Albert Hofmann was a Swiss Scientist who was fascinated by nature. This led him to a career in chemistry in which he sought answers to his uncertainties. He worked at Sandoz Laboratories where he nurtured his research work, and there he made a lot of success by working with various plants and changing them into something useful. He became famous when he became the first person to produce lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) (迷幻药). In addition, he was also the first person to taste it and learn about its hallucinogenic (勾起幻觉的) effects. He was deeply connected to the nature and argued that LSD, besides being useful for psychiatry(精神病学), could also be used to promote awareness of mankind's place in nature. However, he was disappointed that his discovery was being carelessly used as a drug for entertainment. Because of his discovery, LSD fans have fondly called him “The father of LSD”. Besides carrying out his scientific experiments, he also authored numerous books and more than 100 scientific articles. In 2007, he featured in a list of the 100 greatest living geniuses(天才), published by The Telegraph Newspaper.

Childhood & Early Life

    Albert Hofmann was born in Baden, Switzerland, on January 11, 1906. He was the eldest of four children. His father was a poor toolmaker in a factory and they lived in a rented apartment. He spent much of his childhood outdoors, and grew up with a very deep connection with nature.

    He had mind-blowing experiences in childhood, wherein nature was changed in magical ways that he didn't understand. These experiences caused questions in his mind, and chemistry was the scientific field which allowed him to understand them.

    He studied chemistry at Zurich University, and his main interest is the chemistry of plants and animals. At 23, he earned his Ph. D with honors.

    Welcome to SummerCamps.com; find and book the very best summer camps. Your children are precious so we offer the highest quality of camps that will meet each child's needs and interests.

    Catalina Sea Camp

    Sea Camp offers three one-week sessions to boys and girls aged 8-13 and two three-week sessions to teens aged 12-17. Our hand-picked instructors create an atmosphere of fun and excitement while leading campers to a host of ocean adventures, marine(海洋的) biology, and social summer camp activities.

    Address: Toyon Way, San Bruno, California 94066

    Phone: 800-645-1423

    Camp Cayuga

    Camp Cayuga is a private summer camp for children aged 6 to 16. The camp is on a 350-acre land in the Pocono Mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania, just outside the village of Honesdale. It's a 3-hour drive from New York City and Philadelphia.

    Address: 321 Niles Pond Road-Suite ISC, Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

    Phone: 908-470-1224

    Camp Rockmont

    Camp Rockmont is a Christian summer camp for boys, aged 6-16, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Rockmont's duty of developing boys into healthy young men is accomplished through age-appropriate skills, activities, and challenges that help campers to know themselves better.

    Address: 375 Lake Eden Road， Black Mountain, North Carolina 28711

    Phone: 828-686-3885

    Primitive Pursuits Overnight Camps

    Primitive Pursuits Overnight Camps offer week-long Summer Adventure Overnight Camps in New York's Finger Lakes to your children aged 11-15. Campers experience a week of nature-based skills training, inspiring challenges, and fun activities under the guidance of skilled instructors.

    Address: 611 County Rd 13, Van Etten, New York 14889

    Phone: 607-272-2292

    Google, one of the world's outstanding tech companies, was attacked. It wasn't its search engine that was attacked or its advertising platform or even its social network. Google⁺. Instead, it was a building.

    Two web security experts hacked (侵入) into its Wharf 7 office in Sydney, Australia, through Google's building management system (BMS). One of them, Billy Rios, says, “My colleague and I have lot of experience in web security, but it is not something that people couldn't learn. Once you understand how the system works, it is very simple.

    They found the system on Shodan, a search engine that lists devices connected to the Internet, and then ran it through their own software to identify who owned the building. In the case of the Google hacking, the researchers had no immoral purpose and just informed Google about what they found.

    According to Mr Rios, who runs security company Whitescope, there are 50, 000 buildings currently connected to the Internet, including research institutes, churches and hospitals, and 2, 000 of those are online with password protection, Martyn Thomas, a professor of IT at Gresham College in the UK, says, “It is beyond doubt that attempts to attack building management systems are happening all the time.”

    Making a building smart generally means connecting the systems that control heating, lighting and security to the Internet and the wider corporate network. There was a strong reason for doing this, said Andrew Kelly, principal security consultant at defence company Qinetiq.

