【推荐1】Sheep Learned to Read Faces

①Which animals are smart? Your answer may be dogs, or elephants. Now there is one more animal on the list: sheep.

②According to a new study, sheep learned to recognize four famous people after being shown their pictures, suggesting these animals have face-recognition abilities similar to humans.

③Before testing, scientists let the sheep take a look at pictures of four famous people like former US President Barack Obama and British actress Emma Watson. Then the sheep went into a room with two computer screens. Each screen showed a human face looking straight ahead. One screen showed a famous person and the other screen showed a common person. The sheep were more likely to walk toward the screen showing the famous person. On average, they chose correctly in 8 out of 10 tests.

④After learning the animals’ ability to recognize famous people, researchers gave them a new task. They wanted to see if the farm animals could correctly recognize the same people shown from the side. The animals were still able to identify (识别) them, though they were a bit slower to recognize the pictures than before and they were correct less than 70% of the time.

⑤Finally, the researchers wanted to know if the sleep could recognize their trainers from a photo. Pictures of their trainers were randomly (随机地) shown on screens along with other unfamiliar faces. Without any training, the sheep could recognize their trainers.

⑥The results show that the animals’ face-recognition abilities are similar to those of monkeys, and humans.

⑦Face recognition is a difficult process (过程). But sheep have big brains. When they see other sheep, they use this process to recognize one another, said Jenny Morton, the lead researcher.

⑧The researchers plan to further study the sheep and find out if they can recognize different facial expression made by humans.

⑨The researchers hope that the study could shed light on certain brain diseases (疾病) such as Huntington’s disease, which affects (影响) abilities like facial recognition.

⑩We can’t say for sure, but it might help us understand how the disease starts, said Morton.

【推荐2】

【推荐3】The online media group TechRadar recently made a list of “the most useful and interesting apps in 2019”. Let’s take a look at three of them.

	◇   Things 3 Things 3 is an award-winning task manager. It helps users collect their thoughts and plan their time efficiently. The app’s chief design is a to-do list. It allows users to add context, such as the time, date or location that they plan to carry the task out. It then shows a “Today” view with the day’s tasks, and group’s things users do after work under the heading “This Evening”. It puts later tasks in a list titled “Upcoming”.
	◇   StoryZ In the age of smartphones, everyone is a photographer. From taking selfies to sharing them on social media, photo-editing apps play an important role making our pictures look perfect. StoryZ’s latest version takes it a step further. The app has two modes. The first one is “Ripple Effect”, which makes still(静态的) images move and come to life. It can create amazing animated photographs. Another one is “Motion Effect”, which creates video stories on still images. It can tun your photo into animated GIF.
	◇   TaoMix If you want to relax, sleep better or focus, the sounds of nature are an excellent choice. TaoMix allows you to listen to some soft sounds to release stress and helps you take a break from your busy life. This white noise app provides hundreds of nature sounds. You can hear sounds of birds, waves of the sea, falling rain, blowing wind, and many more! Better yet, you are not limited to one sound. You can build a soundscape by choosing several at a time.

【推荐3】Warning: this article may make you want to yawn (打哈欠). Why? It’s because we’re talking about the world of sleep cycles (周期) in light of World Sleep Day which was celebrated on March 21st.

Our bodies sleep in 90-minute cycles, experiencing five to six each night. Each cycle has four stages. At first, you enter a light stage of sleep when your muscles relax. Then, the body temperature drops, and the heart rate slows. Next comes deep sleep. It’s difficult to wake up during this stage. This is when your body repairs itself and builds up energy for the day ahead. Finally, you get into the rapid eye movement sleep stage.

Waking up in the morning in the “wrong” stage can make you feel especially tired. An app called Sleep Calculator can help you avoid this. It’s a tool designed to work out the perfect bedtime for you based on your wake-up time.

Developed by the UK company Hillary, this smart app takes into account the sleep cycles our bodies go through each night. Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl (猫头鹰), simply set your wake-up time, and the app will work its magic, suggesting the best bedtime to help you wake up feeling energetic.

It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t just start your sleep cycle whenever you want. Many young people go to bed late and get up late, such as sleeping from 2 am to 10 am. They think if they have 8 hours of sleep, everything will be fine.

But in fact, our bodies can tell the time by using light and temperature. If we wake up too late, we may feel silly. That’s why sometimes we feel even more tired after oversleeping.

【推荐1】This year is the Year of the Tiger. Do you know anyone born in the Year of the Tiger? What’re they like? Are they brave, strong and tenacious (顽强的)? If so, they are typical “tigers”.

In Chinese culture, tigers are considered as the king of all animals. They are the symbol of power, energy, protection, generosity (慷慨). Tigers are regarded as fearless animals, so that’s why in China people often paint pictures of tigers on the walls of houses to protect themselves from danger.

