【推荐1】Although it has been shown in recent years that plants can see, hear and smell, they are still usually thought of as silent. But now, for the first time, they have been recorded making ultrasonic (超声的) cries when stressed, which researchers say could open up a new field of precision agriculture where farmers listen for water-starved crops.

Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel found that tomato and tobacco plants made cries at frequencies humans cannot hear when stressed by not having enough water or when their stem is cut.

Microphones placed 10 centimetres from the plants picked up sounds in the ultrasonic range of 20 to 100 kilohertz, which the team says insects and some mammals would be able to hear and respond to from as far as 5 metres away. A moth may decide against laying eggs on a plant that sounds water-stressed, the researchers suggest. Plants could even hear that other plants are short of water and react accordingly, they speculate (推断).

On average, drought-stressed tomato plants made 35 sounds an hour, while tobacco plants made 11. When plant stems were cut, tomato plants made an average of 25 sounds in the following hour, and tobacco plants 15. Unstressed plants produced fewer than one sound per hour, on average.

Enabling farmers to listen for water-stressed plants could “open a new direction in the field of precision agriculture”, the researchers suggest. They add that such an ability will be increasingly important as climate change exposes more areas to drought.

“The suggestion that the sounds that drought-stressed plants make could be used in precision agriculture seems feasible (可行的) if it is not too costly to set up the recording in a field situation,” says Anne Visscher at the royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the UK.

She warns that the results can’t yet be broadened out to other stresses, such as salt or temperature, because these may not cause sounds. Besides, there have been no experiments to show whether moths or any other animal can hear and respond to the sounds the plants make, so that idea is still based on guesses for now, she says.

【推荐1】Bai Ye, director of the China Contemporary Literature Study Association, had a dialogue with a famous Canadian critic at an event in Beijing on cultural translation and studies. As they discussed Canadian literature, Bai gave examples of several authors that he liked. The Canadian critic, on the other hand, could not think of any Chinese writer whose works she had read.

“She told me to wait and she would think of one that she really loved. She didn’t think of the name until we dined together later. It was Li Bai,” he says. That almost hit Bai like a blow, because the poet Li lived in the Tang Dynasty（618-907）. “I study only Chinese literature, but I read a lot of foreign literary works. Obviously, foreign readers know nothing about Chinese literature. And I think it’s time for us to change that situation,” Bai says.

The major purpose of the event hosted at Beijing Language and Culture University was to discuss how to translate and introduce excellent contemporary Chinese literary works to overseas readers.

In China, more than 7,000 writers have registered（登记）with the China Writers Association, creating more than 3,000 novels each year. But only some200-plus Chinese writers have been introduced overseas.

Mai Jia, author of “Decoded” and “In the Dark”, is the only contemporary Chinese writer whose works have been translated into 27 languages, says Xu Baofeng, another participant at the event. Xu says there should have been more Chinese writers read by overseas readers, since they create really great works.

Bai says foreign readers now tend to read stories about modern urban life in China rather than tales set in rural areas in old times, such as Mo Yan’s “Red Sorghum”. “We promote overseas what we think are excellent works, but many foreign readers want to read the historical progress in the last 40 years since the reform and opening-up started... However, we don’t have such novels. So I think we should first create some excellent works on such topics as migrant workers.”

Lu Min, 45, vice-chairman of the writers association in Jiangsu province, dismisses such writings. “Can literature be custom-made（定制的）like other products?” she asked. “Foreign readers want to learn about Chinese society through literature, which should be the function of the media,” she says.

【推荐3】Christie’s legacy (遗产) lives on

She was known to millions as the “Queen of Crime” or the “Duchess (女公爵) of Death”. But surprisingly, she hated violence and blood, and didn’t know much about the weapons most often used in murder. “I don’t think I dare look at a really horrible and damaged body,” Agatha Christie once said.

But he pen of the British writer dared to travel where her eyes wouldn’t. During her 50-year writing career, Christie’s murder stories made her the world’s best-known mystery writer.

Her novels have been turned into films and TV series. And a new film adaptation of   Murder on the Orient Express (《东方快车谋杀案》), Christie’s 1934 detective novel, has been released on the big screen on Nov. 10. This is already the fourth adaptation of this novel.

