As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods,"The woods" was our part-time address, destination,purpose,and excuse.If I went to a friend's house and found him not at home,his mother might say, "Oh,he's out in the woods,"with a tone of airy acceptance.It's similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I'm looking for is on the golf course or at the gym,or even "away from his desk."For us ten-year-olds,"being out in the woods" was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.

    We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring.Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today.History seemed to be mostly about explorers.Our explorations,though,seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way.Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks,shooting frogs,picking blackberries,digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.

    Often we got "lost" and had to climb a tree to find out where we were.If you read a story in which someone does that successfully,be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight,and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees.There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches,easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.

    It was in a tree,too,that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end.By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence.In March,the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter,two friends and I set out to go exploring.We climbed a tree,and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree.Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.

Integrity

    Integrity is the quality of being honest and strong about what you believe to be right. The concept of integrity has played a key role in moral philosophy throughout history and is promoted in all societies because of its importance to social relations. Individual integrity is vital to society, one that enables people to make use of their capacity for critical reflection, does not force people to take up particular roles and does not encourage individuals to betray each other. Besides, societies can be favorable to the development of individual integrity.

    Individual integrity can lift up the spirits of the entire society. It can shape the lives of people living in a particular society, the lives of all fellow people and, in its broadest sense, even the destiny(命运) of a nation. By contrast, if those living in the society are corrupt, it could have bad effects, jeopardizing the healthy morality of the society.

    On the other hand, a society can be favorable to the development of individual integrity. Society expects and requires integrity. A society consisting of people of integrity, and people who never compromise on their principles, could have a positive mark on the personal development of its members. Being a part of such a morally lively community could serve as a basis for absorbing traits of good character. This could be of a distinct advantage to any individuals in the society.

    However, some social structures are of the wrong sort for some individuals to pursue(追求) integrity. If that is the case, we have to ask questions about the moral nature of society first before raising questions about individual integrity. Questions about integrity may turn out to be about what kind of society it is, rather than about the relationship between individual interests and characteristics of a society. The pursuit of adequate individual integrity often depends, not so much on understanding who one is and what one believes and is committed to, but rather understanding what one's society is and imagining what it could be.

    Under no circumstances can we underestimate the importance of human integrity in a society. People, who are honest, trustworthy, compassionate and caring, are the factors decisive in the growth of individuals as well as the development of a society.

    Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea.People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves Then they served them mixed with butter and salt They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches

    Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century during the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it

    At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added. She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk Because she was such a great lady her friends thought they must copy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk

    At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o'clock stopped her getting“a sinking feeling”as she called it She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, tea-time was born

    One day, when I was working as a psychologist（心理学家）in England, an adolescent boy showed up in my office. It was David. He kept walking up and down restlessly, his face pale, and his hands shaking slightly. His head teacher had referred him to me. “This boy has lost his family,” he wrote. “He is understandably very sad and refuses to talk to others, and I'm very worried about him. Can you help?”

    I looked at David and showed him to a chair. How could I help him? There are problems psychology doesn't have the answer to, and which no words can describe. Sometimes the best thing one can do is to listen openly and sympathetically（同情）

The first two times we met, David didn't say a word. He sat there, only looking up to look at the children's drawings on the wall behind me. I suggested we play a game of chess. He nodded. After that he played chess with me every Wednesday afternoon—in complete silence and without looking at me. It's not easy to cheat in chess, but I admit I made sure David won once or twice.

    Usually, he arrived earlier than agreed, took the chess board and pieces from the shelf and began setting them up before I even got a chance to sit down. It seemed as if he enjoyed my company（陪伴）. But why did he never look at me?

    “Perhaps he simply needs someone to share his pain with,” I thought. “Perhaps he senses that I respect his suffering.” Some months later, when we were playing chess, he looked up at me suddenly.

    “It's your turn,” he said.

    After that day, David started talking. He got friends in school and joined a bicycle club. He wrote to me a few times, about his biking with some friends, and about his plan to get into university. Now he had really started to live his own life.

Maybe I gave David something. But I also learned that one…without any words—can reach out to another person. All it takes is a hug, a shoulder to cry on, a friendly touch, and an ear that listens.

    Many of you may have used Siri, a voice assistant of US tech company Apple. You only have to say "hey Siri" and it will answer to your command. However, we may be sacrificing our privacy to enjoy this convenience.

    According to a recent report by the Guardian, Siri can be accidentally triggered and start recording private conversations, such as discussions between doctors and patients. Some of these recordings are then given to workers outside the company to review.

    Apple claimed the data was used to help Siri improve, but users were not informed of this measure in the first place.

    Apple's Siri is not the only voice assistant to come under fire.

    In 2018, Alexa, a voice assistant developed by US tech company Amazon, recorded a private conversation between a couple and sent it to a stranger without their permission.

    These issues deepened concerns that tech companies are infringing users' rights of privacy.

    Many people have long feared that tech companies are listening and collecting data from private conversations, reported Forbes. Using this data, third party companies could then paint an accurate picture of users' habits and preferences in order to serve them more targeted advertisements, or even worse, sell this private data.

    Despite this risk, the popularity of voice assistant seems to be unstoppable.

    "In the near future, everything from your lighting to your air-conditioning to your refrigerator, your coffee maker, and even your toilet could be wired to a system controlled by voice," commented The Atlantic.

    Colin Horgan wrote on the blog site Medium that he believed people's daily lives will soon become a source of data.

    "The sounds of our homes, the symphony of life – laughing, crying, talking, shouting, sitting in silence – will no longer be considered memories, but data," he wrote.

    To deal with the issue, Blake Morgan, reporter for The Atlantic, believed that the answer is transparency.

    "All companies need to have messaging ready to explain to customers what they do with private data," she wrote on The Atlantic.

If you've ever seen a sparrow steal your dog food or a crow open a garbage bag, you get a sense of that some birds have learned to take advantage of new feeding opportunities—a clear sign of their intelligence. Scientists have long wondered why certain species of birds are more innovative than others, and whether these capacities stem from larger brains or from a greater number of neurons（神经元）in specific areas of the brain.

It turns out that it's a bit of both, according to a recent study by an international team that included members from McGill University published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The researchers used a new technique to estimate the number of neurons in a specific part of the brain called the pallium in 111 bird species. The pallium in birds is equal to the human cerebral cortex（大脑皮层）, which is involved in memory, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving, among other things. When these estimates about neuron numbers in the pallium were combined with information about over 4,000 feeding innovations, the team found that the species with the higher numbers of neurons in the pallium were also likely to be the most innovative.

"The amount of time chicks spend in the nest as their brains develop might also play a crucial role in the evolution of intelligence," says McGill University Emeritus Professor Louis Lefebvre who spent more than 20 years gathering examples of feeding innovations. "Larger species of crows and parrots, which are known for their intelligence, spend longer in the nest, which allows more time for the brain to grow and accumulate pallial neurons."

The results of the study help to deal with previously opposed views of the evolution and significance of brain size and show how a life-history perspective helps to understand the evolution of cognition.