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     If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

     Dreaming about whether you would want to read minds, see through walls, or have superhuman strength may sound silly, but it actually gets to the heart of what really matters in your life.

     Every day in our work, we are inspired by the people we meet doing extraordinary things to improve the world.

     They have a different kind of superpower that all of us possess: the power to make a difference in the lives of others.

We're not saying that everyone needs to contribute their lives to the poor. Your lives are busy enough doing homework, playing sports, making friends, seeking after your dreams. But we do think that you can live a more powerful life when you devote some of your time and energy to something much larger than yourself. Find an issue you are interested in and learn more. Volunteer or, if you can, contribute a little money to a cause. Whatever you do, don't be a bystander. Get involved. You may have the opportunity to make your biggest difference when you're older. But why not start now?

     Our own experience working together on health, development, and energy the last twenty years has been one of the most rewarding parts of our lives. It has changed who we are and continues to fuel our optimism about how much the lives of the poorest people will improve in the years ahead.

    Most nations have at least one type of food that people from other countries think is unusual or unacceptable to eat. In France, people eat horse meat and frog legs. In South Korea and parts of China, restaurants serve dog meat. And in Australia, it's common to cook kangaroo meat on the barbecue and use emu eggs to make pancakes.

    The kangaroo and emu are native to Australia. Both animals are important to the national image of Australia and appear on the Australian coat of arms. They're also central figures in the history of the native Australians. However, they still hunt these animals for their meat, fur and fat.

    Today, Australian people continue to eat these animals. One of the reasons people eat kangaroo meat is that it's high in protein and low in fat, so eating kangaroo is a good option for anyone on a diet. It's also cheaper to eat kangaroo meat than other red meats. Because of this, a lot of university students choose to buy kangaroo meat. BBC News also reported that Australian scientists believe that eating kangaroo meat is good for the environment— kangaroos have different digestive systems than cows and sheep, meaning they produce less methane, the second biggest contributor to global warming.

    While emu meat is high in iron and vitamin C, most people don't think it tastes good. For this reason, they prefer emu eggs. One egg is large enough to make seven omelettes (煎蛋). And while ifs illegal to collect emu eggs from the wild, they can be bought from emu farms. Rather than cracking the beautiful dark shell, it's better to dry it by putting a small hole at each end and blowing. Afterwards, you can even carve a design into the eggshell.

    Food production does great harm to our environment. There are many procedures involved in the manufacture of food that result in greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Some procedures require the consumption of large amounts of fossil fuels, such as the transportation and storage of food products. Other factors that cause great damage to our environment include the overuse of fresh water.

    The production of beef is more damaging to the environment than that of any other food we consume. Raising large numbers of cattle requires the production of large amounts of food for the animals. It's estimated that producing one pound of beef requires seven pounds of feed.

    Land use is also a problem. If the cattle are free-range cattle, large areas of land are required for them to live on. This has led to disastrous forest cutting and the loss of rare plants and animal species, particularly in tropical rain forests in Central and South America.

    Another problem specific to beef production is methane emissions (甲烷排放). Although many people are aware of the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, they don't realize methane's global warming potential is 25 times worse, making it a more dire problem.

    Unfortunately, beef consumption is growing rapidly. This is the result of simple supply and demand factors. Specifically, there are two main causes of demand that are encouraging the production of more supply. First, the increase in the world population means there are more people to consume meat. The second factor is socioeconomic advancement. As citizens in developing nations become financially stable, they can afford to buy more meat.

    Therefore, one way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions is for people around the world to significantly cut down on the amount of beef they eat.

    If you frequently travel for business, Stay bridge Suites offer you a range of home comforts. Four recent visitors to Staybridge Suites explain why they booked, what they enjoyed and what made them want to return.

Claire Metcalf

    “The concept is great, but the staff are the ones who really make it. ”she says. “It takes a lot of discipline to always be friendly, but the staff at Staybridge Suites do that. They genuinely care about you.”

Andrew Roberts

    “One of the best things is having my own kitchen. I often end up working late and I don't fancy eating in a restaurant on my own, so cooking for myself is a big drawcard. ”

    “The main thing for me is being able to cook and have my own little flat. The staff are amazing. It is great to be recognized by them, ”he says.

