君宁小居，愿君幸福安宁！

在美国工作的可以尝试找公司陪捐。自己捐多少，公司陪着捐多少。

From Mercy Corps (a reputable  NGO; check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Corps; it has a local partner in SiChuan)
http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/china/2155 (choose donate now, for 'china earthquake')

1-800-HELP-NOW  (1-800-435-7669) for CHINA RELIEF FUND 

Tsinghua Foundation in the  Bay Area http://tsinghuafoundation.org/earthquake08/index.html

MITBBS also has the donation paypal account.
http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/sysop/31168784.html

At Red Cross China  (does not accept american credit card)
http://202.108.59.10/wsjz/wsjz.asp

At Red Cross HongKong (choose China earthquake)
https://www.redcross.org.hk/donation/user_donation.asp?langId=2

At Canadian Red Cross (choose donate online, then in 'Fund Designation' choose China Earthquake)
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000043&tid=016

http://www.angelpray.org/China-Earthquake.htm

物理系年度音乐会4月26日晚上，Princeton Univ. Taplin Hall 8PM:
欢迎大家来捧场。 8点前要入场，不然不让进去了，我是第三个节目。中场休息时大概9点

Intordction of WN's vocal:

WN was a graduate student in the physics department. She got her Ph.D. in 2005 and she will soon become a faculty member at San Francisco State University this Aug. She is now a post doctor of New York University. Occasionally she still came back to use some microwave equipments of the cosmology group for her photonics and quasicrystal study. Janitors of Jadwin hall often see her taking a nap in the faculty lounge at 5 AM after taking data for a whole night.  

WN takes piano lessons with Laurel Lerner, who started the annual Princeton Physics Department recital 20 years ago. After Laurel accidently found her lovely voice on the 2^nd floor of Jadwin Hall, WN had performed a few times in previous physics recitals. WN grew up in a few very different regions of China and she loves to share the diverse and amazing Chinese culture with everybody.

Besides the majority Han Chinese, China recognizes 55 other "nationalities" or ethnic groups.Today she is going to sing 3 different Chinese songs representing Chinese Han, Chinese Uyghur and Chinese Tibetan culture, respectively.  “Our homeland, Beautiful homeland” describes the beautiful landscape of her homeland; “Girls of Daban city” is about the pretty Chinese Uyghur girls and their love story; and “Tibetan Plateau” is about the land and spirit of Tibetan Plateau, where WN spent her childhood and her parents worked for over 30 years.

　　在停电最严重的衡阳市，城区停电面积越来越大。目前，没有自备电源的区域和单位，已经断电。一些地方停电的同时还伴随着停水，一些加油站因为断电无法加油。移动电话、固定电话通信也受到影响。

新华网北京1月29日电 中国南方部分地区雨雪冰冻灾情29日仍在持续，受灾人数进一步增加，部分灾区交通受阻、电力中断情况有所恶化。

　　截至29日，安徽省已持续降雪18天。全省904万人受灾，转移安置23.1万人，其中路途滞留17万人，居民6万人，因灾死亡4人、伤病779人；农作物受灾面积40.2万公顷，倒塌房屋3.28万间。六安、安庆、池州、宣城、巢湖、滁州等市受灾较重。

　　目前安徽有460个乡镇和5058个村委会交通中断，128个乡镇和719个村委会供电中断，75个乡镇和364个村委会通讯中断。

　　云南省迪庆藏族自治州境内大雪依旧肆虐，香格里拉县积雪深达35厘米，为当地10年来最严重的一次雪灾。截至29日8时，迪庆州17.5万多人受灾，民房倒损10868户。由于新的灾情仍不断发生，受灾人数将进一步增加。

　　江西省气象台29日上午发布道路结冰红色预警信号，全省11个设区市中，除位于南部地区的赣州市外，其余10个设区市仍有道路结冰，对交通运行、电力供应造成了较大影响。

　　受部分地区持续暴雪影响，江苏大部分高速和民航封闭，28日发送旅客量只有56.62万人，比去年同期下降64.6％，为历史同期最低。

　　持续的冰雪天气使四川的交通出行受到严重影响，据四川省政府应急办29日介绍，国道108线广元棋盘关至陕西宁强段公路交通不畅、滞留车辆严重。

　　国道214线芒康红拉山段29日因积雪导致交通中断，40余辆汽车、80余人受阻。西藏昌都地区已组织抢险人员23人、机械3台（辆）投入抢险保通工作，及时疏导受阻车辆和司乘人员。

