Hello, Listeners. Welcome to Henton Hospital Radio. Before our music program at four, I'm going to repeat some of our hospital rules.

    The hospital can sleep 800 patients. There're 8 beds in each ward (病房). The visiting hours are in the afternoon from 2:30 to 3:30 and in the evening from 7:00 to 8:00. But remember only two people can see you at the same time. Sorry about that, but you can see what would happen if we didn't have these rules.

The other rules are about our hours. We start quite early—you might not be used to that. We wake you at 6 o'clock, and breakfast is at 8 o'clock, lunch is at noon.

    There's tea at 3:30 and supper is at 6 o'clock.

    You can see the non-smoking sign –-- we don't allow smoking in the wards. I'm sure you understand why. However, if you do need to smoke, there are some smoking rooms where it is allowed.

    You will find the radio switch (开关) on the wall near your bed, with your own headphones, if you want to listen. It's our own hospital radio wishing you a quick recovery (康复).

    It was a winter morning, just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005. While most people were warming up their cars, Trevor, my husband, had to get up early to ride his bike four kilometers away from home to work. On arrival, he parked his bike outside the back door as he usually does. After putting in 10 hours of labor, he returned to find his bike gone.

    The bike, a black Kona 18 speed, was our only transport. Trevor used it to get to work, putting in 60-hour weeks to support his young family. And the bike was also used to get groceries（食品杂货）, saving us from having to walk long distances from where we live.

    I was so sad that someone would steal our bike that I wrote to the newspaper and told them our story. Shortly after that, several people in our area offered to help. One wonderful stranger even bought a bike, then called my husband to pick it up. Once again my husband had a way to get to and from his job. It really is an honor that a complete stranger would go out of their way for someone they have never met before.

    People say that a smile can be passed from one person to another, but acts of kindness from strangers are even more so. This experience has had a spreading effect in our lives because it strengthened our faith in humanity（人性）as a whole. And it has influenced（影响）us to be more mindful of ways we, too, can share with others. No matter how big or how small, an act of kindness shows that someone cares. And the results can be everlasting.

Service Trips for High School Students

    Are you a high school student who loves to be outdoors and is eager to experience new challenges, learn new skills and meet new people? WTA offers first-time participants country trips and returning students have the option to go on trips in the back country (边远地区).

    Front Country Trips

    Our front country trips provide opportunities for people to experience projects near the ocean, in the scenic Cascade Mountains and in northeast Washington. Our trips also provide you with experienced leaders, a great project, some camping tents, sleeping bags and all your meals for the week.

    Advanced Back Country Trips

    On these trips you will be backpacking to the work site and will have a chance to advance your trail and leadership skills under the supervision(监护) of a WTA leader.

    Trip Details

    In 2015, trip fees for WTA members will be $195 for the first trip and $145 for each additional trip. Non-members will pay an additional $40 for their first trip and can be qualified to be members in the second trip. Due to the popularity of our trips, please submit your payment and application within two weeks. If a trip is full and you would like to be added to the waiting list, please call us at 206/625-1367 or email trail-teams@wta.org.

    Scholarships

    We believe no student should have to stay at home this summer because he or she can't afford to go outside. Thanks to donations from members and supporters, WTA is proud to announce that we are able to offer a limited number of scholarships. Application Deadline: May 1, 2016.

    Nowadays, parents worry a lot because their children spend hours and hours in front of the TV screen. Because this doesn't happen to only one specific family, many experts warn us that there can be some serious effects of children watching violence on television.

    Children who become addicted(上瘾的) to TV sit down and turn on the TV as soon as they get home. Although they have lots of homework, they become absorbed in TV programs.

    Since they spend tons of time watching TV, they have less time to enjoy real life activities such as playing with friends, playing outdoor sports, or enjoying other kinds of entertainment.

    There are too many violent scenes on TV. Some experts say there are 25 acts of violence per hour on TV. In addition, there are many experiments by psychologists which show how TV violence influences children. Finally, people worry that children tend to imitate what they watch on TV and may start to behave more violently.

