How cool can libraries be in an era of iPods and Kindles? Morethan you think．Only if youknow where to go.

Central Library: Seattle, Washington, United States

The Central Library in Seattle is modern and fashionable and hastourists from around the world paying visits and taking tours. It was designedby Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and American designer Joshua Ramus. Tours beganin 2006, two years after its opening. The library holds various artexhibitions, book signings and other events, while visitors can stop by theChocolate cart for a coffee and scan through the gift shop anytime.

Trinity College Library: Dublin, Ireland

The Trinity College Library in Dublin is the oldest library inIreland, founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. It is the largest single libraryin the world, also known as the Long Room, which contains more than 200,000 ofthe library's oldest books. The Long Room houses one of the oldest harps（竖琴）in Ireland.Dating to the 15th century, the old harp is the model for the symbol foreland.

Geisel Library, University of California: San Diego, UnitedStates

At first glance, it looks like a spaceship. Architect WilliamPereira, who helped design actual space launch facilities at Cape Canaveral inHouston, Texas, designed the library in 1970. It has been featured in sci-fifilms, short stories and novels. The library hosts “Dinner in the Library,”which invites readers for cocktails, and also a special speech fromdistinguished authors．

TU Delft Library: The Netherlands

The library at the Delft University of Technology wasconstructed in 1997 and has more than 862,000 books, 16,000 magazinesubscriptions and its own museum．The buildingitself exists beneath the ground, so you can't really see the actual Library.What makes it interesting is the roof, which is a grassy hill. The roof covers5,500 square meters. And it has become one of the most striking and greeneststructures in the area.

    The universe looks like a pretty quiet place to live. But the universe is filled with dangerous things, all struggling to be the one to wipe us off the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely, but if you wait long enough, one of them is certain to get us. But which one?

1). Death by Asteroid (小行星)

    Of all the ways we might meet our untimely death, getting wiped out by an asteroid is the most likely. Why? Because we sit in a universal shooting gallery, with 100 tons of material hitting us every day. The problem, though, occurs every few centuries when something big this way comes. If you could ask a dinosaur, I'd imagine they would tell you to take this seriously.

2). Death by Exploding Star

    When a huge star ends its life, it does so with a bang, which sends death spreading across space in the form of high-energy radiation. Many studies show that the bang would have to be closer than about 75 light years to do us any harm. The good news: no stars so close are able to do the deed.

3). Death by Dying Sun

    The sun is important to us; without it, we'd freeze. But the sun is also middle-aged, already halfway to running out of fuel, expanding into a red giant, and cooking us to a fine crisp. Even long before then, it'll warm up enough to raise our average temperature and cause a runaway greenhouse effect, boiling our oceans. Happily, that's a long time from now.

4). Death by Black Hole

    Black holes are misunderstood. They don't wander the galaxy looking for tasty snacks in the form of planets and stars; they turn around the Milky Way just like the hundreds of billions of other stars do. But it's possible that one could wander too close to us. If it did, planetary paths would be disturbed, causing the Earth to drop into the sun or be thrown out into deep space.

    Given that it could be trillions of years or more before even that happens, we don't have to worry too much about black holes.

    My advice? Go outside, look up, enjoy the sun, the moon, and the stars. They may be there forever as far as any one of us is concerned...and forever is a long, long time.

    Some things should just be common knowledge by now. The Earth isn't flat. Nope, your hair and nails don't grow after you die. The holes at the top of Bic biro pens are there so that, if you swallow one accidentally, you can still breathe and won't choke to death. It's debatable whether that last one there is common knowledge or not. A quick Google search of the fact, rewritten as a question, shows articles addressing this point going back several years, with the latest (re)appearing just this week over on ScienceAlert. We suppose it's one of those things that come up from time to time, like what would happen if you attack Yellowstone with a nuclear weapon (not much, as it turns out).

    If you jump over to Bic's website, under their FAQs (frequently asked questions), it quite clearly states: "The reason that some BIC® pens have a hole in their cap is to prevent the cap from completely obstructing the airway if accidentally breathed in. This is requested by the international safety standards ISO11540, except for in cases where the cap is considered too large to be a choking risk."

    That's rather lovely of them. In appreciation of their want to not kill off their more clumsy customers, we thought we'd share a few more random facts about Bic that are probably going to come up in a pub quiz one day. Did you know, for example, that each Bic ballpoint pen can produce at least 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of ink before it begins to run out? In fact, in 2018, 7,250 kilometers (4,505 miles) of writing tests on such pens were carried out on ballpoint pens, gel pens(中性笔), and rollers to make sure they worked to the highest standard.

    The best part of the Bic site, however, is this rather curious fact: "100 percent of pen balls are made through a highly-controlled process." As opposed to a highly uncontrolled process, involving explosions and bouncy castles and total chaos, we suppose.

