There is always something that happens in the world that everyone fears will happen to their town, city or country: natural disasters. The scariest part of it is that no one will ever see it coming. Though technology helps us prepare, but it never actually tells the people when it's going to hit. It is always estimated but the result is never 100% accurate.

    However, that is not the point of this article. Two different natural disasters in two different parts of the world have happened in the past few weeks. One was a major flood that has hit Louisiana in the United States. The other was an earthquake that hit Amatrice, Italy. However, there is a major difference in the news coverage of the two tragedies.

    As for the flooding in Louisiana, it is reported that this disaster is the worst to hit the United States since Super-storm Sandy and it'll cost at least $30 million. In only the first couple of weeks, 13 people had died. However, like me, many people did not hear about this tragic event. I did not learn about it until about three weeks after it happened.

    In Italy, however, it covered all media instantly. The earthquake in Italy happened on Tuesday morning. That same day, I was on Twitter and that was all that was over the news feed. Every other post was about the earthquake. Some would have the opinion that Amatrice, Italy was one of the most beautiful towns in that country. I got in deep sorrow because there were more people killed in this quake than the flooding. So far, they have a total of 73 dead and over one hundred missing.

    I understand that technically the earthquake in Italy was worse than the floods in Louisiana. However, I believe that if a natural disaster happens, they all should be equally covered and taken equally seriously. We are one world united and should be there for all of the people who are in need of help. We may not be able to accurately predict disasters but, we can surely lend a hand out for the needy.

    Health experts are calling for action to increase cancer care and control in the developing world. A medical research paper says cancer was once thought of as a problem mostly in the developed world. But now cancer is a leading cause of death and disability in poor countries as well. Experts from Harvard University and other organizations urge the international community to fight cancer actively, saying it should be fought in the way HIV/AIDS has been fought in Africa.

    Cancer kills more than 7.5 million people a year worldwide. Almost two thirds are in low-income and middle-income countries.

They discover cancer kills more people in developing countries than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. But the world spends only 5% of its cancer resources in those countries.

    Felicia Knaul from Harvard Medical School was one of the writers of the paper. She was in Mexico when she was found to have breast cancer. She received treatment there and her experience showed her the sharp difference between the rich and the poor in treating breast cancer.

    Felicia Knaul says, “And we are seeing how this is attacking young women. It's the number two cause of death in Mexico of women thirty to fifty-four. All over the developing world, it's the number one cancer-related death among young women. I think we have to again say that there is much more we could do about it than we are doing about it. ”

    Professor Knaul met community health workers during her work in developing countries. They were an important part of efforts to reduce deaths from the cancer. They were able to persuade people to get tested to prevent the illness. The experts say cancer care does not have to be costly. For example, patients can be treated with lower-cost drugs.

    A family is a collection of people who share the same genes but cannot agree on a place to pull over for lunch. Ed and I, plus his parents and sister Doris and eight-year-old niece Alisha, are on a road trip to Yosemite. Ed wants Subway, I want. In-N-Out Burger, Doris wants Sonic. In the end, we compromise on McDonald's, where Alisha will get an action figure.

    It's a three-hour drive to Yosemite, but we're taking a little longer, as we're working in a tour of Highway 80's public restrooms. As the saying goes, "Not one bladder（膀胱）empties but another fills." Many of these restrooms belong to gas stations. I prefer them to the high-tech ones on planes.

    We get back on the road. Ed is driving now. When all the tabloids（小报）have been read, the travel has grown tedious and anyone under age 12 asks "Are we there yet?" at ever-shortening internals. Just outside Manteca, California, we stop for coffee. At a Starbucks checkout, Ed buys a CD of Joni Mitchell's favorite musical picks. The hope is that it will have a calming effect.

    As we pull back onto the highway, it starts to pour. Then something amazing happens. As we climb the mountain, the rain turns to snow. The pines are spotted with white. We're struck dumb（说不出话）by the scene outside. For a solid 15 minutes, everyone forgets about their bladder, their blood sugar and the temperature. Alisha has never seen snow, so we pull over to make snowmen and catch snowflakes on our tongues. Then Ed realizes we need tire chains, and we have to turn back and drive 30miles to Oakhurst. "Good," says Doris. "There was a very nice restroom there."

