As a little child, I was always plump（胖的）. In college I started blowing up. It got out of control when l went to law school.

    I'd made a decision a thousand times: I'm going to lose weight now. But what motivated（激发） me to get serious about it was turning 30.1 weighed 414 pounds.1 was always tired. Some of my family members have suffered from heart disease, and l was frightened. I also wanted to look better.

    So after my birthday, I walked into the office of a weight loss doctor.

    She was very understanding. Her focus was on balanced meals and she wanted me to exercise.

    Walking was all I could do at first. I started by walking a few blocks and gradually increased the distance, until one weekend, I heard myself saying, "Wow, this seems pretty easy." So I started to run.

    I was losing nine or ten pounds a month, and I had more energy. I started to think about the New York City Marathon. For years, I watched the runners and thought, "This looks like fun, but I could never do that." But now I realized that maybe I could. I joined the New York Road Runners. I ran a 10km, then a half marathon.I still wasn't confident I could run a full 26 miles. But I told myself I was going to do it, no matter what.

    By my 33rd birthday, I was down to 180 pounds. I started formally training for the marathon.

    And on the morning of November l, I stood on the Verrazano Bridge in Staten Island with more than 40,000 0ther runners, waiting for the event to start.

    It was unbelievable to have the audience cheering me on, handing me cups of water. And I crossed the finish line. My friends sprayed（向……喷射）me with beer, as if I'd won the Super Bowl.

    And at that moment, I knew: If I set my mind to something, nothing is impossible.

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    Have you ever been to the world's smallest bookstore?

    The World's Smallest Bookstore, whose official name is just these three words, sits quietly about 100 miles northeast of Toronto.

    The bookstore is about 10 feet by 10 feet，so it is easy to imagine how tiny it really is. The bookstore is open 24 hours a day. Inside the bookstore are various books, especially literary books and classic authors' works. So if you are looking for something less popular, you may get a bit disappointed there.

Another special feature of this bookstore is that each book only costs three dollars. All the expenses are paid on the honor system, which means buyers should make a note of what they've bought and leave their money by themselves. So the tools of the trade in this bookstore are quite simple: pens, papers, light bulbs and a label-maker.

    In order to catch passers-by's attention, the billboards (广告牌) of the bookstore are several times bigger than the store itself. With these large eye-catchers, many people are willing to stop by and have a visit.

The American Bystander

    On a humid subway ride into work a few days ago, a woman on the other end of my car had a seizure (病情突然发作). All of a sudden, I heard her let out a painful sigh as she collapsed. For several minutes, the train continued down the track, and everyone in the car just stared at the woman. Finally, at the next stop a man informed the operator of what had happened and called 911. Luckily the woman came to herself as the EMTs carried her off the train. Ever since, I've been puzzled by the same question — why didn't anyone do anything? And more importantly, why didn't I do anything?

    We've learned about the commonly referenced bystander effect—a psychological phenomenon in which individuals will avoid offering help to a person in need when other people are present. The bystander effect is attributed to two different psychological processes: social influence—individuals in a group will monitor and imitate other group members' behavior—and shift of responsibility—individuals will cease to help because they believe that someone else will.

    Even though most people probably haven't witnessed a woman having a seizure on the subway, I'm sure if asked, anyone could think of a time when they could have helped and simply didn't. In fact, I know that we have all experienced the bystander effect, because I believe it is one of American society's most common headaches.

    Anyone who follows the news can tell you that most of what we hear or read about these days is another death or another hate crime committed right in our own country. Consider the most recent theatre shooting in Nashville. The headlines read Another Theatre Shooting, Gunman is dead. When we read that headline or heard it on the news, most of us just acknowledged how sad it was, then told ourselves that there is nothing we can do to help and assumed that someone else would.

    If America is just one large group of witnesses, all while telling ourselves that someone else most certainly will step in, how can we hope to shake the hold of this social psychological spell? The solution lies solely within us, to know the difference between doing what is justifiable and doing what is right, helping those in need when we have the means and opportunity to do so.

