1 . Nature’s Gigantic Snow Plough

On January 10, 1962, an enormous piece of glacier broke away and collapsed down the side of a mountain in Peru. A mere seven minutes later, when cascading ice finally came to a stop ten miles down the mountain, it had taken the lives of 4,000 people. This disaster is one of the most “destructive” examples of a very common event: an avalanche (雪崩) of snow or ice. Because it is extremely cold at very high altitudes, snow rarely melts.     1     Glaciers are eventually created when the weight of the snow is so great that the lower layers are pressed into solid ice.     2     As snow accumulates on a steep slope, it reaches a critical point at which the slightest vibration will send it sliding into the valley below.

Even an avalanche of light power can be dangerous, but the Peruvian disaster was particularly terrible because it was caused by a heavy layer of ice.     3     As it crashed down the steep mountainside like a gigantic snow plough, it swept up trees, boulders and tons of topsoil, and completely crushed and destroyed the six villages that lay in its path.

At present there is no way to predict or avoid such enormous avalanches, but luckily, they are very rare.     4     In the future, perhaps dangerous masses of snow and ice can be found and removed before they take human lives?

3 . Throughout history, humans have come up with ways to entertain themselves using objects such as cards, counters, and boards. Over thousands of years, these have evolved (进化) into the games we know today, from traditional sets with simple rules and basic pieces, all the way to modern electronic consoles (see the picture attached on the right-hand side) with advanced technology and lifelike interactive graphics (图形).

A．	B．
C．	D．

5 . Health in space

Astronaut Frank Rubiales has returned to Earth after 371 days in space.     1       Unlucky for him, but very lucky for scientists who want to see what effects spending an extended time in space has on the human body.

Being in space can affect physical wellbeing.     2     Astronauts are recommended 150 minutes of exercise per day to counteract this. Also, space traveller’s eyes can be affected by the way that fluids act in zero-gravity. Outside the protection of the Earth’s atmosphere, astronauts are exposed to much higher levels and different forms of solar radiation. This can potentially cause long-term health problems, such as cancer.

It’s not just physical health that is affected by being in space. Our mental health can be damaged if we don’t get enough sleep. On earth, our bodies respond through circadian rhythms (昼夜节奏) to the Sun rising and setting to help us sleep, but astronauts on board the International Space Station see 16 sunsets and sunrises every day. This means that avoiding sleep deprivation is a challenge. Isolation, and spending all your time with a small group of people can also affect mental health. Along with isolation, is the pressure that comes from being constantly monitored by experts back on Earth. With possible future missions to Mars predicted to last three years, tensions within the crew could become heightened.     3    

Developing new techniques and technology to support astronauts’ health will enable more ambitious future missions.     4     The Canadian Space Agency is using its expertise to improve health care for people living in remote regions. The technology that supports robots used in space is now being used in surgery in normal hospitals, while pressure suits are being used to treat post-pregnancy complications.

6 . East is East and West is West. Western culture conditions people to think of themselves as independent entities. In contrast, Eastern cultures stress interdependence. Researchers use the terms East and West very roughly. West tends to mean Americans and people from independence-oriented European countries or Australia. East means East Asians, as well as much of the rest of the world.

In January, researchers led by Trey Hedden at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that such deeply ingrained habits of thought affect the brains of East Asians and Americans even as they perform simple tasks that involve estimating the length of a line. Hedden’s experiment involved two tasks. In one, subjects eyeballed a line simply to estimate its length. In another, they estimated the line’s length relative to the size of a square. Brain scanners measure levels of neural activity by tracking blood flow. The experiment found that though there was no difference in performance, the level of activity in the subjects brains differed. Areas linked to attention lit up more in the Americans’ brains when they worked on the task they tend to find harder, estimating the line’s size relative to the square. In Asians, too, the attention areas lit up more during the harder task, estimating the line’s length without comparing it to the square. Brain findings like this may help people become aware of deep cultural differences that are normally “so much part of the water that we don’t see them,” Hedden said.

Such differences have turned up in experiment after experiment. For example, In one study, researchers offered people a picture of an elephant in the jungle. The research showed that the Westerner will focus on the elephant and the Easterner is going to be more thinking about the jungle scene that has the elephant in it.

So what applications does East-West brain research have for the real world? Well, it could help to defuse tensions a bit between cross-cultural spouses, and provide guidance for students in business schools who are going to work in East-West trade. “Understanding cultural differences in the mind is really important as the world globalizes,” Hedden said. “There can be a lot of breakdowns in communication.”

7 . Pablo Picasso was probably the most famous artist and one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century. This great artist lived more artistic lifetimes than any of his peers. During his 75-year career, he produced thousands of works, not only paintings but also sculptures, prints, and ceramics, using a wide variety of materials. He almost single-handedly created modern art, changing art more profoundly than any other artist of his century.

