【推荐1】You are just waking up in the spring of 2030. Your Internet of Things bedroom opens solar powered e-windows and plays gentle music while your smart lighting displays a montage (剪辑) of beachfront sunrises from your recent vacation.

Your shower uses very little water or soap. It recycles your grey water and puts the extra heat back into your home’s operating system. While you dress, your artificial intelligence (AI) assistant shares your schedule for the day and plays your favorite tunes.

You still start your day with a coffee but it comes from your refrigerator which is capable of providing a coffeehouse experience in your home. A hot breakfast tailored to your specific nutritional needs based on chemical analysis from your trips to the “smart toilet” is waiting for you in the kitchen.

When it’s time to leave, an on-demand transport system has three cars waiting for you, your wife (or husband) and your kids. On the road, driverless cars and trucks move with mathematical accuracy, without traffic jams, routine maintenance or road rage (路怒). Accident rates are near zero.

On the way, you call your R&D team, who are enveloping a day’s work in Shanghai. Your life-sized image is projected (投射) into the China Innovation Centre and your colleagues see you as if you were sitting in the room. It’s a bit surreal for them to see you in the morning light given that it’s dark on the Bund, Shanghai’s waterfront, though the novelty disappears after a few uses.

You review the day’s cloud-based data from your Shenzhen manufacturing centre, your pilot project in San Diego and your QA team in Melbourne. The large amounts of data sets were collected in real-time from every piece of equipment and have been beautifully summarised by your company’s AI. All these facilities are closely maintained and operated through an advanced predictive analytics (分析学) platform.

Pleased with the team’s progress, you end the call and ease into a good book.

This is the future and it will be here sooner than you think.

【推荐2】Dutch officials toasted on Tuesday the opening of what is being called the world’s first 3D-printed concrete bridge, which is meant to be used by cyclists. There was applause as officials wearing hard hats and workmen’s jackets rode over the bridge on their bikes at the opening ceremony in the southeastern town of Gemert.

“The bridge is not very big, but it was rolled out by a printer which makes it unique,” Theo Salet, from the Eindhoven University of Technology, told Dutch broadcaster NOS. Work on printing the bridge, which has some 800 layers, took about three months after starting in June and it is made of pre-stressed concrete, according to the university. “One of the advantages of printing a bridge is that much less concrete is needed than in the conventional technique in which a mould (泥浆) is filled,” it said on its website, adding “a printer deposits the concrete only where it is needed.”

The eight-metre (26-foot) bridge crosses a water-filled channel to connect two roads, and it was tested for safety to bear loads of up to two metric tons in cooperation with the BAM Infra Construction Company. “Although designed for bikes, it could take up to 40 trucks,”the designers said. “We are looking to the future,” said the head of BAM, Marinus Schimmel. “3D printing meant fewer rare resources were needed and there was significantly less waste,” he added.

The Netherlands is among countries, with the United States and China, taking a lead in this cutting-edge technology, using computers and robotics to construct objects and structures from scratch without using much traditional manpower. Last year a Dutch architect unveiled (提示) a unique 3D printer with which he hopes to construct an “endless loop” building. And a Dutch start-up called MX3D has begun printing a stainless-steel bridge, of which a third is already completed. The aim is to finish printing by March and lay the bridge over an Amsterdam canal in the future.

【推荐2】Cities at Sea

People are building a new kind of city. This type of city will not be on land.     1    

The first floating city will be in French Polynesia. That’s an island in the South Pacific Ocean.     2    . Builders hope to finish much of it by 2020.

This floating city will be near the country’s shore. Its people will live by the laws of French Polynesia. Other floating cities might be built in the open ocean.     3    

French Polynesia’s floating city will be good for the environment.     4    . People will drink recycled rain and seawater.

Floating cities will be safe from flooding.     5    . They could be moved, if needed. They would allow more people to live near the ocean.

The first floating city will start out the size of a soccer field. It will grow to contain homes, parks, schools, shops, and restaurants. Would you like to live in a floating city?

【推荐3】You might have heard a lot about ancient towns and ancient cities in China. Here, we list several of the most beautiful ancient villages in China.

Baoshan Stone City, Yunnan Province

Baoshao Stone City was built on a huge mushroom-shaped rock, and only has about one hundred houses. The houses are laid out in an orderly way, built on the rock, and linked by stone steps. The Naxi people there still lead an original life and grow crops in terraces; you can experience the colorful culture of the Naxi ethnic group there.

Tuvas Village in Kanas, Xinjiang

Kanas Tuvas Village is near the mysterious Lake Kanas. The small village is located in a valley, and only has about 80 houses. These Swiss-style wooden houses are all surrounded by wooden fences. Tuvas is an ancient minority group. They traditionally lived as hunter-gathers. You can visit a local family, go herding with the locals and experience the peaceful ancient village life.

Jiajiu Tibetan Village, Danba, Sichuan Province

Jiaju Tibetan Village is known as the “Tibetan fairyland”. It stands on a mountain slope, and consists of about 140 houses. These unique houses are all built with crown-shaped roofs, red caves, and white walls, which make the houses look like little castles among the forest.

Xijiang Miao Village, Guizhou Province

If you’re interested in the Miao Minority, Xijiang Miao Village can be a great destination for deepening your understanding of Miao history and culture. It’s the largest Miao village in China, and now has 1432 households with a population of over 5000, of which 99.5% are Miao ethnic group. It’s also famous for the houses built on stilts of different heights.

【推荐2】Some parents will buy any high-tech toy if they think it will help their child, but researchers said puzzles help children with math-related skills.

Psychologist Susan Levine, an expert on mathematics development in young children at the University of Chicago, found children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition (认知) after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the amount of parent talk, Levine said.

The researchers analyzed video recordings of 53 child-parent pairs during everyday activities at home and found children who play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months of age have better spatial skills when assessed at 54 months of age.

“The children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on tasks that assessed their ability to rotate (旋转) and translate shapes,” Levine said in a statement.

The parents were asked to interact with their children as they normally would, and about half of the children in the study played with puzzles at one time. Higher-income parents tended to have children play with puzzles more frequently, and both boys and girls who played with puzzles had better spatial skills. However, boys tended to play with more complex puzzles than girls, and the parents of boys provided more spatial language and were more active during puzzle play than parents of girls.

The findings were published in the journal Developmental Science.

【推荐3】Why is pink or purple a color for girls and blue or brown for boys?

The answer depends largely on cultural values as well as personal experiences. To the Egyptians, green is a color that represents the hope and joy of spring, while for Muslims, it means heaven. Red is a symbol of good luck in many cultures. In China, children are given money in a red envelope to bring good fortune in the New Year. For many nations, blue is a symbol of protection and religious beliefs. Greek people often wear a blue necklace hoping to protect themselves against evils.

People’s choice of colors is also influenced by their bodies’ reactions toward them. Each color has its own function (功能). Red can cause a person’s blood pressure to rise and increase people’s appetites (食欲). Many decorators will include different shades of red in the restaurant. Similarly, many commercial websites will have a red “Buy Now” button because red is a color that easily catches a person’s eye.

Blue is a calming color. Unlike red, blue can cause people to lose appetite. So if you want to eat less, some people suggest that eating from blue plates can help. Green is said to be the most restful color. It has the ability to reduce pain and relax people both mentally and physically. People who work in green environment have been found to have fewer stomachaches.

The next time you are deciding on what to wear or what color to decorate your room, think about the color carefully.