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Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.
Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.
It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.
“Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. “What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and white anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital.”
Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.
Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans，gaining any insight（感悟） on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “So I want to continue those dialogue. Those are the things I want to foster.”
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Terrafugia Inc .said Monday that its new flying car has completed its first flight,bringing the company closer to its goal of selling the flying car within the next year.The vehicle-named the Transition – has two seats，four wheels and wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car.The Transition,which flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes last month, can reach around 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the flies using a 23-gallon tank of gas and burns 5 gallons per hour in the air. On the ground, it gets 35 miles per gallon.
Around 100 people have already put down a $10,000 deposit to get a Transition when they go on sale, and those numbers will likely rise after Terrafugia introduces the Transition to the public later this week at the New York Auto Show. But don't expect it to show up in too many driveways. It's expected to cost $279,000.And it won't help if you're stuck in traffic. The car needs a runway.
Inventors have been trying to make flying cars since the 1930s, according to Robert Mann, an airline industry expert. But Mann thinks Terrafugia has come closer than anyone to making the flying car a reality. The govemment has already permitted the company to use special materials to make it easier for the vehicle to fly. The Transition is now going through crash tests to make sure it meets federal safety standards.
Mann said Terrafugia was helped by the Federal Aviation Administration's decision five years ago to create a separate set of standards for light sport aircraft, which are lower than those for pilots of larger planes. Terrafugia says an owner would need to pass a test and complete 20 hours of flying time to be able to fly the Transition,a requirement pilots would find relatively easy to meet.
If Confucius(孔子) were still alive today and could celebrate his September 28 birthday with a big cake, there would be a lot of candles. He'd need a fan or a strong wind to help him put them out.
While many people in China will remember Confucius on his special day, few people in the United States will give him a passing thought. It's nothing personal. Most Americans don't even remember the birthdays of their own national heroes.
But this doesn't mean that Americans don't care about Confucius. In many ways he has become a bridge that foreigners must cross if they want to reach a deeper understanding of China.
In the past two decades, the Chinese studies programs have gained huge popularity in Western universities. More recently, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes in more than 80 countries. These schools teach both Chinese language and culture. The main courses of Chinese culture usually include Chinese art, history and philosophy(哲学). Some social scientists suggest that Westerners should take advantage of the ancient Chinese wisdom to make up for the drawbacks(缺点) of Western philosophy. Students in the United States, at the same time, are racing to learn Chinese. So they will be ready for life in a world where China is an equal power with the United States. Businessmen who hope to make money in China are reading books about Confucius to understand their Chinese customers.
So the old thinker's ideas are still alive and well.
Today China attracts the West more than ever, and it will need more teachers to introduce Confucius and Chinese culture to the West.
As for the old thinker, he will not soon be forgotten by people in the West, even if his birthday is.
Scientists have found living organisms trapped in crystals(晶体) that could be 50,000 years old.
The organisms were found in a hot, but beautiful cave system in Naica, Mexico. These ancient life forms can be seen only with a microscope. Penelope Boston, who leads the Astrobiology Institute at NASA, the space agency of the United States, says the ancient microbes(微生物) were able to live by eating minerals such as iron.
She spoke about the discovery recently at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. If the findings are confirmed, they will show how microbes can survive in extreme conditions. Forty different kinds of microbes and some viruses were found in the underground area. The genetic structures of these organisms are 10 percent different from those of their nearest relatives.
The caves in Naica are 800 kilometers deep. They were once used for mining lead. Before the miners began working in the caves, the area was separated from the surface and the outside world. Some of the caves are as big as the large religious centers built during Europe's Middle Ages. There are crystals covering the walls. The caves are so hot that scientists must wear special clothing to keep cool. The clothing keeps the crystals safe from human germs（病菌）or other damage. Boston said the researchers could only work for about 20 minutes at a time before they had to go to a room that was 38 degrees Celsius to cool down.