　　航空方面，由于连日大雪造成跑道结冰，以及清晨大雾，武汉天河机场29日关闭14个半小时，造成大量旅客滞留机场。14时33分，飞往宜昌的东航ＭＵ26ＲＲ从机场起飞，成为天河机场当天飞出的首个航班。至15时15分，天河机场航班起降转入正常。目前，滞留乘客正陆续搭乘航班飞往各地。

　　由于受暴雪、冻雨等持续恶劣灾害天气的影响，全国多个机场仍然处于关闭状态。未来7天南航广州始发长沙、南昌方向的部分航班取消。

　　虽然南方部分灾区降雪已暂时停止，但面对随后而来的冰冻灾害，电力供应形势依然严峻。

　　受长期持续冻雨天气影响，自1月23日有3座供电铁塔发生倒塌事故以来，湖北省境内咸梦线又相继有多个铁塔受损或倒塌，20余公里线路遭到了不同程度损害。据29日最新统计，咸梦线已倒塌铁塔8座，另有10座铁塔损坏严重。

　　作为联结鄂赣电网通道之一的咸梦线，是三峡电力外送的重要通道，是华中电网500千伏骨干网架的重要组成部分。目前，咸梦线抢险工作仍在紧张进行中。

　　受冰雪灾情恶化影响，17天来，湖南有近6000公里220千伏及以上线路出现严重覆冰，电网负

Tearful Serenity: Crying Away the Stress    Nomi Kaim

Tears, stupid tears! Always coming when you least want them. Now everyone on the street is looking at you and your eyes are so blurry you trip over the bumper and stumble into the street. What a klutz. How humiliating! Why do you always have to cry like this? But everybody cries. For its capacity to signal physical or emotional distress, crying has left an indelible mark on the slate of human history. Where would art and poetry be without tears? In fact, where would we be? In truth, crying plays an essential role in our biology as well as our social and cultural experiences. We can't stop the tears from flowing, but we can investigate why they flow ?and why crying might not be, after all, such a bad thing to do.

Tears are body excretions, just like sweat and mucous and urine. We don't usually like to think about body excretions, but when we do, we bear with them because we know they have important functions. Sweat removes excess salts from the body and cools us; mucous traps surrounding pathogens; urine and feces expel unneeded, toxic waste products that would harm the body if they remained within it. All three contribute to the body's self-regulatory or homeostatic nature, readjusting for balance. Tears, too, must serve a biological, homeostatic purpose. But what? In fact, there are three known answers to this question.

Scientists distinguish three kinds of tears, which differ from each other by function and also, probably, by composition. Basal tears actually form continuously. We don't experience these minute secretions as tears because they don't "ball up" as we are used to tears doing; instead, every time we blink, our eyelids spread the basal solution out over the surface of our eyeballs(1). Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated, important in preventing damage by air currents and bits of floating debris(2), (3).
Basal tears, like all tears, have numerous components. A little bit of mucus allows them to adhere to the eye surface without causing harm. The main part of a tear contains, predictably, water and salts (like sodium chloride and potassium chloride). The ratio of salt to water in tears is typically similar to that of the rest of the body, so there is no net change in salt concentration; nonetheless, if the body's salt concentration climbs too high, it will take advantage of the tear solution and instill it with extra salt. Tears also have antibodies that defend against pathogenic microbes, and enzymes which also contribute to destroying any bacteria the eye encounters(1), (4). A thin layer of oil covers the tear's outside to discourage it from falling out of the eye before its work has been done(5). Our eyes produce irritant tears when hit by wind or sand (or insects or rocks). Irritant, or reflex, tears have the same constituents as basal tears, and work toward the same goal: protecting the eyes(1), (6). However, since they are designed to break down and eliminate eyeball-intruders like airborne dust, these tears tend to flow in greater amounts and probably contain a greater concentration of antibodies and enzymes that target micro-organisms. Thus, irritant tears are not just basal tears in greater quantity; different biological processes precede the excretion of the two types of solution.

The voluminous tears that so rapidly move us to frustration or pity are, of course, emotional tears(7). Secreted in moments of intense feeling ?sometimes joy, but more often sorrow ?these tears aren't there to cleanse the eyes of irritating microbes or debris. Yet they do serve a purpose; the function of emotional tears can be inferred from their constituents. Emotional tears contain much more (maybe 25% more) than basal or irritant tears of a certain important ingredient: proteins(8).

