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    Butterfly Garden (Permanent Exhibit)

    Walk among the free-flying residents of this warm conservatory. It is a wonderful opportunity to get close to a variety of living butterflies from New England and across the globe. The "Emergence Box" offers a window into the butterfly behavior. Look inside to see hanging chrysalids (蝶蛹) transform into adult butterflies. Tickets are required and visitors should reserve at least two weeks in advance.

    A Bird's World (Permanent Exhibit)

    This exhibit features the Museum's extraordinary collection of birds, displaying over 300 species found in New England. Here, you can learn to interpret the bird language taking place just outside your window at home.

    Test your observation skills and see if you can get past different birds without them alerting (发信号) other animals to your presence  Learn to identify birds from a distance by recognizing unique flight patterns. Practice your flying technique in the Bird Walk.

    Hall of Human Life (Permanent Exhibit)

    Should you have your baby's DNA sequenced? What keeps you awake? Step inside the Hall of Human Life, the Museum's new biology exhibition, and encounter such far-reaching questions on an amazing journey inside the human body. Through digital media and personal interaction, you become "part of the story', as you contribute your own data in a process of learning and discovery.

    BODY WORLDS & The Cycle of Life (Temporary Exhibit Now Open!)

    BODY WORLDS comes to the Museum of Science with a new chapter, Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS & The Cycle of Life. Don't miss this truly unique opportunity to look within yourself and gain a whole new perspective on what it means to be alive. More than one hundred preserved human specimens reveal the wonders of human development and show how poor health, good health, and lifestyle choices can shape your body.

    A recent BBC documentary, The Town That Never Refired sought to show the effects of increasing the state pension age by putting retirees back to work.

    Although the documentary was fun, they need not have bothered. Away from the cameras, a great numbers of older people are staying in work. Since the start of the economy declines that began in 2008. the number of 16-to 24-year-olds in work has fallen by 597,000. Over the same period the number of workers over the age of 65 has increased by 240, 000.

    The graying of the British workforce dates back to around 2001 since when the proportion of older people working has nearly doubled. But it has accelerated since the start of the economy declines.

    There are several reasons why. Happily, people are living longer and healthier lives, which makes staying in work less discouraging than it was. Less happily, low interest rates, a disappointing stock market and the end of many defined-benefit(固定收益)pension schemes make it a financial necessity. And changing attitudes, inspired by rules against age discrimination, are making it easier than ever.

    Most older workers are simply hanging on at the office: 63% of workers over state pension age have been with their employer for more than ten years. Over two-thirds of them work part-time, mostly doing jobs that they once performed full-time. A big advantage is that they need not pay national insurance contributions.

    According to Stephen McNair, director of the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce the flexibility explains why older workers have not suffered so much in the period of economy decline Instead of cutting back on the workforce, as in previous depression, many firms have stopped taking on new workers and cut working hours. At small businesses m particular, keeping on older workers is cheaper and less risky than training replacements. Over half of workers overstate pension age work for businesses with fewer than 25 employees.

    Christopher Nipper, who owns David Nipper, a women's wear manufacturer based in Derbyshire, prizes his semi-retired workers, who can be employed at short notice and do not need to work full-time to survive. Retired machinists can fill in if there is a rise in orders; former sales advisers can work as part-time consultants. As his competitors have moved production abroad, leaving the pool of trained labor behind, continuing to have older workers and their skills has become even more important.

    There is a tendency for the older workforce to expand• Workers over the age of 50 who are made unemployed find it harder to pick up new jobs, which could mean that more of them want to work than are able to. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, reported on July 12th that an ageing, unproductive population is the biggest long-term threat to Britain's economic health.

    Data from the OECD, a think-tank, shows that employment rates among workers approaching retirement age are split in Europe, with old workers hanging on best in the north. Government credit ratings follow a similar pattern. That Britain's ageing workforce more closely resembles Germany's than Italy's could prove the country^'s being saved from harm.

