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Tu Youyou, 84, honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct 5, 2015. She was the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize in science for her work in helping to create an anti-malaria(疟疾) medicine. In 1967, Communist leader Mao Zedong decided there was an urgent national need to find a cure for malaria. At the time, malaria spread by mosquitoes was killing Chinese soldiers fighting Americans in the jungles of northern Vietnam. A secret research unit was formed to find a cure f or the illness. Tw o years later, Tu Youyou was instructed to become the new head of Mission 523. Researchers in Mission523 pored over ancient books to find historical methods of fighting malaria. When she started her search for an anti-malarial drug, over 240,000 compounds(化合物) around the world had already been tested, without any success.Finally, the team found a brief reference to one substance, sweet wormwood（青蒿）, which had been used to treat malaria in China around 400 AD. The team isolated one active compound in wormwood, artemisinin（青蒿素）, which appeared to battle malaria-friendly parasites（寄生虫）. The team then tested extracts（提取物） of the compound but nothing was effective until Tu Youyou returned to the original ancient text. After another careful reading, she improved the drug recipe one final time, heating the extract without allowing it to reach boiling point.

After the drug showed promising results in mice and monkeys, Tu volunteered to be the first human recipient of the new drug. “As the head of the research group, I had the responsibility.” she explained.

    The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history that has so far killed almost 1000 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria in West Africa has caused fear around the world.

    The outbreak is unprecedented（空前的）both in infection numbers and in geographic scope. Officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier this month the outbreak “is moving faster than our efforts to control it”, reported CNN. So far, the battle against the virus doesn't appear to be slowing down.

    The Ebola virus is terrifying no matter where it strikes: It's a disease with no cure that causes headaches and fever, severe diarrhea(腹泻), vomiting and bleeding and has been known to kill up to 90 percent of its victims.

    It is understandable for people to be panicked, but those living outside Africa shouldn't be particularly concerned about contracting the virus, says a Washington Post article.

    This is because transmission of Ebola requires direct contact with an infected person's blood, vomit or other bodily fluids during the period that he or she is contagious(接触传染的). It is something that is extremely unlikely for anyone but healthcare workers. The virus is not spread by coughing or sneezing.

    Media outlets in the US and the UK are using terrifying headlines, wrongly claiming that people infected with the virus have traveled to their countries.

    James Ball at The Guardian says the Ebola outbreak in Africa is tragic, but it is important to keep a sense of proportion. Other infectious diseases, including common influenza, are far, far deadlier.

    A popular saying goes, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." However, that's not really true. Words have the power to build us up or knock us down. It doesn't matter if the words come from someone else' or ourselves—the positive and negative effects are just as lasting.

    We all talk to ourselves sometimes. We're usually too shy to admit it, though. In fact, more and more experts believe talking to ourselves out loud is a healthy habit.

    This "self-talk" helps us encourage ourselves, remember things, solve problems, and calm ourselves down. Be aware, though, that as much as 77% of self-talk tends to be negative. So in order to stay positive, we should only speak words of encouragement to ourselves. We should also be quick to give ourselves a pat on the back. The next time you finish a project, do well in a test, or finally clean your room, join me in saying "Good job!"!

    Often, words come out of our mouths without thinking about the effect they will have. But we should be aware that our words cause certain responses in others. For example, when returning an item to a store, we might use warm, friendly language during the exchange. And the clerk will probably respond in a similar manner Or harsh (刻薄的)and critical language will most likely cause the clerk to be defensive.

    Words have power because of their lasting effect. Many of us regret something we once said. And we remember unkind words said to us! Before speaking, we should always ask ourselves: Is it loving? Is it needed? If what we want to say doesn't pass this test, then it's better left unsaid.

    Words have power: both positive and negative. Those around us receive encouragement when we speak positively. We can offer hope, build self-esteem(自尊) and encourage others to do their best Negative words destroy all those things. Will we use our words to hurt or to heal? The choice is ours.

