2 . Yellowstone Poster Exhibition to Be on View at UW’s Coe Library

A first-of-its-kind exhibition that focuses on the history of Yellowstone National Park posters will be on display at the University of Wyoming’s Coe Library beginning Tuesday, February 1.

“Wonderland Illustrated” will present posters and poster-style illustrations of the park spanning from the 1870s through 2022. The exhibition will be located on Level 3 of Coe Library. It will be on view through Tuesday, May 31.

The exhibition takes place at the same time as this year’s 150th anniversary of the creation of Yellowstone National Park. The posters in the exhibition serve the purpose of both advertising and art.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Yellowstone collectors Jack and Susan Davís, and Larry and Thea Lancaster to bring this exhibition to the University of Wyoming as part of year-long celebrations recognizing Yellowstone’s 150th anniversary,” says Tamsen Hert, head of UW Libraries’ Emmett D. Chisum Special Collections. “This exhibition involves the history of printing, art, photography and advertising over 16 decades. The images reproduced are found on travel brochures, postcards and maps—many of which are held in our collections.”

One poster from the exhibition—Henry Wellge’s “Yellowstone National Park” from1904—was recently purchased with donated funds and is now part of UW Libraries’ Emmett D. Chisum Special Collections. Wellge, a productive bird’s-eye-view artist, designed the piece for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which used it to advertise the park. This is a unique piece, as posters such as this one were printed on soft paper and very few have survived.

6 . Use this list of winter festivals to plan your trip or plan around them, as many of these festivals will tie up transport and accommodations and drive up prices. It’s all up to you: either plan your travel dates around them, or arrive early enough to jump into the festive atmosphere!

A day-trip away from South Korea’s capital Seoul, the Garden of Morning Calm is a must-see during the Festival. The lights there cover an area of some 330,000 square meters, using 30,000 colorful LED lights hanging from the trees. Wander around the fairy-like wonderland created by the lights-through such fields like Bonsai Garden, Moonlight Garden, and the Garden of Eden.

·Where: Gapyeong County, South Korea

·When: December-Mid-March

Millions of tourists visit this icy festival every year, drawn by the massive ice sculptures that decorate the fairgrounds next to Songhua River. The sculptures, ice palaces, mazes and slides are simply massive in scale, constructed from some 260,000 cubic yards of ice blocks harvested from the river. They range in size from life-scale carvings of animals and fantastic creatures, to massive 250-foot structures that tower over the crowds.

·Where: Harbin, China

·When: January 5-February 5

Japan’s biggest winter festival has expanded in size and scope since its first celebration in 1950.The Festival covers two main sites in Sapporo. The centerpiece Odori Park site features some 100 ice sculptures dazzlingly lit up after dark. The Susukino district site features a smaller scale of ice sculptures decorating the district. The sculptures cover animals both real and fantastic, including anime-based creatures like Pokemon. Visitors can also enjoy snow mazes, street food, musical performances and skating on the ice rink near Odori Park.

·Where: Sapporo, Japan

·When: February 4-11

The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in Taiwan, China is Taiwan’s most visited lantern festival, lighting the skies with floating lanterns bearing messages for the gods. Its counterpart in the Yangshui District favors a noisier kind of illumination-the Tainan Yanshui Fireworks Display takes place at Tainan’s Wumiao Temple, where locals dare to be hit by small fireworks as a test of their strength and to ward off evil.

·Where: Pingxi and Yangshui, Taiwan, China

·When: February

7 . Aeronautics (航空学) specialists from the University of South Australia spent months studying the dragonfly’s flight, creating 3D models from digital images, to build a winged drone (无人机). Study leader Javaan Chahl believes that winged drones based on the dragonfly’s shape and movement will simply be more flexible and energy efficient.

Chahl’s team used a special photography technique to classify the wing shapes of 75 different dragonfly species from museum collections. Their wings are long, light and hard. Plus, their long bodies give them excellent stability and balance, making it possible for winged drones to deliver awkward loads and undertake long observation missions.

Investigating the way that dragonflies remain stable during flight actually reveals the techniques they use to get themselves out of tricky situations. Dragonflies are found to be able to perform upside-down backflips to regain balance and normal flight, when they find themselves upside down mid-air. This special skill can even be performed while dragonflies are unconscious, meaning it is a passive stability mechanism similar in concept to planes that are designed to glide to safety with their engines turned off. Engineers are looking to copy dragonfly wings to create safer drones that can right themselves.

