Researchers around the world have been trying their hand at making better use of the huge amount of wind energy available in nature to produce clean energy. Apart from this, studies are being carried out to harness(利用) usable windenergy produced by man-made technologies.

    One useful source identified by Indian inventor Santosh Pradhan about two years ago is a speeding train, which produces fierce wind that can betrans formed into electricity.

    According to Pradhan's proposal, with a few small improvements in existing trains running in Mumbai, the largest city in India, at least 10,000 megawatts(兆瓦) of electricity could be harvested each day.

    Building on this principle, designers Ale Leonetti Luparinia and Qian Jiang from Yanko Design have created a device(装置) called T-Box that harnesses wind energy from speeding trains.

    T-Box can be placed within the railway tracks. It is half-buried underground between the concrete sleepers(水泥枕木), which does not disturb the normal train operating at all. According to Yanko, around 150T-Boxes can be fitted along a 1,000-meter railway track.

    A train running at a speed of 200 kph can produce winds blowing at 15 miles a second. Based on this calculation, 150 T-Boxes can produce 2.6 KWH of electricity per day. The T-Box's design won a silver medal in last year's Lite-On Awards and was exhibited last summer at the Xue Xue Institute inTaipei, Taiwan Province.

    Though the figures look impressive, it is important to remember that the design is still at a conceptual stage and hasn't taken into account issues such as pieces of waste material produced by the device and the efforts and costs involved in the maintenance(维护) of the device.

    We can expect the technology to see the light of the day only after it clears these issues. If so, rail travel, one of the greenest forms of travel, will become greener and more energy-efficient.

    We walked in so quietly that the nurse at the desk didn't even lift（抬起）her eyes from the book.Mum pointed at a big chair by the door and I knew she wanted me to sit down.While I watched,mouth open in surprise.Mum took off her hat and coat and gave them to me to hold.She walked quietly to the small room by the lift（电梯）and took out a wet mop（拖把）.She pushed the mop past the desk and as the nurse looked up.Mum nodded and said,"Very dirty floors."

“Yes.I'm glad they've finally decided to clean them,”the nurse answered.She looked at Mum strangely and said. “But aren't you working late?”

    Mum just pushed harder,each swipe of the mop taking her farther and farther down the hall.I watched until she was out of sight and the nurse had turned back to writing in the big book.

    After a along time Mum came back.Her eyes were shining.She quickly put the mop back and took my hand.As we turned to go out of the the door,Mum nodded politely to the nurse and said.“Thank you.”

    Outside,Mum told me, “Dagma is fine.No fever."

     “You see her,Mum?”

     “Of course.I told her about the hospital rules,and she will not expect us until tomorrow.Dad will stop worrying as well.It's a fine hospital.But the floors!A mop is no good.You need a brush."

    On a February day during an unusually mild winter, found myself missing the snowy beauty. I enjoyed the feeling that comes from watching snow fall gently from heaven while I'm cosy inside with a good fire burning in the stove. But there were more serious concerns, like the lack of rainfall making our woods more accessible to summer forest fires. Local ski fields and hotels, all dependent on a snowy season, felt sorry for the vacant lifts, empty restaurants and unused snowmobiles.

    Then I happened to see three little robins (知更鸟) fly into our yard. What were they doing here? West of us, in the Willamette Valley, wild flowers burst this time of year. But here in central Oregon, even if a groundhog (土拨鼠) had wanted to appear, it couldn't have broken through the frozen earth. And yet, these robins had arrived.

    Their presence brought me a flow of happiness. It felt like a celebration as I dug into my bag of birdseed and spread a handful on the ground. Above me, the deep blue sky was cloudless, perfectly quiet but for some smoke from a neighbor's chimney. The lively cold made the air fresh and clean.

    My robins jumped lightly toward the seed. My soul jumped with them, feeling equally carefree. Caught up in the moment of spring fever, I checked our snowless flower beds. To my delight, I spotted a green branch sticking out through the brown soil.

    Despite the cold, I wasn't ready to go back inside. Just a short meeting with those robins had renewed my spirit. The next day I would return to my outdoor work with a cheerful heart and a hopeful eye for these signs of spring.

    Have you ever been to Singapore? It is a dynamic city-state where you will find a harmonious mixture of culture, cuisine, arts, people and architecture. If you have at least 5 hours to spare in transit(运输；中转) before your next flight, join us in one of our free two-hour guided tours, which runs daily at regular times. Registration for the tour must be made at least one hour before the start of the tour.

