Jack Ma is the founder and CEO of Alibaba Group. He was one of the 100 global "future leaders" of the 2001 World Economic Forum and the "commercial leader" of 2001 elected by US Commercial Association of Asia.

    Born in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Ma graduated from Hangzhou Teachers Institute in 1988 (he failed the entrance exam twice) and became a lecturer in English and International Trade.

    In 1985, a one-month visit to see an Australian pen pal he had met in Hangzhou changed his life. "Everything I'd learned in China was that China was the richest country in the world," he said. "When I arrived in Australia, I realized it's totally different. I started to think you have to use your own mind to judge, to think." After his return, Ma became the chairman of the Students' Union of the whole city.

    Jack Ma founded Alibaba.com in 1999, a China based business to business marketplace site. In 2003, Alibaba launched Taobao.com, a consumer to consumer auction (消费者拍卖) website similar to eBay.

    Ma said that he got most of his ideas while taking very long, hot showers. He likes to spend time walking his four dogs and playing chess and poker. He said, "I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker."

    Looking ahead, Ma said that he dreamed of using his group's resources to improve the lives of all Chinese people, especially the 900 million farmers. "There must be some way of using our experience, our know-how, and make their life easier," he said.

    When we see well, we do not think about our eyes very often. It is only when we cannot see perfectly that we realize how important our eyes are.

    People who are near-sighted can only see things that are very close to their eyes. Everything else seems ­­blurry. Many people who do a lot of work, such as writing, reading and sewing become near-sighted. People who are far-sighted suffer from just the opposite problem. They can see things that are far away, but they have difficulty in reading a book unless they hold it at arm's length. If they want to do much reading, they must get glasses, too.

    Other people do not see clearly because their eyes are not exactly the right shape. They have what is called astigmatism (散光). This, too, can be corrected by glasses. Some people's eyes become cloudy because of cataracts (白内障). Long ago these people often became blind. Now, however, it is possible to operate on the cataracts and remove them.

    Having two good eyes is important for judging distances. Each eye sees things from a slightly different angle. To prove this to yourself, look at an object out of one eye; then look at the same object out of your other eye. You will find the object's relation to the background and other things around it has changed. The difference between these two different eye views helps us to judge how far away an object is. People who have only one eye cannot judge distances as people with two eyes.

    When my father married my mother in 1943 he gave my mother a 1937 crown coin and told her to keep it in the back of her purse and not spend it. This would mean that she always felt that she was protected and would always have money if she really needed it.

    When I was married in 1970 my husband who had heard this story obtained a 1937 crown for me and I have always kept it in my wallet and I have always had enough for my needs.

    A friend recently fell on hard times partly through external (外部的) circumstances and partly through poor planning. Friends and I have loaned her money, paid her bills, even given her food and tried to teach her budget techniques, but none of them has been a solution. She has just slipped deeper and deeper into financial trouble and depression.

    Last week she looked pale and unwell, very depressed and hopeless. I then thought about how the crown, a reminder of another's care and love, had protected me so I went to the bank for a $100 dollar bill. I told my friend the story and asked her to keep the $100 in the back of her wallet. It turned out that she didn't have a wallet so she put the money in a little pencil case where she kept her coins. She immediately felt better. "I feel rich and thank you for being a good friend" she said and we were both a bit teary.

    The reason for passing this on is not to praise any generosity on my part but to show the power of "random acts of kindness". I went home and remembered a little wallet I had that I'd never used and thought "I'll give that to my friend." I opened it and inside found $100. The universe is very just and if your heart is open the reward always comes.

    When we see a person in trouble, the first idea that comes to our mind is to lend a hand. But what if we see an animal in trouble, does the same rule apply?

    This question was raised after a group of penguins were saved from an icy gully (峡谷) in Antarctica. It was filmed for the BBC wildlife series Dynasties. The film crew were anxious when they saw that a group of penguins had fallen into a gully and been trapped with their young. They built a slope (斜坡) so that a few of the penguins could save themselves.

