They aren't great artists like Leonardo da Vinci or Vincent van Gogh, but their paintings are just as popular on Chinese social media, with millions of Chinese people willing to pay for them.

The 36 works were painted by ordinary Chinese people who live with autism (自闭症) or cerebral palsy (脑瘫), aged from their early teens to late thirties. They all studied art at World of Art Brut Culture (WABC), which is a Shanghai-based non-profit organization (非赢利组织) for art education. The project was started by WABC and supported by the Tencent Charitable Foundation. Users could buy a digital copy of each painting by donating (捐赠) 1 yuan or more. By Aug 29, donations totaled more than 15 million yuan, with about 5.8 million people participating (参与).

    “The paintings by these autistic kids and adults are beautiful: the style is similar to that of the Dutch artist Van Gogh. I'm really impressed by their talent,” Feng Li, a customer service officer in Shanghai, told the South China Morning Post.

    However, the popular campaign also led to certain questions.

    Li Laoxi, an experienced special education teacher in Hangzhou, said that based on his experience, people with autism could only draw a few lines or fill in colors under the guidance of their trainers. “Maybe there are some geniuses out there, but I've never met them”. Others questioned where the money would go, as the donations went to WABC instead of the painters. In response to these concerns, Miao Shiming, founder of WABC, said the money would be used to employ art teachers, buy supplies, and rent facilities. Meanwhile, Tencent said that all donation information would be open to the public.

    Shree Bose is one of the most impressive kids graduating from Fort Worth Country Day High School this year. Bose has a large circle of friends, and there's one who you may have heard of: President Obama. He has twice publicly recognized her achievements in cancer research and spoken with her in the Oval Office.

    If that isn't enough, Bose recently gave a TED Talk about her work with the cancer drug Cisplatin, which also won her first prize at the Google Science Fair and recognition as one of Glamour magazine's Young Amazing Women of the Year.

    After watching her grandfather struggle with liver cancer, Bose was determined to help out in any way she could. As a high school student though, her scientific choices were limited. She reached out to various hospitals and research centers, but doctors turned down her requests because they felt she was too inexperienced medically.

    Only the North Texas Science Health Center respected her determination and chose to guide her. The results were amazing.

    Bose chose to study a protein (蛋白质) and its reaction with the cancer drug Cisplatin. She noticed that when she prevented this protein from growing, Cisplatin was allowed to begin destroying cancer cells once again.

    “My project not only contributes to the understanding of the relationship between the protein and Cisplatin, but also suggests a newer, more effective treatment for patients who resist Cisplatin,” Bose said.

    Bose's achievements aren't limited to the lab, though. She was also captain of her swim team and editor-in-chief of her school paper.

    Bose is currently getting practical experience at the National Institute of Health and she'll be attending Harvard in the fall. She plans to study molecular biology and go to medical school. Eventually, she would like to be a doctor.

    Antarctica(南极洲)'s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.

    The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.

    But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica's once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.

    Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica's contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”

    Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can't do that without international cooperation.”

A Lesson Plan from Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program

    Purpose: To learn about body language and how to use body language.

    Materials (材料): Cards; container

    Time: 25-35 minutes

    Planning Notes:

    ·Write the words below on cards:

    angry disappointed shy afraid sad happy nervous excited bored

    ·Place the cards in the container so volunteers can draw them out one at a time.

    Steps:

    First make sure that all volunteers know what body language means (expressing feelings through body movement and facial expressions). Go over the following instructions:

    ·I'll need at least 9 volunteers to play a game similar to charades (猜词游戏).

    ·The first volunteer will draw a card with a feeling written on it and act out the feeling without using words.

    ·The rest of the group will guess what feeling is being communicated. Once someone correctly guesses the feeling, the next person in line will draw a card and act out what is written on it, again without words.

    ·The game will continue until there are no more cards or until time is up.

    At last, end the activity using the discussion points below:

    ·Can you give examples of when someone's body language communicated a different message from what he/she actually skid?

    ·Sometimes one person is offended (冒犯) by another's body language. How can you work to keep that from happening? Answers may include: be honest and direct; match your nonverbal messages to your verbal ones; be aware of (清楚) cultural attitudes toward different kinds of body language.

    In a recent series of experiments at the University of California, researchers studied toddlers' thinking about winners and losers, bullies (欺凌) and victims.

    In the first experiment, toddlers (学步儿童) watched a scene in which two puppets (木偶) had conflicting goals: One was crossing a stage from right to left, and the other from left to right. The puppets met in the middle and stopped. Eventually one puppet bowed down and moved aside, letting the other one pass by. Then researchers asked the toddlers which puppet they liked. The result: 20 out of 23 toddlers picked the higher-status puppet — the one that did not bow or move aside. It seems that individuals can gain status for being dominant (占优势的) and toddlers like winners better than losers.

    But then researchers had another question: Do toddlers like winners no matter how they win? So, researchers did another experiment very similar to the one described above. But this time, the conflict ended because one puppet knocked the other down and out of the way. Now when the toddlers were asked who they liked, the results were different: Only 4 out of 23 children liked the winner.

    These data suggest that children already love a winner by the age of 21-31 months. This does not necessarily mean that the preference is inborn: 21 months is enough time to learn a lot of things. But if a preference for winners is something we learn, we appear to learn it quite early.

    Even more interesting, the preference for winners is not absolute. Children in our study did not like a winner who knocked a competitor down. This suggests that already by the age of 21-31 months, children's liking for winners is balanced with other social concerns, including perhaps a general preference for nice or helpful people over aggressive ones.

    In a time when the news is full of stories of public figures who celebrate winning at all costs, these results give us much confidence. Humans understand dominance, but we also expect strong individuals to guide, protect and help others. This feels like good news.

    So you're thinking about breaking up with me. But before doing that, make sure you have examined its short-term and long-term environmental effects.

    Let's start simple: consider the great number of gallons of clean, drinkable water that would be wasted by my crying in the shower. Scientists don't have a precise estimate of how much water might be lost, but, considering the length of my listening to the recent two sad albums during the shower, the amount is sure to be catastrophic.

    Make no mistake: running from my sweet hug leaves a set of carbon footprints. Your leaving me will start a swift chain of events that results in me at a bar, drunkenly cursing at you with my friends.

    At the end of the night, I will be forced to take a taxi home instead of the subway. Those extra carbon dioxide releases are a breakup by-product, as are the single-use plastic bottles of Glacier Freeze-flavor Gatorade I'll surely buy the next morning.

    Some effects are more hidden. Should you kick me to the roadside, you must anticipate that I am going to sit there eating ice cream. I will eat ice cream a lot every day, because I have seen sad women do this in movies. This, of course, causes ecological disaster. Not only do dairy cows produce greenhouse gas, but industrial dairy farming can cause the destruction of prairies (北美草原) forests, and other ecosystems. You might meet other interesting women in your life, but good luck is replacing North America's wetlands!

    Breaking up with me is a very personal choice, and no one can make it for you. I only hope that you have gained a helpful new way of thinking, one broad enough to deal with the world that waits for you in your single-hood. There might be "other fish in the sea," but will there be actual fish in the real sea? It doesn't look good. Alternatively, we could stay together and preserve this beautiful blue sea for our grandchildren. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and I eagerly wait for your decision.