Birthdays often involve surprises.But this year's surprise on the birthday of the great British playwright William Shakespeare is surely one of the most dramatic.

    On April 22,one day before his 441st birthday anniversary,experts discovered that one of the most recognizable portraits（画像）of William Shakespeare is a fake.This means that we no longer have a good idea of what Shakespeare looked like."It's very possible that many pictures of Shakespeare might be unreliable because many of them are copies of this one,"said an expert from Britain's National Portrait Gallery.

    The discovery comes after four months of testing using modern chemistry technology.The experts from the gallery say the image—commonly known as the "Flower portrait"—was actually painted in the 1800s,about two centuries after Shakespeare's death.The art experts who work at the gallery say they also used modern chemistry technology to check the paint on the picture.These checks found traces of paint dating from about 1814.Shakespeare died in 1616,and the date that appears on the portrait is 1609.

    “We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to 1840.This was when there was a renewed interest in Shakespeare's plays,”Tarnya Cooper,the gallery's curator（馆长）,told the Associated President.

    The fake picture has often been used as a cover for collections of his plays.It is called the Flower portrait because one of its owners,Desmond Flower,gave it to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

    “There have always been questions about the painting,”said David Howells,curator for the Royal Shakespeare Company.“Now we know the truth,we can put the image in its proper place in the history of Shakespearean portraiture.”

    Two other images of Shakespeare,are also being studied as part of the investigation and the results will come out later this month.

    Winters are long and unforgiving in North Dakota. The winter of 1996 was especially brutal. It was a hard time in my own life too, A neck injury had kept me flat in bed for nearly a year. “Just in time for Easter,” my husband, Dick, said. But how could I feel the joy when the snow was four feet deep and I had months of painful physical treatment ahead?

    I was doing the dishes one day, feeling hopeless when there was a tap against the glass. It was a branch of the troublesome cottonwood (棉白杨).Back in the fall of 1979, it was a new subdivision (分支) then, an eight-foot stick. The people who'd briefly occupied the house before us had placed the pipe from the pump next to it. The earth was so wet that the poor thing had fallen down, most of its bare root system pointing skyward, and blowing hopelessly back and forth in the cold wind. Dick decided to pull it out one day, but I disapproved of it.

    “Look at how hard it's trying!” I said, pointing to the way it strongly kept hold of the earth. “It deserves a chance.”

    Dick borrowed some tools. We packed dry soil around the tree and put up some stakes (桩) into the ground, making it stand upright. That winter was still terrible. Surprisingly, in the spring my “rescue stick” put forth a few leaves, then with lots of branches. The year after that, we were able to remove the stakes. By the 1990s that little stick was a giant, towering over the house.

    Now the tapping at the window continued, louder as the wind picked up, almost as though to tell me to look up. At last, I did. I caught ray breath. In the window against the icy blue sky, thousands and thousands of fresh red buds were waving in the wind.

    The tree was bursting with life and I had a wonderful Easter.

    20 years ago, a couple of ecologists, Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs, convinced Del Oro, a large orange juice producer, to donate part of their forestland to a national park in exchange for the right to dump (倾倒) massive amounts of orange peels on a 3-hectare piece of land within the national park, at no cost. Dealing with tons of waste peels usually involved burning them or paying to have them dumped at a landfill, so the proposal was very attractive.

    A year after the contract was signed, Del Oro dumped around 12,000 tons of sticky orange waste in the land. However, another juice company and rival of Del Oro challenged the deal in court, arguing that their competitor was “polluting the national park”. They ended up winning, and the deal between Del Oro and the national park fell through. The 3-hectare piece of land virtually covered with fruit waste was completely forgotten.

    Then, in 2013, Timothy Treuer, a scientist at Princeton University visited that piece of land 15 years earlier. What he found shocked him. “It was completely overgrown with trees and vines,” Timothy Treuer recently said, “the difference between fertilized and unfertilized areas was visually surprised us a lot! We needed to come up with some really good standards to evaluate exactly what was happening there.”

