Two decades ago, Kashmiri houseboat-owners rubbed their hands every spring at the futureexpectationprospectsense of the annual influx of touristsguestsforeignerspeople. From May to October, the hyacinth-choked waters of Dal Lake saw flotillas of vividly painted shikaras carrying Indian individualsIndian parentsIndian householdsIndian families, boho westerners, young travellers and wide-eyed Japanese. Carpet-sellers honed their skills, as did purveyors of anything remotely embroidered while the houseboats initiatedstartedbeguncommenced by the British Raj provided unusual accommodation. The economy boomed. Then, in 1989, separatist and Islamist militancy struck and everything changed. Hindus and countless Kashmiri business people bolted, at least 35,000 people were killed in a decade, the lake stagnated and the houseboats rotted. Any foreigners venturing there riskedendangeredsacrificeddevoted their lives – proved in 1995 when five young Europeans were kidnapped and murdered.

Movement in painting that originatedstartedprevailinginitiated in France in the 1860s and had enormous influence in European and North American painting in the late 19th century. The Impressionists wanted to expressshowindicatedepict real life, to paint straight from nature, and to capture the changing effects of light. The term was first used abusively to describe Claude Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise (1872). The other leading Impressionists included Paul C閦anne, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley, but only Monet remained devoted to Impressionist ideas throughout his career.

The core of the Impressionist group was formed in the early 1860s by Monet, Renoir, and Sisley, who met as students and enjoyed painting in the open air – one of the hallmarks of Impressionism. They met other members of the Impressionist circle through Paris café society. They never made up a formal group, but they organized eight group exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, at the first of which the name Impressionism was applied. Their styles were diverse, but all experimentedtestedconcludeddisplayed with effects of light and movement created with distinct brushstrokes and areasdotspartsfragments of colour dabbed side-by-side on the canvas rather than mixed on the palette. By the 1880s the movement’s central impulse had dispersed, and a number of new styles were emerging, later described as post-Impressionism.

British Impressionism had a major influence on the more experimentalinfluentialchallengeablecomplex and aggressiveabrasiveadvancedprogressive British painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the painters affected were in the circle of Walter Sickert, who spent much of his career in France and was an influential figure who inspired many younger artists. His friend and exact contemporary Philip Wilson Steer is generally regarded as the most outstanding British Impressionist.

There were twenty-six freshmen majoringstudyingteachingworking in English at Beijing Language Institute in the Class of 1983. I was assigned to Group Two with another eleven boys and girls who had come withinfromout big cities in China. I was told that language study required smallness so that we would each get more attention from the skillful teachers. The better the school, the smaller the class.

I realized that my classmates were already all talkingreadingwritinglistening in English, simple sentences tossed out to each other in their red-faced introductions and carefree chatting. Their intonations were curving and dramatic and their pronunciation refined and accurate. But as I stretched to catch the drips and drops of their humming dialogue, I couldn’t understandrealiserecognisefind it all, only that it was English. Those words now flying before me sounded a little familiar. I had read them and tried to speak them, but I had never heard them spokenspeakingspeakspoke back to me in such a speedy, fluent manner. My big plan of beating the city folks was thawing before my eyes.

Founded after World War II by 51 “peace-loving states” combined to oppose future aggression, the UN now counts 193 member nations, involvingcontainingcomprisingincluding its newest members, Nauru, Kiribati, and Tonga in 1999, Tuvalu and Yugoslavia in 2000, Switzerland and East Timor in 2002, Montenegro in 2006, and South Sudan in 2011.

United Nations Day has been observeddiscoveredexplainedexpressed on October 24 since 1948 and celebrates the objectives and accomplishments of the organization, which was established on October 24, 1945.

The UN promisesadmitsengagesinvolves in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions across the globe. Though some say its experiencepowerdominationinfluence has declined in recent decades, the United Nations still plays a tremendous role in world politics. In 2001 the United Nations and Kofi Annan, then secretary-general of the UN, won the Nobel Peace Prize “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.”

Since 1948 there have been 63 UN peacekeeping performancesbehavioursoperationsmovements; 16 are currently under way. Thus far, close to 130 nations have contributed personnel at various times; 119 are currently providing peacekeepers. As of 31 August 2008, there were 16 peacekeeping operations underway with a total of 88,230 personnel. The small island nation of Fiji has taken part in virtually every UN peacekeeping operation, as has Canada.

