Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

    It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    ＂Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite,＂ Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. ＂What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital.＂

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. ＂The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,＂ says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, ＂just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,＂ says Moran. ＂For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,＂ says Moran, ＂so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.＂

    Feeling sad is an important part of human nature.

    Jerome Wakefield, a professor at New York University, mentions that feeling down after your heart is broken is normal and may even be beneficial. Recently, Wakefield's students have been coming up to him because their parents are pressuring them to get help for their sadness; often the kids want no part of it. Rather than “listen to medicine,” they want to listen to their hearts. He believes these students' reaction represents an important part of human nature.

    Professor Diener, who has studied happiness for a quarter century, finds that the Scots and many other peoples like being sad, and don't appreciate being told they should be happier. “They say too much happiness might not be such a good thing, no matter where it comes from,” says Diener. He believes it's wrong for the “happiness industry” to send the message that not only can we all be happier, but we have a duty to be so. He argues that what is considered normal sadness is something we shouldn't avoid.

    Eric Wilson, a professor at Wake Forest University, made every effort to smooth out his habitual frown and wear a sunny smile, since a happy expression can lead to happy feelings. He even tried to be enthusiastic. When neither of these made him happy, he concluded that such a happiness movement was no good for him at all. Americans, love for happiness, he writes, creates an environment where sadness is not valued.

    These researchers believe the problem of continuous, extreme happiness should not be surprising, since negative emotions developed for a reason. Fear warns us against the presence of danger, for instance. Sadness, too, seems to be part of our DNA: monkeys, dogs and elephants all display something that looks like sadness. Being “up” all the time can cause you to play down very real threats.

    They believe that only by experiencing sadness can we experience the fullness of the human condition. Their studies show that when you are in a negative frame of mind, you become more logical and more creative. Abraham Lincoln was not limited by his dark moods, and Beethoven composed his later works in a sad state. Vincent van Gogh, Emily Dickinson and other artistic giants saw the world through a glass darkly.

    People who are somewhat unhappy are more motivated to improve both their own lot and the lot of their community. In contrast, people at the top of the happiness charts feel no such urgency. “If you're totally satisfied with your life,” says Diener, “you don't feel like working for change. Be careful when people tell you that you should be happier.”

    Dearborn Heights,Michigan—2.7 million children under 18 have a parent in prison,and women put in local prisons are the fastest growing population.Shawna Reynolds has seen some of those women up close while working in the corrections system(劳教所) for 17 years,and she was encouraged to try something different.

    After seven years of education and collecting as much money as she could,Shawna created About Face Course Correction-a one-year rehabilitation program(康复项目) that offers a more personal way to help non-violent women prisoners.The program includes classes for women to finish their education, find a job and So on.“You can't expect people who have been in prison to stay in prison,”Shawna says.“YOU want them to be helpful people but if you are not going to help them, it's not going to happen.”

    The women live free for a year in a house in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.Women like 20-year-old Jennifer Douglas, who dropped out of school,took drugs (吸毒)，and has spent years in and out of prison. She says,“I was doing things I would never have thought I would do in my whole life.Because of About Face, Jennifer's life is changing. “Everyone is starting to trust me again and proud of me and what I'm doing,” she says. “ It's helped me a lot.It has kept me on the right track.”

    There are many other women like Jennifer. Every woman's story is different,but each woman is important.And Shawna is determined to break the cycle and help them turn their lives around.She is using her own money and donations to pay for the house and this program.If you would like to donate, please visit their Go Fund Me account here.

    I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that's just for transporting the baby or groceries.

    I hate driving. So it's been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is estimated 10,000-plus cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a mode of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps climbing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

    Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists-flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads dominated by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape paralysis, and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I've been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road.

    These things don't exactly happen to trams and buses, those other slowcoaches on Melbourne's roads. No—drivers reserve a particular savagery (残暴行为) for cyclists. And that's a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

    We shouldn't need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. The present debate over how to minimize “dooring” is a distraction.

    Dooring is not a legal problem. You cannot legislate (制定法律) it away. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That's what happened to the young university student James Cross.

    This year, there are to be new anti-dooring lanes (车道) built on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, where Cross died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

    Next month, I'm traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala — one of the local languages — to have a conversation. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage this — until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I'm going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the application I'm using. It feels just like a game.

    "People often stop learning things because they feel they're not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work," says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. "We're trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you'd want to do instead of watching TV."

    Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are "seeds" which you plant in your "greenhouse". When you learn the words, you "water your plants". When the application believes that you've really memorized a word, it moves the word to your "garden". And if you forget to log on, the application sends you emails, reminding you to "water your plants".

    The application uses two principles about learning. The first is that people memorize things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use "mems". For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for "engine", using a mem I created — I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.

    The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it's the kind of application you only use for five or ten minutes a day.

    I've learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won't make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I'll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my Vocabulary!