    There are two great trends on parents bringing up children today．First，children are now praised to an unbelievable degree．As Dorothy Parker once joked，American children aren't raised；they are motivated．Children are constantly told how special they are．The second is that children are honed(磨砺) to an unimaginable degree．Parents spend much more time than in past generations on their children's development．

    These two great trends—greater praise and greater honing—combine in close ways. Parents shower their kids with affection，but it is intermingled with the desire to help their children achieve success．Parents are happy when their child studies hard，practices hard，wins first place，gets into a famous college．

The wolf of conditional love is hidden in these homes．The parents feel they love their children in all circumstances．But the children often think differently．They feel that childhood is a performance—on the athletic field，in school and beyond．The shadowy presence of conditional love produces a fear，the fear that there is no completely safe love．

    Meanwhile，children who are uncertain of their parents' love develop a great hunger for it. This conditional love is1ike an acid that affects children's criteria to make their own decisions about their own colleges，majors and careers．At key decision-points，they unconsciously imagine how their parents will react．

    These children tell their parents those things that will bring praise and hide the parts of their lives that won't. Studies suggest that children who receive conditional love often do better in the short run．They can be model students．But they suffer in the long run. They come to hate their parents．They are so influenced by fear that they become afraid of risk．

    Parents today are less likely to demand obedience(顺从) with explicit rules and lectures．But they are more likely to use love as a tool to exercise control. But parental love is supposed to ignore achievement. It's meant to be an unconditional support -a gift that can not be bought and cannot be earned．

    There are many different voices on charity donations recently. Chen TianQiao, one of the Chinese billionaires, gave away $115 million to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to help promote brain research. Chen has been interested in the brain research, believing it can advance the industries of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. However, this huge donation has caused heated discussion among Chinese scholars and internet users.

    Many criticized him for giving money to a foreign university rather than domestic institutes for brain research, which are developing fast and are catching up with the US in just a few years. RaoYi, a biologist at Peking University, even said the donation was a typical mistake.

    Others, however, support his choice. They believe Caltech is a more reasonable choice compared with Chinese research Institutes. Caltech has a long history and has taken a leading position in biology, and therefore it produces more efficient results. What's more, the results of the research will benefit not only the Americans, but also the rest of the world.

    A similar controversial（有争议的）case started two years ago when Pan ShiYi, chairman of SOHO China, donated $15 million to Harvard University to help disadvantaged Chinese Students.

    Many believe that China is still far behind in management and use of donated money, and that as a result, Chinese donators are looking abroad. In comparison, Western countries like the US, which have a long history of donating money, have well-developed systems that use money efficiently. They can also provide full access for donors who want to track the use of the money. To get more donations, Chinese universities should be braver and more honest. They need self-reflection rather than envy.

    Over the years, Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, has studied such things as how far Americans typically drive to buy food, how many times we refill our plates at all-you-can-eat buffets and how we organize our kitchens. In the mid-2000s he famously coined the phrase "mindless eating"(and wrote a book by that name) to focus attention on all the bad dietary decisions we make without really thinking about them.

    His new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, aims to change the design of restaurants, school lunchrooms, office cafeterias and homes so that the mindless choices we make will be more healthful ones. Some examples:

    Keep kitchen counters clear. No visible snack food, no bread, no nuts — not even breakfast cereal. In Wansink's research, "women who had even one box of breakfast cereal that was visible — anywhere in their kitchen — weighed 21 pounds more than their neighbor who didn't."

    Trick yourself into drinking less wine. "We tend to focus on the height of what we pour and not the width, so we pour 12 percent less wine into taller wineglasses than we pour into wider wineglasses." And the shape of the glass is not the only variable that affects how much we drink. Wansink writes: "Because red wine is easier to see than white wine, we pour 9 percent less red wine whenever we pour a glass."

    Wansink said his researchers also found that people ate less at restaurants when sat in well-lighted areas near windows and doors, than in darker areas or in the back. They ate less if they were offered a doggie bag, or to-go box, before they got their meals: apparently the idea of getting a "free" second meal outweighed the impulse (冲动) to clean their plates. Workers who frequently ate at their desks weighed 15.4 pounds less, on average, than those who didn't. Fruits and vegetables kept on the top shelf of the refrigerator were eaten at higher rates than those on lower shelves.

