One in a million chance for these unusual twins

　　混血夫妇生出黑白双胞胎

　　ACCORDING to Britain's Daily Telegraph, in its October 24 issue, black and white twin sisters, Alicia and Jasmin Singerl, born in May in Australia, are enjoying a happy life with their parents in Burpengary, north of Brisbane.

　　Alicia's eyes are brown and her hair was dark, while Jasmin's eyes are blue and her hair is white. Their mother, Natasha Knight, 35, is of mixed-race Jamaican-English heritage, while their father Michael Singerl, 34, is German.

　　Genetics experts say that the likelihood of a mixed-race woman having eggs that are predominantly for one skin colour is very rare. So it is even more unlikely that she would produce two of them, resulting in twins. The chance is probably a million to one.

　　据英国《每日电讯》10月24日报道，一对黑白双胞胎今年5月在澳大利亚出生，目前与他们的父母正愉快地生活在布里斯班北部的伯尔彭加里。

　　这对双胞胎一个叫艾丽西娅，一个叫贾斯曼。她们34岁的父亲迈克尔辛格尔是一个纯正的白人，35岁的母亲娜塔莎奈特则是牙买加和英国的混血儿。艾丽西娅继承了妈妈的特征，皮肤黝黑，有一双棕色的眼睛，头发是深色的;贾斯曼则像爸爸一样拥有白色的皮肤，头发也是白色的，有一双蓝眼睛。

　　基因专家表示，在大多数情况下，像娜塔莎这样的混血女性，她的卵子通常会带有白人和黑人两种基因，只带有一种肤色基因的情况非常少见，像这样一对双胞胎各自携带一种单一肤色基因的情况更是少之又少，几率只有百万分之一。

　　New York artist's treasure is trash

　　变废为宝 “垃圾盒”网上热卖

　　RECENTLY, trash cubes have become an odd best-selling online New York souvenir, with prices running from around US$50 to as high as US$100.

　　According to Associate Press, the particular online garbage seller is Justin Gignac, 26, a gradate of a visual arts school, who works as an art inspector at an advertising agency in New York.

　　Gignac says that early mornings and late nights are the best time for garbage picking - before the street sweepers and residential cleaning begin. He goes out with a pair of gardening gloves and a garbage bag and starts picking up garbage off the street. After carefully examining his haul after returning home, he puts the different items into clear plastic cubes to produce his various "Garbage Cubes".

　　So far, Gignac has sold more than 800 cubes in 41 US states and 20 foreign countries.

　　近日，“垃圾盒”成为网上热销的另类“纽约纪念品”，每盒售价高达50至100美元不等。

　　据美联社报道，在网上出售“垃圾盒”的纽约青年叫古斯汀吉内克，今年26岁，毕业于一家视觉艺术学校，是纽约一家广告公司的艺术总监。每天清晨和夜晚，吉内克都会手拿垃圾袋，戴着园艺用手套，赶在清洁工人扫街前在纽约街头精挑细选垃圾。回家后，他随即再仔细筛选，将各样垃圾摆放在透明的正方形塑料盒内，制作成不同组合的“纽约垃圾盒”。至今，吉内克已通过网站在全美21个州和20个国家卖出800多盒“纽约垃圾”。

　　Mathematicians hit the lotto jackpot

　　教授联手十二载 巧用概率中头奖

　　ON October 21, a group of 17 British university professors cracked the system of the National Lottery by employing the principles of mathematical probability, and they reaped a jackpot of US$13 million.

　　The National Lottery uses 6 numbers, out of a possible total of 49, to determine the winning jackpot ticket number. The odds of being a jackpot winner are approximately one in 14 million.

　　The group's leader Barry Waterhouse explained that they had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success, starting in 1994. By 2002, they were trying a new formula to get all 49 numbers into their calculations and to set up a computer programme to check the numbers every week. The formula finally led to success.

　　10月21日，英国17名教授利用概率理论推算出国家彩票头彩的号码，一举赢得1300万美元奖金。

　　据悉，英国国家彩票游戏规则是，从1至49的数字中随机摇出6个号码。如果彩票上的数字与之相符，即为头奖号码。这类彩票中大奖的机会只有1/14000000。

　　据他们的负责人巴里沃特豪斯教授介绍，自从英国国家彩票1994年开始发行以来，他们17个人就一直联手购买,但在长达8年时间里一直都没有任何重大的收获。自2002年起，他们尝试按照一个新的公式来推算头奖号码，并确保在推算过程中1到49的所有数字都能被使用。同时，他们还设计了一个电脑程序，每周检查一遍号码是否正确。这个推导公式终于在4年后助他们获得了头奖。