Cancer researchers urged people on Wednesday to take more vitamin D to lower risk of cancer, saying studies showed a clear link. “Our suggestion is for people to increase their intake, through diet or a vitamin supplement. ” Dr.Cedric Garland said in a telephone interview.

    Garland's research team reviewed 63 studies, including several large long-term ones, on the relationship between vitamin D and certain types of cancer worldwide between 1966 and 2004.

    “There's nothing that has this ability to prevent cancer,” he said, urging governments and public health officials to do more to fortify foods with vitamin D. Garland is part of a University of California at San Diego Moores Cancer Center team that published its findings this week online in the American Journal of Public Health. Vitamin D is found in milk, as well as in some fortified orange juice, yogurt and cheeses, usually at around 100 international units(IU) a serving. People might want to consider a vitamin supplement to raise their intake to 1000 IUs per day, Garland said, adding that it was well within the safety guidelines established by the National Academy of Sciences.

    The authors said that taking more vitamin D could be especially important for people living in northern areas, which receive less vitamin D from sunshine.

    African Americans, who don't produce as much of the vitamin because of their skin colour, could also benefit significantly from a higher intake, the authors said.

    A sea turtle named Herman, an octopus called Octavia, and a seal named Lidia all spent this summer at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. But unlike the zoo's other residents, they are not real animals. These creatures are actually huge sculptures and they're made entirely out of plastic trash from the ocean.

    These giant artworks, along with 14 others, are part of a traveling exhibit called “Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea”. The Washed Ashore project, led by artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi, works to raise awareness about the problem of plastic pollution in Earth's oceans.

    More than 315 billion pounds of plastic litter the world's oceans today. Most of the plastic is garbage from towns and cities, as well as trash that people leave on beaches, rainwater, winds, and high tides bring the trash into the ocean or into rivers that lead to the ocean. Once it is under the waves, the plastic begins to break up into smaller and smaller pieces. It often collects in spots called garbage patches, which spread over large areas of the ocean.

    Thousands of marine animals--including whales, sea turtles, and fish--die each year from eating or getting stuck in plastic bags and other items. Plastic pieces can also injure coral and kill sea grass.

    Washed Ashore and other organizations are working to stop that from happening. Since 2010, Washed Ashore volunteers have collected 38,000 pounds of plastic trash from more than 3000 miles of beaches. They helped Pozzi create more than 60 sculptures of marine creatures that were harmed by plastic pollution.

    The artworks on display at the National Zoo include a 20-foot-long coral reef, a 12-foot-long shark, and a 16-foot-long parrot fish. Each one is made from hundreds of pieces of trash like water bottles and sunglasses.

    “These sculptures are a powerful reminder of our personal role and global responsibility in preserving biodiversity(生物多样性) on land and in the sea,” says Dennis Kelly, director of the National Zoo.

    Valerie Jarrett, 58, is serving as a top adviser to President Obama and has been close to the first family since the early 1990s. Joe Heim from WashingtonPost had an interview with her.

    Joe Heim: What do you think of a reporter who interviews you for 25 minutes, then later finds out his recorder stopped working and asks you to do the interview again?

    Valerie Jarrett: That he's human. Everybody could make mistakes.

    Joe Heim: You're considered the president's closest adviser. What do you think the role of an adviser is?

    Valerie Jarrett: I think so as that the president's management style is very effective (有效的), all of his advisers should speak openly about their advice.

    Joe Heim: What misunderstandings are there of you?

    Valerie Jarrett: A little-known fact is that I started my life very shy and remained very shy well into adulthood. Painfully shy, I would call it. And I often share this, particularly with young people, because it's something I really had to work hard to overcome. And for all the shy people out there I say, you, too, can overcome it. But it took a lot of hard work on my part, and I discovered along the way that just because you're nervous and you have butterflies in your stomach doesn't mean that it has to show. My point in sharing it with you is that part of life is pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone (舒适区). And if you're going to grow, you have to learn how to take on new challenges that you might not be good at.

    Joe Heim: Will you stay until the end of his term?