    Jimmy is an automotive mechanic, but he lost his job a few months ago. He has good heart, but always feared applying for a new job.

    One day, he gathered up all his strength and decided to attend a job interview. His appointment was at 10 am and it was already 8:30. While waiting for a bus to the office where he was supposed to be interviewed, he saw an elderly man wildly kicking the tyre of his car. Obviously there was something wrong with the car. Jimmy immediately went up to lend him a hand. When Jimmy finished working on the car, the old man asked him how much he should pay for the service. Jimmy said there was no need to pay him; he just helped someone in need, and he had to rush for an interview. Then the old man said, "Well, I could take you to the office for your interview. It's the least I could do. Please. I insist." Jimmy agreed.

    Upon arrival, Jimmy found a long line of applications waiting to be interviewed. Jimmy still had some grease (油腻物) on him after the car repair, but he did not have much time to wash it off or have a change of shirt. One by one, the applicants left the interviewer's office with disappointed look on their faces. Finally his name was called. The interviewer was sitting on a large chair facing the office window. Rocking the chair back and forth, he asked, "Do you really need to be interviewed?" Jimmy's heart sank. "With the way I look now, how could I possibly pass this interview?" he thought to himself.

    Then the interviewer turned the chair and to Jimmy's surprise, it was the old man he helped earlier in the morning. It turned out he was the General Manager of the company.

    "Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but I was pretty sure I made the right decision to have you as part of our workforce before you even stepped into the office. I just know you'd be a trustworthy worker. Congratulations!" Jimmy sat down and they shared a cup of well-deserved coffee as he landed himself a new job.

"Everything happens for the best." My mother said whenever things weren't going my way. "Don't worry. One day your luck will change."

Mother was right, as I discovered after I had finished my college education. I had decided to try for a job in a radio station. One day, I wanted to host (主持) a sports program. I went to Chicago and knocked at the door of every station. But I got turned down every time.

In one station, a kind lady said my problem was that I hadn't got enough experience. "Get some work in a small station and work your way up," she said.

I went back home. I couldn't get a job there, either. Then my dad told me a businessman had opened a store and needed someone to help him. But again, I didn't get the job.

I felt really down. "Your luck will change," Mom said to me. Dad lent me the car to help me to look for my job. I tried another radio station in Iowa. But the owner, a nice man, told me he had already had someone.

As I left his office, I asked, "How can someone be a sports announcer if he can't get a job in a radio station?"

I was waiting for the lift when I heard the man called, "What did you mean? Do you know anything about football?" He put me in front of a microphone and asked me to try to imagine that I was giving my opinion on a football game. I succeeded.

On my way home, Mom's words came back to me, "One day your luck will change, Son. And when it happens, you'll feel good because of all the hard work you have done." At that moment I knew just what she meant.

People are always looking for lost cities and occasionally one is found: Borobudur in Indonesia, for example. But perhaps some of the places people look for never existed—or did they? Here are just a few famous mythical(神话里的) cities.

El Dorado

El Dorado is a story that began in 1537, when Spanish explorers found the Muisca people in the mountains of what is now Colombia. They heard the story of a man who covered himself with gold and dived into a lake. Then people began to talk of El Dorado— "the golden man". Soon people started to think of El Dorado as a place, too—a city of gold and amazing riches. Nowadays, the name "El Dorado" is still used to mean "a place where you can get rich quickly".

Atlantis

There was once an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the mythical island of Atlantis. The people of the island were very rich, thanks to the natural resource on the island. For hundreds of years, they lived simple lives. But slowly they began to change. They started to want power. So the gods decided to destroy Atlantis. Suddenly, the island and its people were swallowed (淹没)by the sea and were never seen again.

Shambhala

In Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Shambhala is a mystical country that is hidden somewhere behind the Himalayas. Shambhala is a word from an old language that means "a place of peace" or "a place of happiness". It is said that there is no war in Shambhala, and in the future, when the world is full of war, a huge army will come out of Shambhala, destroy the world's bad rulers, and start a new Golden Age. Some people say this will happen in 2424.

