Most academics would view a post at an elite university like Oxford or Harvard as the crowning achievement of a career—bringing both honour and access to better wine cellars. But scholars desire such places for reasons beyond glory. They believe perching on one of the topmost branches of the academic tree will also improve the quality of their work, by bringing them together with other geniuses with whom they can collaborate and who may help spark new ideas. This sounds reasonable. Unfortunately，as Albert Laszlo Barabasi of Northeastern University，in Boston (and also, it must be said, of Harvard), shows in a study published in Scientific Reports, it is not true.

    Dr Barabasi and his team examined the careers of physicists who began publishing between 1950 and 1980 and continued to do so for at least 20 years. They ranked the impact of the institutions these people attended by counting the number of citations each institution's papers received within five years of publication. By tracking the association of individual physicists and counting their citations in a similar way, Dr Barabasi was able to work out whether moving from a low to a high-ranking university improved a physicist's impact. In total, he and his team analysed 2,725 careers.

    They found that, though an average physicist moved once or twice during his career, moving from a low-rank university to an elite one did not increase his scientific impact. Going in the opposite direction, however, did have a small negative influence. The consequence is that elite university do not，at least as far as physicists are concerned，add value to output. That surprising conclusion is one which the authorities in countries such as Britain, who are seeking to concentrate expensive subjects such as physics in fewer, more elite institutions—partly to save money, but also to create what are seen as centers of excellence—might wish to consider.

    Living next to the Spellmans, our new neighbors, almost drove my mother crazy. If shewasn't shaming them for not attending church, or complaining to her sister Jackie about theway the Spellman girls dressed, then she was shoeing the Spellman's dogs out of our yard or filing noise complaints with the police, My mother had never been so busy.All she ever spoke of any more were the Spellmans and their wrongdoings.

    One Sunday afternoon after church service, my mother was driving old Ms Parker home to her house on the hill when we got a flat tire. As far as changing the tire, let's just say that we were at the mercy of the good Lord. Since old Ms. Parker lived so far up that hill, not a lot of traffic drove by us. It had been about fifteen minutes since the last car passed when we heard the rattling and puttering of an old pickup truck as it pulled over to assist us.

    The Spellman boys ran up on our car like a NASCAR pit crew. Before my mother could even protest, they had taken the tire off. "Her spare is flat," said the middle one to the big one. " Give her ours” replied the big one, barely acknowledging the sacrifice. My mother was stunned. "I don, t know what to say, "she stammered. The big one said, "Well, the Lord said love your neighbor, and we are neighbors, right?

    The next day when the Spellman's dogs went through my mother's flower garden, she put out a bowl of water for them. When she saw the Spellman girls walking out with nothing but a halter on, she lectured them about being upright ladies and offered them sweaters. And when she heard the Spellman's music through our walls, she tried to dance a little bit. She even invited the Spellmans to be part of the good neighbors committee. Now the neighborhood was a better place.

    One cold day in winter, my wife and I were walking back home from the grocery store as usual when we suddenly decided to walk into a coffee shop.

    My wife ordered a coffee at the counter. Just then, I saw a young woman in her thirties helping with a rather weak Mexican woman into the shop. Maybe it was the gentleness of their difficult experiences or an unclear familiarity (熟悉) with the situation that drew my full attention. I immediately had a strong wish to do something for them. Unfortunately, before I could think of anything reasonable to say, they left the coffee shop without ordering anything!

    When my wife returned, I told her about the two women and said," I missed the chance to do something for them." Strangely enough, though, they came back into the same coffee shop five minutes later. Unbelievable!" This is my chance," I thought out loud as my wife shared some creative possibilities. The two women ordered, took their place card and left the counter.

    After quickly finishing our coffee, we walked up to the counter and asked the smiling cashier (出纳员),"What is your most popular dessert (甜点)?" Chocolate Cake," she answered. With a childlike feeling of happiness, my wife made an unusual order." Can I buy a chocolate cake for the two women who were here just before us? But don't tell them it is from us. Just give them this card," she said while taking out a smile card. The cashier couldn't believe it." Do you do this all the time?" she asked." Not all the time, but just whenever the heart calls for it," I answered with a natural smile.

    We, my wife and I, are people of middle income (收入). That night, we had planned to have our once-in-a-while dinner at a restaurant. But walking out of that coffee shop, both of us stood upright and said," Let's eat at home today." It's more filling (能填饱肚子的) to give a chocolate cake than to eat it.

