European ski resorts (胜地) are numerous and often legendary. Read our guide to the best European resorts you may not have heard of before getting on the road and exploring.

Val d' Anniviers (Switzerland)

Quiet valley, traditional villages, famous high mountains, extended ski area. Home to five small unspoilt resorts, the area is gaining recognition thanks to the recent cable car link between the two biggest, Grimentz and Zinal. It's a secret powder haven (避风港) offering more than 100 kilometers of sunny journey.

Champoluc (Italy)

Champoluc's ideal ski area links over to Gressoney and Alagna, where the experts go to ride the cableway lift up to 3,275 meters for extensive off-piste runs on the southern sides of the Monte Rosa massif (山丘), western Europe's second highest range. Champoluc's a quiet sort of place, ideal for making your own fun in the honest local joints. And it's cheap —1 euro ($1) for a coffee, anyone?

Sainte Foy (France)

A haven from mega-resort madness, family-friendly, off-piste mecca. The ski area rises from 1,550 meters to 2,620 meters and only has four lifts, but the characterful runs offer family-friendly fun. And the off-piste is still fabled. Take a heart-pounding plunge down the pristine powder fields of La Foglietta or brave a leg-jellying descent to the historic hamlet of Le Monal for a memorable big day.

Hochkoenig (Austria)

Tree-lined skiing, Austrian atmosphere, choice of villages, sweeping views. Hochkoenig is the highest mountain in the Berchtesgaden Alps (2, 941 meters). For enthusiasts looking to log some miles — the Konigstour is a 32-kilometer romp over five summits and features 6, 700 meters of ups and downs. Ski huts are all keen to peddle local produce and specialties. Mmm, dumplings and Kaiserschmarrn pancakes with stewed plums, please.

For the first time in 100 years, the endangered California condor (秃鹰) will return to the Pacific Northwest. As the largest lying land bird, the California condor was once in a difficult situation of extinction, but now has made noticeable steps towards recovery.

California condors prehistorically lived from California to Florida. By the mid-20th century, condor population had decreased due to illegal hunting. In 1967, the California condor was listed as endangered with a population of 50 to 60. Fifteen years later, only 23 condors survived worldwide. By 1987, all remaining wild condors had been placed into a breeding program. Thus, a recovery program began. As a result of excellent reintroduction efforts, there are now over 300 California condors in the wild in America.

The return of condors to the skies is a key step towards the recovery of the beautiful scenery. These creatures are essential members of their ecosystems and play a very important role in the cultural beliefs of the Yurok Tribe. Because condors have an irreplaceable place in their culture, the Yurok Tribe has led this reintroduction effort and completed a great deal of work over the past twelve years.

Recently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Park Service, and the Yurok Tribe came together to announce a final rule. This rule will help to facilitate the creation of a new California condor release place for the reintroduction of condors to Yurok Ancestral Territory and Redwood National and State Parks. Considering the date of the completion of the condor release place may be ahead of schedule, the actual release of condors would be spring of 2022.

Steve Mietz, head of Redwood National and State Parks said, "We will continue to work with our partners in condor recovery. Tourists can visit the tallest trees in our parks while watching the largest birds in the world fly overhead."

Humans are emotional beings, showing feelings in our behavior and facial expressions. But whether these mean the same thing in different cultures has been hotly debated. Now a new study has found that in different social contexts, such as weddings, funerals and sports, people indeed show universal facial expressions.

For the new study, Alan Cowen’s team used a machine learning model, Deep Neural Network (DNN), to systematically analyze facial expressions in thousands of different contexts. These contexts come from more than six million videos uploaded to You Tube between July 2009 and May 2018 by people in 144 countries.

Facial expressions were rated by English speakers in India by selecting applicable emotions from a list of 31 labels, resulting in a total of 16 distinct facial expressions. Meanwhile, contexts were classified in a separate experiment. The results showed that people from different cultures share about 70% of the facial expressions used in response to different social and emotional situations.

“This supports Darwin’s theory that expressing emotions in our faces is universal among humans,” the study co-lead author Dacher Keltner said. “The physical display of our emotions may define who we are as a species, enhancing our communication and cooperation skills and ensuring our survival.”

However, Lisa Barrett, from the Northeastern University College of Science notes that the English speakers in India were given the emotional word ratings rather than labeling the expressions themselves. They used emotion labels such as “anger”, “fear” and “sadness” instead of descriptive terms, thereby inferring the emotions behind the expressions.

She further comments that the raters (评定者) saw the faces in contexts which can’t necessarily be separated from the emotions themselves, and that the key point is that the raters are from just one country. “The ultimate value of Cowen and his colleagues’ study might lie not in the answers it provides,” she concludes, “but in the opportunity for further discovery that it opens up.”