Of course, not all attempts to build dragonfly-like drones are successful. TechJet’s air vehicle was supposed to operate as an aerial camera, observation and security drone, but it failed before production got underway. Similarly, Insectothopter, an American dragonfly spy drone built in the 1970 s was deserted.

Yet the principles behind winged drones are solid. In fact, NASA has settled on a nuclear-powered autonomous craft called Dragonfly to explore the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan in 2034. NASA’s project is actually an air vehicle, rather than a winged drone, but engineers are still convinced they can crack the code of nature’s most gifted flying insect and revolutionize unmanned flight along the way.

8 . Xi'an enjoys a reputations as a “Living History Museum” due to its rich, diverse collection of historical and cultural treasures. Apart from the Terracotta Warriors, there are also some other attractions in the city. Here are some of them.

Ancient City Wall

Xi'an City Wall was built in the 14th century in the Ming Dynasty as a military defense system. Now it is one of the oldest and best preserved Chinese city walls. The wall is now a landmark, dividing the city into inner and outer areas.

Giant Wild Goose Pagoda （塔）

Situated in an ancient temple, the pagoda built with layers of bricks was built in the Tang Dynasty. It is traditional Chinese architecture. One of the main functions of the pagoda was to store Buddhist scriptures（经文） and figurines brought to China from India by the famous monk and traveler Xuan Zang, who stayed here for 19 years translating Buddhist scriptures.

Shaanxi History Museum

The Shaanxi History Museum, built in 1991，is home to over 370,000 precious relics unearthed in Shaanxi over the years, The museum consists of three main sections. Its collections range from bronze ware（器血）to pottery ware, gold and silver ware and mural paintings from the Tang Dynasty tombs.

The Muslim Quarter

One of the highlights is its local snacks when you tour Xian. The best food destination is the Muslim Quarter，which has a history of several hundred years. Consisting of a number of food streets, the area has become a famous attraction in the city for its rich and authentic Muslim cultural atmosphere.

9 . Using a raised eyebrow or smile, people with speech or physical disabilities can now operate their Android-powered smartphones without using their hands, Google said on Thursday.

Two new tools put machine learning and front-facing cameras on smartphones to work, identifying face and eye movements. Users can look at their phone screens and select a task by smiling, raising eyebrows, opening their mouths, or looking to the left, right or up.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 61 million adults in the United States live with disabilities, which has pushed Google, Apple and Microsoft to make products and services more accessible to them. “Every day, people use voice instructions, like ‘Hey Google’, or their hands to operate their phones,” the tech giant Google said in a blog post. “However, that’s not always possible for people with serious physical or speech disabilities.”

The changes are the result of two new features: One is called “Camera Switches”, which lets people use their faces instead of taps to interact with smartphones. The other is Project Activate, a new Android application which allows people to use those gestures to start an action, like having a phone play a recorded phrase, send text, or make a call. The free Activate app is available in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States at the Google Play Store.

Apple, Google and Microsoft have kept rolling out inventions that make Internet technology more accessible to people with disabilities or who find that age has made some tasks, such as reading, more difficult. Voice-instructed digital assistants built into speakers and smartphones can enable people with sight or movement challenges to tell computers what to do. There is software that identifies text on web pages or in images and then reads it aloud, as well as automatic generation of captions that display what is said in videos. Apple built “AssistiveTouch” into the software powering its smartwatches. It lets touchscreen displays be controlled by sensing movements such as finger pinches or hand clenches.

10 . My career as a chef started at the age of 25, but my ______ for cooking started at an early age, when I was about 5 years old — by watching my grandmother and my mom in the kitchen ______ daily meals for the family. I was also ______by going with my grandfather to markets to ______ the freshest ingredients. My grandfather taught me the art of picking and recognizing “the ______.”

From my youth, I have had this passion for food. Growing up in Morocco, I witnessed the most amazing hospitality and ______ through my grandparents. They opened their ______ to everybody, and fed and sheltered the poor, travelers, family and friends.

I remember as a young kid coming home from school to the ______ of fragrant (芳香的) fresh bread coming out of the oven. Those smells stimulated (刺激) my senses at a young age. The ______were fresh and seasonal — they were very simple dishes but delightfully ______.

Food is almost as ______ as it is necessary. Food makes people feel things. I really think that food tastes its best when there is a ______ behind it. It shapes cultures, religion, politics and health. Food brings people together, and goes straight to the ______.

In my kitchen, I try to duplicate (复制) smells and flavors that make me think about more than what I’m actually smelling or ______ — it makes me think of life, my family, and my history. I love to cook food that ______ people’s emotions and memories; my philosophy is to “keep food real and simple.”