That cold January night,I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco.There I was,walking home at one in the morning after a tiring practice at the theatre.With the opening night only a week away,I was still learning my lines.I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time.As I walked,I thought seriously about giving up both acting and San Francisco.City life had become too much for me.

    As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings,I felt very small and cold.I began running,both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible robbers.Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking homeless people under blankets.

    About a block from my apartment,I heard a sound behind me.I turned quickly,half expecting to see someone with a knife or a gun.The street was empty.All I saw was a shining streetlight.Still,the noise had made me nervous,so I started to run faster.Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been.It had been my wallet falling to the sidewalk.

    Suddenly I wasn't cold or tired anymore.I ran out of the door and back to where I'd heard the noise.Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes,my wallet was nowhere to be found.

    Just as I was about to give up the search,I heard the garbage truck pull up to the sidewalk next to me.When a voice called from the inside,"Alisa Camacho"I thought I was dreaming.How could this man know my name?The door opened,and out jumped a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eye."Is this what you're looking for" he asked,holding up a small square shape.

    It was nearly 3 a.m. by the time I got into bed.I wouldn't get much sleep that night,but I had gotten my wallet back.I also had gotten back some enjoyment of city life.I realized that the city couldn't be a bad place as long as people were willing to help each other.

    The Bowler family had a very unusual experience this year. It was one of more than 400 families who applied to 1900 house, a reality TV show which took a typical family back a hundred years to see how people lived in the days before the internet, computer games and even electricity.

    The Bowler family spent three months in a London home without a telephone, computers, TV, or fast food. The bowlers wore clothes from 1900, ate only food available in England at that time, and cooked their meals on a single stove. Paul Bowler still went to work every day in a then uniform. The children changed their clothes on the way to and from school and their classmates didn't know about their unusual home life. Joyce stayed at home, cooking and cleaning like a typical housewife of the time, though everything took three times as long.

    So does Joyce think that people's lives were better in the old days?

    “I think people in the old days had just as many troubles and worries,” Joyce said. “And I don't think their life was better or worse, there were lots of things back then that I'm happy I don't have to deal with nowadays, but on the other hand life was simpler.” “We had a lot more time with our family, and it was hard being nice to each other all the time,” eleven-year-old Hilary said.

    So what did the Bowler family miss most about modern life while living in the 1900 house?

Paul, 39: “telephone and a hot shower”

Joyce, 44: “a quick cup of tea from a kettle you could just turn on”

Hilary, 11: “rock CD”

Joseph, 9: “hamburger and computer games”

    Car companies are developing vehicles that will plug into electric sockets, ust like many laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and Mp4 do. Called “plug-in vehicles”, these cars will get most of their power from electricity. Their drivers won't have to stop at gas stations as often as usual.

    The technology is more than just cool. In our car-filled world, plug-in vehicles could reduce the amount of gas we use, which keeps rising in cost now and then. Besides, driving around in these vehicles may even help the environment. Gas-burning cars produce a lot of greenhouse gas, which causes global warming.

    The first company-produced plug-in vehicles could hit the roads by 2020. But engineers still have a lot of work to do to make the technology practical and inexpensive.

    Batteries are the biggest challenge. In the plug-in-vehicle world，Li-ion(锂离子)batteries are getting the most attention. These batteries can store a large amount of energy in a small package, and they last a longer time between charges. Li-ion batteries can fit laptops, cell phones, heart instruments and other similar pocket ones.

    But because cars are so big and heavy, it would still require a suitcase-sized Li-ion batteries to power about 12km of driving. What's more, the batteries are much expensive.

    “A car filled with batteries could go a long distance,” says Ted Bohn, an electrical engineer in Chicago. “But it couldn't pull any people, and it would cost $100,000.” So researchers need to work out how to make batteries smaller and cheaper, among other questions.

    “The answers don't exist yet,” Bohn says, “As a kid, I thought someone someplace knows the answer to everything. All of these questions haven't been decided. That's what engineering is about-making a guess, running tests and getting fine results.”

