Too Much Happiness

by Alice Munro

Kovalevskaya was a 19th—century mathematician at a time when women were not allowed in most of Europe to attend university. She married a man who promised to take her to Germany to study. She made major contributions to the field and became the first woman in Russia to obtain a doctorate in mathematics.

The Ore Miner’s Wife

by Karl Iagnemma

It is about a miner who thinks he’s discovered the evidence to the problem: construct a square, equal in area to a given circle. His wife, not knowing what has suddenly taken his attention and his time, fears he is being unfaithful. It is a moving exploration of the joys of entering a problem whole and the desire and impossibility of truly knowing those we love.

Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

This collection contains several maths stories. The one I suggest is Division By Zero, about Jane Parkinson, a brilliant German mathematician. To her great despair, she ends up proving that mathematics is inconsistent and is able to prove that any two numbers are equal. A beautiful, thought—provoking(发人深省的) story about belief, understanding and faith.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

by Yoko Ogawa It’s about a woman who comes to work for a once—great mathematician. Due to a brain injury, he has only 80 minutes of short—term memory available to him before he forgets everything. It is filled with beautiful maths, simply and clearly described alongside finely drawn relationships between the characters.

——(Posted by Catherine Chung, a great writer)

Jill stares at the wall, her fingers tapping rhythmically on her desk. Pedro, her lab mate, hesitates before whispering, “Hey Jill, what’s up?” Jill opens her mouth slowly before answering with the friendliest tone she can muster, “Nothing, apart from tons of anger I am trying to control. It’s not about you, so don’t worry.”

“I assume you would like to know what made me angry,” Jill says as they sit in a quiet corner of their busy campus. Pedro nods. “People who act like robots and don’t care about the feelings of others,” she tells him. “That’s what made me angry.”

Jill had been busy writing an application for her first research fund. The deadline was approaching, but she wanted to get some feedback from her advisor before sending it off. She was happy when she got the draft back just a few hours later, but she didn’t like what she saw. “He sent me 15 pages full of pure and unfiltered criticism (未经过的批评).”

Pedro falls silent and thinks about how he can approach the situation. Finally, he turns to Jill. “Do you want to know the name I secretly called him during my first few months working in his lab? — Mr. Ice Age. I found him super-cold. But now that I’ve worked with him for a few years, I also know him as a kind-hearted person. It’s not all pure gold, but his character is upright and strong and he cares about his lab members.”

“It’s true that when he gives feedback, he’s very direct. But I think it’s a cultural thing,” Pedro continues. “He grew up in Germany, where the cultural styles around criticism are different from here. When I was over there, I took classes from other professors who were like that as well. They don’t sugarcoat their criticism.”

Plant-based foods are good sources of healthy nutrients. These include different types of dietary fibre, vitamins, minerals, and a range of “phytonutrients”, which plants produce to help them grow or protect them from diseases and pests.

A review of research published in May 2021 found those who ate the most plant foods were less likely to die from any cause over follow-up time periods that varied across the studies from 5 to 25 years, compared to those who ate the least.

Tomatoes are a fruit. They’re rich in vitamin C and “lycopene”, which is a carotenoid. Carotenoids are pigments produced by plants and give vegetables their bright colours.

A review of six trials asked people to consume tomato products equivalent to 1 — 1.5 large tomatoes or 1 —1.5 cups of tomato juice daily for about six weeks. The researchers found people who did this had reduced blood levels of triglycerides (a type of fat in your blood that increases heart disease risk), as well as lower total and “bad” cholesterol levels, compared to those who didn’t have any tomatoes.

Another review of 11 studies tested the effect of tomatoes and lycopene on blood pressure. Researchers found consuming any tomato products led to a large decrease in systolic blood pressure (the first number that measures the pressure at which the heart pumps blood). However, there was no effect on the diastolic pressure (the second number which is the pressure in the heart when it relaxes). In the group who had high blood pressure to begin with, both systolic and diastolic blood pressure decreased after eating tomato products compared to placebos.

A review of studies included a total of 260, 000 men and found those with the highest intakes of cooked tomatoes, tomato sauces and tomato-based foods had a 15 — 20% lower risk of developing cancer compared to those with the lowest tomato intakes. Keep in mind connection doesn’t necessarily mean cause and effect, though.

A researcher at Ben-Gurion University conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, uncovering a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.

“We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs prove skills absent in children who don’t take part in similar activities,” explains Dr. Idit Sulkin. “We also found that children who naturally perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during break have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors.” As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education conducting music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training — each lasting a period of 10 weeks.

“Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn’t taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did,” she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made a necessary part of education for children aged 6 to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.

During the study, Dr. Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these entertainments are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports. “This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through,” Dr. Sulkin observes. “The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children’s lives at the age of 7, and disappear at the age of 10.”

Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects that hand-clapping songs have on children’s motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, causing countless parents to obtain a “Baby Mozart” CD for their children.