Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    If anyone knows what makes a great children's book,it must be Sussex author and illustrator(插图家) Jane Hissey. Her " Old Bear" books have achieved classic status in a variety of formats.

    I caught up with Jane at her home in the East Sussex countryside and asked her what she thinks is the secret of a classic children's book. "That's a difficult one. I suppose it's got to be relevant to the child's stage of development-for young children, pictures on a page that are familiar, for older children, an experience. The book should be familiar,but hold some surprises too to keep the interest. It must inspire and delight, but there are the things that happen every day. "

    After the birth of her first child,she gave up teaching and worked on her own artwork, drawing pictures of teddy bears. An editor from a publishing company saw her work and invited Jane to do a children's book. Over the years, from the first " Old Bear" book in 1988,her children have made a huge contribution-not least in terms of plot. She said, "I used to give my children the toys to play with-and they had tea parties and so on. One of my bear characters,"Little Bear",is the same age as Ralph, my youngest, who's seven now. All the children have joined in my work and,in years to come, they will realize how much. "

    "I hope I'll know when people are getting tired of the characters. If ever they did, I think I'd go on drawing them for fun," Jane continued," My own children have been very useful to me in my work, but as they are older now, I'll just have to hope that other people's children can inspire me. "

    Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri(MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

    “To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density (密度)”，said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “The radioisotope (放射性同位素) battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries.”

    Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, presently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanreal systems (MNEMS) Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said they are safe.

    “People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous,” he said, “However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems.”

    His new idea is not only in the battery's size, but also in its semiconductor(半导体). Kwon's battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor.

    “The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure(晶体结构) of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said, “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”

    Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwon is working to build and test the battery, In the future, they hope to increase the battery's power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.

    An Israeli law banning too skinny models went into effect with the start of 2013. The law, approved last March in Israel, requires models to prove they have maintained a Body Mass Index (BMI) of at least 18.5 for three months before a fashion show. That means a woman who is 68 inches tall can weigh no less than 119 pounds.

    "This law is another step in the war against eating disorders," said physician Adatto. "Underweight models," he explained, "can no longer serve as role models for innocent young people who copy their false image of being skinny."

    But some critics in this country say it is misguided, focusing on weight instead of health. They also say the Israeli ban is bound to fail because of the strong power of the fashion industry. "I think it's an approach that isn't going to work." said eating disorder expert Susan Ice, who worked with an organization which creates a healthy working environment for models.

    But Adatto told the reporter that he began to concern the issue after meeting an ambitious model who looked like she needed to be hospitalized. He said. "I realized that only legislation(立法) can change the situation. There was no time to waste; so many girls were dieting to death."

    However, the efforts to regulate models' weight in Spain and Italy have not resulted in significant changes in part because of difficulties in determining reliable methods of measuring weight and health.

    Still, folks including Ice say there's no denying that images from Hollywood and the fashion industry can be difficult for young women to deal with. "Certainly I don't believe the modeling industry has caused the rise in eating disorders, but it makes it harder," she says. "It's a difficult recovery environment, worshiping thinness as the beauty ideal."

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    Dolphins, African gray parrots and some other animals understand the idea of “zero,” but researchers were surprised to find that honeybees also comprehend this abstract concept, considering the insects' tiny brains, according to a new study. Honeybees have fewer than one million neurons (神经元), compared with the 86 billion neurons in humans—and yet, they grasp a concept that humans, by some measures, don't start to understand before preschool.

    The researchers set up two cards, each of which had a set of symbols on them, like triangles or circles. Then, they trained a group of the bees to fly to the card with the lower number of symbols. The bees quickly learned what the humans wanted them to do to get their delicious, sweet rewards. The trained bees were then shown a card that was empty and one that had symbols on it. There is no need for the bees to be trained to fly more often to the empty card—thus showing that they understood that “zero” was a number less than the others.

    Although they flew more often to an empty card than to one that had one symbol on it, it became easier for them to distinguish when the symbols on the card increased in number. For example, they more often flew to the zero when the other card had four symbols than when it had one.

    Perhaps these findings will explain the brain mechanism (机制) behind what allows us to understand the concept of “nothing,” Adrian Dyer, a researcher said. This understanding, in turn, could help in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) that also understands this concept. “If bees can understand 'zero' with a brain of less than a million neurons, it suggests there are simple, efficient ways to teach AI new tricks,” Dyer said in the statement.