NASA officials would not let Boston share her findings with scientific experts before last week's announcement. So scientists could not say much about the findings. But Norine Noonan, a biologist with the University of South Florida, said she believed them. "Why are we surprised?" Noonan asked. "As a biologist, I would say life on Earth is extremely tough and extremely colorful."
Boston is also studying microbes commonly found inside caves in other countries, such as Ukraine and the United States. These microbes appear to be impossible to kill. Boston said they show how difficult life on Earth can be.
China's boss of table tennis Liu Guoliang was shocked at his first sight of Japanese teenager Miu Hirano who beat three top-ranked Chinese to claim a sensational victory of the women's singles at the Asian Table Tennis Championships.
"She's much better than I had imagined," said Liu, on the conclusion of the continental tournament（锦标赛）. "When she came out the winner of last year's World Cup, I thought maybe she took advantage of the absence of the Chinese women paddlers. However, I changed my mind when I saw her play here. She's strong enough technically and mentally, and capable of beating any one in the world," added Liu.
Hirano, who just turned 17 years old on Friday, stunned China's world No. 1 Ding Ning 3-2 in the quarterfinals before second-ranked Zhu Yuling 3-0 and finally seeing off world No. 5 Chen Meng, also 3-0, to smash the Chinese dominance（统治）of the tournament.
"She's so young and has so many possibilities in the future," said Liu. "That makes her success more intimidating to our women's team."
In Liu's opinion, the difficulties that China faced in these Asian championships reflected the changes of table tennis world map in recent years.
"It's not just recently that Japan wants to beat China," he said. "By the end of the day, their efforts finally worked out."
The head coach, however, refused to stand all by the Japan's side. "We do need to learn from the other associations, including the Japanese, who do an excellent job on youth training," Liu said. "But one failure should not lead to the whole denial to our own team. I think it's a good thing to have competitors who can pose real challenges, which makes our sport more competitive and more healthy," he added.
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Amazon is breaking into physical retail in a new way. The online retail giant revealed a new kind of physical store concept in a video published on Monday.
The store, called Amazon Go, doesn't work like a typical Walmart or supermarket. Instead, it's designed so that shoppers will use an app, also called Amazon Go, to automatically add the products that they plan to buy to a digital shopping cart by scanning a QR code(二维码). They can then walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line because Amazon will charge their Amazon account and send them a receipt.
The first Amazon Go store is located in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. For years, there have been rumors the e-commerce company would expand its dominance from digital to physical shopping. Amazon began experimenting with physical bookstores a year ago, but Amazon Go may mark its boldest bet on physical ones yet. By removing much of the staff needed to operate a store, Amazon keeps costs lower than traditional competitors. It's also in a strong position to bring together data on its customers' shopping habits online and offline to make better suggestions in all situations.
However, Amazon's move deeper into physical retail shops comes in a sensitive political climate. The company could be perceived as being a threat to some of the 3.4 million Americans who work as cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos for “getting away with murder tax-wise” and having “a huge antitrust(反垄断) problem.” Will the President& shy; elect add “job killer” to the list of criticisms?
Amazon's effort to launch a new kind of retail store predates(在……之前) the rise of Donald Trump. “Four years ago we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout? Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go?” The company says on an informational page about Amazon Go. For now, Amazon is starting slow. The Amazon Go is only open to Amazon employees in our Beta program, and is scheduled to open to the public in early 2017.
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Earlier this year, the social media website Facebook announced that it would work with several news organizations — including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the BBC — to place news stories directly into users' personal Facebook webpage. Stories published using Facebook Instant will load more quickly and keep the style of the original publisher, who will keep all the advertising income the stories earn — at least for now. The deal shows how important social media has become to news organizations, and is a clear sign of how the world of news is changing — and has been for a while.
When Google News began in 2002, many saw it as the death of the newspaper. It had no human editor. Instead Google used, and still uses, a secret computer program that selects and displays news stories according to the reader's personal interests. More recently, Associated Press and Yahoo! have been publishing computer-written articles. Both use special software to automatically produce stories about company financial results and sports reports — areas where the quality of writing is felt to be of secondary importance to the accuracy of the data.