Born in 1890 in England , Christie was educated at home and began her writing career while working as a nurse during World War Ⅰ. She went on to produce 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, before dying at the age of 85. With her knowledge of murder, Christie could easily have taught would-be detectives a few things.

But instead, she chose to give her skills to her favorite character — Hercule Poirol, a retired Belgian police officer she introduced in her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (《斯泰尔斯庄园奇案》). Poirot then starred in 37 of her works, including Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile (《尼罗河上的惨案》). The character has become so famous that someone has even written his biography (传记), The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot.

Christie also featured interesting aspects of human nature in her works, usually by putting a large group of characters in an isolated environment. An example is And Then There Were None (《无人生还》), in which 10 people with different personalities and from different social backgrounds were trapped on an island and soon started to mysteriously die one after the other. Each character’s story is portrayed with depth, and put together, they make for a fascinating read.

“From the British country house to the mysteries of the Ease, her vivid construction of characters and places attracts readers,” wrote mystery author TP Fielden in Express.

【推荐1】Wanting his audience to feel a roller coaster of emotions, Neil Simon used his own personal experiences of family pain and sorrow to make light of the banalities（陈词滥调）of human existence.

It was this fine ability to dig his audiences' consciousness that brought him big success. With crowds turning up in groups, in 1966, Simon had four plays running on Broadway at the same time. By 1983, he was named the most notable comedy writer in the English language.

He grew up in a household filled with conflict, often caused by his quarrelsome parents' on-off relationship. When he was seven, Simon began writing comedy as a way of blocking out the “really ugly painful things in my childhood" and through the medium of laughter he escaped the heavy atmosphere at home. Often visiting the cinema, Simon was amused and then inspired by watching Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch movies, and with his elder brother Danny created comedy sketches.

Receiving a positive reception, he would go to the local library to read books on famous comedians to help him learn the tricks of the trade. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and studied at New York University, before starting as a clerk at Warner Brothers.

Meanwhile, Simon continued to work on his own plays, developing Come Blow Your Horn which was a fictionalized version of his upbringing. It opened on Broadway in 1961 and enjoyed relative success.

His next play, Bare foot In The Park, was a comedic account of his marriage to Joan Baim. Convinced it would be a failure before it had even begun, Simon begged the producer to pull the play. However, to his disbelief, Barefoot In The Park proved to be a runaway success, became one of Broadway's longest-running plays and pushed him to Hollywood fame when it was made into a movie starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.

He received an incredible 16 Tony nominations（提名）and won the best play three times. He also earned four Oscar nominations, a Pulitzer Prize, the Mark Twain Prize and countless other honours.

【推荐2】The end of the year is drawing near, and winter is in full swing. The season brings along with it strong winds and snow — an environment that’s never comfortable to be in.

This unpleasant and even frightening aspect of winter can often be seen in literature. In Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606), the king has given away his kingdom and been rejected by his two ungrateful daughters. He is out in the winter cold, suffering things that are usually reserved for the poorest and most unfortunate human beings.

The winter is bad enough for Lear, but being abandoned by his family is worse. A song from another Shakespeare play, As You Like It (1599), is fitting for this poor old man’s situation: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,/Thou art not so unkind /As man’s ingratitude (忘恩负义)”. Here, winter is used to bring out the ugliness of inhumanity (不人道). There aren’t many things that are worse than winter, according to Shakespeare.

Once winter became less of a threat to human beings, literary works featuring it became more positive. Since Charles Dickens, the representation of the season in literature has often featured happy Christmas celebrations.

The cold of the winter weather provides a contrast to the fun going on indoors. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) was the start of this, but Christmas is still a common, cheery element in stories that feature winter scenes today. Consider the joy felt by Harry Potter and his friends in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997) as they sit down for their festive meal:

“Harry had never in all his life had such a Christmas dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas (小香肠) and so on.

It is almost as much a pleasure to read about the meal as it might have been to eat it.

Although winter still isn’t the most cheerful season in novels and poems, it’s safe to say that writers have certainly “warmed up” since Shakespeare’s days.