For many years, scholars have regarded My Mortal Enemy as somewhat of an enigma. Written in only a few months during the early spring of 1925 and published in 1926, Willa Cather's shortest novel was sandwiched in between The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). While the subject matter of these latter two works can be traced to Cather's experience in the desert Southwest, My Mortal Enemy seemingly has nothing to do with these subjects or her Nebraska roots; it appears to have come out of nowhere, puzzling those who have tried to fit this rather irregular work into a logical progression of Cather's artistic development. The question of what caused Cather to write such a novel at this point in her career, for example, has still not been answered definitively. One commonly held hypothesis (假说) was first voiced by Marcus Klein, who in his 1961 introduction to the novel wrote that for Cather, “The story of Myra Henshawe must have been a personal crisis”. Klein, though, acknowledged that he could not prove his theory, “because there is available no record other than the novel”. Emmy Stark Zitter has recently argued that in My Mortal Enemy and Sapphira and the Slave Girl(1940) Cather exercises the autobiographical impulse (冲击) by putting details of her own life into her fiction, but, like Klein, she is unable to name which “details” of her life Cather drew on in writing My Mortal Enemy.

    As hinted (暗示) in the above statements by Klein and Zitter, much of the general uncertainty about the meaning of My Mortal Enemy can be traced to the absence of a persuasive theory as to who the real-life models for the novel's characters were and what Cather's relationship to them was. Cather herself wrote in a 1940 letter that, in James Woodress's paraphrase, “she had known Myra's real-life model very well, and the portrait drawn in the story was much as she remembered her”; Cather also added that the woman had died fifteen years before My Mortal Enemy was published, and that many relatives of this model later wrote to her to say that they recognized the “real” Myra from her description in the novel. Given such hints and Cather's liking for drawing on her experiences in Nebraska for characters, settings, and plots, it is quite understandable that scholars have thus looked to Red Cloud and Lincoln for possible sources of the people and events depicted in My Mortal Enemy.

    In light of the evidence presented in this article, though, I believe that Cather intended her comments about the model for Myra Henshawe to serve as red herrings (转移注意力的言语) that would protect her relationship with the couple who were the prototypes (原型) for the Henshawes, both of whom were still alive in 1925. Mark Madigan has recently confirmed how Cather in 1905 had to hold off publishing “The Profile (传略)” because of fears that the main character might recognize herself and commit suicide, and twenty years later Cather would have been well aware of how her description of the Henshawes might have affected both the real-life wife (who died in 1929) and husband (who died in 1949) if they had recognized themselves. It is my argument that the Henshawes were modeled after people Cather knew not in Nebraska but rather in New York: S. S. and Hattie McClure. Myra's uncle, John Driscoll, was modeled after Hattie's father, Professor Albert Hurd.

    Possibly most important, identifying the Henshawes as the McClures allows us to more conclusively identify Cather herself with Nellie Birdseye. Nellie and Cather, both Midwestern onlookers and recorders, experienced four distinct stages in their relationships with the Henshawes and the McClures (especially with S. S.) My Mortal Enemy, I believe, was an extended attempt by Cather to deal with certain aspects of her own past and to move on in a world stripped of romantic illusion.

    In the story of “The crow and the Pitcher” from Aesop's Fables, a thisty crow (乌鸦)drops stones into a narrow jar to raise the low level of water inside so he can take a drink.

    Now scientists have evidence to back up that story. Crows actually do understand how to make water displacement (移位) work to their advantage, experiments show. The results suggest that the birds are, at least in some aspects, as smart as first-graders.

    Researchers, led by Sarah Jelbert at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, presented six crows with tubes filled with water. Inside the tubes, a worm or piece of meat on a piece of wood was floating, just out of reach of the crow. In front of the tubes, the researchers arranged several rubber erasers that would sink, and some plastic objects that would float. The crows found out that they could drop the erasers into the tubes in order to raise the water level and get their snack.

    However, the birds handled awkwardly in experiments in which they could choose to drop objects in either a wide tube or a narrow one to get a snack, the researchers said. Dropping objects into narrow tube would lift the water level by a greater amount and put the treat within reach after just two drops; while it took around seven drops to raise the snack to the same level in the wide tube. The crows obviously didn't realize this, and most of them went for the wide tube first.

    Previous studies showed that chimps and human children can solve similar tasks. In a 2011 study, chimps and kids found out that they could put water into a tube to reach a peanut that was floating in a small amount of water at the bottom.

    Tenzing left his home when he was ten to work and help his mother, who was looking after their 2-acre ancestral farm after his father's death. He did temporary jobs for the first few years and then joined a Malaysian construction firm, where he learnt to drive, repair machines, work on the Internet and even speak English fluently.

    “In those 13 years, I learnt everything—driving, mechanic work, and how to set up a small factory. This made me gain much confidence to do almost all jobs,” says Tenzing.

    However, as his mother was getting older, on December 12, 2006, Tenzing returned to his hometown in Assam. Having visited several farms, he came to know that tea could be easily exported and many tea companies were buying tea; so he also decided to grow tea on his farm. But as his family had never grown tea, he had no idea how to do it.

