At first, muffled (听不太清的)conversations made researchers at a San Diego aquarium puzzled, but when a diver thought he was being told to get “out” of the water they realized the conversations were coming from a white whale.

    Noc was about one year old when he was caught off the Pacific coast of Canada. He was kept in an open-ocean pen (围栏) at the US National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, California. After seven years at the Foundation, he began, automatically, to make unusual sounds, a report in the latest issue of the journal, Current Biology, said.

    “We thought of the whale' s vocalizations(发出的声音) as an attempt to imitate humans. Whale vocalizations often sounded as if two people were talking just out of the range of our understanding,” the authors said. “ 'These conversations' were heard several times before we finally realized the whale was the source.” The researchers realized it was Noc when a diver surfaced and asked, “Who told me to get out?” It was then that they realized the word “out”, which was repeated several times, had come from Noc. Later, his speech-like sounds were recorded in the air and underwater.

    Noc started making the sounds after seven years in the open-ocean pen, and continued making them for another four years. He died five years ago. Researchers have now analyzed the sound recordings. It was the first time that sound recordings had shown how such sounds imitated speech and were different from the usual calls of the species.

    The speech-like sounds were lower than normal whale sounds and much closer to those of the human voice. Also, whales talk to each other by blowing air through their noses, rather than using a larynx(喉), as people do.

    “We don't claim that our whale was a good imitator compared to such well-known imitators as parrots,” the researchers said. “However, the behavior we observed is an example of vocal learning by the white whale. It seems that Noc's close association with humans played a role in how often and how well he employed his human voice.”

    Upcoming Events of New York Chinese Cultural Center

    Fan Dance

    Sunday, September8, 2:00pm-3:00 pm, $15 per child

    New-York Historical Society Museum & Library

    Learn Chinese fan dancing with an instructor from NYCCC! This program is a part of an exhibition which examines the history of trade and immigration between China and the United States.

    Dragon Boat Festival

    Friday, September13,2:00pm -2:30pm

    Fresh Meadows Park

    Come and celebrate with us in the thousand-year-old tradition of Dragon Boat racing! Be part of the audience and enjoy the excitement of this celebration. FREE ADMISSION! Click here for more information. Dragon Boat Festival will be held in Fresh Meadows Park.

    Dance to China

    Sunday, September15, 2 pm

Spruce Street School Auditorium, 12 Spruce St, New York, NY 10038

Join us in celebrating 43 years of preserving and continuing Chinese traditional dance. Students from NYCCC School of the Arts will be performing traditional Chinese dance, martial arts, and Beijing opera. Cost is $15 for adults, $12 for teenagers and senior citizens, $10 for children under 12.

    NYCCC School of the Arts Open House

    Saturday, September21, from 1:00pm -3:00 pm, $12 per child

    PS 124, Yung Wing School, 40 Division Street, New York, NY 10002

    Join us and see Chinese dance, kung fu, and acrobatic (杂技的)performances performed by our current students. Come and see our students' beautiful artwork on display and make some artwork yourselves during our hour of arts and crafts and face painting from 1-2 pm. The show will be from 2-3pm.

    You can relax if remembering everything isn't your strong suit. Recent research makes the case that being forgetful can be a strength—in fact, selective memory can even be a sign of stronger intelligence.

    Traditional research on memory has focused on the advantages of remembering everything. But looking through years of recent memory data, researchers found that the neurobiology of forgetting can be just as important to our decision-making as what our minds choose to remember.

    Making intelligent decisions doesn't mean you need to have all the information at hand. It just means you need to hold onto the most valuable information. And that means clearing up space in your memory palace for the most up-to-date information on clients and situations. Our brains do this by creating new neurons(神经元）in our  hippocampus, which have the power to overwrite(重写)existing memories that are influencing our decision-making.

    If you want to increase the number of new neurons in our brain's learning region, try exercising. Some aerobic exercise like jogging, power walking and swimming has been found to increase the number of neurons making important connections in our brains.

    When we forget the names of certain clients or details about old jobs，the brain is making a choice that these details don't matter. Although too much forgetfulness can be a cause for concern, the occasional lost detail can be a sign of a perfectly healthy memory system. The researchers found that our brains facilitate decision-making by stopping us from focusing too much on unimportant past details. Instead，the brain helps us remember the most important part of a conversation.

    We can get blamed for being absent-minded when we forget past events in perfect detail. These findings show us that total recall(记忆)can be overvalued. Our brains are working smarter when they aim to remember the right stories, not every story.

In 1962, Rachel Carson's bestseller Silent Spring created an awareness of the dangerous effects of pesticides. Then, a fire, which broke out in 1969 on Cleveland's Guyahoga River, {#blank#}3{#/blank#}(reveal) the problem of chemical pollution in water. Senator Gaylord Nelson dreamed of a similar event {#blank#}4{#/blank#} would get people to take environmental issues seriously. In 1969, he was greatly inspired by protests {#blank#}5{#/blank#} the Vietnam War and came up with the idea for Earth Day.

In the fall of 1969, Nelson announced it and appealed to the entire country to get {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (involve). Consequently, telegrams, letters and telephone calls from all over the country poured in. Since 1970, Earth Day celebrations {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (grow) . Later, Nelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of his work.

Today, numerous {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (community) celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on the 64. {#blank#}9{#/blank#} (environment) issues. In 2017, the March for Science {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (occur) on Earth Day and was followed by the People's Climate Mobilization on April 29. 

It's 4:30 in the morning. Behind a forest, the sun begins to lighten the sky with bright and warm tones. The national bird of Honduras, scarlet macaws （红金刚鹦鹉）, which have colorful feathers, groom （理毛） each other as they wait for Anayda Pantin Lopez who has devoted the last 12 years to protecting them.

Pantin and her husband, Santiago Lacuth Montoya, live in a small village called Mabita, where most of its villagers protect these birds and the rest of the wildlife surrounding them. Twice a day, Pantin prepares food for 40 to 60 scarlet macaws that come to her village for feedings. She also cares for several other birds at a rescue center, or chicks that fall down from their nests, until they can fly freely.

Years ago, Lacuth supported the family by selling macaw eggs and chicks as pets — not realizing it would have a detrimental impact on the bird population. At that time, the hunting and sale of wild species was legal and thousands of scarlet macaws disappeared.

However, when Lacuth learned the number of scarlet macaws was sharply decreasing, he decided to become a guardian of them. He tried to convince other hunters to follow in his footsteps. Eventually, other Mabita residents joined Lacuth and Pantin's efforts. "For many years the scarlet macaws helped me provide for my family. Now it was my turn to help them," Lacuth said.

"The Mabita project is very impressive because of the commitment of Pantin and Lacuth and the entire community," says LoraKim Joyner. founder of One Earth Conservation. In 2014, additional funds came from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and England's Darwin Foundation stepped in to support the conservation and community engagement efforts.

Since the project began, the scarlet macaw population has grown from 500 to more than 800. "Now we have seen that the number of these birds has increased," said Pantin. "But that does not change our goal, which is to continue caring for them so that our children and grandchildren can have the opportunity to enjoy everything that nature gives us."