When you're travelling to a new place, often one of the main things you're looking for is a really brilliant museum or gallery. Here are some museums worth visiting.
Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, Xi'an
Can you imagine how unbelievable it must have felt to uncover the terracotta warriors for the first time? No, of course you can't, but we're guessing it must have felt pretty good. The people who found it were farmers in Xi'an in 1974. Gathered around the tomb of China's first emperor, the 8,000 warriors and their horses are a grand sight.
State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
It is said that if you look at every object in the State Hermitage Museum for one minute each, it would take 1 1 years to see everything. That's quite for sure. But it's certainly that you just hang around its galleries for a day or two. Highlights include an over 200-year-old clock decorated with mechanical golden peacocks, but make sure to take plenty of pictures of the building's outer wall too(It looks best on fresh winter mornings).
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
With its 40 Rembrandts(Dutch painter) and four Vermeers (Dutch painter), the Rijksmuseum is unmissable if you're partial to a sullen(沉闷的) seventeenth-century scene. The museum in fact houses more than a million works of art, and by no means are these limited to just paintings. If you're visiting with kids, hunt down the dollhouse collections and review Dutch life in miniature—right down to the tiny plates set for dinner.
Tate Modern, London
The Tate has four galleries in the UK: Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, Tate Britain, and Tate Modern. It's the latter that's really world-class, though. Housed in a former power station on London's Bankside, the cavernous(像洞穴的) galleries house a vast lasting collection and amazing exhibitions that pull in the crowds.
The vast majority of Spain's trains will be free until the end of the year in a new program. People visiting the West European country can now whizz(飞速行驶) across it in the relative luxury of one of its trains for zero cost. As well as being much better for the environment than air travel, sitting on a train and watching the countryside slip by is the perfect way to get to know a country.
Under Spain's new program, all short and medium train rides are free—with the right ticket—providing the perfect opportunity to see Catalonia, Andalucía and the Basque Country. Tourists can take advantage of the discounts, which have been brought in to help the population deal with the cost of living crisis, if they buy multi-journey tickets. "I'd like the people of Spain to know that I'm fully aware of the daily difficulties that most people have," a senior official said. "I know salaries cover less and less and that it's difficult to get to the end of the month." The country's Ministry of Transport said the measure would help people get to work safely as fuel prices continue to rise sharply.
Spain joins Germany in cutting the price of public transport, with the latter country launching a ticket costing €9 which gives a full month of travel from June until the end of August. Austria has started offering a climate ticket, which allows people to complete journeys for just €3. When it was first launched last year, the popularity of the ticket almost caused its website to crash. The UK government has not announced any plans to encourage the use of trains, despite the seriousness of the climate crisis and the damage petrol and diesel cars cause. Instead, the government cut fuel duty by 5% in March for 12 months, encouraging more people to get behind the wheel.
After age and genetics(遗传性), being a woman is the single most important risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease(阿尔茨海默病), experts say. "Two out of every three brains affected by Alzheimer's disease are women's brains," said Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic in the Center for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine.
Now, a new study has good news when it comes to giving women a chance to reduce their increased risk. Personalized lifestyle interventions(干预)—such as diet, exercise, stress reduction and sleep hygiene—were able to reduce Alzheimer's risk factors in both sexes, but they worked even better in women.
"Our individually tailored interventions led to greater improvements in women compared to men across risk scales for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular (心血管的) disease," said Isaacson, who coauthored the paper.
"Lifestyle changes such as increased exercise, improved sleep and diet, and reduced stress can impact brain health. This study clearly stresses the need for additional larger studies to be able to better predict the baseline cognitive trail in aging females versus males," said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
"As we aim to find ways to block out this disease in the early stage, we will need to know if prevention and treatment strategies will work equally on both men and women. This new study clearly brings us a big step closer to that goal,"Tanzi added.
Finding that women were able to reduce their risk even more than men is welcome news, as it provides a promising area for future study and gives hope that women can tip the battle against Alzheimer's in their favor. "By treating people in an evidence-based yet safe way, using various lifestyles and medical interventions, we've shown that you can really make an impact on brain health," he said.
A new study finds that bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits(特征) face the highest risk of extinction. The study led by researchers at Imperial College London finds that the most unique birds on the planet are also the most threatened. Losing these species and the unique roles they play in the environment, such as seed spread, pollination and predation, could have negative impacts on the functioning of ecosystems.
The study analyzed the extinction risk and physical traits, such as beak shape and wing length, of 99% of all living bird species, making it the most general study of its kind to date. The researchers found that in simulated scenarios(模拟场景) in which all threatened and near-threatened bird species became extinct, there would be a significantly greater reduction in the physical diversity among birds than in scenarios where extinctions were random(随机的).