    The point, Wansink says, is to consider findings like those and change your environment or habits. Then you won't have to think about it: You'll just eat less.

    A recent university study found that current electric cars could be used for 87% of daily car journeys in the US. That figure could rise to 98% by 2020.

One hurdle to the widespread adoption of electric cars has been “range anxiety” —drivers' concerns about running out of petrol on a journey. While petrol stations are conveniently located across national road systems, the necessary network of electric charging stations is still being developed. In fact, charging points are becoming increasingly common throughout the USA.

    Attitudes towards electric vehicles have changed quite considerably over the last few years. Not that long ago, electric cars met with doubt, and their high price drove customers away. Thanks to improvements in battery capacity(电池容量), recharging times, performance and price, the current generation of electric cars is starting to persuade critics.

    As well as progress on the road, electric vehicles are taking to the sea and sky. Electric boats are among the oldest electric vehicles, having enjoyed several decades of popularity from the late 19th to the early 20th century before petrol-powered outboard motors took over. Now, the global drive for renewable energy sources is bringing electric boats back. Steps towards electric planes are also being made, with Airbus and NASA among the organizations developing and testing battery-powered planes. The experiments could soon make electric flight a reality.

    Electric vehicles do not produce any emissions(排放物). Were the US to act on the study's findings and replace 87 percent of its cars with electric vehicles, it would reduce the national demand for petrol by 61 per cent. However, because of the production processes and the generation of electricity required to charge these vehicles, they cannot claim to be completely emission-free. Even so, as many countries continue to increase their use of renewable energy sources, electric vehicles will become even cleaner.

    Bargain hunters spent a record of 168.2 billion yuan ($25.3 billion; 21.7 billion euros; ￡19.3 billion) during the 2017 Singles Day on Nov. 11, the world's largest daylong discount festival, as e-commerce giant Alibaba Group took online shopping to offline stores and beyond(超越) the nation's borders(边界).

    Spending climbed by 39.3 percent during this year's sale, as consumers from 225 countries and regions scooped up goods from 140,000 brands (品牌)that offered promotions during the annual event.

    Alibaba surpassed last year's 120.7 billion yuan total shortly after 1 pm, as overseas shoppers joined in the afternoon, seeking good deals from China. Expanding at a faster-than-expected pace, the total eclipsed (使黯然失色) the combined sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States last year. Nine out of ten people used mobile wallet apps for payment, says Alibaba, with its Alipay app having handled 1.48 billion transactions (转账) in 24 hours and processed them at a peak rate of 256,000 transactions per second.

    Meanwhile, some offline shops also joined in, turning into smart stores that allowed shoppers to track product availability at other locations and get timely delivery to their doorsteps while paying with their phone. "Using big data analytics powered by Chinese tech firms can help us locate customers in a precise manner, something we wouldn't have achieved using old-school retailing," says Gary Chu, e-commerce general manager.

    The Nov. 11 shopping event represents a China-branded business model that can also be spread to other countries, creating opportunities for businesses worldwide. As Singles Day grows, shoppers have used the opportunity to try out new items rather than simply bagging a bargain, says Tommy Hong, vice-president of Nielsen China.

    "That changing attitudes (toward Singles Day) is also consistent with China's shifting focus from quantity(数量) to quality growth," Gary Chu says.

    Chinese has overtaken French, Spanish and German to become one of the most promising foreign languages for job seekers in the UK. Research shows graduates in Chinese earn an average yearly salary of 31,000 pounds or more.

    Chinese students set themselves up for a different university experience from others who take traditional subjects. While an English student may have as little as six hours of a week, those studying Chinese are in class for most of the day. "I had a lot of friends on other courses who didn't do much in first or second year. You can't play at Chinese. You have to spend hours and hours writing characters," says Hannah, who graduated in Chinese Studies from Sheffield University. "The first year was really difficult. Most of my friends admitted at one point to crying because of the pressure. I was almost told at one point that I might want to reconsider and drop out. "

    So are the evenings in learning characters while your friends are at the student bar really worth its Despite the painful studying experience, most of the graduates think so. They use Chinese in their chosen careers, and would not have been in the jobs they do now without their knowledge of the language.

