One of the greatest contributions to the first Oxford English Dictionary was also one of its most unusual. In 1879, Oxford University in England asked Prof. James Murray to serve as editor for what was to be the most ambitious dictionary in the history of the English language. It would include every English word possible and would give not only the definition but also the history of the word and quotations (引文)showing how it was used.

    This was a huge task. So Murrary had to find volunteers from Britain, the United States, and the British colonies to search every newspaper, magazine, and book ever written in English. Hundreds of volunteers responded, including William Chester Minor. Dr. Minor was an American Surgeon who had served in the Civil War and was now living in England. He gave his address as “Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire,” 50 miles from Oxford.

    Minor joined the army of volunteers sending words and quotations to Murray. Over the next years, he became one of the staff's most valued contributors.

    But he was also a mystery. In spite of many invitations, he would always decline to visit Oxford. So in 1897， Murray finally decided to travel to Crowthorne himself. When he arrived, he found Minor locked in a book-lined cell at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally insane.

    Murray and Minor became friends, sharing their love of words. Minor continued contributing to the dictionary, sending in more than 10,000 submissions in 20 years. Murray continued to visit Minor regularly, sometimes taking walks with him around the asylum grounds.

    In 1910, Minor left Broadmoor for an asylum in his native America. Murray was at the port to wave goodbye to his remarkable friend.

    Minor died in 1920, seven years before the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was completed. The 12 volumes defined 414,825 words, and thousands of them were contributions from a very scholarly and devoted asylum patient.

"Dad," I say one day …..take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    My father had just reired……….. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drfting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

" What is our first stop?" asks my father.

"What time is it?"

"Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

"Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything?

No directions, …… I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad? I ask.

"Only once," he says. " I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.">

    The kast sebtebce—it's probably the same thing I's say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—— and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

"The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says." We have got to take another trip like that sometime.

    I tell him I've learn decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

    Every year on April 1, April Fools' Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. In France, it's called "Poisson d' Avril" or "Fish of April." In Scotland, the holiday is often called "Gowkie Day." In Iraq, the holiday is called Kithbet Neesan or "April Lie."

    History experts say people have celebrated April Fools' Day for a long time. Some believe the tradition comes from the ancient Romans more than two thousand years ago. It was a day of playing games and pretending to be someone else.

    Others say the day for fooling began in France in 1564, when King Charles changed the yearly calendar. He moved New Year's Day from April 1 to January 1. Many people did not know about the change because of communication problems back then. Some people continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Other people called them April Fools and played jokes on them.

    In the United States, April Fools' Day is just a day of joking and playing tricks on friends. These kinds of jokes are also called pranks. These jokes typically end in the prankster shouting "April Fools'!"

    Simple pranks, like telling a friend a funny lie or making prank phone calls, are still common. But, major companies also get in on April Fools' Day fun in a much bigger way. A few years ago, on April 1, Starbucks announced it was introducing new coffee cup sizes -- Plenta and Micra. The very large cups, bigger than a human head, remained useful for customers even after finishing all that coffee. According to Starbucks, the cups could be used as a rain hat, a pot for plants, or a lampshade.

    It did not take long for customers to catch on to the prank! More and more people use social media or smart phone apps to play pranks on their friends on April Fools' Day. One very annoying smart phone app, Cat Facts, sends funny facts about cats to your friends' phones, every day.

    Chinese scientists recently have produced two monkeys with the same gene, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using the same technique that gave us Dolly the sheep. These monkeys are not actually the first primates(灵长类)to be cloned. Another one named Tetra was produced in the late 1990s by embryo(胚胎)splitting, the division of an early-stage embryo into two or four separate cells to make clones. By contrast, they were each made by replacing an egg cell nucleus(卵原子核)with DNA from a differentiated body cell. This Dolly method, known as somatic(躯体的) cell nuclear transfer(SCNT), can create more clones and allows researchers greater control over the edits they make to the DNA.

    Success came from adopting several new techniques. These included a new type of microscopy(显微术) to better view the cells during handling or using several materials that encourage cell reprogramming, which hadn't been tried before on primates. Still, the research process proved difficult, and many attempts by the team failed. Just two healthy baby monkeys born from more than 60 tested mothers. This leads to many researchers' pouring water on the idea that the team's results bring scientists closer to cloning humans. They thought this work is not a stepping stone to establishing methods for obtaining live born human clones. Instead, this clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, and it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.

    But the scientists involved emphasize that this is not their goal. There is now no barrier for cloning primate species, thus cloning humans is closer to reality. However, their research purpose is entirely for producing non-human primate models for human diseases; they absolutely have no intention, and society will not permit this work to be extended to humans. Despite limitations, they treat this breakthrough as a novel model system for scientists studying human biology and disease.

A Life in Danger

    Lucy, aged 15, lives in Bournemouth with her parents. Her parents aren't poor, and she was at a private school when she started getting bullied. This made her very unhappy and she began to misbehave. She made some new friends who went clubbing a lot. Later she even took drug and stole money to buy drug. Her parents were so worried about their daughter and so angry about her behavior that they decided to send Lucy to Turn-About Ranch (TAR), a tough camp for problem teens in Utah, in the USA.

Lucy didn't like the idea of going to the ranch（牧场）in Utah, but after spending three months there, she's changed her attitude. She said, "The staff at TAR cared about our emotional well-being but they also wanted us to be disciplined and respect the rules. They told us not to take any drugs, not even tobacco or alcohol, and they made us get up at 6.30 a.m. every day and to school work as well as jobs around the ranch. TAR is a real, working ranch with cows and horses, which we had to take care of.

At TAR they asked us not to wear make-up or jewelry or use hair products. They told us that teenagers with problems often use a cool appearance as a mask to hide behind and that they needed to break down those barriers to help us look inside at the confusion which causes our problem behavior. They also wanted us to take responsibility for all our actions."

Her time there has made her more self-confident, less aggressive and much happier. She's started a college course, she's got a part-time job, and she's also doing voluntary work helping underprivileged children. She hasn't taken any drugs since she left TAR. Lucy says, "TAR made me think very hard about the friends I used to see and where my life was going. I realized that the drugs were starting to become the only thing in my life that I cared about, which meant I stopped enjoying other things and treated people badly. I ought to have realized that, and I know I shouldn't have done a lot of things that I did. The ranch has really opened my eyes. They told me to believe I could achieve something with my life, and from now on I want to try."

Family Fun in Canadian Museum of Nature

    Bring the whole family to rediscover our fully redecorated museum.

    WHAT TO SEE AND DO

    Check out What's On for all the events, educational activities and HD movies happening during your visit. Care for birds, dive down into the depths at the helm (舵柄) of a research submersible(潜水器) or explore a cave… on the first floor. Don't miss our gallery play areas on the third floor when visiting with kids. By visiting here, your children will learn more about nature. Check out Our Exhibitions which present our special exhibitions and our galleries. Be sure to stop at our Nature Boutique on the second floor for a vast selection of games, books and nature-related souvenirs from 9:30 am until the museum closes for the day.

    HOURS, ADMISSION, SERVICES AND MORE

    The Canadian Museum of Nature provides a host of information, images and videos on our websites about nature, such as http://www.nature.ca/en/family-fun and http://www.expeditionarctic.ca/.The museum also participates in several social networks. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.