Five or six years ago, I attended a lecture on the science of attention. A professor who conducts research over in the medical school was talking about attention blindness, the basic feature of the human brain that, when we concentrate on one task, causes us to miss just about everything else. Because we can't see what we can't see, our lecturer was determined to catch us in the act. He had us watch a video of six people tossing (投掷) basketballs back and forth, three in white shirts and three in black, and our task was to keep track only of the tosses among the people in white. The tape rolled, and everyone began counting.

    Everyone except me. I'm dyslexic (患阅读困难症的), and the moment I saw that tape with the confusing basketball tossers, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep track of their movements, so I let my mind wander. I became curious, though, when about 30 seconds into the tape, a gorilla (大猩猩) walked in among the players. She (we later learned a female student was in the gorilla suit) stared at the camera, beat her chest with her fist, and then went away while they continued passing the balls.

    When the tape stopped, the professor asked how many people had counted at least a dozen basketball tosses. Hands went up all over. He then asked who had counted 13, 14, and congratulated those who'd scored the perfect 15. Then he asked, “And who saw the gorilla?”

    I raised my hand and was surprised to discover I was the only person at my table and one of only three or four in the large room to do so. He'd set us up, trapping us in our own attention blindness. Yes, there had been a trick, but he wasn't the one who had played it on us. By concentrating so hard on counting, we had managed to miss the gorilla in the midst.

    Attention blindness is the fundamental organizing principle of the brain, and I believe that it presents us with a great opportunity. My take is different from that of many neuroscientists: Where they see the shortcomings of the individual, I sense an opportunity for cooperation. Fortunately, given the interactive (互动的) nature of most of our lives in the digital age, we have the tools to control our different forms of attention and take advantage of them.

    It's not easy to admit that everything we've learned about how to pay attention means that we've been missing everything else. It's not easy for us logical, intelligent, confident types to admit that the very key to our success — our ability to discover a problem and solve it, an achievement obtained in all those years in school and beyond — may be exactly what limits us. No one ever told us that our way of seeing left out everything else.

    Mary Krupa became friends with the grey squirrels during her first week at Penn State,after spotting them running around and idly（漫不经地）wondering what they would look like with tiny hats on their heads.Today, everyone at the university knows her as the "Squirrel Girl".

    Mary started bringing them food,and gradually they began to trust her.She managed to put a hat on a squirrel and take a picture.Thinking that her colleagues could do with something to lift up their spirits,she started posting similar Photos on Facebook.The response Was greatly positive,and before long Mary and her squirrels became an Internet sensation.

    Growing up in a neighborhood outside State College,Mary was always fond of birds and animals around her home,but she didn't interact with people very much.She was later diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome,but the squirrels changed that.The squirrels are actually a good way to break the ice,because I'll be sitting here patting a squirrel and other people will come over and well just start like feeding the squirrels together and chatting about them,"she said."I am a lot more outgoing.

    And in case you're wondering how Mary is able to get the squirrels to do what she wants for her photos,it has a lot to do with food.For example,whenever she wants them to hold or play with something,she puts peanut butter on the prop（道具）,and they'll grab it.But getting to that part took a while.In the beginning,she would throw peanuts up the trees on campus and invite the squirrels to come down and get them,but they hesitated to approach her.She had the patience to earn their trust,though.

    This year,Mary is graduating with a degree in English and wildlife sciences.She wants to be a science writer and educate people on how to preserve the environment.As for her furry friends,Mary plans to stay in the area and visit them as often as she can.

    Audrey Hepburn won an Academy Award as Best Actress for her first major American movie，Roman Holiday，which was released in 1953．But she is remembered as much for her aid work as for her acting．

    Born in Belgium in 1929，Audrey's father was British and her mother was Dutch．Audrey was sent to live at a British school for part of her childhood．During World War II，she lived and studied in the Netherlands. Her mother thought it would be safe from German attacks．Audrey studied dance as a teenager and during college when she returned to London after the war．But she realized she wasn't going to be a ballerina （芭蕾舞女演员）．So she began taking acting parts in stage shows．Later she began to get small parts in movies．

    But it was Audrey Hepburn's move to America that brought her true fame．In 1951 she played the character"Gigi"in the Broadway play of the same name to great critical praise．Two years later，Roman Holiday made her a star at the age of 24．