Should we be worried about such developments? I think we should. One concern is that facebook, Google and other social media websites see journalism as a sideline, a way of putting people in front of advertisements. It isn't their primary function — so if it stops making them lots of money, they're likely to stop doing it.
There's also a concern that computer-written articles are not actually journalism at all, because what a human news team produces is actually quite complex. A well-written news story puts information in context, offers a voice to each side of an argument and brings the public new knowledge.
Though economics and speed of delivery mean readers will probably choose a computer-written story over a carefully shaped article — at least for daily news — I don't think the computers will be writing any in-depth articles for a while yet.
Under new rules posted by the Civil Aviation (航空) administration of China on Friday, pilots will have to pass a “level four” test of Mandarin Chinese, China's official language. Those who speak with an accent that “often impedes” comprehension will not pass. These rules take effect in January 2016.
China's 56 ethnic groups speak more than 80 languages and dialects. Even native Mandarin speakers can have trouble communicating with each other depending on the strength of their accents, which can be mutually unintelligible (难理解的).
One flight trainer illustrated the scope for linguistic confusion, especially when common English aviation terms are used. Asked if there is a problem on board, a Chinese pilot might answer in the negative with the words mei you, or “there isn't.” But someone speaking with a heavy Sichuan accent would pronounce mei you as “May day” — unconsciously parroting the universally recognized distress call (遇难信号).
Like their international counterparts (对应物), Chinese aviators have developed codes to avoid confusion resulting from homonyms (同音异义字) or near-homonyms. They use the terms yao for one and guai for seven, which are otherwise pronounced yi and qi respectively and easily confused.
The new rule could affect all pilots, who must renew their license every six years, and adds to a growing list of burdens for the profession.
China's largest search engine Baidu has said it will make its latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology accessible to developers and businesses as part of the company's latest move into AI, big data and cloud computing.
AI solution "Tianzhi" was launched at a cloud-computing summit held in Beijing Wednesday. It includes services in three fields: sensing technology, such as image and voice processing, machine learning, and deep learning, an advanced form of machine learning, said Zhang Yaqin, CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company, at the summit.
Developers can access facial or voice recognition, algorithms(演算法) for data analysis and projections, and deep learning applications, Zhang said, adding that the technology could help users innovate in their sectors.
"With more devices connected to the cloud, enterprises will use cloud computing and AI more frequently," said Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, "Open AI technology can play a bigger role."
The company also revealed a plan to invest 10 billion yuan (1.45 billion U.S. dollars) in cloud computing in the next five years and establish an innovation center, which will serve 10 million enterprises.
Discovery's astronauts arrived to an exciting celebration Wednesday as nearly 700 people crowded an airplane storage place, waving flags and holding signs that read: “Welcome Home, Astronauts!”
The seven-person team returned to Earth on Tuesday after being the first to take a space shuttle into orbit since the Columbia disaster（灾难）of 2003.
“In the last two and a half years, we have been through the very worst that manned space flight can bring us, and over the past two weeks we have seen the very best,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin told the astronauts and their families and fans Wednesday.
The crowd waved American flags for the U.S. astronauts and Japanese flags for crew member Soichi Noguchi, one of the spacewalkers.
“As a rookie（新手）astronaut, I could not ask for more,” Noguchi said, “We had three spacewalks, two extra days in space and one great team.”
While the homecoming has been filled with excitement for what mission controllers declared a “truly spectacular test flight”, uncertainty remains for the future of the shuttle program.
Shortly after Discovery rose up into space July 26, a nearly 1-pound large piece of foam insulation（泡沫绝缘材料）fell from the fuel tank-the very thing that was supposed to have been fixed after Columbia exploded. The foam missed Discovery, but NASA grounded all shuttle flights until engineers fix the problem.
NASA ground crews examined Discovery after its return from orbit and found it in good condition, an official said Wednesday at NASA‟s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
Technicians counted 101 dings and divots, including 20 that were larger than 1 inch. Schaaf Dean, landing support group chief, said the numbers were similar to the results of other shuttle, post-landing examinations.
