Dear Friend ,

    The recent success of children's books has made the general public aware that there's a huge market out there .And there's a growing need for new writers trained to create the $3 billion worth of children's books bought each year … plus stories and articles needed by over 650 publishers of magazines for children and teenagers .Who are these needed writers ? They're ordinary folks like you and me .But am I good enough ?

    I was once where you might be now . My thoughts of writing had been pushed down by self-doubt , and I didn't know where to turn for help .

    Then , I accepted a free offer from the Institute to test my writing ability , and it turned out to be the inspiration I needed .

    The promise that paid off

    The Institute made the same promise to me that they will make to you , if you show basic writing ability :

    You will complete at least one manuscript（手稿）suitable to hand in to a publisher by the time you finish our course .

    I really didn't expect any publication before I finished the course , but that happened . I sold three stories . And I soon discovered that was not unusual at the Institute .

    Since graduation , I have authored 34 nationally published children's books and over 300 stories and articles .

    Free test and brochure

    We offer a free ability test and will send you a copy of our brochure（小册子）describing our recognized home-study courses on the basis of one-on-one training .Realize your writing dream today . There's nothing sadder than a dream delayed until it fades forever .

Sincerely ,

Kristi Hill , Instructor

Institute of Children's Literature

    George Aldrich, whose official title is chemical specialist, works at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. He uses his nose to protect astronauts from unpleasant or harmful odors (气味). His near four-decade career has involved smelling objects from technical handbooks to astronauts' personal things.

    It's crucial that all items taken aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are odorless. Since astronauts are allowed to bring personal items aboard, all their objects must be smell-checked before leaving Earth. In a video provided by Science Channel, Aldrich relates one specific occasion when an astronaut wanted to build a ship in a bottle in space. Everything in the ship-building process had to be sniffed—right down to the glue.

    Aldrich and his team are responsible for making sure that objects are not only odorless but also harmless to astronauts. When the ISS heats up, a process called off-gassing occurs, which means chemicals flow out from certain substances (物质). Objects that would be safe on Earth could give off unpleasant odors or become dangerous when exposed to high temperatures in the ISS's unique environment.

    Of course, humans aren't the only testers or the first to be exposed to potentially dangerous objects. Before Aldrich sticks his nose into a substance, it has been examined by machines. Even though machines can detect unsafe substances, computers cannot tell exactly how things smell to humans. While something could be technically fine, it could be smelly to an astronaut.

Aldrich's nose is not alone there. He is the head of a hard-sniffing team of smell testers. Together they smell each object and rate it on a scale (等级) of 1 to 4. According to NASA, 1 cannot be detected, and 4 is considered not bearable. After the scientists conclude their tests, the scores are averaged. If an item is rated more than 2.4 on the scale, it fails the test and is not allowed on the flight.

B

    Many of us love July because it's the month when nature's berries and stone fruits are in abundance. These colourful and sweet jewels from British Columbia's fields are little powerhouses of nutritional protection.

    Of the common berries, strawberries are highest in vitamin C, although, because of their seeds, raspberries contain a little more protein (蛋白质), iron and zinc (not that fruits have much protein). Blueberries are particularly high in antioxidants (抗氧化物质). The yellow and orange stone fruits such as peaches are high in the carotenoids we turn into vitamin A and which are antioxidants. As for cherries (樱桃), they are so delicious who cares? However, they are rich in vitamin C.

    When combined with berries or slices of other fruits, frozen bananas make an excellent base for thick, cooling fruit shakes and low fat "ice cream". For this purpose, select ripe bananas for freezing as they are much sweeter. Remove the skin and place them in plastic bags or containers and freeze. If you like, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on the bananas will prevent them turning brown. Frozen bananas will last several weeks, depending on their ripeness and the temperature of the freezer.

    If you have a juicer, you can simply feed in frozen bananas and some berries or sliced fruit. Out comes a "soft-serve" creamy dessert, to be eaten right away. This makes a fun activity for a children's party; they love feeding the fruit and frozen bananas into the top of the machine and watching the ice cream come out below.

    Robots make me nervous — especially the ones which seem to think for themselves. I was embarrassed to admit this till I heard that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, felt the same way.

Gates said in an interview with the social networking and news website Reddit: "I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern."

    Well, maybe I don't have to worry about my computer and kitchen equipment yet. After I use them I can always pull the plug. But in the future, machines might find a way to prevent us from switching them off. There's a terrible thought!

    Maybe the problem with computers too clever for us is not that they are evil like some we've seen in sci-fi movies. What could put us in danger is that they might be too efficient. That's what philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University believes. He says that machines are indifferent to humans and in pursuit of their own goals, the destruction of people might be just additional damage. Bostrom gives us an example: A machine which might have as its only goal to produce as many paperclips as possible might look at human bodies as extra material for paperclips and go after you. Because it is, well, a machine, it would not take pity on you.

    It's a good thing that American writer Isaac Asimov thought about how far robots can go and left us his three rules of robotics. They state that a robot may not hurt a human being or allow the human being to come to harm.

I'm glad my machines at home are "dumb". All my cleaner wants to take over is the carpet in my living room. Let's hope they don't create an appliance which wants to take over the world!

    "Depend on yourself" is what nature says to everyone. Parents can help you. Teachers can help you. Others can help you. But all these only help you to help yourself.

    There have been many great men in history. But many of them were poor in childhood, and had no uncles, aunts or friends to help them. Schools were few and not very good. They could not depend on them for education. They saw how it was, and set to work with all their strength to know something. They worked their own way till they became well­known.

    One of the most famous teachers in England used to tell his pupils, "I can not make worthy men of you, but I can help you make men of yourselves."

    Some young men do not try their best to make themselves valuable to the human beings. They can never gain achievements unless they see their weak­points and change their courses. They are nothing now, and will be nothing as long as they live, unless they accept the advice of their parents and teachers, and depend on their own honest efforts.

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census's measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic wellbeing, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.

While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.

The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.

In 2005, as the authors observe: real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France's consumption with the U.S.'s overstates the gap in economic welfare.

Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97 % of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%. The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy's performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.

Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.