Annie slept in the front of the seat with her father drove through the darkness. ”We're almost there!” Dad announced cheerfully. “Soonwell be observing and counting owls at the state park.” Yawning, Annie nodded and smiled. The time was 4:30 a.m. Looking out into the darkness, Annie remembered learning in school that most owls are active at night, when they hunt for food. During the day they sleep in hard-to-find spots.

  “Dad, why do you need to count owls?” she asked. “It's important for the scientists to have current information about bird populations,” he explained. “We want to know which birds have decreased in number and whether any new kinds of birds are coming into a certain area. You and I will write down the kinds of birds that we see today and keep a record of how many times we see each kind. The we'll send out a report to a scientific organization that is collecting about birds from people all over the county.”

    Dad pulled into the parking lot of the state park. Then, with flashing in hand, they began their hike into the woods. Annie zipped up her coat and tried to keep from trembling. She had not expected the morning to be so frigid. Luckily her gloves were in her pocket.

    Suddenly Annie's father stooped and gestured for her to bestill. Obeying, Annie did not take another step. She thought she heard a low crying up head. “That's certainly a screech owl,” her father whispered. “Let's get a look at it.” After looking more closely, Annie could see that it was asmall owl. Sensing danger, the owl narrowed its eyes and pulled its feathers tightly against its body. Annie carefully wrote down in her notebook that they had seen a screech owl.

    Walking a little farther, they came to a tall oak tree. “This looks like a perfect spot to attract owls,” Dad said. “I'm going to play a recording of common call of the barred owl. Maybe we can get one to answer." Annie could hardly believe her ear. The recorded all sounded as if the birds were asking, “who cooks for you?” Moments later Annie thought she heard areturn call in distance. She held her breath and waited. Suddenly a huge birdlanded very quietly on a branch above them.

    Annie had long forgotten how cold it was. She stood in wonder, shining her flashlight on the bird and studying it carefully. The barred owl was nearly tow feet tall. Gray feathers surrounded its dark eyes. The bird did not matter. Annie would never forge the image of the powerful barred owl.

It is hardly surprising that clothing manufacturers(生产商) follow certain uniform standards for different features of clothes. What seems strange, however, is that the standard used for women is the opposite of the one for men. Take a look at the way your clothes button. Men's clothes tend to button from the right, and women's from the left. Considering most of the world's population—men and women—are right-handed, the men's standard would appear to make more sense（更有道理） for women. So why do women's clothes button from the left?

    History really seems to matter here. Buttons first appeared only on the clothes of the rich in the 17th century, when rich women were dressed by servants. For the mostly right-handed servants, having women's shirts button from the left would be easier. On the other hand, having men's shirts button from the right made sense, too. Most men dressed themselves, and a sword（剑） drawn from the left with the right hand would be less likely to get caught in the shirt.

    Today women are seldom dressed by servants, but buttoning from the left is still the standard for them. Is it interesting? Actually, a standard, once it is set, resists change. At a time when all women's shirts buttoned from the left, it would have been risky for any single manufacturer to offer women's shirts that buttoned from the right. After all, women had grown so used to shirts which buttoned from the left and would have to develop new habits and skills to switch. Besides, some women might have found it socially awkward to appear in public wearing shirts that buttoned from the right, since anyone who noticed that would believe they were wearing men's shirts.

    There is a lot to learn about the creations of Beatrix Potter—not only is she the author of one of the world's most famous children 's books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit ,but also a pioneering conservationist(自然资源保护论者) with the spirit of a scientist.

    “Potter grew up as the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family, but along with her brother who filled an entire floor of their large house in London with all sorts of animals, which contributed a lot to her works,” said Anne Lundin, a retired professor for the UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies.

    “As an adult, she was a frustrated botanical scientist. That field was not open to her because she was female,” Lundin said. Potter was urged to turn the charming stories she wrote in letters to children into books. She wrote 23 books in all--a body of work that has inspired plays, ballets, films and an astonishing amount of merchandise.

    “The Tule of Peter Rabbit is probably the most famous children's book in the world, which was published in 1902 and has really stood the test of time. It's been translated into 36 languages. The parents and grandparents will share it with the next generation,” said Lundin.

    Potter also made a mark on the world through her land conservation.“In many ways, she was like Peter Rabbit, risking into a world of adventure. She withdrew from London as soon as she started making some money on her books to the Lake District and became an extremely important farmer and conservationist. She preserved and passed on 15 farms and over 4,000 acres, which were given back to the country as gifts in the 20th century,” said Lundin.

