Tangshan, Hebei province, kicked off a tourism activity for night travelers on Hetou Old Street called the “Hebei Night Tour in Golden Autumn” event, which will last eight days starting on Friday(Sept.29). Travelers can enjoy a special kind of night beauty while exploring Hebei during the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays.

Foreigners living in Shanghai will gather at Loutang Ancient Town in Jiading on Friday to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. During the event, people can engage in mooncake making as well as exploring other folk culture, such as Chinese shadow puppetry (皮影戏) and rabbit lanterns. They will also enjoy performances of Mid-Autumn Festival folk music while enjoying local traditional snacks.

Young Chinese living in France will seize an opportunity to introduce Chinese culture on Mid-Autumn Festival according to Chinese lunar calendar. Led by the Belleville Joint Chamber of Commerce Association (BJCCA) and supported by the Association d’Entraide à l’Entreprenariat Des Jeunes Chinois (AEEJC), the second annual Belleville Mid-Autumn Food Festival will offer an opportunity for French residents to enjoy true traditional Chinese tasty foods with a significant get-together cultural meaning.

4 . German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed concerns that growing Chinese competition is a threat to the local automotive industry, while welcoming Chinese carmakers to Europe’s largest auto show, IAA Mobility 2023, in Munich.

The six-day event officially opened on Tuesday. Scholz said increased competition from China was good for the German auto industry. “Fair competition stimulates business. It is in the interest of consumers,” he said, “as Chinese electric vehicle companies show eased several new fully electric models, out shining some German automotive giants.” Competition should stimulate us on, not scare us.

“The countries that have achieved great prosperity in the course of globalization, the workers there, have no less right and no less claim to the opportunities of modernity than we do,” Scholz said of China.

“In the 1980s, it was said (that) Japanese cars would overrun the market. Twenty years later, it was cars made in South Korea and now supposedly Chinese electric cars,” Scholz, who wore a black eye patch due to an injury from a jogging accident on Saturday, said.

The German chancellor also expressed confidence in his country’s strengths. “There is no question about the international competitiveness of Germany as a car country,” he said, adding that “Germany is still the linchpin of the auto industry and will remain so.”

Jun Jin, an auto industry expert, said the international market provides great opportunities for Chinese EV (电动汽车) makers, given their strength in technology and costs. “But this does not simply mean repeating their China success story; they need to succeed by adopting local practices,” Jun told China Daily.

Chinese companies, he said, still count on exports and have a long way to go before manufacturing vehicles overseas, arranging global supply chains and improving services for local customers.

5 . While doing homework, Seoyoung Jun closed one eye and successfully picked up her pencil holder. She realized that directing herself in a 3D space didn’t require both eyes. This surprised her so much that she did some research. And she learned the brain can process 3D information with poor vision (视力) or even without any vision. Then the idea for Mind Beacon was born.

It uses a thin line of light to gather 3D information about the placement of walls, furniture and other things. Then the light sends that information back to Mind Beacon,which then raises little pins (大头针) to show where those obstacles (障碍物) are. Then blind people can “read” the position of those pins to understand the positions of structures and objects ahead and walk around them.

When the invention worked for the first time, Seoyoung didn’t believe it. She’d been up all night working on it. To be sure there wasn’t a mistake, she shut it off and started it up. It had been seven long months of research and testing. Now this tool can help disabled people create a mental image of their surroundings.

The heart of Mind Beacon is a 3D depth sensor that’s connected to a computer. That computer can control motors that are lined up in three rows of three. Each motor controls a pin that can move up and down. When the sensor finds an obstacle, the pin rises. It can rise to three different heights. Each height roughly represents the height of the obstacle. Someone who runs their hand over the nine pins can tell where the obstacle is and its general height.

Mind Beacon won Seoyoung a place at the world’s high school research competition, Right now, she wants to ameliorate it. She imagines in the future it can be connected to a smartphone, with more little pins to show the exact height of the obstacle. It would feel like a little map showing the location and size of the obstacle ahead.

6 . Nirvaan Agarwal found out early how powerful a kid’s voice can be. He was taking part in a protest against the mistreatment of animals at a local circus (马戏团) when he was 3 years old. “I passed out almost half copies of brochures,” Nirvaan told TIME for Kids. “People kept taking them from me because I was a little kid.”

