As a boy, Charles Robert Darwin(达尔文) collected anything that caught his interest: insects, coins and interesting stones. He was not very clever, but Darwin was good at doing the things that interested him.

    His father was a doctor, so Darwin was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, and was planned to follow a medical career. But Charles found the lectures boring. Then his father sent him to Cambridge University to study to be a priest. While at Cambridge, Darwin's interest in zoology and geography grew. Later he got a letter from Robert FitzRoy who was planning to make a voyage around the world on a ship, the Beagle. He wanted a naturalist to join the ship, and Darwin was recommended(推荐). That voyage was the start of Darwin's great life.

    As the Beagle sailed around the world, Darwin began to wonder how life had developed on earth. He began to observe everything. After he was home, he set to work, getting his collection in order. His first great work The Zoology of the Beagle was well received, but he was slow to make public his ideas on the origin of life.

    Later Darwin and Wallace, another naturalist who had the same opinions as Darwin, produced a paper together. Darwin's great book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”(《物种起源》) appeared. It attracted a storm. People thought that Darwin was saying they were descended from monkeys. What a shameful idea! Although most scientists agreed that Darwin was right, the Church was still so strong that Darwin never received any honors for his work.

    Afterwards, he published another great work, The Descent of Man. His health grew worse, but he still worked. “When I have to give up observation, I shall die,” he said. He was still working on 17, April, 1882. He was dead two days later.

EVENTS

Aug.31-Sept.4,Laughter Bus

Cape Town, South Africa

Lovely sightseeing tour with laughter, fun and festivities. The tour departs(启程) from Cape Town towards the Garden Route, stopping at beautiful and interesting places, enjoying lunch at the seaside and sharing laughter with local communities. Cost:$800.

+277222-97454, info@laughterbus.co.za  Sept. 17-18, Laughter Yoga 2-day Certified Leader Training

Irvine, California, USA

10 am-5 pm daily at Irvine Valley College. Learn to laugh for health without the need of jokes. Start a laughter club, share laughter with elders and kids, and earn income sharing happiness. Includes practice with Jeffrey Briar. Costs: $ 295.

▪ (949)376-1939, JBriar@LYInstitute.org

Set. 30, Laughter is Serious Business Workshop

St. Albans, Hertfordshire, UK

A workshop for those who have completed Laughter Leader/Skills courses and want to get ideas and real advice on how to promote(提升) themselves. 10 am-3 pm with lunch break. Costs:￡100 (includes a￡25 DVD)

+44(0)1727-741-050, Jotte@unitedmind.co.uk Oct. 7-9, Laguna Laughter Club Mountain Retreat(静修)

Angelus Oaks, California, USA

Everyone is welcome on this three-day retreat in the pine forest of Redlands. Daily laughter yoga sessions, music, dancing, hiking, and vision-sharing. Costs:$150 (includes meals).

▪ (949)376-1241, Anne@LaughingAnne.com

Oct. 29-Nov. 5, Laughter Cruise in the Caribbean

The tour departs from Miami, Florida, USA. Daily laughter sessions, onboard programs, easy yoga classes, creating new exercises, fun and friendship! Holland America Lines. Costs: $719.

▪ (941) 349-6069, amy.ferrell@verizon.net

    Sydney Trains is one of the most economical, reliable and convenient ways to travel throughout Sydney and its surrounds.

    Our network, the NSW Trains Intercity, covers suburban Sydney and extends to the Hunter, Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Southern Highlands and South Coast regions.

    The network is made up of several color-coded lines. Trains from different lines can share the same platform, so check display screen and listen to announcements.

    Ticket prices are generally based on the distance traveled. You can visit transportnsw. Info for details.

    Getting to the City.

    In Sydney, if you're near a train station, you're on your way to the city. Every rail line leads directly or indirectly to the City Circle. It's the loop around the central business district of Sydney. Most City stations are underground so look out for the sign on street level.

    Automatic ticket gates

    Large stations have automatic gates for entry to, and exit from, the station. If you have an Opal card or a ticket which has a magnetic stripe you must use the automatic gates. You may use the wide gate for wheelchair, pram or luggage access. Station staff will assist you.

    Night Ride buses

    Most trains do not operate between midnight and 4:00 a.m. For your convenience a special Night Ride bus service is available between these hours on most Sydney suburban lines.

    Track work

    In order for the tracks to the maintained, we sometimes have to replace train with buses, particularly at weekends, Please check the track work section for the latest service alterations on your line.

    If you are looking for the place that has everything, there is only one place to visit, and that's New York. It's a whole world in a city.

    The World of Theater: All of New York is a stage. And it begins with Broadway. Where else can you find so many hit shows in one place? Only in New York!