    What should be done? First of all, the government should regulate TV violence. It should also encourage people to invent and develop new technology which can block violent scenes from the programs children watch. For example, with a rating system(分级制度) and the V-chip, unfit scenes of violence and sex can be blocked out. Second, parents should monitor what their children watch. At the same time, they should make their children interested in real life activities. Then when the children start to spend more time playing with friends or reading books, parents can stop their monitoring.

    It is a fact that there is more violence on TV today than there was ten years ago. Moreover, violent incidents occur more frequently in real life. It's time to realize how harmful watching TV violence is, and it's time to keep our children from watching violence.

What Is Social Media?

    Not many people ask the question “what is social media?” anymore. Social media has been around for years now, and most of us would probably describe it as any Internet medium that can be used to share information with others, including blogs, forums, applications, games, websites and other stuff.

    But let me ask you this: what exactly is so “social” about sitting before a computer setting up a blog and blogging for days without anybody reading it, or scrolling through your Facebook feed of information from 500 friends you barely know? If you ask me, it can be way more anti-social than anything.

    Social media is not a “thing”. It's not just Facebook, WeChat and Weibo It's more of a frame of mind and a state of being. It's about how you use it to improve your relationships with other people in real life. However, we tend to rely on technology and social media so much that it can actually tear apart those relationships.

    Social media isn't about numbers. When someone says “social media,” web giants like Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and Weibo instantly pop into our minds, often because they have more updates, more friends, more followers, more links, more photos, more everything. We tend to get distracted by the number game, thinking “volume, volume, volume”. It's led to a lot of meaningless noise and information overload. As the old saying goes, quality over quantity is usually the way to go. So, social media is not just about lots of people aimlessly pushing around lots of information.

    Social media needs to have an “IRL” factor-an Internet slang standing for “In Real Life”. It should affect how a person thinks or acts offline. After all, social media shouldn't be an end in itself. It was built to enhance your actual social life, in real life. Take for example an event that a person attends because they are invited by the host on Facebook through a Facebook event page. Something like that definitely has the IRL factor. Likewise, a WeChat photo that touches someone so much that they feel the need to bring it up and describe it to someone else during a dinner date also has the IRL factor.

    So, is it really considered to be social to spend an hour scrolling through photos on Weibo, with no thoughtful or emotional effect and no interaction with others? In fact, there is no wall between real life and Internet life where true social media exists. Social media is not a specific place on the Internet or just a thing you use to see what other people are doing. It's all about creating meaningful experiences and relationships wherever you may be.

    A new discovery may change how scientists think about prehistoric humans. Human history is more of a war movie than a romantic comedy, at least as far as other animals are concerned; we may be causing one of the planet's great extinction events at the moment. But a recent discovery means humans might not be as destructive as we thought.

    Large animals have a history of disappearing when humans move to their areas. Scientists have long believed that humans simply hunted big animals because people are really good at hunting. For example, scientists thought humans arrived in Madagascar around 4,000 years ago, but only two thousand years later, giant lemurs, giant tortoises and elephant birds disappeared from the island. Many scientists thought humans had something to do with that rapid drop in biodiversity(生物多样性).

    At least, that's what scientists thought until a group of researchers dug up a lot of bones in Madagascar recently. These bones belonged to the elephant bird, a kind of extinct bird that weighed up to 1,000 pounds. The huge bones were covered in cuts that clearly came from a human hunter. The researchers found that the humans had killed the birds 10,000 years ago...Thousands of years before scientists believed humans had come to the island.

    "Our research provides evidence of human activity in Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than suspected, which shows that a different extinction theory is required to understand the huge biodiversity loss that has happened on the island." explained James Hansford, one of the researchers. "Humans seem to have coexisted with elephant birds and other now-extinct species for over 8,000 years, clearly with limited negative influence on biodiversity for most of this period."

    If humans lived among large animals for thousands of years without wiping them out, then maybe our species can't wipe other species out. Rather, extinction is more of a habit we've learned. Perhaps we can unlearn it too.