    Liberty now works for the civil service in Beijing. She earned a place on the Department for International Development graduate scheme with a salary of over 30, 000 pounds within two years. "The degree was absolutely worth it. Looking around at people I know who have studied French or Spanish at university, there's not such a chance to use it in the workplace."

    Hannah has set her apart in the workplace, but she warns ambitious students to think about whether they would really want to live in China in the future." Some people think they are going to learn Chinese and then be a big success, but I think it's important to be quite realistic about that. "

    While visiting the North pole in winter may not be at the top of your bucket list, the ever-changing ICEHOTEL, which opened its doors to visitors on December 14 this year, may change your mind.200 km north of the Arctic Circle in the Swedish village of Jukkasjārvi, the hotel, which is carved entirely from ice, is rebuilt annually.

    The 35 rooms, built to accommodate visitors on all kinds of budgets, vary from expensive suites to basic rooms that are furnished with just an icy bed and a reindeer skin. Among the highlights this year is the “Spruce Woods” suite. Sculpted by Christopher Pascoe and Jennie O'Keefe of Canada, it describes a camping scene complete with a classic microbus, a forest, and even an artificial campfire.

    There is also the artfully-carved “Living Ocean” suite to remind visitors of the importance of saving our oceans. The room is full of carved sea life that includes coral and a shark “swimming” right over the ice bed. “The suite is inspired by global warming and the overfishing that affects our oceans.” says artist Jonathan Paul Green. “I also think the idea of using frozen water from a river in northern Sweden to create an ocean with shells, fish, and corals is exciting.”

    The nearby “Haven” suite is a “magical gate of ice” guarded by two large animals. “We are inspired by the meeting between people and want to create an experience that invites curiosity and creativity, "says artist Jonas Johansson." It feels like a dream to get to work with ice that allows our love for light, shine, and reflection to wander freely from thought to creation.”

    Regardless of whether visitors select the carved suites or the basic ice rooms, the temperature is always set to a bone-chilling －5℃! That is why guests are advised to snuggle(蜷缩)up inside sleeping bags and wear gloves and winter hats all night. Not surprisingly, most end up spending just a single night at this unique hotel before moving on to the conventional and warmer hotels nearby.

    Imagine being a business that regularly takes huge quantities of your own products worth millions of pounds and burns them up. Your stock literally goes up in smoke. It sounds crazy, but the practice is common for some of the world's biggest clothing manufacturers. They argue that it is the most cost-effective way of maintaining their brand's exclusivity (独特性).

    The clothes that are burned are those that do not sell at a high enough price. Rather than watch them go on sale, the companies would set fire to them and regain a small amount of energy.

    Nobody knows exactly how much unsold stock is burnt annually by those fashion houses, but burning clothes has various negative impacts on the environment. For example, burning clothes made from artificial fibers may release plastic microfibers into the atmosphere, which worsens global warming. A U.K. parliamentary committee report on sustainability and the fashion industry advises the government to ban the burning of unsold stock if it can be reused or recycled.

    Actually, there are other approaches. What if those companies had a section tasked with taking back unsold clothes, redesigning them into new products, and shipping out the new products to the market once again?

    There is also now an opportunity to focus on biodegradable (可生物降解的)fabrics. Clothes that break down faster might not have to be burned. They would also appeal to those who care about the environmental impact of their own wardrobes.

    Additionally, we have an over-production problem. According to the World Bank, while clothing sales have risen steadily since 2000, clothing utilization has fallen at roughly the same rate. For every extra T-shirt that is sold, it will be worn roughly half as much as it would have been 20 years ago. That means better forecasting market trends would in theory result in less waste.

    Burning clothes won't happen simply through fashion firms. The scale of fashion production has to change. And it's important to recognize that these consumer-focused brands will only go where the market takes them. If protecting the environment really matters to the public, they have to make clear that they want more sustainable clothing in the first place. Without consumers demanding that, it won't change.

