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    In the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen's apple and falls victim to a curse（诅咒）;in Shakespeare's novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pellets（药丸）that contained mercury（水银）, believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.

    Poison has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?

    An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison.

    The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars（毛毛虫）, frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren't much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered with a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.

    "Poisons can be bad for some things," Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. "Yet they can also be good for others."

    A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol.

    The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances（物质）that we regularly ingest（摄入）-chili, coffee and chocolate-owe their special flavors or stimulating（提神的）effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.

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    The National Air and Space Museum in Washington，DC has thousands of objects on display，including the 1903 Wright Flyer，Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St．Louis，the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia，and a lunar rock you can touch．In addition to our exhibition galleries，you may want to visit the Albert Einstein Planetarium，Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater，and the Public Observatory on the east end．There are many things to do at the Museum in DC．We offer daily tours and educational activities for both children and adults．We also have scheduled lectures and events throughout the year．

Hours & Admission：Open every day except December 25．Admission is free．

    Regular hours：10：00 am to 5：30 pm

    Extended Hours：10：00 am to 7：30 pm

    December 26-30，2016

    March 30-April 20，2017

    Fridays and Saturdays，April 24-May 16，2017

    May 17-September 7，2017

    VISITING TIPS：

    Limit the Number of Bags：All visitors are screened through metal detectors upon entry．The fewer items you bring inside the Museum，the faster your entry．Before you visit，please review the list of prohibited items，which include pocket knives and tripods（三脚架）．Visitors carrying prohibited items will not be allowed inside the museum，so please leave them at home or in your car．

    No food and Drink：Only bottled water is permitted in the Museum．You may only consume food and other drinks in the Food Court，not in the Museum．Groups who bring food are encouraged to picnic on the National Mall．

Please Take Photos：You are welcome to take photos for personal use．However，tripods and monopods（单脚架） are not permitted without approval．

    First Aid：The Museum has a First Aid office and a nurse on duty．Please contact the nearest security officer or the Welcome Center for assistance．

    Visit the Welcome Center：At our Welcome Center in the South Lobby，staff and volunteers can answer any questions you have during your visit．

    Phone：202-633-2214

    E-mail：NASM-VisitorServices@si．edu

    Fashions have a lot of rules. Most of them, however, are just wrong. But there's one rule that goes beyond tradition and into the field of scientific study of the brain: Black garments are slimming. It all comes down to how your visual system processes the light. The below holes in each square are the same in size, yet the white hole looks bigger than the black hole.

    In the 1500s, Galileo Galilei noticed that some of the planets looked larger when viewed with the naked eye (肉眼) than they did when viewed through a telescope, making the white light of Venus (金星) appear eight to ten times larger than Jupiter (木星) in the night sky. He knew something strange must be going on with his vision to cause this illusion, but he wasn't sure what it was. Luckily, scientists never stopped wondering, and in 2014, they figured it out.

    Our visual system operates via two main channels: "on" neurons (神经元) that are sensitive to light things and "off" neurons that are sensitive to dark things. When it came to the dark "off" neurons, the researchers found that they responded predictably to dark shapes on a light background — the greater the contrast between the two, the more active these neurons were. But the light "on" neurons behaved unpredictably. Even with the same amount of contrast, light objects on a dark background caused a greater response in these neurons.

    This makes some sense, evolutionarily speaking. In the dark of night, you'd want to be able to take in every bit of light you can get, so a visual system that enlarges light objects on a dark background could be very useful. However, it's not that hard to see dark objects in the light of day. It has some effects in the colors of your clothes and in the appearance of the planets—the brighter appearance of Venus in the night sky makes it look bigger than the darker Jupiter.

    In 2011, Nancy Ballard went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. "It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy (化疗) rooms," the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

    She was shocked by what she found. The walls were dull and bare, and the paint was chipping (剥落). It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients restricted to chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. Ballard didn't have cancer herself, but she could sympathize with the patients. "I couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that," she says. As it happens, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford, was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

    She started by e-mailing 20 local designers. "I wrote, 'You don't know me. But my heart hurts after seeing these rooms," she remembers. She then asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr. Hufford's rooms each.

    As it happened, six of them wrote back almost immediately. Six rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork, and furniture. Dr. Hufford was delighted. "All the patients feel relieved of the pain because of it," he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

    Ballard was so encouraged by the patients' reactions that she created a nonprofit, Rooms That Rock 4 Chemo, to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. "We were in Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting, and a woman was there on her third battle with cancer," says Ballard. "When she saw what we'd done, she said, 'I'm gonna beat it this time. I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it".

    Making employees feel happy and healthy at work is good for many businesses. But it isn't always an easy thing. A research suggests that just 33% of the U. S. employees consider themselves fully engaged (投身于) at work, while 16% are actively disengaged, and 51% are just showing up.

    But there is an exception. When it comes to employee engagement, it seems that employees in small companies are doing better. According to the same research, the largest U.S. companies have the lowest levels of engagement, while companies with fewer than 25 employees have the highest. And in one recent report, 75 percent of small business workers surveyed said they were "very" or "extremely" satisfied with their role as a small company employee.

    Unlike big companies, small companies are often short of resources but the employees can get more surprises there. Small companies offer excellent career opportunities to their employees. The bosses often know their staff very well and understand their personal needs. Employees of small companies are more likely to receive free meals, paid leave, and they can even bring their pets to work.

    But of course, there're many other draws in small businesses. One of the top draws is flexible scheduling (弹性工时). Another is being able to really see the fruits of one's labor. Besides, non­cash award is also a big draw. This could be something small that reflects employees' interests and lifestyles.

    While a parental leave might lead to some financial problems, small companies may do something to improve it. "It may be impossible for a five­person team to be reduced to four for six months," writes Camilla Velasquez, head of HR management platform Justworks. "But it could be possible to allow new parents to take on reduced hours in a work­from­home environment." This kind of method has been realized in some small companies.

    Reuel Tolkien (1892－1973), the British linguist, writer. He created a fantasy novel "The Lord of the Rings" the well­known trilogy (三部曲).

    Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. When he was 4 years old, his father died and his family moved back to England. Tolkien graduated from Oxford University when he was 23 years old, and participated in the First World War. During the war, Tolkien suffered from "trench fever" and stayed in the hospital until the end of World War Ⅰ. It was the days in the hospital that he began his writing career first.

    After the war, Tolkien became a linguist. He was an editor of the "New English Dictionary" of 1918－1920. However, he was more researching into Anglo­Saxon language which makes his extensive contacts in Britain and the Nordic spread all over the folklore and mythology.

    In 1937, Tolkien completed his first work "The Hobbit". Although this was a fairy tale, it was also suitable for adults to read. Because of good sales, the publisher Allen & Unwin convinced Tolkien to write its sequel. This encouraged Tolkien to complete his most famous works the epic (史诗) trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". The works of writing went on for almost a year with the support from his good friend Lewis.

    At the beginning "The Lord of the Rings" was similar works for children, but after that writing style quickly became serious and dark. "The Lord of the Rings" was one of the most popular literary works in the 20th century in terms of sales and readers' evaluation. Tolkien's influence is important, for the success of "The Lord of the Rings" makes the fantasy novels of this literature genre (体裁) develop rapidly.