1 . Counseling(咨询)Services

Counseling Services is a place on campus where you can find someone to talk when you're feeling hopeless, lonely, depressed, confused, upset over a relationship, or just anxious. If you or anyone you know has been disturbed by recent events, please come to Counseling Services, which can provide a safe and comfortable environment for all students.

Counseling Services will be closed from Monday. December 21st 2020 through the beginning of Spring Term 2021. But we will continue to provide Tele-health services by phone and email Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. We will be fully closed on the following dates: December 24th. 25th. 30th. 31st. January 1st. 2021.

To make an appointment, call (715) S36-552I during our business hours: Monday-Friday 8:00 am-12:00 am, 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm. We are open 8:00 am to 6:00 pm on Wednesdays.

In addition to services on phones or on line, you can now check out our Attacking. Anxiety and Depression Workshop Videos, or see what our office is up to on Instagram and Facebook. We have also been collecting COVID-19 specific online resources.

If you want to know more, please click here.

2 . Living in a city can be stressful. But some people in Bogota, Columbia have found a place to help ease stress and get a peaceful break from busy life. The place is a protected park for hummingbirds (蜂鸟) .

The park sits at the top of Monserrate Hill, east of the city, in a place known as the Paramuno corridor. The area contains a forest that has turned into a peaceful place for both people and birds. As the hummingbirds fly from flower to flower, some people study the animals through binoculars. Others take pictures with cameras or phones. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem real because we are close to a city of eight million citizens who produce noise every day,” said Camilo Cantor, a caretaker in the park. His job is to mix water and sugar that is put in bird feeders along a 300-meter path. Cantor explains, “You can hear noise from the city, the generation of pollution and aggressiveness.” But, he adds, the park is a special place, like an oasis. It is a place where people can go to release stress and forget about the pressures of city life.

Visitors to the park can see between 25 to 35 different species of birds, Cantor said. Ten years ago, the hill was completely deforested, meaning there were not any trees left on it. But workers began to replant local trees and flowers to bring the forest back to life. Presently, there are 115 species of birds, including 18 kinds of hummingbirds and some migratory (迁移的) species. Hummingbirds are only found on the American continent and Columbia is home to many different kinds.

5 . Tracking wildlife is a tough job. Take the case of a one-eared leopard named Pavarotti.

Kasim Rafiq, a wildlife biologist at Liverpool John Moores University. “So I used to get up at the crack of dawn, follow his tracks and try and find him. So one day, I went out, and I was looking for him. And his tracks took me off road through this woodland area...and...”

Before he knew it, the wheel of his Land Rover was stuck in a deep hole. He wasted several hours getting it out. And then, on the way back to camp, he came across some local tour guides and their safari (观赏野兽的旅行) guests, who’d had way better luck spotting Pavarotti. “Basically, they laughed and they talked to me that they’d seen him that morning.”

Rafiq then realized that tourist wildlife sightings might be an untapped source of information about wild animals.

So he and his team worked with a safari lodge in Botswana to analyze 25,000 tourist photographs of wildlife. They compared those data to the estimates they made with traditional wildlife biology methods.

It turned out that the estimates from tourists’ photos were just as good as those gleaned (四处搜集) from traditional methods. And the tourists were actually the only ones to see elusive (难以捉摸的) leopards — the researchers would have missed the cats without the citizen science data. The results are in the journal Current Biology.

The idea is not to put wildlife researchers out of a job. “The reality is there are so many interesting things we still have to find out about these large carnivores (食肉动物) and so many conservation (保护) projects that need to be carried out that we don’t have the time or resources to do them all.” And tourist photos might help make sure that all the local carnivores are spotted.

Thanks for listening for Scientific American-60-Second Science. I’m Christopher Intagliata.

6 . Tourist Guide to the National Gallery

Opening hours: Daily 10: 00 am- -6: 00 pm; Friday 10: 00 am- 9: 00 pm

Closed: 2426 December

Reasons to visit:

With over 2, 300 paintings in the collection, there are hundreds of reasons to visit the Gallery. Here are some to get you started...

Get into great art. From Leonardo da Vinci to Vincent van Gogh: See priceless works of art for free.

Get creative. Brush up your skills, and create your own great works of art...

Learn about art. Discover more about paintings...

Regulations:

Talk in a low voice when you use your cellphone in the gallery

Please do not touch the paintings or other exhibits. Do not take pets in or cross the barriers.

Consume food and drink in designated areas only i.e. not in rooms that contain paintings.

