As a Chinese saying goes, "Taste is actually a memory of childhood". Local specialty food may not be popular among all people, but it offers outsiders a glimpse of local culture and history.

    Gongcheng "oil tea" is such a kind of food that would be considered "weird" by many first-time visitors to the remote county in the north of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Many people dislike its bitter and astringent(涩的) flavor when they take a sip.

    "It felt like drinking Chinese herbal medicine. I never expected that I would gradually accept it afterwards, and even become addicted to it," said a traveler surnamed Zhang who comes from Shijiazhuang in northern China's Hebei province.

    Langshan village is said to be the birthplace of Gongcheng "oil tea" whose ideal ingredients are green tea and fermented tea. The village has preserved well its buildings and roads dating back to late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), as well as its traditional way of making the special tea.

    Lin Fengyou, 60, introduced the cooking process. She looks younger than her age, and attributes this to the benefits of drinking "oil tea" throughout the year.

    The first procedure is to use a wooden hammer to pound the tea while heating it in an iron pot, and then add edible oil and boiled water afterwards. She filters off the solid residues(余渣), and pours the glue-like green tea soup into bowls. Then, she adds salt, caraway seed, green onion, dried rice, fried groundnuts, sliced taro and fried beans.

    The taste of the "oil tea" is a mixture of the distinctive flavors of all its ingredients. Local people usually eat it together with glutinous rice(糯米) balls, rice dumplings and glutinous rice cake.

    The villagers consume "oil tea" three times a day. The tea soup is a healthy and refreshing food. "The tea soup to us is coffee to Westerners", said Lin. "But it is tastier."

    Publishers of books for beginning readers are in the business of doing whatever they can to make children develop a love of reading. At times, that means they'll produce books that are more colorful and more packed with pictures. But it turns out that when it comes to learning to read books, more pictures aren't always better.

    In fact, simply having more than one picture on a page can negatively(消极地) affect the ability of preschoolers to learn words from that page, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Sussex. “Storybook reading is a great activity to help children increase their vocabularies,” writes co-author Zoe M. Flack in the University's School of Psychology blog.

    But the illustrations(插图) can affect how well children will learn new words. “For example,” Flack writes, “We know that children learn words better if illustrations are realistic.” Also, studies have shown that adding bells and whistles(哨声) to storybooks may negatively affect learning, according to Jessica S. Horst, Flack's co-author for the study. “We also know that children look within illustrations for the things they hear in the story, so if the story mentions a girl dropping an ice cream, children will look at the ice cream in the illustration.”

    With that in mind, Dr. Horst and Ms. Flack began to wonder what would happen when picture books show many illustrations on a page and how young children who haven't yet learned to read know which illustration to look at while listening to a story. To find out, they read storybooks that displayed either one or two illustrations per page to 36 three-year-old children. As it turns out, children who listened to stories with only one illustration at a time learned twice as many words as children who listened with two or more illustrations.

    Kung fu is one of a number of Chinese martial arts designed to improve the body and the mind. It is perhaps one of the most widely known martial arts, because many films include its techniques. There are hundreds of styles taught all over the world, although they can be loosely divided into two camps: Shaolin style kung fu, and other techniques, some of which have a history that outdates the Shaolin order.

    Shaolin kung fix has its origins in the fifth century. Like some other martial arts, it began in religious temples, where the monks sought a mind and body discipline (训练方法). In addition to the fighting style, it also includes mental exercises and religious practices designed to balance the whole body.

    Shaolin temples resembled universities, integrating a wide range of subjects of study. Therefore, traditional Shaolin styles such as Wing Chun, Crane, Praying Mantis, and Hung Gar took knowledge from fields outside martial arts, such as the healing arts and meditation. Supporters for Shaolin styles believe that they are more rounded martial arts styles, and that learners will benefit from them on a whole body level.

    Other fighting styles, some of which predate the Shaolin style, are also lumped under the kung fu umbrella. They include Pa-Kua, Eagle Claw, and Eight Drunken Immortals styles. These disciplines are not considered to be Shaolin style because they did not originate in temples and are focused primarily on fighting techniques.

    Whether Shaolin or otherwise, kung fu is characterized by self defense strategies that turn the energy of an attacker against him or her. Although the techniques may vary, most styles teach throws, kicks, punches, and the use of weapons. In addition to the physical discipline, most place a great importance on respect, honor, and living a balanced life.

    College graduation eventually means taking much of your attention in your first job search. This process can be challenging, especially for those students who had second thoughts about their chosen major and intended career path — or those who majored in a field not directly connected to a specific career. If you are in one of these groups, fear not! Although your major, coursework, and academic performance are relevant to landing a job, they are not the only deciding factors on where you can work. So, just how important is your major to your job search?

