I had to knock on the taxi to get his attention. Finally, the driver, a man about 60, looked up from behind the wheel and apologized, “I'm sorry, but I was reading a letter.” He sounded as if he had a cold or a cough.

    Since I was in no hurry, I told him to finish his letter. He shook his head, explaining that he had already read it several times and almost knew it by heart. Curious, I asked whether it was from a child or maybe a grandchild. “This isn't family,” he replied. “though he might just as well have been a regular member of the family. Old Ed and I grew up together.”

    They were always friends. But since he moved away from the neighborhood 30 years ago, it'd generally just been postcards at Christmas time between them. A couple of weeks ago, Ed died. “I should have kept in touch.” He repeated this, more to himself than to me. To comfort him, I said sometimes we just didn't seem to find the time. “But we used to find the time,” he said. “Take a look.” He handed the letter over to me.

    The first sentence “I've been meaning to write for some time, but I've always delayed it.” reminded me of myself. It went on to say that he often thought about the good times they had had together. When I read the part where it said “Your friendship really means a lot to me, more than I can say because I'm not good at saying things like that”, I found myself nodding in agreement.

    We had gone several kilometers and were almost at my hotel, so I read the last paragraph: “So I thought you'd like to know that I was thinking of you.” And it was ended with “Your Old Friend, Tom.”

    “I thought your friend's name was Ed,” I said.

    “I'm Tom,” he explained. “It's a letter I wrote to Ed before I knew he'd died. I never put it in the mailbox. I guess I should have written it sooner.” His face was pale as he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

    When I got to my hotel room I didn't unpack right away. I had to write a letter and post it.

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    If you want to slow aging, you might want to eat less. This finding is good news—if you were a mouse. The researchers studied mice, not people.

    John Price and other researchers studied two groups of mice. One group was able to eat as much as it wanted. The researchers limited what the mice in the other group ate. Their diet had 35 percent fewer calories than the first group of mice.

    Price says the mice with the diet restrictions were “more energetic and suffered fewer diseases.” They were not just living longer but seemed to stay younger for a longer period of time.

    The researchers found that fewer calories slow down a natural mechanism in cells called ribosomes. Price explains that ribosomes are responsible for making important proteins in the cells. But with fewer calories, they slow down. This gives the cells more time to repair themselves.

    The researchers say ribosomes use from 10 to 20 percent of the cell's energy to make those proteins. Price wrote that “because of this, it is impractical to destroy an entire ribosome” when it starts to break down. However, “repairing individual parts of the ribosome on a regular basis enables ribosomes to continue producing high quality proteins for longer than they would otherwise. This top quality production, in turn, keeps cells and the entire body functioning well.”

    Price said, “ribosome is a very complex machine, like a car.” They need “maintenance to replace the parts that wear out the fastest. When tires wear out,” he explained, “you don't throw the whole car away and buy a new one. It costs less to replace the old tires.”

    “Food,” he said, “isn't just material to be burned—it's a signal that tells our body and cells how to respond.” Price said the findings help to explain how exactly our bodies age. And this may “help us make more educated decisions about what we eat.”

    One morning, my newspaper wasn't delivered on time. Since I always brought it to work, it upset me that I would have to pick one up on my way to work. After breakfast, I was already running late, but figured I could make it if I hurried.

    As I pulled into the parking lot of the store, I noticed a young man in a wheelchair who seemed to be struggling. “Someone else will stop and help him,” I thought.

    However, no one stopped. I got out, and walked over to see what the trouble was.

    “Is there anything I can do?” I asked. It was then that I noticed he wasn't able to speak, and was still struggling with the chair.

    I looked down at the chair and noticed that the clamps (夹具) holding the electronic keyboard had apparently become loose causing the equipment to slip down, out of his reach.

    I pulled it back into place and then re-tightened the clamps. He hit a key on the keyboard. An electronic voice told me, “Thank you.” He then found the control that steered (操纵) the chair, turned and left.

    I got back in my car and headed off to work, completely forgetting my newspaper. As I drove, I felt a deep gratitude (感激). I was truly blessed to have the physical abilities that allow me to live a normal life. Here was this young man who relied on machines to get around and communicate. He probably dreamed about doing all the things that I thought were normal and simple.

    It's funny; fifteen minutes before that happened, I was whining because my morning paper hadn't arrived on time. I was glad I helped the young man, because he helped me gain a new viewpoint on everything I had in my life.

    Binge-watching (刷剧) is when a person watches more than one episode of a TV show one after another. With developments in the speed and connectivity of the Internet, increases in technology and the rise of on-demand entertainment companies, people can now watch their favorite shows directly on the Internet at their convenience.

