Many Years ago three soldiers,hungry and tired of battle,came upon a small village.The villagers,suffering a bad harvest and the many years of war,quickly hid what little they had to eat and met the three in the village square, shaking their heads and sighing,"Well,we are starving."The soldiers communicated with each other quietly and then the first soldier turned to the villagers.“Your poor fields have left you nothing to share,so we will share what little we have: the secret of making soup from stones.”

    Naturally the villagers were intrigued and soon a fire was built to the village's greatest pot,and then the soldiers dropped in three smooth stones.

“Now this will be a fine soup,”said the second soldier,"but a handful of salt and some parsley（香芹）would make it wonderful!"Up jumped a villager,crying “What a piece of luck!I've just remembered where some has been left!”

    And off she ran,returning with parsley.As the pot was boiling,the memory of the villagers improved: soon carrots,beef and cream had found their way into the great pot.They ate and danced and sang well into the night, thrilled about the feast and their new-found friends.In the morning the three soldiers awoke,finding all the villagers standing before them.At their feet lay a bag of the village's best bread and cheese.“You have given us the greatest gift,”said an elder,“and we shall never forget.”The third soldier turned to the crowd,and said,“There is no secret,but this is certain: people working together can accomplish great things.”At last the light dawned on villagers.Off the soldiers wandered,down the road.

    We all know the names of certain famous male inventors throughout history, from Galileo to Alexander Graham Bell to Steve Jobs. Do you know the outstanding ladies listed below?

    Margaret Knight (1838-1914)

    Margaret Knight was nicknamed “the lady Edison'' for her productive inventions which included a safety device for textile looms, shoe manufacturing machines, a rotary engine and internal combustion engine (内燃机), among many others. Knight received 27 patents in her lifetime.

    Josephine Cochran(1839-1913)

    Cochrane, a wealthy woman who entertained often, wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than her servants, and without breaking them. When she couldn't find one, she built the first dishwasher herself in 1886. She received a patent for her famous invention and started a company to sell her invention to restaurants and hotels.

    Katharine Burr Blodgett (1898-1979)

    Katharine Blodgett was the first woman to receive a Ph.D in physics at England's Cambridge University and the first woman hired by General Electric. Her most influential invention was non-reflective glass, which today is still essential for eyeglasses, car windshields and computer screens.

    Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014)

    In 1965, Stephanie Kwolek created an unusually lightweight and durable new fiber which was later developed by a chemical company DuPont into the synthetic Kevlar (凯夫拉尔纤维), used in everything from military helmets and bulletproof vests to work-gloves, sports equipment, and building materials. Kwolek was awarded the National Medal of Technology for her research on synthetic fibers and was admitted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1994.

    A recent study presents the possibility of “carbon farming” as a less risky alternative to other carbon capture and storage technologies. It suggests that a significant percentage of atmospheric CO₂ could potentially be removed by planting millions of acres of a shrub known as the Barbados nut（麻疯树）, in dry, coastal areas. But other experts doubted whether the Barbados nut would be able to grow well in sandy desert soils and absorb the quantity of carbon their models predict.

    The researchers behind the study say Barbados nut plantations（种植园）could help to reduce the local effects of global warming in desert areas, causing a decrease in average temperature and an increase in rainfall. If a large enough portion of the Earth were blanketed with carbon farms, these local effects could become global, capturing between 17 and 25 metric tons of CO₂ per hectare each year over a 20-year period.

    Carbon farms would not compete with food production if they were concentrated in dry coastal areas. In their analysis, oceanside desalination（海水淡化）plants provide a low-emission irrigation method. The study states that the Barbados nut is uniquely suited to growing in regions unsuitable for other crops .The plant, which produces a non-edible seed that can be used to create biodiesel（生物柴油）, is comfortable growing at temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It can also stand up to high levels of pollution in the soil, making waste water another potential source for irrigation.

    The cost of carbon farming is comparable to the costs associated with other carbon capture and storage technologies, the study claims. Wulfmeyer stressed that carbon farming could have “fantastic value for the local people” if international carbon markets pick up, promoting rural development and opening up the possibility of additional agriculture as the soil quality improves around the plantation.

