is binding (有约束力的) and will also support the ruling (裁决) of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (国际体育仲裁法庭) in the future if Russia appeals. Norway said it would refuse Russia's participation in the Ski World Cup in2023.

    The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said the ruling against Russia was “too moderate” and that the failure to ban Russian athletes from participating in any sports event was a blow to international sports. Although RUSADA will have three weeks to appeal against WADA's decision, according to the reaction of other organizations, there is a high possibility that the penalties will be carried out.

    Russian president Vladimir Putin said the country had every reason to appeal against the decision. ''The key thing, and everyone is in agreement here, any punishment has to be individual, has to be targeted based on what a particular individual has done. We can't have collective punishment, '' Putin stressed. ''We cannot punish people who have nothing to do what so ever with violations.''

    Despite the ban, Russia will be able to compete at Euro 2020 — in which St. Petersburg will be a host city — as European football's governing body UEFA is not defined as a ''major event organization. ''

    There is a truth generally acknowledged by drivers in India, honk your horn (按喇叭) loud enough and the traffic light will surely change to green. But, fed up with the drivers who have no patience and cause a deafening noise every time they are forced to stop, the police in Mumbai have come up with a new system to punish those people. The new system, said the police, was quite simple: “Honk more, wait more.”

    Known as “the punishing signal”, the Mumbai police fixed a new traffic light system to deal with the problem of “reckless honkers”, which resets the red traffic signal every time the sound of car horns goes above 85 decibels. For particularly honk- happy drivers, it could mean a very long wait at the lights.

    Mumbai was recently listed as the fourth most congested city in the world, according to the TomTom traffic index, with 65% congestion and drivers spending an average of eight days and 17 hours in traffic each year. Speaking to local media, Mumbai traffic police commissioner Madhukar Pandey said, “Sadly, many Mumbaikars are addicted to reckless honking which not only causes noise pollution, but hurts eardrums, increases heart rates, causes stress and adds to traffic disturbance.”

    He added, “All recognize it, but do little to control it. With this, I am sure that our road discipline can become better and the new system ensures honk-less, noise-free and stress free travel on Mumbai roads.”

    The idea, which was tested in November and December, 2019, has already gained momentum and there is a plan for rolling it out in other cities in India. Across the country, Indian cities have the worst traffic in the world. Bangalore was recently named as the world's most congested city, with drivers spending an average of 10 days stuck in traffic, while both Delhi and Pune were also in the top 10.

    A Four-Year-Old Boy Convinced Father Is a Fool After 45th Hide-and-Seek Victory

    GLENDALE, PENNSYLVANIA-Expressing embarrassment and disappointment over being the son of such a loser, local four-year-old Connor Heyward was convinced that his father, Craig Heyward, was a fool after losing 45 games of hide-and-seek. "God, this is bad. I've hidden behind that bush a dozen times, and he still can't find me, " said Connor, admitting that after finding his father crouched behind a chair half his size, he had started to worry he might grow up to be a " complete idiot" just like his dad. "At first, I thought I might be really good at this game, but after succeeding in hiding underneath a clothes basket with visible holes, I realized the kind of game was not his cake. It'd be one thing if he were only bad at seeking, but so far, his best hiding spot was behind the back door. Who hides behind a door? There's no strategy to it whatsoever. "

    Reality of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned on Man Until He Held Newborn Son's Hospital Bill

    MISSOULA, MONTANA-Describing how he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a flood of intense emotions, local man Mike Bentzen told reporters the reality of fatherhood didn't truly set in for him until the moment he held his newborn son's hospital bill. "Wow, this is going to totally change my life," said Bentzen as tears welled up in his eyes. "Some friends tell me about their experience, but you can't understand what it feels like until you're looking down at it in your own hands." Bentzen reportedly started weeping softly as he sat down with his son's hospital bill in his lap and began imagining how he would deal with this for the next 18 years.

A new book called "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua has caused a debate (争论) about cultural differences in parenting. Amy Chua is a teacher in an American university and both of her parents are Chinese. In the book, Ms. Chua writes about how she taught her daughters. She told NBC television that she had a clear list of what her daughters were not allowed to do, such as having a play date, watching TV or playing computer games and getting any grade less than an A.

