One morning, my husband Jerry went back to the kitchen as he just finished loading his car. “I guess filling my thermos(保温瓶) is all that I have left to do, and then I'm off.” Down the drain went the hot water that had been warming his thermos.

    With a nostalgic(怀旧的) look on his face, he softly said: “Anytime I fill my thermos I think of your mom.” The tone in his voice was so tender as he spoke of my mother, who is sadly no longer with us.

    “Oh honey, I know she's watching and listening right now with a big smile on her face,” I responded, tears in my eyes.

    One morning years ago when we were leaving, mother watched as Jerry was to fill his thermos. Mom then casually said, ‘Jerry, if you filled your thermos with hot water and let it sit a while, your coffee would stay hot for longer then.” With her simple suggestion, his face showed that he was shocked by his own lack of common sense. Well, of course it would!

    He poured out the small amount of coffee already in the thermos and refilled it with boiling hot water. Then he poured the water and refilled it with hot coffee. Mom smiled as Jerry did so.

    Words of wisdom from a loving mother-in-law made an impact that will never be forgotten. She never dreamed her words would be a treasured and everlasting memory in the heart of her son-in-law.

    The lasting memories don't necessarily come from major moments in life. Memories are often made during those small, ordinary times. Life is about small moments we share with friends and loved ones.

Do you like spicy food?

    What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can't get enough of it.

    Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

    'We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,' said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

    But before you look at the study, you should first know that “spicy” is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

    In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

    By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

    Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. “It's not that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn,” Hayes explained.

    Harvard researchers have created a tough, low-cost, biodegradable (可生物降解的) material inspired by insects' hard outer shells. The material's inventors say it has a number of possible uses and someday could provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic. The material, made from shrimp ('虾) shells and proteins produced from silk, is called "shrilk." It is thin, clear, flexible and strong.

    A major benefit of the material is its biodegradability. Plastic's toughness and flexibility represented a revolution in materials science during the 1950s and '60s. Decades later, however, plastic's very durability (耐用性) is raising questions about how appropriate it is for one-time products such as plastic bags, or short-lived consumer goods, used in the home for a few years and then cast into a landfill where they will degrade for centuries. What is the point of making something that lasts 1,000 years?

    Shrilk not only will degrade in a landfill, but its basic components are used as fertilizer(肥料), and so will enrich the soil.

    Shrilk has great potential, the inventors said. Materials from which it is made are plentiful in nature, found in everything ranging from shrimp shells, insect bodies to living plants. That makes shrilk low cost, and its mass production possible should it be used for products demanding a lot of material.

Work on shrilk is continuing in the lab. The inventors said the material becomes flexible when wet, so they're exploring ways to use it in wet environments. They're also developing simpler production processes, which could be used for non-medical products, like for computer cases and other products inside the home. They're even exploring combining it with other materials, like carbon fibers, to give it new properties.

    “Fast fashion” means clothes that are inexpensive but look like the latest designs. One reason for the success of fast fashion is social networking. A report by the investment research firm Bernstein found that millennials — people born in the 1980s and 90s — wanted to wear a variety of clothes in the photos they posted on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. As a result, many businesses that offer trend, low - cost clothes are growing.

    But the situation is changing now. Maxine Bedat, a woman who is in her early 30s，looks in her closet full of clothes, but she has nothing to wear. She says she hates always shopping for what is in style . Instead，she says, she wants to buy fewer clothes that she can wear over and over. Other people want the same thing, she says.

    So Ms. Bedat and a business partner, Soraya Darabi, started a “slow fashion” clothing company calltd Zady. “Slow fashion” means clothes that last a long time. They are often classic colors and shapes, and are made from natural materials that are biodegradable (可生物降解的) over time.

    The terms “fast fashion” and “slow fashion” are related to “fast food” and “slow food: fast food is still popular in the US, but many restaurants increasingly offer higher - quality, more expensive and relaxed meals.

    Like slow food，slow fashion also aims to use sources that are good for the environment and 、 workers. Maxine Bedat says people in her generation want to know where their clothes come from and who is making them. To answer millennials'demand for information about the products they buy, Ms. Bedat's company, Zady, includes details about the history of the brands. It also describes the process in which the clothes are made. Ms Bedat says Zady aims to tell shoppers where their clothes come from, where they go, and how they impact the world.

Joy Adamson (Jan, 20, 1910-Jan. 3, 1980) was a popular wildlife conservationist of the 1960s and an author, best known for her book, Born Free, which described her experiences in saving the life of a lioness, Elsa.

Mrs. Adamson was born as Friedericke Victoria Gessner in Troppau. Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic). In 1937 she moved to Kenya. then a British Colony. In 1944 she married George Adamson, a British game warden in Kenya. and adopted Kenya as her own country, living on the shores of Lake Naivasha. It was with George Adamson, her third husband, that her most crucial and well-known work was done. Their works were pivotal (关键的)for the foundation of modern conservation.

They acquired Elsa, a tame lion cub, in 1956, after George had killed the cub's mother in self-defense. For two years Joy and George trained the animal for a return to the wild, and the subsequent book about Elsa. Born Free (1960), was an international success. Adamson followed the book with Living Free (1961) and Forever Free (1962). These first two books were made into films. In addition to her books about lions, Adamson also wrote two books about Pippa. a cheetah (猎豹) she took on in 1964. as well as numerous other books about her life in Africa. She was also an accomplished artist and many of her paintings are displayed in a museum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Joy and George separated in the 1970s, though they never divorced. On January 3, 1980, Joy was found murdered in a remote region of Kenyn. George was murdered on August 20, 1989, in an isolated region of Nairobi. This was an ironic (讽刺的) end to the lives of two who had lived in such seemingly dangerous circumstances with wild animals; that their deaths were at, the hands of men.