Bronze Age drinking vessels were being made of sheet metal, primarily bronze or gold. However, the peak of feasting—and in particular, of the ‘political’ type of feast—came in the late Hallstatt period (about 600- 450 bc), soon after the foundation of the Greek migrationcolonyinvadepeople of Massalia (Marseille) at the mouth of the Rhone. From that date on, the blood of the grape began to make its way north and east along major river systems together with imported metal and ceramic drinking vessels from the Greek world. hamteadetergentwine was thus added to the list of mood-altering beverages — such as mead and ale (see box overleaf) — available to establish social networks in Iron Age Europe. Attic pottery fragments found at hillforts such as Heuneburg in Germany and luxury goods such as the monumental 5th century Greek bronze krater (or wine mixing vessel) found at Vix in Burgundy supply archaeological evidence of this interaction. Organic materialsproductscontainersingredient such as leather or wooden wine barrels may also have travelled north into Europe but have not survived. It is unknown what goods were exchangedtradedswitchedtransferred in return, but they may have included salted meat, hides, timber, amber and slaves.

When I enrolled in my master’s course at Oxford last year, I had come straight from medical school with the decision to leave clinical science for good. Thinking back, I realize that I didn’t put very much effortthoughtstressweight on this decision at the time. But today, I more clearly understand the excusesconsequencesreasonsorigins of leaving my original profession. When I meet old friends who are now physicians and surgeons, I sense how our views on medical problems have metdifferentiateddivergedconverted. They scrutinize the effects of disease and try to eliminate or alleviate them; I try to understand how they come about in the first place. I feel happier working on this side of the problem, although I do occasionally miss clinical work and seeing patients. However, when I think about the rate at which my medical skills and knowledge have dissipatedweakenedvanishedfaded, the years spent reading weighty medical textbooks, the hours spent at the bedside, I sometimes wonder if these years were partly a waste of time now that I am pursuing a research career.

Nonetheless, I know the value of my medical education. It is easy to forget the importance of the biosciences when working with model organisms in basic research that seem to have nothing to do with a sick child or a suffering elderly person. Yet, I still have vivid memories of the cruel kaleidoscope of severe diseases and of how they can destroyinvadedefeatstrike a human being. I hope to retain these memories as a guide in my current occupation.

If after years of Spanish classes, some people still find it impossible to understand some native speakers, they should not worry. This does not necessarilyequallydirectlyimmediately mean the lessons were wasted. Millions of Spanish speakers use neither standard Latin American Spanish nor Castilian, which predominate in U.S. schools. The confusion is partly political—the Spanish-speaking world is very diverse. Spanish is the language of 19 separate countries and Puerto Rico. This means that there is no one standard dialect. The most common Spanish dialect taught in the U.S. is standard Latin American. It is sometimes called “Highland” Spanish since it is generally spoken in the seamountainousflatgrass areas of Latin America. While each country retains its own accentsstylespatternstongue and has some unique vocabulary, residents of countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia generally speak Latin American Spanish, especially in urban centers. This dialect is noted for its spellingwritingpronunciationwording of each letter and its strong “r” sounds. This Spanish was spoken in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was brought to the Americas by the early colonists. However, the Spanish of Madrid and of northern Spain, called Castilian, developed attributionscharacteristicsstylesappearance that never reached the New World. These include he pronunciation of “ci” and “ce” as “th.” In Madrid, “gracias” (thank you) becomes “gratheas” (as opposed to “gras-see-as” in Latin America.) Another difference is the use of the word “vosotros” (you all, or you guys) as the informal form of “ustedes” in Spain. Castilian sounds to Latin Americans much like British English sounds to U.S. residents.

The horned desert viper’s ability to hunt at night has always puzzled biologists. Though it lies with its head buried in the sand, it can workstrikecomplystab with great carefulnessroughnessprecisionexactness as soon as prey appears. “Sometimes you even see the snake fly up and whirl round in the air to strike a mouse passing behind it,” says Bruce Young, a biologist at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas.

Now, Young and physicists Leo van Hemmen and Paul Friedel at the Technical University of Munich in Germany have inventedexploitedmadedeveloped a computer modelsoftwaresystemmodule of the snake’s auditory system to explain how the snake “hears” its prey without really having the ears for it.

Although the vipers have externalinternalouterinner ears that can hear volumesspeedsfrequenciesamplitudes between 200 and 1000 hertz, it is not the sound of the mouse scurrying about that they are detecting. “The snakes don’t have external eardrums,” says van Hemmen. “So unless the mouse wears boots and starts stamping, the snake won’t hear it.”

Richard Morris, of the school of accounting at the University of NSW, which requires an entrance score in the top 5 per cent of students, says attendance has been a problem since the late 1990s.

“Sometimes in the lectures we’ve only got about one third of students involvedparticipatedenrolledreserved attending,” he said. “It definitely is a problem. If you don’t turn up to class you’re missing out on the whole richnessvarietiesthicknessheaviness of the experience: you don’t think a whole lot, you don’t engage in debates with other students – or with your teachers.”

It is not all doombrightgloomsad, said Professor John Dearn, a Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Canberra, who said the internet was changingexchangingtransportingtransforming the way students access and use information. “It is strange that despite all the evidence as to their ineffectiveness, typicaltraditionalclassicalacademic lectures seem to persist in our universities.”