Born in 1881, in Spain, Picasso was a child with great talents, completing the one-month qualifying examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona in one day at the age of 14. After finishing his studies in Barcelona, the artist continued his training in Madrid but later returned to Barcelona. There began his “blue period”, so named for the dominant blue tones in the artist’s paintings. During this time, he moved frequently between Barcelona and Paris. In Paris, he spent his days studying the masterworks at the Louvre and his nights with other artists at night clubs, during which time he became fascinated with the circus world’s acrobats and wandering performers. This marked a radical change in color and mood for the artist. He began painting in subtle pinks and grays, often highlighted with brighter tones. This was known as his “rose period”.

The peak of Picasso’s creativity is evidenced in his pioneering role in Cubism. In 1907, he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a Cubist painting which changed 20th century art completely. In it, the artist and viewer look at the subjects from many different angles at the same time. Picasso and French painter Georges Braque were the leading figures of the Cubist movement. For Picasso, the 1920s were years of rich artistic exploration and great productivity. He designed theater sets and painted in Cubist, Classical styles. In the last decades of his life, he still experimented with new methods of printing and painted a series of variations of old master paintings. He died in France in 1973, at the age of 91. His powers of creativity and execution continue to astonish artists all over the world.

8 . How China’s Dancing Lions Get Their Heads

Bamboo and silk strips cover every surface in He Yubin’s workshop. The 37-year-old jokes that he’s an expert in“3D modeling.”     1    

The skeleton (骨架) of the lion’s head alone takes two or three days for an experienced craftsman to make.     2     After binding the skeleton using bamboo strips, the craftsman covers the structure with starch paste (淀粉糊), three to six layers of paper, and one layer of silk, all cut into small strips. Once the papered skeleton is dry, craftsmen paint it in a rainbow of colors using a Chinese writing brush, often adding images of historical characters from Cantonese opera, such as Three Kingdoms heroes. Lastly, he adds the lion’s movable lower jaw, eyelashes (睫毛), ears, and other decorations.

Though the number of lion head orders has increased over the last decade, his factory has had difficulty in getting enough hands.     3     He explained that unlike “the quick sense of accomplishment” one can get from mastering a movement in lion dance, young people are “not patient enough” to work around 10 hours a day to make the costume, or to take a decade to master the skills.

    4     Government’s policy and the efforts of craftsmen like him, who work with schools and companies to teach their skills to students of all ages, will hopefully keep the head on China’s dancing lions for generations to come.

9 . It all began with an experience one of us (Arinzeh) had more than two decades ago. In 1991, a summer research experience at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated how engineering could improve the lives of patients. Instead of working in a more traditional area such as automobile design, Arinzeh spent the summer after her junior year of college working in a rehabilitation laboratory.

Engineers there were designing new prosthetic (修复的) devices for patients who had lost limbs, and new assistive devices to help paralyzed patients move. The engineers would then collaborate with clinicians at a rehabilitation center to test their developments. Before that summer she hadn’t connected traditional engineering principles with the opportunity to solve biomedical problems. But by the end of those short months, Arinzeh was hooked on the promise of using mechanical engineering to help people move better.

Tissue engineering, a budding field at that time, offered a chance to move beyond building prosthetics. Damage to musculoskeletal tissues, such as bone and cartilage, and nervous tissue, such as the spinal cord, can be debilitating and can severely limit a person’s quality of life. In addition, such tissues cannot fully regenerate after a severe injury or in response to disease. Tissue engineers aim to fully repair and regenerate that tissue so that it regains complete function, but at that time researchers still had a lot to learn about cells and their support structures to solve these problems.

The earliest successes were with skin, in which researchers used dermal cells to generate grafts, leading to the first commercial products in the late 1990s. Researchers imitate nature, using cells as building blocks and developing strategies to guide the cells to form the appropriate tissue. Because stem cells (干细胞) are precursor (前身) to almost all tissue types, such cells are a promising source of these critical building blocks. But cells don’t grow and differentiate on their own. The cell’s microenvironment can influence stem-cell function in critical ways. Engineered microenvironments, or scaffolds, can effectively promote stem cells and other cell types to form tissues. To construct such scaffolds, some important tools are what are called functional biomaterials. These materials respond to environmental changes such as PH, enzymatic activity, or mechanical load, and their composition can mimic or replicate components of native tissue.

One of us (Arinzeh) wanted to use functional biomaterials to create three-dimensional tissue-like structures where cells can grow, proliferate (增殖), and differentiate, ultimately forming and regenerating tissue. Our group’s work started with bone studies in the 1990s, eventually moving into cartilage and the spinal cord over the past decade. The overall goal is to produce structures that could someday help patients struggling with severe injuries and movement disorders to move freely. For bone repair, our group has studied composite scaffolds consisting of polymers and ceramics that provide both mechanical and chemical cues to repair bone. Piezoelectric materials, which respond to mechanical stimuli by generating electrical activity, are used to encourage the growth of nerve tissue as well as cartilage and bone. Glycosaminoglycans (GACs), a major component of native cartilage tissue, provide growth factors to promote tissue formation, and Arinzeh has designed biomimetic scaffolds that incorporate these molecules. After all these years, the promise that seemed so enticing in 1991 is becoming a practical reality, with huge implications for human health.