Six years ago at the age of 35,I suddenly decided I wanted to learn the cello（大提琴）.Straight away I rented an instrument and appeared before Wendell Margrave,professor of musical instruction.

    "You can be as good as you want to be,"Margrave said rather mysteriously.On a piece of paper he drew the notes E and F.He showed me where to put my fingers on the neck of the cello and how to draw the bow.Then he entered my name in his book: 10 am,Tuesday.Tuesday followed Tuesday,and soon it was spring.

Thus began my voyage out of ignorance and into the dream.E-F,E-F,we played together—and moved on to G.It was a happy time.I was again becoming something new,and no longer trapped as the same person.Surely the most terrible recognition of middle life is that we are past changing.We do what we can already do.The cello was something I couldn't do.Yet each Tuesday this became less and less true.Riding home on the bus one snowy night and learning the score of Mozart's C-Major Quintet(莫扎特的C大调五重奏),I felt the page burst into music in my hands.I could by then more or less read a score,and was humming（哼唱）the cello line,when suddenly all five parts came together harmonically（和谐地） in my head.The fellow sitting opposite stared.I met his glance with tears,actually hearing the music in my head for the first time.Could he hear it too, perhaps?No,he got off at the next stop.

    As the years slipped by,my daughter grew up,playing the piano well.My goal was that she and I would one day perform together.I also wanted to perform in public with and for my peers,and to be secretly envied.I continued to play,to perform,but it is not the same.Before,when I heard a cello,it was all beauty and light.Now,as the TV camera gets close to Rostropovich's face,I recognize that his smile shows his incredible determination.Even for him,the cello is a difficult instrument that doesn't respect your ambitions.I picked up my cello and practiced.As good as I wanted to be,I am as good as I'm going to get.It is good enough.

    When asked about her childhood in the documentary Alive Inside, a 90-year-old woman with dementia(痴呆) replies, "I've forgotten so much." Filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett then plays music from her past for her. “That's Louis Armstrong,” she says. “He's singing When the Saints Go Marching In and it takes me back to my school days.” She then recalls exact details from her life.

Why does it happen? Music tends to accompany events that arouse emotions or otherwise make strong impressions on us — such as weddings and graduations. These kinds of experiences form strong memories, and the music and memories likely become intertwined(紧密相连) in our neural(神经的) networks, according to Julene Johnson, a professor at the University of California. Movements, such as dancing, also often pair with our experience of music, which can help form memories. Even many years later, hearing the music can bring back memories of these long-past events.

    As Alive Inside shows, music has this power even for many people with dementia. Researchers note that the brain areas that process and remember music are typically less damaged by dementia than other areas, and they think it may explain the phenomenon.

    They also pay attention to elderly people with dementia, especially those in nursing homes. "It's possible those long-term memories are still there," Johnson says, “but people just have a harder time accessing them because they're in a strange place and there are not a lot of circumstances in which someone could pull out those memories.”

    Johnson also notes that music is not universally useful for all people with dementia since there are some people with dementia whose brain area that recognizes music is damaged.

    Despite music's apparent benefits, few studies have explored its influence on memory recall in people with dementia. “It's really an untapped area,” Johnson says. Petr Janata is one researcher investigating the topic of music and memory. He says that scientists still do not have the answers for why and how music reawakens memories in people with dementia, but this phenomenon is real and it's just a matter of time before it's fully borne out by scientific research.

    Although the idea of "zero emission net carbon-positive, sustainable (可持续)" development was promoted worldwide, most cities are at a loss what to do or even some have objected to it. But in Liuzhou, a city in southern China, attitudes could not be more different.

    The Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning Bureau has signed up Italian architect Stefano Boeri, the father of the forest city movement, to build a self-contained community for up to 30, 000 people. He is the go-to man for such projects thanks to the success of his "vertical forests", two residential (住宅的) towers. Completed in 2014, they remove up to 17.5 tons of soot (煤烟) from the air each year, and a year later one of them was named Best Tall Building Worldwide.

    The Liuzhou project is a much more ambitious undertaking, however. Its homes, hospitals, hotels, schools and offices will be built on a 340-acre site in what Boeri calls the first attempt to create an "urban environment that is really trying to find a balance with nature". Its 100 species of plant life are expected to absorb almost 10, 000 tons of carbon dioxide and 57 tons of pollutants per year, while at the same time producing 900 tons of life-giving oxygen.

    Although the architects haven't published the cost of the forest city, the Milan towers cost only five percent more than traditional skyscrapers.

    The construction of his forest city at Liuzhou is set to begin in 2020, and there is still a great deal of planning and research required before a projected completion date can be set. However, Boeri remains optimistic about the project and has confidence in the soundness of his vision: "I really think that bringing forests into the city is a way to deal with global warming."

