Master painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) was well known for having a large number of friends and students. Among them, painter Li Qiujun was special.

    They got to know each other through Li's elder brother, who was one of Zhang's best friends.

    They admired each other's artistic talent and became confidants, which resulted in a romantic relationship.

    In 1948, Zhang produced Spring Clouds Amid Autumn Landscape, a mountain-and-water ink painting featuring gongbi (meticulous brushwork), as a gift for Li's 50th birthday.

    A year later, Zhang permanently departed from the mainland, and traveled and exhibited around the world before settling down in Taipei in 1976.

    After leaving the mainland, he often said that he missed Li, who died in Shanghai in 1973.

    Spring Clouds Amid Autumn Landscape will be auctioned in Hong Kong on Oct 4.

    The painting not only marks a friendship between the two painters, but it deserves special attention because it shows Zhang at the top of his game as he sought to master the mountain-and-water style, according to C.K. Cheung, head of Sotheby's Chinese painting department.

    Sotheby's will auction the work at its major autumn sale, which runs from Oct 1 to 5.

    Cheung says the painting's composition and Zhang's attention to details reflect his incorporation of traditional touches, especially from Song Dynasty (960-1279) paintings, while also developing his own style.

    A dog, it is said, is a man's best friend. Put a dog, a kid and a book together, and you have a struggling reader's best friend.

    The therapy dogs of R.E.A.D. – Reading Education Assistance Dogs – have been helping children improve their reading skills since 1999, when Intermountain Therapy Animals (ITA) began the program in Salt Lake City, Utah.

    Today, tens of thousands of R.E.A.D. teams – dogs and their owners – volunteer to spend time with youngsters in schools and libraries across the United States and around the world. The idea is that sharing a book with a nonjudgmental (不带评论的) partner encourages students' confidence and helps develop a love of reading.

    Izzy, a Havanese therapy dog, is a regular visitor to Public School 57 in East Harlem, New York. Students meet him in the library, pick out a book and sit down on the carpet. Izzy snuggles (依偎) up to them and gets ready to hear a story.

    “I love reading to Izzy because he listens to me, and he doesn't make fun of me when I make a mistake,” says third-grader Aelane Vasquez. The 9-year-old, whose parents are from Mexico, is one of 15 Latin-American students at the school who were selected for the program.

    “All the students that we work with in the R.E.A.D. program were behind reading levels at the beginning of the year,” Bridget McElroy, who teaches English as a Second Language, explained. “Now most of them have reached the average level, if not above it.” That's important, because achieving proficiency (熟练) in reading is vital for kids to succeed. Studies have shown that students who can't read at grade level by the end of third grade are four times less likely to graduate high school by the age of 19.

    The R.E.A.D. teams from New York Therapy Animals work with 175 kids at Public School 57 and nine other schools.

    McElroy said she sees a marked difference in Aelane and her classmates, and not just in study. “Not only do the kids have time to practice reading, what we are really seeing is that they are excited to read and practice even when Izzy is not here,” she said.

    A long-term American study shows the importance of early education for poor children. The study is known as the Abecedarian Project. It involved more than one-hundred young children from poor families in North Carolina.

    Half of the children attended an all-day program at a high-quality child-care center. The center offered educational, health and social programs. Children took part in games and activities to increase their thinking and language skills and social and emotional development. The program also included health foods for the children.

    The children attended the program from when they were a few weeks old until the age of five years. The other group of children did not attend the child-care center. After the age of five, both groups attended public school.

    Researchers compared the two groups of children. When they were babies, both groups had similar results in tests for mental and physical skills. However, from the age of eighteen months, the children in the educational child-care program did much better in tests.

    The researchers tested the children again when they were twelve and fifteen years old. The tests found that the children who had been in the child-care center continued to have higher average test results. These children did much better on tests of reading and mathematics.

    A few years ago, organizers of the Abecedarian Project tested the students again. At the time, each student was twenty-one years old. They were tested for thinking and educational ability, employment, parenting and social skills. The researchers found that the young adults who had the early education still did better in reading and mathematics tests. They were more than two times as likely to be attending college or to have completed college. In addition, the children who received early education were older on average, when their first child was born.

    The study offers more evidence that learning during the first months and years of life is important for all later development.

