Walt Disney is credited for creating such wonderful things as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. However, he cannot take the credit for creating other well-loved characters, such as Cinderella and Snow White. They are almost automatically associated with Disney because Disney turned old fables(寓言) into cartoon movies.

    The original Cinderella varies very much from the Disney version we know today. It started off with the girl mourning her mother's death and going to her tomb three times a day. In addition, there were only birds that helped Cinderella; there was no such thing as a fairy godmother or helpful mice, nor was there mention of a horse and carriage.

    The stepsisters were cruel: they always threw Cinderella's food into the ashes of the fire and made her sleep on the ashes on the floor, hence（因此）her name.

    In the original story, the king's ball actually lasted for three days. With the help of the birds, the girl, beautifully dressed, danced with the prince on all three nights and the prince fell in love with her. However, she broke away from him to rush back home each night. On the last night, the prince placed soothing sticky on the stairs; as Cinderella made her escape, a shoe got stuck on it.

    Here now is where the story becomes unpleasant: when the prince went to the house looking for the girl whose foot fit the shoe, the wicked(邪恶的) stepmother told one of her two daughters to cut off her big toe to fit into the shoe. The daughter did as told. So the prince took her away to be his bride. But when they passed the tomb of Cinderella's mother, the birds called out to the prince,

    “Turn and peep, there's blood in the shoe;the shoe is too small, the true bride waits for you.”

    Realizing he had been tricked, the prince returned the daughter to her mother. The other then had to cut off part of her heel in order to fit into the shoe, with the same result. Only Cinderella's foot fit perfectly and so the prince chose to marry her. The story ends with the wedding day: as Cinderella's two stepsisters followed her, pretending to be devoted to her so that they could enjoy the king's riches, two birds flew by and plucked(啄) out their eyes. Because of their wickedness and falsehood, they had to spend the rest of their days blind.

    The original Cinderella is so different from the Disney version. Thank goodness Disney made such changes; it indeed was a wise move.

    If you see a group of people dancing and singing on the street or in the railway station, you don't need to feel surprised. They are a flash mob(快闪族). Who are they Are they mobs? Don't be confused by their name. Actually, a flash mob is a group of people who gather suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, and then quickly disappear.

    They are usually organized with the help of the Internet or other digital communications networks. The messages may be sent to friends, who send to more people. At a predetermined time, they gather and perform some activities such as exchanging books, coming together to look at the sky, waving their hands and yelling something at the top of their voice for 30 seconds. Then, they quickly disappear before the police can arrive Using mobile phones, the flash mob can change its place if the first one has been cancelled for any reason.

    Bill Wasik, senior editor of Hamper's Magazine, organized the first flash mob in Manhattan in May 2003 and the first successful flash mob gathered on June 3, 2003. Wasik claimed that he created the flash mob as a social experiment designed to laugh at fashion seekers and stress the cultural atmosphere of wanting to be an insider or part of "the next big thing”.

    Flash mob gatherings can sometimes shock people. Such an activity might seem amusing and magical, but it also might frighten people who are not aware of what is taking place. Undoubtedly, flash mob can serve as good political tools and have great potential, such as using flash mob to advertise a product.

    The flash mob is now becoming more and more popular. People use it to do many things. Flash mobs give people from all walks of life an opportunity to come together to create a memory.

    Bees in a colony work with each other to gather food, and they try to find the most nectar (花蜜)in the least amount of time possible. A small number of bees work as searchers, but when a good flower patch (花丛) is found, how do they tell other bees where to find it?

    Bees communicate flower location using special dances inside the hive, where bees live. One bee dances while the other bees watch. The dancing bee smells like the flower patch, and also gives the watching bees a taste of the nectar she has gathered. Smell and taste helps other bees find the correct flower patch. Bees use two different kinds of dances to communicate information: the waggle (摇摆) dance and the circle dance.

    Waggle dance

    The waggle dance tells the watching bees two things about a flower patch's location: the distance and the direction away from the hive.

A. Distance

    The dancing bee waggles back and forth as she moves forward in a straight line, then circlesaround to repeat the dance. The length of the middle line, called the waggle run, shows roughly how far it is to the flower patch.

B. Direction

    Bees know which way is up and which way is down inside their hive, and they use this to show direction. How? Bees dance with the waggle run at a specific angle away from straight up. Outside the hive, bees look at the position of the sun, and fly at the same angle away from the sun.