    “Energy savings are the biggest factor in connecting building management systems to the corporate network,” he says. “It gives those who run the building better control and offers between 20% to 50% in energy savings,” he adds.

    But it also makes them less secure. And if any of these feels like a Hollywood filmy, think again.

    Anyone who has ever played the game of Tetris (俄罗斯方块) knows the game's surreal ability to spill into real life. After you shut off the game, you still see those Tetris blocks falling in your mind. You're grocery shopping and find yourself thinking about rearranging items on grocery shelves. Your mind continues to play the game, even when you're physically not.

    Robert Stickgold, a Harvard professor, noticed something similar after a day hiking a mountain. That night, he dreamt he was still going through the motions of mountain hiking. Curious about this, he tried something: he got a group of college students of various skill levels to play Tetris and let them sleep in the Harvard sleep lab.

    Over 60% of the students, including those who suffered from amnesia (健忘症), reported dreams of images of Tetris pieces falling, rotating (旋转), and fitting together. Interestingly, half the Tetris expert students reported such Tetris dreams, while 75% of the beginners did.

    A study found that playing Tetris can grow your brain and make it more efficient. Adolescent girls played the game for an average of 1.5 hours a week over three months. The cerebral cortex (大脑皮层) of the girls grew thicker, while brain activity in other areas decreased. Richard Haier, who had found that there was a "Tetris learning effect", in which the brain consumed less energy as mastery of the game rose, concluded, "The brain is learning which areas not to use."

    Haier's study showed that as the girls practiced playing the game, nerve cells made connections, communicating through synapses (a synapse is a connection between two nerve cells). When you learn something, you change those connections. Every time you reactivate(激活) a circuit, synaptic efficiency increases, and connections become more durable and easier to reactivate. Stickgold says sleep plays a role in this memory process.

    So to sum up, whenever you do specific tasks over and over again, they take up less of your brain power over time. And that's pretty amazing.

    Membership

    All you need to do is fill out the order form at the bottom of the page, select your first order from our book list and then post the completed form back to us.

    Special offers for new members

    As a special offer, you may choose any reduced-price books from our new members' book list, to the value of 100 yuan in total. Tick the box on your form to order a free watch. Join before the end of this month and you receive another free book carefully chosen by our staff. Order an audio-book from the many on offer, at half the recommended retail price.

    When you've joined

    As a member you get around 50% off the publisher's price of every book you buy, and what's more, they come straight to your door. Your free club magazine arrives once a month to keep you up to date with the latest best-sellers we've added to our list. On the Internet, you can find all our titles for the year at our exclusive members' website. Our website also has a book swap service where members can request or offer books for exchange.

    Being a member

    All you have to do is order four books during your first year. After that, you can decide on the number of books you wish to take. In each of your monthly club magazines, our experienced staff choose a "Book of the Month" for you, which is offered at an extra-special price. If you do not want this book, just say so in the space provided on the form and send it back to us. We always send the book if we do not receive this form.

    Once we receive your order, your books are delivered within one week. And remember, you have up to a fortnight to decide if you wish to keep the books you have ordered. If they aren't what you expected just end them back!

    The following are some of history's most inspirational women recommended by Therese Borchard.

    Who Was Mother Teresa? ￥66.00

    Born in Macedonia, Mother Teresa(1910—1997)taught at St. Mary's High School, in Calcutta, India, but was forced to do something about the suffering and poverty. In 1950 she founded the Missionaries of Charity. Although her devotion to the poor is inspiring, it's her persistence(坚持不懈)through years of doubt, as recorded in her private journals, that inspired me the most.

    The Diary of a Young Girl ￥55.10

    In The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1929—1945) documented her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944 during the German Occupation of the Netherlands. She is a role model of honesty, strength, and hope for me — that even in the most miserable circumstances, you can lead with love.

    A Life of Discovery ￥111.10

    "Do one thing every day that scares you," wrote Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962). She had a lot to choose from, as her life was full of challenges. Eleanor inspires me to bravely deal with problems that matter to me, and to find her way through life's trials and hardships with gracefulness and determination.

    Story of My Life ￥32.50

    A deaf-blind author from Alabama, Helen Keller (1880—1968) provides a powerful example of a woman through two major disabilities to achieve a meaningful life. "We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world," she said. Her attitude of hope and optimism inspires me to use my suffering to become a better and wiser person, to go beyond my pain into service of others.