Layue falls on the     1     (twelve) month of the traditional Chinese calendar. The Chinese character “La” holds historical significance,     2     (appear) in ancient texts such as Book of Changes and Rites of Zhou.     3     (original), “La” meant “cured meat”. Layue is also the month with the richest traditional customs in one year.

The eighth day of Layue marks the Laba Festival, whose custom on this day is to enjoy Laba porridge. It is a delightful     4     (mix) of grains, peanuts, chestnuts, red dates, lotus seeds, and other ingredients (配料), all of     5     are mixed together to make it a main course of the Laba Festival. In the northern part of China, there is a saying, “Children, don’t be too eager; right after Laba, the new year is     6     its way.” Celebrating Laba means the approach of the Chinese New Year.

The Kitchen God Festival is a widespread custom     7     (observe) across the country. On this day, people would hang images of the Kitchen God     8     his wife around the kitchen stove (炉子). Today, many rural areas still uphold this tradition.

Layue     9     (regard) as preparation for the upcoming Spring Festival. If the Spring Festival is considered the most joyful celebration of the year, many would agree that the joy, noise and expectation of Layue are no     10     (little) significant than the main event.

5 . Researchers have developed a new soft robot design that conducts itself with three behaviours at the same time: rolling (翻滚) forward. turning like a record and following a path that goes around a central point. The equipment, which operates without human or computer control, holds promise for developing soft robots that can be used to AA-head and map unknown environments.

The new soft robots are called twisted ring-bots (扭曲环机器人) . They are made of something like the ribbon (缎带) and then joined together at the end to form a ring.

When the robots are placed on a surface that is at least 55 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than the surrounding air, one part of the ribbon touching the surface becomes smaller, while one part in the air does not. This induces a rolling movement: the warmer the surface, the faster the robot rolls. “The ribbon rolls on its horizontal axis (横轴) , giving the ring forward strength,” says Jie Yin, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

The twisted ring-bot also turns along its central axis. And as the twisted ring-bot moves forward it travels in a path around a central point, basically moving in a large circle. However, if the twisted ring-bot meets a boundary- like the wall of a box-it will travel along the boundary.

The twisted ring-bots are examples of equipment whose behaviour is governed by physical intelligence, meaning their actions are determined by their structural design and the materials they are made of, rather than being directed by a computer or human.

“Soft robotics is still a relatively new field.” Yin says. “Finding new ways to control the movement of soft robots in a repeatable and engineered way moves the field forward. And advancing our understanding of what is possible is exciting.”

6 . Four Places to Listen to Free Music Online

Pandora

Pandora is a popular Internet radio service that lets users create personalized stations and listen to music. To use Pandora, you will have to create an account using your email address and a password. As you find music you like, you can save songs to your collection. However, you can’t download any specific tracks to your computer or phone.

LiveOne

On LiveOne, you’ll mostly find big artists, bands and songs along with interviews and news. While you won’t be able to stream all songs on demand for free due to licensing restrictions (限制), you will be able to create a station of similar tracks/artists from nearly any song. There’s a tab (标签) named “My Library” where you can save and share your favourite music.

iHeartRadio

iHeartRadio is a great website or app for listening to live radio stations. You can find local stations or check out stations from around the country. You won’t have to create an account to begin listening on iHeartRadio. but you can make one for free to save stations and playlists. Whether you decide to create an account or not. you won’t be able to download music from iHeartRadio.

Spotify

If you’re looking for free music online, you’ve most likely come across Spotify already. This resource is great for streaming popular hits while discovering new favourites. You can keep track of what you’ve recently played, and “favourite” songs. In addition to music. Spotify offers playlists of its most-played songs and information on local upcoming concerts.

7 . The African continent has seen its average monthly temperatures rise by 0.5 — 2 degrees Celsius over the past century, with up to another two degrees of warming projected for the next 100 years. The changing climate will break historical rainfall patterns, but which of these, temperature or rainfall, will have the most impact on a species, like rhinos (犀牛) ?

“Generally speaking, most, if not all, species will. in one way or another, be affected by the changing climate,” says lead author Hlelowenkhosi S. Mamba, who completed this research. It is therefore important to catch tendency (趋势) and model futures for some of the world’s weakest species. It can help prepare to reduce climate change’s effects, hence reducing global biodiversity losses.

To understand how our changing climate will affect rhino populations, Mamba and Timothy Randhir, professor of environmental protection, focused their efforts on the five large national parks that are home to most of the rhinos.

Mamba and Randhir then modeled two scenes for each of the parks: the IPCC’s high-emissions (排放) scenes and a more moderate (适度的) emissions scenes. They projected temperature and rainfall for each of the scenes out to 2055 and 2085 to arrive at a possibility that each park would remain suitable for the rhinos.

Nearly every park will become increasingly drier as emissions increase. This is all very bad news for the rhinos, because the team also found that, though the change in rainfall will not be most suitable for the rhinos, the changes in temperature are greater than what the species can bear.

“The temperature conditions in all study parks will become increasingly unsuitable for the species. And under the high-emissions scenes, the possibility of occurrence of the species falls to zero by 2085,” the authors write.

But to be forewarned is to be prepared in advance. “We propose that park managers think now about increasing water supplies, tree cover, watching for stress and planning to allow rhinos to move from one place to another place as the world warms,” says Randhir.