A Guide to the University

    Food

    The TWU Cafeteria is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.It serves snacks（小吃）,drinks, ice cream bars and meals.You can pay with cash or your ID cards.You can add meal money to your ID cards at the Front Desk.Even if you do not buy your food in the cafeteria,you can use the tables to eat your lunch,to have meetings with your friends and to study.

    If you are on campus in the evening or late at night, you can buy snacks,fast food,and drinks in the Lower Cafe located in the bottom level of the Douglas Center.This area is often used for entertainment such as concerts,games or TV watching.

    Relaxation

    The Globe, located in the bottom level of McMillan Hall,is available for relaxing,studying,cooking and eating. Monthly activities are held here for all international students.Hours are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed on Sundays.

    Academic Support

    All students have access to the Writing Center on the upper floor of Douglas Hall.Here,qualified volunteers will work with you on written work,grammar,vocabulary and other academic skills.If you heed help,you can sign up for an appointment by finishing the sign-up sheet outside the door,two 30-minute appointments per week maximum. This service is free.

    Transportation

    The TWU Express is a shuttle（班车）service.The shuttle transports students between campus and the shopping center, leaving from the Mattson Centre.Operation hours are between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.Saturdays only.Round trip fare is $1.

    The koala is an unusual creature. Native to Australia and a bit bigger than a rabbit, it spends most of its time in eucalyptus trees（桉树）, feeding on leaves that are poisonous to nearly every other animal on the planet.

    The koala sleeps about 22 hours a day and spends the remainder of its time eating and resting. It might spend 10 minutes a day moving, experts say, usually from one tree to another. It has a soft pad at the end of its spine and extra thick fur on its rear end to make the effort, of sitting more comfortable.

    Threats and protective measures

    The unique lifestyle of the koala has helped it prosper, but today the cute and iconic creature is facing threats from habitat loss, disease and a changing climate. Koala populations are expected to decline by 50 percent in the next 20 years according to the Australian Museum.

    To help protect these animals, which bring in an estimated $1.1 billion to Australia each year through koala-related tourism, an international team of researchers has published the first complete genome（基因组）of the koala. Their hope is that the keys to the marsupial's（有袋动物）long-term survival might be planted in its genetic code.

"The ultimate goal is that we won't have to…rescue them from the edge of extinction," said Rebecca Johnson of the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney, who led the work.

    "Now we have a really good understanding of the koala genome, and we are in a fantastic position to use that knowledge to help us manage them."

    Early findings

    An elementary analysis of the koala's genome, published in Nature Genetics, has already yielded some interesting findings.

    For example, the authors found that, compared to other mammals, the koala's DNA includes an expansion in the number of genes that encode for enzymes involved in anti-poison. That allows them to have a diet that depends almost entirely on eucalyplus leaves which are unusually high in poison. However, it also means that koalas metabolize（代谢）medicines like anti-chlamydia antibiotics faster than other animals.

    The koala genome also revealed why koalas are such famously picky eaters. They are known to consume leaves from just 20 of Australia's 60 known eucalyplus species. And even when they are in one of their preferred trees, koalas take leaf selection very seriously.

    Information waiting to be discovered

    Johnson said that the information encoded in the koala's DNA is already being included in management strategies by conservation groups. However, she said the findings described in the new paper represent the early stages of what can be gleamed from the marsupial's genome.

    "The data is public, and I would love for anyone to start mining it and see what other amazing things they can find," she said." Once you have a genome of this quality, the sky's the limit with what you can do with it."

    Prosocial behaviors are those intended to help other people. Behaviors that can be described as prosocial include feeling empathy(同感) and concern for others and behaving in ways to help or benefit other people.

    Prosocial behavior has long posed a challenge to social scientists seeking to understand why people engage in helping behaviors that are beneficial to others, but costly to the individual performing the action. Why would people do something that benefits someone else but offers no immediate benefit to the doer?

    Psychologists suggest that there are a number of reasons why people engage in prosocial behavior. In many cases, such behaviors are fostered during childhood and adolescence as adults encourage children to share, act kindly, and help others. Prosocial behaviors are often seen as being compelled by a number of factors including egoistic reasons (doing things to improve one's self­image), reciprocal benefits (doing something nice for someone so that they may one day return the favor), and more altruistic reasons (performing actions purely out of empathy for another individual).

    Characteristics of the situation can also have a powerful impact on whether or not people engage in prosocial actions. The bystander effect is one of the most notable examples of how the situation can impact helping behaviors. The bystander effect refers to the tendency for people to become less likely to assist a person in distress when there are a number of other people also present. For example, if you drop your purse and several items fall out on the ground, the likelihood that someone will stop and help you decreases if there are many other people present. This same sort of thing can happen in cases where someone is in serious danger, such as when someone is involved in a car accident. In some cases, witnesses might assume that since there are so many other present, someone else will have surely already called for help.

    Why do people help in some situations but not in others? Experts have discovered a number of different situational variables that contribute to (and sometimes interfere with) prosocial behaviors. First, the more people that are present decreases the amount of personal responsibility people feel in a situation. People also tend to look to others for how to respond in such situations, particularly if the event contains some level of ambiguity. Fear of being judged by other members of the group also plays a role. People sometimes fear leaping to assistance, only to discover that their help was unwanted or unwarranted. In order to avoid being judged by other bystanders, people simply take no action.

    Experts have suggested that some key things must happen in order for a person to take action.

Memorial Day is a time that many associate with a slower pace affording, maybe, a little more free time to read. We asked some of our regular book reviewers what titles they are most looking forward to reading this summer. Here's what they said.