【推荐1】In his 1975 novel Changing Places, British novelist David Lodge described the lifestyle of two literature professors who cross the planet repeatedly, trading a rainy English campus for a sunny California university, and vice versa. Along the way, many other things are exchanged as well, including affairs of the heart.

While scholars working today don't enjoy the same benefits—luxury hotels and business-class flights in particular—they might recognize that they still live in Lodge's small world. Since the mid-l970s, transportation and communication advances have made the planet steadily smaller and the number of international students has risen sharply in turn. In Lodge's novels, universities seemed changeless, white four decades later they are fully engaged in internationalization.

In the post Cold War era, academic relationships are becoming richer and more complex. Students in the Global South, eager to participate in the knowledge economy and receive some of its benefits, are driving much of the increased demand for education at all levels.That future profits and solutions to pressing global problems are to be found in advanced research makes international cooperation essential.

As a recent report shows, internationalization is a strategic priority for many universities and they're working to put themselves on the world map.When competing for new lands, however, familiar rules no longer apply and new guidelines must be established to increase the chance of profits, or at least minimize potential losses.

The internationalization of universities raises an old problem: the ability to connect to global development without losing diversity. Some aspects of global science, such as Nobel prizes, tend to promote a “winner-takes-all' system. Higher education institutions should take a critical distance from this tendency and embrace their diversity— there is more than one Treasure Island for science. Internationalization is not about going to places similar to our own country or institution. Instead, students and scholars can find stimulating environments and academic conditions that can challenge what they take for granted.

We generally assume that higher education and innovation go hand in hand, but we do not know how innovation comes about. The only reasonable assumption is that it happens in difficult conditions, when we have to overcome a problem. That's why it's important to put students and scholars in challenging diverse situations and help them learn different ways of thinking. From my point of view, enhancing access and promoting diversity should be the compass of all internationalization strategies. So, the ship has started, and let's sail.

【推荐2】A good meal has a positive impact on one’s mood. Those who feast on Christmas buffet almost enjoy an immediate rise in their blood sugar. That will prompt a flood of chemicals that act as happy hormones to rush through their brains.

But the pleasure goes deeper. Tyrosine and tryptophan are needed for the production, respectively, of dopamine, a neurotransmitter (神经传递素) that controls feelings of pleasure and reward, and serotonin, another such, which helps regulate mood. And cranberries are high in vitamin C, which is involved in converting dopamine to noradrenaline, another neurotransmitter, and a lack of which seems to be associated with depression.

With mental-health disorders rising, a growing number of scientists are investigating how food or nutritional supplements affect the mind. But separating the brain’s nutritional needs from those of the rest of the body is difficult. Not possible for now, at least. And, compared with other fields, nutritional science is understudied. That is partly because it is hard to do well. Randomised controlled trials (rcts), used to test drugs, are tricky. Few people want to stick to an experimental diet for years. Instead, most nutritional science is based on observational studies that try to establish associations between particular foods or nutrients and diseases. They cannot be used to definitively prove a causal ( 因 果 关 系 的 ) connection between a disease and a particular contributing factor in a diet. But as with smoking and lung cancer, put together enough of these kinds of trials and causal narratives begin to emerge.

It is now clear that some diets are particularly good for the brain. One recent study concludes that sticking to the “Mediterranean diet”, high in vegetables, fruit, pulses and wholegrains, low in red and processed meats and saturated fats, decreases the chances of experiencing strokes, cognitive impairment and depression. Other recent work looking at a “green” Mediterranean diet high in polyphenols found it reduced age-related brain atrophy. Another version, the mind diet, emphasises, among other things, eating berries over other kinds of fruit and seems to lessen the risk of dementia.

Scientists think such diets may work by reducing inflammation in the brain. This, in turn, may affect areas such as the hippocampus, which is associated with learning, memory and mood regulation—and where new neurons grow in adults. Studies in animals show that when they are fed a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (from walnuts, for example), flavonoids (consumed mainly via tea and wine), antioxidants (found in berries) and resveratrol (found in red grapes), neuron growth is stimulated and inflammatory processes are reduced. This fits with research suggesting that those who regularly eat ultra-processed, fried and sugary foods, which increase inflammation in the brain, heighten their risk of developing depression.