It isn't often that zookeepers call on craftsman for help. But cold weather at the Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center in northern India was putting elephants at risk. So the center's staff joined forces with locals to find a creative way to keep the animals warm. Now the elephants are stepping out in style, thanks to volunteers who made use of their crafting talents to knit (编织) enormous sweaters to protect the animals.

    Wildlife SOS is a conservation group that has been taking action against animal cruelty and saving wildlife in danger since 1995. Their Elephant Conservation and Care Center is devoted to rescuing the large animals from abuse in circuses, illegal dealing, and other circumstances where they have been ignored or treated with extreme cruelty. There are currently 20 elephants living at the center, and the staff hope to take in 50 more of the creatures this year.

    Because most of the elephants housed at the center are recovering from injuries or are elderly and weak, they are particularly vulnerable to cold temperatures. When the staff reported near-freezing nighttime temperatures in the winter, volunteers from surrounding villages began knitting enormous sweaters to keep the elephants warm. The monumental sweaters are large enough to cover the elephants' backs, bellies, and legs.

    Making the sweaters is a big undertaking—each one takes approximately four weeks to create, with volunteers working together on the enormous clothes. Local villagers have already made sweaters for three of the 23 elephants on their own, each with a unique pattern and color.

    If you're also looking for something happy and heartwarming, this is it. The elephants usually wear blankets to keep warm during colder months and you can purchase a blanket for an elephant on the Wildlife SOS website.

    Welcome to the Miami Planetarium

    School Groups: $10.00 per person

    One free teacher admission per 10 students.

    Group rates apply to groups 15 or more.

    Click HERE to make a reservation online today!

    The Miami Planetarium (天文馆|) opened its doors to the public on November 4, 1966 and has entertained and educated children of all ages about astronomy and the wonders of the night sky ever since. The Planetarium houses a 65-foot diameter domed (圆顶状的) projection screen with 231 seats. At the heart of the Planetarium is a SPITZ “Space Transit Planetarium” star projector (放映机)， which is capable of accurately reproducing the stars and planets as seen from anywhere on Earth at any time during the year. Shows daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Unlike any other in South Florida, the Planetarium is a unique setting for bringing the stars and planets indoors in animated (动画) live star shows and music-filled laser light shows.

    The Weintraub Observatory (天文台) houses two powerful telescopes. Observatory hours are from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Look though the telescope to view the planets, the four moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and deep sky objects such as galaxies, nebulate and double stars.

    Deposit (定金): A $75 deposit must be received 10 days prior to the visit date to guarantee your visit.

    Cancellation Policy: The museum requires 48 hours advance notice prior to any cancellation or other changes to a reservation. Without prior notification (通告) the original total will be expected upon arrival.

    Payment Policy: The balance of the admission fee is due upon arrival at the museum on your visit day.

    Upon Arrival: The leading teacher should check in at the box office with payment for the correct head count of students, and teachers. Visitors should remain on the bus until a museum interpreters show you around the museum.

Museum Etiquette (规矩): We ask that all groups remain together and orderly. Teachers are asked to help maintain order with their groups. We reserve the right to refuse service to any group or individual not obeying the museum policies.

    Bus Procedures: The museum will provide parking for buses in our parking lot. Upon arrival, bus drivers will be directed by the museum staff to the appropriate places to park. It is recommended that buses remain on the spots throughout the group's entire museum visit.

    For more information & reservations call: (305)646-4222.

    My teacher, Mr. August J. Bachmann, was the most influential teacher I ever had.

    I had gotten into trouble in his class: Another student had pushed me for fun, and I became angry and began to hit him. Mr. Bachmann stopped the fight, but instead of sending me to the office, he sat me down and asked a simple question, "Penna, why are you wasting your life？Why aren't you going to college?"

    I didn't know anything about colleges or scholarships. No one had ever considered that a fatherless boy from the poorest neighborhood had a future. That day, instead of rushing off for lunch, he stayed and explained possible education options to me. At the end of our talk, he sent me to see a secretary who had a child at a state college. This was in 1962 at Emerson High School in Union City, New Jersey.

    Well, 55 years have passed, and what have I done with the knowledge he gave me？I gained a PhD from Fordham University when I was only 29.I taught English and social studies and then moved up the chain of command from teacher to principal(校长).

    I've sat on the board for Magnet Schools of America and represented that organization at the United Nations. I've won a number of great educational awards. But where would I be if a truly caring teacher had not taken the time out of his lunch period to speak to me? It was without question only his confidence in me that helped me forward.

    I have repaid his kindness hundreds of times by encouraging misguided youngsters to aim higher. If I have saved any children, it is because of him. If I have been a successful educator, it is because I had a great role model in Mr. Bachmann.

    When David Edwards founded the oPhone, he hoped scent (嗅觉的) messages would become the next big thing in the digitization of our online lives.

    The device looked like a high-tech cruet set (调味瓶), and allowed a friend with an iPhone app to send you scent messages alongside photos. Send a picture of your dinner, tag it with four different tones, and whoever is on the receiving end can sniff it from the vase-like tubes of the oPhone.

    The oPhone didn't take off, and the company has now shifted focus to a “scent speaker” called the Cyrano, which similarly uses a range of scent capsules to emit “play lists” of smells.

