Mosquitoes have an extraordinary ability to find humans far away and fly straight to their skin. Mosquitoes can do more than cause an itchy (发痒的）wound. Some mosquitoes spread several serious diseases, including Dengue, yellow fever and malaria.

    Over one million people worldwide die from these diseases each year. New research now shows how mosquitoes choose who to bite.

    Mosquitoes need blood to survive. They are attracted to human skin and breath. They smell the carbon dioxide gas, which all mammals breathe out. This gas is the main way for mosquitoes to know that a warm-blooded creature is nearby.

    But mosquitoes also use their eyes and sense of touch. Michael Dickinson is a professor at the California Institute of Technology. His research shows how these small insects, with even smaller brains, use three senses to find a blood meal.

    Michael Dickinson's team used plumes—a material that rises into the air of carbon dioxide gas into a wind tunnel (隧道). They then used cameras to record the mosquitoes. The insects followed the plume.

    Then, the scientists placed dark objects on the lighter colored floor and walls of the tunnel. Mr. Dickinson said, at first, the mosquitoes showed no interest in the objects at all. “What was quite surprising is that the mosquitoes fly back and forth for hours. These are hungry females and they completely ignore the objects on the floor and wall of the tunnel. But the moment they get a hit of CO₂, they change their behavior quite obviously and now would become attracted to these little visual blobs (斑点).”

    This suggested to the researchers that a mosquito's sense of smell is more important in the search for food. Once mosquitoes catch a smell of a human or animal, they also follow visual signals.

    Here are six steps to better studying.

Pay attention in class

    Do you have trouble paying attention in class? Are you sitting next to a loud person? Tell your teacher or parents about any problem that is preventing you from paying attention.

Take good notes

    Write down facts that your teacher mentions or writes on the board. Try to use good handwriting so you can read your notes later. It's a good idea to keep your notes organized by subject.

Plan ahead for tests and projects

    Waiting until Thursday night to study for Friday's test will make it hard to do your best. One of the best ways to make sure that doesn't happen is to plan ahead. Write down your test dates. You can then plan how much to do after school each day, and how much time to spend on each topic.

Break it up

    When there's a lot to study, it can help to break things into several parts. Let's say you have a spelling test on 20 words. Instead of thinking about all of the words at once, try breaking them down into five-word groups and work on one or two different groups each night.

Ask for help

    You can't study effectively if you don't understand the material. Be sure to ask your teacher for help. If you're at home when the confusion occurs, your mom or dad might be able to help.

Sleep tight

    So the test is tomorrow and you've followed your study plan—but suddenly you can't remember anything! Don't panic. Your brain needs time to digest all the information you've given it. Try to get a good night's sleep and you'll be surprised by what comes back to you in the morning.

    Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living. School education is very important and useful. Yet no one can learn everything they want to know. The teacher's job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So, much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.

    It is always more important to know how to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula (公式). It is usually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or a formula in mathematics. But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a maths problem. Great scientists, such as Einstein, Newton and Galileo didn't get anything from school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind.

    The reason for their success is that they knew how to study. They read books that were not taught at school. They worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. They would ask many questions as they read and they did thousands of experiments.

    Above all, they knew how to use their brains.

    Exhibitions in the British Museum

    Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave

    Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is widely regarded as one of Japan's most famous and influential artists.He produced works of astonishing quality right up until his death at the age of 90.This new exhibition will lead you on an artistic journey through the last 30 years of Hokusai's life—a time when he produced some of his most memorable masterpieces.

    25 May—13 August 2017

    Room 35

    Adults￡12,Members/under 16s free

    Places of the mind: British watercolour landscapes 1850-1950

    Drawn from the British Museum's rich collection,this is the first exhibition devoted to landscape drawings and watercolours by British artists in the Victorian and modern eras—two halves of very different centuries.

    23 February—27 August 2017

    Room 90

    Free, just drop in

    Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia

    This major exhibition explores the story of the Scythians—nomadic tribes and masters of mounted warfare, who flourished between 900 and 200 BC. Their encounters with the Greeks, Assyrians and Persians were written into history but for centuries all trace of their culture was lost—buried beneath the ice.

    14 September 2017—14 January 2018

    Room 30

    Adults￡16.50,Members/under 16s free

    Politics and paradise: Indian popular prints from the Moscatelli Gift

    This display is part of the Museum's contribution to the India-UK Year of Culture 2017.It looks at the popular print culture of India from the 1880s until the 1950s.

    19 July—3 September 2017

    Room 90a

    Free,just drop in

    If you do not use your arms or your legs for some time, they become weak. When you start using them again, they slowly become strong again. Everybody knows that. Yet many people do not seem to know that memory works in the same way.

    When someone says that he has a good memory, he really means that he keeps his memory in practice by using it. When someone else says that his memory is poor, he really means that he does not give it enough chance to become strong.

    If a friend says that his arms and legs are weak, we know that it is his own fault. But if he tells us that he has a poor memory, many of us think that his parents are to be blamed(责备), and few of us know that it is just his own fault.

    Have you ever found that some people can't read or write but usually they have better memories? This is because they cannot read or write and they have to remember things; they cannot write them down in a little notebook. They have to remember days, names, songs and stories; so their memory is the whole time being exercised. So if you want to have a good memory, learn from the people: practice remembering.

    British Writer John Donne once said: "No man is an island; every book is a world." As an enthusiastic reader, I can't agree with the latter part of the sentence more. Every summer, I endeavor to find some peaceful places where I can attack some classics without being disturbed. Thomas Hardy wants to live far from the madding crowd. I am no friend to chaos, either.

    I read George Orwell's 1984 in a New England beachside cottage with no locks on the doors, no telephones or televisions in the rooms. 1984 is a good book that needs deep reflection. Attempting Sound and Fury lying on the bed of a poorly-occupied motel, however, was less fruitful: I made it through one and a quarter volumes, but then my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn't keep them open.

    But this summer I find myself at a loss. I'm not quite interested in J. D. Salinger, say, or Frankenstein. There's always War and Peace which I've covered some distance several times, only to get bogged down in the "War" part, set it aside for a while, and realize that I have to start over from the beginning again, having forgotten everyone's name and social rank. How appealing to simply fall back on a favorite—once more into The Call of the Wild or Alice in the Wonderland, which feels almost like cheating, too exciting and too much fun to belong to serious literature.

    And then there's John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. This title do not amaze but confuse. We're never short of sour grapes, but we've never heard of angry grapes. Anyway grapes are my favorite fruit of summer. These stone fruits can always make me feel cheerful and peaceful all at once.