The year 2117 will be an eventful one for art. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats' “century cameras”— cameras with a 100-year-long exposure (曝光)time—will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited. Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will open its doors for the first time, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2017.

    As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: “Future Library is an artwork for future generations.” These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of slow art intended to push viewers and Participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today's short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture—not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.

    In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time—a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than30seconds on each piece of art.

Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it's in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. “Since I started living in a city, I've somehow been quite disconnected,” Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the Pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told The Atlantic magazine.

    The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups. Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, uneasiness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; therefore attempts may be made to fill every gap (间隙) with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.

    Many Native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communicating among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thai persons do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what maybe implied (暗示) is that the person wants the listener to consider what has been said before continuing. In these cultures, silence is a call for reflection.

    Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with conflicts (冲突) among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions arc given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.

    Nurses and other care-givers need to be aware of the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal anxiety their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient's silence is not interrupted too early or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing (治愈) value of silence can use this understanding to help in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.

    Barbara McClintock was one of the most important scientists of the twentieth century. She made important discoveries about genes and chromosomes (染色体).

    Barbara McClintock was born in 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family moved to the Brooklyn area of New York City in 1908. Barbara was an active child with interests in sports and music. She also developed an interest in science.

    She studied science at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Barbara was among a small number of undergraduate students to receive training in genetics in 1921. Years later, she noted that few college students wanted to study genetics.

    Barbara McClintock decided to study botany, the scientific study of plants, at Cornell University. She completed her undergraduate studies in 1923. McClintock decided to continue her education at Cornell. She completed a master's degree in 1925. Two years later, she finished all her requirements for a doctorate degree.

    McClintock stayed at Cornell after she completed her education. She taught students botany. The 1930s were not a good time to be a young scientist in the United States. The country was in the middle of the great economic Depression. Millions of Americans were unemployed. Male scientists were offered jobs. But female geneticists were not much in demand.

    An old friend from Cornell, Marcus Rhoades, invited McClintock to spend the summer of 1941 working at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It is a research center on Long Island, near New York City. McClintock started in a temporary job with the genetics department. A short time later, she accepted a permanent position with the laboratory. This gave her the freedom to continue her research without having to teach or repeatedly ask for financial aid.

    By the 1970s, her discoveries had had an effect on everything from genetic engineering to cancer research. McClintock won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for her discovery of the ability of genes to change positions on chromosomes. She was the first American woman to win an unshared Nobel Prize.

    If conditions get bad enough, almost any kind of weather can become a storm.

Stormy weather can cause people to cancel their plans. It can cause major events to be postponed. And severe stormy weather can be dangerous to people, fortune and anima1.

    If you weather the storm, or ride out the storm, you survive and move on without harm or injury. For example, 1et's talk about Tornado Alley, the name for part of the central United States. During springtime, this area often has a large number of powerful tornadoes. People who live there are taught to shelter in the safest place they can find and wait for the storm to pass. People who live in Tornado Alley are used to weathering many storms!

    You can also weather a storm, but it doesn't involve actual weather. “To weather the storm” can also mean to make it through a difficult experience or trying times. So, if the stock market(股市)crashes, you might have to weather a financial storm.

    Often before a big storm, conditions are calm. The calm before the storm can happen anytime. It is the time before something bad happens. For example, at the beginning of a family reunion, the adults were all talking happily. But the older children knew it was just the calm before the storm. They've seen it happen before. The adults talk happily for about an hour. Then they start arguing about events from the past—things that should really stay buried!

    But after the storm begins and you find yourself in the middle of it, you are in the eye of the storm. In the world of weather, the eye of the storm is the calmest part, in the center of a hurricane, for example. However, in the English language, if you are in the eye of the storm, you are in the most intense part of a conflict. For example, she had no idea that walking into the meeting would put her in the eye of the storm.

    However, a brainstorm does not exist in the world of weather. To brainstorm means to try to solve a problem by talking with other people. And don't worry. If we have trouble thinking of an idea for the next program, we can always brainstorm with you!

    Thomas Cheatham had planned to study Latin during his time at Hebron High School in Texas. But when he learned that the school district was going to offer a Mandarin(普通话) class, he quickly changed his mind.

    "I thought Mandarin would be more beneficial than Latin," said Cheatham, who is now in his second year of studying the language.

    He speaks Mandarin to order food at Chinese restaurants and can read social media posts from his Chinese-speaking friends. While it's a difficult language to master, the high school junior, who plans to study computer engineering, thinks it will be important for his career. "Chinese is a good language to know, especially with China becoming a growing power," he said.

    Many experts agree that proficiency(熟练) in a language spoken by a billion people worldwide will give American students an edge in the global economy.

    "People are looking at China as our next economic competitor, and interest in Mandarin is growing fast," said Marty Abbott, director of the American Council(议会) on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. "We're seeing it in all parts of the country."

    Abbott predicts that as many as 100,000 students are now studying Mandarin in public and private schools throughout the US. She said the US government has designated (指定) Mandarin as an "important needs" language and provides professional development programs for teachers. "Our government wants to increase our language ability for national security and economic competitiveness," Abbott added.

    At the same time, the Chinese government is spreading knowledge of the Chinese language and culture through Confucius Institutes set up in many US states. For example, the Confucius Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas has been the home of a Confucius Institute for 10 years. It sponsors Confucius Classrooms at 21 local public and private schools, where tens of thousands of students are learning Mandarin.

    Suppose you become a leader in an organization. It's very likely that you'll want to have volunteers to help with the organization's activities. To do so, it should help to understand why people undertake volunteer work and what keeps their interest in the work.

    Let's begin with the question of why people volunteer. Researchers have identified several factors that motivate people to get involved. For example, people volunteer to express personal values related to unselfishness, to expand their range of experiences, and to strengthen social relationships. If volunteer positions do not meet these needs, people may not wish to participate. To select volunteers, you may need to understand the motivations of the people you wish to attract.

    People also volunteer because they are required to do so. To increase levels of community service, some schools have launched compulsory volunteer programs. Unfortunately, these programs can shift people's wish of participation from an internal factor (e.g. "I volunteer because it's important to me") to an external factor (e.g. "I volunteer because I'm required to do so"). When that happens, people become less likely to volunteer in the future. People must be sensitive to this possibility when they make volunteer activities a must.

    Once people begin to volunteer, what leads them to remain in their positions over time? To answer this question, researchers have conducted follow-up studies in which they track volunteers over time. For instance, one study followed 238 volunteers in Florida over a year. One of the most important factors that influenced their satisfaction as volunteers was the amount of suffering they experienced in their volunteer positions. Although this result may not surprise you, it leads to important practical advice. The researchers note that attention should be given to "training methods that would prepare volunteers for troublesome situations or provide them with strategies for coping with the problem they do experience".

    Another study of 302 volunteers at hospitals in Chicago focused on individual differences in the degree to which people view "volunteer" as an important social role. It was assumed that those people for whom the role of volunteer was most part of their personal identity would also be most likely to continue volunteer work. Participants indicated the degree to which the social role mattered by responding to statements such as "Volunteering in Hospital is an important part of who I am." Consistent with the researchers' expectations, they found a positive correlation (正相关) between the strength of role identity and the length of time people continued to volunteer. These results, once again, lead to concrete advice: "Once an individual begins volunteering, continued efforts might focus on developing a volunteer role identity…Items like T-shirts that allow volunteers to be recognized publicly for their contributions can help strengthen role identity".