We all know what a brain is. A doctor will tell you that the brain is the organ of the body in the head. It controls our body's functions, movements, emotions and thoughts. But a brain can mean so much more.

    A brain can also simply be a smart person. If a person is called brainy, he is smart and intelligent. If a family has many children but one of them is super smart, you could say, “He's the brains in the family.” And if you are the brains behind something, you are responsible for developing or organizing something. For example, Bill Gates is the brains behind Microsoft.

    Brain trust is a group of experts who give advice. Word experts say the phrase “brain trust” became popular when Franklin D. Roosevelt first ran for president in 1932. Several professors gave him advice on social and political issues（问题）facing the U.S. These professors were called his “brain trust”.

    These ways we use the word “brain” all make sense. But other ways we use the word are not so easy to understand. For example, to understand the next brain expression, you first need to know the word “drain”. As a verb, to drain means to remove something by letting it flew away. So a brain drain may sound like a disease where the brain flows out the ears. But, brain drain is when a country's most educated people leave their countries to live in another. The brains are, sort of, draining out of the country.

    However, if people are responsible for a great idea, you could say they brainstormed it. Here, brainstorm is not an act of weather. It is a process of thinking creatively about a complex topic. For example, business leaders may use brainstorming to create new products, and government leaders may brainstorm to solve problems.

    If people are brainwashed, it does not mean their brains are nice and clean. To brainwash means to make some accept new beliefs by using repeated pressure in a forceful or tricky way. Keep in mind that brainwash is never used in a positive way.

    Mr.Bean is an internationally recognized comedy character on TV and in films. He constantly gets into awkward and absurd situations, which greatly amuses audiences regardless of their nationalities or culture. The humor is always made clear through a series of simple and funny acts that rely purely on body language, which is universal.

    One of the remarkable shows is that Mr.Bean has a meal in a fancy restaurant. After being seated at his table, Mr.Bean takes out a card, writes a few words on it, seals(密封) it in an envelope and places it on the table. After a moment, he looks back at the envelope but this time he looks surprised, as if he did not know it was there. He opens it to find a birthday card and delightedly puts it on the table for everyone to see.

    When he looks at the menu, an astonished look swiftly appears on his face. He takes all the money out of his wallet, counts it and puts it in a saucer(茶托)．He then looks from the menu to the money with concern until he finds one thing that makes him smile. Then he orders a dish called "steak tartare". When the dish arrives, he is shocked to discover that "steak tartare" is actually raw hamburger. He makes an attempt to eat it, but it is clear from the look on his face that he finds the taste truly disgusting. He cannot hide his feelings, except when the waiter asks if everything is all right. When this happens, he smiles and nods, indicating that everything is fine. When the waiter is not looking, however, he busies himself hiding the raw meat anywhere he can reach-the sugar bowl, the tiny flower vase, inside a bun(小圆面包) and under a plate. He becomes so desperate in the end that he even hides some inside the purse of a woman sitting near him and throws some down the trousers of the restaurant's violinist!

    Make Money This Summer with Sunny Libraries!

    Do you have too much free time this summer vacation? Do you need a summer job to earn extra money? Do you want to be involved in your community? Sunny Area Library System (SALS) has job opportunities for high school students. These are good chances to get work experience.

Life in the Clear

    Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet — as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, "These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they're eating it, or unless something is eating them."

    And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see­through? It's trickier than you might think.

    The objects around you are visible because they interact with light.  Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter (散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks.  Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

    But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it — you see the things behind it.

    To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments (色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn't have pigments, so its tissues won't absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

    Animals are built of many different materials — skin, fat, and more — and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat.  Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see­through. Others build a large, clear mass of non­living jelly­lie (果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.

    Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they're doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process.  When they die, they turn a non­transparent milky white.

    Everybody, at some point in their lives, has experienced failure. It could be something as simple as not getting the job you wanted, or getting fewer marks even after hard work. But what makes you is not your failure, but how you get back up after being hit.

    Once, a young school boy was caught in a fire accident in his school and was assumed that he would not live. His mother was told that he was sure to die, for the terrible fire had destroyed the lower half of his body. Even if he were to survive, he would be lame throughout his life.

    But the brave boy did not want to die nor did he want to be lame.  Much to the amazement of the doctor, he did survive. But unfortunately from his waist down, he had no motor ability. His thin legs just hung there, lifeless. Eventually he left the hospital. But his determination to walk was unshakable. At home, when he was not in bed, he had to stay in a wheelchair. One day, he threw himself from the chair and pulled himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him. He reached the fence, raised himself up and then began dragging himself along the fence, firmly determined. He did this every day, with faith in himself that he would be able to walk unaided. With his iron determination, he did develop the ability to stand up, then to walk on and off, then to walk by himself and then to run.

    He began to walk to school, and then run to school, to run for the joy of running. Later in college he was on the track team.

    In February 1934, in New York City's Madison Square Garden, this young man who was not expected to survive, who would surely never walk, who could never hope to run-this determined young man, Dr. Glenn Cunningham, ran the world's fastest mile.

    A good example of the power of positive thinking and faith in one's self, Glenn Cunningham continues to be an inspiration for many, and his story, a brilliant evidence to how one can bounce back even when all difficulties are piled against one, to the degree that death seemed the preferable option.

In 1835, William Talbot finally succeeded in producing a photograph of his country house. He declared that his was the first house ever known to have drawn its own picture. The drawing was formed "by the action of light upon sensitive paper." Photography offered nature a "pencil" to paint herself through optical （光学的） and chemical means alone.

By the mid-nineteenth century, people no longer needed to hire a draftsman to draw detailed images because the process could be completed instantly with a camera. Advocates for the technology stated that not only was it more precise than the human hand-it was faster and cheaper.

The removal of human fallibility in the creating process was one of photography's biggest selling points, but this also started debates about the new medium's implications for visual culture. Could images made largely by a machine be considered art? If so, where did human creativity, fit in this process?

As the twenty-first century becomes increasingly automated （自动化的）, more and more people attempt to identify where human agency exists in the technologically driven world. Images generated with artificial intelligence by companies like OpenAI are stimulating questions like those that emerged with the coming of the photograph. By typing a sentence, users can generate "new" images composed from images collected across the internet. The result has been a flood of Al-generated images in places that are previously unique to human authors. Painting competitions, commercial graphic design and the fashion of portraiture（肖像） have all since collided with the technology in troubling ways.

The fine arts were thought to be a final hold-out of human creativity, but the surprisingly high quality of Al-generated images is producing deeper questions about the nature of originality. If the history of photography tells us anything, it's that the debate won't be settled quickly; straightforwardly or by the institutions we typically associate with cultural gate-keeping.