    John Winston Ono Lennon (9 October 1940-8 December 1980) was an English rock musician, singer, songwriter, artist and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of The Beatles. As a member of the group, Lennon was one of the leading singers and co-wrote most of the band's songs with bassist(低音歌手) Paul McCartney.

    In his singing career, Lennon wrote and recorded songs such as Give Peace a Chance and Imagine. Lennon showed his rebellious(反叛的) nature and cleverness on television, in films such as A Hard Day's Night, in his books such as In His Own Write, and in press conferences(新闻发布会) and interviews. He was controversial(有争议的) through his work as a peace activist, artist and author.

    Lennon had two sons: Julian Lennon, with his first wife Cynthia Lennon, and Sean Ono Lennon, with his second wife, avant-garde(前卫) artist Yoko Ono. After a retirement from 1976-1980, Lennon reemerged(再度出现) with a comeback album, but was killed one month later in New York City on 8 December 1980. In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll(投票) on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon into the eighth place. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of "The Immortals(不朽的): The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" and ranked The Beatles number one.

    Compassion（同情）is a desire within us to help others. With effort, we can translate compassion into action. An experience last weekend showed me this is true. I work part-time in supermarket across from a building for the elderly. These old people are our main customers, and it's not hard to lose patience over their slowness. But last Sunday, one aged gentleman appeared to teach me a valuable lesson. This untidy man walked up to my register（收款机）with a box of biscuits. He said he was out of cash, had just moved into his room, and had nothing in his cupboards. He asked if we could let him have the food on trust. He promised to repay me the next day.

    I couldn't help staring at him. I wondered what kind of person he had been ten or twenty years before, and what he would be like if fortune had gone his way. I had a hurt in my heart for this kind of human soul, all alone in the world. I told him that I was sorry, but store rules didn't allow me to do so. I felt stupid and unkind saying this, but I valued my job.

    Just then, another man, standing behind the first, spoke up. If anything, he looked more pitiable, “Charge it to me,” was all he said.

    What I had been feeling was pity. Pity is soft and safe and easy. Compassion, on the other hand, is caring in action. I thanked the second man but told him that was not allowed either. Then I reached into my pocket and paid for the biscuits myself. I reached into my pocket because these two men had reached into my heart and taught me compassion.

    A butterfly's wings can have many jobs besides keeping the insect in the air. They may be called on to attract mates, to warn potential enemies to stay away, to do other animals or even to provide disguise(伪装).

    All of these roles, though, depend on their colouration-which is unchanging. This plays into the idea that butterfly wings are dead tissue, like a bird's feathers or a mammal's hair. In fact, that is not true. For example, in some species males' wings harbour special cells that release chemicals which attract females.

    Nanfang Yu, a physicist at Columbia University, in New York, has been looking into the matter. One of his interests is the optical (光学的) properties of biological materials. That has led him to study butterfly wings in more detail. And, in cooperation with Naomi Pierce, a butterfly specialist at Harvard University, he has now shown, in a paper published this week in Nature Communications, that butterfly wings are, indeed, very much alive.

    Initially, Dr Yu and Dr Pierce wanted to know how the insects keep their body temperatures up without their wings overheating. Unlike birds and mammals, butterflies do not produce enough internal heat to metabolize(新陈代谢). Instead, they rely on outside heat sources-usually the sun-to bring their bodies up to speed. But their wings, being thin protein membranes (膜), have a limited thermal capacity. Those wings can therefore overheat quickly if the insects are exposed to the sunlight too long, or, oppositely, can cool down too rapidly if they are flying through cold air.

In their experiments, the two researchers used a laser (激光) to heat up spots on the wings of dozens of butterfly species. When the temperature of the area under the laser reached 40℃ or so, the insects responded within seconds by doing things that stopped their wings heating up further. These actions included a butterfly turning around to minimize its exposure to the laser, beating its wings or simply walking away.