Many people are against Amy Chua's parenting style (风格), even her husband, who is American. They say it is rude and unfair to children. But she says her parents raised her and her three sisters in that way.

Ms. Chua says after her younger daughter shouted "I hate my life! I hate you!" she decided to retreat because she was afraid of losing her daughter. But she also says American parents often have low expectations of their children's abilities.

"The debate is about what it means to be a successful parent and what it means to be a successful child," said Stacy DeBroff, who has written four books on parenting. She says Amy Chua's parenting style is not limited to Chinese families. It is a tradi-tional way of parenting among immigrants (移民). They hope to get a better future for their children.

She also sees a risk (风险). When children have no time to be social or to develop their own interests, they might not develop other skills that they need to succeed in life. DeBroff advises parents to develop their own style of parenting and not just repeat the way they were raised.

The biggest and the smallest of the world's animals are most at risk of dying out, according to a new analysis, with vertebrates (脊椎动物) in the so-called "Goldilocks zone"—not too big and not too small—winning out. Action is needed to protect animals at both ends of the scale, they say. The research adds to evidence that animals are dying out on such a scale that a sixth extinction is considered under way.

One clue is body size. Research on birds and mammals has shown that those with larger bodies are more likely to go extinct. Yet, when the researchers made a database of thousands of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians (两栖动物) and reptiles (爬行动物) at risk of extinction, they found disproportionate (不成比例的) losses at the large and small ends of the scale.

"Surprisingly, we found that not only the largest of all vertebrate animal species are most threatened, but the very tiniest ones are also highly threatened with extinction," Prof. Ripple told BBC News.

Large animals, such as elephants, rhinos (犀牛) and lions have long been the target of protection efforts. However, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians that are the giants of their kind, such as the whale shark, Somali ostrich (鸵鸟) and the Chinese giant salamander (蝾螈), tend to be overlooked. Meanwhile, small species at risk--such as frogs and shrews (鼩鼱)--receive very little attention.

"I think, for the smallest species, first of all we need to bring higher awareness to them, because the larger ones get a lot of attention, but the smaller ones get very little," said Prof. Ripple.

In the study, vertebrates with the smallest and the largest bodies were found to be most at risk of disappearing, whether they were on land or living in oceans, streams or rivers.

Heavyweights are threatened mainly by hunting, while featherweights are losing out to pollution and cutting down forests. "Ultimately, reducing global consumption of wild meat is a key step to reduce negative impacts of hunting, fishing, and trapping on the world's vertebrates," they write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    A 76-year-old grandmother, dressed in Hanfu, the traditional clothing of China attracted hundreds of thousands of people's attention with her beauty and passion for life. The first short video was filmed by her grandson Liu Haochen in early October, and received 1. 76 million likes on short video platform Douyin within a month.

    Now known as "Grandma of Chenchen" with 200，000 fans, she has tried on many different Chinese traditional clothing, dutiful headwear and fans with traditional Chinese pammgs are some of her favorite parts in dressing. Liu, also a lover of Hanfu. said he wanted to share happy memories with his grandma and to record her life at old age. And he found she was quite suitable for the clothing.

    The grandma learned Peking Opera al 13, entered an opera school al 19 and then became an actress at Hunan Peking Opera in Hunan province. Now at the age of 76, she is still teaching opera.

    She said she agreed the moment Liu invited her to shoot a video. I didn't really know what it was about at the time. I thought it would be good to spend some time with Chenchen," she said, as Liu had been busy working far from home.

    In October, she participated in a catwalk show in Changzhou, with performers much younger than her. Although the show went on in the rain, all the audience enjoyed the show. "When I was on the stage, the audience kept shouting my name. I was very cheerful, she said.

    Along with videos about Hanfu, she also shares her daily life, which is full of happiness and smile—shopping, chatting with friends and playing with cats. She said she felt as young as a young person.

