About 5,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases such as cholera and dysentery (痢疾) , which spread when people use unclean water for drinking or cooking. A lack of water for personal health leads to the spread of totally preventable diseases like trachoma, which has blinded some six million people.

    Water troubles also trap many low-income families in a cycle of poverty and poor education and the poorest suffer most from lack of access to water. People who spend much of their time on ill health, caring for sick children, or collecting water at distances averaging 3.75 miles a day don't have educational and economic opportunities to better their lives.

    Agriculture is called the lion's share of freshwater worldwide, using some 70 percent, and industrial uses consume another 22 percent. Water areas have no political borders and nations don't always work together to share common resources, so water can be a frequent source of international conflict as well.

    Day-by-day demand keeps growing, further needing water sources, from great rivers to groundwater. “We're going deeper into debt on our groundwater use,” Postel said, “and that has very significant impacts on global water security. The rate of groundwater consumption has doubled since 1960.”

    Some of Earth's groundwater is fossil water created when Earth's climate was far different. Today such water is as limited as petrol. “But we're pumping much of them out faster than ever,” Postel explained. “Humanity's growing thirst also causes a major problem about water and our ecosystems. And that also creates a cost to us, to our sons and to our grandsons, not just to nature.”

    I sat with my friend in a well-known coffee shop in a neighboring town of Venice. As we enjoyed our coffee, a man called the waiter and placed his order, “Two cups of coffee, one on the wall.” We got interested and observed that he was served with one cup of coffee but he paid for two. As soon as he left, the waiter attached a piece of paper to the wall saying “A Cup of Coffee.” Similar occasions took place twice while we were there. It seemed that this gesture was quite normal at this place. However, it was something unique and confusing for us.

    After a few days, when we again enjoyed coffee there, a man entered. The way this man was dressed did not match the standard or the atmosphere of this coffee shop. Poverty was evident from his looks. As he seated himself, he looked at the wall and said, “One cup of coffee from the wall.” The waiter served coffee to this man with respect and dignity. The man had his coffee and left without paying. We were amazed to watch all this when the waiter took off a piece of paper from the wall and threw it in the dustbin.

    Now it was no surprise for us; the matter was very clear. The great respect for the needy shown by people in this town moved us to tears.

    Coffee is not a necessity. However, the point is that when we take pleasure in any blessing, maybe we also need to think about those people who also appreciate that specific blessing but cannot afford.

    Note the waiter, who gets the communication going between the affording and the needy with a smile on his face. Think about the man in need: he enters the coffee shop without having to lower his self-dignity; he has a free cup of coffee without asking or knowing about who has given this cup of coffee to him; he only looked at the wall, placed an order for himself, enjoyed his coffee and left. Besides, we need to remember the role played by the wall that reflects the generosity and care of people in this town.

Flying High

    Barrington Irving made his historic flight and founded an educational non-profit-making organization. His message for kids: "The only thing that separates you from scientists is determination, hard work and a strong liking for what you want to achieve." The secret, he believes, is having a dream in the first place, and that starts with learning experiences that inspire kids to build careers.

    The moment of inspiration for Irving came at the age of 15 in his parents' bookstore. One customer, a professional pilot, asked Irving if he'd thought about becoming a pilot. "I told him I didn't think I was smart enough; but the next day he took me to the cockpit (驾驶舱) of the commercial airplane he flew, and just like that I was hooked."

    To follow his dream, Irving turned down a football scholarship to the University of Florida. He washed airplanes to earn money for a flight school and increased his flying skills by practising at home on a $40 flight simulator (模拟) video game. Then another dream took hold: flying alone around the world. He faced more than 50 rejections for sponsorship before convincing some companies to donate aircraft components. He took off with no weather radar, no de-icing system, and just $30 in his pocket. "I like to do things people say I can't do."

    After 97 days, 26 stops and dozens of thunderstorms, he touched down to a cheering crowd in Miami. "It was seeing so many young people watching and listening that pushed me into giving back with my knowledge and experience." Irving has been doing it ever since. He set up his non-profit-making organization, Experience Aviation (航空), aiming to increase the numbers of youth in aviation and science-related careers. Kids attend programmes dealing with hands-on robotics projects and flight simulator challenges.

    "We want to create chances for students to accomplish something amazing," he notes. Perhaps Irving's most powerful educational tool is the example his own life provides. After landing his record-breaking flight at age 23, he said, "Everyone told me I was too young, that I didn't have enough experience, strength, or knowledge. They told me it would take forever and I'd never come home. Well… guess what?"

    A good disguise keeps you hidden, right? Well, sometimes the best disguise is actually the most dazzling because research reveals that flashy metallic iridescence(金属彩虹色) can visually puzzle predators, which allows colorful prey to survive another day. Those surprising results appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

    Shining iridescent color, which changes depending on the angle from which it's viewed, is favored by everything from birds to beetles and blossoms to butterflies.

