On one such day,I was walking from class across the school to catch the school bus home,with my head down,fighting tears of total hopelessness,when a young man came down the sidewalk toward me.Though I had never seen him before,I did not want him to see that I was in such low spirits,so I turned my head away and hoped to hurry past.I thought he'd walk on by,but he moved until he was directly in front of me,waited until I looked up,and then smiled.

    Looking into my eyes,this stranger spoke in a quiet voice："Whatever is wrong will pass.You're going to be OK,just hang on."   He,then,smiled again and walked away.

    I can't explain the effect of that man's unexpected kindness and caring! He gave me the one thing that I'd lost completely—hope.I looked for him in our school to thank him,but never saw him again.

    That was thirty years ago.And I've never forgotten that moment.Over the years,whenever I see someone who is in trouble,I will always think of that young man and try to give a flash of hope in the dark wherever I can.I carry things for people when they are too heavy for them,sit with naughty babies in the waiting room while their mothers are busy,or talk to tired couples at the checkout line or it could be anything.

    If you keep your head up,your heart will show you the place that needs hope.

    The kids in this village wear dirty clothes. They sleep beside cows and sheep in huts (棚屋) made of sticks and mud. They have no school. Yet they all can sing the English letters, and some can make words.    

    The key to their success: 20 tablet computers (平板电脑) dropped off in their Ethiopian village in February by a U.S. group called One Laptop Per Child.

    The goal is to find out whether kids using today's new technology can teach themselves to read in places where no schools or teachers exist. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers analyzing the project say they're already amazed. “What I think has already happened is that the kids have already learned more than they would have in one year of kindergarten (幼儿园),” said Matt Keller, who runs the Ethiopia program.

The fastest learner—and the first to turn on one of the tablets—is 8-year-old Kelbesa Negusse. The tablet's camera couldn't save memory, yet within weeks Kelbesa had figured out its workings and made the camera work. He called himself a lion, a marker of accomplishment in Ethiopia.

With his tablet, Kelbasa rearranged the letters HSROE into one of the many English animal names he knows. Then he spelled words on his own. “Seven months ago he didn't know any English. That's unbelievable,” said Keller.

The project aims to get kids to a stage called “deep reading,” where they can read to learn. It won't be in Amharic, Ethiopia's first language, but in English, which is widely seen as the ticket to higher paying jobs.

    Ask someone what they have done to help the environment recently and they will almost certainly mention recycling. Recycling in the home is very important of course. However, being forced to recycle often means we already have more material than we need. We are dealing with the results of that over-consumption in the greenest way possible, but it would be far better if we did not need to bring so much material home in the first place.

    The total amount of packaging increased by 12% between 1999 and 2005. It now makes up a third of a typical household's waste in the UK. In many supermarkets nowadays food items are packaged twice with plastic and cardboard.

    Too much packaging is doing serious damage to the environment. The UK, for example, is running out of it for carrying this unnecessary waste. If such packaging is burnt, it gives off greenhouse gases which go on to cause the greenhouse effect. Recycling helps, but the process itself uses energy. The solution is not to produce such items in the first place. Food waste is a serious problem, too. Too many supermarkets encourage customers to buy more than they need. However, a few of them are coming round to the idea that this cannot continue, encouraging customers to reuse their plastic bags, for example.

    But this is not just about supermarkets. It is about all of us. We have learned to associate packaging with quality. We have learned to think that something unpackaged is of poor quality. This is especially true of food. But it also applies to a wide range of consumer products, which often have far more packaging than necessary.

    There are signs of hope. As more of us recycle, we are beginning to realize just how much unnecessary material we are collecting. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.

    Living and dealing with kids can be a difficult job these days, but living and dealing with parents can be even more complex.

    If I have learned anything in my 16 years, it is that communication is very important. With any relationship, you need to let other people know how you are feeling. If you are not able to communicate, you drift apart (疏远). When you are mad at your parents, or anyone else, not talking to them doesn't solve anything.

    Communication begins with the concerns of others. It means that you can't just come home from school, go up to your room and ignore everyone. To keep a good relationship, you must keep communication, even if it's just by writing a note.

    When dealing with parents, you always have to make them feel good about how they are doing as a parent. If you are trying to make them see something as you see it, tell them that you'll listen to what they have to say, but ask them politely to listen to you. Yelling or walking away only makes the situation worse.

    This is an example: one night, Sophie went to a street party with her friends. She knew she had to be home by midnight after the fireworks, but she didn't. She was late getting home. Her parents were mad at first, not giving Sophie a chance to explain why she was late. Later, they kept calm and listened to her. Communication is the key factor here. If Sophie's parents had not been willing to listen, Sophie would have been in a lot of trouble.

    ELECTRICITY IS AT THE CORE OF MODERN LIFE. DESPITE THIS, THE FULL STORY OF THIS REVOLUTIONARY FORCE HAS REMAINED UNTOLD—UNTIL NOW.

    Simply Electrifying offers the comprehensive story of one of mankind's most important journeys: from a time when only a few could even imagine a world with electricity to today when, for most of us, a world without electricity would be unimaginable.

    Since the birth of the modern science of electricity 265 years ago, mankind has built an impressive structure to produce, deliver, and use electricity, thanks to a combination of pioneering science, innovative technology, wise business strategy, and pervasive (到处存在的)economic and environmental regulation.

    Simply Electrifying brings to life the stories of the people that made it all possible—from early pathfinders like Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein to innovators such as Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla. In modern times, business strategists and economic and environmental regulation driven by many, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, and even President Barack Obama, have shaped how we use and understand electricity in crucial ways. Today, Elon Musk and others are on the edge of again changing the way we think about and interact with it.

    Simply Electrifying is painstakingly researched and beautifully written, showing us how both profit-makers and policy-makers must use a wide-angle lens to truly understand the past and predict the future.

    Do you know the difference between a food chain anda food web? Food chains show how a living thing such as a plant or an animal gets its energy. A food web consists of multiple food chains and includes many more plants and animals than a food chain includes. This diagram shows a food chain within a food web of the African savanna.