Pauline Robinson

    “What I love about it is the way that you are treated by the staff,” she says. “Some of the staff have been there all that time and they do look after you well. As a woman staying on my own, it is reassuring that they look out for you, and recently when I was poorly they even brought things I needed to my room. ”

Ryan Ruckledge

    “The fully-equipped kitchen is great. I always have a one-bed apartment so I have a separate kitchen and dining room and I'm able to relax and cook some meals. Eating out can feel a bit much when you do it day in and day out—it makes you hate what you do—and I don't want that.

    It is commonly believed that in medieval France, New Year was celebrated on 1 April. Then in 1562, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, changing New Year to 1 January. With no modern communications, news travelled slowly and new ideas were often questioned. Many people did not hear of the change, some merely forgot, and others chose to ignore it. These people were called fools. Invitations to non-existent "New Year" parties were sent and other practical jokes were played. Over time playing tricks on 1 April became a tradition. The custom eventually spread to England and Scotland, and it was later transported across the Atlantic to the American colonies (殖民地) of the English and the French. April Fools' Day has now developed into an international festival of fun, with different nationalities celebrating the day in special ways.

    France and Italy

    In France and Italy, if someone plays a trick on you, you are the "fish of April". By the month of April fish have only just hatched and are therefore easy to catch. Children stick paper fish to their Friends' backs and chocolate fish are found in the shops.

    America and Britain

    Today, Americans and the British play small tricks on friends and strangers alike on 1 April. A common trick is to point to a friend's shoe and say "Your shoelace (鞋带) is untied." When they look down, they are laughed at. Schoolchildren might tell a friend that school has been cancelled. Sometimes the media get involved. Once, a British short film was shown on April Fools' Day about spaghetti farmers and how they harvest their crop from spaghetti trees!

    Scotland

    In Scotland, April Fools' Day lasts for two days! The second day is called "Taily Day" and tricks on this day involve the bottom (or the "tail", in informal speech). Often a sign saying ‘kick me' is stuck onto someone's back without them knowing.

    Sweet potato plants don't have spines or poisons to defend themselves. But some have evolved a clever way to let hungry herbivores (食草动物) know they aren't an all-you-can-eat buffet, a new study finds. When one leaf injured, it produces a chemical that warms the rest of the plant and its neighbors to make themselves inedible (不宜食用的)to bugs. Sweet potato breeders could potentially engineer plants to produce the chemical as an all-natural pest defense.

    Plant ecologists led by Axel Mithofer of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, started to look into sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) defenses after they noticed something interesting about two varieties of the plant grown in Taiwan: The yellow-skinned, yellow-fleshed Tainong 57 is generally herbivore-resistant, but its darker orange cousin, Tainong 66, is plagued (造成麻烦) by insect pests.

    To find out why, the team offered up Tainong 57 and 66 plants to hungry African cotton leafworm caterpillars (毛虫).Both plants released at least 40 airborne compounds as the caterpillars snacked on their leaves. But Tainong 57 produced a lot more of a chemical called DMNT, which has a very distinct smell, the team details this month in Scientific Reports. ("The smell is not nice," Mithofer says. "You wouldn't want it as a perfume.")

    DMNT isn't a new compound; researchers have isolated (分离出) the smelly chemical from other plants such as corn and cabbage, and it is known to induce defense responses in some species.

    To determine whether this was happening in sweet potatoes, scientists set up two experiments. First, they put two plants next to each other and wounded one so it produced DMNT. Then, they exposed healthy Tainong 57 plants to DMNT they had synthesized (合成).In both cases, the DMNT caused the exposed plants to produce more of a protein called sporamin in their leaves. (Tainong 66 did not have the same reaction.) When the caterpillar's snack on sporamin, "they immediately stop eating because they don't feel well," Mithofer says.

    Sporamin is the main protein in sweet potato tubers (块茎),and is indigestible raw, which is why sweet potatoes must be cooked for humans to enjoy them. "If the caterpillars could cook it, they could eat it," Mithofer says. Theoretically, he says, sweet potato breeders could use genetic engineering to make different varieties of sweet potato produce as much DMNT as Tainong 57, and display the same defense responses.

    Still, the research isn't ready for prime time, cautions plant ecologist Martin Heil. DMNT might work in the lab, but in the field, airborne chemicals can be "blown away in seconds," says Heil, who studies plant-insect interactions at the National Polytechnic Institute in Irapuato, Mexico.

    Mithofer himself has no plans now to create genetically engineered sweet potato plants, because they would not be a viable (能活下去的) crop in Europe, where genetically modified crops are outlawed. So for now, Tainong 66 will have to put up with being a caterpillar salad bar.