Jarome Ali, a PhD candidate at Princeton University who completed the research at Imperial College London, said, "Our study shows that extinctions will most likely prune a large percentage of unique species from the bird family tree. Losing these unique species will mean a loss of the specialized roles that they play in ecosystems. If we do not take action to protect threatened species and prevent extinctions, the functioning of ecosystems will be thrown into disorder."
In the study, the authors used a dataset of measurements collected from living birds and museum specimens, totaling 9,943 bird species. Although the dataset used in the study was able to show that the most unique birds were also classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, it was unable to show what links uniqueness in birds to extinction risk.
Jarome Ali said, "One possibility is that highly specialized organisms are less able to adapt to a changing environment, in which case human impacts may directly threaten species with the most unusual ecological roles. More research is needed to div e deeper into the connect ion between unique traits and extinction risk."
Wondering what you can do to celebrate Earth Day on April 22? We've made a list of fun and environmentally-conscious Earth Day activities to help raise awareness and make a difference.
Walk or ride your bike. Each day can make a difference, but if you can commit to walking or biking more often in the future, that's even better! If your daily commute(通勤)is too far for walking or biking, try environmentally-conscious public transportation like buses, trains, or shuttles.
Carry reusable plastic or cloth bags. Most plastic bags are used for about 10-20 minutes, only to end up in a landfill for hundreds of years. So use reusable grocery bags when you go to the supermarket or when you're buying items at any store.
You can do this as an individual or join a community group. Many local environmental groups organize bigger events where you can join a team and clear roadways, highways, and neighborhood streets of litter, so see if your local community is hosting anything. Taking a moment to pick up any litter you see as you're out and about on Earth Day is helpful and easy to do.
Attend a local Earth Day event. See if your community is holding an environmental fair. If your community doesn't have one planned, consider starting one yourself! Any money raised can go towards a local environmental restoration project or group.
Turn off lights when you're not using them. Turn off lamps and overhead lights whenever you leave a room or your house. Electricity often comes from fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.
A. Pick up litter in your community. B. Join a volunteer activity to help a community. C. Going car-free for the day will reduce harm to the environment. D. Since humans use 4 trillion plastic bags a year, this is a big problem. E. So using as little electricity as possible is a great way to help the Earth. F. Landfills are already overflowing, so try to avoid adding to that situation. G. It's the perfect day to get together for a fun and educational celebration of the Earth. |
Walking along the Great Wall is a once-in-a-lifetime dream for many, but Jim Spear has taken it one step 1 , spending the last 18 years living in a village beneath the ancient2 . Spear's interest in China began during college when he took a class taught by a
Chinese 3 . His interest 4 when he met his wife-to-be, Tang, in 1980, and married her two years later. He says that it was 5 that led him to settle beneath the Great Wall. In the 1990s, he and his wife discovered their future home in Mutianyu after a chance to6 Li Fengquan, who tried to sell him a T-shirt.
As an architect, Spear used his expertise to renew his dream house, which came with7 views of the Great Wall. Moreover, the architect explored ways of supporting rural residents. In 8 of his contributions, Spear was given the Great Wall Friendship Award by the Beijing government in 2014.
"The Great Wall 9 me in many ways to this very day," he says when asked if his architectural work 10 inspiration from the impressive structure. However, he stresses that 11 a Great Wall style doesn't mean building defence, but rather that his approach concerns designs that echo(与……有共同特征) the wall, but don't 12 it.
Spear sees plenty of possibilities in China, driven by significant internal demand and a growing focus on 13 historical structures. His love for China is 14 alive. "15 of my heart is in the US and always will be. But the rest is in China and I love living here. I like China," he says.
The Chinese pancake jianbing and the French crêpe are common in their own country.__ they come from very different culinary traditions, the Chinese pancake jianbing and the French crêpe share many similarities in terms of their thin and flexible texture(柔韧的质地), various fillings, and (popular) as a quick meal. Often (serve) folded or rolled up, both snacks can be enjoyed any time.
(originate) in northern China, jianbing is a popular breakfast snack sold on the side of the street. It has a history of more than 5,000 years. Since it was created , jianbing(be) a favoured snack of many people. It consists of a thin pancake is made from a batter of wheat and mung bean flour, often topped with spicy sauces and fried dough in the shape of twin bars or flat blistered rectangles, and topped with freshly cracked egg.
Commonly seen in France, crêpes can be enjoyed as a sweet or spicy treat. They are(typical) made from a thin batter of wheat flour, milk, eggs and butter, resulting in a delicate and tender texture. Crêpes can be accompanied by (vary) topping s such as chocolate, cheese, fresh fruit or whipped cream.
