Science Museum, London

    Runs: Until 5 May

    Price: £7

    Exhibition about the Large Hadron Collider which uses theatre and video, as well as handmade works to recreate the experience of the real place and show the work behind the discovery of the Higgs 、 boson. Well worth it for anyone studying physics or simply interested.

    Weston Park Museum, Sheffield

    Runs: Until 5 May Price: Free for students

    Underneath the 1960s-built Castle Market in Sheffield, there are the remains of a historical castle. Now that the market is being moved, there has been a sudden growth in interest in the old castle.

    Seacity Museum, Southampton

    Runs: Continued

    Price: Entrance to the museum is £4.50 for students

    Explores the Titanic disaster and its effect on Southampton, where more than five-hundred families lost a family member to the disaster. The exhibition recreates the sights and sounds of 1912 Southampton and ends ill the Disaster Room, where a series of events from the moment of the Titanic hit the iceberg are explored using powerful oral description from survivors.

    The Guildhall, Leicester

    Runs: Until 1 June

    Price: Free

    This exhibition tells the history of King Richard III and of the search for his lost remains, eventually found underneath a car park two years ago. The exhibition can give visitors a rounded view of the life of the king and how he was discovered. Great for history students.

    You may think, salt is just a simple cooking element we shake on our food for a little extra taste. But salt is much more than that. Without salt our muscles would not move. Our nervous systems would not operate. Our hearts would not beat.

    But do not think rubbing salt into a wound will help. Doing that would be painful and not heal the wound. “To rub salt into a wound” is an idiom that means to purposefully make a bad situation worse.

    Early humans got the salt they needed to stay alive from the animals they killed. But advances in agriculture led to a diet low in salt. So, humans needed to find other sources. Those who lived near the ocean or other natural sources for salt were lucky. Those who did not had to trade for salt. In fact, people used salt as a method of payment in many parts of the ancient world. The word “salary” comes from the word “salt”.

    Salt also played an important part in population movement and world exploration. Explorers understood that if they could keep food fresh, they could travel longer distances. So they used salt to preserve food and explore the world.

    Salt was so important that, according to food historians, it was traded pound-for-pound for gold. Today, people still use the expressions “worth one's salt” or “worth one's weight in salt”. The expressions describe a person of value.

    A person might also be called “salt of the earth”. That description means he or she is dependable and trustworthy. However, when you say “I think we should take what he said with a grain of salt”you mean you accept it but maintain a degree of doubt about its truth.

    When success comes quickly, as a result of hard work meeting opportunity, one tends to forget that it may not always continue on trend.

    Like me, most people do not “hit it big”. We tend to take a more circuitous(迂回的) route toward success. Believe that great success is not always be given the lucky but those who go after it long and diligently.

    Recently I have conversations with many people that are in the “success” stage, not happy where they currently are or feeling “unsuccessful”. Society has made us confirm that we need to be wealthy in order to be successful. I tell them not to get on the “way off track”. Success doesn't have to be financial, it could be relationships, it could be fulfilling your passions, and it could be your health level. I know many successful people that are not wealthy but are rich in their career or spirit. The worst thing people can do is chase the “money” by any kind of means. Success is made by serving others, and in turn, you will get the rewards of financial success.

    It's not easy travelling down the roads of patience, risk and uncertainty. You must stay flexible because the road to success is always under construction. You must concentrate because someone or something will throw a roadblock in the middle of the road. So, get ready for difficulty and delays. Stop worrying about failure.

    The road to success is not a straight line, it's over mountains and down in the valleys. With persistence and belief, you will most certainly get there. Trust you will have powerful and new breakthroughs as long as you get rid of the hurdle of self-doubt and never give up. And, even if all else fail, remind yourself that: I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it.

    David Lindenmayer of the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra says that older trees play important roles in maintaining landscapes and ecosystems.

