Tomato Festival

    Started in 2005, the Tomato Festival has grown into a local tradition in Malta． In recent years, the festival has added amusement park-style rides and a yearly Creature Feature, which screens old horrible movies．There are also dance competitions, parades and pancake breakfast．Third weekend in August．

    Address: 833 Tinkham Rd, Fountain Park, Wilbra-ham, Massachusetts 01095

Phone: （413）599-0010

                                                                                                           Brat Days

Don't mistake this festival for a day filled with poorly behaved children． Begun in 1953, the gathering is the biggest festival in the city each year and features more than 50 stands selling the sausage, as well as a contest to see who can quickly eat the most bratwurst in ten minutes．Early August．

    Address: 17th and New Jersey sts, Kiwanis Park, She boygan, Wisconsin 53081

Phone: （920）457-9491

                                                                                               Hope Watermelon Festival

    The festival dates back to the 1920s, when many trains went through this small town and local watermelon growers would sell their watermelon to parched travelers．These days, the festival sees a Watermelon Queen crowned（加冠的） and sometimes a world-record watermelon grown．There are also more than 300 stands selling arts and crafts from a six-state area, as well as a car show and the Watermelon Olympics．Early August．

    Address: 108 W 3rd St, Hope, Arkansas 71801

Phone: （870） 777-3640

                                                                                                     Oyster Festival （牡蛎节）

Featuring appearances from tall ships and oyster boats, this festival has regularly drawn 60,000 visitors a year since it began in 1978．More than 3,000 volunteers make the festival possible each year．Norwalk is less than a two-hour drive from many of New England's larger cities, making it easy to attend the festival during a trip to New York or Hartford．Weekend after Labor Day．

    Address: Sea view Ave, Veteran's Park, East Nor-walk, Connecticut 06855

Phone: （800） 866-7925

    To help the environment, many Americans have made the change from paper and plastic bags to reusable shopping bags.But a report by a Florida newspaper says that reusable shopping bags sold by some supermarkets have high levels of lead(铅), which can be dangerous to humans, especially young children.Now, there's a call for a rethink about the use of reusable shopping bags.

     “When our families go to the store looking for safe and healthy foods, the last thing they should be worrying about is a bag，”Charles Schumer, a government official said.“Quick and complete research will allow everyone to make right decisions.”

    The newspaper bought more than a dozen bags sold at Publix supermarkets from Florida supermarkets to test them for lead.The results showed that certain bags had lead levels that worried health officials.Some bags had enough lead in them to be considered dangerous waste if people were to throw the bags out with other rubbish.Lead in the bags is not likely to move onto food.But over time, paint (油漆) on the bags can break off and the bags can wear out.When this happens, lead can be freed.

    The affected (受影响的) bags were found in Florida.But Publix has more than 1，000 stores across America.Publix says that its bags don't break any laws about lead levels, but that they have asked the makers of the bags to reduce(降低) the lead levels in them.

    The bags with the highest levels of lead had beautiful designs and many pictures.Plain reusable bags without them are found to have little lead.People worried about lead levels in reusable bags can turn to cloth.Paper bags are also a good choice, since paper can be reused.

    Differences are important and they should be respected. For example, many important people throughout history were considered different, such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln. They did great things, but some people thought they were strange because they had strong feelings about something. I can understand these people because I've been in that situation before many times.

    It all started in elementary school when I realized that I wasn't like everyone else. My mom says that I have a tendency to be obsessed(着迷)with certain subjects. Unfortunately, these subjects don't interest other kids of my age and they really don't interest my teachers. In fact, my kindergarten teacher said she would scream if I mentioned snakes or lizards one more time while she was teaching the days of the week. I would get into trouble for not paying attention and the teasing began.

    In the third grade, my teacher informed me that I have Asperger's Syndrome（症状）. I said, “So what? Do you know that Godzilla's suit weighs 188 pounds?”