English Conversation

    Leader：Mandi Ashmore english @ iwc­lausanne.org

    We meet on Mondays at 14：30 at the IWC clubhouse. We chat for about an hour and discuss everything. Mandi asks "students" to contact her on Monday to confirm the class as sometimes she needs to cancel for various reasons or occasionally she may choose to hold the class at a different venue (举办地点) or at an earlier time for us to be able to have lunch together.

    French Conversation, Advanced Beginner

    Leader：Marielle Sulmoni frenchconvo@ iwc­lausanne.org

    I'm French (born in Bordeaux) and Swiss by marriage. I hold an advanced beginners' French conversation class on Tuesday afternoons from 14: 30—16: 00. We meet weekly at the clubhouse in a friendly atmosphere. I hope to help you use your knowledge of French, allowing you to speak with no fear of making mistakes, which in time will become fewer and fewer.

    French Language Lab, Beginner

    Leader：Malja Remlinger frenchlab@ iwc­lausanne.org

    The group meets on Thursday afternoons from 15: 00—16: 30 at the clubhouse. The first half of the class is devoted to reading out loud from the book "Easy French Reader", working on proper pronunciation and phrasing. During the second half, we listen to audio recordings from "New French with Ease" and work on oral comprehension.

    French Conversation, Advanced

    Leader：Juliette Brull french@ iwc­lausanne.org

    We meet every Tuesday at the IWC clubhouse from 9: 30—11: 00. Most of our time is devoted to very lively discussions about current events and various topics. We also read a book written by a French author and sometimes we see a French movie.

A planet the size of Jupiter has been discovered and it is one of the hottest ones known to us. This has made scientists think about how planets are formed.

Planets such as Earth have more oxygen than carbon, but what if the composition（组成）is just the opposite? This is a question opened up by a recent discovery of a diamond planet by US and UK scientists. The planet is 1200 light years away from Earth and was observed using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Dr Marek Kukula explained that researchers initially used the Super WASP(Wide Angle Search for Planets) robotic observatories operating continuously, all year around. They detected the planet, then it was observed with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected the heat coming from the planet, and from that heat signature they can tell what this planet is made from.

The planet is very different to Earth. "It's giant planet," explains Dr Kukula, "a gas planet, a bit like Jupiter in our solar system. But the interesting thing that they've discovered is that it has a very different composition to the planets in our solar system. This planet has more carbon than oxygen." This suggests that there is more than one way to make a solar system and the range of planets in the universe could be much wider than previously thought.

Dr Kukula says that if there are smaller planets in the same solar system with a similar composition, rich in carbon, their rocks could be rich in minerals such as carbon and diamonds, unlike Earth which has silica (硅石), the sand that rocks on Earth are made from. "This is where this diamond planet idea comes from; they haven't actually detected a diamond planet yet," explains Dr Kukula.it' s hypothetical (假设的), "but you can imagine strange landscapes with black graphite rocks lying around and the surface could be covered with sticky liquids instead of water".

Those who had the pleasure of watching Benny Goodman at work saw a rather ordinary-looking man in rimless glasses and a conservative business suit; but they also saw a human being who could play the clarinet （单簧管） like no one before or since. This made Benny Goodman a unique individual.

Other Americans who have stood out from the flock include Joe DiMaggio, Beverly Sill, Ernest Hemingway and Jonas Salk. They, like Benny Goodman, were recognized and honored for no other reason than excellence.

It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique. Yet a surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing. They wear garish clothes, dye their hair strange colors and decorate their skin with tattoos to make some kind of social statement. But an ordinary guy who has dyed his hair purple or orange is nothing more than the same person with a funny-looking head.

The whole purpose of individuality is excellence. Those who invent, who improvise （即兴发挥）, who know more about a subject than other people do, and who take something that doesn't work and make it work—these people are the very soul of capitalism.

Charles Kettering didn't like the idea of cranking a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter. Henry Ford figured out the assembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produce automobiles, and Elisha Otis, inventor of the elevator, indirectly created the city sky-line. These people understood that individualism means working at the top of one's capacity.

The ones with the purple hair and the funky jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be "different" and not knowing how to go about it.

The student who earns straight A's on his report card has grasped the idea and has found the real meaning of individuality. So has the youngster who has designed his own spaceship, who gives piano recitals, who paints pictures of the world around him.

Benny Goodman understood it too. This is why he was at his best, blowing his clarinet, in a blue suit and black shoes.