    Compared to our real world interactions, our online lives are lacking in scent. Our digital culture, so soaked in visual and aural stimuli, is odorless (没有气味的). So why didn't his marriage of smell and picture messaging excite more interest?

    From a technical point of view, smell is simply harder to mass communicate than sounds and pictures. “There are two main technological obstacles to making smell transmissible by digital means,” explains biophysicist and author of Perfumes: The A -Z guide, Dr Luca Turin.

    “First, there are no odor 'primaries' like RGB or CMYK. Second, it has proved impossible to stimulate the olfactory epithelium (上皮组织) directly by any means tried so far. This means that it is currently impossible to induce a sensation of smell without there being an actual chemical in the inhaled air (吸入的空气).”

    “The more we're plugged into the virtual world, the more we deeply appreciate the contrast-moments in our human, experience,” says designer and olfactory artist Mindy Yang.

    “Intuitively, we realize that we are starved of certain sensations. With the rise of digital culture, society has become more interested in the missing sense-c-what we smell.”

    This interest in scent isn't only happening within the worlds of perfume and fashion. Over the past few years a number of cultural projects have set out to focus on the power of sensory experiences, from the use of a smell map, to the Tate Sensorium, which in 2015 let users experience visual art alongside smells, tastes and sounds.

    Whether it's devices like the oPhone that try to introduce scent into digital messaging, organizations are growingly aware of our culture's desire for sensory experiences. In a time of virtual reality and scentless social networks, it's perhaps no wonder that we as a culture have such a desire for something that instinctively feels real and authentic-even if it was made in a lab.

    The first organized system for sending messages began in Egypt around 1500 B.C. This system developed because the pharaohs frequently needed to send messages up and down the Nile River in order to keep their empire running smoothly. Later, the Persians developed a more efficient system for sending messages using men and horses. Messages carriers rode along the road system stretching from one end of the Persian Empire to the other. Along these roads, fresh men and horses waited at special stations to take and pass along any messages that needed to be sent. The stations where riders passed messages back and forth were built 23 kilometers apart, so the men and horses were able to travel quickly between them. The Romans later took up his idea and improved it by using a more advanced and extensive road system.

    In China, however, Kublai Khan had built up his own system for delivering messages. This system worked in the same basic way as the Roman system. The difference was that Kublai Khan kept 300,000 horses along the roads of this delivery lines. There were over 10,000 stations where a message would be passed from one rider to another with a fresh horse. In this way, Kublai Khan could receive messages from anywhere in the country in only a few days.

    It was not until the 1500s that a well-organized postal system appeared again in Europe. One family, the von Taxis family, gained the right to deliver mail for the Holy Roman Empire and parts of Spain. This family continued to carry mail, both government and private, throughout Europe for almost 300 years.

    In 1653, a Frenchman, Renouard de Velayer, established a system for delivering post in Paris. Postal charges at that time were paid by the recipient, but de Velayer's system was unique by allowing the sender to pre-pay the charges, in a similar way to the modern stamp. Unfortunately, de Velayer's system came to an end when jealous competitors put live mice in his letter boxes, ruining his business. Eventually, government-controlled postal systems took over from private postal businesses, and by the 1700s government ownership of most postal systems in Europe was an accepted fact of life.

    The thing that all these early systems had in common was that they were quite expensive for public use, and were intended for use by the government and the wealthy. However, in 1840, a British schoolteacher named Roland Hill suggested introducing postage stamps, and a postal rate based on weight. This resulted in lowering postal rates, encouraging more people to use the system to stay in touch with each other, His idea helped the British postal system begin to earn profits as early as 1850. Soon after that many other countries took up Mr. Hill's idea. And letter writing became accessible to anyone who could write. Today, the Roland Hill awards are given each year to "encourage and reward fresh ideas which help promote philately"(stamp collecting).

    A study showed that the experiences children have in their first few years are important. These experiences affect the development of the brain. When children receive more attention, they often have higher IQs. Babies receive information when they see, hear and feel things, which makes connections between different parts of the brain. There are a hundred trillion (万亿) connections in the brain of a three-year-old child.

    Researcher Judit Gervain tested how good newborns are at distinguishing different sound patterns. Her researchers produced images of the brains of babies as they heard different sound patterns. For example, one order was mu-ba-ba. This is the pattern "A-B-B". Another order was mu-ba-ge. This is the pattern "A-B-C". The images showed that the part of the brain responsible for speech was more active during the "A-B-B" pattern. This shows that babies can tell the difference between different patterns. They also were sensitive to where it occurred in the order.

    Gervain is excited by these findings because the order of sounds is the building block of words and grammar. "Position is key to language," she says. "If something is at the beginning or at the end, it makes a big difference: 'John caught the bear.' is very different from 'The bear caught John.' "

    Researchers led by scientist Patricia Kuhl have found that language delivered by televisions, audio books, the Internet, or smartphones－no matter how educational－doesn't appear to be enough for children's brain development. They carried out a study of nine-month-old American babies. They expected the first group who'd watched videos in Chinese to show the same kind of learning as the second group who were brought face-to-face with the same sounds. Instead they found a huge difference. The babies in the second group were able to distinguish between similar Chinese sounds as well as native listeners. But the other babies－regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio－learned nothing.