To stay healthy and fit, Chinese students do group exercises every day at school. Most of you probably do the same set of exercises. But some school exercises have grown popular online due to their local and innovative designs.

Singing in Sichuan dialects with energetic movements and unique mask-changing is not just a Sichuan Opera performance. It's the routine exercise for students of Mianyang Foreign Languages Experimental School in Sichuan province.

"Sichuan Opera is a local opera, and it is now facing a gap in inheritance (传承). Therefore, we cooperated with Mianyang Intangible Cultural Heritage Center to create a simple and easy-to-learn Sichuan Opera exercise," said Shen Junhua, who is in charge of organizing the school's exercise between classes.

According to Shen, this new type of exercise has been practiced since 2017 and has been popular among students. When students enroll (入学), they will spend several weeks practicing it. At present, almost all of the students and teachers have mastered it.

"In fact, we had hardly heard of Sichuan Opera before teachers taught us how to do the Sichuan Opera exercise," said Li Yangwenwen, 14, an eighth grade student who also joined the school's Sichuan Opera club out of interest. "It's very different from normal exercises. After practicing it, we found it very beautiful and became interested in it. Now, almost all of the students look forward to our daily exercise time and feel excited to do it."

"By combining opera with daily exercise, the daily class activity allows students to perceive and understand Sichuan Opera's culture", Shen said. "After years of continuous effort to spread the seeds of traditional culture, the younger generation is finally catching on."

A disastrous fire surrounded Notre Dame (巴黎圣母院) completely and destroyed large parts of the Gothic(哥特式的) architecture on Monday.

"Notre Dame is our history, our literature; part of our spirit, the place of all our great events, our wars, our liberations, the center of our lives" French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in front of the still burning Paris landmark and promised to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral.

"Notre Dame is burning, and know the sadness and this tremble felt by so many fellow French people. But tonight, I'd like to speak of hope too, "he said, announcing the launch of a fundraising campaign.

"Let's be proud, because we built this cathedral more than 800 years ago, we've built it and, throughout the centuries, let it grow and improve it. So I gravely say tonight: we will rebuild it together, "he added.

The disastrous fire engulfed(吞没) the upper reaches of Paris' towering Notre Dame Cathedral as it was undergoing renovations(翻新)。

Tourists and Parisians looked on horrified from the streets below. France's Interior Ministry said firefighters might not be able to save the structure.

The fire collapsed the cathedrals' spire(尖顶) and spread to one of its landmark towers "Everything is burning; nothing will remain from the frame, "Notre Dame spokesman Andre Finot told French media. The 12th-century cathedral is home to incalculable works of art and is one of the world's most famous tourist attractions, immortalized by Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The cause of the fire was not known, but French media quoted the Paris fire brigade(消防队) as saying the fire is "potentially linked" to a 6 million—euro($6. 88 million)renovation project on the church's spire and its 250 tons of lead. Officials opened an investigation as Paris police said there were no reported deaths. Some 400 firefighters were battling the fire well into the night.

China has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. TheChange 4 probe(探测器)has also made the first moon landing since1972. It has the task of exploring the side of the moon that never faces the Earth. The dark side of the moon is older and has a thicker surface than the visible side. It takes the moon as long to go around on its own axis(轴) as it does for one complete orbit around the Earth.

The Chinese probe landed in a huge crater 2, 500 km in diameter and 13 km in depth. The crater is one of the oldest parts of the moon and our solar system.

Scientists hope to learn more about the geology of the far side of the moon. The craft has two cameras on board which will send images back to the Earth. It will also try to send signals to distant regions of space, something that cannot happen on Earth because of too much radio noise.

Chang'e 4 also has instruments on board to examine minerals as well as a container with seeds which will try to create a miniature(微型的)biosphere(生物圈).

Communication with the spacecraft is not easy. Images and other data must be transmitted to a separate satellite because no direct communication with the Earth is possible.

For China the Chang'e 4 mission is an important achievement, because the country has successfully done something no other nation on Earth has done. It wants to become a leading power in space exploration and has announced plans to send astronauts to the moon and set up its own space station.