    HERITAGE TOUR

    Tour Timings:

    9:00 am to 11:00 am

    11:30 am to 1:30 pm

    2:30 pm to 4:30 pm

    4:00 pm to 6:00 pm

    The heritage（遗产） tour has a short stopover at the Merlion Park before going to the Colonial District, Central Business District and Chinatown or Little India. The journey to the Merlion Park offers you an entire view of Singapore's landmarks like Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Flyer and Gardens by the Bay. The tour will bring you through a discovery journey where you will have a glimpse of a unique mixture of East and West, tradition and modernity. It will be a splendid way for you to explore the history, culture and lifestyle of multi-racial Singapore while in your transit.

    CITY LIGHT TOUR

    Tour Timings: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

    As night falls, Singapore takes another look to offer an entertainment choice. The City Light Tour brings you to various attractions in Singapore. As the journey begins from Changi Airport towards Benjamin Sheares Bridge, you will get a wide view of Singapore's famous symbols- the Singapore Flyer, Marina Bay Sands and Esplanade. Next, you will see the Helix(螺旋的) Bridge which is inspired by the double helix of our DNA structure.

High-Wire Act

    Mickey Wilson had been on the mountain only a few seconds when he heard the scream. Wilson, 28 years old, had just gotten off the cable car (索道缆车) at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area in Keystone, Colorado, along with his friends Billy Simmons and Hans Mueller. Their friend Richard had been on the cable car ahead of them, but when the men reached the top of the lift, he had disappeared. The men walked toward the source of the scream and found skiers stopped on the slope, pointing to the cable car. And then the friends screamed too.

    "Oh, Richard!" yelled Mueller.

    When Richard had tried to jump off the cable car, his backpack had been caught in the chair, which then dragged him back down the hill. In the process, the backpack belt twisted around his neck, making him breathless. Now Richard's body was swinging four feet above the snow. The cable car operator had quickly stopped it, and the friends kicked off their skis and ran toward the scene. They made a human pyramid to try to reach Richard, but the unconscious man was too far off the ground. With the clock ticking, Wilson ran to the ladder of a nearby lift tower. Scared skiers watched as he struggled the 25 feet. After he reached the top, Wilson's first challenge was to climb onto the two-inch steel cable that held the chairs. He handled the balance and height bravely, but he knew he could not walk on the cable. Therefore, he calmed down and sat over it and then used his hands to pull himself to Richard quickly. Wilson's greatest fear wasn't that he'd fall, but that he wouldn't reach Richard. "This was life or death," he said.

    When he reached Richard's chair, Wilson swung a leg over the cable and attempted to drop down onto it. But as he did that, his jacket caught on the movable footrest, which was in the up position. The footrest began to slide down, with Wilson attached. But before that could happen, he managed to free himself and reached Richard.

    Fortunately, the ski patrol (巡查) had gathered below and performed emergency treatment on Richard, who had been hanging for about five minutes, then skied him down to an ambulance.

    That night, Richard called from the hospital to express his thanks to Wilson, his other friends and the workers at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area.

    Moving flight times from night to day could reduce air travel's contributions to global warming, a new study suggests. Scheduling more (lay time flights may reduce the influence of contrails ——the visible lines of white steam that many planes leave behind them in the sky.

    The role of contrails in climate change is still being studied, but some scientists believe they contribute to the greenhouse effect by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

    Nicola Stuber, first author of the study, suggests that contrails' overall impact on climate change is almost as big as that of aircraft^? s carbon dioxide emissions (排放)over a hundred-year period. Aircraft are believed to be responsible for 2-3% of human carbon dioxide emissions. Like other high, thin clouds, contrails reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet. However, they also trap energy in the atmosphere and increase the warming effect.

    Stuber and other scientists believe that the effect of the contrails is big. "On average, the green-house effect controls the effects of contrails, said Stuber, a meteorologist at England's University of Reading." The warming effect is far greater for contrails left by night flights," Stuber added. "The cooling effect only happens (luring the day when the sun is up. During the night the greenhouse warming is no longer balanced and that is why the contribution of night-flight is so large."

    Most commercial airline traffic occurs during daylight hours. For example, only one in four United Kingdom flights is a night flight, but those flights create some 60% of the warming created by contrails, the study reports.