Every year, thousands of teenagers participate in programs at their local art museums. But do any of them remember their time at museum events later in life? A new report suggests that the answer is yes--and finds that arts-based museum programs are credited with changing the course of alumni's（毕业生的） lives, even years after the fact. 

The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles recently asked researchers to conduct à study to find out how effective their long-standing teen art programs really are. They involved over 300 former participants of four programs for teens that have been in existence since the 1990s. Alumni, whose current ages range from 18 to 36, were invited to find out how they viewed their participation years after the fact. 

Among the alumni surveyed, 75 percent of them thought the teen art program experience had the most favorable impact on their own lives, beating the family, school and their neighborhoods. Nearly 55 percent thought that it was one of the most important experiences they had ever had, regardless of age. And two-thirds said that they were often in situations where their experience in museums affected their actions or thoughts. 

It turns out that participating in art programs also helps keep teens keen about culture even after they reach adulthood: Ninety-six percent of participants had visited an art museum within the last two years, and 68 percent had visited an art museum five or more times within the last two years. Thirty-two percent of alumni work in the arts as adults. 

Though the study is the first of its kind to explore the impact of teen-specific art programs in museums, it reflects other research on the important benefits of engaging with the arts. A decade of surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts found that the childhood experience with the arts is significantly associated with people's income and educational achievements as adults. Other studies have linked arts education to everything from lower dropout rates to improvement in critical thinking skills. 

Rolland and Adeline are proud parents to nine beautiful children. Their youngest two, daughter Lanto, and son, Rindra, were both born with cleft lip（唇裂） conditions. In Madagascar, many families have never seen a cleft lip before, so it's a condition often greeted with fear and misfortune in some rural communities.

However, the news of Lanto and Rindra's cleft lip wasn't much of a shock for Rolland and Adeline because Rolland's cousin—a man in his fifties—had lived his entire adult life with an untreated cleft lip. Although seeing a relative with a cleft lip meant the family weren't fearful of the condition, they knew the negative impact an untreated cleft lip can have on a person's health and life. As any loving parents would, Rolland and Adeline wanted a better future for their children.

Rolland heard an advertisement on the radio about an Operation Smile surgical programme in Antsirabe, Madagascar. Finding out that Rindra and Lanto could have the cleft lip surgery they needed, for free, was a dream for the family. Unlike here in the UK, health services aren't free in many parts of the world, and the costs of treatment—or even travelling to reach medical facilities—are out of reach for most families.

When Rolland and his children arrived at the patient village, they were surprised to see so many other families in the same position. After a thorough medical evaluation by medical volunteers, Lanto was found to be fit enough for surgery, and later got the new smile her parents had dreamed of for her. But, for younger brother Rindra, the journey to a new smile would take a little longer.

Operation Smile has provided hundreds of thousands of safe surgeries for children withc left lip conditions worldwide. For more information about our work or to find out how you can help, visitwww.operationsmile.org .

It's 4:30 in the morning. Behind a forest, the sun begins to lighten the sky with bright and warm tones. The national bird of Honduras, scarlet macaws （红金刚鹦鹉）, which have colorful feathers, groom （理毛） each other as they wait for Anayda Pantin Lopez who has devoted the last 12 years to protecting them.

Pantin and her husband, Santiago Lacuth Montoya, live in a small village called Mabita, where most of its villagers protect these birds and the rest of the wildlife surrounding them. Twice a day, Pantin prepares food for 40 to 60 scarlet macaws that come to her village for feedings. She also cares for several other birds at a rescue center, or chicks that fall down from their nests, until they can fly freely.

Years ago, Lacuth supported the family by selling macaw eggs and chicks as pets — not realizing it would have a detrimental impact on the bird population. At that time, the hunting and sale of wild species was legal and thousands of scarlet macaws disappeared.

However, when Lacuth learned the number of scarlet macaws was sharply decreasing, he decided to become a guardian of them. He tried to convince other hunters to follow in his footsteps. Eventually, other Mabita residents joined Lacuth and Pantin's efforts. "For many years the scarlet macaws helped me provide for my family. Now it was my turn to help them," Lacuth said.

"The Mabita project is very impressive because of the commitment of Pantin and Lacuth and the entire community," says LoraKim Joyner. founder of One Earth Conservation. In 2014, additional funds came from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and England's Darwin Foundation stepped in to support the conservation and community engagement efforts.

Since the project began, the scarlet macaw population has grown from 500 to more than 800. "Now we have seen that the number of these birds has increased," said Pantin. "But that does not change our goal, which is to continue caring for them so that our children and grandchildren can have the opportunity to enjoy everything that nature gives us."