In 1975, George Carlin appeared on a popular TV show, Saturday Night Live, with his famous words about blue food. “Why is there no blue food? I can't find blue food—I can't find the flavor of blue! I mean yellow is lemon; orange is orange and red is cherry. Where is the blue food?”

    Well, Carlin pretty much has it right—there is not no blue food, but there's certainly not a lot of it. Fresh-picked blueberries are blue, though they become purple when they are turned into jam. The blue in blueberries—like the purple in grapes and red in tomatoes—is found in nature. But it isn't a hot color for food. People don't seem to prefer blue food. Some diet programs even suggest that those determined to lose weight should make their food blue.

    Eating, in part, begins with our eyes. Chares Spence—an experimental psychologist from Oxford University—points out that color can change our taste experience. Commonly, we consider red-colored foods up to 20% sweeter than they actually are; and green foods as being more sour. Spence suggests: human expectations may be influenced by our long history of watching—green fruits can become sweet as they grow up and turn red.

    But what about blue? Except blueberries, much of the blue food we see these days is dyed blue artificially. Food producers argue that artificial color doesn't do much damage to health. A lot of research shows that some physical problems of kids are related to food dyes—while other studies show no effects at all. Blue birthday cake or even blue-dyed chicken can be served on the dinner table. So what?

Blood Drive & Marrow（骨髓）Registration

    “These patients deserve a chance at a normal happy future and they rely on the kindness of the strangers to make that happen.”

— Daisy, Isabelle's Mother

    Isabelle is the daughter of Daisy and Saman Mirzaei. In January 2014 Isabelle, 12-year-old, was diagnosed with a genetic blood disorder, beta thalassemia. Isabelle's body is unable to produce healthy red blood cells. As a result, Isabelle has been receiving blood transfusions (输血) every 4-6 weeks since she was 13 years old. A lifetime of regular transfusions can lead to serious medical problems. Her only chance at a normal, healthy life is to have a marrow transplant. Isabelle is only a child, so doctors have started a search for an unrelated marrow donor through The Match Registry. The Mirzaei family asks that you consider helping patients like Isabelle by registering to be a marrow donor and give the gift of life, the gift of blood.

Held at Wiley Hall

Wednesday, March 26

Behind Heathman Dormitory/Butterfield Rd.

12:00 PM - 6:00 PM

    Don't forget to bring your driver's license or another form of identification when you donate.

    Visit www.ribc.org to make an appointment, Sponsor Code 3390.

FREE Kingston Pizza ! ! !

www.ribc.org     800－283－8385

    The Rhode Island Blood Center distributes blood products to hospitals in Rhode Island and Southern New England.

    October might seem to be pumpkin month in the U.S. The holiday of Halloween (万圣节) comes on October 31. Americans around the country are already using social media to show off their pumpkin growing and carving skills.

    Pumpkins are round, orange fruits related to squashes (南瓜小果) and gourds (葫芦). People use their flesh and seeds for food, but they are also popular decorations in the fall.

    Two big pumpkins recently made headlines in the U.S. A farmer in the northeastern state of Rhode Island broke the record for the largest pumpkin ever grown in North America. Richard Wallace's pumpkin weighed 1,026 kilograms. It broke his son's record from 2015. Ron Wallace's pumpkin only weighed 1,011 kilograms last year. A schoolteacher in the northwestern state of Washington brought her large pumpkin to an event in California. Her pumpkin was the champion, weighing 866 kilograms. It turns out that Cindy Tobeck's pumpkin grew from one of the seeds from Ron Wallace's pumpkin from 2015.

    While those pumpkins are large, they are still not the largest in the world. According to the website BigPumpkins.com, Richard Wallace's pumpkin is only the second-heaviest pumpkin of the year. A man in Belgium produced a pumpkin that weighed almost 1,200 kilograms. Smithsonian magazine wrote a story about people who try to grow large pumpkins. In 35 years, the size of record pumpkins has grown from about 225 kilograms to over 1,000 kilograms. Pumpkin farmers trying to grow record fruits are taking the seeds of champion pumpkins from one year and breeding them with other large pumpkins.

    But people are not just growing pumpkins. They are carving them, too. One Twitter user from Britain recently posted a photo of a pumpkin designed to look like U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump. No word of a Hillary Clinton pumpkin design. But one pumpkin farmer in California allows visitors to shoot small pumpkins out of a cannon（大炮）. The targets? Large paper cut-outs of both Trump and Clinton.

