Four Novels Recommended to Readers

Come Back for Me by Sharon Hart-Green

Loss, sufferings, memory, and, above all, the ties of family and being Jewish are the factors that weave together this whole story. Come Back for Me travels through time and place only to bring us, eventually, to the connections between generations. The main character is a young war survivor whose effort to find his sister takes him to post-war Israel.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It is 1939, Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a little girl living outside of Munich, who tries to keep body and soul together by stealing when she meets with something she can’t resist—books. With the help of her father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing attacks as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

Red Shoes for Rachel: Three Novellas by Boris Sandler

Rachel, a daughter of Holocaust survivors raised in Brighton Beach, meets with a Moldovan Jewish woman as she is tending to her disabled, elderly mother along the Coney Island boardwalk. As the two begin a relationship, the story exposes their past and the common points between the two children of Holocaust survivors raised in very different societies.

Shidduchcrisis: Short Stories by Penina Shtauber

Like any world, it has its stereotypes. We’ve got the mean guy and the shallow girl, the too-religious, the not-religious-enough and everyone in between, those who are in it because they want to and those who are in it because their moms made them.

And mostly we’ve got the pressure, pressure on all ends.

Basically, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of tears, a lot of arguments and some love.

Charles Darwin was born into a family of thinkers. His father was a Fellow of the Royal Society（the elite circle of top British scientists），his mother was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood，the man who founded the famous Wedgwood Potteries，and his grandfather，Erasmus Darwin，was a famous physician，thinker and philosopher who，like his grandson，spent much time studying the evolution of life.

After a childhood in the town of Shrewsbury，where he was educated at the Grammar School，Darwin went up to Edinburgh University to study medicine and natural history. When he was eighteen，he left Edinburgh and went to Cambridge University，planning to enter the church，but he was more interested in science than in religion and later he abandoned theology.

Shortly after graduating from Cambridge，he got a job as a naturalist on the ship H. M. S. Beagle，which was about to start on a scientific and cartographic（地图的）survey of the South American coast. The journey started in December 1831 and was to last almost five years，during which time he collected considerable documentation.

Darwin was struck by the animals of the south seas，particularly by the tortoises he found on the Galapagos Islands，a group of Pacific Islands. The Galapagos tortoises，Darwin observed，differed from island to island，and this，he inferred，showed different forms of evolution，since the animals obviously came from the same origins. Darwin was also struck by the iguanas（蜥蜴）he found，and observed that those which lived in water had heads suitable for finding food among stones，while those that lived on land had a sharper head，more fit for a herbivorous（食草的）animal.

Darwin developed his theory of evolution，but it was not until 1859 that he actually published it. It was instantly seen as a great milestone in scientific thought，and attracted violent argument all over Europe. Many found fault in it，and Darwin spent the rest of his life improving his theory in the light of other people's observations.

Dolphins are universally regarded as some of the cleverest creatures in the world. In captivity (圈养), they can be trained to complete complex tasks such as jumping through hoops and somersaulting through the air.

But their intelligence doesn’t stop there. In a recent study of cetaceans (鲸目动物)—a group of animals that includes dolphins and whales—researchers created a list of intelligent behaviors observed in 90 different cetacean species, reported the Guardian. For example, the smartest cetaceans hunt in groups, share knowledge through mimicry (模仿) and even care for each other’s children. Some even consider their behavior to be human-like.

“There is the saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ seems to be true for both whales and humans,” Michael Muthukrishna of the London School of Economics, co-author of the study, told the Guardian.

However, cetaceans don’t just use their brain power for survival. The study suggests that dolphins might even gossip. That’s because some species greet each other with specific whistles, just as humans greet each other by name, the Guardian reported. Sometimes, a group of dolphins whistles the “name” of a dolphin that isn’t there. Could they be speaking about their “friend” behind its back?

For the researchers, dolphin small talk is a big deal. As they found that the most social cetaceans also have the largest brains, they argue that cetacean intelligence developed to meet the demands of complex social groups.

Known as the “cultural brain hypothesis (假设),” it had only been used to explain the intelligence of humans and other primates (灵长目动物). The new study aimed to find a common pathway for the evolution of intelligence among biologically different species.

“It is interesting to think that whale and human brains are different in their structure but have brought us to the same patterns in behavior,” Luke Rendell, a biologist at the University of St Andrews, told the Guardian.

Indeed, we still have a lot to learn about our intelligent ocean-dwelling neighbors. “We don’t have to look at other planets to look for aliens,” Muthukrishna told the Guardian, “because we know that underwater there are these amazing species with so many parallels to us in their complex behaviors.”

A small device no bigger than a toaster has generated oxygen on the surface of Mars, bringing the chances of surviving on the red planet a step closer.

The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, better known as Moxie, has been generating oxygen from the atmosphere on Mars, as part of NASA’s Perseverance rover (漫游者) mission.

Moxie produced breathable oxygen in seven hour-long tests conducted in various weather and atmosphere conditions since landing. During each test, the device produced six grams of oxygen, about the same as a small tree and enough to sustain an astronaut for 15 minutes. It’s also found that even in extreme temperatures and after a Martian dust storm, Moxie continued to produce high-purity oxygen.

“This is the first demonstration of actually using resources on the surface of another planet and transforming them chemically into something that would be useful for a human mission,” said Jeff Hoffinan, a retired astronaut and professor at MIT.

NASA and the MIT team are planning to build a bigger version of Moxie, as they hope advanced models will produce enough oxygen to support a crewed mission to Mars. “We have to bring a lot of stuff from Earth to support a human mission, but oxygen is a big problem. If you can make it there, go for it and you’re way ahead of the game,” Hoffinan said.

The device uses pumps that absorb in carbon dioxide which is heated to 800℃and processed to separate the carbon and oxygen. Carbon monoxide (一氧化碳) is emitted as waste while the pure oxygen is left behind.

Expanding the device to support a human mission to Mars presents challenges. It is needed to run continuously for 400 days, a leap from the one-hour tests and its inner temperature should be controlled stably. Moxie has proved to endure the extreme conditions on Mars, however, and the team plans to assess the machine’s limits in the coming months when atmosphere is thick and carbon dioxide levels are high. They say they just want to set everything as high as they dare and make as much oxygen as they can.