FAMOUS CHINESE PAINTINGS, ARTISTIC TREASURES

With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the most unique nations. Over many centuries, Chinese artists have created paintings that are now in the hearts of more than a billion people.

Nymph of the Luo River — Gu Kaizhi

The legend has it that Cao Zhi, a prince of the state of Cao Wei, fell in love with the governor’s daughter. However, she married his brother, Cao Pi, and the prince became upset. Later, he composed an emotional poem about the love between the goddess and common people. In the 4th century, Gu Kaizhi, a Chinese artist, was moved by the story and illustrated the poem.

Court Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers — Zhou Fang

During the Tang Dynasty, China had a prosperous economy and flourishing culture. In this period, the genre of “beautiful women painting” enjoyed popularity. Coming from a noble background, Zhou Fang, a Chinese artist, created artworks in this genre. In his painting, the ladies stand as though they were fashion models, but one of them is entertaining herself by teasing a cute dog.

Along the River During the Qingming Festival — Zhang Zeduan

Zhang Zeduan depicted the landscape in his work Along the River During the Qingming Festival. However, instead of concentrating on the vastness of nature, he captured the daily life of the people of Bianjing, present-day Kaifeng. His work shows much about life in the Northern Song Dynasty.

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains — Wang Ximeng

Not only did officials and scholars enjoy listening to music but they also found pleasure in depicting nature. One such painter was Wang Ximeng. He was a prodigy. Wang Ximeng painted A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains when he was only seventeen years old. He died at the age of twenty, but he left one of the largest and most beautiful paintings in Chinese history.

Yes, study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says. I do not yet see you set out for school with that determined mind and that smiling face which I should like. You are still stubborn. But listen; reflect a little! What a miserable thing your day would be if you did not go to school! At the end of a week you would beg with tears that you might return there, for you would be eaten up with boredom and shame; disgusted with your sports and with your existence.

Everybody, everybody studies now, my child. Think of the workmen who go to school in the evening after having worked hard all the day; think of the women, of the girls, of the people, who go to school on Sunday, after having worked all the week; of the soldiers who turn to their books and copy-books when they return exhausted from their drill! Think of the dumb and of the boys who are blind, but who study, nevertheless. Think of the innumerable boys who, at nearly this precise hour, are going to school in all countries. Behold them with your imagination, alone, in couples, in groups, in long lines, all with their books under their arms, dressed in a thousand ways, speaking a thousand tongues, from the most remote schools in Russia almost lost in the ice to the furthermost schools of Arabia, shaded by palm-trees, millions and millions, all going to learn the same things, in a hundred varied forms. Imagine this vast, vast crowd of boys of a hundred races, this great movement of which you form a part, and think, if this movement were to cease, humanity would fall back into barbarism (野蛮); this movement is the progress, the hope, the glory of the world.

Courage, then, little soldier of the immense army. Your books are your arms, your class is your squadron (中队), the field of battle is the whole earth, and the victory is human civilisation. Be not a cowardly soldier, my Enrico.

Medicine is notonly a human invention. Many other animals have been known to self-medicate with plants and minerals for infections and other conditions.

Behavioral ecologist Helen Morrogh-Bernard has spent decades studying orangutans (猩猩) and says she has now found evidence they use plants in a medicinal way.

Morrogh and her colleagues watched 10 orangutans occasionally chew a particular plant (which is not part of their normal diet) into a foamy lather (泡沫) and then rub it into their fur. The apes spent up to 45 minutes at a time massaging the mixture onto their upper arms or legs. The researchers believe this behavior is the first known example using a painkiller.

Local people use the same plant, Dracaena cantleyi, to treat aches and pains. Morrogh’s co-authors studied its chemistry. They added extracts (汁) from the plant to human cells that had been grown in a dish and had been artificially stimulated to produce cytokines (细胞因子) that causes inflammation (炎症) and discomfort. The plant extract reduced the production of several types of cytokines, the scientists reported the finding in a study published last November in Scientific Reports.

The results suggest that orangutans use the plant to reduce inflammation and treat pain. Such findings could help identify plants and chemicals that might be useful for human medications.

In creatures such as insects, the ability to self-medicate is almost certainly innate; woolly bear (灯蛾毛虫) infected with flies seek out and eat plant substances poisonous to the flies. But more complex animals may learn such tricks after an initial discovery by one member of their group.

For example, an orangutan may have rubbed the plant on its skin to try to treat parasites (寄生虫) and realized that it also had a pleasant pain-killing effect. That behavior may then have been passed on to other orangutans. Because this type of self-medication is seen only in south-central Borneo, Morrogh says, it was probably learned locally.

Black taxis have been a common sight in London for decades. Now these taxis and their drivers have become the focus of a new exploration into Alzheimer’s (阿兹海默症). For those on the outside, it may seem that behind the wheel of these black taxis are just regular people who help move us to our destinations. But within their brains is a map of London’s streets that has put GPS technology to shame for decades.

“The Knowledge”, the test for London’s taxi drivers, stands among the hardest mental examinations one could ever undergo. It involves recalling information repeatedly from the memory of minute details about 56,0000 streets in London, from Trafalgar Square to the tiniest residential lanes.

Normally, the hippocampus (海马体) feels the effects of Alzheimer’s most. University College London and Alzheimer’s Research UK are studying these taxi drivers’ brains, as it has been found that the hippocampus controlling the brain’s short-term memory and spatial (空间的) memory systems is enlarged in their brains. Moreover, the taxi drivers’ hippocampi continue to enlarge as they go on doing the job for more years, suggesting that perhaps there’s something we can do to reproduce the effect in the general population.

Lead researcher Hugo Spiers was part of the team which 20 years ago found that, like birds and squirrels, the taxi drivers’ hippocampi gradually got bigger. Indeed, research has found for years that any animal that requires a detailed spatial knowledge of their territory experiences growth in the hippocampus.

Spiers’ team hopes to deal with Alzheimer’s by studying the taxi drivers’ brains. To collect more information on the mechanisms (机制) that cause the “brain gain”, Spiers has asked thirty of London’s taxi drivers connected to an MRI machine to drive around on their routes. The machine will allow the researchers to gather real time observations of the workings of the hippocampus. “It’s been a joy to help scientists fight with the disease,” said taxi driver Robert Lordan.