    In an email, Van Noordwijk, a chief science advisor, questioned the growth rate and the atmospheric carbon capture rate assumed by the study's authors, calling the estimated carbon price of the plantations a “considerable underestimate”. “We are talking about a plant with a shrubby growth habit and a long track record of misleading farmers with production potentials that are not being realized,” he said, and “Even with abundant water, the nutrient storage in sandy desert soil is low. He added, “The estimated carbon price of this option already indicates that there are far better opportunities for reducing ongoing emissions from peatland（泥炭地）use and deforestation.”

    Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his family immigrated to New York, America, from Dublin, Ireland, in 1848 when he was just six months old. As he grew up, Augustus liked racing his friends around the block, buying candies at the store, especially drawing—drawing pictures of the shoemakers at his father's shoe shop. At the age of 13, his father told him it was time to go to work. Augustus replied, "I should like it if I could do something which would help me to be an artist." He began as an apprentice to a cameo cutter out of stone and shell, and carved cameos of people, lions, and even the head of Hercules from Greek mythology, when the Civil War had just begun.

    At 19, with his earnings and his parents' support, he travelled to Paris and Rome for further training and artistic study. Before he left, he drew a portrait of his mother in pencil and sculpted a small bust(半身像) of his father out of clay. Then, 22-year-old Augustus opened an art studio in Rome and worked on his first life-sized sculpture, called Hiawatha. An art patron was impressed with this sculpture and promised to help Augustus "until your genius and labors shall have met with the reward to which I feel they are entitled".

    In 1876, Augustus was chosen to design a monument to the Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut of the U. S. Navy. Completed five years later, when he was 33, his first major sculpture for the U. S. was unveiled at Madison Square in New York City, the sculptor's boyhood home. One art critic called it "the best monument of the kind the city has to show". Then the giant Standing Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago in a setting by architect White, 1884-1887, was considered the finest portrait statue in the U. S.

    However, in 1900, aged 52, his doctors told him he had cancer. Even though he was often ill, he continued to work at his home and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire.

    In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt requested that Augustus redesign American coins—to convey the strength of the nation. Augustus made lifelike pencil sketches of his coin designs. Yet, Augustus died in August 1907, two months before his l0-dollar and 20-dollar gold coins were issued. Augustus Saint-Gaudens had fulfilled his dream-and more! He was one of the greatest American sculptors not only of his day but also of all time.

    Most dog owners are convinced that their four-legged friends know exactly what they mean when they use certain words like sit, stay or treat. However, researchers have always wondered whether dogs really understand human speech or if they rely on other information to get the meaning. For example, does the word “fetch” form a picture of a stick or ball in the dog's mind, or does the dog bring back the object based on the owner's voice or gesture? A new study by scientists at Atlanta's Emory University seems to indicate that “man's best friend” does indeed know what the owner is saying.

    The researchers began by asking the owners of twelve dogs of various kinds to train their pets to identify two toys of different materials, such as a toy animal and a ball. Once the dogs had mastered the task, they took turns inside a special scanner. The owners then tested their dog's language skill by first calling out the names of the toys they had been trained to recognize and then saying meaningless words such as “bobbu” and “bodmick” while holding up random objects the dogs hadn't seen before.

    The scans suggested that the parts of the dogs' brains responsible for processing of sounds showed different brain patterns when they heard words they were familiar with, compared with the ones they had never heard before. While that was not enough to prove that the dogs were picturing their toys when they heard the word, it did indicate some sort of recognition. The researchers believe this is an important step forward in understanding how dogs process language.

    Even more interesting was that the dog's brains showed a higher level of neural(神经)activity at the sound of unknown words. This is the exact opposite of what happens in human brains, which get more active at the sound of familiar words. The researchers say the dogs may become cheerful at the sound of new words to try to understand them in the hope of delighting their masters. “Dogs want to please their owners, and perhaps also receive praise or food,” says Empty neuroscientist Gregory Burns, senior author of the study.

    However, though your pet may understand human speech, the scientists recommend using visual signals and smell for training. “When people want to teach their dog a trick, they often use spoken command because that's what humans prefer, ”Prichard says.“ From the dog's view, however, a visual command might be more effective, helping the dog learn the trick faster.”

    One morning, a blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held a sign which said, "I am blind, Please help me."

    There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by could see the news words.

    Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving the money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked." Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?

    The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said, but in a different way." What he had written was, "Today is a beautiful day, but I can not see it."

    Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

    Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.

    The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. There are at least two lessons we can learn from this simple story.

    The first is: Treasure what you have. Someone else has less. Try your best to help those who need your help.

    The second is: Be creative. Think differently. There is always a better way.