Imagine being a crew member, hundreds of years ago, sailing in southern waters. Your captain is searching for food while exploring unfamiliar waters. Your job is to watch the sea off the ship's side for ice. The wind is cold on your face. Alongside the ship, a fish darts past. Another slows to a stop and raises its head above the water to look at you. How could a fish do that?

    Did the sailors see fish with feathers or swimming birds? Today, we know that the sailors saw birds that developed the ability to swim. Their wings became flippers, and they could “fly” through the water with amazing speed.

    There are many types of penguins. Only two kinds raise their young on the continent of Antarctic. Adelie penguins grow up to 29 inches tall and have a white ring around each eye. Emperor penguins have yellow orange color near their necks. Standing about 35 inches tall, they are the tallest penguins living today.

    Emperor penguins have nests on top of their feet. Father Emperor penguins keep the egg on top of their feet for more than two months, until the egg is ready to hatch. The mother penguin goes out for food during that time. Imagine holding an egg on your feet for two months until someone returns with food!

    Male and female penguins are both good parents. Once the chicks hatch, both parents travel long distances to find food for them in the sea. It may be days before the parents return and the chicks eat again. When they return with food, the fun really begins. Chicks chase their parents, begging for food. Penguin chicks eat huge amounts at one time.

    Eventually, the adult penguins stop feeding the chicks. This is nature's way of forcing children to grow up. When the penguin chicks are hungry enough, they find their way to the sea. Without any swimming lessons, they make their way into the icy waters and swim as only penguins do.

Music

    Opera at Music Hall: 1243 Elm Street. The season runs June through August, with additional performances in March and September. The Opera honors Enjoy the Arts membership discounts. Phone: 241-2742. http://www.cityopera.com.

    Chamber Orchestra: The Orchestra plays at Memorial Hall at 1406 Elm Street, which offers several concerts from March through June. Call 723-1182 for more information. http: //www.chamberorch.com.

    Symphony Orchestra: At Music Hall and Riverbend. For ticket sales, call 381-3300. Regular season runs September through May at Music Hall in summer at Riverbend. http://www.symphony.org/home.asp.

    College Conservatory of Music (CCM): Performances are on the main campus(校园) of the university, usually at Patricia Cobbett Theater. CCM organizes a variety of events, including performances by the well-known LaSalle Quartet, CCM's Philharmonic Orchestra, and various groups of musicians presenting Baroque through modern music. Students with I.D. cards can attend the events for free. A free schedule of events for each term is available by calling the box office at 556-4183. http://www.ccm.uc.edu/events/calendar.

    Riverbend Music Theater: 6295 Kellogg Ave. Large outdoor theater with the closest seats under cover (price difference). Big name shows all summer long! Phone: 232-6220. http://www.riverbendmusic.com.

    Tablets(平板电脑) are useful devices, but their big screens always make them as a burden to carry around without a bag. Wouldn't it be great if there were a phone with the powers of a tablet that could be folded up and fit neatly into the hand? Now something like a tablet-shaped but foldable(可折叠的) phone is about to become available. In February, Samsung and Huawei both introduced foldable phones, the Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X separately, to the public for the first time. Mobile phone use has entered the "foldable future", the Verge noted.

    The technology could change our lives in significant ways. These devices, due to their bendable screens, give us the larger screens we want but still fit easily into the pocket. The technology could change other devices too. For example, we could make TVs that stick to walls like posters, or fold up easily to hide away in drawers, which could help increase available space to the maximum. In a keynote address, Justin Denison, Samsung's senior vice president, called the foldable screen "the basis for the smartphone of tomorrow". "It's a blank canvas (画布) for us to do something beautiful together," he said.

    So is there nothing to stand in the way of the foldable future? According to tech news website Android Authority, the necessary displays were difficult to produce. In 2012, nine out of ten foldable screens produced were defective or unusable. Today, that 10 percent rate has been improved to almost 90 percent. However, at present these foldable devices are expensive. For example, the price of Huawei Mate X is 17, 500 RMB. That's a price that few people will be able to afford.

