The full moon climbs over the eastern horizon (地平线) and hangs like a huge orange globe in the sky. A few hours later, the moon is overhead but seems to have changed. The huge orange globe has become a small silver disk. What has happened? Why has the orange color disappeared? Why does the moon seem so much smaller and farther away now that it is overhead?

    The moon appears orange on the horizon because we view it through the dust of the atmosphere. The overhead moon does not really shrink as it moves away from the horizon. Our eyes inform us that the overhead moon is farther away. But in this position the moon is actually closer to our eyes than when it is near the horizon.

    The change in size is a trick our eyes and minds play on us. When the moon is low in the sky, we can compare its size with familiar objects. It is easy to see that the moon is much larger than trees or buildings, for example. When the moon is high in the sky, however, it is hard to compare it with objects on earth. Compared to the vastness of the sky, the moon seems small.

    There is another reason why the moon seems to shrink. We are used to staring at objects straight ahead of us. When an object is difficult to see, our eyes have to try to focus on it. When we move our heads back to look up, we will try hard again. Looking at something from an unaccustomed position can fool you into believing an object is smaller or farther away than it is. However, scientists do not yet understand completely why the moon seems to shrink as it rises in the sky.

    UK is becoming a popular destination for people who wish to study abroad. However, Britain is quite an expensive place to study and live in. Tuition fees have now reached £ 9,250 a year and students also face some of the highest living costs in the world.

    Fortunately, there are a number of countries where universities offer degree programs entirely in English, along with the chance to learn the local language while you live there. Here are three of the options.

    Tianjin University

    Moving to China is not for the faint hearted. Undergraduate degree courses at Tianjin last four years. Living costs are only around £ 400 a month and tuition fees are £ 2,300 a year. Flights will cost £ 3,600 over the four years. The total cost, at £ 28,800, is still around half that of a three-year degree in Britain. Tianjin is one of the world's latest cities and is only a half-hour train ride from Beijing. Three undergraduate programs are offered in English: Chemical Engineering, Environment & Energy and Pharmaceutical Science.

    University of Amsterdam

    The Dutch capital is not a cheap city to live in, but standard tuition fees of £ 1,800 a year make it significantly cheaper than a British degree. There are 14 bachelor's degrees on offer that are taught in English, including Political Science, Economics & Business Economics and Actuarial Science. Nearly all Dutch people speak English, making it an easy country to get by in.

    University of Milan

The University of Milan's fees range from £ 140 to £3,650 a year. The one bachelor's degree offered entirely in English—Political Science is a three-year course. While living costs in Milan are high, the significantly lower fees make it a cheaper option than a British university.

    When it comes to the most famous 20^th century painters of the United States, Grandma Moses should be mentioned, although she did not start painting until she was in her late seventies. As she once said to herself:" I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me." No one could have had a more active old age.

    She was born on a farm in New York State, one of five boys and five girls. At 12 she left home and was in domestic service until at 27 she married Thomas Moses, the hired hand of one of her employers. They farmed most of their lives, first in Virginia and then in New York State, at Eagle Bridge. She had ten children, of whom five survived; her husband died in 1927.

    Grandma Moses painted a little as a child and made embroidery(刺绣) pictures as a hobby, but only changed to oils in old age because her hands became too stiff(僵硬的) to sew and she still wanted to keep busy and pass the time. Her pictures were first sold at the local drugstore and at a market and were soon noticed by a businessman who bought all that she painted. Three of the pictures were exhibited(展览) in the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first exhibition in New York. Between the 1930's and her death, she produced some 2,000 pictures: careful and lively portrayals of the country life she had known for so long, with a wonderful sense of color and form. "I think really hard till I think of something really pretty, and then I paint it" she said.

My Favourite Books

    Jo Usmar is a writer for Cosmopolitan and co-author of the This Book Will series（系列）of lifestyle books. Here she picks her top reads.