    AHerb Garden

    A delightful walled garden with old varieties of fruit trees and flower borders, Herb Garden is planted with over 200 medical and culinary(烹饪用的)herbs. Dogs on leads(狗链) are welcome to woodland walks. Children's activity sheets are available.

    Open Time: 10:00a. m—5:00p. m, daily except Mon. and Tue.

    Tearoom: 11:00a. m—4:30p. m

    Shop:10:00a. m—5:00p. m

    Price: Adult:￡3 Child: ￡1. 50

    The Beatrix Potter Gallery

    Original sketches(素描) and watercolors by Beatrix Potter for her children's tales. This year's exhibition will feature The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Wrinkle and The Tale of the Pie. Also on display is information on Beatrix Potter's life. Children's quiz sheets and goods bags are available.

    Open Time: 10:30a. m—4:30p. m, daily except Thur. and Fri.

    Price: Adult:￡3.50 Child: ￡1.70

    Hill Top

    Beatrix Potter wrote and drew for many of her famous children's stories in this farm house. You can view her personal treasures and step into the garden which is planted with flowers and vegetables, just as it would have been in Beatrix Porter's time.

    Please note that this is a small and popular house, which gets very busy especially on school holidays. At peak time there are queues and by the end of the day not all visitors may be able to visit the house. Please collect a timed ticket from the park for your car parking on your arrival. Tel: 051394 36269

    Open Time: 10:30a. m—4:30p. m, daily except Thur. and Fri.

    Shop and garden: Thur. and Fri. ,10:00a. m—5:00p. m

    Price: Adult:￡5 Child: ￡2

Gemini Man

    Gemini Man is a big-budget Hollywood sci-fi-action movie based on an original concept, rather than on a superhero comic or an old TV series, even though this particular original concept is more 20 years old. In it a government assassin (杀手)is being hunted down by his own clone The original script was sold by Darren Lemke to a studio in 1997, and since then almost every male A-listener has been attached as a potential star. Now, at long last, Ang Lee has directed Gemini Man, and Will Smith plays both the veteran assassin and his much younger doppelganger (分身).

Jojo Rabbit

    During World War Two, a 10-year-old German boy (Roman Griffin David) is desperate to be a dutiful Nazi, only to discover that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding, a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their house. It may not sound like the stuff of a big-hearted comedy but Taika Waititi can make anything warm and funny. As well as writing and directing Jojo Rabbit, Waititi co-stars as the boy's imaginary friend,a nitwitted Adolf Hitler.

Doctor Sleep

    Mike Flanag's new film is adapted from Stephen King, novel, Doctor Sleep, which was a sequel (续集) to The Shining. You can expect to see blood flowing out of lifts in a rapid stream, ghostly twin girls and headache-including carpet patterns. Ewan McGregor stars as Danny Torrance, the boy with psychic powers m 1980 film. Now, he is a middle-aged hospital counsellor.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

    Here's another chance to see Angelina Jolie. In 2014 she starred in Maleficent, Disney's live-action remake of the Sleeping Beauty cartoon from 1959. The twist was that the eponymous wicked fairy wasn't so wicked, after all, and that the real villain was the father of Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning). The sequel's subtitle promises that Maleficent will actually be evil this time around, her change of heart prompted by Aurora's engagement to handsome prince (Harris Dickinson).

Damian Stefaniuk and his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology （MIT） have developed a novel energy storage device—a supercapacitor— using three basic, inexpensive materials： water, cement, and a soot （煤灰）, which can carry electricity. 

Supercapacitors are highly efficient at storing energy but differ from batteries in some important ways. They can charge much more quickly than a lithium （锂） battery and don't experience the same level of performance decline over time. But supercapacitors also release the power they store rapidly, making them less useful in devices such as mobile phones, laptops or electric cars where a steady supply of energy is needed over an extended period of time. 

Yet according to Stefaniuk, these supercapacitors could make an important contribution to efforts to reduce carbon emissions and make the global economy more environmentally friendly. "If it can be scaled up, the technology can help solve an important issue— the storing of renewable energy," he says. 

He and his fellow researchers at MIT envision several applications for their supercapacitors. One might be to create roads that store solar energy and then release it to recharge electric cars wirelessly as they drive along a road. The rapid release of energy from the supercapacitors would allow vehicles to get a rapid boost to their batteries. Another application would be using supercapacitors in the foundations or walls of houses, so that these parts of the house not only support the structure but also store energy. 

"But it's still early stages. Right now, the supercapacitor made from building materials can only store just under 300 watt-hours per cubic meter, enough to power a 10-watt LED light for 30 hours. The power might seem low compared to regular batteries, but a foundation made from 30-40 cubic meters of this material could meet the daily energy needs of a house," says Stefaniuk. "Since this material is used so widely around the world, it has the potential to be very competitive and useful for energy storage."