Before I had my son, I spent two years working with children with disabilities. I learnt that shouting and threats of punishment would result in a disaster. Coming up against their behaviour could only make the job harder and their behaviour more extreme. I found something that worked, though.

    There was a very naughty boy in the nursery and a teacher who was generally very confident with the children was asked to take charge of him. One day the boy joined a session in the room next to mine. His appearance created an atmosphere of tension. He spent the entire session running around, hitting and kicking, and destroying property.

    I was in the craft room working with some other children when my co­worker told me that this boy's teacher was in tears, and could not get control of the situation. As we were talking, the boy ran in. I told my co­worker that I would take care of him.

    I closed the door. He was full of energy, throwing things around and making a huge mess. But I could see that he was doing all these to annoy me. He needed connection, and this was the only way he knew how to ask for it. So I sat back down and kept quiet. Then he slowed down and began making a rocket. I talked to him about it. We continued like this for a few minutes before I slipped into the conversation：

    “So what happened today？”

    It was purely a question, no blame or anger in my tone. I believe that if I had criticized him, the gate that was slowly opening would have shut firmly closed. He told me that the teacher didn't let him do what he knew well due to safety but asked him to do what he disliked. He also admitted that he had enjoyed making her run around and saw it as a game. I explained that his teacher had not seen it as a game and was very upset. This again was stated simply as a fact. I suggested that next time he had a session, he talk about what he hoped to do at the start, which might be easier for everyone. He agreed and was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at me with tears in his eyes before quietly asking if he could go to find his teacher to apologize.

    Many people wrongly think that cities don't have farms and fruits and vegetables are only grown in the country. Believe it or not, there are more urban farms popping up in cities all over the world.

    Alexandra Sullivan, a food systems researcher in New York, studies urban agriculture. Urban agriculture is another name for farming and gardening in a city environment. Ms. Sullivan studies everything from tiny gardens in empty lots between buildings to bigger fields that have been planted and grown. According to Ms. Sullivan, “Urban agriculture has existed since cities have, across the world.”

    The number of humans living in urban areas, or cities, is increasing. The amount of people who wanted to garden in urban areas is also rising. Ms. Sullivan says, “In small gardens, on rooftops and indoors, city residents grow fruits, vegetables, grains, and herbs, and raise animals to produce milk, eggs, honey, and meat. City residents use these foods as supplements to food produced by rural agriculture.” Even though some people who live in urban areas grow crops, urban residents still need to rely on food grown in rural areas. This is because a city doesn't have enough space to grow enough food for everyone living in it.

    In New York City, urban farmers have come up with many different ways to grow their own produce, even though there isn't a lot of room. For example, Brooklyn Grange is a farming operation that has two rooftop vegetable farms in New York City. All together, the farms are made up of 2.5 acres of rooftop space. This makes Brooklyn Grange one of the largest rooftop farming operations in the world.

    Brooklyn Grange grows all kinds of things. The farming company sells its vegetables to local residents and restaurants. And because the farms are on rooftops, they are specially adapted to their urban location. They use available space that is not needed for anything else. As more urban farmers find ways to grow food in cities, urban residents will be better able to get fresher materials for their meals.

    To save as much language diversity as possible in the face of its rapidly dying out, researchers suggest using “evolutionary trees”, a tool from conservation biology.

    One of the world's 7,000 languages disappears every other week, and half might not survive the 21st century, experts say.

    When setting conservation goals, ecologists use evolutionary trees—diagrams that show how biological species are related to one another—to identify species that have few close relatives. Such species are said to be evolutionarily distinct. Similarly, recent advances in the construction of language trees make it possible to measure how unique a language is.

    “Evolutionary trees have transformed our understanding of how life has evolved and helped us to decide which species most need conserving,” says Jonathan Davies, senior author of the new study.

    “The rapid rate of language loss, as well as limited resources for preservation（保护）, means that we must choose carefully where to focus our efforts,” adds Max Farrell, a PhD student in Davies' lab. “The more isolated (孤立的) a language in its family tree, the more unique information it contains and eventually contributes to language diversity.”

    As a case study, they used this approach to rank 350 Austronesian languages, spoken in islands spread across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

    For each of these languages, the researchers combined measures of evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) and global endangerment (GE) to produce an “EDGE” score. The language with the highest score, which means it is extremely distinct（不同的） yet nearly dying out, was Kavalan, a language native to Tai Wan. The next-highest scores went to Tanibili, an endangered language in the Solomon Islands.

    By building trees for other language groups, language specialists could target preservation efforts and help reduce the loss of language diversity in the future, the researchers say.

    On a clear night, you can see a sky paced with stars. But you can't see planets orbiting any of these stars, even with the strongest Earth—based telescopes. Astronomers reported that they discovered seven Earth—sized planets orbiting a nearby star called TRAPPIST – 1 in February. They had to rely on indirect evidence to tell them that the planets are there. By doing some math, they figured out the number of planets and the distance of their orbits.

