Hilary Smith belonged to a good family. But by the age of twenty, he had spent all the money the good old family had. He then had some trouble with the bank and was put in prison. He escaped from the prison and ran to Australia without delay.

    Hilary did not like Australia and Australia did not like Hilary. What he could do seemed to be one of two things: die or work. Then he remembered that he was not alone in the world. He had an aunt.

    She was his father's only sister, but his father used to say she brought no glory to the family. Hilary, of course, tried to discover what she had done. It seemed that she had failed to marry a nobleman. Instead, she had chosen a husband who was connected with "trade". Of course as soon as she became "Mrs. Parks", her brother considered her dead. Later on, Mr. Parks died and left her a lot of money; but that did not bring her back to life in her brother's opinion.

    Hilary discovered his aunt's address. Fortunately she remained faithful and honest to him even after she fell ill. So Hilary's star shone again, and soon he moved into her house and lived as comfortably as a sailor who had just reached harbor. He had only about six pence in his pocket.

    One thing was soon clear: his aunt was seriously ill, and nothing could cure her illness. Hilary was very worried. Fate had found a home for him, and was now going to throw him out of it. There was only one thing that could save him: her will.

    "Will?" she said, "yes, I have made one. That was when I was a girl and had not much money. I left all my money to some religious people."

    "Didn't you make another will when you were married?" Hilary asked.

    His aunt shook her head. "No," she said in a low voice, "There was no need. When I finally had a lot of money, I found I had no relations."

    On the next day he went to the public library and examined a book of law. It told him what he already believed. When a woman is married, an earlier will loses its value. A new will must be made. If no new will is made, the money goes to the nearest relation. Hilary knew that he was his aunt's only relation. His future was safe.

    After a few months had passed, Hilary's problems became serious. He badly needed money. He had expensive tastes, and owed a lot of money to shopkeepers. They trusted him because his aunt was rich, but the debt was terrible.

    Unfortunately his aunt did not want to discuss money matters at all. In the end they had a quarrel about the small amount of ten pounds. Hilary was not very angry. He began to wonder about a new problem. Was it kind to want his aunt to live any longer? Was it not better for her to die now? While he was considering what to do, his aunt told him that she was going to send for her lawyer. So she was going to make a new will, Hilary thought. She might leave all her money to someone else. Soon he reached a clear decision. He must do a great kindness to the poor old woman.

    One night when the old servant who had been nursing his aunt went off, he doubled the amount of some medicine. The total amount was too great and it could just put her to sleep forever.

    "Thank you," his aunt took the glass from his hand with a grateful look." I want, more than anything, to sleep, and never to wake up again. Is that what you wish, Hilary? Don't blame me if I have some doubts about what you intended to do. Sick people get these ideas, you know. One thing I ought to explain to you. Mr. Parks never married me. He already had a wife and couldn't marry again. That made your foolish father very angry with me...Well, if I am alive tomorrow, I shall make another will in your favor. If I die tonight, you'll get nothing...No, Hilary, don't try to take the glass away. If you do that, I shall know and I don't want to know. Good night, Hilary."

    Then, very carefully, she raised the glass to her mouth and drank.

    Sally Dawly is a woman from Auburn, California. Over the last three and a half years, the anti-littering woman has spent most of her free time picking up cigarette butts (烟头) from the streets of her home city.

    Called the "Butt Lady" by her local community, Dawly began her mission to rid the streets of her city of cigarette butts in October, 2014. The woman looked for cigarette butts, picked them up and threw them in the trash. To keep a count of how many butts she picks up, the Butt Lady has been using a tablet, and earlier this month, she hit a historic milestone—one million cigarette butts.

    "I got tired of going on my walks and seeing cigarette butts everywhere," Sally Dawly said. "I'm just shocked that I had to pick up so many. I've ever picked up 3,000 butts in one day," she said. "Don't throw away your butts; better yet, stop smoking."

    With so many cigarette butts littering the streets, can one person's efforts really make a difference? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be yes. Soon after the Butt Lady of Auburn started her mission and word of her efforts spread, cigarette cans started appearing around bars and restaurants in the city. Members of the local community even came out to cheer her on as she approached her one-million-butt milestone.

    Sally knows her city's cigarette butt littering problem won't be solved anytime soon, but she hopes her work will inspire people to at least think twice before dropping cigarette butts in the streets. She has decided to continue cleaning up after irresponsible smokers, and already has a new milestone in her sights—two million cigarette butts.

    Word of the Butt Lady's efforts to keep the streets cigarette butt-free has reached neighboring communities as well, and CBS Sacramento reports that other cities have started seeking her help as well.

    A new study has found that social media could be affecting the sleep of young adults.

    The study is a project of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine. They found that young people who often use social media are more likely to suffer from sleep disorders than those who use social media less. The researchers say doctors should ask young adults about their use of social media when treating sleep issues.

    "This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can influence your sleep." said Jessica C Levenson. She was the lead author of a report on the study.

    The researchers set out to examine the connection between social media use and sleep among young adults. Levenson noted that these young adults are possibly the first "generation to grow up with social media."

    The researchers wanted to find out how often young people used social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Credit and Tumbler. For the study, they gave questionnaires to nearly 1,800 adults, aged 19 to 32. On average, members of the study group used social media sites one hour a day. They also "visited various social media 30 times per week."

    Thirty percent of the study's participants reported having serious problems with sleeping. Those people who used social media a lot were three times more likely to have a sleep disorder. And those who spent the most time on social media were two times as likely to suffer from sleep disturbances.

    Levenson said the number of times a person visits social media is a better predictor of sleep problems than overall time spent on social media. If this is true, she adds, then practices that stop such behaviors may be the most effective.