What do proteins do? Well, what can't they do? We know very well they can be involved in anything and everything. The proteins found in emotional tears are hormones that build up to very high levels when the body withstands emotional stress(9).

If the chemicals associated with stress did not discharge at all, they would build up to toxic levels that could weaken the body's immune system and other biological processes. But here, as in other areas, the body has its own mechanisms of coping. We secrete stress chemicals when we sweat and when we cry. Clearly, then, it is physically very healthy to cry, regardless of whether or not it feels awkward or embarrassing socially. The reason people will frequently report feeling better after a well-placed cry is doubtless connected to the discharge of stress-related proteins(10); some of the proteins excreted in tears are even associated with the experience of physical pain, rendering weeping a physiologically pain-reducing process(8). Conversely, the state of clinical depression ?in which many of the body's self-healing processes appear to "shut down," including, often, emotional tears ?is most likely exacerbated by the tearless victim's inability to adequately discharge her pent-up stress. Psychologists refer to freely weeping as an important stage in the healing process. But although this notion may appear to be psychological in origin, involving the confrontation of one's own grief, it also just applies physiologically: crying can reduce levels of stress hormones. Rejuvenating!

One major stress hormone released from the body via tears, prolactin, is found in much higher concentration in women's bodies than in men's. (This makes sense when you consider that the hormone is also implicated in the synthesis of breast milk.) (7), (10) Interestingly, prolactin appears to not only be secreted in tears but also to play a role in the formation of tears. Levels of prolactin in the body correlate positively with frequency of emotional crying(5); as a whole, women cry more often than men (perhaps four times as often, according to one study) and also have a whole lot more prolactin (60% more) (8).

From an evolutionary perspective, why does it make sense for women to cry more often than men? Clearly, this phenomenon plays no minor role in our social interactions; culturally, greater female weepiness is taken for granted in perhaps every area of the world. But why should it be so biologically? Don't men get as stressed out as often as women? Don't they need to release their tension just as much? Perhaps prolactin plays a double role in terms of increasing a person's vulnerability to feeling stress as well as her tendency to cry to discharge that stress. If this is the case, men may not be inclined to get as stressed out as women, who harbor more of the "stress-sensitive" protein prolactin. Thus, women's increased reliance on tears for stress-release may be their bodies' way of maintaining homeostasis. They take in more stress, they pour out more. The fact that men's tear glands are, as a whole, structurally smaller than women's supports the notion that they are used less(10).

But this theory seems faulty. I have seen many men become just as overwhelmed as women by the fast-paced, demanding culture we live in. Prolactin is not the only stress hormone, after all. In all likelihood, men have higher concentrations of other stress-related hormones than women. It could be, instead, that men discharge of their stress by different channels. Men tend to sweat more than women, and sweat contains many of the same chemicals as tears. Perhaps their sweating reduces men's stress in a fashion comparable to women's crying. Men might also urinate more, another way to rid the body of built-up waste products. In fact, it makes sense evolutionarily that men would benefit from discharging stress chemicals in ways other than crying; heavy crying blurs the eyes and prevents vision, antithetical to tears' most basic eye-preserving function. Men, traditionally the hunters, would need to be able to see their prey to survive. But hunting has got to be stressful! Either the age-old trials and tribulations of hunting molded men into organisms less vulnerable to stress (which would support the original hypothesis involving prolactin as the stress-hormone), or men have been releasing their stress through alternate pathways. Sweat, which does not usually impede vision, would be a functional alternative. (Men's evolutionary tendency for increased excretion efficiency over women is evidenced by the way they urinate. In the heat of the jungle, pursuing a wooly mammoth, it pays not to have to sit down to pee.)

If blurry eyes were a nuisance to prehistoric men, they could not have been a great boon for women, either. With their annoying propensity to cut off vision, how did emotional tears survive the test of time? None of the body's other natural processes involve the suppression of one of its basic senses. We need our eyes to see!

