“I like photography because it captures amazing things that you might not see again,” Timmy Walsh says. He takes pictures of flowers, sunsets and road signs. But those photos don't usually end up in a scrapbook(剪贴簿) or on his bedroom walls.

    When Timmy was five, he found out that his aunt Bev had lung cancer. He wanted to do something to help her. His first idea was to sell his photos from a lemonade--type stand in front of his house in Pennsylvania. “My mom said it wouldn't work because we were not on a busy street,” Timmy explains.

    His next idea was to have an art show. Timmy decorated his home with candles, flowers, and white lights. Then he arranged his photos. Timmy's mom, Sheila, remembers: “Our dining-room table was filled, the living room—everything was filled with photos.” Friends, family, and Timmy's teachers came to the show. He raised more than $300 for cancer research that night. Aunt Bev was “very happy and excited,” he says.

    After a local newspaper wrote a story about Timmy's photos, a volunteer offered to help him set up a website. As people learned about his cause, called Camera for a Cure, Timmy began receiving invitations to sell his pictures at art galleries and fund-raisers. Since then, his work has appeared in more than 20 shows.

    When Timmy is at a show, he greets each customer and talks about what he was thinking when he took his photos. And he always shares facts about lung cancer. Sometimes donations and sales are slow, but that doesn't bother him. “It doesn't matter how much money we made because we just raised awareness,” he says. Timmy knows that finding a cure for lung cancer will take time and effort. So Timmy will keep doing his part by shooting and selling photos of the things he sees.

    Cultures are based on social and linguistic(语言的) communities.

    In South Africa, we exist amongst diverse groups which are culturally different. This makes us multicultural. Toit, one sociologist in the U.S., explains that multiculturalism is more than the expression of cultural variety, and it also concerns communication. He adds that for multiculturalism to “succeed”, meaningful communication is a requisite.

    In multicultural countries, it is necessary that the education system encourages learners to become interculturally competent (胜任的). The process of becoming intercultural is a “personal transformation” from being cultural to being intercultural. This does not mean that a highly intercultural person's identity is culture-free. Rather, it is not rigidly bound by membership to anyone particular culture. Furthermore for learners to become interculturally competent, it is necessary that all involvers in the education system become aware of their own cultural background.

    Toit conducted a survey, the objective of which was to determine the problems experienced by learners in a multicultural learning environment. Two hundred questionnaires were administered. 55% believed that different values and beliefs were a major cause of the communication problems. Closer examination of the interactions showed that learners were in fact mostly associating with members of their own cultural groups. Toit points out that in an intercultural communication, people would be challenged by the sudden difference in culture, and this may force an evaluation or re-evaluation of their beliefs and values. 45% of the learners believed that there was lack of trust among their peers. The general lack of trust between two complete strangers leads to an uncomfortable situation. They said that when learners are asked to work in groups, they are unwilling to do so. They added that one of the many issues that contribute to such negative opinions was the language barrier.

    In China, there are more and more people leaving the countryside to hunt for jobs in the cities, because the countryside is much poorer than the city, and often there isn't much work there. Services such as hospital and transport are usually much better in the city than in the countryside. They hope that their lives will improve when they move to the city.

    But in the big cities of Europe like London or Paris, people are moving out of the city. These rich families want to live a quieter life. They are tired of the noise and the dirt of the city, and they are tired of the crowded streets, crowded trains and buses. They don't want to live in the cities any more. They want a house with a garden in the countryside, and breathe the fresh air there. So they move out of the cities. Some don't go very far, just a little way out of the city, to the towns near the cities. Other people move to the real countryside with sheep, cows and green fields. There they start new lives and try to make new friends.

    Not all those who move from the city to the countryside are happy. After two or three years, many people who have done this feel that it is a big mistake. They don't make so much money and there isn't much work to do. People in the countryside are different and aren't always very friendly. As a result, quite a lot of people who have moved to the countryside move back to the city. “It's wonderful to see crowds in the streets and cinema lights.” they say.

    It sounds almost too good to be true, but a new study on sleeping brains suggests that listening to languages while you sleep can actually help you to learn them.

    For the study, researchers played recordings of foreign words and their translations to subjects enjoying slow-wave sleep, a stage when a person has little consciousness of their environment. To ensure that the results were not compromised by foreign language words that subjects may have had some contact with at some point in their waking lives, researchers made up totally nonexistent foreign words.

    When the subjects woke up, they were presented with the made-up words again without their translations. The subjects were then asked to imagine whether this made-up word indicated an object that was either smaller or larger. This vague(模糊的)way of testing their understanding of the words is an approach that is supposed to tap into the unconscious memory.

    Unbelievably, the subjects were able to correctly classify the words in this way at an accuracy rate that was 10 percent higher than random chance. That's not a rate high enough to have them suddenly communicating in a foreign tongue, but it is enough to suggest that the brain is still absorbing information on some level, even during sleep.

    Researchers have long known that sleep is important for memory, but previously its role in memory was thought to relate only to the preservation and organization of memories acquired during wakefulness. This is the first time that memory formation has been shown to be active during sleep.

    In other words, our brains are listening to the world, and learning about it, even when our conscious selves are not present.

    The next step for researchers will be to see if new information can be 1earned quicker during wakefulness if it was already presented during sleep. If so, it could forever change how we train our brains to learn new things. Sleep learning might become a widespread practice.

    Most parents fear getting letters home from their children's school. They are usually informing them that their child is in big trouble. But ahead of the SATs exams next week, one school decided to send a letter of a different type.

    Bosses at Buckton Vale Primary School in Stalybridge sent letter to all pupils in the sixth grade to tell them how special and unique they are. The letter highlights all the natural skills and abilities the pupils have and everything that makes them "smart'' individuals.

    They are told how their laughter can brighten the darkest day and that the examiners do not know the pupils are kind, trustworthy and thoughtful.

    The letter, signed by the headmaster and two other teachers, has been put on the school's Facebook page and shared more than 9. 000 times with more than 7,000 likes.

    The letter reads, "Next week you will sit your SATs tests for maths, reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation. We know how hard you have worked, but there is something very important you must know. The SATs test does not assess all that makes each of you special and unique. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you in the way that we do and certainly not in the way your families do. "

    The letter goes on to say that the tests are not the most important thing in life, adding, "The scores you will get from this test will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything. There are many ways of being smart. You are smart!"

    The letter has been welcomed by many parents on Facebook. Lynn McPherson wrote, "That's great instilling (逐步灌输) hope, faith and belief. " And Mary Tilling said, "Every child school receive one of these. Brilliant. "