    The case has taken the international media by storm. Viewers watching this film let out a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad. I understand not taking action directly, but a helping hand isn't bothering, right?" viewer Kathryn Shaw said on her Facebook.

    However, others think human interference (干涉) is unnatural. "You can't have sunshine throughout your life. To have done anything else would only make matters worse," said the show's creator David Attenborough, according to The Times.

    In this case, however, Mike Gunton, the executive producer of the series, said that this was a one-off situation. "There were no animals going to suffer by interfering. You weren't touching the animals and it was just felt by doing this... they had the chance not to have to keep slipping down the slope," he told the BBC.

    Such cases are familiar to Paul Nicklen, wildlife photographer for National Geographic. He told Metro, "If it's ever a predator (捕食者) situation, no matter how gut-wrenching, you stay out of the way. Even when you're watching a male polar bear eat a baby bear."

    "There's no rule book in those situations. You can only respond to the facts that are right there in front of you," Will Lawson, the show's director, told Daily Mail.

Students from Oceanside High School in Rockland will be able to sleep in a little longer from this autumn.

Regional School Unit 13 Superintendent (负责人) Lew Collins said during the school's Thursday night meeting that the schedule (时间表) for the schools will be changed. Oceanside East and West will start a half hour later, at 8 a.m. for their new school year.

Research has shown that teenagers' brains are often not fully awake at 6:30 a.m. Collins said the schedule, which is used to get students to school for classes that begin at 7:30 a.m., calls for some to get on buses before 6 a.m. to get to school on time. Teachers are having meetings at 6:40 a.m., which is too early, he thinks.

Collins visited the high schools in Rockland and asked students when they would like classes to begin. Most of them said 8:00 a.m. "I was surprised. I thought they would have said 9:00 or 10:00," he said.

The National Sleep Foundation says on its website that teenagers' biological clocks (生物钟) are designed to stay up later and get up later. The Foundation called for schools to change their schedules, which means a later start as well for elementary students (小学生).

We do not have enough buses to run, since all the high school and elementary school buses run almost at the same time, Collins said. He suggested, "We should buy six more buses and get six more drivers to keep the new schedule working."

Elementary school classes in Rockland now start at 8:30 a.m., but will be moved to 8:45 a.m., starting in the autumn. "I know this is a problem for working parents, but we will see what we can come up with," said Jane Brown, a teacher at Bardonia Elementary School. "Anyway, I believe if students get more sleep they'll be more ready to learn when classes start," she added.

Climbing, I once thought, was a very manly activity, but as I found my way into this activity, I came to see that something quite different happens on the rock.

Like wild swimming, rock climbing involves you into the landscape. On the rock, I am fully focused. Eyes pay close attention, ears are alert, and hands move across the surface. Unlike walking, where I could happily wander about absent-mindedly, in climbing, attentive observation is essential.

As an arts student studying English literature, I discovered a new type of reading from outdoor climbing. Going out on to the crags (悬崖), I saw how you could learn to read the rocks and develop a vocabulary of physical movements. Good climbers knew how to adjust their bodies on to the stone. Watching them, I wanted to possess that skillful "language".

My progress happened when I worked for the Caingorms National Park Authority.Guiding my explorations into this strange new landscape was Nan Shepherd, a lady too. Unlike the goal-directed mindset of many mountaineers, she is not concerned with peaks or personal achievement. Shepherd sees the mountain as a total environment and she celebrates the Caingorms as a place alive with plants, rocks, animals and elements. Through her generous spirit and my own curiosity, I saw that rock climbing need not be a process of testing oneself against anything. Rather, the intensity of focus could develop a person into another way of being.

Spending so much time in high and st ony places has transformed my view on the world and our place in it. I have come into physical contact with processes that go way beyond the everyday. Working with gravity, geology (地质学), rhythms of weather and deep time, I gain an actual relationship with the earth. This bond lies at the heart of my passion for rock climbing. I return to the rocks, because this is where I feel in contact with our land.