    Eldon Musk, the entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and Space X, may have a little more time on his hands, as he's leaving his position on the board of the Open AI, according to a blog post.

    The departure is likely the result of Tesla's moving into the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which he said in 2017 would be the “best in the world” and would even be able to “predict your destination.” Musk will continue to “donate and advise the organization,” Open AI said in a blog post on Feb. 20, adding that “As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will avoid a potential future conflict for Eldon.”

    Musk and Y Combiner CEO Sam Altman co-founded the nonprofit enterprise in December 2015, its mission is to develop safe artificial general intelligence and ensure those developments are made public. Open AI researchers published a paper on the site ArXiv.org, detailing the possible secure threats that come with “malicious” AI. In fact, Musk has heard the “evil AI” alarm several times. On Aug. 11, 2017, he warned that artificial intelligence poses a bigger threat to humanity, and he told a gathering of state governors that the government needs to regulate AI before robots start “killing people.”

    Musk's departure from the Open AI board could mean big things for Tesla. As Eton Goodbye, a financial reporter, noted on Futurism, the move “could signal that Tesla is more deeply committed to their own AI projects than we thought.” He added, “Those who have had their ears to any rumors (谣言) that Tesla is ready to deliver vehicles capable of Level 5 autonomy could take this new Open AI development as a sign that the company is inching closer to that unapproachable goal.” No company has reached that level of autonomy, which means that a driverless car could navigate any road under any conditions and that all the human “driver” would need to do is to input a destination.

    Filled with much housework, meals and childcare at home, many people feel that being at work sounds more like having a picnic. Even for those who have a happy family life, they feel actually more stressed at home than at work.

    Recently, a study carried out by the researchers at a university in the USA found lower levels of hormone released in response to stress in a majority of subjects when they were at work compared to when they were at home. This was true for both men and women, and parents and people without children.

    Both men and women showed less stress at work. But women are more likely to report feeling happier there. Men were more likely to feel happier at home. Experts say there are other reasons why work is less stressful than home for many. “Paid work is more valued in society,” said Sarah Damaske, the lead researcher on the study, “Household work is boring and not particularly rewarding.”

    We get better at our job with time and the increased competence means less stress and more rewards. Yet none of us, no matter how long we've been doing it, ever truly feels like an expert at parenting or even at marriage.

    The support and friendship of co-workers also offer stress relief. At home, meanwhile, stress spreads and increases quickly. “That's the reason why most housewives wish they were the bread earners,” Dr. Damaske says.

    Much of the advice to families and couples includes the warning to “leave work stress at office” and even to change our mind-set from work to home, for example, a walk around the block. The recent findings, though, suggest our home life, not our attitude, might be due for some change.

On paper, hydrogen (H2) looks like a dream fuel. Coal, oil, and natural gas produce carbon dioxide, which warms the earth when burned, Hydrogen produces pure water. Hydrogen packs more energy into less space than a battery (but certainly less than petrol) . Also, empty tanks (燃料箱) can be refilled with hydrogen much faster than refilling empty batteries with electricity.

While in practice, things are trickier. Storing a meaningful amount of hydrogen gas requires pressing it several hundred-fold. Changing it into the liquid form is another option, but it should be cooled to-253C. Both processes require a heavy and strong tank. While a 700 bar tank is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, adapting it for use in small vehicles is very difficult because the pressure during refilling would be too great.

The solution? Powerpaste.

A German team of researchers, led by Marcus Vogt, have come up with an interesting "powerpaste", which can store hydrogen energy at atmospheric pressure, ready for release when needed. It is so named because it comes in tubes and looks like toothpaste (牙膏) , not in its traditional form of gas.

The main ingredient (原料) of the paste is magnesium hydride, a substance that reacts with water to form hydrogen. The escaped hydrogen can then be directed into a fuel cell, where it reacts with oxygen from the air to produce electric power.

Refueling is very simple, as instead of going to a filling station, drivers and riders can simply replace an empty tube with a new one and refill the water tank.

Given that powerpaste only begins to break down at temperatures of around 250℃ it remains safe even when a vehicle stands in the baking sun for hours.

However, we will have to be patient. Just because researchers have succeeded in developing a new fueling way does not mean that we can expect to see such vehicles on the road anytime soon. It will indeed be several years before this concept is turned into reality.