For most city people, the elevator is an unremarkable machine that inspires none of the enthusiasm or interest that Americans afford trains, jets，and even bicycles. Dr. Christopher Wilk is a member of a small group of elevator experts who consider this a misunderstanding. Without the elevator, they point out, there could be no downtown skyscrapers or tall buildings, and city life as we know it would be impossible. In that sense, they argue，the elevator's role in American history has been no less significant than that of cars. In fact, according to Wilk_? the car and the elevator have been locked in a “secret war” for over a century, with cars making it possible for people to spread horizontally (水平地)，and elevators pushing them toward life in close groups of towering vertical (垂直的)columns.

    If we tend to ignore the significance of elevators, it might be because riding in them tends to be such a brief, boring, and even awkward experience^one that can involve unexpectedly meeting people with whom we have nothing in common, and an unpleasant awareness of the fact that we're hanging from a cable in a long passage.

    In a new book, Lifted, German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard directed all his attention to this experience, studying the origins of elevator and its relationship to humankind and finding that riding in an elevator has never been a totally comfortable experience. “After 150 years, we are still not used to it”， Bernard said. “We still have not exactly learned to cope with the mixture of closeness and displeasure.” That mixture, according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives.

    Today，as the world's urban population explodes，and cities become more crowded, taller, and more crowded, America's total number of elevators—900,000 at last count, according to Elevator World magazine's “2012 Vertical Transportation Industry”一are a force that's becoming more important than ever. And for the people who really, really love them, it seems like high time that we looked seriously at just what kind of force they are.

    Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of efficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLOSONE, makes it known that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.

    Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense(无意义的词语)words to volunteers undergoing fMRI scans. The words differed in only one letter, such as “farm” and “form” or “soat” and “poat”, or were completely different, such as “farm” and “coat” or “poat” and “hime”. The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words.

    Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons(神经元)in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “farm” to “form”, for example, produced as great a change in activity as changing “farm” to” coat”, the team reports in Neuron. The area responded slowly to single-letter changes in made-up words.

    The data suggests that readers grasp real words as whole objects, rather than focusing on letters or letter combinations. And as a reader's exposure to a word increases, the brain comes to recognize the shape of the word. Meaning is passed on after recognition in the brain, Riesenhuber says.

    The researchers don't yet know how longer and less familiar words are recognized, or if the brain can be trained to recognize nonsense words as a unit.

    Construction on Knolly's Tunnel began in 1896, and it was opened on August 13th, 1898 by the man it was named after--Sir Clement C. Knolly, Acting Governor of Trinidad. It linked Rio Claro with Port of Spain. Its architecture is still admired and studied today, and many are amazed that Knolly's Tunnel has stood up to the earth's movement over so many years.

    Much research is being done on the tunnel. At the top of Knolly's Tunnel are cottages covered with leaves, where visitors can sit and enjoy the beauty of nature. Standing at the beginning of Knolly's Tunnel, you can see nothing but the tiny light at the end. The train tracks have been removed and replaced with small stones. Visitors can drive through the tunnel or walk through, but should do so in groups for safety. In the old days, there were no lights, but now there are street lights on the way to the tunnel, though not inside.

    On your way in, you may notice some manholes on the walls of the tunnel. These were there for individuals to step into for safety as the train passed. Knolly's Tunnel can be accessed through Tabaquite and through Mitchell Gap. The road was recently improved, but is better when you enter from Tabaquite, and there are signs on the road directing you to Knolly's Tunnel.

    On the drive to Knolly's Tunnel there are two other cottages where visitors can sit and just enjoy nature. At the site itself, there is nothing to purchase to eat or drink, but in Tabaquite there are several bars, a restaurant, and food outlets. A gas station and a health centre are also close by.

    For those who admire architecture, Knolly's Tunnel is a must-see when visiting Trinidad. For the nature lovers, there is no better place for them to be and for the historians, they can walk or drive through Knolly's Tunnel knowing that many of our ancestors toiled (worked hard) on its structure. So when you visit Trinidad, don't forget to take a look at Knolly's Tunnel!

    However exciting space exploration sounds, there's a necessary and important point about it that needs to be considered: food supplies. Right now, astronauts typically rely on dry food in airtight bags and cans, since there are strict weight limits on items taken into space. Foods that we take for granted, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are out of the question for space explorers.

    For those who've made an effort to try to grow food during space flights, they've faced many difficulties, including the absence of gravity, and a lack of soil, air and humidity (湿度). However, growing food to add and minimize (最小化) the food that must be carried to space will be increasingly important on long-duration flights into space. Great efforts have been made to explore the concept (idea) of space farming. Recently, a team led by Federico Maggi at the University of Sydney in Australia have worked out how plants can absorb nutrients from human urine (尿), as was reported by New Scientist on March 27.

    After over 20 years of experiments, the results suggested that human urine could supply three to four out of the six nutrients that plants need. The researchers also found out that urine-fertilized plants produce no harmful by-products, such as carbon dioxide or ammonia.

    According to New Scientist, human urine is 95 percent water, with the other 5 percent made from nutrients which are harmful to the human body but not to plants. The advantage of this urine-fueled life support system is obvious: By recycling liquid waste and producing food, an efficient cycle will be created.

    And most importantly, said New Scientist，the duration of space flights will be greatly extended to “20 years of flight”, meaning we may be soon sending astronauts on flights to Mars, or even beyond.

    When something goes wrong, it can be very satisfying to say, "Well, it's so-and-so's fault." or "I know I'm late, but it's not my fault; the car broke down." It is probably not your fault, but once you form the habit of blaming somebody or something else for a bad situation, you are a loser. You have no power and could do nothing that helps change the situation. However, you can have great power over what happens to you if you stop focusing on whom to blame and start focusing on how to remedy the situation. This is the winner's key to success.

    Winners are great at overcoming problems. For example, if you were late because your car broke down, maybe you need to have your car examined more regularly. Or, you might start to carry along with you the useful phone numbers, so you could call for help when in need. For another example, if your colleague causes you problems on the job for lack of responsibility or ability, find ways of dealing with his irresponsibility or inability rather than simply blame the person. Ask to work with a different person, or don't rely on this person. You should accept that the person is not reliable and find creative ways to work successfully regardless of how your colleague fails to do his job well.

    This is what being a winner is all about—creatively using your skills and talents so that you are successful no matter what happens. Winners don't have fewer problems in their lives; they have just as many difficult situations to face as anybody else. They are just better at seeing those problems as challenges and opportunities to develop their own talents. So, stop focusing on "whose fault it is." Once you are confident about your power over bad situations, problems are just stepping stones for success.

Richard Holmes, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, famous for biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, "The Age of Wonder", he wrote about science and Romanticism and their common commitment to discovery. In his new book, "Falling Upwards", he combines the two again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists (气球飞行者).

Mr Holmes's love of balloons was aroused at a village festival and his enthusiasm is one of the book's many pleasures. He refers to the cheerful tone used in many first-hand ballooning stories, and applies it in this second-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under their hydrogen-filled balloons, enjoying cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth to see mankind "for what it really is."

Mr Holmes makes much of the strange side of ballooning, but the book is at its best when examining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both North and South put observers in balloons to spy on enemy movements. And during the Prussian attack on Paris in 1870-71， balloonists managed to fly out of the city to communicate with the French government in exile (流亡) in Tours.

"Falling Upwards" contains much of the historian's writing characteristics, such as footnotes and bibliography (文献书目), but its epilogue (后记) refers modestly to what has gone before as "a series of true balloon stories". It does touch on the more technical aspects of ballooning, and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. That though seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work. Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was being handed over to the airship and the airplane.