    Circle dance

    The circle dance tells the watching bees only one thing about the flower patch's location: that it is somewhere close to the hive.

    In this dance, the bee walks in a circle, turns around, then walks the same circle in the opposite direction. Sometimes, the bee includes a little waggle as she's turning around. The duration of this waggle is thought to indicate the quality of the flower patch.

    Are you afraid of going to the dentist(牙医)? If so, you're not alone.

    These fears could just be in our heads, however. According to a recent survey by Martin Tickle, a professor at the University of Manchester in the UK, the pain isn't felt most of the time in dental surgeries(牙科手术). In fact, among the 451 interviewed patients, 75％reported no pain at all during their visits, including situations when they had their teeth pulled out.

    Could it be the sound of the drill(钻头)then?

    "I found that the sound of drilling can evoke deep worry in dental patients. Actually they don't have any pain, "Hiroyuki Karibe, a scientist at Nippon Dental University in Tokyo, told The Guardian.

    To find the reason why a drill might bring on a racing heart, Karibe divided the volunteers into low-fear and high-fear groups based on how much they feared a trip to the dentist. Volunteers were played the sound of a drill while their brain activities were watched by a machine.

    What Karibe found in the low-fear group was increased activity in the areas of the brain relative to auditory processing(听觉处理), which means, for these people, the sound of dental drills is no different from other sounds.

    In the high-fear group, however, the brain area that was activated(激活)was different. It was the area that carries out a number of duties, including learning, feelings and, most importantly, memory. This means that these volunteers not only heard the sound, but they remembered it—they made connections between the sound of a drill and the worry it produced in the past, causing their worry to return.

    Understanding how brains reply to the sounds of dentists' drills could help scientists find ways to make patients more relaxed, according to Karibe, because patients who worry about going to the dentist might keep putting off their visits. But the best way is to keep your teeth healthy.

    It is every kid's worst nightmare(噩梦) and six-year-old Jaden Hayes has lived it twice. First he lost his dad when he was only at the age of four and then last month his mom died unexpectedly in her deep sleep.

    "I tried and I tried and I tried to get her awake, but... I just couldn't," said Jaden.

    No one could imagine how heartbroken Jaden was.

    But there's another side to his sadness. A side he first made public a few weeks ago when he told his aunt, Barbara DiCola, and now his guardian(监护人)after both his parents died, that he was sick and tired of seeing everyone sad all the time. And he had a plan to fix it.

    "And that was the beginning of it," said Barbara. "That's where the adventure began."

    Jaden asked his aunt Barbara to buy a bunch of little toys and bring him to downtown Savannah, Georgia near where he lives, so he could give them away to anyone who will smile to him. "I'm trying to make people smile," said Jaden.

    Jaden targets people who aren't already smiling and then turns their day around. He's gone out on four different occasions now and he is always successful. Even if sometimes he doesn't get exactly the reaction he was hoping for.

    It is just so overwhelming to some people that a six-year-old orphan would give away a toy -- expecting nothing in return -- except a smile.

    "I'm depending on it to be 33, 000," said Jaden. When asked if he thinks he can make that goal, he answered: "I think I can."

It's normal to long for the taste of potato chips or a cheese-covered pizza. Even though they're full of calories, eating them occasionally won't do much harm. However, according to the new numbers, young people are becoming more gluttonous. The BBC's Good Food Nation Survey showed that on average, 16 to 20-year-olds ate fast food at least twice a day in the UK. So what's behind this fast food binge (狂热)?

WebMD, an online publisher of news and information of human health and well-being, surveyed nearly 600 teenagers and adults in the United States. They found that the most common reason was our busy lifestyle. More than 92.3 percent of respondents said they were too busy to cook. Many find it challenging to balance work and life, and the convenience of fast food meets their needs. Fast food is readily available in corner stores and vending machines (自动售货机). Remember those instant noodle cups from the supermarket? They're ready in minutes, and you can store them at home for a long time.

But many people think this trend does no good. Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, told the BBC: "It's frightening that people, especially younger generations, are eating so much fast food loaded with fat, sugar and salt, but offers little nutritional value."

She added, "Especially high in calories, fast food leads to unhealthy weight gain — which in turn increases the risk of 11 cancers later in life."

So what is the right thing to do? Toule suggested that young people should prepare meals in advance and learn to include the different food groups in their diets.