【推荐2】In China, people travel by train to visit new places, go on business trips or go back to their hometowns during holidays. But in the US, traveling by train is a very old tradition. It wasn't always that way, though.

The US railway system started to grow in 1826. Later, many railway companies started up and competed with each other to build new railway routes （路线）. Trains became a symbol of progress, with New York City’s Grand Central Station becoming a major cultural landmark （地标）. Musicians even created music works about trains. For example, Johnny Cash wrote a song called Folsom Prison Blues. But little by little, railways were replaced by highways as “car culture” took over the US.

China would go on to use trains even more widely than the US. China's railway network connects the entire country. It allows people to travel fast with ease. For that reason, Chinese people like traveling by train. This is especially obvious during Chunyun, when China’s train stations are crowded with thousands of people who are trying to get home.

I had never traveled by train until I moved to China. My first trip by train was from Beijing to Tianjin by high-speed train. It was amazing how quickly I could get there just half an hour. Since then, I’ve taken the train to lots of other cities Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen. It's always a good time. People on the train tend to be friendly and happy to chat. And for some reason, even instant noodles taste better on the train than they do anywhere else.

【推荐3】In the United States, a company is working on a project that could change the way we think about public transportation. Its planned system would move people around in steel tubes. Those passengers would be traveling at speeds of up to 1,200 kilometers per hour.

The futuristic transportation system is called Hyperloop. Workers plan to test the system next year in a specially built community called Quay valley. The town will be powered entirely by energy from the sun.

The Hyperloop transport system is the idea of businessman Elon Musk. Dirk Ahlborn is head of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. He says his company has taken Mr. Musk's idea and is developing a system that will be safe, environmentally friendly and fast.

It’s 100 percent solar-powered... we’re not going to get up to 760 miles per hour, but we believe we can actually break the records that are exiting right now.”

This means that a four-hour drive from Los Angeles, California to Las Vegas, Nevada, could someday take only 30 minutes by Hyperloop.

The system involves a series of capsules that float inside a long tube. These containers wouldn’t need to travel along a pathway or track. The system has been designed to operate above or below ground.

Inside the tube there is a low-pressure environment very similar to an airplane that’s at high altitudes. So now the capsule travelling inside the tube doesn’t meet with as much resistance, and therefore can travel really fast with very little energy.

Dick Ahlborn and his company will use an eight-kilometer track in Quay Valley to find the best way to set up passenger traffic and repair capsules. A larger system will cost an estimated 6 — 10 billion dollars to build.

If Mr. Ahlborn and his company succeed, we may one day see these very fast Hyperloop capsules speeding through tubes around the world.

【推荐1】Every year, thousands of teenagers participate in programs at their local art museums. But do any of them remember their time at museum events later in life? A new report suggests that the answer is yes — and finds that arts-based museum programs are credited with changing the course of alumni’s (毕业生的) lives, even years after the fact.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles recently asked researchers to conduct a study to find out how effective their long-standing teen art programs really are. They involved over 300 former participants of four programs for teens that have been in existence since the 1990s. Alumni, whose current ages range from 18 to 36, were invited to find out how they viewed their participation years after the fact.

Among the alumni surveyed, 75 percent of them thought the teen art program experience had the most favorable impact on their own lives, beating the family, school and their neighborhoods. Nearly 55 percent thought that it was one of the most important experiences they had ever had, regardless of age. And two-thirds said that they were often in situations where their experience in museums affected their actions or thoughts.

It turns out that participating in art programs also helps keep teens keen about culture even after they reach adulthood: Ninety-six percent of participants had visited an art museum within the last two years, and 68 percent had visited an art museum five or more times within the last two years. Thirty-two percent of alumni work in the arts as adults.

Though the study is the first of its kind to explore the impact of teen-specific art programs in museums, it reflects other research on the important benefits of engaging with the arts. A decade of surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts found that the childhood experience with the arts is significantly associated with people’s income and educational achievements as adults. Other studies have linked arts education to everything from lower dropout rates to improvement in critical thinking skills.

【推荐2】Earlier this month, TikTok announced that it will be introducing screen time limits for the accounts of users aged under 18. Children under 13 will require a parent or guardian to type in a password to continue scrolling (滚屏) through their feed, and those aged 13-17 will be asked to set their own password s when the viewing time goes beyond the limit.

Studies suggest that 30 minutes may be the best for social media use, where users are able to stay connected with friends and family and view entertainment. However, many other studies show that overly-heavy social media use can lead to a lot of problems, like physical and mental problems.

By suggesting 100 minutes as a hard line where a password is required to be created by the user, TikTok is gradually making the standards clear about what may be regarded as a problematic social media habit in young people. Although these passwords for older teenagers can obviously be bypassed, they are a step in the right direction in encouraging children to use social media responsibly.

In addition, parents who own their own TikTok accounts will be able to link with their children’s accounts, gaining additional controls, such as muting notifications (消息免打扰) and customizing time limits for different days in the week.

Algorithms (算法) that could tell parents if the child has been viewing dangerous material could soon be put into use. However, the difficulty in this is the amount of content available on the internet. Finally, apps such as TikTok and Instagram will need to continue introducing more measures to improve online safety for children.

Lawmakers around the world are paying close attention to the effect social media has on the young, meaning that the development of new tools to improve its use will no doubt take place soon if big tech wishes to avoid additional legal problems.

【推荐3】Across Britain,burnt toast will be served to mothers in bed this morning as older sons and daughters rush to deliver their supermarket bunches of flowers.But,according to a new study,we should be placing a higher value on motherhood all year.

Mothers have long known that their home workload was just as heavy as paid work.Now,the new study has shown that if they were paid for their parental labours,they would earn as much as ￡172,000 a year.

The study looked at the range of jobs mothers do,as well as the hours they are working,to determine the figure.This would make their yearly income ￡30,000 more than the Prime Minister earns.

By analysing the numbers,it found the average mother works 119 hours a week,40 of which would usually be paid at a standard rate and 79 hours as overtime.After questioning 1,000 mothers with children under 18,it found that,on most days,mums started their routine work at 7am and finished at around 11pm.

To calculate just how much mothers would earn from that labour,it suggested some of the roles that mums could take on,including housekeeper,part-time lawyer,personal trainer and entertainer.Being a part-time lawyer,at ￡48.98 an hour,would prove to be the most profitable of the“mum jobs”,with psychologist(心理学家)a close second.

It also asked mothers about the challenges they face,with 80 per cent making emotional(情感的)demand as the hardest thing about motherhood.

Over a third of mums felt they needed more training and around half said they missed going out with friends.

The study shows mothers matter all year long and not just on Mother’s Day.The emotional,physical and mental energy mothers devote to their children can be never-ending,but children are also sources of great joy and happiness.Investing(投入)in time for parenting and raising relationships is money well spent.

【推荐1】You’re in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation:

“I can’t believe it — Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn’t it beautiful? And it’s a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome.”

They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It’s nice and the price is right. You’ve never heard of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. They must know. So, you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes.

Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too. This is the secret of undercover marketing. Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.

Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don’t pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation consumers between the MTV generation consumers between the age of 18 and 34. It’s a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don’t trust ads.

So advertising agencies hire young actors to “perform” in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice misleading, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative. “Look at traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing.” It is true, because everyone knows an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. However, you don’t know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance.