Tu Youyou, 84, honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Oct 5, 2015. She was the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize in science for her work in helping to create an anti-malaria(疟疾) medicine. In 1967, Communist leader Mao Zedong decided there was an urgent national need to find a cure for malaria. At the time, malaria spread by mosquitoes was killing Chinese soldiers fighting Americans in the jungles of northern Vietnam. A secret research unit was formed to find a cure f or the illness. Tw o years later, Tu Youyou was instructed to become the new head of Mission 523. Researchers in Mission523 pored over ancient books to find historical methods of fighting malaria. When she started her search for an anti-malarial drug, over 240,000 compounds(化合物) around the world had already been tested, without any success.Finally, the team found a brief reference to one substance, sweet wormwood（青蒿）, which had been used to treat malaria in China around 400 AD. The team isolated one active compound in wormwood, artemisinin（青蒿素）, which appeared to battle malaria-friendly parasites（寄生虫）. The team then tested extracts（提取物） of the compound but nothing was effective until Tu Youyou returned to the original ancient text. After another careful reading, she improved the drug recipe one final time, heating the extract without allowing it to reach boiling point.

After the drug showed promising results in mice and monkeys, Tu volunteered to be the first human recipient of the new drug. “As the head of the research group, I had the responsibility.” she explained.

Weekend Photography Workshop(研讨班): Seattle Aims

Learn new techniques from a great photographer

Take photos of Pike Place Market, Bainbridge Island, and more

Activity Details

    Seattle is a fantastic place to photograph. Spend the weekend taking photos of the historic Pike Place Market, get a new angle on the Space Needle, and photograph harbor views on Bainbridge Island.

    This workshop is led by a great photographer and a professional instructor and is designed for people who are interested in improving their digital photography. All participants must bring a digital SLR camera(单反相机), a laptop, and the software for organizing and presenting images. The workshop is limited to 25 participants.

Plan – 3 Days

Day 1—Thursday: Seattle

    Settle into our hotel or stay in accommodations of your choice. Gather tonight at a restaurant in town for a welcome dinner.

Day 2—Friday: Pike Place Market & Pioneer Square

    Start the day in the classroom with an instructive talk by our photographer. Our first task this afternoon takes us to the oldest running farmers' market in the country, Pike Place Market. Work on portraits, street scenes, and food photographing. Then photograph the stately 19^th century brick buildings of Pioneer Square, Seattle's historic center. End the day with an edit-and-critic meeting.

Day 3—Saturday: Olympic Sculpture Park & Space Needle

    Head out to the Olympic Sculpture Park. Then go to the streets of the downtown area to get a unique view of the Space Needle, and photograph city life against a background of diverse architectural styles. Tonight, we'll present our best images to the group, enjoy dinner at a local restaurant and end our journey.

Cost

    Meals noted in the plan are included in both options(with and without hotel)

Dates

Jul 11 – 14, 2013     Aug 08—11, 2013       Sep 26 – 29, 2013

Contact Information

    For questions about this workshop, please call 1-886-797-4686. Or you can visit the website: http://www. nationalgeographicexpeditions.com.

    At the end of last summer my parents' house in Tunstall went up in flames. Several months on, we're still trying to find out exactly what happened, but my parents John and Carole were out when more than half the house was burned to the ground. What was left behind needed to be pulled down and most of the things that were not actually destroyed were so smoke-damaged that they would have to be thrown away.

My parents were both teachers and not the kind of people to fill their house with expensive furniture, so most of their belongings were memories—--including photos and the tracksuit(运动服) that Dad was given when he carried the Olympic torch (火炬). But what really upset me was not the loss of these things.

    Dad had an album(唱片) for every occasion. Once his car got broken into and he was more upset that his cassettes had been nicked(划伤) than about all the rest of the damage. So when I was considering doing something to help after the fire, I immediately thought about his music. We couldn't get the old photos back, but we could replace his CDs and records. Then I started a little page about my dad on the blogging site Tumblr.

    Within a few days, news of what had happened spread by word of mouth, and I was getting messages from friends I hadn't spoken to for years. I also heard from Dad's mates and even from people neither of us had ever met. Soon packages arrived from all over the country. I expected 100CDs if we were lucky, but his new collection would now run into the thousands!

    On Christmas Day, all the records, tapes and CDs were packed into a beautiful box, which of course, was for my dad. A lot of them came from his previous students and he was touched to realize what an effect he had had on their lives. Eventually , he told me, “What could have been a bad Christmas has been a very good one.”

    As for old people, some of the applications are hard to use because they didn't grow up with them. They don't have simple models of how they should work, what to do when something doesn't work or where to go for help. We make it as easy as possible to be used for people who are not familiar with the technology.

    I think there is huge potential (潜力) and we are designing it. The ability to connect to friends, who remember the same movies and news and music, is really important, especially as people get old. They end up in retirement homes and they aren't always close to their friends. Allowing the network to help them connect with friends and family is a really powerful thing.

    My mother is an enthusiastic user of the Internet, although it took me years to get her to use e-mail. She was born with normal hearing, but lost it when she was 3. She was totally deaf for many years, until age 53, when she got ear aids. They work really well. That is a big change for her. But before then, her friends couldn't call her on the phone, so they insisted she use e-mail to communicate with them.

    Young people don't even think of the Internet as technology. It's just there, and they use it. There's been a very interesting change in communications styles between old people and young people. There are some kids who are now in their teens and aren't willing to make phone calls. And they think of e-mail as old-fashioned and slow.

    The reason why teens don't make phone calls seems to be that they don't know what to say. When they call they often stop for a while and there's this silence. On the other hand, texting is considered proper, and it's okay if you don't answer. You might have been distracted. It's not considered rude. But it is considered strange if you're in this kind of voice conversation and simply stop talking.

    Father's Day is celebrated today in 75 countries around the world. In my personal world, it's a day I like to think of my father's father.

    I learned a lot in my later life from my dad. But I learned something else, as a kid not even yet in school, from my grandfather. I learned to be curious. Little things fathers and grandfathers do can change the life of a child forever. In my case, this change came from necessity: My mom needed someone to look after little Allen, barely 4 years old, during the school day. My grandmother volunteered, and my grandfather came up with a way I could be watched while he worked in his clockmaker's shop.

    He seated me on a chair every day while I was there, right in front of his big workbench. He told me stories. He had a great sense of humor and a funny way of making a "buh-buh-buh" sound when he sensed my attention was weakening, and he encouraged me to ask questions about anything he was doing.

    Naturally, I was usually asking questions about clocks--what made the hands move, what the pendulum(钟摆) did, why you had to stop winding just before the weight hit the stop. Sometimes I just asked about which shiny parts went where.

    Most of all, he showed me how clocks worked. He treated me as if I were a sort of small grown-up. He never talked down to me, never told me I was "too young to understand".

    And so my grandfather granted me two things: A love of clocks, and an everlasting curiosity.

    As a journalist, I turned that fascination into explanations of why computers and software do what they do——and, perhaps even more importantly, why they fail at that task. I haven't been afraid of opening up the innards and looking for what is wrong with the computer.

    I've always felt a need to be prepared for whatever situation I've found myself in.

    My mother once took me to a store when I was seven years old. She and I got to the checkout counter, and she realized she had forgotten a couple of things on her shopping list. She left me with the cart and ran off to get what she needed.

    "I'll be right back." she said.

    She was gone just a few minutes, but at that time, I had loaded all the things on the belt and everything was rung up. I was left staring at the cashier, who was staring at me. "Do you have money for me, son?" she said. "I'll need to be paid."

    I didn't realize she was just trying to please herself. So I stood there, ashamed and embarrassed.

    By the time my mom returned, I was angry. "You left me here with no money! This lady asked me for the money, and I had nothing to give her."

    Now that I'm an adult, you'll never catch me with less than $200 in my wallet. I want to be prepared in case I need it.

    I've always admired people who are over-prepared. In college, I had a classmate named Norman. One day he was giving a speech on an overhead projector(投影仪) and in the middle of his talk, the light bulb（灯泡）on the projector blew out. We would have to wait ten minutes until someone found a new projector.

    "It's Okay." he said. "There's nothing to worry about."

    We watched him walk over to his bag and pull something out. He had brought along a spare(备用) bulb for the overhead projector. Who could even think of that?

    I often told my students, "When you go into the wilderness, the only thing you can depend on is what you take with you." And essentially, the wilderness is anywhere but your home or office. So take money. Pack a light bulb. Be prepared.