    Some majors are tied directly to specific career fields. For example, if you wish to become a teacher, you will likely have needed to complete an education program and eventually sit for a licensing exam. Successfully completing a specific major is very important to landing a job in the matching field.

    Other majors, however, are closely related to career paths but don't necessarily require a degree in the area. For example, students who majored in finance or math, may also have the necessary skills to be hired as an accountant.

    Lastly, there are many industries, such as professional sales, education (non-teaching positions), insurance, and customer service management, which hire new graduates from several more majors, looking for more generalized (笼统的) requirements. They may simply want to know the student has completed his or her bachelor's degree, which proves students' college-level math and writing, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

    Hopefully, as a college student, you were able to do more than just attend classes. Your non-academic experiences can be very influential on your future career as well. If you worked or volunteered during college and if you enjoyed these activities, seek out related careers. You may qualify for a position regardless of your major.

    Although it often seems like your college major alone determines your career fate, this just isn't the case. It may influence it, but there are other factors that influence your career options as well. If you don't know what career choices you have, talk to your faculty or academic adviser. You may be surprised at what opportunities await!

    Shop with Your Doc is part of a broader and still growing movement in US medicine to shift the focus away from simply treating disease toward caring for the whole person. It is meant to help people make educated, healthy choices one grocery cart at a time. Across the country, hospitals are setting up food banks and medical schools are putting cooking classes on the curriculum. Nonprofits are connecting medical centers with community resources to ensure that low-income Americans have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

    For centuries, Western medicine's mission was to cure disease. But over the past generation, two generation, two significant trends are of concern to the medical community, says Timothy Harlan, executive director of Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. Healthcare costs began to soar (激增), and relatively inexpensive, poor-quality food became more common. "There's a very straightforward link between people improving their diets and improving the condition that they have," Dr. Harlan says.

    The connection drove the medical and nonprofit communities to rethink their approach to health. What emerged was the concept of the "social determinants of health"—the notion of taking into account the biological, physical, and socioeconomic circumstances surrounding a patient. A healthy person isn't just someone who is free from disease, the theory goes; he or she also enjoys "a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being."

    The question the medical community now faces is how to get patients—especially low-income families—to recognize these determinants and make it possible for them to eat and live healthier. In Boston, medical experts responded by creating an on-site pantry (食品室) at Boston Medical Center. Since its founding in 2002, the pantry has evolved into a kind of nutrition center where primary care providers at BMC send patients for food. Today the pantry, which gets 95 percent of its stock from the Greater Boston Food bank, hosts free cooking classes and serves about 7,000 people a month. The Greater Boston Food Bank has also launched its own initiatives, striking partnerships with four community health centers across the state to offer free mobile produce markets. The organization also helped develop toolkits (软件包) that map local pantries, markets that accept government food vouchers, and other resources.

    At Tulane in New Orleans, Harlan is leading the development of a curriculum that combines medicine with the art of food preparation. His philosophy: Doctors who know their way around a kitchen are better at helping their patients. And empowering patients to take charge of their own diets is one way to help them deal with the incredible costs of health care, Harlan says. The curriculum has since been adopted at 35 medical schools around the United States. Chipping away at bad habits is a good place to start getting patients to think about the choices they make for themselves and their families, say Dr Maureen Villasenor, the Orange County pediatrician (儿科医生).

    Here are some great people and their achievements.

    Mary Anderson ­ windscreen wiper.

    Back on a freezing winter's day in 1902, Mary Anderson was travelling by train through New York City. Snow was falling, forcing the driver to stop repeatedly and get out to clear it. Each time the door opened, Mary suffered a gust of sub-zero air. She had an idea: why not make some kind of a rubber blade that could be operated from inside the vehicle? And that's exactly what she did.

    Josephine Cochrane ­ dishwasher

    The dishwasher dates back even earlier to the 19th century, and to the dinner parties thrown by a lady called Josephine Cochrane. As a frequent host, she wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than people. Her response was to develop what was to become the first commercially successful dishwasher. Interestingly, innovation was in her blood: her grandfather had invented the steamboat.

    Stephanie Kwolek ­ Kevlar

    Kevlar is the lightweight fibre used in bulletproof vests. The material is used by millions every day and has saved countless lives. The super tough fabric is also used in objects ranging from gloves to airplanes. Incredibly, its strength-to-weight ratio(比强度) is five times higher than steel. Again, it was invented by a woman, the American chemist Stephanie Kwolek, in 1964.

    Grace Hopper ­ first compiler(编译程序)

    One of the most important inventions of the 20th century must surely be the computer programme. The world of programming is unbalanced in terms of gender. Men vastly outnumber women, and take home around 30% more pay than their female counterparts on average. But back in the 1940s and 1950s, women were at the forefront of this new field. Grace Hopper is credited with inventing the first compiler in 1952, which serves as the bridge between code and the binary(二进制的) ones and zeros understood by computers.