"Your mother's breast cancer has returned, and it's metastasized (扩散)," said my mother's doctor. I held the phone, tears in my eyes.

Even as a health-care professional, I had never really been able to do anything for my mother. She'd always been the caretaker, especially when I was in my teens battling my own incurable illness. She'd arranged and accompanied me on trips to the Cleveland Clinic. During those long train rides, she'd always reach into her bag and produce a gift-a Seventeen magazine-to lift my spirits.

Shortly after her diagnosis, I stopped by Mother's house. She'd wanted to live at home to look after herself while she could, so my sister and I took turns to check in on her.

As her health worsened, Mother eventually decided to stay with me in my house on the weekends and let me care for her. After I helped her into the house, she would stretch out on the sola, my dog Spanky sleeping at her feet. I'd make us cups of Red Zinger tea. She'd look at me and say, "My purse, honey. Inside would be one of her surprises, like a bag of treats for Spanky or a new pen for me.

At the end of her life, Mother was no longer conscious. Her wish was to be in my house. The night before, I moved all the furniture to prepare for the delivery of her medical equipment. The next morning, two guys lifted the sofa to move it, making room for the hospital bed. "What do we do with these, ma'am?" one asked. I looked over. He held up two beautifully-wrapped (包裹) gifts. How had they gotten there? I'd moved that sofa the night before and seen nothing! My hands shook as I unwrapped a toy for Spanky and a box of Red Zinger tea.

At that moment, it was as if my mother spoke directly to my heart, "Our little traditions will get you through this, Roberta, even if I can't take part anymore."

We went to the T. B. Blackstone Library, not far from Lake Michigan. You could easily miss the building if you didn't know what you were looking for. But once you were inside, you could never mistake it for anything else. We passed through two sets of heavy brass doors to the lobby of the library. And if we turned right then, we could see an alcove with tables; this led, in turn, to a big reading room with a gigantic and ancient globe that sat in front of the largest windows. I liked to look at Africa, with the coded colours of the different countries like the Belgian Congo and Rhodesia, and try to remember which countries were fighting to be free just as we were struggling for civil rights. I had heard Daddy talking about the struggle, arguing with the television as someone discussed it on a news show.

One Saturday, as I wandered through the young adult section, I saw a title: Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I could tell from looking at the shelf that she'd written a lot of books, but I didn't know anything about her. I had learned from experience that titles weren't everything. A book that sounded great on the shelf could be dull once you got it home, and every bad book I brought home meant one less book to read until we went back in two weeks. So I sat in a chair near the shelves to skim the first paragraphs:

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

"We've got Father and Mother and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner.

It was a good thing I'd already decided on some other books to take home, because I didn't look through the rest of the section that day. I read and read and read Little Women until it was time to walk home, and, except for a few essential interruptions like sleeping and eating, I would not put it down until the end. Even the freedom to watch weekend television held no appeal for me in the wake of Alcott's story. It was about girls, for one thing, girls who could almost be like me, especially Jo. It seemed to me a shame that she wasn't Black; then our similarity would be complete. She loved to read, she loved to make up plays, she hated acting ladylike, and she had a dreadful temper. I had found a kindred spirit.

A young Dutch inventor is widening his effort to clean up floating(浮动的) plastic from the Pacific Ocean. He has developed a floating device(设备) to trap plastic waste moving into rivers before it reaches the oceans.

Boyan Slat was just 18 years old when he invented a system for catching waste in the ocean. He also founded an environmental group called "The Ocean Cleanup". Its purpose is to develop the system. Last year, Slat showed the next step: a floating device called Interceptor. It removes plastic out of rivers. The device is powered by energy from the sun. "The 1,000 rivers are responsible for about 80% of plastic going into the world's oceans," said Slat. Three of the machines have already been used. Each machine costs about $ 775,660, but the cost might drop as production increases.

