I grew up poor. We had little money, butplenty of love and attention. I understood that no matter how poor a person was, they could still afford a dream. My dream was athletics.

    By the time I was sixteen, I was good at baseball and football. My high-school coach was Ollie Jarvis. He not only believed in me, but taught me the difference between having a dream and showing conviction（信念）.

    One summer a friend recommended me for asummer job. This meant a chance for money in my pocket — cash for dates withgirls, certainly, money for a new bike and new clothes, and the start of savings for a house for my mother.

Then I realized I would have to give up summer baseball to handle the work schedule, and that meant I would have to tell Coach Jarvis I wouldn't be playing. I was dreading（害怕）this, but my mother said: "If you make your bed, you have to lie in it."

When I told Coach Jarvis, he was as madas I expected him to be. "Your playing days are limited. You can't afford to waste them," he said.

   I stood before him with my head hanging, trying to think of the words that would explain to him why my dream of buying my mom a house.

"How much are you going to make at this job, son?" he demanded.

"Three twenty-five an hour," I replied.

"Well," he asked, "is $3.25 an hour the price of a dream?"

    That question laidbare for me the difference between wanting something right now and having agoal. I devoted myself to sports that summer, and within the year I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates to play rookie-league ball, and offered a $20,000 contract. I signed with the Denver Broncos in 1984 for $1.7 million, and boughtmy mother the house of my dream.

    On May 23, 1989, Stefania Follini came out from a cave at Carlsbad, New Mexico. She hadn't seen the sun for eighteen and a half weeks. Stefania was in a research program, and the scientists in the program were studying body rhythms. In this experiment Stefania had spent 130days in a cave, 30 feet in depth.

    During her time in the cave, Stefania had been completely alone except for two white mice. Her living place had been very comfortable, but there had been nothing to tell her the time. She'd had no clocks or watches, no television or radio. There had been no natural light and the temperature had always been kept at 21℃.

    The results were very interesting. Stefania had been in the cave for over four months, but she thought she had been there for only two. Her body clock had changed. She hadn't kept to a 24-hour day, she had stayed awake for 20～25 hours and then had slept for 10 hours. She had eaten fewer meals and had lost 171bs in weight as a result! She had also become rather depressed.

    How had she spent her time in the cave? As part of the experiment she'd done some physical and mental tests. She'd recorded her daily activities and the results of the tests on a computer. This computer had been specially programmed for the project. Whenever she was free, she'd played cards, read books and listened to music. She'd also learned French from tapes.

    The experiment showed that our body clocks are affected by light and temperature. For example， the pattern of day and night makes us wake up and go to sleep. However, people are affected in different ways. Some people wake up naturally at 5:00 a.m., but others don't start to wake up till 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. This affects the whole daily rhythm. As a result the early risers are at their best in the late morning. The late risers, on the other hand, are tired during the day and only come to life in the afternoon or evening!

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    Mr. Parker was born in a small village. His father was so poor that he couldn't send him to school. The boy had to help his parents to do some farming and learned English and maths by himself when he was free. Later on he was made to leave his home village and hoped to find a job in a city. And as soon as war broke out, he joined the army. He couldn't forget his terrible past and fought with the enemies bravely. So he became a general when he was fifty. He was honest and friendly to his soldiers and often punished those who tried to pocket a portion of the soldiers' pay (克扣军饷). And his soldiers liked him very much.

    Once Mr. Parker heard from a soldier. In the letter the young man said the food in their military camp was very bad and he wished the general could go to find out the reasons, the old man went there at once, without telling anybody. He went in the kitchen and examined everything carefully and found it was very dirty. Then he went in the soldiers' bedrooms and found there were a lot of fleas. He became angry and asked the soldiers, “What do you think of your food, young men?”

    The soldiers saw their officer standing by the general and said nothing Only a new soldier said, “Very bad, sir!”

    “What did you have for lunch today?” asked Mr. Parker.

    “A fried chicken, some fish and pork, a cake, six eggs and I had three cups of wine.”

    “Really?” Mr. Parker called out in surprise. “It's the King's lunch, I think!”

    “So do I. General,” said the young man. “But it's my birthday today. I paid three hundred dollars for them all in the restaurant!”

    What would work be like if you had no boss?Imagine you could make all your own decisions and no one told you what to do.

    A Swedish software company,Crisp,decided to get rid of their CEO.First,they needed to find out what a CEO actually did.Then they shared those duties among staff and board members,which is exactly what they did.And the employees believes it's been a good change.An employee named Heinrik Kniberg says the company can now act faster,"If you want to get something done,you stand up and start driving that.Workers are also more active and satisfied."And any big decisions are made during the all-member meetings several times a year.

    So,if it's working well for Crisp,could this model become more widespread? Online retailer（零售商）Zappos tried out a similar plan but had unpleasant results.Almost a fifth of its staff decided to leave,and CEO Tony Hsieh admitted that "self-management is not for everyone".Mr Houston,founder of file-sharing service Drew Dropbox,says that total freedom doesn't always feel good,because you no longer know what you're supposed to do,what is important and you're bumping up against other people."

    Would you like to work somewhere with no boss?

    Sixty-four-year-old Pierre Deom has spent his entire life close to the woods and fields that he loves. Twice a year, his magazine, La Hulotte, focuses on an animal or plant native to the French countryside.

    The 100th edition was published in November. The magazine counts more than 150, 000 subscribers in many countries, and is doing very well financially. Deom says it all began in January 1972, when he was teaching science in a one-room schoolhouse here." It upset me how the forests and swamps were beginning to be ruined. The word 'ecology' didn't really exist yet. Some friends and I wanted to call attention to the issue. So we said, let's educate the kids. They're ready to hear our message." So he took a step into the unknown, planning to publish his nature journal.

    Deom does all the research and writing and the illustrations (插图) of the magazine by hand. He combines science and humor in his writing and drawing to describe the daily life and sufferings of his creatures. Animals you might overlook or consider dull are magically and vividly brought to life in La Hulotte. "I try to write about animals and plants that are easy to find because I want kids to put on boots, take a magnifying glass, go to the woods and fields to observe and be amazed by what they find," Deom says.

    And it seems to work. Biologist Jerome Fournier began subscribing to La Hulotte when he was just eight years old. "For me it was the first contact with nature when I was a child. And maybe it's the beginning for my life of scientist. I think so."

    What's amazing is its approach. The magazine has realistic drawings and also a little cast of cartoon creatures who comment on things and give a different views. You can read it as an adult or a child; it can be understood on two different levels. So scientists, regular people and children all get something out of it. "It's extraordinary." Fournier says, who works at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where he says La Hulotte has a crazy following.

    Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri (MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

    "To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density (密度)", said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. ''The radioisotope (放射性同位素) battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries."

    Kwon and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, presently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro systems (MNEMS). Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said they are safe.

    "People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous." he said. "However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems."

    His new idea is not only in the battery's size, but also in its semiconductor (半导体). Kwon's battery uses a liquid semi conduct or rather than a solid semiconductor.

    "The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure (晶体结构) of the solid semiconductor." Kwon said, "By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem."

    Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwon is working to build and test the battery. In the future, they hope to increase the battery's power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwon said that battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.