Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably accomplish what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

    My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren't written until the final threat.

    I've been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working towards her master's degree in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student (技校学生). They're called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.

    When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”, I was shocked. “Hey, he's a good kid,” I wanted to say. “And smart, really.”

I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don't often make school honor rolls (光荣榜).

    But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who labor in clean shirts in offices don't have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was estimated at $800. “Hey, I can fix it,” said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.

    My son, with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts from a junkyard, and ability from vo-tech classes. The cost was $25 instead of $800.

Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbours and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

    These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

    I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don't need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.

    As technology develops, school students who are off class may have no fear of too much absence from class. A small robot may help those children recovering from a long-term illnesses in the hospital or at home. These children may feel isolated from their friends and classmates. The robot takes their place at school. Through the robot, the children can hear their teachers and friends. They also can take part in class from wherever they are recovering.

    Anyone who has had a long term illness knows that recovering at home can be lonely. This can be especially true of children. They may feel left out. Now these children may have a high-tech friend to feel less alone. And that friend is a robot. The robot is called AV1. AV1 goes to school for a child who is at home while recovering from a long-term illness. And the child's school friends must help. They carry the robot between classes and place the robot on the child's desk.

    A Norwegian company called No isolation created the robot. The co-founders of No Isolation are Karen Dolva and Marius Aabel. Dolva explains how the robot AV1 works. She says, from home, the child uses a tablet or phone to start the robot. Then they use the same device（设备）to control the robot's movements. At school, the robot becomes the eyes, ears and voice of the child. The child can take part in classroom activities from wherever she/he is recovering-whether at home or from a hospital bed. The robot is equipped with speakers, microphones and cameras make communicating easy.

    Whenever we see a button on a doorbell or on a remote, we may press it. This is true in most cases. But some buttons are actually fake(假的), like the "close" button on an elevator.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the "close" button because they don't have the patience to wait for the elevator doors to shut. But according to experts, the buttons are a complete trick—the doors will not close any faster however hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, making sure that all elevators stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only firefighters and maintenance workers(维修工) can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys. But to normal elevator 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. Experts have showed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, pedestrian crosswalk buttons don't live up to their names. Pressing them used to help make the traffic signals change faster, but that was before computer-controlled traffic signals were introduced.

    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 at Drexel University in the US, told The New York Times. "After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not try the chance?"

    Fireworks are exciting, but also hard to control. The Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang, though, has developed a way to harness the visual and physical power of fireworks to make art He recently used them to create a burning sculpture that stretched high into the sky. Guoqiang fittingly named the work Sky Ladder.

    Guoqiang built Sky Ladder by making a frame out of metal. He coated the frame with gunpowder, the main chemical material in fireworks.

    The artist tried one end of the frame to the ground and attached a large weather balloon to the other end. The balloon was filled with helium — a gas that is lighter than air. When released, the balloon floated upward, pulling the top of the ladder 500 meters into the sky. That's higher than the top of the Empire State Building.

    Guoqiang set fire to the bottom of the ladder, and the crackling（啪啪作响） flames raced skyward up the frame. The sculpture burned for two-and-a-half minutes before its flames began to die out from the bottom up.

    Dealing with explosive (炸药）is challenging, and conditions had to be perfect for Guoqiang to achieve his desired effect. He first attempted Sky Ladder in 1994, but bad weather prevented him from successfully completing the work. Guoqiang put Sky Ladder aside so that he could work on other projects, perhaps most famously the fireworks display that opened the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

    Finally, after two more failed attempts, Guoqiang successfully sent his flaming ladder skyward last year. He presented Sky Ladder in his hometown, a quiet fishing village near Huiyu Island, Quanzhou. He offered the work as a gift to his 100-year-old grandmother, other family members, his friends and his town.

    “Behind Sky Ladder lies a clear childhood dream of mine, "Guoqiang explains. “Despite all life's twists and turns, I have always been determined to realize it. The ladder rose toward the morning sun, carrying hope. For me, this not only means a return, but also the start of a new journey."

    When my daughter Sara was in the fifth grade, she came to me with a problem." Marcy hates me！" she cried." Because Kathy is my friend, too. She wants me to be her friend and nobody else's. You talk to Marcy. You tell her that I want to be her friend, but I can have other friends, too！"

    Oh！I looked at her for a few moments，wondering how I got into this mess，when suddenly an idea came to me.

    Picking up two baskets from the living room, I explained, "When everyone is born, he or she has a little basket. This little one here is yours. The big one is mine. As you grow, so does the basket. You can see your little basket is inside mine because when you were born, there were too many things you couldn't do for yourself. I did everything you couldn't do on your own." She nodded.

    "Well, as you grew older and began to do some things on your own, I began placing a few more things in your basket. When you learned to tie your shoes, that went in your basket."

    She said softly, "I can tie my own shoes."

    "Right. As you grow older，there will be more and more things you must do on your own." As I spoke, I gradually took her basket out of mine and handed it to her." You will finally carry your own basket with things only you can do."

    She looked up at me and said," I understand. There are some things that I have to do for myself because they are in my basket."

    Researchers in Australia have discovered an effective new method to capture the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is damaging our planet and transform it into something solid, making it much easier to store.

    Carbon capture isn't new, but previous methods call for the gas to be compressed into liquid and then injected underground. Widespread usage of that technology has been locked by economic and environmental concerns due to possible leaks. Instead, in a study published in Nature Communications, the group details their sustainable and cost-effective plan for transforming CO₂ into coal.

    This new process involves a liquid metal catalyst(催化剂)that is efficient in conducting electricity. CO₂ gas is dissolved in a container with some liquid. Once electricity charge is introduced, the CO₂ begins to turn into solid pieces of carbon, which can be collected and stored.

    What makes this particularly unique is that the entire process can occur at room temperature. Previous experiments have only shown a gas to solid conversion at extremely high temperature, which made it impossible on a large scale. Now, the researchers are hoping that their work will be used to create even further when it comes to carbon storage.

    In an interesting side benefit, the solid carbon also works as an electrode(焊条), which opens up a world of possibilities. "A side benefit of the process is that the carbon can hold electrical charge, becoming a super battery, so it could potentially be used as a part in future vehicles," explains Dr. Dorna Estrafilzadeh, a researcher. "The process also produces fuel as a by-product, which could also have industrial applications."