Since they were used, the machines have been doing very well, collecting the plastic bottles and all the rubbish in the rivers. According to Slat, it is necessary to close "the tap", which means preventing more plastic from reaching the ocean in the first place. He wanted to clean them all in the next five years. "This is not going to be easy, but if we do get this done, we could truly make our oceans again," said Slat.

The device is designed to be safe in rivers. Its nose is shaped to change directions to keep it away from larger floating things. It works by guiding plastic waste into an opening in the front of the device. The waste is then carried inside the machine where it is dropped into containers. The device sends a text message to local operators that can come and empty it when it is full.

The Tibet autonomous region has placed nearly half its land area under the strictest ecological supervision (监督).It was announced at an annual meeting of the regional People's Congress, which kicked off on Wednesday.

The ecological protection area, which covers more than 539,000 square kilometers, makes up 45 percent of the region's area, and 22 ecological reserves have been built and are operational.

According to the government work report, the rate of days with good air quality in Tibet's cities has reached 99.4 percent, and all the region's drinking water sources have met applicable standards.

The report also said that the number of Tibetan antelope (羚)in the region has risen to more than 200,000, wildlife species to 1,072 and black-necked cranes to more than 8,000. Five rare new species have been discovered in recent years. The region has spent 12.2 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) on ecological protection projects in recent years. Five cities and three counties have been named as national-level ecologically civilized model cities and counties, and more rural residents have benefited financially by undertaking part-time ecological protection work.

More advanced monitoring facilities have been in place in the reserve, with more ecological protection inspectors employed to undertake protection work. The professional ecological inspectors are provided with basic tools such as motorcycles, telescopes and paging receivers, and they provide feedback regularly. Professional inspectors also receive one week of training every year from professors at Tibet University.

Kunsang Darje, a railway maintenance worker in Nagchu, said that apart from maintaining the railway and highway, he also collects trash along the section with his colleagues. "The place I work is in a no-man's land, and I think it's very important to protect the animals there without affecting them with human activities, and we are also bound to take responsibility there," he said.

In the age of online shopping and e-readers, devoted staff and customers keep the doors of Auntie's Bookstore open for 40 years. "When you're in Portland, you go to Powell's Books. When you're in Seattle, you go to Elliott Bay. When you're in Spokane, you go to Auntie's," said John Waite, the owner of the bookstore. "I can't imagine Spokane without Auntie's," he said. "A lot of people can't imagine Spokane without Auntie's, either," Waite said.

Turning visitors into regular customers is important to the store's success. Auntie's markets itself as a destination. A half-dozen book clubs meet there. Most weeks, the store hosts two to four author readings or literary events. "We want people to come down, hang out and experience the feel of having a book in their hands," Waite said.

Eager readers not only want to read books, but want to discuss them, said Kerry Halls, the store manager. Auntie's offers them that chance, she said.

"You can't go to Amazon and talk to someone about your favorite novel, or discuss what you think of the latest Stephen King's book compared with Pet Sematary," she said.

To compete with the convenience of shopping online, Auntie's tries to predict what books will become a trend. They store these books in advance. But Waite doesn't sugarcoat the realities of selling books in the era of Amazon and other online retailers(零售店). "Even the big guys can't make it," he said, noting physical retailers are striving nationally. As the United States' oldest national bookstore chain, Barnes&Noble has to constantly reorganize to stop the declining sales.

At Auntie's, regular customers are very important to its survival and development. Sales of children's and young adults' books are increasing in recent years. Waite said. "For a long time, older customers have kept bookstores alive," he said. "Now, it's starting to attract younger people." Another reason of Auntie's longevity (长寿) is Northwest culture, which Waite said encourages new ways of thinking and the diversity of ideas. "I think it's a great book town," Waite said. "People are enthusiastic about reading."