    Matilda

    Roald Dahl

    I once wrote a paper on the influence of fairy tales on Roald Dahl's writing and it gave me a new appreciation for his strange and delightful words. Matilda's battles with her cruel parents and the bossy headmisres, Miss Trunchbull, are equally funny and frightening, but they're also aspirational.

    After Dark

    Haruki Murakami

    It's about two sisters-Eri, a model who either won't or can't stop sleeping, and Mari, a young student. In trying to connect to her sister. Mari starts changing her life and discovers a world of diverse "night people" who are hiding secrets.

    Gone Girl

    Gillian Fynn

    There was a bit of me that didn't want to love this when everyone else on the planet did but the horror story is brilliant. There's tension and anxiety from the beginning as Nick and Amy battle for your trust. It's a real whodunit and the frustration when you realise what's going on is horribly enjoyable

    The Stand

    Stephen King

    This is an excellent fantasy novel from one of the best storytellers around. After a serious flu outbreak wipes out 99.4% of the world's population, a battle unfolds between good and evil among those let. Randall Flagg is one of the scariest characters ever.

Hip-hop started 50 years ago as an escape from poverty and violence in Bronx, New York City. The music and style appealed to Black and Latino teenagers. As hip-hop spread throughout New York, so did the culture.

People often mix up hip-hop with rap. Rap is a musical style that combines quick recitation of rhymes with musical beats. But hip-hop is more than just music. It is a culture, and rap music is one part of it. Hip-hop also includes other activities, like breakdancing, disc-jockeying and graffiti art. In his 1993 song Hip Hop vs. Rap, KRS-One said: "Rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live." In the early days of hip-hop, playing music on the streets or turning a basketball court into a dance floor may have seemed like a simple invitation to have fun and party. But it actually was an answer to social and economic injustice in poor neighborhoods. It was a way to show joy and imagination even without resources and wealth.

As hip-hop and rap music grew into a force in American culture, entertainers used it to speak to their personal realities. In 1982, in the song The Message, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five criticized poverty and a lack of investment in Black communities. Several years later, Tupac Shakur complained about police violence in the song Changes. Today, hip-hop's influence on music and other industries is so widespread that experts say it becomes difficult to measure.

There is also hip-hop's influence on protest, resistance and political dissent(异议)around the world. From the Arab Spring and the Palestinian freedom fight to feminism and class struggles, rap music is a popular expression for calls to action. Music videos produced by artists in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America often include breakdancers, graffiti and other elements of hip-hop.

"Hip-hop took the chains off us and said, ‘No, we're gonna say it our way,' " Al Sharpton, American civil rights leader, said, "It was that freedom. It was that raw, non-watered down kind of expression."

It's one of the biggest challenges in higher education today: What do you do with the nearly one in five working-age adults who have some college experience, but no degree?

Sokeo Ros was one of them. "I just hated community college," he says. "I made up my mind: I'm never going back to school. I have all these debts, and I don't want to waste my time." Ros,34, was born in Thailand. He dropped out of two colleges, switching majors several times. Meanwhile, he taught dance in Providence, R. I. , struggling to raise his daughter. But in 2012, he found College Unbound that accepts adults, like Ros.

College Unbound is the creation of educator Dennis Littky He is devoted to helping adults make their own path to a degree through College Unbound. Nearly all the students can get scholarship. They are paired one-on-one with advisers who help them make a plan that combines a job with online classes and independent research. Students create online works and show their live exhibitions.

Right now,College Unbound has about 75 students. It makes a great effort to keep the total cost per student under $10,000 per year. So far, the approach seems to be working:85 percent of its students have returned for a second year;60 percent of graduates take less than two years to complete their bachelor's degrees. And nearly nine of 10 College Unbound alumni (校友) are employed full-time.

Littky says College Unbound's goal is to create a new learning experience giving students more than just job training or qualifications. At last it lets adults understand lifelong learning is important for them.

Sokeo Ros experienced that. "At first, I just wanted to get a degree. But I kind of fell in love with the idea that learning is a lifelong experience."