A modern phone can put the world at the user's fingertips. Calls, messages, photos and information access, all make for a better lifestyle. But sometimes, these phones are of little practical use. Leku Wuniure's 63-year-old mother communicates in the Yi language, because she can't read Chinese or speak Mandarin and is even unable to read numbers. As a result, a very simple, taken-for-granted feature of any modern phone like calling someone can prove to be difficult. Whenever she wants to call her son, she has to ask someone to help her to dial his number.

Leku, 25, a young man of the Yi ethnic group(彝族), sincerely, wanted to help. So he created an app that responds to his mother's request for "calling my son" in the Yi language. Once this is said, the app will automatically(自动地) dial his number. The app is called Yayou. It turned out to be a fantastic aid for his mother and has also benefited many among the more than 8 million Yi people in China.

"With the app, I wanted to help my mom, as well as the Yi people," says Leku, a college student at Chongqing University. "Besides my mother's plight, I've also seen some villagers, who left to make a living as workers in cities, suffering financial losses or misunderstanding due to the obstacles (障碍) in communication."

The dream is becoming bigger—after more than two years' development, Leku and his partner Mise Achang are ready to launch an updated version of their app in May. The 2.0 version of Yayou will have several new functions, providing news and entertainment content, as well as online shopping services, in both the Yi language and Mandarin. What's more exciting, some users will be able to test the new voice assistant function and interact with their smartphones in the Yi language before its final release.

With the app, users could listen to more songs, watch videos and read news presented on the app in the Yi language. The app, apart from bringing tremendous convenience, can also serve as an important cultural tool. It can be used as a database to collect oral and written records of Yi culture and help keep them.

An American teacher who helped make college education accessible to  low-income, immigrant (移民), first-generation American, and refugee (难民) pupils has won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize. Keishia Thorpe, an English teacher in Maryland, was selected from more than 8,000 teachers in 121 countries.

"As a young girl from the circumstances that I come from, I would never have thought something like this would ever happen to me. I'm speechless, I'm overjoyed, I'm amazed. This is just an extraordinary achievement for me," Ms. Thorpe said.

Ms. Thorpe teaches English to 12th-graders at the International High School Langley Park, where 95 percent of pupils are from low-income families. She redesigned their courses for the English department to make it culturally relevant to her pupils who are from mostly Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and South America. Since then, her English language learners have shown a 40 percent increase in their reading.

Ms. Thorpe spent a lot of time encouraging her pupils to apply for college and helped them with their applications and accessing fully-funded scholarships. She helped her senior pupils in 2018–2019 win more than $6.7 million in scholarships to 11 colleges, with most of them not having to pay for their education.

She plans to use the prize money to give less well-off pupils an opportunity of receiving a third level education. "Every person deserves the right to education and I want to be that person who champions (捍卫) that for them. I plan to use the money to help students worldwide access higher education," she said. "Students are the reason I'm here, so I plan to use that to promote them and create a better future for them."

Organized by UNESCO and first awarded in 2015, the Global Teacher Prize is an annual award to a teacher who has made a vast difference to the profession. The winner of this year was announced at a virtual ceremony in Paris on November 10th, 2021.

BEIJING—A bullying(欺凌)incident at a primary school in Beijing should not be bushed off as "a joke that went too far"; rather, faces should be dug out and action should be taken to prevent similar events from happening on campus again, according to experts.

Huang Zifang, a psychologist specializing in children's growth issues, said schools should be careful about taking bullying incidents as mere pranks(恶作剧).

"Instead, they should work to find out the root cause of the incident in a timely manner, guide the children involved to face and handle the incident in a correct way and teach them to behave properly to avoid-similar situations," Huang said.

She made the comments after a mother in Beijing posted a description online on Thursday of how her 10-year-old son was bullied at Zhongguancun No 2 Primary School, a top school in Haidian district.

The mother wrote that her fourth-grade son was the target of bullies who threw a toilet wastepaper basket at him, striking him in the head. The boy was also mocked by his classmates, she said, bringing on acute stress disorder—a mental illness triggered by severe anxiety.

