Tu Youyou, an 84-year-old female（女性）scientist, became the first Chinese to win a Nobel Prize in science on Oct 5. Before that, she ever won the 2011 Lasker Award for finding out artemisinin (Qinghaosu), which saved millions of lives. She was grateful（感激的）for the Lasker prize, but said, “It is just a scientist' duty. I will go on fighting for the health of all humans.”

    Tu kept her work in the 1960s and 1970s. In that age, Malaria (疟疾) could took away people's health. Scientists all over the world had already tried over 240, 000 times but failed. Tu Youyou, a member of the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, began to study Chinese herbs.

    Before 2011, people didn't know Tu very much. Many friends played jokes with her “the Professor of Three None's” : no degree（学位）, no study experience abroad, not a member of any Chinese national colleges. But she is hard-working. She read a lot of traditional Chinese medicine books and did a lot of researches on the disease.

    In February, 2012, Tu was named National Outstanding Females (One of the Ten) Tu is now a model of Chinese medical workers.

    We considered a list of the best American books — but we'd need a whole issue to do them justice. Here are 5 that helped define the national character. Most from a century or so ago, they still entertain, teach and inspire American people.

    Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

    First published in 1851, the book tells the adventure stories of Captain Ahab and his continuous hunting for the white whale and draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories.

    The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

    Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1918, the book provides insight into Adams' family, including his experience as a private secretary to his father, minister to England during the American Civil War.

    Leaves of Grass by Walt Whiteman

    When Whiteman published Leaves of Grass in 1855, he wanted to define the American experience— sing for the new country in a new voice, reflecting the great changes in the American literary world that had taken place during his lifetime.

    Poems by Emily Dickinson

    An enthusiastic poet whose works have had a considerable influence on modern poetry, Dickinson's frequent use of dashes(破折号)，sporadic(零星的)capitalization of nouns, and unusual metaphors(隐喻) has contributed to her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of the 19^th-century American literature.

    The song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    First published in 1855, this is Longfellow's most popular and most recognized poem, showing the heroic life and death of a magic American Indian sent by the Great Spirit to guide the nations in the ways of peace.

    In the mid-nineteenth century, as iceboxes became increasingly common in American homes, there were efforts to find cheaper and more reliable sources of ice. In the eighteen-thirties, scientists discovered a way to make ice, which is similar to how a refrigerator works. In 1860, there were four artificial-ice plants in the United States; in 1889, there were about two hundred; by 1909, there were two thousand. Ice now came from factories, not ponds, and it was turned out in three-hundred-pound blocks by lowering steel cans of pure water into tanks of refrigerated salted water. Kept below thirty-two degrees, the salted water did not freeze, but the water in the cans did. Those cans were then lifted from the tank, and the ice was taken out of them.

    The ice blocks were delivered to home users, and to the fishing and chemical industries. On the railroads, trains carrying fruit and vegetables had cars at each end filled with blocks of ice. It was a growing industry.

    The great trade began to fall away in the middle years of the twentieth century. The railroad business shrank, and, in the immediate postwar period, block ice lost out to home refrigerators and then to small commercial ice machines. By the nineteen-sixties, things looked very dark. “It was scary,” Dan Ditmar, an ice expert in San Antonito, told me. “Your biggest customers were cafeterias and country clubs, and you'd go out there and they'd say, 'We don't need you anymore; we've got ice machines.'”

    Then the companies that survived the slump（a slump is a period when there is a reduction in business）began investing（投资）in newly developed ice-cube machines, and by the late sixties American ice was becoming a packaged-ice business. And packaged ice was exactly what the country needed. These were years of increased leisure time—more barbecues, more cars, and more houses by the lake. “Things exploded in the nineteen-seventies, Paul Handler said. Ice cubes evolved. They became hugely popular^ shoveled（铲）here and there into picnic coolers and fast-foof sodas. They became noisier.

    One morning more than thirty years ago, I entered the Track Kitchen, a restaurant where everyone from the humblest(卑微的) to the most powerful came for breakfast. I noticed an empty chair next to an elderly, unshaven man, who looked somewhat disheveled. He was wearing a worn-out hat and was alone. I asked if I might join him. He agreed quietly and I sat down to have my breakfast.

    We cautiously began a conversation and spoke about a wide range of things. We never introduced ourselves. I was concerned that he might have no money and not be able to afford something to eat. So as I rose to go back to the counter and buy a second cup of coffee, I asked,

    "May I get you something?"

    "A coffee would be nice."

    Then I bought him a cup of coffee. We talked more, and he accepted another cup of coffee, Finally, I rose to leave, wished him well, and headed for the exit. At the door I met one of my friends. He asked,

    "How did you get to know Mr. Galbreath?"

    "Who?"

    "The man you were sitting with. He is chairman of the Board of Churchill Downs."

    I could hardly believe it. I was buying, offering a free breakfast, and feeling pity for one of the world's richest and most powerful men!

    My few minutes with Mr. Galbreath changed my life. Now I try to treat everyone with respect, no matter who I think they are, and to meet another human being with kindness and sincerity.

    A British-designed electronic newspaper which is made of plastic and no larger than a table mat(垫子) is to enter the market next year. The new newspaper was conceived(想出) by Cambridge University scientists. They came up with the idea of replacing silicon chips (硅片) with plastic ones. It is being developed by Plastic Logic, a company based in Dresden, Germany.

    "It looks just like a table mat, and is as light as a magazine. But you can download hundreds of newspapers at the touch of a button, and read them quite safely," the BBC reported on its website.

    The plastic paper is produced in a safe "clean room" at the Plastic Logic factory, which opened last month as the world's first plastic-electronics factory. Every part of the product, from the screen to the electronics, is made of plastic. And it is described by engineer Dean Baker as "top quality". Baker says the plastic newspaper could help solve the problem of waste material associated with traditional newspapers.

    "There's a huge amount of waste. We have paper distributed（分发）all over the country each day and then thrown into the bin. This doesn't need to happen any more. All of the copies could be made electronically and stored on a single ereader with the appearance of paper." he says.

    People can expect to see the plastic newspaper next year, the BBC says.