It was Mother's Day morning last year and I was doing my shopping at our local supermarket with my five-year-old son, Tenyson. As we were leaving, we found that only minutes earlier an elderly woman had fallen over at the entrance and had hit her head on the concrete. Her husband was with her, but there was blood everywhere and the woman was embarrassed and clearly in shock.

    Walking towards the scene, Tenyson became very upset about what had happened to the couple. He said to me, “Mum, it's not much fun falling over in front of everyone.”

    At the front of the supermarket a charity(慈善) group had set up a stand selling cooked sausages and flowers to raise funds. Tenyson suggested that we should buy the lady a flower. “It will make her feel better,” he said. I was amazed that he'd come up with such a sweet idea. So we went over to the flower seller and asked her if we could buy a flower for the lady to cheer her up. “Just take it,” she replied. “I can't take your money for such a wonderful gesture.”

    By now paramedics（救援人员）had arrived, and were attending the injured woman. As we walked up to her, my son became intimidated by all the blood and medical equipment. He said he was just too scared to go up to her. Instead I gave the flower to the woman's husband and told him, “ My son was very upset for your wife and wanted to give her this flower to make her feel better.”

    At that, the old man started crying and said, “Thank you so much, you have a wonderful son. Happy Mother's Day to you.”

    The man then bent down and gave his wife the flower, telling her who it was from. Though badly hurt and shaken, the old lady looked up at Tenyson with love in her eyes and gave him a little smile.

    Can exercise during childhood protect you against memory loss many decades later? Exercise early in life seems to have lifelong benefits for the brain, in rats at least.

    “This is an animal study, but it shows that physical activity at a young age is very important—not just for physical development, but for the whole lifelong track of cognitive (认知的) development during ageing,” says Martin Wojtowicz of the University of Toronto, Canada. “In humans, it may delay the appearance of Alzheimer's symptoms (阿兹海默氏症), possibly to the point of preventing them.”

    Wojtowicz's team divided 80 young male rats into two equal groups, and placed running wheels in the cages of one group for a period of six weeks. Around four months later-when the rats had reached middle age-the team taught all the rats to connect an electric shock with being in a specific box. When placed in the box, they froze with fear.

    Two weeks later, the team tested the rats in three situations: exactly the same box in the same room, the same box with the room arranged differently, and a completely different box in a different room.

    The rats without access to a running wheel when they were young now froze the same percentage of times in each of these situations, suggesting they couldn't remember which one was dangerous. But those that had been able to run in their youth froze 40 to 50 percent less in both changed box settings.

    “The results suggest the amount of physical activity when we're young, at least for rats, has influence on brain and cognitive health-in the form of better memories-when we're older,” says Arthur Kramer of Northeastern University in Boston, who has found that, in humans, exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells.

    Japanese researchers say they have developed a new type of glass that can heal itself from cracks and breaks. Glass made from a low weight polymer (聚合物) called “polyether-thioureas” can heal breaks when pressed together by hand without the need for high heat to melt the material.

    The research, published in Science, by researchers led by Professor Takuzo Aida from the University of Tokyo, promises healable glass that could potentially be used in phone screens and other fragile (易碎的) devices, which they say are an important challenge for sustainable (可持续的) societies.

    While self-healing rubber and plastics have already been developed, the researchers said that the new material was the first hard substance of its kind that can be healed at room temperature. The new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression (压紧) at broken surfaces”.

The characteristics of the polyether-thioureas glass were discovered by accident by a graduate school student named Yu Yanagisawa, who was preparing the material as a glue. Yanagisawa found that when the surface of the polymer was cut, the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being manually compressed for 30 seconds at 21℃. Further experiments found that the healed material regained its original strength after a couple of hours.

    Yanagisawa told NHK that he didn't believe the results at first and repeated his experiments several times to confirm the finding. He said, “I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken.”

    This is not the first time a polymer has been suggested as a healable screen for devices such as smartphones. Researchers at the University of California suggested the use of polymer that could stretch to 50 times its original size and heal breaks within 24 hours.

    Smartphone manufacturers have already used self-healing materials in devices. LG's G Flex 2 shipped in 2016 with a coating on its back was capable of healing minor scratches over time, although failed to completely repair heavier damage.

    According to the research conducted by repair firm iMend, over 21% of UK smartphone users were living with a broken screen, with smashed displays being one of the biggest issues alongside poor battery life.

    Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, there is nothing fixed about attitudes to dirt.

    In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, as medical opinion had it that washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. So did the king of England in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. Henry IV, King of France, was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.

    Though the belief in the merit of dirt was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbor ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War II. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?

    Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist (免疫学家), encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.

    We all have some people whom we respect very much, like our family members, our friends or our teachers.

    Respect often means different things to different people. There are several aspects that many people can agree on, though. For example, at its most basic level, respect means being kind and considerate to others.

    Respect can take many forms. Don't make fun of others. Put yourself in other people's shoes and think about how they feel. Remember the Golden Rule: treat others the same way you'd want to be treated.

    Respect is important because it sets the proper stage for all our human interactions. Friendship, love, and even basic communication must all start with respect.

    Everyone wants to be respected. To get respect, though, you must also show respect for others. It's always a two-way street. You can't be impolite to others and expect respect in return.

    It's easy to show respect. Be polite. Look for the best in people rather than concentrating on their mistakes. Show compassion to others and try to put their interests before your own. Make others comfortable when they're uneasy. Help out whenever you can. When you pay it forward, amazing things can happen.

    And be respectful to everyone. The world is an unbelievably huge place filled with billions of people, each one of whom is unique and special. And they all deserve your respect!

    Be careful, though. Not everyone will show you respect all the time. In fact, you'll probably see examples of impolite behaviour each and every day. How you respond to impolite behaviour, though, can make a huge difference.

    If you choose to respond to impolite behaviour by acting rudely yourself, you've gained nothing. You've only continued the pattern of impolite behaviour and set a bad example. Instead, act respectfully and set a good example. Consistently acting respectfully might just help others learn from your example!

Teaching Poetry

    No poem should ever be discussed or "analyzed", until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

    All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling "interpretation" of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching can not replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

    I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than "analysing" it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is "a criticism of life", and "a heightening of lief". It is "an approach to the truth of feeling", and it "can save your life". It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

    I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to communicate this to anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.