A new study finds that young females in one group of African chimps(黑猩猩) use sticks as dolls more than their male peers (同龄) do, often treating pieces of wood like a mother chimp caring for a baby. In human cultures around the world, girls play with dolls and pretend that the toys are babies far more than boys do.

    Chimp observations, collected over 14 years of field work with the Kanyawara chimp community in Kibale National Park in Ugandan, provide the first evidence of a nonhuman animal in the wild that exhibits sex differences in how it plays. This finding supports an argument that biology as well as society underlies boys' and girls' different toy preferences.

    Stick play occurred most commonly between ages 3 and 9. Females spent a lot more time carrying sticks than males did. Young male chimps occasionally used sticks to mimic(模仿) childcare. "Far more often, they fought with sticks, an infrequent behavior among females," say Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.

    "Biological differences between the sexes make female chimps more receptive to stick-mothering than males," says Wrangham.

    Consistent with reported cultural traditions among adult chimps, Kanyawara youngsters learned from each other to play with sticks as if caring for babies. Stick play among young chimps showed no evidence of being directly influenced by older chimps. Child-bearing females never played with sticks and thus didn't model such behavior for younger chimps.

    Young females carried sticks for anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. They often rested in nests with their sticks, sometimes playing with them much as chimp mothers play with their babies though they didn't get any form of teaching from the adults.

    Festivals play an important role in a culture's identity. I can't think of a better way of appreciating a new culture than by taking part in one of its festivals. Here are some special festivals around the world．

    Boryeong Mud Festival－Boryeong, South Korea

    For two weeks in July, millions gather in Borueong to experience the grey pools and slides．What began as a way of promoting the region's mineral-rich mud has turned into a festive party, complete with music and fireworks.While the mud is usually only available in cosmetic products, here you can cake yourself in grey as you want．

    Holi－India

    Holi, the Festival of Colors, is a Hindu celebration full of joy and one of India's most important holidays. During the day of the last full moon of the lunar month, usually late February throughout the country, but the cheerful spirit is common throughout Hindu communities around the world．

    Koninginnedag－The Netherlands

    Although their current Queen's birthday is really during the winter, the Queen still celebrates it on April 30th, the country's official “ Queen's Day” since 1949．Orange is the national color, and the streets become a sea of feather boas（长围巾）and body paint as crowds gather in the plazas（广场）．Amsterdam is the center of this outdoor party, with many live music acts, but nearly every town is alive with orange on this day．

    National Elephant Day in Thailand

    In Thailand, March 13th is regarded as National Elephant Day to show that the Thai elephant plays an important role in the Thai history. Thai Elephant Day has been held on an annual basis since the idea was first approved by the Thai government in 1998. Special events are held at a number of venues in northern Thailand．At the Mae Sa Elephant Camp, it has become a tradition on March13th for the dozens of elephants there to be treated to a huge feast of fruits and sugarcane．

    George Aldrich, whose official title is chemical specialist, works at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. He uses his nose to protect astronauts from unpleasant or harmful odors (气味). His near four-decade career has involved smelling objects from technical handbooks to astronauts' personal things.

    It's crucial that all items taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are odorless. Since astronauts are allowed to bring personal items aboard, all their objects must be smell-checked before leaving Earth. In a video provided by Science Channel, Aldrich relates one specific occasion when an astronaut wanted to build a ship in a bottle in space. Everything in the ship-building process had to be sniffed—right down to the glue.

    Aldrich and his team are responsible for making sure that objects are not only odorless but also harmless to astronauts. When the ISS heats up, a process called off-gassing occurs, which means chemicals flow out from certain substances (物质). Objects that would be safe on Earth could give off unpleasant odors or become dangerous when exposed to high temperatures in the ISS's unique environment.

    Of course, humans aren't the only testers or the first to be exposed to potentially dangerous objects. Before Aldrich sticks his nose into a substance, it has been examined by machines. Even though machines can detect unsafe substances, computers cannot tell exactly how things smell to humans. While something could be technically fine, it could be smelly to an astronaut.

