An Oceans Vacuum

    There's a collection of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's bigger than Texas-and growing. The way to clean it up now is to catch it with nets. That is both costly and slow. Instead, the Ocean Cleanup Project proposes 62-mile-long floating barriers that would use natural currents to trap trash. If next year's trials succeed, a full cleanup operation would aim to start in 2020. It could reduce the trash by 42% over 10 years.

    Easy-On Shoes

    In 2012, Mathew Walzer, a high school student with a disability, sent a note to Nike. “My dream is to go to college,” he wrote, “without having to worry about someone coming to tie my shoes every day.” Nike assigned a design team to the challenge. This year, they came out with their solution: the FlyEase. The basketball shoe can be fastened with one hand. A pair of Nike FlyEase shoes sells for $130.

    An Airport for Drones(无人机)

    As Amazon, Google, and others get ready for drone delivery service, there is one big question: what kinds of home bases will their drones have? Rwanda, in Africa, may have the answer. There, workers will soon start work on three “drone ports”. The goal is to make it easier to transport food, medical supplies, electronics, and other goods through the hilly countryside. Construction is set to be completed in 2020.

    I remember that it was a fall morning when the orchestra teachers came into Miss Newell's third-grade classroom. “You have hands for the viola (中提琴),” Miss Ciano told me. I was excited because my hands were finally good for something. I told my parents I wanted to play, and naturally, they agreed.

    Since I first touched the viola, I haven't been able to put it down. Ignoring the difficulty, I am pulled closer to it each day.

    Classical music is truly my best friend. It is the trusted friend of every man, woman and child. Various feelings are expressed in classical music. I discovered that when I was eleven and played a Bach cello concerto (大提琴协奏曲) in a competition, the first movement was joyful, but the second movement was mysterious and full of pain. From that piece, I learned that music expressed not only feelings, but also sudden mood changes. By listening to classical music, I know that someone else share these feelings. Since I am lucky enough to be able to play classical music, I am comforted when I am upset. It gives me a way to escape from my problems for a short period. Classical music can express my joy, sadness and anger.

    Now look at that fall day and think how gullible I was for believing that anyone, even music teachers, could tell if hands were perfect for a certain instrument. I'm certain they told me I had “viola hands” not because they were fortune-teller, but because there was a lack of violists in our district. Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it will become your friend for life.

    I was very fortunate to be selected by Kindspring to receive $100 for the monthly kindness competition and it has helped to make a beautiful difference in people's lives.

    The idea is simple. I took a lot of fallen branches and hung them from the ceiling with the help of volunteers and friends. Then we hung strings with pins attached to them from the branches. I got a whole lot of art supplies and as people came in for the art exhibit, they were encouraged to create a piece of art or a positive message to hang from the tree.

    The tree changed into this really fun way of exchanging positive messages. If you were to hang a message up, you had to take a message down for you to keep. The experience was really amazing. People of all ages and from all walks of life were sharing art and encouragement through the tree.

    With the $100 I received from Kindspring, I made a total of seven more trees. I am putting them all over our community（社区）. One will go to a youth shelter for homeless teens and one will be put right in the middle of town on our public square. They will have paper and art supplies at the base for people to use in creating a message or piece of art. For the classroom I was able to provide them with new colored pencils, markers, and some sketchbooks, which they all loved. The act is to create communications that are positive and can influence people's lives in great ways just by doing a simple act of kindness. The messages people receive can be kept with them forever as a reminder of the good in the world, or they can pass them along to others. The beauty of the idea is that the messages have unlimited possibilities.

    Many of the world's most well-known people were once successful failures. Here are the stories of a few of them.

    Abraham Lincoln(1809-1865)

    Abraham Lincoln was one of America's greatest leaders, taking the country through the Civil War(from 1860 to 1865). However, his life was never easy. He started numerous businesses that failed. He went bankrupt twice, and was defeated in 26 campaigns for public office. He later said, “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. ”

    Vincent Van Gogh(1853-1890)

    Van Gogh is one of the most famous and influential painters in the history of Western Art. He's renowned for paintings such as TheStarryNight, ThePotatoEaters and Sunflowers. However, during his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting for a very small amount of money. Despite this, he carried on painting, sometimes even going without food so he could complete his collection of over 800 known works.

    Albert Einstein(1879-1955)

    Albert Einstein won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1921. However, he wasn't always considered as a “genius”. He didn't speak until he was four, and couldn't read until he was seven. His teachers and parents thought he was slow, so he was expelled from school and couldn't get into the Zurich Polytechnic School. He later famously said, “Success is failure in progress. ”

    Stephen King(born 1947)

    Stephen King is one of the best-selling authors of all time, but his first book,  Carrie, was rejected by about 30 publishers. Eventually, Stephen threw it in the bin,  but his wife fished it out and encouraged him to resubmit it, which he did successfully this time!

    I travel a lot, and I find out different “styles”(风格) of directions every time I ask “How can I get to the post office?”

    Foreign tourists are often confused(困惑) in Japan because most streets there don't have names; In Japan, people use landmarks(地标) in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, “Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop.”

    In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, “Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile.”

    People in Los Angeles, California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance in time, not miles. “How far away is the post office?” you ask. “Oh,” they answer, “it's about five minutes from here.” You say, “Yes, but how many miles away is it?” They don't know.

    It's true that a person doesn't know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, “Sorry, I have no idea.” But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers “I don't know.” People in Yucatan believe that “I don't know” is impolite. They usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!

    Whenever we see a button (按钮), we are eager to press it because we know something will happen. This is true in most cases, for example on a doorbell and on the “on/off” button on the TV. But some buttons are actually fake, like the “close” button on a lift.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the “close” button because they don't have the patience to wait for the lift doors to shut. But lifts'" close" buttons are a complete scam, at least in the US—the doors will not close any faster no matter how hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the US, making sure that all lifts stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only US firefighters and repairmen can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys.

    But to normal lift riders, the buttons aren't completely useless. According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control.

    “Perceived (能够感知的) control is very important. It reduces stress and increases well-being," Ellen J. Langer, a psychology professor, said, “Having a lack of control is associated with depression.”

    Experts have revealed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example  many offices in the US have fake thermostats (温度调节器) because people tend to feel better when they think they can control the temperature in their workspace.

    But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little "white lies", they still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

    "That habit is here to stay," John Kounios, a psychology professor, said, ''Even though I have real doubts about the traffic light buttons, I always press them. After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not press the button in the hope that this one will work?”