Register in person, by phone 264-8833, or by mail. Use form given.

178 IN Winchester St, Chicago

Basic Photography

    This is an eight-hour course for beginners who want to learn how to use a 35mm camera. The teacher will cover such areas as kinds of film, light, and lenses(镜头). Bring your own 35mm camera to class. Course charge: $50. Jan.10,12,17,19, Tues. & Thurs. 6:00~8:00 p.m. Marianne Adams is a professional photographer whose photographs appear in many magazines.

Understanding Computers

    This twelve-hour course is for people who don't know very much about computers, but need to learn about them. You will learn what computers are, what they can and can't do, and how to use them. Course charge:$75. Equipment charge:$10. Jan.14,21,28, Sat. 6:00~10:00 p.m. Joseph Saimders is Professor of Computer Science at New Urban University. He has over twelve years of experience in the computer field.

Typing

    This course on week-days is for typing. You are tested in the first class and practice at one of eight different skill levels. This allows you to learn at your own speed. Each program lasts 20 hours. Bring your own paper. Course charge:$125. Materials charge:$25. Two hours each evening for two weeks. New classes begin every two weeks. This course is taught by a number of business education teachers who have effectively taught typing courses before.

Oil Painting

    Oil paint is easy to use once you learn the basics. When you enroll(注册) in this oil painting course, you will learn to draw and paint using many oil painting techniques under complete guidance and instruction. Together—with the teacher's knowledge and your passion—we'll unlock your creativity and develop your potential! Course charge: $35. Jan. 5,12,19,26, Thurs. 2:00—5:00pm. Ralf Ericssion has taught beginners to masters and he has learned that everything builds on just a few basic concepts that he will show you here.

    Internet use appears to cause a decline in psychological well-being（安康）, according to research at Carnegie Mellon University.

    Even people who spent just a few hours a week on the Internet experienced more depression and loneliness than those who logged on less frequently, the two-year study showed. And it wasn't that people who were already feeling bad spent more time on the Internet, but that using the Net actually appeared to cause the bad feeling.

    Researchers are puzzling over the results, which were completely contrary to their expectations. They expected that the net would prove socially healthier than television, since the Net allows users to choose their information and to communicate with others.

    The fact that Internet use reduces time available for family and friends may account for the drop in well-being, researchers suggested. Faceless, bodiless “virtual”（虚拟的）communication may be less psychologically satisfying than actual conversation, and the relationship formed through it may be shallower. Another possibility is that exposure to the wider world via the Net makes users less satisfied with their lives.

    “But it's important to remember this is not about the technology perse; it's about how it is used,” says psychologist Christine Riley of Intel, one of the study's sponsors. “It really points to the need for considering social effects in terms of how you design applications and services for technology.”

    Spend any time in London, England's capital, and you'll quickly gather that it's a multicultural (多元文化的) community. Look around at your fellow passengers on the Tube(地铁) or the bus. They're of every skin color and dress differently to one another. Listen, and you'll hear many other languages besides English spoken. Some of these people, no doubt, will be tourists who are in London to see the sights. But others — in fact probably most — will be living their lives there, along with millions of others.

    Along with white British people, there are Britons from, or with parents and grandparents from, the Caribbean, India, China and most other places. This makes London a fascinating place in which to live. The reason is that when people settle in a place, they don't just buy a house and live there, but bring aspects of the culture of their “old country” with them.

    The most visible sign of this is the number of restaurants offering dishes from different parts of the world. In a city in which it's estimated 250 different languages are spoken, you can expect a similarly wide range of foods to be available. You would expect in one of the world's leading cities to encounter(遇到) French, Italian, Chinese and Indian eateries. But in London you'll also find Polish, Patagonian and Palestinian restaurants.

    However, London's multiculturalism isn't just about food. Many types of people are gathered in one space, but the way they live differently shows in that space. They worship(崇拜) differently, for one thing. Alongside the famous old English churches by Nicholas Hawksmoor and Christopher Wren — responsible for one of the capital's most famous landmark, St Paul's Cathedral—you'll find mosques(清真寺), temples and synagogues (犹太教堂).

    London even speaks its own special kind of English. Language experts created the term “Multicultural London English” to identify the dialect of English that appeared at the end of the last century.

    All of this makes London a very surprising and varied place to call your home. But, in a way, this has long been true. In the 18^th century, the compiler(编纂者) of the first English dictionary, Samuel Johnson, once said: “ He who is tired of London is tired of life.”

    Josh Hill, a biology teacher at Mar Vista High School in California, US, often gets sick after swimming in the ocean at Imperial Beach in California.

    He and a group of students are raising awareness(意识)about water pollution by taking weekly water samples(样本)of the ocean and publishing their results online.

    Every Thursday, Hill and his students collect water from the ocean. Students then take the samples to their school and test them for levels of bacteria. Usually, samples closer to the border have higher levels of bacteria, Hill said.

    “Water quality is usually the worst at the southern end and it increasingly gets better,” he said.

    Hill collects the samples on Thursdays so that students can publish the results on the Surfrider Foundation's website in time for the weekend. The Surfrider Foundation has give Mar Vista lab equipment and promote the students' results on its site.

    Most of Hill's students grew up in Imperial Beach. Many have gotten sick from the water or know someone who has.

    Cameron Bell, 17, who is currently applying to college, wants to pursue a STEM career. He appreciates the fact the he can get lab experience at school. “Our research really impacts our community because it's keeping people safe,” he said.

    On a recent Thursday morning, Anthony Gass, 15, collected some samples. Before he got into the water, his classmates helped him put on waterproof(防水的)clothes and tie a rope around his waist to protect him from the onrush of water.

    Hill said the protection probably wasn't necessary, but that it was better to be safe than to be sorry. “We just want to make sure we protect the students,” he said.

    In the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen's apple and falls victim to a curse(诅咒);in Shakespeare's novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pellets(药丸)that contained mercury(水银), believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.

    Poison(毒药) has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?

    An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison.

    The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars(毛毛虫), frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren't much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered with a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.

    "Poisons can be bad for some things," Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. "Yet they can also be good for others."

    A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol.

    The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances(物质)that we regularly ingest(摄入)-chili, coffee and chocolate-owe their special flavors or stimulating(提神的)effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.

    The United States of America is faced with serious traffic problems. Too many cars travel on the freeways to and from the city. This heavy traffic causes delays and lots of pollution from cars that are using their engines but not moving anywhere. Many cars going nowhere is called a "traffic jam".

    While many cities in the United States have traffic problems, some of the worst are in Los Angeles, California, which is a big city with a large downtown area. One of the reasons why there is so much traffic is that few people use public transportation to get around.

    Experts say one possible solution to the traffic problems in Los Angeles would be to make people want to use the public transportation system of buses instead of their own cars. People say the buses should be made easier, faster, less costly and more dependable than driving a car.

    One suggestion is to reduce the cost of taking the bus. Also, Los Angeles could make the buses easier for people to use. The buses could travel to more places in the city. And there could be more special lanes on the freeways that only buses could drive in. These changes would make taking the bus faster and easier than driving a car.

    Other experts have said that the best way to ease traffic problems is to charge people money to drive on the freeways. These charges, or tolls, would be for the most crowded roads. The tolls would be in effect during the times of a day when most people drive to work and home. These times in the morning and late afternoon are called "rush hour". People would try to avoid driving on these roads, which would decrease the amount of traffic. Also, the money collected from these tolls could be used to improve the roads and public transportation system.