The student arrived early, sat front and center, and stood out in my classroom in more ways than one. I'd say that he had about 40 years on his classmates in my class. He eagerly jumped into class discussions, with his self-deprecating humor and wisdom of experience. And he was always respectful of the other students' opinions, as if each of them were a teacher. Jerry Valencia walked in with a smile-and he left with one too.

One day, Valencia said he would have to stop taking classes that semester and reapply for next year. By then, he hoped to have earned enough money from construction jobs and have his student-loan papers in order. But he said he was still coming to campus to attend events or see friends. He asked seriously whether he could still sit in on my communications class.

Sure, I said. But he wouldn't get any credit. No problem, he said.

Soon there he was again, back at his old desk, front and center, jumping into our discussions on how to find and tell stories in Los Angeles – a 63-year-old junior with as much energy and curiosity as any of the youngsters in class.

"Here he is, willingly taking a class for the joy of it and benefit of learning," says Jessica Espinosa, a 25-year old junior. "You may not see that in our generation."

Valencia showed up and took the final exam too. Afterward, I overheard Valencia say he wanted to stay in school until he earned a master's degree, but it had taken him 12 years to finish community college, so he had a long way to go.

Twelve years? He was in and out of school, he said, subject to his work schedule and whether he had money for classes. He had earned his associate of arts degree over the summer, then transferred to Cal State LA to start on his bachelor's.

China's domestically developed. long-acting experimental AIDS drug is undergoing a final review by the China Food and Drug Administration, the last stage in the approval process.

Different from traditional oral drugs that require daily use. Albuvirtide is an injection solution that can be administered weekly.

In developed countries，oral AIDS drugs are very efficient, but it's a heavy burden for patients to take medicine every day for years. As a result, long-acting drugs are the future direction in developing innovative AIDS medicine. For Chinese patients, the number of oral drugs available in the domestic market is very limited, so there is an urgent need for drugs to solve the problem of drug resistance.

Zhao Yan, a treatment specialist at the National Center for AIDS said seven or eight oral drugs for AIDS are currently provided to patients for free. "The injection solution could given an alternative to patients…if it could be included in the country's health insurance system," she said.

"Now very few patients are using drugs from the health insurance system, both because no differentiated drugs are provided and because the procedure is more complex and could harm their privacy," she said. "New drugs will be broadly used only if the system can embrace more varieties of drugs."

Albuvirtide went into the research and development stage in 2002 and entered phase three of clinical trials — a step to assure safety and effectiveness before market approval - in 2014. Phase three is the last round of clinical trials for new drug tests in China. If the drug can pass the reviews of the country's drug watchdog usually at least two rounds, it can then enter the market. The time needed for the review ranges from months to years.

Clinical trials showed that the new drug performs even better than the oral drugs being used. Most of the oral drugs for AIDS being used in China are generic drugs developed in the 1970s and"'80s that are not so efficient. In terms of safety and effectiveness, evidence so far showed that Albuvirtide is better than most second-line drugs — drugs used when first-line standard drugs fail-- in developed countries because of lower toxicity and fewer side effects.

Worldwide, a number of long acting AIDS drug are in development. None has been approved for sale. Only Albuvirtide and a few in the United States have entered phase three of clinical trials

Perhaps the first novel to best express the modern idea of the self was Jane Eyre, written in 1847 by Charlotte Bronte.

Those who remember Jane Eyre solely as required reading in high-school English class likely recall most vividly a childhood banishment(流放) to a death-haunted room, a mysterious presence in the attic, and a cold mansion going up in flames. It's more seemingly the stuff of Lifetime television, not revolutions. But as unbelievable as many of the events of the novel are, even today, Bronte's biggest accomplishment wasn't in plot devices. It was the narrative voice of Jane — who so openly expressed her desire for identity, definition and meaning — that rang powerfully true to its 19th-century audience. In fact, many early readers mistakenly believed Jane Eyre was a true account (in a clever marketing scheme, the novel was subtitled, "An Autobiography"), perhaps a validation of her character's authenticity.