    Huawei Technologies Co. displayed its much-anticipated in-house operating system Harmony OS on Friday, marking what some call the Chinese tech giant's biggest push yet to build its own software ecosystem for the era of the internet of things.

    The move is also expected to weaken the influence of the United States government's restrictions on Huawei using Google's Android operating system in smartphones, analysts said.

    Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, speaking in Dongguan, Guangdong province, said it is difficult to deliver a smooth experience across different devices with the huge amount of codes involved in the Android and Linux operating systems. Linux is an open-source operating system widely used in personal computers and other hardware.

    "Harmony is a next-generation operating system designed to address the challenge," Yu said, adding that it will be able to support a wide range of application situations, including smart TVs, automobiles and wearables.

    The internet of things refers to a network of devices and other objects that can connect with each other and exchange data.

    Yu said the US government's restrictions have accelerated the company's marketing of the system, which now has about 4,000 employees working on it.

    The senior executive said Harmony can be used in its smartphones. But Android is still Huawei's preferred choice for handsets if the company is allowed to use it.

    "But when Android is not available, Harmony can be applied immediately to smartphones. Harmony is ready," Yu added.

    Jia Mo, an analyst at market research company Canalys, said even if Huawei does not use Harmony in its smartphones in the short term, its smartwatches and smart TVs can be equipped with Harmony to widen its use and accumulate more experience in building an ecosystem.

    "Also, more importantly, Huawei chose to build Harmony into an open-source operating system and allow it to be compatible with Android. Thus Harmony will be more accepted by current Android users. This will prevent Huawei from repeating the fate of Microsoft in promoting smartphone systems," Jia said. Microsoft failed to popularize the use of its Windows system in smartphones years ago.

    A house is the most expensive thing most people will buy. Very few people have enough money of their own to buy a home, so they have to borrow money from a bank. Borrowing money from a bank to buy a house is called "take a mortgage (抵押)". The bank usually lends money or gives a mortgage for twenty-five years. Houses are so expensive that many people nowadays have to borrow as much as $ 50 000. In other words, they will have a $ 50 000 mortgage.

    How can you get a mortgage? When you find a house you like  you go to a bank. The bank will research you financial history and decide if they think you are a good risk. They will want to know what kind of job you have, what kind of salary you make, and how long you have had the job. They will also want to know how much money you have. In addition, the banks will require a down payment. Depending on which state you live in, the bank may require as much as 30% of the-price of the house as a down payment. The bank will then lend you the rest of the money to buy the house. Many people are never able to buy a house because they cannot save enough money for the down payment.

    It wasn't until Friends took off that I was a part of this extraordinary organization, St. Jude. And that was 25 years ago. I am very honored to be a part of St. Jude and I've been in love with it ever since.

    Right around this time every fall I get to spend the day with a family of St. Jude. I always say it's the best day of the year and the hardest day of the year. And a few years back I met a little girl named Sawyer. She was seven at the time and I remember she had this pink little dress on and these big angelic eyeballs. The chemo (化疗) had taken all of her hair and she had these tiny little tumors (肿瘤) on her body that she called her "bumps".

    She was just with me the whole time as we ran through the script again and again and again. And at the end of the day after hearing the word repeated over and over again, she looked up at me with those big blue eyeballs and she asked me, "What is cancer?" I just looked at her. Oh! I'm not equipped to answer this question. Here was this little girl who was fighting this deadly disease every single day and she didn't even know what was the word for it. It was just part of her reality and she was just making the absolute best of it.

    That's what's unbelievable about these children. Despite everything that they ate up against and as much pain as they're often in, they are lively. They are joyful. They are fearless. And that's part of the magic of St. Jude. I'm so honored to support their work because they're giving children the best care on the planet so that they can regain their childhood, so that they can find their little inner superhero. They're doing it at no cost so that the families can focus on their little ones, live without worrying about crippling hospital bills and their cutting edge treatments will soon one day find a cure. And that is what every child deserves to know, that they are seen, that they are powerful and are loved, that they deserve a seat at the table, that anything they have to say or any question they have to ask is of value, even if we don't have all the answers for it.

    So thank you very much for recognizing the work of this remarkable organization and for celebrating the power in each and every one of us. Thank you.

Lately I was visiting some websites when I came across a collection of strange beach photos where everyone had a cloth wall surrounding their little patch of sand. I had never seen anything like it before, and I was intrigued. So I started Googling all sorts of phrases that might throw light on the mystery of Polish beach separators.

I found a site on Poland's affairs that actually covered this "phenomenon" quite exactly. According to the site, beach separators have been a part of Polish beach-going culture for a long time, but have recently been getting a lot of attention online, after foreign tourists started posting photos on social networks.

Beach separators vary in size according to the size of the group. You'll see tiny ones only surrounding the space around a single beach towel, and giant ones separating a large part of the beach. They weren't designed to protect their users from prying (窥探) eyes. It's no secret that strong winds are very common on the shores of the Baltic Sea, so they were originally meant to allow beach-goers to enjoy sunbathing without having their belongings blown away, or sand blown in their faces.

However, in recent years, people have begun criticizing them. During the summer, beach separators are placed so close to each other that a person can hardly pass between them, let alone find a place to put their own beach towels. This creates a problem for foreign tourists unfamiliar with them, who just want a place to lie down on the sand. And thus they can easily create all kinds of conflicts due to the lack of space. For example, some people leave the beach for hours but leave their separators in place, to make sure that their space doesn't get occupied by someone else.

Having visited a fair number of seaside resorts (胜地) across Europe, I admire that I have never seen anything like this before.

If you are given only one yuan, could you live in a city for one day? It seems this may be a little difficult. But students from Xi'an did it.

On April 10, more than 60 students from the Middle School Attached to Northwestern Polytechnical University took part in the One Yuan Metropolis Survival. The charitable( 慈善事业的) organization for teenagers called Imperceptible Education held this activity. Students not only have to live, but they also have to deal with a lot of hard tasks. It has happened in eight cities and is going to four others, including Beijing, in June.

To make money, many students looked for part-time jobs and saw how hard life was. Zhang Qiyue, 14, asked more than 10 restaurants for a job and finally got one chance." We were sad when they said no. But gradually(逐渐地), we got used to it," he said. After being a waiter for an hour, he got 25 yuan.

Some made use of their talents by singing and dancing in parks or shopping malls. Many people who walked by took notice and helped them. Zhao Jiacheng, 14, drew pictures and made paper crafts(手工)." This showed it's important to learn a special skill," he said. Living was hard, but finishing the tasks wasn't any easier. They went to different places to finish tasks in a short time.

The most amazing one was when they had to exchange things worth thousands yuan with only a piece of paper in half an hour." We learned how to persuade others. From a balloon to a cake to a bottle of yogurt(酸乳) … after almost 20 tries, we got an expensive necklace," he said. They will give all of the money they made to poor schools in Tibet, which is their special purpose by taking part in the survival activity.

Even a small increase in light activity such as washing dishes, or walking around the house might help prevent an early death among older adults, researchers say.

"It is important for elderly people, who might not be able to do much moderate intensity activity, that just moving around and doing light intensity activity will have strong effects and is beneficial," said Ulf Ekelund, who led the research.

Published in the BMJ, the latest research was based on a review of eight studies involving a total of more than 36,000 people with an average age of almost 63 years. Participants were followed for five to six years; 2,149 deaths were recorded. All of the studies involved monitoring the physical activity of individuals who had activity trackers, and the studies did not rely on self-reporting, which, the experts noted, could be unreliable.

For each study participants were split into four equal-sized groups, based on the total amount of time spent actively, and the risk of death assessed, taking into account factors such as age, sex, body mass index, and socioeconomic status. This was then repeated for an amount of activity at different levels of intensity. The results were analyzed together to give an overview. The team found a greater amount of activity was linked to a lower risk of death. The results held for different intensities of activity. The team said the study supported the message "sit less and move more and more often".