    The Broadcom MASTERS competition aims to find a balance between celebrating individual accomplishments and acknowledging that science seldom happens alone. The competition takes off when students from around the country are teamed up and have to solve a series of hands—on challenges in the spotlight.

    Nowadays, kids are fed with “the myth of the lone scientist”, so placing such challenges in the middle school period has a huge potential for impact. The focus on teambuilding skills gets students excited before more fears and stereotypes(成见)set in.

    The initial pool of qualified students comes from the participants in nation-wide science fairs. Those who score in the top 10％(about 10, 000 kids)have the qualification to apply. The judges select the top 300 young scientists, and that group is finally narrowed to 30 finalists.

    Selection at this stage is clearly an honor in itself, but it counts as step one for the finalists. They are then flown to Washington, D. C. and placed into teams of five for the hands-on part of the competition. Each team is made up of students with different talents and skills, including academic focus and experience.

    Unlike the science fairs, where most of the work takes place behind the scenes and students share a polished outcome, the hands-on challenges create a space where the work is the competition itself. The students take up a range of challenges in science, technology, engineering, math and so on. Each of the challenges will need the insight and skills of multiple team members.

    Judges observing the challenges aren't just looking for outcomes but also for leadership, teamwork and problem solving.

    The Broadcom MASTERS attracts increasing numbers of passionate and talented young people who are eager to take part in a program that helps them grow as scientists, engineers and inventors. It lets the students experience a sense of coming together with true peers. More importantly, it provides them with new skills to tackle future challenges.

    After finishing a meal at an American Chinese restaurant you probably expect to receive a handful of fortune cookies after you pay the bill. Fortune cookies are in Chinese restaurants throughout the United States. It's rather satisfying to crack open a cookie at the end of your meal and read your “lucky fortune” on the slip of paper inside.

    The exact origin of the fortune cookie is unknown. It is thought that the tasty snack was the first introduced into San Francisco in 1914, after an immigrant began distributing the cookie with “thank you” notes in them. These “thank you” notes were intended as symbols of appreciation for friends who stood with him through the economic hardship and discrimination of his early life in America.

    There is an alternate origin story. Los Angeles is regarded as the site of the fortune cookie's invention. In this version of the story, David Jung, a Chinese immigrant residing in L. A., is thought to have created the cookie in order to uplift the spirits of the poor and homeless. In 1918, Jung handed out the cookies for free to the poor outside his shop and each cookie contained a strip of paper with an inspirational sentence printed on it.

    Fortune cookies first began to gain popularity in mainstream American culture during WWII. Chinese restaurants would serve them in place of desserts, as desserts were not popular in traditional Chinese cuisine. Today fortune cookies are not tied to Chinese-American culture. In fact, the largest fortune cookie manufacturer is located in the United States and it produces 4.5 million fortune cookies a day —— an evidence to the modern-day popularity of the snack. However, an attempt to introduce the fortune cookie to China in 1992 was a failure, and the cookie was cited for being “too American.”

    So the next time you break open a fortune cookie and read a fortune about the many successes you should expect in your future, remember that the conclusion to your Chinese restaurant meal may not be as Chinese as you think.

    Why not consider spending the holiday at Harvard if you are a high school student who will have a holiday in this coming summer?

    About the program

    This is a five-week program^ from July 16 to August 17, 2018, which is designed to help high school students to pave the way for a successful college experience. We have 200-plus courses, such as film, philosophy, creative writing, and computer science. Besides, we offer you two types of credit courses—4-credil course and 8-credit course. You can earn college credit here. Whether you choose to sign up for one or two courses, you will still have some flexibility (灵活性) to schedule your days'.

    Tuition and Fees

    Application fee (the application period opens in December): $50

    Tuition: $3,300 for 4-credit course;

    $6,600 for 8-credit course

    Housing (room and board) fee: $5, 700

    Health insurance fee: $200

    Financial Aid(援助)

    Financial aid is a scholarship award. It is available to Secondary School Program students with excellent academic records who give evidence of financial need. It does not have to be paid back. Awards cover only a part of the program cost. Families should expect to contribute to the remaining part. Award amounts are determined by many sides, including family finances, availability of fund (基金), and whether students are resident. ... Local students may be eligible (有资格的) for additional funding towards room and board.