    David studies conservation, landscape, ecology and biodiversity at the Australian National University College of Science in Canberra. “Lots of people recognize that as humans get older they tend to have less and less children while trees do it the other way around. What really happens is that the older some of these really big old trees get, the more seeds they produce and the more germinant（萌芽的）they're likely to be. So it's actually the polar opposite of what we see with humans and most other animals, so really quite extraordinary. “On January 26th he spoke to Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina when they were both at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

    In actually it's quite a worrying situation, because in plenty of forests and woodland and other ecosystems around the world, populations of large old trees are declining very quickly. And this matters because a lot of biodiversity, a lot of carbon, a lot of key ecosystem processes are associated with those really big, old trees.

    We can make sure we grow more forests, that we protect the big trees we have now, and that we don't do things that really put a lot of pressure on those trees. We should not be cutting down really big old trees anymore.

    Careers in zoology are extremely varied and unique, and can provide incredible learning and work opportunities for anyone devoted to animal studies and welfare. Zoology, or the study of animals, is a wide field with many specialties, including research, conservation, veterinary (兽医的) medicine, and the care of animals. For people with a love of animals and some training, dreams of careers in zoology may come true.

    Some careers in zoology focus on research and scientific studies. These careers may allow those with a good theoretical science background to develop and run studies that improve human understanding of the animal world. Research in zoology can help create safer and more effective products for animals or can teach humans more about animal behavior in order to aid in conservation, breeding programs, and habitat preservation.

    Careers in zoology that focus on conservation attach great importance to the continued survival and increased protection of animal species. Conservationists may work with political groups or governments to help make laws to protect and preserve animals, or may work in the field gathering information on potential threats to the health of global ecosystems. Some conservationists work in educational fields, trying to improve human efforts to save animals from extinction.

    Animals are subject to illness and injury, and some careers in zoology help to create a safe, stable animal population. Veterinary medicine is an important specialty field, and may take several years of intensive training to qualify as a certified veterinarian. While many veterinarians focus on the small-animal practice of domestic pets, vets in rural areas often work with large farm animals and more adventurous veterinarians may work with exotic species in zoos and wildlife preserves. .

    Humans love to observe animals, and modern-day zoos and wildlife preserves help meet that interest while providing facilities to assist with conservation programs. Zoology careers in zoos can range from overseeing breeding programs, to creating the proper diet for a deer, to cleaning the tiger's cage. Many volunteer and entry-level jobs are available for people that love animals.

    Why can some people sleep through noises like a honking car or flushing toilet, while others are awakened by the lightest sound?

    To find the answer, sleep researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted an unusual study of 12 self-described deep sleepers. After tests confirmed that the healthy volunteers were solid sleepers, they took part in a three-night study in the university's sleep laboratory. The participants spent the night in a big and comfortable room. But the room also included four speakers positioned near the top of the bed.

    During the night, the deep sleepers were subjected to 14 different recorded sounds, like street traffic, toilets flushing, and an airplane flying overhead. Next door, the researchers monitored their sleep patterns and brain waves.

    As expected, all of the participants slept relatively well, but there were differences in how they responded to the noisy interruptions. Some of the sleepers didn't wake up even when a sound was blasted at 70 decibels（分贝）; others were awakened by sounds at 40 or 50 decibels.

    The researchers discovered that the difference in a sleeper's reaction to noise could be predicted by the level of brain activity called "sleep spindles（纺锤体）". A sleep spindle is a burst of high-frequency brain activity coming from deep inside the brain during sleep. The source of the spindles is the thalamus（丘脑）, a part of the brain that sends sensory information to the rest of the cortex（皮层）.

    Before the study, the Massachusetts researchers theorized that the spindles are the brain's way of preventing sensory information from passing through the thalamus and waking the rest of the brain during sleep. They found that sleepers who experienced the most sleep spindles during the night were also the soundest sleepers and were least likely to be awakened by noise.

    Scientists already know that most people become lighter sleepers with age, most likely because older people experience less "slow wave sleep", which is the deepest stage of sleep. People also produce fewer sleep spindles as they age. But even when controlling for the stage of sleep a person was in, the number of sleep spindles still predicted their risk for awakening because of noise.

    More research is needed, but the findings suggest that a better understanding of sleep spindles could lead to new behavioral or drug therapies for people with sleep disorders. For example, future studies may try to determine whether diet, exercise or other behaviors may influence the number of sleep spindles a person produces during the night.