【推荐3】For the first 18 years of my life, my mom cooked Chinese food every day, all served family-style. But when it came time for me to teach myself how to cook, I didn’t ask my mom for help. Instead, like so many young people, I turned to the online recipes. By the time I got married, I could cook many dishes. What I didn’t really know how to cook at all, however, was Chinese food.

Part of the problem was that I only knew how to cook by following recipes. And up until maybe 5 or 10 years ago, the number of English-language recipes for Chinese dishes you could find in a cookbook or on the Internet still felt extremely limited — at least when it came to homey (家乡菜), everyday recipes written with a younger Chinese American audience in mind.

That was the experience, too, for sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung. Like so many other ABCs (American-born Chinese) and younger first- and second-generation Chinese immigrants (移民), the Leung sisters reached a point in their adult lives when they started to love to eat the food they’d grown up on, but found it really difficult to learn how to prepare it.

As it turns out, though, the Leung sisters were uniquely positioned to do something about it: Their father had spent years cooking at his family’s Chinese American takeout restaurant. Their mom had deep knowledge about traditional Shanghainese cooking. Meanwhile, the two sisters had grown up in New York, eating their parents, food, but also immersed (沉浸) in America’s own food culture.

So, in 2013, the Leungs started a food blog “The Woks of Life”. What made their blog different from other blogs was that the intergenerational transfer of knowledge that the Leungs were so eager for was baked right into the concept: The four family members took turns posting recipes, each sharing their own favorites. In that way, Sarah says, the blog reflected — and continues to reflect — the diversity of the Chinese diaspora (华侨).

【推荐2】“What would the world be if there were no hunger?” It’s a question that Professor Crystal would ask her students. They found it hard to answer, she wrote later, because imagining something that isn’t part of real life—and learning how to make it real—is a rare skill. It is taught to artists and engineers, but much less often to scientists. Crystal set out to change that, and helped to create a global movement. The result—an approach known as systems thinking—is now seen as essential in meeting global challenges.

Systems thinking is crucial to achieving targets such as zero hunger and better nutrition because it requires considering the way in which food is produced, processed, delivered and consumed, and looking at how those things intersect (交叉 ) with human health, the environment, economics and society. According to systems thinking, changing the food system—or any other network—requires three things to happen. First, researchers need to identify all the players in that system; second, they must work out how they relate to each other; and third, they need to understand and quantify the impact of those relationships on each other and on those outside the system.

Take nutrition. In the latest UN report on global food security, the number of undernourished (营养不良 )people in the world has been rising, despite great advances in nutrition science. Tracking of 150 biochemicals in food has been important in revealing the relationships between calories, sugar, fat and the occurrence of common diseases. But using machine learning and artificial intelligence, some scientists propose that human diets consist of at least 26,000 biochemicals—and that the vast majority are not known. This shows that we have some way to travel before achieving the first objective of systems thinking - which, in this example, is to identify more constituent parts of the nutrition system.

A systems approach to creating change is also built on the assumption that everyone in the system has equal power. But as some researchers find, the food system is not an equal one. A good way to redress (修正 ) such power imbalance is for more universities to do what Crystal did and teach students how to think using a systems approach.

More researchers, policymakers and representatives from the food industry must learn to look beyond their direct lines of responsibility and adopt a systems approach. Crystal knew that visions alone don’t produce results, but concluded that “we’ll never produce results that we can’t envision”.

【推荐1】Hundreds of scientists, writers and academics sounded a warning to humanity in an open letter published last December: Policymakers and the rest of us must engage openly with the risk of global collapse. Researchers in many areas have projected the widespread collapse as “a credible scenario（情景）this century”.

A survey of scientists found that extreme weather events, food insecurity, and freshwater shortages might create global collapse. Of course, if you are a non-human species, collapse is well underway.

The call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of still-uncontrolled pandemic and economic crises in the world’s most technologically advanced nations. Not very long ago, it was also unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations and that safety nets would be proven so disastrously lacking in flexibility.

The international scholars’ warning letter doesn’t say exactly what collapse will look like or when it might happen. Collapseology, the study of collapse, is more concerned with identifying trends and with them the dangers of everyday civilization. Among the signatories（签署者）of the warning was Bob Johnson, the originator of the “ecological footprint” concept, which measures the total amount of environmental input needed to maintain a given lifestyle. With the current footprint of humanity, “it seems that global collapse is certain to happen in some form, possibly within a decade, certainly within this century, ” Johnson said in an email.

Only if we discuss the consequences of our biophysical limits, the December warning letter says, can we have the hope to reduce their “speed, severity and harm”. And yet messengers of the coming disturbance are likely to be ignored. We all want to hope things will turn out fine. As a poet wrote,

Man is a victim of dope（麻醉品）

In the incurable form of hope.

The hundreds of scholars who signed the letter are intent（执着）on quieting hope that ignores preparedness. “Let’s look directly into the issue of collapse, ” they say, “and deal with the terrible possibilities of what we see there to make the best of a troubling future. ”

【推荐2】Humans have long gained pleasure from the smells of the natural world. For the most part, though, human beings are not their target market. For plants, fragrances are a way to interact with insects and other animals. Their attraction for people happens simply by chance.