▲ As tigers mostly live in Asia, they have become a cultural symbol of Eastern countries for people in the West. For example, in the book Life of Pi, Canadian writer Yann Martel chose a Bengal tiger as the partner for the Indian boy Pi on his adventure (冒险) in the Pacific Ocean.

In the West, tigers are also seen as very powerful animals. In English, if you want someone to calm down you can say to him, “Easy, tiger.” Another famous phrase is the “eye of the tiger”. People who have the “eye of the tiger” are usually confident and fierce (凶猛的).

Tigers are also one of my favorite animals. I first learned about the beauty of tigers as a child while watching animal documentaries. And my favorite toy while growing up was my toy tiger. As a young animal lover, I feel so sad that they are in danger of dying out and I want to help protect them.

【推荐2】Be honest. That’s all you have to do on Honesty Day. It would be great if we were all honest every day of the year. It’s good that there is a day to encourage honesty. M. Hirsh Goldberg started Honesty Day. He chose the last day of April because the first day is April Fool’s Day, which celebrate lies. On Honesty Day, anyone may ask you any question and you should give a true and honest answer. That means that you have knowledge of Honesty Day.

M. Hirsh Goldberg wrote a book on telling lies. He said in his book that almost all persons lie about 200 times a day. In our daily life, a typical life for a man is “I did not drink that much” and for a woman is “Nothing is wrong, I’m fine.” It is found that nurses are the most honest people, while sales people and politicians (政客) are the biggest liars.

Every Honesty Day, M. Hirsh Goldberg hands out prizes to honest people.

【推荐3】Many people used to be shy. But they all have overcome(战胜) this problem successfully.

Lucy is a fourteen-year-old girl. Over the last 5 years or so, she has worked very hard at dealing with her shyness. She started by making conversations with “friends’ friends”. It did take a lot of effort(努力) but was useful. Now she can talk to almost everyone.

Peter is thirteen years old. He used to be shy, too. But he had to change since he took part in a baseball club two years ago. He has made many friends there.

Andy was also a shy girl in the past. But a year ago, she started working as a waitress at a restaurant on weekends. That’s really helpful. She has become more outgoing now.

【推荐1】Private car services that work only with women are becoming more popular in Brazil due to concerns about safety. One of the car services has a mobile app called Femi Taxi .It has more than 1，000 drivers giving some 20，000 rides per month.

Femi Taxi has expanded into six Brazilian cities and may go to other Latin American markets.

A competing app ,Lady Driver ,was set up in Sao Paulo in March.It has 8，000 drivers and over 100,000 users.

It plans to expand operations to Rio de Janeiro this month .The rapid growth of these apps in cities such as Sao Paulo highlights the rising concerns about public safety in Brazil .From August 2016 to August 2017,reports of crimes(犯罪)such as attempted rape rose by more than 10 percent in Sao Paulo state.

Well­known transportation companies, such as Uber, along with Spain's Cabify and 99，have also increased efforts to improve safety for drivers and passengers in Brazil this past year.

High­profile cases of sexual assault(袭击)on public buses have drawn attention to the issue of violence against women.

Metros in the cities of Belo Horizonte and Recife have recently started female­only train cars.There have been female­only cars in Rio de Janeiro's trains for over a decade.

Gabriela Correa is the founder and CEO of Lady Driver.

“I think the problem of sexual harassment(骚扰)in public transport always existed，but it wasn't discussed，” she said.

“Now__women__are__standing__up,taking__initiatives__like__our__own__to__seek__safety.”

Ride­hailing apps for female drivers and passengers are not unique to Brazil.See Jane Go，an all­women transportation app ,launched in the American state of California in 2016.

A rival company, Safr, launched in the American city of Boston earlier this year.

【推荐2】Jack White's house is near a river. Every morning,Mr White takes his children to school in his car,and then goes to work. Mrs White stays at home. Every day,she does the housework(家务事)．She often has lunch at 12：00. In the afternoon she sees her friends. They drink tea together. In the evening,the children come home from school. They get home early,but Mr White comes home from work late. At night,the children often do their homework,and then go to bed. Mr White often reads books and sometimes he watches TV with Mrs White.

【推荐3】Sally Smith is a teacher in a middle school. She goes to school at seven thirty. Her classes are from 8:00 to 8:40. All the students like her Chinese classes a lot.

But in March, the students are always sleepy in class. They don't listen to her in class. Sally Smith is not happy about this. "How can I make my classes more(更加) interesting?" she thinks.

Then she has a good idea(主意). She comes to the classroom, and then she starts to tell her students some interesting riddles(谜语). All the students like the riddles. They are very happy in class. They like Sally's classes again.