    To confirm that the fruit waste was responsible for the revival of plant life, Treuer and his team spent months picking up samples, analyzing and comparing them. They found “dramatic differences between the areas covered in orange peels and those that were not. The area fertilized by orange waste had richer soil, greater tree-species richness and greater forest coverage. In a sense, it's not just a win-win between the company and the local park—it's a win for everyone.”

    The effect the orange peels had on the land is probably not that surprising to people familiar with composting (堆肥), but what is shocking is that a judge actually called this particular example polluting the national park and stopped it from going forward. Now that Timothy Treuer's study has received worldwide attention, this type of polluting is being seriously considered as a way of bringing tropical forests back to life.

    The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cooled uniform, stood at the table; his poor helpers were behind him; the gruel (稀粥) was served out; and after they spoke to God to give thanks, there was little time left to eat. The gruel disappeared immediately; the boys whispered each other, and encouraged Oliver to ask for more. Oliver was very hungry and decided to take a risk. He rose from the table; and went to the master, plate and spoon in hand, said:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

    ①

    The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He looked at Oliver in great surprise for some seconds, and nearly fell but for the support to the table. The helpers were frozen with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at last, in a confused voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

    The master hit Oliver's head with the ladle; and screamed for Mr. Bumble.

    ②

    The board were sitting in plotting (密谋) something, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and spoke to the gentleman loudly in the high chair, said:

"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!"

    ③

"For more!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Calm yourself, Bumble, and answer me clearly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted (配给) by the dietary?"

"He did, sir, "replied Bumble.

"That boy will be hung, " said the gentleman in white. "I know that boy will be hung."

    Nobody was against the gentleman's opinion. A heated discussion took place. Oliver was put in a cold, dark room and no boys were allowed to talk to him; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish (教区).In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.

    ④

"I never was more convinced of anything in my life, "said the gentleman in white, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill next morning: "I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung."

    "Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts," Marion Brando once said. But for scientists, working out what is going on in an actor's head has always been something of a puzzle.

    Now, researchers have said actors show different patterns of brain activity depending on whether they are in character or not.

    Dr Steven Brown, from McMaster University in Canada, said, "It looks like when you are acting, you are suppressing (压制) yourself; almost like the character is possessing you."

    Brown and colleagues report how 15 actors, mainly theatre students, were trained to take on a Shakespeare role — either Romeo or Juliet — in a theatre workshop. They were then invited into the laboratory, where their brains were scanned in a series of experiments.

    Once inside the MRI scanner, the actors were asked to answer a number of questions, such as: would they go to the party? And would they tell their parents that they had fallen in love?

    Each actor was asked to respond to different questions, based on two different premises (前提). In one, they were asked for their own perspective, while in the other, they were asked to respond as though they were either Romeo or Juliet.

    The results revealed that the brain activity differed depending on the situation being tested. The team found that when the actors were in character, they use some third-person knowledge or inferences about their character.

    The team said they also found additional reduction in activity in two regions of the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) linked to the sense of self, compared with when the actors were responding as themselves.

    However, Philip Davis, a professor at the University of Liverpool, was unimpressed by the research, saying acting is about far more than "pretending" to be someone — it involves embodying (体现) the text and language.

    Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous scientists in this century. He was born in 1942. He's world well-known on space and time. Stephen was searching some very big questions, such as "How did the universe begin? How will it end?"

    Stephen was a student at Oxford University. He studied math and science. Then, at the age of twenty, he became sick. He was so young, but the doctors said to his family, "He has only two more years to live." As a matter of fact, the doctors were wrong – he didn't die. He can't walk but he uses a wheelchair. He can't feed himself and get in or out of bed himself. But he refused to give in to the condition. He talks with the help of a computer. After Oxford, Stephen went to Cambridge University. Three years later, in 1965, he became a doctor of philosophy(哲学).

    Because of his serious health problems, it was difficult for him to draw or to write. So he started to think in pictures. With this new way of thinking, he became one of the most famous scientists in the world. In 1981, he met the Pope(教皇) in Rome. They talked about his ideas. Then in 1988, he wrote his first important book, A Brief History of Time. It sold more than 5.5 million copies in 33 different languages. He was once invited to China, he impressed us with his self-confidence, humorous and witty(风趣的) conversation.(谈话)