Wild weather, unexpected coral reefs and dangerous sea creatures… these are the nightmares (噩梦) you can imagine a teenager on a solo voyage (独自旅行) around the world might suffer from. But for Laura Dekker, sailing around the globe seems less a price to be paidthan a prize to be treasured.

    As the 19-year-old Dutch sailor said in Maidentrip, a documentary（纪录影片） released last year about her experience of becoming the youngest person to sail around the world alone in 2012, “I was born on a boat. I lived my first five years at sea. And ever since, all I have wanted is to return to that life.”

    With her yacht(游艇) Guppy, Dekker began her journey at 14 and sailed 50,004 kilometers in 519 days.

    The flying fish keeping her company, the dolphins following in her wake and the warm days spent on deck playing the flute (长笛) as she watched another unforgettable sunset were enough to make others jealous.

    But these didn't always go well. There were terrible moments in which Dekker feared death. On one occasion, a whale almost turned Guppy over. Another time, she battled extreme winds and Guppy surfed down 8-meter-high waves.

    Out on the open sea alone, she also got used to living without a fridge, a flushing（用水冲洗） toilet, and a hot shower.

   “As a human being you don't need much,”she told Stuff.co.nz. “ They might make life more comfortable, but you really don't need them to be happy.”

    In fact, her outlook on life was shaped by the trip. “I wanted the storms. I wanted the calms. I wanted to feel loneliness,”she told The New York Times. “And now I know all these things. It's the end ofthe dream I had as a child, and it's the beginning of my life as a sailor.”

    Imagination Stage is a children's theater in the state of Maryland. A special performance is put on for children with autism (自闭症) each day. People with autism have difficulty communcating and socializing with other people. Children in the theater are allowed to move around during the performance. It's OK if they shout out or hold their ears when the music is too loud. These special performances are sometimes the only thing that a family can go to the theater together to see if a child has autism.

    That is the same idea with Autism on the Seas. This company organizes vacations for families of children with autism, especially vacations on cruise ships. Jamie Grover is director of group development in Autism on the Seas. He said, “With our staff on board, parents know that they are going to be able to relax, enjoy their vacation, and participate in ship activities. They know that their children are well taken care of.”

    The benefit of such vacations organized by Autism on the Seas is not waiting in huge lines on departure day. The company has staff to help in the ports. Waiting in long lines or being in the middle of big crowds can cause problem behavior in children with autism. Autism on the Seas helps families avoid situations like that.

    Autism on the Seas works with the help of cruise companies like Royal Caribbean. Special times or places are arranged for families to play video games, go skating or rock climbing, or eat dinner. Autism on the Seas also directs families to organizations that can help them pay for these vacations.

    Bambi Van Woert from the state of Michigan went on a cruise with her 7-year-old Ben, who has autism. She said, “I would never do something like this myself. I cannot take Ben shopping by myself at this point, so for me to try to do a cruise without help would be absurd.”

    You have heard the words “that which does not kill you makes you stronger”. I have found it true. But I also believe in the philosophy that we are not defined (定义) by what happens to us, but by what we do when things happen to us.

    Some friends think we have had far more than our share of bad things occur, but I don't think bad things are shared. They are events that occur as the result of many aspects, sometimes far past our control or even knowledge of them. I am also a firm believer in the laws of unintended consequences — one event causes things that are quite unexpected, sometimes positive, sometimes not.

    So as I considered the question of “What motivates me?” and sought an answer, it struck me that I simply refuse to be defeated. I won't let life or events tear me down to the point at which I am no longer me, or simply stop being.

    In 2008, I battled three types of cancer, had four cancer operations, the firm I worked for closed without notice, my wife was in a horrible car accident, got laid off from her company, the economy devastated our life savings, … and that was for starters.

    We also lost two family members and my closest friend. He was the last person I would expect to pass away out of our friends. But a disease took hold of him 9 years earlier. His memorial service was filled with love, and many of us told about his joy of life, humor, his achievements, and the challenges he had overcome in his life — which were many and painful. He would not be defeated in his life either.