    But if the foldable device isn't going to change the world overnight, there is no doubt that it is coming. Patrick Moorhead, an industry expert told The Verge, "Few are debating if foldable mobile displays are the future of smartphones; the only question is when and by whom."

    Did you know that if you attach a weighed stick to the back of a chicken, it walks like a dinosaur?

    No, you did not know(or care to know) such things, but now you do! Thanks to this year's winners of the 12 Noel Prize! Now in is 251h year, the lg Nobel is the goofy younger cousin of the honored Nobel Prize. It applauds achievements in the fields of medicine, biology, physics, economies.literature.etc. Every September at Harvard University, awards are presented in 10 categories that change year to year, depending on - according to the organization - what makes the judges "laugh, then think".

    The ceremony officially begins when audience members launch paper airplanes at an assigned human target on the stage, then speakers only have 60 seconds to present their research. In previous year, the one-minute rule was imposed by a young girl - nicknamed Miss Sweetie Poo -who would go up to the platform and repeat the words: "Please stop, I'm bored." in a sharp tone until the speaker left the stage.

    Fortunately for candidates though, the Ig Informal Lectures are held afterwards on Saturday to give presenters more time to explain the crazy things they're working on.

    The research can seem more like the brainchildren of teenage boys than of respectable adults. Justin Schmidt won the physiology Ig for creating the "Sting(蛰) Pain Index," which rates the pain people fell after getting stung by insects. Smith pressed bees against 25 different parts of his body until they stung him. Five stings a day for 38 days, Smith concluded that the most painful sting locations were the nose and the upper lip. Ouch.

    As silly as they sound, not all of the Ig awards lack scientific applicability, A group of scientists from 12 different counties won in the medicine category for accurately diagnosing patients with appendicitis (阑尾炎) based on an unusual measurement: speed bumps(减速带) . They found that patients are more likely to have appendicitis if they report pain during bumpy car rides.

    All these weird experiments have just one thing in common. They're improbable. It can be tempting to assume that "improbable" implies more than that--implies bad or good, worthless or valuable, trivial or important. Something improbable can be any of those, or none of them, or all of them, in different ways. And what you don't expect can be a powerful force for not only entertaining science, but also for the boundary-pushing science we call innovation.

On paper, hydrogen (H2) looks like a dream fuel. Coal, oil, and natural gas produce carbon dioxide, which warms the earth when burned, Hydrogen produces pure water. Hydrogen packs more energy into less space than a battery (but certainly less than petrol) . Also, empty tanks (燃料箱) can be refilled with hydrogen much faster than refilling empty batteries with electricity.

While in practice, things are trickier. Storing a meaningful amount of hydrogen gas requires pressing it several hundred-fold. Changing it into the liquid form is another option, but it should be cooled to-253C. Both processes require a heavy and strong tank. While a 700 bar tank is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, adapting it for use in small vehicles is very difficult because the pressure during refilling would be too great.

The solution? Powerpaste.

A German team of researchers, led by Marcus Vogt, have come up with an interesting "powerpaste", which can store hydrogen energy at atmospheric pressure, ready for release when needed. It is so named because it comes in tubes and looks like toothpaste (牙膏) , not in its traditional form of gas.

The main ingredient (原料) of the paste is magnesium hydride, a substance that reacts with water to form hydrogen. The escaped hydrogen can then be directed into a fuel cell, where it reacts with oxygen from the air to produce electric power.

Refueling is very simple, as instead of going to a filling station, drivers and riders can simply replace an empty tube with a new one and refill the water tank.

Given that powerpaste only begins to break down at temperatures of around 250℃ it remains safe even when a vehicle stands in the baking sun for hours.

However, we will have to be patient. Just because researchers have succeeded in developing a new fueling way does not mean that we can expect to see such vehicles on the road anytime soon. It will indeed be several years before this concept is turned into reality.