Celeste Ng,a new writer,has gained recognition for her first novel,Everything I Never Told You.

    Ng's parents came from Hong Kong,China in the 1960s.Ng was born in America and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,and Shaker Heights,Ohio,in a family of scientists.Celeste went to Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan,where she won the Hopwood Award.

    Although her novel is not about race,the characters are Asian.The main character is Lydia,a teenage girl,who is the favorite of three children born to a white mother and a Chinese-American father.The story is about Lydia's disappearance,and the emotions the family goes through as the mystery unfolds.The whole family deals with sorrow, regret,and exposed secrets as they search for their lost daughter.

    Though the characters in this story are Asian,Ng says she didn't really want to include Asian characters.She was afraid people would think the story was about real people in her life.Because she grew up in America and doesn't speak Chinese,she was actually surprised that she included.Asian characters in the book.

    The book has taken off,especially on Amazon,where it won the Editor's Pick for No.1 Best Book of the Year in 2014.Ng is still getting used to the attention,saying she is still amazed when people tell her they have read her book. With so many readers,it's safe to say this is a book you should read.But if you're looking for a simple mystery,this book might not be for you.Most readers warn that you should not read this book unless you're prepared to cry.

    Suppose you are a visitor in the land of Mongolia, some friends ask you to eat with them. What kind of manners do they want you to have? They want you to give a loud burp after you finish eating. Burping would show that you like your food. In some countries, if you give a big burp, you are told to say “Excuse me, please”.

    In many places people like to eat together. But in some parts of Polynesia it is bad manners to be seen eating at all. People show their good manners by turning their backs on others while they eat.

    What are manners like in an East African town? The people try not to see you. They are being polite. You may see a friend. He may not see you at all. If you are polite, you will sit down beside him. You will wait until he finishes what he is doing. Then he will talk to you. Manners are different all over the world. But it is good to know that all manners begin in the same way. People need ways to show that they want to be friends.

    Have you ever found yourself in this situation: You hear a song you used to sing when you were a child – a bit of nostalgia(怀旧) or "blast from the past," as we say. But it is not a distant childhood memory. The words come back to you as clearly as when you sang them all those years ago.

    Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied the relationship between music and remembering a foreign language. They found that remembering words in a song was the best way to remember even one of the most difficult languages.

    Here is what they did. Researchers took 60 adults and randomly divided them into three groups of 20. Then they gave the groups three different types of "listen-and-repeat" learning conditions. Researchers had one group simply speak the words. They had the second group speak the words to a rhythm, or beat. And they asked the third group to sing the words.

    All three groups studied words from the Hungarian language for 15 minutes. Then they took part in a series of language tests to see what they remembered.

    Why Hungarian, you ask? Researchers said they chose Hungarian because not many people know the language. It does not share any roots with Germanic or Romance languages, such as Italian or Spanish. After the tests were over, the singers came out on top. The people who learned these new Hungarian words by singing them showed a higher overall performance. They did the best in four out of five of the tests. They also performed two times better than those who simply learned the words by speaking them.

    Dr. Katie Overy says singing could lead to new ways to learn a foreign language. The brain likes to remember things when they are contained in a catchy 3, or memorable 4, tune 5.

    Dr. Ludke said the findings could help those who struggle to learn foreign languages. On the University of Edinburgh's website Dr. Ludke writes, "This study provides the first experimental evidence that a listen-and-repeat singing method can support foreign language learning, and opens the door for future research in this area."

    Chinese scientists recently have produced two monkeys with the same gene, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, using the same technique that gave us Dolly the sheep. These monkeys are not actually the first primates(灵长类)to be cloned. Another one named Tetra was produced in the late 1990s by embryo(胚胎)splitting, the division of an early-stage embryo into two or four separate cells to make clones. By contrast, they were each made by replacing an egg cell nucleus(原子核)with DNA from a differentiated body cell. This Dolly method, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer(SCNT), can create more clones and allows researchers greater control over the edits they make to the DNA.

    Success came from adopting several new techniques. These included a new type of microscopy to better view the cells during handling or using several materials that encourage cell reprogramming, which hadn't been tried before on primates. Still, the research process proved difficult, and many attempts by the team failed. Just two healthy baby monkeys born from more than 60 tested mothers. This leads to many researchers' pouring water on the idea that the team's results bring scientists closer to cloning humans. They thought this work is not a stepping stone to establishing methods for obtaining live born human clones. Instead, this clearly remains a very foolish thing to attempt, it would be far too inefficient, far too unsafe, and it is also pointless.

    But the scientists involved emphasize that this is not their goal. There is now no barrier for cloning primate species, thus cloning humans is closer to reality. However, their research purpose is entirely for producing non-human primate models for human diseases; they absolutely have no intention, and society will not permit this work to be extended to humans. Despite limitations, they treat this breakthrough a novel model system for scientists studying human biology and disease.

In Search of Silicon Valley — 10th November

Join us to hear Robert Good's thoughts on the digital revolution, and what he learned from Silicon Valley.

Robert is an artist based in Cambridge UK. His work has been shown across the world.

The talk will begin at 7pm and last around 60 minutes.

£6.00

Retro Computer Festival — 5th November

We're very happy to announce our Retro Computer Festival — our biggest yet, with more exhibitors than ever before. We welcome enthusiasts to exhibit their personal collections.

The event will be free to exhibitors and entry for visitors is just standard museum entry.

Programming with Yarn — 18th October

As well as interesting historical facts, this talk provides a simple way of explaining key programming concepts and highlights the logical thinking necessary to get into coding.

Lily Madar is an experienced software engineer, always trying to find new ways to make coding more accessible in this digital world.

The talk will begin at 7pm and last around 60 minutes.

£6.00 

Family Gaming Night — 15th October

A great event for all the family kids young and old!!

We'll be opening at 6pm for a solid 4 hours of digital entertainment in a fun and family-friendly environment. It's great chance for kids and parents to come together, share experiences, compete against each other and talk about how technology and gaming have changed over the years.

Under 5's are free. Under 16's must be accompanied by an adult

Adult    £1l.00

Child    £8.00

Family Ticket (2 Adults, 2 Children)    £34.00

  A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic

Genre: Fantasy

Number of Pages: 320

What's the basic story line?

Kai and Leila have never met, but their seemingly dull lives will be drawn together in unbelievable ways. Each girl is vacationing—Kai in Texas and Leila in Pakistan. Each girl finds a copy of a book called The Exquisite Corpse. Each book is blank, but when Kai writes a sentence, the book magically begins a story. When either girl writes another phrase, the book shows more. Whatever the girls are doing when they write—getting attacked by a dog, hunting for a rare species, accidentally buying a goat—helps to develop the plot of The Exquisite Corpse. It also makes reading A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic even more enjoyable.

Are the characters believable? Many aspects of the characters are realistic. Readers see that the characters, like all of us, can sometimes fail. Also, both characters have some unflattering (不讨人喜欢的) qualities, even though they're represented as "the good guys" in the story.

Who would like this book? Any lover of fantasy and stories about magic would enjoy this book. Readers who enjoy knowing things the characters don't, or who like being shocked by a huge plot twist (曲折的情节),will like this book.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this book? I would rate A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic a perfect 10, because of the creative story idea and the crazy plot twists that keep the reader turning page after page. I, for one, did not want the story to end.