    Even though she was born 150 years ago, she was amazingly modern--her embracing of the natural world, commented Jennifer Blatchley Smith, an artistic director of the show Peter Rabbit Tales to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Potter's birth.

    It was the summer of 1965. DeLuca, then 17, visited Peter Buck, a family friend. Buck asked DeLuca about his plans for the future. “I'm going to college, but I need a way to pay for it,” DeLuca recalls saying. “Buck said, 'You should open a sandwich shop.' ”

    That afternoon, they agreed to be partners. And they set a goal: to open 32 stores in ten years. After doing some research, Buck wrote a check for $1000. DeLuca rented a storefront(店面) in Connecticut, and when they couldn't cover their start-up costs, Buck kicked in another $1000.

    But business didn't go smoothly as they expected. DeLuca says, “After six months, we were doing poorly, but we didn't know how badly, because we didn't have any financial controls.” All he and Buck knew was that their sales were lower than their costs.

    DeLuca was managing the store and going to the University of Bridgeport at the same time. Buck was working at his day job as a nuclear physicist in New York. They'd meet Monday evenings and brainstorm ideas for keeping the business running. “We convinced ourselves to open a second store. We figured we could tell the public, 'We are so successful, we are opening a second store.' ” And they did—in the spring of 1966. Still, it was a lot of learning by trial and error.

    But the partners' learn-as-you-go approach turned out to be their greatest strength. Every Friday, DeLuca would drive around and hand-deliver the checks to pay their suppliers. “It probably took me two and a half hours and it wasn't necessary, but as a result, the suppliers got to know me very well, and the personal relationships established really helped out,” DeLuca says.

    And having a goal was also important. “There are so many problems that can get you down. You just have to keep working toward your goal,” DeLuca adds.

    DeLuca ended up founding Subway Sandwich, the multimillion-dollar restaurant chain.

    Airbags, now found in almost every vehicle, have saved countless lives and largely reduced the severity of injuries in crashes. Similar technology could greatly reduce broken hips (髋部) resulting from a fall, something most seniors fear.

    Dr. Robert Buckman and his start-up company, Active Protective in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has developed a promising solution, a wearable airbag that can protect hip bones in the event of a fall. The idea was the result of Dr. Buckman's years as a doctor at Temple University. He noticed how many elderly people were being brought into hospitals with broken hip due to falls, and how they often never completely recovered from the injuries. He started to ask what he could do for these people, and that was when he started trying to figure out whether there was a way of helping people who were at the highest risk of falling and suffering these kinds of injuries.

    The device is worn much like a regular belt, but on the outside of the clothing, and it includes sensors that monitor the movement of hips. If the device detects that the person, is falling, an airbag opens before the person hits the ground, cushioning the fall. When the wearer hits the ground, the bag reduces the force to the hip bones by 90 percent, enough to avoid the majority of hip injuries.

    With one out of every three people aged 65 and older suffering serious falls each year, Active Protective has a big market for its wearable device. It also has the potential to sizably reduce hip - related health care expenses: Hip injuries among the elderly cost the US health care system in 2012 $30 billion, which doesn't include the long-term care expenses associated with the high percentage of patients that can no longer live independently.

    People love cellphones, which is why nine in ten Americans own one. But does heavy use of cellphones pose a risk of cancer? This question has caused controversy for many years. A new study in rats now augments those concerns. Its data linked long-term, intense exposure to radiation from cellphones with an increased risk of cancer in the heart or brain. The results have yet to be confirmed, the authors note.

    Indeed, although the rat study found a link between cellphone radiation and cancer, it offers no clues to why such a link might exist, notes Jonathan Samet. He teaches preventative medicine and directs the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Still, he calls the new study's findings “significant”.They could lead to studies researching how cellphone radiation might cause cancer, he says.

    Phone signals are relayed between cell towers and cellphones via radio waves. This radio frequency—or RF—radiation is a type known as non-ionizing (非电离的).Unlike X-rays, non-ionizing radiation does not deposit enough energy into cells to release electrons from atoms or molecules, producing ions. So it tends to be far less harmful than ionizing radiation, such as X-rays. But that does not mean radio waves might not cause harm.

    In very large doses (量) this radiation will heat the body and cause tissue damage. But it's not yet known what much lower RF levels might do, such as those from cellphone use. Five years ago, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, concluded that cellphone use “is possibly carcinogenic (致癌的)”.

    Its conclusion was based on what little research data was available at that time. But notice that IARC was not certain. It said only that phone use might “possibly” cause cancer. So scientists at the National Toxicology Program, or NTP, investigated further.