    I want to be like the man on the subway who told the operator about the woman's seizure, because as soon as he did, people followed suit and offered help. We have the power to choose whether to justify passivity or actively decide to do the right thing, and as a society I believe we ought to break free from our psychological tendency to just stand by.

    In a world with limited land, water and other natural resources (资源), the harm from the traditional business model is on the rise. Actually, the past decades has seen more and more forests disappearing and globe becoming increasingly warm. People now realize that this unhealthy situation must be changed, and that we must be able to develop in sustainable (可持续的) ways. That means growth with low carbon(低碳) or development of sustainable products. In other words, we should keep the earth healthy while using its supply of natural resources.

    Today, sustainable development is a proper trend in many countries. According to a recent study, the global market for low-carbon energy will become three times bigger over the next decades. China, for example, has set its mind on leading that market, hoping to seize chances in the new round of the global energy revolution. It is now trying hard to make full use of wind and solar energy, and is spending a huge amount of money making electric cars and high-speed trains. In addition, we are also seeing great growth in the global markets for sustainable products such as palm oil (棕榈油)， which is produced without cutting down valuable rainforest. In recent years the markets for sustainable products have grown by more than 50%.

    Governments can fully develop the potential of these new markets. First, they can set high targets for reducing carbon emissions (排放) and targets for saving and reusing energy. Besides, stronger arrangement of public resources like forests can also help to speed up the development. Finally, governments can avoid the huge expenses that are taking us in the wrong direction, and redirecting some of those expenses can accelerate the change from traditional model to a sustainable one.

    The major challenge of this century is to find ways to meet the needs of growing population within the limits in this single planet. That is no small task, but it offers abundant new chances for sustainable product industries.

    (CNN) — A 12 -year-old girl who had a feeling that she might be quite clever has taken a test and proved she was absolutely right.

    Lydia Sebastian achieved the top score of 162 on Mensa's Cattell III B paper, showing she has a higher IQ than well-known geniuses Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. The comparison doesn't sit well with the British student, who's currently in Year 8 at a selective girl's grammar school in Essex, England.

    "I don't think I can be compared to such great intellectuals as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. They've achieved so much. I don't think it's right," Lydia told CNN.

To explain Lydia's mark's level, the top adult score in the Cattell III B test, which mainly tests verbal(语言) reasoning, is 161. A top 2% score — which allows entry to Mensa, the club for those with high IQs — would be 148 or over. Lydia scored 162, placing her in the top 1% of the population.

    Lydia's not quite sure what she wants to do when she leaves school, although she's leaning toward something "based on Maths, because it's one of my favorite subjects." "All I'm going to do is work as hard as I can, and see where that gets me," she said.

    As a little girl growing up in the early 1960s in a suburb of Pittsburgh, it was not always easy to find role models. But I was lucky. In my childhood, I knew smart, strong women who had accomplished much, one of whom invented the world's first computer compiler (编译器).

    Recently, though, I learned about a role model who was right under my nose—my own mother.

    Growing up, I knew she had worked as a secretary before I was born. I knew that she had joined the WAVES—the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve (海军预备队)—during World War Ⅱ. And I knew she'd worked in an office that was involved with codes (编码). But when she talked about it—rare, because she had been sworn to secrecy—she described her duties as ordinary, routine. I never questioned it. After all, the woman I knew was a reserved suburban mom.

    Not long ago, a chance conversation with a colleague led me to the book, Code Girls. It tells the story of the WAVES, who decrypted (解码) and encrypted secret messages during the war. They worked around the clock, knowing that the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers—their brothers, husbands, fathers—were on the line.

    Inspired, I began a journey to explore the mystery of my mother's service that continues to this day. I got some of her working records about her unit, OP19. In two years, she was promoted three times. She was no secretary, and her duties were hardly ordinary.

    My mother always encouraged my interest in science and insisted to my father that I go to college. “You're going to grow up to be another Madame Curie,” she told me. She was always pointing at other women. She did not see herself as someone to model on. Neither did I. Now I see her differently.