    The researchers of the Abecedarian Project believe their study shows a need for lawmakers to spend money on public early education. They believe these kinds of programs could reduce the number of children who do not complete school and are unemployed.

    We all know that theme parks are places to have fun and amuse ourselves, but among so many exciting rides there are also some dangers. Make sure you know what the safety standards are for all the attractions at the park. If you do that, you will be safe and have fun.

    Drink water. Believe it or not, dehydration—when your body doesn't have enough water—is the commonest cause of injuries at theme parks. Drinking water while you are at the park is not enough. You must make sure that you drink enough water before you visit it.

    Use your "common sense". There are lots of people around, so make sure you know where your friends or family are. Also, if you are walking and want to stop, make sure nobody is walking behind you. First step aside, then look behind and if you aren't in anybody's way, then stop. It might sound upset, but crashes between people can cause accidents.

    Follow the instructions. The majority of theme parks have instructions for each ride. Some rides only allow people of a certain height. So make sure you are not too tall or too short before boarding any ride. Also, people with certain diseases or conditions are advised not to go on some rides. Do remember: If you are told not to go on a ride, then DON'T.

    Do not ride until a bad stomach or if you've just eaten. Rides can make you ill because of their violent changes of direction and your lunch may end up on someone else's head; surely not a very pleasant experience.

    Have fun, relax and be a little brave! Some rides might look scary but theme parks are very safe places.

    Some colors people see late at night could cause signs of clinical (临床的) depression. That was the finding of a study that builds on earlier study findings. They show that individuals who live or work in low levels of light overnight can develop clinical depression. Doctors use the word "clinical depression" to describe severe form of depression. Signs may include loss of interest or pleasure in most activities, low energy levels and thoughts of death or suicide.

    In the new study American investigators designed an experiment that exposed hamsters (仓鼠) to different colors. The researchers chose hamsters because they are nocturnal which means they sleep during the day and are active at night.

    The animals were divided into four groups. One group of hamsters was kept in the dark during their night-time period. Another group was placed in front of a blue light a third group slept in front of a white light while a fourth was put in front of a red light.

    After four weeks the researchers noted how much sugary water the hamsters drank. They found that the most depressed animals drank the least amount of water.

    Randy Nelson heads the Department of Neuroscience at Ohio State University. He says animals that slept in blue and white light appeared to be the most depressed. "What we saw is that these animals didn't show any sleep uneasiness at all but they did mess up biological clock genes and they did show depressive sign while if they were in the dim (微弱) red light they did not."

    He notes that photosensitive (感光) cells in the eyes have little to do with eyesight. He says these cells send signals to the area of the brain that controls what has been called the natural sleep-wake cycle.

    He says there's a lot of blue in white light. This explains why the blue light and white light hamsters appear to be more depressed than the hamsters seeing red light or darkness.

Perhaps you know them as "taters", "spuds", or "Kennebees", or as "chips", "Idahoes", or even "shoestrings". No matter, a potato by any other name is still a potato — the world's most widely grown vegetable. As a matter of fact, if you are an average potato eater, you will put away at least 100 pounds of them each year. 

That's only a tiny amount grown every year, however. Worldwide, the annual potato harvest is over 6 billion bags. Each bag contains 100 pounds of potatoes, some of them as large as four pounds each. Here in the United States, farmers fill about 400 million bags a year. That may seem like a lot of "taters", but it leaves the United States a distant third among world potato growers. Polish farmers dig up just over 800 million bags a year, while the Russians lead the world with nearly 1.5 billion bags. 

People eat potatoes in many ways-baked, mashed, and roasted, to name just three. However, in the United States most potatoes are devoured in the form of French fries. One fast-food chain alone sells more than $1 billion worth of fries each year. No wonder, then, that the company pays particular attention to the way its fries are prepared. 

Before any fry makes it to the people who eat at these popular restaurants, it must pass many separate tests. Fail any one of these tests and the potato is rejected. For example, only Russet Burbank potatoes are used. These Idaho potatoes have less water content than other kinds, which can have as much as 80 percent water. Once cut into "shoestrings" shapes, the potatoes are partly fried in a secret blend of oils, sprayed with liquid sugar to brown them, steam dried at high heat, then flash frozen for shipment to individual restaurants. 

So, now that you realize the enormous size and value of the potato crop, you can understand why most people agree that this part of the food industry is no "small potatoes".