The way that novels paid attention to the particularities of human experience (rather than the universals of romances) made them the ideal vehicle to shape how readers understood the modern individual. The novel seemed perfectly designed to tell Bronte's first-person narrative of a poor orphan girl searching for a secure identity—first among an unloving family, then a charity school, and finally with the wealthy but unattainable employer she loves. Unable to find her sense of self through others, Jane makes the surprising decision to turn inward.

The broader cultural implications of the story—its insistence on the value of conscience and will—were such that one critic worried some years after its publication that the "most alarming revolution of modern times has followed the invasion of Jane Eyre:' Before Rene Descartes's cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am")，when the sources of authority were external and objective, the aspects of the self so central to today's understanding mattered little then.

To be sure, no earlier novelist had provided a voice so seemingly pure, so fully belonging to the character, as Bronte, She developed her art alongside her sisters, the novelists Anne and Emily, but it was Charlotte whose work best captured the sense of the modern individual. Anne Bronte's novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall contributed to the novers ability to offer social criticism, while the Romantic sensibilities of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights explored how the "other, " in the form of the dark, unpredictable Heathcliff，can threaten the integrity(完整) of the self.

One of the greatest testimonies(证明) to Bronte's accomplishment came from a modernist pioneer, Virginia Woolf, who declares, "Jane's voice is the source of the power the book has to absorb the reader completely into her world. " Woolf explains how Bronte depicts:

… an overpowering personality, so that, as we say in real life, they have only to open the door to make themselves felt. There is in them some untamed ferocity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently.

It is exactly this willingness — desire, even — to be "at war with the accepted order of things" that characterizes the modern self. While we now take such a sense for granted, it was，as Bronte's contemporaries rightly understood, radical (激进的) in her day.

"_______," Jane says as she is dragged by her cruel aunt toward banishment in the bedroom where her late uncle died. This sentence, Joyce Carol Oates argues, serves as the theme of Jane's whole story.

Charlotte Bronte created a new mold for the self—a person's inner life can allow her to change from the inside out.

It is true Jane does right and exercises great moral strength.

Anyone who cares about what schools and colleges teach and how their students learn will be interested in the memoir (回忆录) of Ralph W. Tyler, who is one of the most famous men in American education.

Born in Chicago in 1902, brought up and schooled in Nebraska, the 19-year-old college graduate Ralph Tyler became hooked on teaching while teaching as a science teacher in South Dakota and changed his major from medicine to education.

Graduate work at the University of Chicago found him connected with honorable educators Charles Judd and W. W. Charters, whose ideas of teaching and testing had an effect on his later work. In 1927, he became a teacher of Ohio State University where he further developed a new method of testing.

Tyler became well-known nationally in 1938, when he carried his work with the Eight-Year Study from Ohio State University to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Robert Hutchins.

Tyler was the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a position he held for fourteen years. There, he firmly believed that researchers should be free to seek an independent spirit in their work.

Although Tyler officially retired (退休) in 1967, he never actually retired. He served on a long list of educational organizations in the United States and abroad. Even in his 80s he traveled across the country to advise teachers and management people on how to set objectives (目标) that develop the best teaching and learning within their schools.

An unusual trip to Hawaii brought two strangers closer and closer and their story deserves a wide spread.

As her plane sliced through the sky above the ocean, there came a sudden thunderstorm. Five minutes later, Uemoto and her copilot McMahon heard a strange sound. Then, without warning, they lost power to both of the engines. It took them a moment to process the fact that they might crash. The pilots powered through the items on the emergency checklist. Nothing worked. As the plane was falling, they jumped into the ocean.

By ten that night, their bodies began trembling uncontrollably in the cool night air. Something must be done to pull them through. Swimming on her stomach, Uemoto had McMahon wrap his arms around her knees so he could rest his head on the back of her legs. To be with someone else and to feel another person's comforting presence in the darkness somehow made the suffering bearable.