The mother also wrote that the school described the incident as "a joke that went too far" and that the parents of the boy who threw the basket believed their son was "just being naughty".

The article went viral, with many internet users recalling being bullied at school.

Shen Xua, a volunteer from Beijing who has traveled the country for several years to work with schools to reduce bullying, said schools should take responsibility for such incidents and try to make the bullies understand that their behavior is "vicious and harmful" and "not allowed".

"In the long run, a reporting system should be established to root out bullying on campus. Students should be given specific channels to report what they experience to teachers before further measures are taken to deal with incidents," Shen said.

Huang, the psychologist, said that schools and parents must pay more attention to the ethical(道德的) development and mental health of children, rather than just looking at their academic performance.

On Saturday, Zhongguancun No 2 Primary School released a statement on its social media account saying that it had talked to the parents on both sides and would make further efforts to achieve an outcome satisfactory to all parties.

Traffic jam is a problem for cities around the world, with some looking to electric scooters (踏板车) to ease the problem, and others to Al-enabled traffic lights. But one company believes the solution is to build a network of driverless high-speed pods (吊舱) that ride around cities suspended (悬挂) from a steel track.

In June, Belarus-based uSky Transport opened a 400-meter test line in Sharjah (沙加). From the outside, the electrically powered pods are white while the inside is designed to feel like a first-class airline suite, including mood lighting, music and floor-to-ceiling windows. With two padded armchairs and two foldable seats, the vehicle being tested can carry up to four passengers. A complete city-wide network could support 10,000 passengers per hour, uSky says, with vehicles at present able to travel up to 150 kilometers per hour.

The company says its aim is to free up roads and ground spaces that could be used for greenery, walkways and public leisure spaces, "The ground space is completely over-saturated, and people are tired of traffic jams. People are tired of emissions," says Oleg Zaretskiy, uSky Transport's CEO.

According to uSky, while one kilometer of subway can cost up to $150 million to construct, this system costs around $10 million. And by using less structural materials, it reduces carbon emissions. The company has also developed a similar technology to transport goods containers, carrying up to 48 tons at a top speed of 90 kilometers per hour.

Although she cautions that it would require careful planning to avoid traffic jam in a busy city-wide network, Haag believes it could still be a widely adopted solution if the promises of improved mobility and sustainability (持续性) are kept.

Zaretskiy says uSky is also looking beyond Sharjah. "We can see that the most promising areas for us are in the Middle East and Asia—places where there is natural growth of population, such as India and Pakistan," he says. Haag adds that pods are more suited to countries where public transportation is under-developed and there is increasing demand for mobility solutions. The company hopes to finalize its first commercial contract (商业合同) by the end of the year in Sharjah, Zaretskiy adds, meaning uSky pods could be running properly by 2024.

One thing that sets cycling apart from most other sports at the Olympics is technology. With the exception of a few other sports, such as sailing and rowing, most events that take place at the Summer Games usually just come down to the performances of the athletes. They try to swim and run faster, jump and climb higher, lift and hit with more strength.

In cycling, the competition is so close-often a hundredth of a second separates riders-that the difference in winning and losing can be found in the chain, the wheels, and even the helmet that they choose to wear. That is why the US team made headlines at Rio 2016 Olympics Games, when it rolled out a new bike design that moved the entire drive chain from the right side to the left. It might not catch the attention of the average bicyclists, who probably don't even notice which side the drive chain is on their own bikes. But it caused plenty of outcry from the Olympic Committee, since Olympic rules state that any bike used in competition must be made available to the public. But the American bike-maker Felt Bicycles only sold the new bikes to the American team. The price? $25,999 per bike.

Then the British adopted a more tactful（圆滑的）strategy. It teamed up with bike maker Hope Technology to create something extremely expensive for the Tokyo Olympics Games this year. The frame alone sells for about $23,500. Another $12,000 for the wheels. Throwing in the expensive suits, oil for chains, and sunglasses and shoes, the investment needed to compete for a cycling medal can be almost unaffordable for most of the athletes.