A beginning examination of the shuttle's thermal（热的）blanket showed it remained undamaged during re-en-try into the Earth's air.(Agencies)
China Merchants Bank Co Ltd has teamed up with ride-hailing major Didi Kuaidi to provide automobile financing and expand its reach in China's booming mobile payment industry.
The two have inked a comprehensive partnership, which includes a strategic investment by the former in the latter. Under the partnership, CMB will become the first bricks-and-mortar bank that can offer in-app credit card payments to Didi users. At present, users of Didi can only choose third-party payment solutions like WeChat Payment and Alipay to pay cab fares.
Zhao Ju, vice-president of CMB, said the cooperation with Didi was an important step in its mobile Internet finance strategy. “CMB's mobile payment is going to enter a new chapter by leveraging Didi Kuaidi's vast user base,” he said.
According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center earlier this month, Didi holds 87.2 percent of China's private car hailing market. The company said it has received 1.43 billion car-hailing requests on its platforms in 2015, which means 1.43 billion payments were made via smartphones.
CMB is expected to use Didi to reach the core users of China's mobile payment market. Jean Liu, president of Didi, said many of the expats prefer payment by credit card rather than Alipay or WeChat. “The new partnership will help improve service quality and customer loyalty,” she said. The investment makes CMB part of Didi's existing investors, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Investment Corporation. Both of the companies declined to reveal the actual amount of the investment.
Liu, who showed up on Tuesday for the first time in public after her treatment for breast cancer, said the cooperation with CMB is for the long run and “the capital investment is only part of it”.
Under the partnership, CMB and Didi will cooperate on a wide range of initiatives on financial services and online-to-offline cooperation. Apart from the in-app credit card payments, the two companies are going to launch joint credit cards in late February and automobile financing services for Didi's car owners. CMB's branches across China are expected to help Didi recruit more drivers.
“There is a lot of room for imagination in our partnership,” Li said, adding in future people may use their CMB credit card reward points to pay for the ride on Didi.
Li Chao, an analyst with iResearch Consulting Group, said the partnership may not significantly boost CMB's mobile payment business. “Didi has educated the market for three years and its customers have formed the habit of paying by WeChat or Alipay. So I think CMB can only turn a very smart proportion of Didi users into its payment customer,” he said. “But the move shows that China's traditional banking industry is finally thinking out of the box and looking for outside partners in Internet finance competition,” he said.
Statistics from Big-Data Research showed that more than 90 percent of China's 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.41 trillion) worth of third party mobile payment market is donated by Alibaba and Tencent.
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University graduates Mallorie Brodie and Lauren Hasegawa, who invented a smartphone app that tracks construction defects for commercial builders, had a tiger by the tail.
Bridgit, which they founded in 2012, launched a cloud-based communications platform that helped manage defects on construction sites, which can delay projects and result in costly repairs if left unchecked. The smartphone application lets site supervisors take photos of cracks or damaged paint, share them with employees and track the problems to solution.
More than 600 subcontractors used the pilot version in many building sites before the commercial version, called Closeout, officially launched.
Feedback(反馈)was so good that they began to wonder: Why limit their invention to a specific industry? Why not turn it into some kind of a handy tool for consumers too? This became their dilemma. In other words, should they stay the course or look for wider applications of their app?
The experts polled all agreed Bridgit should stay focused on its original goal. Ms. Hasegawa and Ms. Brodie took that advice.
As more business customers signed on, it became clear that they made the right decision. Since then, the company's growth has been rapid.
Earlier this year, Bridgit launched Closeout ,which is designed so that even the least tech-savvy can use it easily. Today, the app is being used on sites across Canada and the United States and even by top general contractors.
In October, Bridgit was named to the Canadian Innovation Exchange's top 20 list of Canada's most innovative (创新的) companies working in digital media and information and communication technology .
But Ms. Hasegawa and Ms. Brodie are not resting on their glories. They have also been collecting feedback on Closeout from customers, and they'll launch a new version in the spring. It will target not only general contractors but developers and building owners, too.