    "And in our research group we are of course interested in why this vivid metallic color is so widespread in nature." Karin Kjernsmo of the University of Bristol adds that in some cases the showy splashes of light are a sexual strategy. " Here I would like to point out that in some species, particularly those that display strong sexual dimorphism(雌雄两性), such as birds of paradise or some butterflies or fishes, the occurrence of iridescence is most likely driven by sexual selection. For example, in many of these cases it is the males that have these vivid iridescent colors and they use them in mate choice or they use them as a signal to attract mates."  But iridescence also shows up in situations where reproduction is not an issue. " So what we are studying now is whether natural selection imposed by predation(捕食行为) could explain the occurrence of iridescence in prey animals."

    The idea that eye­catching colors could be used as a cover­up isn't a new one." The father of camouflage theory, Abbott Thayer, really believed that iridescence should be categorized as a camouflage strategy. And he wrote in his famous lifework Concealing­Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, already in 1909, that 'brilliantly changeable or metallic colors are among the strongest factors in an animal's concealment'. And this sounds like a completely unreasonable thing to say, because how can colors that are both brilliant and changeable contribute to animal's concealment？"

    "In a similar way, we were asking whether iridescence, due to its changeability, could work as a form of camouflage by preventing shape recognition." Kjernsmo and her colleagues trained bumblebees to associate a particular shape—a circle or an oval—with a sugar reward. And they found that the bees, when given a choice, would preferentially visit the shape they knew to be sweet. But when the shapes were iridescent, the bees had trouble telling them apart. "It seemed that the strikingly iridescent surfaces on our targets visually broke up the otherwise recognizable shape of the targets, which made them hard to distinguish." As for making use of this method for hiding in plain sight, "Any practical applications is of course directly linked to any industry that has an interest in camouflage, that is how to conceal objects or make them more difficult to recognize." The researchers are currently conducting experiments with birds, which often prey on iridescent insects to see if it helps to have a bird's­eye view.

What better way to experience the history of a site than to have a hand in actually preserving it? This was the thought behind the founding of Adventures in Preservation (AIP) in 2001. The nonprofit's founders. Judith Broeker and Jamie Donahoe, were both long time preservationists and world travelers. They had seen a great many buildings in poor condition, as well as buildings that had been "restored" without the benefit of conservation expertise.

Twelve years on, they are still involved in the day-to-day management of the organization, supported by a volunteer staff located around the world, Judith's favorite projects have long been the ones in Eastern Europe, and she enjoys opportunity to travel there each year. She, along with anyone else who's joined an adventure, always quotes their fellow jammers, as they're called, as the highlight of each project. The groups are made up of people from all different ages, occupations, and cultures. Yet each time, they form a strong bond and work so well together that the work becomes fun. Which, after all, is the point of a working vacation, no?

Raising understanding of people's own heritage(遗迹) is another part of AIP projects. In many places, there is so much focus on the news that not only are heritage buildings being lost but so are the traditional building skills needed to keep them. By providing training and raising awareness of the importance of their heritage, AIP is helping keep both alive.

Next year, AIP has projects in Europe and the US. There will be even more projects the following year as projects currently under development in Ghana, Armenia, Ukraine and the US come on line. Each project is also an opportunity for travel, adventure, and personal growth, and AIP welcomes people from around the world to join a project and" "jam" with them.

Journalists are the major group of people who make their living from writing. Many young people who see themselves as future novelists choose journalism as a way of earning a living while developing their writing skills. Although writing for newspapers and writing for books require different qualities, the aspiration (志向) to be a great writer is not one to be discouraged in a would-be journalist.

Most people want their work to be recognized by others. This helps to give it value. Some people also want themselves to be recognized, so that they have status (地位) in the eyes of society. It is not a bad motive to wish to be famous, but this must never become your main reason for being a journalist. You will not be a good journalist if you care more for impressing your audience than for serving their needs.

Knowing the power of the printed or spoken word or image, some people enter journalism for the power it will give them to influence people. There is a strong belief that journalists control the mass media but the best journalists recognize their role as servants of the people. There is a difference between the desire to influence events for your own sake, and the desire to do it for other people. You should never use journalism for selfish ends, but you can use it to improve the life of other people.

Curiosity is a natural part of most people's characters and an important ingredient for any journalist. Lots of young men and women enter the profession with the desire to know more about the world without needing to specialize in limited fields of study. Most journalists tend to know a little bit about a lot of things, rather than a lot about one subject. Knowledge has many uses. It can simply help to make you a fuller and more interesting person. It can also give you power over people, especially people who do not have that particular knowledge. Always bear in mind that power can be used in a positive way to improve people's lives.