When the sun rose the next morning, they caught sight of the island of Hawaii, the destination they had dared dream!Suddenly, Uemoto saw a shark, which made her breath catch in her throat. "What do we do? What do we do? " Uemoto asked, panicked. "Just keep looking forward!If it comes close, I'll kick it in the eye!" said McMahon evenly. Unexpectedly, the shark circled them for about 30 minutes. Then, as quietly as it had appeared, it swam off. Uemoto and McMahon breathed a sigh of relief.

After struggling in the water for over 20 hours, there came a US Navy helicopter. It flew overhead and next banked towards them. Uemoto and McMahon burst into tears. Alone, either of them would have died. But together, they made it.

I remember my grandma sitting at the kitchen table with cucumber (黄瓜) pieces stuck on her face. My sisters and I had them on our faces, too. We would just sit laughing at each other and seeing who could stick the most on at once. We looked silly, but it was a good way of cooling down when the apartment got too hot.

From our days as newborns, my grandma raised all three of us while my parents worked. As I got older, my family left the apartment and moved into a new house. I called my grandparents every day. I can't remember all that we talked about, but I remember how much we laughed. Mostly, though, our phone calls centered on my school homework.

Grandma was a Greek who came to America without speaking a word of English. I remember when one of my tasks was to learn the Greek national anthem (国歌), she took it upon herself to teach my sisters and me every word. As she sang, her voice was always filled with pride. She didn't Americanize herself to fit in, but brought her roots (根) and planted them firmly.

Now, I visit my grandma once a week in her nursing home. She can no longer walk, eat hard food, or carry out a conversation. She can say a few words at a time on a good day, but the nurses don't understand her, as she's returned to speak Greek.

One afternoon, I was feeding my grandma and a nurse walked up to us and said, "Are you her grandson? Because she knows you — I can tell. She doesn't look at anyone else like that." I looked over and my grandma's eyes were fixed on me, with the same kind of smile I've known all my life. I got close to her and she kissed me. Of course, she hasn't forgotten.

Meeting people from another culture can be difficult. From the beginning, people may send the wrong signal. Or they may pay no attention to signals from another person who is trying to develop a relationship.

Different cultures emphasise (强调) the importance of relationship building to a greater or lesser degree. For example, business in some countries is not possible until there is a relationship of trust. Even with people at work, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in "small talk", usually over a glass of tea, before they do any job. In many European countries—like the UK or France—people find it easier to build up a lasting working relationship at restaurants or cafés rather than at the office.

Talk and silence may also be different in some cultures. I once made a speech in Thailand. I had expected my speech to be a success and start a lively discussion; instead, there was an uncomfortable silence. The people present just stared at me and smiled. After getting to know their ways better, I realised that they thought I was talking too much. In my own culture, we express meaning mainly through words, but people there sometimes feel too many words are unnecessary.

Even within Northern Europe, cultural differences can cause serious problems. Certainly, English and German cultures share similar values; however, Germans prefer to get down to business more quickly. We think that they are rude. In fact, this is just because the culture starts discussions and makes decisions more quickly.

People from different parts of the world have different values, and sometimes these values are quite against each other. However, if we can understand them better, a multicultural environment will offer a wonderful chance for us to learn from each other.

I know what you're thinking: pizza? For breakfast? But the truth is that you can have last night's leftovers in the a.m. if you want to.

I know lots of women who skip breakfast, and they have a ton of different excuses for doing it. Some say they don't have time, others think they're "saving" calories, still others just don't like breakfast food. 

But the bottom line is that eating in the morning is very important when you're trying to lose weight. "Eating just about anything from 300 to 400 calories would be better than nothing at all," says Katherine Brooking, R. D., who developed the super­easy eating plan for this year's "SELF CHALLENGE". And even pizza can be healthy if it's loaded with vegetables, and you stick to one small piece. 