In chemical terms, most natural fragrances are made up of volatiles — so called because of their tendency to change states suddenly. Volatiles evaporate easily, drifting into noses. In plants’ reproductive processes, smelly volatiles attract pollinators (授粉昆虫). But their natural applications are much more varied. If an insect chews through the leaves of some Bursera plants, out shoots a sticky, smelly liquid to trap it. Coyote tobacco plants are even more crafty: upon sensing the smell of hungry caterpillars, they produce volatiles that attract predators to kill the pests.

What is truly amazing is just how wily plants can be in using their scents for reproduction. White flowers often emit their scent at night to attract nocturnal pollinators such as moths. They produce a dilute nectar (稀释的花蜜) that encourages moths to keep moving, rather than linger at a single bloom—all the better to increase pollination. Other flowers change their fragrance after being successfully pollinated, as a signal for insects to go elsewhere.

But though “Scent” is a story of plants’ cleverness, it is also a tale of the human kind. People have long used fragrances for their own purposes, particularly for use in religious ceremonies: perfume recipes on the walls of an Egyptian temple in Edfu demonstrate just how long ingredients have been mixed in pursuit of the best blend. So highly prized were some scents that, to scare off competitors, Arab traders spread a legend about giant eagles that guarded cinnamon.

Eventually scientists no longer needed natural sources for fragrances. In 1866 a fragrance molecule was produced for the first time. Sixteen years later, Houbigant Parfum released Fougère Royale, the first “modern fantasy perfume” that creates an imaginary scent rather than copying a natural one. Nowadays fragrance–making is dominated by man–made compounds, which can be reliably and affordably produced in large quantities.

That has led to the mass production of smelly products, from toilet paper to toothpaste. Scent is accordingly big business. It is said that a world–famous fragrance and flavour manufacturer that claims people interact with its products up to 30 times a day, had sales of €3.8bn last year.

【推荐1】Jobs Week: Find Your Next Job Here

▲ A Registered Nurse

Average salary: $ 65,470 per year

Top cities for hiring: San Antonio, Texas;Chicago, Illinois;Dallas, Texas

In the United States, registered nurses (RNs) are clinicians who have completed at least an associated degree in nursing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS)has identified it as one of the top ten occupations for career growth. RNs can either practice independently or as part of a healthcare team.

▲ A Retail Associate

Average salary: $ 21,410 per year

Top cities for hiring: Atlanta, Georgia;Houston, Texas;Chicago, Illinois

Retail workers sell products and help customers find the products they want. According to the BLS, nearly 14. 8 million people were employed as retail workers in 2014. Top places to find retail positions include Walmart, Target and Macy’s.

▲ A Truck Driver

Average salary: $ 46,000 per year

Top cities for hiring: Atlanta, Georgia;Houston, Texas;Indianapolis, Indiana

Truck driving doesn’t require a college degree and can pay well even at the entry-level stage. It takes a certain kind of person to work the long weeks away from home — but with a high level of demand, it can be a great career choice for someone who wants job security without the cubicle (工作间).

▲ A Web Developer

Average salary: $ 62,500 per year

Top cities for hiring: Chicago, Illinois;New York;Atlanta, Georgia

Tech jobs like Web Developer frequently top lists of the best jobs for pay, worklife balance, and career welfare. The wide use of the Internet means that web developers are in continuous demand, and there are no education barriers preventing job seekers from learning programming languages like Java or Python.

【推荐2】Do you have frightening dreams while sleeping? According to an email interview by clinical psychologist and sleep expert Dr. Michael Breus, roughly 5 percent of the general population has at least one bad dream per week. Nightmares typically happen during REM sleep, during the middle and later parts of the night.

There is no exact explanation for nightmares, but Breus says it’s possible that they help the brain practise, prepare for and even predict difficult or dangerous experiences in waking life. Of course, it’s possible that nightmares, like dreams in general, don’t have a primary function — that they’re a by-product of other activities in the body. But most sleep scientists think that dreams and nightmares exist for some purposes.

One study found the most common nightmare was falling, followed by dreams of being chased, feeling lost, and feeling trapped. Then why do nightmares happen?

“Certain circumstances and characteristics make some people more likely to have nightmares than others,” says sleep medicine specialist Dr. Barry Krakow. He thinks people who’ve been traumatized (使受精神创伤) are certainly at a higher risk of nightmares Examples are offered of those who have suffered criminal attacks, or who have been in life-threatening accidents. People with some degree of sensitivity in their biological make-up are also more likely to have bad dreams, so they’re more common in people who suffer from anxiety or depression, or who use excess drugs or alcohol. The traditional belief often has it that nightmares are the result of eating too much rich food before bedtime, but it is still uncertain whether this is true. One study from 2015 did find a link between eating dairy or hot foods before bedtime and having disturbing dreams, but the study authors noted that this couldn’t be proven definitely because the data was self-reported and there were a lot of other factors to consider.

However, research in recent decades has shown that people who suffer from sleep disorders are also more likely to have nightmares.

【推荐3】Grading Policies for Introduction to Literature

90-100, A; 80-89, B; 70-79, C; 60-69, D; Below 60, E.

Your four major essays will combine to form the main part of the grade for this course: Essay 1 = 10%; Essay 2 = 15%; Essay 3 = 15%; Essay 4 = 20%.