However, the study had limitations. It only looked at the situation for middle age and older adults, most of whom lived in the US or Europe, and some of the effect could be due to those people with a higher risk of death being less likely to be related to physical activity. Physical activity levels also were only measured over one period of time.

Dr Gavin Sandercock, from the University of Essex, said the results suggested moving more brought bigger benefits than simply reducing the time of sitting, another factor measured in the study.

"This study reinforces the important message that getting the least active people to do even just a little bit more physical activity can have important public health benefits," he said.

Metaphor (隐喻) is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish - a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action as well. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

The concepts that govern our thought are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most ordinary details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.

But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.

To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions: ARGUMENT IS WAR.

Your claims are indefensible.

He attacked every weak point in my argument.

His criticisms were right on target.

I demolished his argument.

I've never won an argument with him.

You disagree? Okay, shoot〜!

If you use the strategy, he'll wipe you out.

He shot down all of my arguments.

It is important to see that we don't just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument - attack, defense, counterattack, etc. -reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.

March, April and May are months full of festivals and events all over the world. Here are four wonderful festivals around the world that happen in spring.

SongKran—Thailand

Dates: 13th-15th, April

In Thailand, it's time to celebrate the coming monsoon season, which will bring the rain many people have been looking forward to. They celebrate it with a festival called Songkran, when people head out to the streets with water guns to spray (喷洒) everyone who walks past.

Naghol—Vanuatu

Dates: Every Saturday from April to May

Every year, villagers come together to celebrate the harvest of yams, a kind of root vegetable popular in Vanuatu. The festival is most famous for its "land diving ceremony". During the ceremony men and boys dive to the ground from high wooden towers with only two thin vines (葡萄藤) attached to their ankles.

Cherry Blossom Viewing —Japan

Dates: The cherry blossom season is different from year to year depending on the weather forecast.

The cherry blossom season has huge importance to the people of Japan, who celebrate the days when the flowers finally blossom. In Japan, almost everyone has picnics in the parks to view the flowers.

Sinhalese New Year—Sri Lanka

Dates: 13th or 14th, April

Just like in many other countries in South or South East Asia, this is the time when the Sinhalese celebrate the traditional New Year, an ancient celebration which marks the end of the harvest season and is one of two times of the year when the sun is straight above Sri Lanka. There are a lot of delicious food during the celebration.

Papa, as a son of a dirt-poor farmer, left school early and went to work in a factory, for education was for the rich then. So, the world became his school. With great interest, he read everything he could lay his hands on, listened to the town elders and learned about the world beyond his tiny hometown. "There's so much to learn," he'd say. "Though we're born stupid, only the stupid remain that way. "He was determined that none of his children would be denied(拒绝)an education.

Thus, Papa insisted that we learn at least one new thing each day. And dinner time seemed perfect for sharing what we had learned. We would talk about the news of the day; no matter how insignificant, it was never taken lightly. Papa would listen carefully and was ready with some comment, always to the point.

Then came the moment-the time to share the day's new learning.

Papa, at the head of the table, would push back his chair and pour a glass of red wine, ready to listen.

Felice, "he'd say, "tell me what you learned today. "learned that the population of Nepal is… "

Silence.

Papa was thinking about what was said, as if the salvation(拯救)of the world would depend upon it. "The population of Nepal. Hmm. Well…"he'd say. "Get the map; let's see where Nepal is." And the whole family went on a search for Nepal.

This same experience was repeated until each family member had a turn. Dinner ended only after we had a clear understanding of at least half a dozen such facts.

As children, we thought very. little about these educational wonders. Our family, however, was growing together, sharing experiences and participating in one another's education And by looking at us, listening to us, respecting our input, affirming(肯定)our value; giving us a sense of dignity, Papa -was unquestionably our most influential teacher.

Later during my training as a future teacher studied with some of the most famous educators. They were imparting(传授)what Papa had known all along-the value of continual learning. His technique has served me well all my life. Not a single day has been wasted, though I can never tell when knowing the population, of Nepal might prove useful.