Breakfast is one meal I never miss, and the same goes for most weight loss success stories. Research shows that eating breakfast keeps you from overeating later in the day. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that breakfast skippers have a bigger chance of gaining weight than those who regularly have a morning meal.

So eat something in the morning, anything. I know plenty of friends who end up having no breakfast altogether, and have just coffee or orange juice. I say, try heating up last night's leftovers—it may sound crazy, but if it works for you, do it! I find if I tell myself, "You can always eat it tomorrow," I put away the leftovers instead of eating more that night. Try it…you may save yourself some pre­bedtime calories. And watch your body gain the fat­burning effects.

Japanese researchers are genetically changing mosquitoes so that they become carriers of a vaccine (疫苗) that could vaccinate millions for free. The researchers have already genetically changed a mosquito species so that its saliva (唾液) contains a protein that acts as a vaccine against leishmaniasis(利什曼病）, a deadly disease that leads to terrible skin problems. The team confirmed that mice bitten by the genetically-engineered mosquito developed an antibody to the disease, meaning they had built up immunity (免疫力).

"You would be vaccinated without even noticing. You wouldn't need any drug and you wouldn't need to show up at a fixed place for mass vaccinations," said Shigeto Yoshida, the associate professor who has led the research. "Repeated bites would only strengthen the immunity."

Similarly the mosquitoes could be used to help treat malaria (疟疾), perhaps a decade from now, said the malaria expert.

Nearly one million people die each year from malaria —- most of them are children —- mainly in Africa and Asia, according to the World Health Organization. Now a problem is that no effective vaccine exists. "There is a treatment that works, but it is beyond the reach of people who need to worry about food for tomorrow," Yoshida said.

However, Yoshida expects that the genetically-engineered mosquito will finally help wipe out the deadly disease in the developing world. "Technically speaking, I believe it's a matter of 10 years or so, but it's not clear whether society would accept it," he said.

Another problem is that the genetically-engineered mosquito may still pick up and spread the infected blood of a person who has already caught malaria. Yoshida's team is hoping it can solve this problem by developing a mosquito species that kills the malaria virus inside its own body.

When Mexican scientist of the evolution of animal behavior, Laura Cuaya, moved to Hungary(匈牙利) for her postdoctoral studies in Budapest, she brought her pet dog, Kun-kun, along for the ride. Cuaya couldn't help noticing how locals warmed to dogs. This prompted her naturally curious scientific mind to start asking questions. “Here people are talking all the time to Kun-kun, but I always wonder if Kun-kun can recognize that people in Budapest speak Hungarian, not Spanish?” So she set out to find an answer through a scientific study.

Cuaya and her colleagues decided to use brain images from MRI scanning to shed light on her hunch. They worked with dogs of various ages that had, until the experiment, only heard their owners speak just one of the two languages, Spanish or Hungarian. Not surprisingly, getting the dogs to happily take part in the experiment took some creative coaxing and animal training! The researchers first needed to teach Kun-kun and her 17 fellow participating dogs including a labradoodle, a golden retriever and Australian shepherds, to lie still in a brain scanner. Their pet parents were always present, and they could leave the scanner at any point.

The research team played children's book classic The Little Prince in both Spanish and Hungarian while scanning the dogs' brains with an MRI machine. They were looking for evidence that their brains reacted differently to a familiar and unfamiliar language. The researchers also played scrambled versions of the story to find out if dogs could distinguish between speech and non-speech.

The images reveal that dogs' brains show different patterns of activity for an unfamiliar language than for a familiar one - the first time anyone has proved, researchers say, that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages. This means that the sounds and rhythms of a familiar language are accessible to non-humans.

Interestingly, the team also found that the brains of older dogs were more skilled at detecting speech “suggesting a role for the amount of language exposure”. They suggest that dogs have refined their ability to distinguish between human languages over the long process of domestication.