Music is good for the health. And drumming may be best of all. As well as being physically demanding, it requires people to synchronise their limbs and to react to outside stimuli, such as what the rest of the band is up to. It is particularly helpful for children who have emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Researchers at the Clem Burke Drumming Project-an organisations named after Blondie's drummer, who was one of its founders- have shown that teaching such children to drum helps them to control their reactions more generally, to focus more effectively on tasks they are given, and to communicate better with other people.

The project's latest work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team led by Marie-Stephanie Cahart of King's College, London, goes a step further. It looks at the neurological (神经系统的) changes which accompany these shifts. Ms Cahart and her colleagues recruited 36 autistic (自闭的) teenagers and split them into two groups. One lot had drum lessons twice a week for eight weeks. The others did not. At the beginning and end of the project everyone was asked to stay still for 45 minutes in afunctional magnetic-resonance imaging (fmri) machine, to see how the activity of their brains had changed. Their behaviour, as reported by their guardians, was also recorded.

As expected, most of the drumming group showed positive behavioral changes. And these were indeed reflected in their brains. The fmri scans showed that several clusters of connectivity between parts of those brains had strengthened during the experiment. In particular, two regions involved in attention control, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (背外侧前额叶皮层) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (额下回), formed strong links, respectively, with places associated with reflection and with areas involved in interpreting facial expressions. These changes in the brain's "wetware" thus nicely match the changes in behaviour which learning to drum causes.

Not a surprise, perhaps. But an encouraging confirmation of drumming's power to heal.

The captain of the ship, the Beagle, wanted someone who would "profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known". The person who answered the call was not the captain's first choice. It was a young man who had left medical school without completing his degree. What's more, he had recently received a letter from his father predicting that he would be "a disgrace to yourself and all your family". Despite all this, his adventures on this ship would lead to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time.

The young man in question, Charles Darwin, was a geologist and naturalist, fascinated by rocks, plants and animals. The journey gave him the chance to study various living things in their natural environments. After Darwin had spent some time in South America, his room on the ship was crowded with samples of the plants and animals he had collected. As he studied these, he asked himself the question: how did different species come to exist?

At that time, people believed that all species had appeared on Earth at the same time, and had not changed since. But Darwin began to think differently. He noticed that some species of animals were very similar to each other. Maybe animals evolved as they adapted to their changing environments. It was just an idea, but enough to inspire Darwin to look for more evidence. When the Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands in 1835, Darwin saw a variety of new species, but it was the birds that interested him the most. Darwin noticed that there was a difference between the finches (雀科小鸟) on each of the islands. It seemed their beaks (鸟喙） had evolved according to what food was available on that particular island.

Darwin suspected the finches had evolved from a common ancestor, which had arrived on the islands a long time before. Over time, it had slowly evolved into many new species. And that was the answer to how new species of plants and animals came to exist: they evolved from earlier ancestors.

It was a completely new idea — a theory of evolution. Darwin explained this theory in his book, On the Origin of Species. Many people refused to believe that living things, including humans, had evolved from lower forms of life. But Darwin's scientific studies were so convincing that more and more people started to believe his theory.

Today, On the Origin of Species has changed ideas about life on Earth forever. And it all began with the journey on the Beagle.

The human brain is the most complex and poorly understood biological structure known to man. Our human brain is relatively large for our body size and wrinkled in comparison to other animals' brains. Across species, brain size and wrinkle number is related to intelligence.

University of Copenhagen researchers have made an incredible discovery seeking to learn more about the  mammalian(哺乳动物的)  brain.  A  vital  enzyme,  a  special  material,  allows  brain  signals  to  be transmitted or transported. The enzyme is randomly turning on and off, even taking hours-long "breaks from work." These discoveries could have a significant impact on our understanding of the brain and the development of medicines. The discovery is featured on the cover of Nature.

Millions of neurons(神经元) are constantly communicating with one another, shaping thoughts and memories and allowing us to move our bodies at will. Neurotransmitters are transported from one neuron to another by a unique enzyme when two neurons meet to exchange a message.

This  process  is  necessary  for  neuronal  communication  as  well  as  the  survival  of all  complex organisms(extremely small living things). Until now, researchers all over the world assumed that these enzymes were constantly active, transmitting vital signals. However, this is not the case.

It is almost impossible to understand that the extremely critical process of loading neurotransmitters in containers is carried out by only one cell per container. Especially when we find that 40% of the time these cells are switched off.

Using a new method, researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen closely examined the enzyme and discovered that its activity switches on and off at random periods of time, contradicting our previous understanding.

"Contrary to popular belief, and unlike many other proteins, these enzymes could stop working for minutes to hours. Still, the brains of humans and other mammals are miraculously able to function," says Professor Dimitrios Stamou, who led the study from the research center at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Chemistry.