In 1943, when I was 4, my parents moved from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, to Fairbanks, Alaska, where adventure was never very far away.

We arrived in the summer, just in time to enjoy the midnight sun. All that sunlight was fantastic for Mom's vegetable garden. Working in the garden at midnight tended to throw her timing off, so she didn't care much about my bedtime.

    Dad was a Railway Express agent and Mom was his clerk. That left me in a mess. I usually managed to find some trouble to get into. Once I had a little Are going in the dirt basement of a hotel. I had tried to light a barrel（桶） of paint but couldn't really get a good fire going. The smoke got pretty bad, though, and when 1 made my exit, a crowd and the police were there to greet me. The policemen took my matches and drove me

    Mom and Dad were occupied in the garden and Dad told the police to keep me, and they did! I had a tour of the prison before Mom rescued me. 1 hadn't turned 5 yet.

    As I entered kindergarten, the serious cold began to set in. Would it surprise you to know that I soon left part of my tongue on a metal handrail at school?

    As for Leonhard Seppala, famous as a dog sledder (驾雪橇者), I think I knew him well because I was taken for a ride with his white dog team one Sunday. At the time I didn't realize what a superstar he was, but I do remember the ride well. I was wrapped (包裹) heavily and well sheltered from the freezing and blowing weather.

    In 1950, we moved back to Coeur d'Alene, but we got one more Alaskan adventure when Leonhard invited us eight years later by paying a visit to Idaho to attend a gathering of former neighbors of Alaska.

    Harvard University in the United States has been ranked as the university with the best “reputation” in the world.

    The Times Higher Education magazine has listed 200 top universities all over the world based on how they are regarded by a group of international college teachers. That is to say, the list measures how universities are regarded, rather than how they actually performed.

    “A subjective, word-of-mouth (口碑的) quality such as “reputation” has genuine economic value for universities,” said Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

    “Reputation is not just an impression, though it might not be as reliable as performance by objective indicators (客观指标),” said Prof Marginson.

    Based on the views of 13,000 college teachers around the world, it confirms the power of the big US universities, which dominate this list. Seven of the top 10 are US universities, headed by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Furthermore, 14 of the top 20 are from the US. Cambridge is the highest ranking UK university in the list, in third place, with Oxford ranked as sixth.

    “For students applying to university, reputation might be hard to quantify, but was an important part of the attractiveness,” said the president of Cambridge University's students' union, Rahul Mansigani.

    “Reputation makes a huge difference. If there is an idea that somewhere is great, it will get lots of good people applying whether it's true or not. Factors such as a sense of history and the presence of outstanding college teachers were part of the reputation of Cambridge,” he said.

    Most dog owners feel that their dogs are their best friends. Almost everyone likes dogs because they try hard to please their owners. One of my favorite stories is about a dog who wanted the owner to please him. One of my friends has a large German shepherd(牧羊犬) named Jack. These dogs are often very intelligent (clever). Every Sunday afternoon, my friend takes Jack for a walk in the park. Jack likes these long walks very much.

    One Sunday afternoon, a young man came to visit my friend. He stayed a long time, and he talked and talked. Soon it was time for my friend to take Jack for his walk, but the visitor didn't leave. Jack became very worried about his walk in the park. He walked around the room several times and then sat down directly in front of the visitor and looked at him. But the visitor paid no attention. He continued talking. Finally, Jack couldn't stand(容忍) it any longer. He went out of the room and came back a few minutes later. He sat down again in front of the visitor, but this time he held the man's hat in his mouth.

    German shepherds aren't the only intelligent dogs. Another intelligent dog is a Seeing Eye dog. This is a special dog that helps blind people walk along the streets and do many other things. We call these dogs Seeing Eye dogs because they are the "eyes" of the blind people and they help them to "see". Seeing Eye dogs generally go to special schools for several years to learn to help blind people.

    Recently, the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, added about 1,000 words and new definitions to its website. The changes are to help users understand a mix of terms, some dating back many centuries. The additions include words such as "brencheese", "deathshildy" and "hip-pop".