    Audrey made more than 25movies．Among her most popular roles was Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tifany's in 1961．Three years later she played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady．

    She was married two times and had one son by each husband．In 1989，the UN Children's Fund named Audrey a goodwill ambassador．She travelled all over the world in support of UNICEF （联合国儿童基金会） projects．The UN agency said she was a tireless worker．She often gave 15interviews a day to gain money and support for UNICEF projects．

    Audrey Hepburn often said her loyalty to UNICEF was the result of her experiences as a child during World War II．She said she knew what it was like to be starving and to be saved by international aid．She was a goodwill ambassador until her death in 1993from colon cancer．

    Located in the checkroom in Union Station as I am, I see everybody that comes up the stairs.

Harry came in a little over three years ago and waited for the passengers from the 9:05 train.

    I remember seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn't much more than a thin, anxious kid then and I knew he was meeting his girl and that they would be married twenty minutes after she arrived. The passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn't look toward the stairs again until it was nearly time for the 9:18 train and I was very surprised to see that the young fellow was still there.

    She didn't come on the 9:18 either, nor on the 9:40, and when the passengers from the 10:02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty desperate. He showed me the telegram he'd received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME STATION. LOVE YOU. MAY.

    Harry met every train for the next three or four days, but in vain.

    Then came yesterday. I heard a cry and found that it was from Harry. He grabbed a girl who was small and dark. For a while they just hung there to each other laughing and crying and saying things without meaning. She'd say a few words like, "It was the bus station I meant" and he'd kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he had done to find her. What apparently had happened three years before was that May had come by bus, not by train, and in her telegram she meant "bus station," not "railroad station." She had waited at the bus station for days and had spent all her money trying to find Harry. Finally she got a job typing.

    "What?" said Harry. "Have you been working in town? All the time?"

    She nodded.

    "Didn't you ever come down here to the station?" He pointed across to a magazine stand. "I've been there all the time. I own it. I've watched everybody that came up the stairs."

    She began to look a little pale. Pretty soon she looked over at the stairs and said in a weak voice, "I never came up the stairs before. Harry, for three years, for three solid years, I've been right over there working right in this very station, typing, in the office of the stationmaster."

    When I was three years old, I couldn't speak. It was a strange reality that none of the doctors I visited could understand.

    One day, I was shadowing my mother. She found herself looking in a mirror, and through it our eyes met. She began to speak to me through the reflection, and I slowly began to mimic(模仿)her mouth's movements until I formed a word.

    It turned out I'm deaf in my left ear, and have a slight problem in my right. Being hard of hearing has been difficult, but I've never lived in a state of self-hating sorrow. Imagine being able to shut out all sound as you lay your head down to sleep by simply rolling over onto one side. That's my reality when I sleep on my "good ear", and it makes me feel like a superhero sometimes.

    People call my deaf side my "bad ear", but when I wear my hearing aid, I have access to a range of features that some other deaf people don't. In cinemas, for example, with one click of a button I can enjoy a whole film as though it were whispered to me from the mouths of the actors.

    Owning a hearing aid hasn't always felt good, however. On the first day I got my aid, when I was eight, I took it to school for show-and-tell. As I explained how it worked to my classmates, a boy yelled out, "Aren't those for old men?" At that moment, I felt different. It took a long time for me to get over that sense of being so unlike my peers.

    But it's not just school kids who can make us deaf and hard-of-hearing people feel like burdens. Every video on social media that lacks subtitles(字幕), for example, means an entire community of deaf people is unable to enjoy it. Completely deaf people are excluded from enjoying many movies too, as subtitles in cinemas are almost impossible to find.

    And with hearing aids costing around $2,500 each, it can be hard for many people to afford to be able to listen to the things that others take for granted. As for me, I can listen to music, enjoy films, and catch conversations - I'm lucky. I'm deaf, but I can still hear everything. I've been blessed with wonderful life experiences, and I am human. And when it comes to sleeping, I'm even superhuman.

    Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U. S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

    It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    "Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite, "Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. "What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and white anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital. "

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. "The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same, "says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, "just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music," says Moran. "For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context," says Moran, "so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster. "