Follow our no smoking policy in any part of the building.

Follow our no photograph policy in exhibitions where a sign is displayed.

Access:

The National Gallery aims to make access to the paintings enjoyable and welcoming to the widest possible public. There are a range of facilities to help you see the collection, visit exhibitions and come to events.

The Gallery offers British Sign Language-interpreted talks on paintings for visitors who are deaf, and special art sessions(展期) for visitors who can't see.

Address: The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square London WC2N 5DN

Click here to find more information.

8 . Can you think outside the box? Samsung Electronics is inviting you to think outside the “cardboard” box.

We love it when companies try to limit their carbon footprint (碳排放量) . But it can be hard especially when you take packing (包装) materials into consideration. For safe delivery purposes, it’s not something we can completely do without. But giving that packing material a long-lasting purpose is a way to reduce unnecessary waste. That’s what Samsung Electronics has done with their new “eco-packing” try. In addition to using corrugated (波纹状的) cardboard for easier recycling, the boxes have another function. Each box comes with a dot-matrix pattern (点矩阵图案) allowing customers to cut and build it into everything from a tea table to a cat house.

Each package comes with a QR code that buyers can scan (扫描) for more ideas of building their own DIY items. And you will be proud of making your furniture out of cardboard. Believe it or not, it’ll be a fashion soon.

This is a great idea and another win for Samsung. The company already won an innovation (创新) prize for its eco-packaging idea earlier this year. Any brand devoted to keeping us entertained while protecting our planet is a brand we can support.

The South Korean company is now holding a global contest that encourages people to come up with new designs and ideas on how the cardboard can be changed to make it suitable for a new purpose.

Anyone can enter the contest as long as they are at least 18 years old. They can be from any country. Each has to send at least one, and up to ten photos of their creation.

The company offers a prize of $20,000 for the top of five designs. The top prize is $10,000, while second and third places will be rewarded with $5,000 and $3,000. Fourth and fifth places will receive $1,000 each.

Have you got a good idea for a box design? Why not try your luck?

9 . Have you ever wondered if you see the same colours as other people? Most people know what blue is when they see it. They call it "blue” because they were taught the word and connected it with what they saw. But how do you know what you see as blue isn't someone else's red?

The ability to perceive （感知）different colours is up to receptors （接受器）in our eyes. Light waves hit these receptors and they react depending on which colour the light is, sending signals to the brain. The brain then reads these signals to determine which colour light the eyes are receiving.

Some people's receptors are more developed than others. The inability of the receptor to feel the light waves correctly means that some people cannot tell the differences between similar colours. Those with more developed receptors can see more colours. We sometimes hear people having an argument about whether something is dark blue or black. It might be because one person has stronger receptors to feel the light than another.

In the past, most scientists would argue that everyone saw colours in the same way. However, research was conducted on monkeys, in which their receptors were changed. This enabled them to see more colours than usual. Normally monkeys can only see blue and green, but the change allowed them to see red. Their brains automatically got used to new colours. This suggests that our brains may find new colors of the things we see. Colours could be a very personal experience , unique to everyone.

So, the next time you talk about your favourite colour, just remember if yours is blue and your friend says red, you two might actually be thinking about the same colour. What if everyone in the world has the same favourite colour, but just calls it different names?

10 . Since you can't get to theaters, museums, galleries, music venues or opera houses during these difficult days due to coronavirus, instead they'll come to you. Here's a list of some of Europe's best-known museums.

Louvre Museum in Paris

As the most visited museum in the world, it offers virtual tours online. It also has a number of   "Visitors Trails" in different themes, designed to give an overview of the scope and wealth of the museum's collections. Each trail is based on a selection of works that characterize a period, an artistic movement or a theme, including the artworks from JAY-Z and Beyoncé's music video.

Schirn Museum in Frankfurt

It has digitally opened its current exhibition, now closed due to the virus, called   "Fantastic Women" (scheduled from February 13 to May 24), highlighting the works of 34 women artists and their contributions to Surrealism (超现实主义), including Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning and Dora Maar.

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

Are you looking for ways to entertain your children with an educational twist? Then the Van Gogh will bring the great artist to you and also invite you to a virtual visit inside the Museum. The museum explores the painter's life, his relationship with his brother Théo, his passion for Japan and also his mental illness. Everything is in high definition.

Of course, a range of recent opera and ballet productions are also available, with the hope to give pleasure to as many people as possible. Please get more information at www. forbes. com.