    The new entries are part of the company's update to oed.com, its searchable online dictionary for paid members. The OED makes changes to the website four times each year. But the latest print version has been in process since the year 2000, and may not be ready for 10 more years. That information comes from Katherine Connor Martin, who heads the company's dictionary operations in the United States.

    Usually, the OED watches usage of a word for at least 10 years before deciding whether to add a new entry, new definition or word related to an existing entry, she said. This general rule, however, is sometimes not followed. That is what happened with "tweet", a word that the OED added far before the 10-year mark. Other times, the company adds words that are very old, but were not included in the dictionary in the past.

    “It's funny because we talk about new words, but many of the words we add are already obsolete. It's just that they were never in the dictionary before," Martin told the Associated Press.

    That is the reality, she said, of a historical dictionary trying to put more than 1,000 years of English into books that already have over 855,000 entries. So, you get "brencheese", a rarely used term for when bread and cheese are eaten together. The word dates back to the year 1665. The word "deathshildy" is from Old English. It means someone who is guilty of a serious crime and condemned to death.

    The website defines the term "hip-pop" for music that combines parts of hip-hop and popular music. The OED discovered the term “hip-hip pop” was used in a 1985 story from a Pennsylvania newspaper. It noted that the term "hip-pop" appeared in a 1991 U. S. newspaper report about the rap artist M.C. Hammer.

    The website has added several other terms related to modern culture. They include three popular terms: "binge-watching", "spoiler alert" and "microaggression".

    Here are a few other new entries if you long to read on.

    When many people are worried that there are no more heroes in modern times, two university students who lost their lives to rescue drowning children have shown that heroes still exist (存在).

    According to the Inner Mongolia Morning Post, the accident occurred on the afternoon of December 14, 2002 when three school students skating on a frozen lake in Qingcheng Park in Hohhot fell through the ice into the freezing water.

    More than 20 university students who happened to be near the spot immediately went to the rescue of the children.

    Two children were quickly rescued, but the third died. The child's body was not found for three hours. Two of the rescuers, Liu Ye and Hao Longbiao, also died of cold and exhaustion (筋疲力尽).

    The body of Hao who took the lead in jumping into the lake was not found until the next day.

    A student who was unwilling to tell his name said he and his classmates from the local college were taking photos at the lake. When they heard the children's cries for help, they went to the ice hole hand in hand to rescue the children. But the ice kept breaking, causing most of them to fall into the icy water.

    Local residents held mourning ceremonies (祭奠仪式) at the lake.

    Eight of the students were seriously affected by the freezing water and were being kept in hospital for further observation, but their lives were no longer in danger.

    Throughout our daily lives, we have known plenty of people and will know more. But how can we tell if someone is trustworthy? In a paper published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researcher gave us the answer.

    The researchers asked 401 adults from the United States to fill out a questionnaire measuring their guilt-proneness (内疚倾向) in different situations as well as several other qualities, and then play a short online game. In this game, Player 1 is given $1, which they can choose to give to Player2. Any money given to Player 2 is then automatically increased to $2.50. Player 2 can then decide whether to keep all of the money or behave in a trustworthy way by returning a portion of the money to Player 1. The researchers found more guilt-prone people were more likely to share the money with Player 1. Actually, in follow-up studies, guilt-proneness predicted trustworthiness better than other personality qualities the researchers measured.

    Why might guilt lead to trustworthy behavior? The researchers found people who were guilt-prone also reported feeling an obligation to act in ethical (合乎道德的) and responsible ways while interacting (互动) with their partners in the game. People who are guilt-prone tend to avoid engaging in behavior that might harm or disappoint others. If they do something bad, guilt encourages them to try to make things right again.

    Then, how can we use this research to ascertain whether someone is trustworthy? "One way to do this might be observe how they respond to experience regret," lead author Emma Levine, assistant professor at the University of Chicago Levine, explains. Another way is to ask them to describe a difficult dilemma they faced in the past, suggests co-author Taya Cohen, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University. This is particularly effective, Cohen and her colleagues have found, because it allows us to see if they're concerned about the effects their actions have on others.