    The World of Music: Spend an evening with Beethoven at Lincoln Center. Swing to the great jazz of Greenwich Village. Or rock yourself silly at the hottest dance spots found anywhere.

    The World of Art: From Rembrandt to Picasso. From Egyptian tombs to Indian teepees. Whatever kind of art you like, you will find it in New York.

    The World of Fine Dining: Whether it's roast Beijing duck in Chinatown, lasagna in little Italy, or the finest French coq au vin found everywhere, there is world of great taste waiting for you in New York.

    The World of Sights: What other city has a Statue (雕塑) of Liberty? A Rockefeller Center? Or a Bronx Zoo? Where else can you take a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park? Only in New York!

    It is a live celebration of the lasting power of letter writing!

    Letters Live, which started in December 2013, was held at the Freemasons' Hall in London from March 10 to 15. The show invited various great performers who read remarkable letters that had been written around the world over the centuries.

    "Bringing letters alive through outstanding performances is one of the most powerful ways in which the joy and pain and humor and tragedy of being human can be shared," Jamie Byng, managing director of Canongate Books publishing firm, told the Nowness video channel.

    British actor Benedict Cumberbatch agreed. "Letters are windows into the love, beauty, pain and humor of their creators and receivers," he told The Guardian. "Letters Live makes us stop and imagine the lives behind the letters read and where they came from. It's a privilege to read this most ancient of communications live to an audience."

    This year, the movie Sherlock star treated the audience by playing the part of a 17-year Tom Hanks. He put on the young actor's voice when he read his letter to the Hollywood director George Roy Hill, a letter that urged Hill to "discover" him. The letter revealed that two-time Oscar winner Hanks' teenage dream was not to "be a big-time Hollywood superstar" but to one day own a Porsche car and call his favorite US actor Robert Red ford his nickname "Bob".

    Other famous faces at the event included Carey Mulligan, who played a fictional laundry worker, a female activist fighting for women's rights in the 2015 movie Suffragette. The British actress once again played the role of a suffragette, when she read a very enthusiastic letter demanding the vote for women. The suffragette sent a precious 1913 note to The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

    "Everyone seems to agree upon the necessity of putting a stop 10 Suffragist anger, but no one seems certain how to do so," Mulligan read out. "There are two, and only two, ways in which this can be done. Both will be effectual. One, kill every woman in the UK. Two, give women the vote."

    A good disguise keeps you hidden, right? Well, sometimes the best disguise is actually the most dazzling because research reveals that flashy metallic iridescence(金属彩虹色) can visually puzzle predators, which allows colorful prey to survive another day. Those surprising results appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

    Shining iridescent color, which changes depending on the angle from which it's viewed, is favored by everything from birds to beetles and blossoms to butterflies.

    "And in our research group we are of course interested in why this vivid metallic color is so widespread in nature." Karin Kjernsmo of the University of Bristol adds that in some cases the showy splashes of light are a sexual strategy. " Here I would like to point out that in some species, particularly those that display strong sexual dimorphism(雌雄两性), such as birds of paradise or some butterflies or fishes, the occurrence of iridescence is most likely driven by sexual selection. For example, in many of these cases it is the males that have these vivid iridescent colors and they use them in mate choice or they use them as a signal to attract mates."  But iridescence also shows up in situations where reproduction is not an issue. " So what we are studying now is whether natural selection imposed by predation(捕食行为) could explain the occurrence of iridescence in prey animals."

    The idea that eye­catching colors could be used as a cover­up isn't a new one." The father of camouflage theory, Abbott Thayer, really believed that iridescence should be categorized as a camouflage strategy. And he wrote in his famous lifework Concealing­Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, already in 1909, that 'brilliantly changeable or metallic colors are among the strongest factors in an animal's concealment'. And this sounds like a completely unreasonable thing to say, because how can colors that are both brilliant and changeable contribute to animal's concealment？"

    "In a similar way, we were asking whether iridescence, due to its changeability, could work as a form of camouflage by preventing shape recognition." Kjernsmo and her colleagues trained bumblebees to associate a particular shape—a circle or an oval—with a sugar reward. And they found that the bees, when given a choice, would preferentially visit the shape they knew to be sweet. But when the shapes were iridescent, the bees had trouble telling them apart. "It seemed that the strikingly iridescent surfaces on our targets visually broke up the otherwise recognizable shape of the targets, which made them hard to distinguish." As for making use of this method for hiding in plain sight, "Any practical applications is of course directly linked to any industry that has an interest in camouflage, that is how to conceal objects or make them more difficult to recognize." The researchers are currently conducting experiments with birds, which often prey on iridescent insects to see if it helps to have a bird's­eye view.