    Today, my wife and I are hand-in-hand, continuing trying to live our lives with dignity, although living it differently from the end of 2007.

    Unlike most other holidays, the history of April Fools' Day, sometimes called All Fools' Day, is not totally clear. The only point in time that can be agreed on as the beginning of this tradition was 1582, in France. Before that year, the New Year was celebrated for eight days, beginning on March 25th. The celebration reached the highest point on April 1st. With the reform of the calendar under Charles IX，the Gregorian calendar(公历，阳历) was introduced, and New Year's Day was moved to January 1st.

    However, because in those days communications were not as developed as they are today, many people did not receive the news for several years. Some people refused to accept the new calendar and continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st. These backward people were considered "fools" by other people. They  were often sent on "fools" errands(徒劳无益的工作)  or were made the targets of jokes.

    This developed, over time, into a tradition of playing a trick on someone on the first day of April. The tradition eventually spread to England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. It was later introduced to the American colonies of both the Britain and France. April Fools' Day thus developed into an international fun feast, so to speak, with different nationalities specializing in their own kind of humor at the expense of their friends and families.

    I had reached the age of twenty-eight. Still, I doubted the letter from my past would make it to me, all these years later. It was a simple creative writing assignment from when I was eighteen. The teacher collected our letters to our future selves in self-addressed envelopes with stamps and promised to mail them ten years later. Yet so much time had passed. Would he even remember?

    Thinking back on the letter, I vaguely recalled giving my future self some advice. When you're eighteen years old, twenty-eight seems like a grown-up age but I wasn't feeling as grown up as I believed my younger self had expected me to be.

    When the letter finally reached me, I opened it eagerly. It began," How much do you bet this letter will never get to you "It continued to greet me casually as if we were having an IM (instant messaging) chat. My eighteen-year-old self was so stressed! As a senior in high school, facing the SATS and college applications, I was apparently not quite happy and hoped I wouldn't worry so much in the future, and that I wouldn't forget to be present and enjoy my life!

    Contrary to my belief, my eighteen-year-old self did not have any demands of me, or expectations I might have failed to meet. Instead, she wrote," I'll stand by whatever you do. Even if you are not who I'm imagining now, I'll support you, because maybe who I' m imagining is someone else, and you are-well you're not someone else, you're me."

    I was blown away, and tears welled up in my eyes at this self-acceptance through time. I had put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best version of myself that I could be. However, I came to realize what I would have accomplished in ten years' time would pale in comparison to how I'd feel and who I'd be.

    If you want to spark a heated debate at a dinner party, bring up the topic of genetically modified foods. For many people, the concept of genetically altered, high-tech crop production raises all kinds of environmental, healthy, safety and ethical questions. Particularly in countries with long a grain traditions—and vocal green lobbies—the idea seems against nature.

    In fact, genetically modified foods are already very much apart of our lives. A third of corn and more than half the soybeans and cotton grown in the U. S. last year were the product of biotechnology, according to the Department of Agriculture. More than 65 million acres of genetically modified crops will be planted in the U. S. this year. The genetic genie(鬼怪) is out of the bottle.

    Yet there are clearly some very real issues that need to be resolved. Like any new product entering the food chain, genetically modified foods must be subjected to rigorous testing. In wealthy countries, the debate about biotech is tempered by the fact that we have a rich array of foods to choose from and a supply that far exceeds our needs. In developing countries desperate to feed fast-growing and underfed populations, the issue is simpler and much more urgent: Do the benefits of biotech outweigh the risks？

    The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing. Last year the world's population reached 6 billion. The U. N. estimates that nearly 800 million people around the world are undernourished. The effects are devastating. About 400 million women of child-bearing age are iron deficient, which means their babies are exposed to various birth defects. As many as 100 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, a leading cause of blindness.

    How can biotech help? Biotechnologists have developed genetically modified rice that is fortified with beta-carotene—which the body converts into vitamin A—and additional iron, and they are working on other kinds of nutritionally improved crops. Biotech can also improve farming productivity in places where food shortages are caused by crop damage attributable to pests, drought, poor soil and crop viruses, bacteria or fungi.