Perhaps, once again, our bodies take care of this problem implicitly. Tears, along with saliva, stomach acids and other secretions, are generally only produced when the body is in a state of quiescence or calm. These functions are under the control of the parasympathetic nervous system, a system that operates most efficiently when there's nothing too exciting going on to stimulate the body(11). After all, it would be unreasonable for your body to focus its energy on digesting your breakfast when you're being pursued by, say, a saber-toothed tiger! Same goes for emotional tears ?and, indeed, for the feelings associated with them. We don't fully realize our fear and sadness until after the fact, when we get the chance to sit down, cry, and de-stress. Maybe, in the course of our evolution, our ancestors could afford to lose their vision to tears sometimes so long as they limited their crying to after the trauma. Nonetheless, it seems odd to me that a process which so blatantly interferes with one of the senses should survive until today. It's a good reminder that evolution is a work in progress!

One of the reasons emotional tears so fascinate people is that we don't see them in other species. All animals go to the bathroom; many animals sweat. All animals lubricate their eyes with basal tears. However, discounting a few unverified tales of weepy gorillas and elephants (which may well prove, someday, to be accurate), it seems humans are the only ones to cry(10). Why?

Emotional tears may be a piece of the equation that renders human beings biologically and culturally unique (or so we think...). We know our enlarged cerebrums and manual dexterity afford us thoughts and social liaisons as yet unwitnessed in other species. Our faces also hold the key to wonderful communication; we can smile, and we can cry. Smiling clearly developed chiefly for social purposes; crying, on the other hand, may have begun as a solely biological mechanism (for reducing stress) and then acquired an important social meaning. And so crying evolved for the dual purpose of physically dissipating tension and conveying profound emotion.

It may seem, when you cry in public, as though your body has failed you; a mistake, you think; should have been saved for later; sort of like peeing in your pants. It is more likely, however, that you have reached a level of stress that is detrimental to your health. You should let it out. It's okay to cry.

It is good to cry. 

End Note:
Though emotional tears are likely unique to humans, all animals secrete irritant tears, and some secrete them in greater volumes than human beings. It is interesting to note that sea animals, including birds, rely most heavily on tears for removing salts from their bodies(10). Do these animals harbor especially high levels of salts because they originated in the ocean? But so did humans. Is it because they eat salty sea-foods? Or perhaps the vicious ocean winds cause increased irritant tearing in these animals, so they evolved to make good biological use of their bountiful tears?

***生日篇:祝Chen 洁生日快乐***

天是Chen 洁生日,9月23日!

Chen 洁,我对不起你,看在我准时当面给你祝贺过生日的份上,这篇作业就容我再缓2天交吧,为什么这些天过生日的这么多呢???

呵呵，这是去年此时写下的，去年CJ开恩宽限我到她今年生日之前写完就行，我说一个月之内吧，没想到真的拖了一年。3年多以前，请一帮朋友吃饭，LW带了他传说中，在公共汽车上面问路问来的奇缘的女主角，一个甜美清秀精灵的小女孩，作为第一次到来的远客，饭后她居然执着地要洗碗，我要派别人洗，可她说，“让我洗吧，不然LW要说我的。”我当时心想，天哪，这年代居然还有这么老实憨厚的80后的漂亮小姑娘，要我不疼她都难啊。此后，大家都看见了，在家里连头发都是妈妈给梳的CJ，一个月不到就可以做饭请10多个人吃，两年下来，连我这个资深大厨都可以常常从她那里学到新的菜谱，烤鸭，煎饼，糯米藕，好多好多。有多少人羡慕死了LW的好福气啊。更不用提，我们的婚礼上面，所有的胸花捧花都是她亲手做的呢。不过不论多么能干体贴人，CJ都还是一个小姑娘，有着象张白纸一样纯洁的性格，水晶一样透明的心地，对人好得毫无保留，善良地有时候都令人心疼，恨不得教她一些人情世故，一些在纷纷扰扰的世界保护自己的武器。。。其他的我不知道，有一点肯定是我带坏了她，呵呵，学会打扑克的我在2年前去纽约的免费火车上教会了她，呵呵，害得她比我还瘾大，在我们度过了好多聚餐打牌的周末之后，又开始倡议健康生活，一起去运动学游泳。在一起的日子，CJ是带给大家好多欢笑的开心果。好可惜他们就要离开了，在她看到这篇文章的时候，今年我们已经在我家提前一天给她庆祝生日了，生日当天会一起坐车去纽约，此后怕有很长一段时间她享受不到东部风情和法拉盛的美食了。这篇文章也写在就要跟她话离别的时候，不能不说心情是颇伤感的，不多写了，在这里祝愿，清纯可爱的CJ生日快乐，一生幸福。愿早日再相聚，亲爱的小MM……