    Being a green hand in this field, Tenzing went to meet with many tea experts and followed their instructions. But whenever he sprayed pesticide (农药)on his farm, he'd get a headache and feel indisposed. So he started looking for alternatives. Tenzing did his research online and finally in 2007, he connected with people from a Canadian non-governmental organization and invited them to his farm, where they trained him. Thus, Tenzing started growing tea organically.

    Today Tenzing has 25 acres of land, of which 7.5 acres is used for tea planting, and he grows almost all types of fruits and vegetables. His success inspired many, and farmers from other parts of the country also started coming to his farm to learn organic farming. He has trained about 30,000 farmers so far. Every year almost 100 tourists visit his farm from various parts of the world like the UK, Australia, Germany, etc.

    A new study by Chinese researchers has found differences in the brain activity of men and women addicted(上瘾的)to Internet gaming.

    The study says addicted men have lower impulse control compared with women, indicating that men are more likely to become addicted to internet gaming.

    Researchers from Renji Hospital, which is connected with Shanghai Jiaotong University, recruited 105 Chinese participants for the study, which had two groups - one with 32 men and 23 women addicted to gaming, and the other with 30 men and 22 women who were not addicted.

    They completed a questionnaire for gaming addiction, and reported their gaming history and number of hours playing per week. Researchers also talked with their families to collect the information.

    Through FMRI (磁共振扫描), researchers found that men addicted to gaming had lower brain activity in the brain region associated with impulse control, than nonaddicted men. The lower the activity levels, the poorer the impulse control. Addicted women, however, showed no differences compared with the healthy female group.

    Researchers also studied the functional connectivity between brain regions, which were lower in men with addiction than in nonaddicted men, but showed no differences in the female groups.

    Although there are some limitations, the findings suggest that activity levels displayed in the brain region could be biomarkers to evaluate the behavioral inhibitions of gaming-addicted men, they said.

    Gaming disorder was listed as a mental disorder by the World Health Organization earlier this year. People with the disorder have impaired control over gaming and give it increased priority in their lives－to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities.

    About three decades ago, China was known as the "Bicycle Kingdom".But the two­wheeled transport's popularity began to fade, with many bikes soon replaced by their fuel­powered competitors.

    But recent months have seen a renaissance of the bike across China, with an increasing number of people choosing cycling instead of driving to schools, to workplaces or to do sightseeing. The introduction of bike­sharing schemes, first developed by new companies like Ofo and Mobike, has brought the trend to a new level. According to data from iResearch Consulting Group, the first week of this year saw 5.85 million active users of Mobike while Ofo had 1.4 million active users.

    People can unlock the shared bikes by simply using their smartphones. The bikes are equipped with GPS and can be left anywhere in public places for the next user. They're popular among many Chinese people as they provide an effective answer to the "last mile" problem, which refers to a person's final journey. "In places where the subway doesn't reach and where it's difficult to change from one kind of transport to another, it's so easy to get where you want to go with Mobike," Hu Hong, 29, said. She rides a bike to work.

    However, the schemes have also led to problems such as illegal parking, vandalism (故意破坏) and theft. "Bike­sharing is a greener method of transportation and provides a user­friendly experience," said Liu Xiaoming, Vice­Minister of Transport. "But it's a combination of online and offline business. Operators are usually strong in online services, but lack offline business experience."

    In fact, these problems are also shared by bike­sharing schemes abroad. Set up in 2007, Vélib is a large­scale public bike sharing system in Paris. By October, 2009, a large number of Vélib's initial bikes had to be replaced due to vandalism or theft. Bikes were found hanging from lampposts (街灯柱) or thrown into the Seine River.

When Jeff Sparkman draws his cartoon superheroes with coloured pencils, he often has to ask other people to tell him what colour his masked men turned out to be because he's colour blind. Now, a new smart phone application (app) can help him figure out what colours he's using and how the picture looks to most everyone else.

The DanKam app, available for iPhone and Android for $2.99, is an application that turns the vague (模糊的) colours that one percent of the population with colour-blindness see into the "true" colours as everyone else sees them. In America, an estimated 32 million colour-blind Americans—95% are males—can soon have their life improved.

"DanKam takes the stream of data coming in through the phone's camera and changes the colours slightly so they fall within the range that people who are colour-blind see," developed Dan Kaminsky told CNET. He came up with the idea after watching the 2009 film Star Trek with a colour-blind friend.

It was then that he got to know more about colourblindness like its varying types and degrees. A vast majority, for instance, have trouble seeing red or green due to a genetic defect (遗传缺陷), Blue-yellow colourblindness, however, is rarer and develops later in life because of aging, illness or head injuries, etc. He started experimenting with one of the most common representations of points in the RGB colour model. What the DanKam app attempts to do is clean up the colour space of the image or video signal so that colours can be visible to those suffering from viewing problems. "You can adjust the app to fit your needs. There is a range and not everyone who is colour-blind sees things the same," Says Kaminsky.

Sparkman, a copy editor at CNET, tried out the app and was pleased with the result: "It would be useful for dressing for a job interview," he said. But using it for his art is "the most practical application". It worked well on LED and other lights on electronic gadgets (器械), which means Sparkman can now identify the power light on his computer display green.