On a cloudless summer day, 13-year-old Charlie Finlayson was ready for a long hike with his father, David.

    Around noon, David was inching his way across a cliff 800 feet above the valley, searching for a line of cracks that would lead them to the top. Charlie stood on a rock a dozen yards to the right as he fed rope to his dad. Reaching up, David missed his step. In the next moment, he heard a sharp crack from above as something larger broke loose.

    When Charlie saw his father sailing through the air alongside the huge rocks that had struck him, he pulled the rope fiercely.

    “Tell me it's OK,” Charlie begged, struggling to control his fear.

    “I think I broke my leg,” David told him. “And we must get off this mountain.” He proposed a plan: Charlie would lower David half a rope length at a time, then lower himself to the same level, and at a new place, begin again.

    As hours passed, they came to the base of the cliff, and David was shaking with cold and exhaustion.

    Worried that David would die if he fell asleep, Charlie kept the conversation going; they talked about past travels. Eventually Charlie allowed himself to catnap, checking on his father each time he awoke. When the sun rose on their camp, Charlie was relieved to see that his father was awake.

    Just after dawn, Charlie headed off on the trail toward the volunteers' cabin 12 miles away, bringing back a helicopter that would carry his father to safety.

    “Charlie's as strong as anyone I know,” says his father, “I'm so proud of him.”

    I returned home the other night, tired. My husband asked me how my evening was, “Great.” I told him. I had spent 90 minutes in a gym with 10 Ping-Pong tables and all kinds of players, all playing a little ball over the net. By 9 pm, I was excited, tired, satisfied. I had beaten two young men half my age and lost battles against other competitors. To an observer, the night was common. To me, it was a lucky thing that I hadn't expected.

    I had taken up Ping-Pong during college, and in my 30s took more advanced lessons. However, a serious accident hurt my leg, which made me unable to take exercise. Months later, I tried to play Ping-Pong but my leg pained for a week. I put the game out of my mind.

When I was 53, one day my bad leg was working a little bit better. Could Ping-Pong be possible for me, now—in my condition, at my age? I tried to play Ping-Pong again

    Ping-Pong is a sport which requires endurance(耐力). Players need quick foot work and upper body movements to return balls, requiring faster response time than tennis.

    Playing Ping-Pong offers benefits for the brain. A study of 164 women aged 60 and older showed that Ping-Pong improved cognitive(认知)function more than dancing, walking or gymnastics. “The great thing about our sport is that it can be played by anyone,” said Jimmy Butler, a four-time national USA Table Tennis Association winner. “I see 90-year-olds and 10-year-olds.”

    Years passed and my endurance improved. People started to praise my shots. I won a game. Then I won agin. These days, I feel wonderful, I believe this sport is the fountain (源泉)of youth.

    We all know that the cost of heating our homes will continue to be a significant burden on the family budget. Now millions of people are saving on their heating bills with the EP portable heater. With over one million satisfied customers around the world, the new EP heats better and faster, saves more on heating bills, and runs almost silent.

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    The EP will not reduce oxygen in the room. With other heaters, you'll notice that you get sleepy when the heat comes on because they are burning up oxygen.

    The advanced EP also heats the room evenly, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It comfortably covers an area up to 350 square feet. Other heaters heat rooms unevenly with most of the heat concentrated to the center of the room. And they only heat an area a few feet around the heater. With the EP, the temperature will not vary in any part of the room.

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    We all know that listening to music can soothe emotional pain, but Taylor Swift, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys can also ease physical pain, according to a study of children and teenagers who had major surgery.

    The research was carried out because of a very personal experience. Sunitha Suresh was a college student when her grandmother had major surgery and was put in intensive care (重症监护). This meant her family couldn't always be with her. They decided to put her favorite music on an iPod so she could listen around the clock.

    It was very calming, Suresh says. “She knew that someone who loved her had left that music for her and she was in a familiar place.”