    Partway through Wonder, Fifth-grader Auggie Pullman finds himself seated across from a new friend in the school cafeteria. "Have you ever thought about having plastic surgery?" the friend asks.

    "Dude, this is after plastic surgery. It takes a lot of work to look this good," Auggie says, running a hand through his hair. In other words, what could be painfully depressing turns out to hold lurking (潜藏的) reserves of humour, which is pretty much the story of Wonder.

    Auggie, played by Jacob Tremblay, was born with a facial difference, and even after multiple operations, his looks shock his classmates. As he adapts from homeschooling to a new school community, he encounters far worse than that lunchtime scene—one nasty bully (横行霸道者) says he'd kill himself if he looked like Auggie—but he never fully loses heart.

    The movie is an adaptation of the 2012 novel by R.J.Palacio, which has sold 6 million copies in North America and launched an antibullying campaign, Choose Kind. Palacio has said she got the idea for the story when her young son began crying at the sight of a girl with a facial difference in an ice cream shop. She took her kids out of the shop, but later regretted her reaction. "What I should have done is simply turned to the little girl and started up a conversation and shown my kids that there was nothing to be afraid of," she said.

    Tremblay, 11, who broke out opposite Brie Larson in the 2015 drama Room, has more than a few things in common with Auggie. "We both love Star Wars, we have awesome families, and we love our dogs." But Tremblay thinks we all can find something in common with the boy. "Everyone's like Auggie in one very important way: we want to be accepted and treated equally and with kindness."

    Julia Roberts, who plays Auggie's mother, became interested in the part because of her own children, "I read it with my kids and fell so in love with it," she says of the novel. "This book is such a beautiful and gentle introduction into all kinds of topics, including bullying and intolerance and fear, and what fear makes young people do sometimes."

    Both actors have some familiarity with the subject. "I was picked on quite a bit as a young person," Roberts says, though she won't say what for. "Even as a 50-year-old mother of three, it's not a path I like to go up and down." Tremblay reveals a bit more. "I have been picked on," he says, "because I'm kind of short for me age. I told my parents, and that's one of the best things you can do, because my mom said would never want me to carry negative thoughts on my shoulders alone."

    The most challenging parts of filming, says Tremblay, were moments in which he had to cry. Tenderhearted audience members will likely shed tears of their own—especially during scenes between Auggie and his mom, who repeatedly reassures her son that he is worthy of love. But the movie also has its fair share of hijinks (喧闹): for every tear-filled moment, there is a lightsaber battle or silly science project to lighten the mood. This mixture of pity and humor, says Roberts, "was intrinsic (固有的) in the writing in the novel." But she credits writer-director Stephen Chbosky with translating that balance into visual terms.

    As much as the movie impresses the viewer with compassion for the underdogs, it also finds a way to sympathize with the bullies. "I would say to try to take a moment to be conscious of why a person that is bullying somebody is behaving that way," says Roberts, "After all", she adds, "There's no child that's born bully."

    The school year has barely started in Denver, and French teacher Tiffany Choi is already worried that her students are suffering from absent-mindedness. The problem isn't texting, playing video games or passing notes. It's Denver's ongoing heat wave.

    "Today was a little bit hot, so I noticed kids were very sleepy and they were having to get up to drink water quite often." said Choi, who works at Denver's East High School. "If you lose too much water, and you have to keep going to the water fountain, that can take away from their classroom experience." While nodding off in class on a warm day may seem like a right of passage for the average teen, Choi's observation carries a bigger consequence than parched (干燥的) lips.

    "There's been quite a few media reports about teachers noticing that students weren't able to focus on hotter days," said R Jisung Park, a researcher, "Does a hotter climate during the school year actually affect the rate of learning?" The drops in academic achievement couldn't be explained by hotter weekends or hotter summers, but the trend was connected to higher temperatures on school days alone.

    The connection between lost learning and a greater number of hot days is one more example of how climate change is already affecting our lives-and it's an alarm bell for what we stand to lose in the future. Humans still have time to lessen the worst consequences of continued global warming. But unless significant changes occur in the next decade-which seem more and more unlikely—the world will be locked into an inescapable period of heat waves unlike our species has ever seen.

At just seven years old, Angelina Tsuboi discovered her passion for innovation. It all began with a simple game she programmed in her Los Angeles public school's Grade 2class. Today , at18, the Grade 12 student's initial curiosity has evolved into a deep-seated desire to use technology to decode (解码) real-world problems. 

In 2021, she co-developed Megaphone, one of her first apps, to tackle unanswered post-class questions and poor communication about events and announcements. Her problem-solving ability kept building from there. 

When she took online CPR classes at the start of the pandemic, she figured it couldn't be just her who was struggling with the steps. So she created an app called CPR Buddy ― a winner in the 2022 Apple Swift Challenge ― which guides users through CPR using vibrations (震动) to regulate breath. After winning the award, Angelina presented her work to Apple CEO Tim Cook, a highlight in her young career, but one she didn't lose her cool over. "There's no point putting people on a pedestal (神坛)," she says. 

The next year, Angelina built an app called Lilac, designed to assist nonEnglish-speaking single parents with resources for housing, job opportunities and translation support. She was inspired by her own experiences as a child of a single mother who immigrated to the US. 

When Angelina decided to pursue pilot training at the age of 16, she was struck by how difficult it was to find financial support, which encouraged her to create yet another app, Pilot Fast Track, which helps those longing to be pilots find scholarships for flight training. 

Looking to the future, besides applying to colleges with great labs, Angelina is exploring the field of aerospace cybersecurity and mechatronics ― combining computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. 

"There's not enough optimism in the world," she says. "I have also been in situations in my life where I've lost a lot of hope. But in the end, it is a mindset, and there are ways in any situation you're in to make it somewhat better. "