Since then, Nirvaan, now 12, has been speaking out on a range of issues affecting animals, from their use in the fur (毛皮) industry to horse racing. That commitment shows in his personal life, too, He’s a vegan, which means he doesn’t eat food that comes from animals. He says, “It’s important to make a voice for animals because they can’t speak for themselves.” In the meantime, Nirvaan encourages other kids who care about animals to take action. “It’s never too early to help animals,” he says.

In 2022, he spoke before county officials in his hometown of Edison, New Jersey, relaying animal advocates’ concerns about the Johnson Park zoo, in Piscataway, which was always hit by flood, threatening the animals’ life, Nirvaan got results, Months later, it was finally closed and the animals were moved to shelters, Later that year, Nirvaan was recognized for his work by the animal-rights organization PETA Kids. He was named one of its Kids’ All-Star for Animals. The honor gave him a new viewpoint on his duty. “It makes me feel like I have the power to do something,” he says. “I feel like I can change the world.”

Even with all of his accomplishments, Nirvaan has big plans for the future, He says, “Ending the mistreatment of animals happens one step at a time. You can slowly break down the pillars (柱子) of a structure. Eventually, when you break down all of those pillars, the whole structure falls.” He hopes to be a chef and create vegan recipes someday.

8 . Animals, including humans, feel sound as well as hear it, and some of the most meaningful communication happens at frequencies (频率) that people can’t hear. Elephants, for example, use these low-frequency sounds to, among other things, find family or a mate across long distances. Whales do it, too.

But you don’t have to weigh a ton to make a sound. In fact, you don’t have to be bigger than a pea. Consider, for example, the tree-hopper, a curious little animal that lives on the stems (茎) of the leaves. University of Missouri biologist Rex Cocroft has spent much of his time listening closely to tree-hoppers with his team.

The team discovers that all the sounds being heard from tree-hoppers are produced by males. They do it by vibrating (振动) their abdomens (腹部) to make a wide variety of strange sounds. There is almost no airborne sound produced with these vibrational sounds. Cocroft explained, “If a tree-hopper were to stand on your finger and produce a sound, you would feel the vibration but hear no sound.”

They showed that some sounds, not surprisingly, seem to be aimed at attracting females. And some are aimed at other males.

Cocroft explained, “When two males meet each other, or when they are mate-searching on a branch, we’re hearing ‘purring, bdddddrrrr…’ sounds that males give.” Normally, a person couldn’t hear any of this, because the sound travels along the stem, inside it. And that’s how other tree-hoppers detect it.

Cocroft said tree-hoppers have very sensitive legs. And they stand around on stems, which are good at spreading vibrations. So they just use what nature gives them to communicate with each other.

“They have so many different forms of social behavior and grouping,” Cocroft explained. “And once there are animals living in groups, then there will be all sorts of interesting possibilities for communication.”

10 . Phones, tablets and smart watches will be mostly banned (禁止) from classrooms in the Netherlands from Jan 1, 2024, Sky News reported.

The move is meant to limit distractions from social media, messaging and other sites. Devices will only be allowed if they are needed for the lesson, for medical reasons, or for people with disabilities.

“Scientific research showed that mobile phones are a disturbance (打扰). We need to protect students against this,” said Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands. “Students need to be able to concentrate and need to be given the opportunity to study well.” Dijkgraaf noted that schools could manage the implementation of the ban themselves. However, he added that laws would follow if the results are not good enough.

The United Nations also warned of the risks of smartphones in schools, the BBC reported.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that too much mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance. And high levels of screen time have a bad effect on children’s mind, noted The Guardian.

UNESCO said its call for a smartphone ban sent a clear message that all digital technology including artificial intelligence should always be less important than a human-centered vision of education and can never replace face-to-face interaction with teachers. Based on its analysis of 200 education systems around the world, UNESCO estimate one in four countries and regions had laws or policies banning phones in schools. Besides the Netherlands, France introduced its policy in 2018, and Finland had a similar decision in June. In 2021, the Ministry of Education in China banned mobile phones, tablets, and other digital devices in the classroom, Xinhua reported.

According to the policy, if such devices are brought to school, then they should be stored together in the same place. Meanwhile, the use of the devices for teaching purposes should not be over 30 percent of the total teaching time.

“Our school has strict rules to ban phones in class. Students who break the rules may lose their merit student qualification or admissions eligibility (保送) for college,” Dai Ting, a 17-year-old student from Chengdu, told Teens.