Experiments under way in several labs aim to create beneficial types of genetically modified foods, including starchier potatoes and caffeine-free coffee beans. Genetic engineers are even trying to transfer genes from a cold-winter fish to make a frost-resistant tomato.

    A low-sugar GM strawberry now in the works might one day allow people with health problems such as diabetes (糖尿病) to enjoy the little delicious red fruits again. GM beans and grains rich in protein(蛋白质) might help people at risk of developing kwashiorkor. Kwashiorkor, a disease caused by severe lack of protein, is common in parts of the world where there are severe food shortages.

    Commenting on GM foods, Jonathon Jones, a British researcher, said: "The future benefits will be enormous（巨大的）, and the best is yet to come". To some people, GM foods are no different from unmodified foods. "A tomato is a tomato," said Brian Sansoni, an American food manufacturer.

    Critics of GM foods challenge Sansoni's opinion. They worry about the harm that GM crops might do to people, other animals, and plants.

    In a recent lab study conducted at Cornell University, scientists tested pollen(花粉) made by BT corn, which makes up one-fourth of the U.S. corn crop. The scientist dropped the pollen onto milkweed, a plant that is the only known food source of a butterfly caterpillar(毛虫). Within four days of feeding on the leaves, almost half of a test group of caterpillars died. "This is a warning bell." said Cornell researcher Linda Raynor.

    Some insects that are not killed by GM foods might find themselves made stronger. How so? The insecticides are used on the crops to kill the pests. But GM plants produce a continuous level of insecticide. Insects relying on those crops may develop resistance to the plants and they may also develop a resistance to the insecticide.

    At the forum on GM food held last year in Canada. GM crops that have been made resistant to the herbicide might crossbreed with wild plants, creating "superweeds" that could take over whole fields.

    So where do you stand? Should GM food be banned in the United States, as they are in parts of Europe? Or do their benefits outweigh（胜过） any of the risks they might carry?

    One of my first memories as a child in the 1950s was a discussion I had with my brother in our tiny bedroom in the family house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

    We had heard in school about a planet called Pluto. It was the farthest, coldest, and darkest thing a child could imagine. We guessed how long it would take to die if we stood on the surface of such a frozen place wearing only the clothes we had on. We tried to figure out how much colder Pluto was than Antarctica, or than the coldest day we had ever experienced in Pennsylvania.

    Pluto, which famously was downgraded from a “major planet” to a “dwarf planet”（矮星） in 2006, captured our imagination because it was a mystery that could complete our picture of what it was like at the most remote corners of our solar system.

    Pluto's underdog discovery story is part of what makes it so attractive. Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farm boy who built telescopes out of spare auto parts, old farm equipment and self-ground lenses. As an assistant at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Tombaugh's task was to search millions of stars for a moving point of light, a planet that the observatory's founder thought existed beyond the orbit of Neptune. On February 18，1930，Tombaugh found it. Pluto was the first planet discovered by an American, and represented a moment of light in the midst of the Great Depression's dark encroachment (入侵).

    Pluto is much more than something that is not a planet. It's a reminder that there are many worlds out there beyond our own and that the sky isn't the limit at all. We don't know what kinds of fantastic variations on a theme nature is capable of making until we get there to look.

    YOUR mom might cook a bowl of noodles for you on your birthday. But in the US, a mom makes a cupcake for her children on their birthday.

    Cupcakes are small, round cakes topped with frosting (糖霜). It has been an American tradition that moms bring cupcakes to the classroom to celebrate their child's birthday. But recently some doctors have called for this to be banned. They believe cupcakes contribute to child obesity. Despite their good intentions, however, some people believe that experts are interfering (妨碍) with American culture. The cupcake is seen as American as apple pie — only prettier.

    According to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, the cupcake is the most democratic (民主的) of desserts. As they are small enough for one person, you don't have to share your cupcake with anyone — it's all yours. They are also all of the same size, so there can't be any cries of  “she got the bigger piece!”

    Each bite can taste different depending on how much icing you have. It is a lesson in self-determination. Some people eat only a little of the frosting every time, others have it all in just one bite.

    In recent years, eating a cupcake has become as trendy as having a cup of Starbucks coffee.

    Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jokingly promised on a talk show that if she was elected president, she would give everyone a cupcake on her birthday. Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, explains that the rise of the cupcake is very much about going back to American national identity in food, which is all about comfort. “People want to think about when they and their country were innocent,” she said.

    I was wandering around the Albuquerque International Support airport. My flight had been delayed and I heard an announcement: “If anyone near Gate A-4 understands Arabic（阿拉伯语）, please come to the gate immediately.” Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

    An older woman was crumpled（蜷缩成一团的）on the floor, crying loud. In her traditional Palestinian dress, she reminded me of my grandmother.

    “Talk to her,” urged the flight agent. “We told her the flight was going to be late, and she did this.”

    I bent over to put my arm around the woman and spoke uncertainly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stanischway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” She stopped crying. She thought the flight had been called off. She needed to be in El Paso for a medical treatment the next day. I said, “You'll get there, just late. Who is picking you up? Let's call him.”

    We called her son. In English, I told him that I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane. She talked with him. Then we called her other sons just for fun. Then we called my dad and they spoke for a while in Arabic and found out that they had several shared friends. After that, I called some Palestinian poets I knew and let them chat with her.

She was, laughing a lot but then, patting my knee and answering questions. She pulled a bag of homemade cookies filled with dates and nuts and topped with sugar from her bag and offered them to the people at the gate. To my amazement, no one declined. It was like a sacrament（圣餐）. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo— We were all smiling, covered with the same sugar.

    I looked around the gate and thought. This is the world I want to live in, one with no anxiety. This can still happen anywhere, I thought. Not everything is lost.

    Earthquakes happen without warning(前兆). They can happen any time of a day, at any point during the year. But don't worry because most are so weak that they cannot be felt. Only a few big ones hurt people. However, it's important to know what to do when an earthquake is happening.

    Do NOT go outside. You could get injured from falling glass or parts of buildings. If you are outside, stay away from buildings and power lines (输电线).

    Stay under a desk, table, or other strong furniture. Hold on to it. Or stay in a corner of the building. Cover your face and head with your arms and cover your mouth with a towel or clothing. Stay inside until shaking stops and it is safe to go outside.

    Keep away from windows, pictures or advertisements on the wall or the building, and anything else that could fall and hurt you. Most people get injured by falling things during an earthquake, not by the shaking itself.

    Also keep away from a fire. You could fall down and burn yourself on the fire.

    If you are driving when an earthquake happens, stop the car if it's safe. Stay inside your car until the earthquake stops, and don't drive near bridges. Try not to stop by power lines or trees. These could fall and hurt you.

    When Oliver Sacks, 82, died on Aug 30 at his home in New York City, the world was saddened by the loss of a brilliant neurologist (神经学者)and a truly beautiful mind.

     London-born Sacks was most famous for his writing. A Forbes obituary (讣告)calls him "one of the greatest writers of science of the past 50 years. Maybe the greatest".

    In his best-selling 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife far a Hat, Sacks described man who could not tell the difference between his wife's face and his hat, because his brain had difficulty telling what he saw.

    In 2006, Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time, declaring, "Lots of neuroscientists now looking into the mysteries of the human brain cite (列举)this book as their greatest inspiration."

     His 1973 book. Awakenings, is about a group of patients who were frozen in a decades-long sleep until Sacks tried a new treatment The book led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks by Robin Williams. It was nominated (提名)for Academy Awards.

    Another book. An Anthropologist on Man、published in 1995, described cases like that of a painter who lost his color vision in a car accident but found new creative power in black-and-white images. Sacks also wrote the story of 50-year-old man who suddenly regained sight after nearly a lifetime of blindness. The experience was a disaster. The man's brain could not make sense of the visual world. After a full and rich life as a blind person, he became "a very disabled and miserable (悲惨的）sighted man," Sacks wrote. "When he went blind again, he was rather glad of it."

    Despite the drama and unusual stories. Sacks' books were not meant to be freak shows. "Oliver Sacks humanizes illness…he writes of body and mind, and from every one of his case studies there shows a feeling of respect for the patient and for the illness," Roald Hoffinann, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, said in 2001.

     When Sacks received the Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing in 2002, the citation (荣誉状)declare, "presses us to follow him into unknown areas of human experience and forces us to realize, once there, that we are facing only oureclves."