    This behavior is nothing new. In fact, “binge-watching” has been officially listed in dictionaries since 2015. The entertainment companies recognize this behavior and many take steps to encourage it. Often, instead of releasing each episode on a week-by-week basis, an entire series will become available at the same time. Once the episode finishes, many platforms will display pop-ups with “you might like” suggestions, or will automatically play the next episode.

    However, this wonderful gift may in fact be poisonous. Recent research from British media Ofcom suggests that this behavior may have become a hindrance (障碍). Out of the more than half of British adults who watch more than one episode of a show in a row, almost a third have admitted missing sleep or becoming tired as a result; and one quarter have failed to do their household chores. Next well be missing work!

    Bingeing has other connections—binge eating, binge drinking and binge smoking, all of which are often associated with compulsive (强迫性的) behavior, a lack of control and possible route to addiction. Lindsey Fussell, consumer group director at Ofcom, said, “The days of waiting a week for the next episode are largely gone, with people finding it hard to resist watching multiple episodes around the house or on the move.” If people find binge-watching hard to resist, coupled with the fact that it has shown to lead to negligence (疏忽) in many, are we witnessing the birth of a new type of addiction?

    The large amount of information and entertainment that television and online media can bring us is, many would say, a good thing. It offers us opportunities to better understand the world we live in, educate ourselves and enjoy much needed downtime. However, like any behavior done to an extreme degree, it can become dangerous. And when the activity begins to bleed into other areas, causing us to stop functioning-then it becomes a problem. So, what's the answer? Neither a tiny amount, nor too much. After all, as the old proverb says, a little of what you fancy does you good.

    “At almost any given age, most of us are getting better at some things and worse at others, ”Joshua Hartshorne, an MIT cognitive(认知的)science researcher and the lead author of a study looking at how intelligence changes as we age, told Business Insider. His team quizzed thousands of people aged 10—90 on their ability to do things like remembering lists of words, recognizing faces, learning names, and doing math. Their results suggest that no matter your age, there's almost always a new peak on the horizon.

    The human brain has a remarkable capacity to recognize and identify faces, and scientists are just beginning to learn why. On average, we know that our ability to learn and remember new faces appears to peak shortly after our 30th birthday.

Having trouble focusing? The study suggests that our ability to maintain attention improves with age, reaching its peak around age 43.While younger adults may excel in the speed and flexibility of information processing, adults approaching their mid-years may have the greatest capacity to remain focused.

    Dating is tough. One of the reasons could be that we're generally bad at reading other people's emotions until we reach our late 40s.That's according to one component of Hartshorne's study, which involved showing thousands of people images of faces cropped tightly around the eye area. Participants were asked to describe the emotion the person in the photo was feeling. Performance peaked for people aged around 48.

    Many people believe that their math skills decline after they leave school and stop practicing arithmetic. But the next time you try to split up a check, keep this in mind: your ability to do basic subtraction and division doesn't reach its apex until your 50th birthday.

    Ever wonder why you always lose at Scrabble? Good news: Your best days may be ahead. According to people's scores on multiple—choice vocabulary tests, most of us don't reach our peak wordsmithing abilities until we're in our late 60s or early 70s.

    Kids and science seem to be made for each other!

    The basic science is a combination of thought and experiment called the scientific method. It's where you start with an idea, create a way to prove or disprove your idea, and show what you learned based on facts. Learning to follow this process helps you think logically (逻辑地) and carefully. These important thinking skills can be used in many areas of study. To give a child practice with these thinking skills is like giving vitamins (维生素) to a developing mind.

    One of the greatest things we can teach our children is to love learning. Learning science is a great way to do so. Children are easy to be interested in science. Because much of science is hands­on, it attracts most children. Nothing makes a child sit up and take notice like the "WOW!" of a great science showing.

    Science opens doors to many subjects at school. Building love for science can be helpful in other areas of study. For example, one cannot love science for very long without becoming good at its language — math! So science encourages children to study math. An interest in science is an interest in how things were once understood compared to how they are understood now. Thus studying science lends itself easily to studying history. And after you do an experiment, you need to write a lab report. Therefore, writing becomes an important part of science.

    Science is the basic thing for much of our life. The science of farming shows how our food is produced; biomedical science keeps us healthy; even our beds these days are designed according to scientific facts. We almost eat, sleep and breathe with the help of science! When we prepare the next generation (一代) of voters, creators, and policy makers, it is important to make sure they are not only comfortable but also good at science.