    TRAPPIST – 1 is a red dwarf （红矮星）, much smaller than our sun, but larger than Jupiter (木星). If the sun were the size of a basketball, TRAPPIST – 1would be the size of a gold ball. This star is one of our closest neighbors, just like the moon to the earth in space.

    When astronomers using Earth-based telescopes to study TRAPPIST – 1,they noticed that every once in a while, it became slightly dim（昏暗）. They decided that a planet must be passing in front of the star, blocking part of the light. This dimming would come and go as the planet orbited the star, passing alternately (交替地) behind and in front of the star regularly.

    By making careful observations, astronomers expected to get a rough idea of the planet's size from the pattern of dimming light. But the light level changed often and not at evenly spaced (均匀间隔的) times. The astronomers had to conclude they were looking at more than one planet! To get additional data, NASA's spritzer Space Telescope measured TRAPPIST –1's brightness nearly continuously for 20 days, catching 34 crossings of planets in front of the star. Sorting through the mess of data, the astronomers found that the innermost planet completes its orbit in 1.5 Earth days, while the outermost planet takes 20 days. Once you know how long it takes each planet to complete an orbit, you can work out how far it is from the star compared with the other planets.

    The TRAPPIST – 1 planets are not alone. So far, astronomers have found more than 3,400 planets that orbit other stars.

    I must have always known reading was very important because the first memories I have as a child deal with books. There was not one night that I don't remember mom reading me a storybook by my bedside. I was extremely inspired by the wonderful way the words sounded.

    I always wanted to know what my mom was reading. Hearing mom say, "I can't believe what's printed in the newspaper this morning," made me want to grab it out of her hands and read it myself. I wanted to be like my mom and know all of the things she knew. So I carried around a book, and each night, just to be like her, I would pretend to be reading.

    This is how everyone learned to read. We would start off with sentences, then paragraphs, and then stories. It seemed an unending journey, but even as a six-year-old girl I realized that knowing how to read could open many doors. When mom said, "The C-A-N-D-Y is hidden on the top shelf," I knew where the candy was. My progress in reading raised my curiosity, and I wanted to know everything. I often found myself telling my mom to drive more slowly, so that I could read all of the road signs we passed.

    Most of my reading through primary, middle and high school was factual reading. I read for knowledge, and to make A's on my tests. Sometimes, I would read a novel that was assigned, but I didn't enjoy this type of reading. I liked facts, things that are concrete. I thought anything abstract left too much room for argument.

    Now that I'm growing and the world I once knew as being so simple is becoming more complex, I find myself needing a way to escape. By opening a novel, I can leave behind my burdens and enter into a wonderful and mysterious world where I am now a new character. In these worlds I can become anyone. I don't have to write down what happened or what technique the author was using when he or she wrote this. I just read to relax.

    We're taught to read because it's necessary for much of human understanding. Reading is an important part of my life. Reading satisfies my desire to keep learning. And I've found that the possibilities that lie within books are limitless.

    When I was about 12 years old, my older brother, James, smuggled a BB gun into the house. Our parents had told us many times that we were not allowed to bring home guns or knives, even if they were just toys. Having any form of weaponry in our home was strictly forbidden.

    James brought me to his room. He opened his closet door and took out a shoebox that was buried beneath a heap of clothes. The BB gun was inside. I was immediately enamored by the shiny barrel.

    "Can I shoot it, Jamesie?" I asked, hopefully.

    "Noway,"James said, taking it from me and putting it back.

    One day, when no one was home, I went into James' closet and took it out. For some in explicable reason - I have no idea what I was thinking - I went to the front window of the second floor in our row house. I cracked the window open. I pointed the gun outside and shot. I quickly shut the window and peeked outside.

    In a matter of seconds, old Mr. Schlosberg came out of his grocery store. He looked back at his store window. He looked up the street. He looked down the street. Then he looked straight across to our house.

    Thankfully, Jamesie made it home before Mother or Father.

    As he stepped through the door, I could hear old Mr. Schlosberg call his name. "James, James," he called. "Come here, son."

    After several minutes, James ran back across the street and into the living room. I had retreated into the kitchen. "Alma!" he screamed. "Get out here! You cracked Mr. Schlosberg's window with my BB gun!"

    "Oh, please, Jamesie," I begged. "Don't let him tell Mother. She will whip my bottom real good!" Jamesie sighed. He wiped my tears and went back across the street to Mr. Schlosberg's. I don't know what James said to that man, but there was never a mention of the incident again.

    Years later, I found out Jamesie had used the money he got from his newspaper route to pay for Mr. Schlosberg's cracked window. He only got one cent for every paper he delivered. He managed to pay back the debt just before he went off to fight in World War II.

    Since that day, I have never touched a gun: a BB gun, a water gun, a real gun, or any other type.