4 . The history of the school bus can date back to 1886 when the Wayne Works company made horse-drawn carriages (四轮马车) known as “ school wagons” or “kid hacks” in Indiana.     1    

In the early 1900s, the car industry was beginning to develop fast.    2     The company managed to make its carriages powered by engines. But the design remained mostly the same as that of the previous ones, with students sitting along the walls of the bus while facing inside.

In 1927, a man built the first bus that primarily used steel. Before long, Wayne Works introduced the first all-steel school bus body with safety glass windows.     3     This led to a turning point in the history of the school bus in 1939, when a conference was organised at Manhattan College to develop school bus standards.

Many new national standards were created, determining everything from seating designs to the famous yellow color that school buses still sport today. The reason why the color was chosen was simple.     4    The color is especially easy to see in the early morning and evening light when school buses usually operate.

    5     For example, a variety of changes have been made to enable the school bus to not only be safer but also have better fuel (燃料) economy, be easier to drive, etc. The most creative approach among all of these is probably a kind of stop signal arm that warns traffic of a stop in progress, which states began to require in the early 1950s.

5 . Researchers have tapped the brainwaves of a paralyzed (瘫痪的) man unable to speak and turned what he intended to say into sentences.

The device, created by a team at the University of California, San Francisco, analyses brainwaves to decode (解读) what a person is trying to say and then displays the text on a computer screen. The additional research will take years but the results of the current studies mark an important step toward one day bringing back more natural communication for people who can’t speak because of injuries or illnesses.

The person volunteering to test the device was a man in his late 30s who 15 years ago suffered a brainstem stroke that caused widespread paralysis and robbed him of speech. The researchers placed electrodes (电极) on the surface of the man’s brain, over the area that controls speech. A computer analysed the patterns when he attempted to say common words such as “water” or “good”, eventually becoming able to discern 50 words that could produce more than 1,000 sentences.

Started with such questions as “How are you today?” or “Are you thirsty?”, the device eventually enabled the man to answer “I am very good” or “No, I am not thirsty” - not voicing the words but translating them into text. It takes about three to four seconds for the word to appear on the screen. That’s not nearly as fast as speaking but quicker than tapping out a response.

Harvard neurologists called the work a “pioneering demonstration”. They suggested improvements but said if the technology works out, it eventually could help people with injuries, strokes or illnesses like Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Next steps include ways to improve the device’s speed, accuracy and vocabulary size, and maybe one day it will allow a computer-produced voice rather than display text on a screen while testing a small group of volunteer patients.

6 . The ability to solve complex math problems is one thing that sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Despite this fact, some animals do seem to have at least one basic mathematical ability-they can, in a sense, count.

In the early 1900s, the horse Clever Hans drew worldwide attention in Berlin when his trainer showed that he could count and solve math problems, tapping his feet to indicate a number. However, researchers later discovered that Clever Hans didn’t actually have mathematical skills, but the horse did own impressive observation skills. That is, he was unable to answer questions that his questioners also couldn’t answer because Clever Hans was actually reading minute facial and body language clues to determine the correct responses.

While Clever Hans failed his math quiz a century ago, studies in more recent decades have shown that many species do actually have a “number sense”. In the late 1980s, researchers showed that chimpanzees (黑猩猩) could add up the number of pieces of chocolate in two food bowls (up to five pieces of chocolate in each bowl), compare it with the sum of two other food bowls, and correctly choose the larger of the two sums 90 percent of the time. Some other mammals, including lions, wolves and black bears, have also showed the ability to discriminate (辨别) between quantities — and so have animals from various other animal classes.

Some research suggests that the number sense may be something that certain animals are born with. In 2015, scientists found that baby chicks as young as 3 days old could identify smaller and larger quantities and might even think of numbers on a “number line” running from left to right, similar to humans.

Whatever the case, our number sense is not unique in the animal kingdom. In fact, it may not be something that’s reserved to just animals: Venus flytraps can also “count”.

7 . LHR Airport Parking Rates & Information

The London Heathrow International Airport offers both long and short term parking spaces, each with facilities like shuttle buses (穿梭巴士) and more. LHR also has additional services like electric car charging points. There are also accessible pod parking areas that connect with Terminal (候机楼) 5. They are on-demand and you can access them with a waiting time of less than 30 seconds. However, the place is heavily crowded sometimes and it’s best to make advance booking for it.

Heathrow Airport parking rates can vary depending on the lot and duration, so please check for specific rates below.

Short Stay Parking

Location: On Airport

Type: Multi-Storey Building

To Terminals: 2-5-min walk

Rates:

0-29 minutes:￡5.10        30-44 minutes:￡8.20               45-59 minutes: 11.00

1-2 hours: ￡12.90                 ...                                                                   12-24 hours:￡73.90

More than 24 hours: ￡73. 90 for each additional 24 hour period

If you are traveling for a short time or simply need parking while you meet someone at the airport, consider the LHR short parking. The parking is available at Terminals 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Long Stay Parking

Location: Off Airport Area

Type: Drive-In Lot

To Terminals: Shuttles (around 10 min)

Rates:

0 -24 hours: ￡38.20 More than 24 hours: ￡30.50 for each additional 24 hour period

To save money, use the LHR long stay parking. It’s available at the eastern perimeter (外缘) road of Terminals 2 and 3, the southern perimeter of Terminal 4 and at the northern perimeter of Terminal 5 next to business parking. Each parking area is set with a boarding point to take shuttle buses and you can keep the keys with you.