Register in person, by phone 264-8833, or by mail. Use form given.

178 IN Winchester St, Chicago

Basic Photography

    This is an eight-hour course for beginners who want to learn how to use a 35mm camera. The teacher will cover such areas as kinds of film, light, and lenses(镜头). Bring your own 35mm camera to class. Course charge: $50. Jan.10,12,17,19, Tues. & Thurs. 6:00~8:00 p.m. Marianne Adams is a professional photographer whose photographs appear in many magazines.

Understanding Computers

    This twelve-hour course is for people who don't know very much about computers, but need to learn about them. You will learn what computers are, what they can and can't do, and how to use them. Course charge:$75. Equipment charge:$10. Jan.14,21,28, Sat. 6:00~10:00 p.m. Joseph Saimders is Professor of Computer Science at New Urban University. He has over twelve years of experience in the computer field.

Typing

    This course on week-days is for typing. You are tested in the first class and practice at one of eight different skill levels. This allows you to learn at your own speed. Each program lasts 20 hours. Bring your own paper. Course charge:$125. Materials charge:$25. Two hours each evening for two weeks. New classes begin every two weeks. This course is taught by a number of business education teachers who have effectively taught typing courses before.

Oil Painting

Oil paint is easy to use once you learn the basics. When you enroll(注册) in this oil painting course, you will learn to draw and paint using many oil painting techniques under complete guidance and instruction. Together—with the teacher's knowledge and your passion—we'll unlock your creativity and develop your potential! Course charge: $35. Jan. 5,12,19,26, Thurs. 2:00—5:00pm. Ralf Ericssion has taught beginners to masters and he has learned that everything builds on just a few basic concepts that he will show you here.

    Recently, the TV show “Where are we going, Dad?” produced by Hunan SatelliteTelevision is a big hit across nation. Many famous stars brought their children to a strange village alone, and they had to spend 72 hours with their children there. The program fully showed us a modern version of the “how to be a good father”. As the young parents today are too busy to take care of their children, this new form of “Lost on the way” played by nanny Daddy and cute kids triggered（触发）a lot of people's emotional resonance（共鸣）. Both the kids and their parents will find that their hearts are being drawn closer. But this kind of feeling has just proved that there is a big spiritual barrier between the modern parents and children.The TV shows like “Children are hard to support!”, “Where are we going, Dad?”, “hot mom” and “cute kids” are becoming more and more popular. All of these show the new parents' confusion in children's education and the appeal for the balance between career and family.

    In the real life, on the one hand, the young parents feel helpless because they are too busy to accompany their children under the pressures of work and life; on the other hand, they continue to do so. The data collected by HNTV shows that nearly two-thirds of their audience are female, among whom 36% are aged from 25 to 34.We can imagine such a scene that one evening a young mother is watching the show with her young children, while her husband is still at work or trapped in socializing, or maybe is just playing computer games in the bedroom. The story of a child without the company of father is still going on. In fact, it is sometimes the same to mothers. In a modern family, it is often the old who take the responsibility of raising a child. The participation of mother in the children's education is also very low.

    It is just this kind of confusion where the parents have gone in the modern family education, and where the parents will guide their children to go that “Where are we going, Dad?” shows us. If a child wants to grow up healthily and safely into a modern citizen with independent personality and free spirit, it is very important for him or her to follow the parents who serve as their first teacher. Maybe this is the real reason why such kind of TV programs could get hot. The truth is that children will go where their parents go; and society will go where the children go.

    For Suilasaikhan, a man living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region(IMAR)(内蒙古自治区), life was hard years ago. When the wind blew, the sand made it almost impossible for him to see anything. He had to find his way back home by following the barking of dogs.

    Thankfully, things are much better today. About one third of the desert is now covered with trees, and sandstorms are less common. Ian Teh, who comes from Malaysia, came to China last year and was amazed to see people planting trees in the several deserts in northern China. "To be honest, it was hard to imagine it was ever a desert at all," he said.