    Valerie Jarrett: I serve at the pleasure of the president. If he wants me to stay, I will.

    A European Union program is letting blind people experience famous paintings for the first time. It uses three dimensional (3-D) printing to re-create famous paintings so they can be touched.

    One painting printed with the new technology is Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss." It is a popular attraction at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. The painting shows a man and a woman standing in a field filled with flowers. They are wearing gold robes and have their arms around each other. The man leans down to kiss the woman.

    Klimt finished the painting in 1908. Until now, people who had trouble seeing could not appreciate the artwork. But thanks to the reproduction they can touch the piece and feel the ridges and depressions. Andreas Reichinger started making 3-D versions of artwork in 2010. He said this reproduction was his most difficult project because the couple's robes are so detailed.

    Dominika Raditsch is a blind museum visitor. She touched the reproduction. As she moved her hands around it she said, "Exactly, can you see these? There are so many details." Raditsch said she can imagine what the original painting looks like when she touches the reproduction. "It's somehow round. You can feel it. It comes with it. And in many places it's so smooth. And then I think to myself: it probably shines too!" Raditsch said.

    The Belvedere is not the only museum to have 3-D versions of its artwork. Some of the pieces at the Prado, in Madrid, Spain, have reproductions that can be touched. But the piece in Vienna has one special part: it is made with widely available 3-D printing technology. That means one day, blind art fans anywhere in the world could download the source files and print the reproductions themselves.

    The Winter Olympics is also called the White Olympics. At this time, many colorful stamps are published to mark the great Games. The first stamps marking the opening came out on January 25, 1932 in the United States for the 3rd White Olympics. From then on, publishing stamps during the White Olympics became a rule.

    During the 4th Winter Olympic Games a group of stamps were published in Germany in November 1936. The five rings of Olympics were drawn on the front of the sportswear. It was the first time that the rings appeared on the stamps of the White Olympics.

    In the 1950's, the stamps of this kind became more colorful. When the White Olympics came, the host countries (东道国) as well as the non-host countries published stamps to mark those games.

    China also published four stamps in February 1980, when the Chinese sports men began to take part in the White Olympics. Japan is the only Asian country that has ever held the White Olympics. Altogether 14, 500 million stamps were sold to raise money for this sports meet. Different kinds of sports were drawn on these small stamps. People can enjoy the beauty of the wonderful movements of some sportsmen.

For hundreds of years, Africans have preserved their history through storytelling. But some Africans worry that oral traditions will be lost to the Internet connections and social media.

This has led a Nigerian woman named Elizabeth Kperrun to create a mobile phone application as a way to preserve African folk stories. She calls her mobile app AfroTalez, which tells children's stories that teach moral lessons.

"We can't teach kids something by telling them, 'Don't do this'. I think kids need context to understand. In a story somebody stole something and then something bad happened to them. Alternatively, somebody else did something good and they ended up happy or rich."

"Hello children. My name is Liz and I'd like to tell you a story about tortoises, elephants, and ..." The voice of "Aunt Liz" narrates the story, while a full-screen animation appears. An arrow signals when it's time to move on. There are also quizzes on object recognition and counting throughout.

Kperrun asks her older relatives to help her collect stories for the application. The stories come from an ethnic group living in southeast Nigeria and northwest Cameroon. "I want to keep it centered on folk stories, not the ones that Walt Disney has made really popular... It's fair and respectful to keep certain cultures alive because folk stories are part of the tapestry that keeps cultures together." Kperrun once said.

Kperrun writes and reads the stories. Her business partner and husband Idamiebi Ilamina-Eremie does the animation (动画).

AfroTalez is available for Android users and can be downloaded for free. So far, AfroTalez has more than 50,000 users. Funding for the app has been a major challenge. Kperrun hopes to use a crowdfunding campaign to help fund the next version of AfroTalez to be released soon.

Kperrun believes technology doesn't have to destroy or replace traditions. Her goal is to combine them to keep African culture alive. She says "Africa is our home, but we are so eager to become Western that we are forgetting things that are really important and should be passed on of who we are, and I don't think that's right."