    Later, I asked my mom, “What's Asperger's Syndrome? Am I gonna die?” She said that it's like having blinders on, and that I can only see one thing at a time, and that it's hard to focus on other things.

    People also make fun of me for knowing facts about volcanoes, whales, tornadoes and many other scientific things. My mom says that she has been able to answer many questions on Jeopardy! just by listening to what I have to say, but I've even been laughed at for being smart.

    Maybe someday I'll become a gene engineer and create the real Godzilla. I can dream, Can't I?

    Modern lifestyles are generally quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a fact that some claim as the cause of the current rise in global obesity, but new results published July 25 in the open access journal PLOS ONE find that there is no difference between the energy expenditure(耗费) of modern hunter-gatherers and Westerners, casting doubt on this theory.

    The research team behind the study, led by Herman Pontzer of Hunter College in New York City, along with David Raichlen of the University of Arizona and Brian M. Wood of Stanford measured daily energy expenditure among the Hadza, a population of traditional hunter-gatherers living in the open Savannah of northern Tanzania. Despite spending their days hiking long distances to seek for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable(难以区分的) from that of Westerners. The study was the first to measure energy expenditure in hunter-gatherers directly; previous studies had relied entirely on estimates.

    These findings overturn the long-held assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended more energy than modern populations, and challenge the view that obesity in Western populations results from decreased energy expenditure. Instead, the similarity in daily energy expenditure across a broad range of lifestyles suggests that habitual metabolic(新陈代谢的) rates are relatively constant among human populations. This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure. It means we have more to learn about human physiology(生理学) and health, particularly in non-Western settings.

    "These results highlight the complexity of energy expenditure. It's not simply a function of physical activity," says Pontzer.” Our metabolic rates may be more a reflection of our shared evolutionary past than our diverse modern lifestyles."

    Getting around in Canada is fairly easy. Most cities have urban transportation systems, including buses, streetcars, and trains, and some of the larger cities also have subways.

    You can board the transportation at regular stops along the routes. Some let you pay in cash, others require tickets. If you don't have a ticket for the bus, you must pay the right amount of money. This is because the driver does not carry any change. Once you get settled, you may want to buy a monthly pass or a package of tickets to save money. You can buy subway tickets at the subway station.

    If you have to take several buses or change subways on a single trip, you do not need to pay money each time. Simply ask the driver for a transfer, or pick one up from the machine on the subway platform.

    If you are not sure where to board the bus or the streetcar, just ask someone, or follow the crowd. It's usually at the front of the bus, where you show your pass to the driver. When using public transportation, Canadians line up. First come, first served, is a common approach to many activities in Canada.

    Maps of routes and schedules are usually available from the public transit company in your area, and there may also be a telephone information line. You may want to ask someone for the name of the transit company in the area where you live, and then look it up in your telephone book.

In life, once on a path, we tend to follow it, for better or worse. What's sad is that even if it's the latter, we often accept it anyway because we are so used to the way things are that we don't even recognize that they could be different. This is a phenomenon psychologist call functional fixedness.

This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap: People are given a box of tacks (大头钉) and some matches and asked to find a way to attach a candle to a wall so that it burns properly.

Typically, the subjects try tacking the candle to the wall or lighting it to fix it with melted wax. The psychologists had, of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious approaches would work. The tacks are too short, and the paraffin (石蜡) doesn't stick to the wall. So how can you complete the task? The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candle-holder. You empty it, tack it to the wall. and stand the candle inside it. To think of that, you have to look beyond the box's usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and re-imagine it serving an entirely new purpose. That is difficult because we all suffer to one degree or another from functional fixedness.

The inability to think in new ways affects people in every corner of society. The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase" frozen thoughts" to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should. In Arendt's eyes, the self- content reliance on such accepted "truths" also made people blind to ideas that didn't fit their worldview, even when there was plenty of evidence for them.

Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence. She said," It can be found in highly intelligent people."