    These are the results of Chinas years-long efforts to deal with desertification (沙漠化). In the 1950s, this widespread problem affected the life of about 400 million people in 18 provinces and autonomous regions in China. So China started several programs to deal with it. For example, the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, saw thousands of trees planted in northern China.

    In 1994, China joined the United Nations' convention (公约) against desertification and created the world's first law on sand prevention in 2001. With these efforts, the past five years have seen the area of desert in China decrease by 242,400 hectares.

    Desertification isn't the problem only in China. With china's success in dealing with desertification, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) believes the country is a good example for other countries to follow. "China is one of the most successful countries in greening the desert and has lessons to share with the world." UNEP Executive Director Erik Solheim told Xinhua.

    In recent years, a growing body of research has shown that our appetite and food intake are influenced by a large number of factors besides our biological need for energy, including our eating environment and our perception（感知）of the food in front of us.

    Studies have shown, for instance, that eating in front of the TV (or a similar distraction) can increase both hunger and the amount of food consumed. Even simple visual clues, like plate size and lighting, have been shown to affect portion size and consumption.

    A new study suggested that our short-term memory also may play a role in appetite. Several hours after a meal, people's hunger levels were predicted not by how much they'd eaten but rather by how much food they'd seen in front of them—in other words, how much they remembered eating.

    This disparity (新旧研究的差异）suggests the memory of our previous meal may have a bigger influence on our appetite than the actual size of the meal, says Jeffrey M. Brunstrom, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Bristol.

    "Hunger isn't controlled individually by the physical characteristics of a recent meal. We have identified an independent role for memory for that meal," Brunstrom says. "This shows that the relationship between hunger and food intake is more complex than we thought."

    These findings echo earlier research that suggests our perception of food can sometimes trick our body's response to the food itself. In a 2011 study, for instance, people who drank the same 380-calorie milkshake on two separate occasions produced different levels of hunger-related hormones （荷尔蒙），depending on whether the shake's label said it contained 620 or 140 calories. Moreover, the participants reported feeling more full when they thought they'd consumed a higher-calorie shake.

    What does this mean for our eating habits? Although it hardly seems practical to trick ourselves into eating less, the new findings do highlight the benefits of focusing on our food and avoiding TV and multitasking while eating.

    The so-called mindful-eating strategies can fight distractions and help us control our appetite, Brunstrom says.

    It was a morning in January. The jet stream (急流)had dipped down, causing the Arctic cold to reach the mountains of my home. It was only 2 degrees outside, but the cold wind made it feel like it was 15 below zero. Still, I was kneeling in the snow alongside my house trying to open a tiny door, so I eoukl get in. 1 had forgotten to leave my water dripping the night before and now my water pipes were frozen and my faucets(水龙头)were dry.

    The wind cut into me like a knife while I struggled to get two electric heaters in place around the section of frozen pipes. The waterlines were buried except for a small piece that connected up to my house. I put a heater on each side of it, ran the extension cords(软线)into my house and plugged them in. Both heaters roared to life and started blowing hot air on the frozen water pipes. My fingers had already started to go numb, so I stayed inside to wait. I could only hope that this bit of warmth could get my water flowing again. Finally, after twenty minutes, the water started flowing through my faucets again. I went back outside into the biller cold and gathered my heaters up. I looked at the weak January sun shining on the frozen snow and smiled. Then I sent a joy filled with "Thank you" heavenward and returned inside to make myself a hot breakfast.

    Sometimes the coldness of this life can get to us as well. It can make our hearts feel icy and frozen. It can keep our kindness and love from flowing out to others. Sometimes, though, all we need is a bit of warnth to get us going again. It can be a simple smile, a kind word, a heart-felt hug, a morning sunrise, a bird's song or any gentle reminder of just how much God loves us. Let us all be grateful for those bits of warmth that gel us going again. And let us all try to be that bit of wannth for others every chance we get.

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

    According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of "early bilinguals" who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

    Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.

    "Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language," said the scientists.

    It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.

    Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. "Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的)," he said. "You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas."

    The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. "Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world," explained the scientists.