    Suresh could see that the music relaxed her grandmother and made her feel less anxious, but she wondered if she also felt less pain. That would make sense, because anxiety can make people more sensitive to pain. At the time Suresh was majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor (兼修) in music cognition (认知) at Northwestern University where her father, Santhanam Suresh, is a professor of pediatrics (儿科).

    So the father and daughter decided to do a study. And since Dr Suresh works with children, they decided to look at how music chosen by the children themselves might affect their tolerance for pain.

    It was a small study, involving 60 patients between 9 and 14 years old. All the patients were undergoing big operations that required them to stay in the hospital for at least a couple of days. Right after surgery, patients received narcotics (麻醉药) to control pain. The next day they were divided into three groups. One group heard 30 minutes of music of their choice, one heard 30 minutes of stories of their choice and one listened to 30 minutes of silence via noise canceling headphones.

    After a 30-minute session, the children who listened to music or books reduced their pain burden by 1 point on a 10-point scale. Sunitha Suresh says it's equal to taking an over-the-counter pain medication like Advil or Tylenol.

    The findings suggest that doctors may be able to use less pain medication for their pediatric patients. And that's a good thing, says Santhanam Suresh, as children are smaller and are more likely to suffer side effects. So the less pain medication, he says, the better.

The Big Ben is located in the tower at the eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, Greater London. It was designed by Edmund Beckett and Baron Grimthorpe.

The Big Ben is very famous throughout the world, but nobody really knows why it is called Big Ben. There are two hearsays about this. Some people say that it was named after Benjamin Caunt, a boxer, who was called Big Ben. More people believe it was called after Welshman, Sir Benjamin Hall. He was the commissioner(特派员)of the work at the time of its installation in 1859. A story was told that during a debate in the Commons on what to call the bell, Sir Benjamin was about to give his ideas when a MP who sat behind the front bench shouted, "Let's call it Big Ben!" Then this name came into being.

The bell hasn't gone through a smooth road since the beginning of its design. Because there was great disagreement about the design of the clock. It took fifteen years to build. In 1857, the bell was completed and tested on the ground, but a four-foot crack appeared and the bell had to be cast again. Finally, the clock started ticking on 31 May, 1859, and struck its first chime(报时)on 11, July. Then in September, the bell cracked again. It was silent for four years but was eventually turned a quarter of a revolution(旋转). In this way, the crack was not under the striking hammer. Craftsmen made a square above the crack to stop it growing longer and it can still be seen today.

The Big Ben is famous not only for its 13-ton weight, but also for its accuracy(准确性) which is a result of its precise mechanism(机械装置). Even one extra penny's weight on the balance will cause a gain of two fifths of a second in twenty-four hours. Although there have been several problems, the bell is still striking today. Its chimes can be heard all over the world on the B. B. C.

Books have tremendous power. Between their pages, readers can be transported to anywhere imaginable and become just about anyone or anything. Unfortunately, many children all over the world don't have access to books. For several years now, Maria Keller, a 14-year-old girl from Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been changing that fact.

When she was 8 years old, Maria already loved reading. She also noticed that some of her classmates didn't read as much as she did. When she asked her mother why that could be, her mother said that they might not be able to afford books. Maria had never thought of this. She could not believe that some children might not have bedtime stories read to them. She became determined to change this.

With her mother's help, Maria created Read Indeed. Read Indeed is a non-profit organization aiming to collect and distribute(分发) books to children in need. During the early stages of Read Indeed, Maria set the goal to collect and distribute 1 million books by the time she was 18. It didn't take long to reach that goal.

Today, at age 14, she has collected over 1.8 million books and has shipped them to many states and countries around the world. She says, "I cannot live without books. As I continue my mission, I have learned that the number of kids who have no books are in the hundreds of millions. So I just can't give up, even after reaching my original goal of 1 million books distributed."

She recently set a new goal: to distribute donations to kids in need in every state in the United States, and every country in the world. She keeps track of her progress on a large map at the warehouse(仓库) where they store and sort books. Maria believes that she can get support from even more people and help kids around the world to become better readers!