Aldrich's nose is not alone there. He is the head of a hard-sniffing team of smell testers. Together they smell each object and rate it on a scale (等级) of 1 to 4. According to NASA, 1 cannot be detected, and 4 is considered not bearable. After the scientists conclude their tests, the scores are averaged. If an item is rated more than 2.4 on the scale, it fails the test and is not allowed on the flight.

    As soon as a person dies, decomposition(分解) begins. And the first visitors arrive. “Within 5 to 15 minutes of death, flies or other insects begin to colonize the body.” says Rabi Musah, an organic chemist at the University at Albany.

    She says different species turn up at different stages of decomposition. “So because of that, depending upon what entomological(昆虫学的) evidence you find, you can learn something about when the person died in terms of the timing of the death.”

    Flies don't tend to stick around when disturbed by detectives. But they do leave behind eggs. The eggs are hard to tell apart by appearance alone, so specialists raise them until they hatch, a few weeks later—and they get a species ID and, with a little guesswork, a person's time of death.   But Musah has come up with a more time-saving approach: chemical analysis of the eggs. She and her team investigated that method by first harvesting flies with pig-liver traps hidden throughout New York City. They collected the trapped flies and then chemically analyzed their eggs. And it turns out each species of fly egg has a unique chemical fingerprint—enough to tell the eggs apart without raising the eggs to maturity. The study is in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

    Musah and her colleague Jennifer Rosati are now testing the method on a real case. “And once we do that we will be publishing some case studies to illustrate(阐明) that this is a method that can be used, and hopefully eventually it's something that will stand up in court, and something that could speed up detective work—or help deal with a cold case.”

    Once upon a time, there was a little boy who wanted to meet the king. He set off, walking towards the king's castle. After many years of walking, the king's castle came into his view. However, as the boy drew closer to the outside of the castle, the guards took notice of him.

    "Get out of here!" commanded the guards.

    Well, the little boy didn't have to be told twice. He turned...and ran right away. All he wanted to do was to tell the king wonderful things, and see all the beautiful things in the king's house. But he couldn't even get near the castle! The boy finally stopped running, sat down and cried.

    A young man happened to be coming down the path at the very moment. He saw the little boy and came up. "What's wrong, young man?" he asked.

    "Sir, I walked and walked just to see the king. But these guards made me frightened. I wanted to tell the king how lovely everything is and just tell the king that I just wanted to see him!"

    The man looked at the little boy thoughtfully. "Look, why don't you try again. Don't lose heart. I'll come with you this time."

    The little boy got up and took the man's hand. The king's guards spotted them.

    "Look, mister, we don't have to do this...I don't want you to get hurt. We can just turn around now."

    The man held the little boy's hand and went on. The boy really thought the man might be crazy until he looked back up at the guards. They were all smiling now. The little boy was surprised.

    "Who are you?" asked the little boy in surprise.

    "Why, I'm the king's son. You can enter the castle and be with the king," said the man.

    The little boy broke into a huge smile.

    I had an experience some years ago, which taught me something about the ways in which people make a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I had to hold two funerals for two elderly women in my community. Both had died "full of years", as the Bible would say. Their homes happened to be near each other, so I paid condolence(吊唁) calls on the two families on the same afternoon.

    At the first home, the son of the deceased(过世的)woman said to me, "If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It's my fault that she died." At the second home, the son of the other deceased woman said, "If only I hadn't insisted on my mother's going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride, the sudden change of climate, was more than she could take. It's my fault that she's dead."

    You see that any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they believe that the opposite course—keeping Mother at home, putting off the operation—would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?

    There seem to be two elements involved in our willingness to feel guilty. The first is our need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens. That leads us to find patterns and connections both where they really exist and where they exist only in our minds.

    The second element is the view that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short step from believing that every event has a cause to believing that every disaster is our fault. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.

    A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and summons the rest of the world to his tasks. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely outgrow that childish view that our wishes cause things to happen.