Every pet owner loves his pet. There is no argument here.

    But when we asked our readers whether they would clone their beloved animals, the responses were split almost down the middle. Of the 228 readers who answered it, 108 would lone, 111 would not and nine weighed each side without offering an opinion.

    Clearly, from readers' response, this is an issue that reaches deeply into both the joy and eventual sadness of owning a pet. It speaks, as well, to people's widely differing expectations over the developing scientific procedure.

    Most of the respondents who favored the idea strongly believed it would produce at least a close copy of the original; many felt the process would actually return an exact copy. Those on the other side, however, held little hope a clone could never truly recreate a pet, many simply didn't wish to go against the natural law of life and death.

    Both sides expressed equal love for their animals. More than a few respondents owned “the t dog/cat in the World”. They thought of their pets as their “best friend”, ''a member of the family,” “the light of my life.” They told moving stories of pets' heroism, intelligence and selfless devotion.

Little wonders the loss is so disturbing—and the cloning so attractive. “People become very lose to their animals, and the loss can be just as hard to bear as when a friend or family member dies,” says Gary Kowalski, author of Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet. “For me, cloning feels like an attempt to turn death away... It's understandable. Death is always painful. It's difficult to deal with. It's hard to accept.”

    But would cloning reduce the blow? This question seemed to be at the heart of this problem.

    The Great Fire of London started in the very early hours of 2 September 1666. In four days it destroyed more than three-quarters of the old city, where most of the houses were wooden and close together. One hundred thousand people became homeless, but only a few lost their lives.

    The fire started on Sunday morning in the house of the King's baker(面包师)in Pudding Lane. The baker, with his wife and family, was able to get out through a window in the roof. A strong wind blew the fire from the bakery(面包房)into a small hotel next door. Then it spread quickly into Thames Street. That was the beginning.

    By eight o'clock three hundred houses were on fire. On Monday nearly a kilometer of the city was burning along the River Thames. Tuesday was the worst day. The fire destroyed many well-known buildings, old St Paul's and the Guildhall among them.

    Samuel Pepys, the famous writer, wrote about the fire. People threw their things into the river. Many poor people stayed in their houses until the last moment. Birds fell out of the air because of the heat.

    The fire stopped only when the King finally ordered people to destroy hundreds of buildings in the path of the fire. With nothing left to burn, the fire became weak and finally died out.

    After the fire, Christopher Wren, the architect(建筑师), wanted a city with wider streets and fine new houses of stone. In fact, the streets are still narrow; but he did build more than fifty churches, among them new St Paul's.

    The fire caused great pain and loss, but after it London was a better place: a city for the future and not just of the past.

    Sleep deprivation(缺失)is an important hidden factor in lowering the achievement of school pupils, according to researchers carrying out international education tests.

    It is a particular problem in richer countries with sleep experts linking it to the use of mobile phones and computers in bedroom late at night. Sleep deprivation is such a serious problem that lessons have to be dragged down to a lower level to suit sleep-deprived learners, the study found. The international comparison, carried out by Boston College, found the United States to have the highest number of sleep-deprived students, with 73% of 9- and 10-year-olds and 80% of 13- and 14-year-olds identified by their teachers as being negatively affected.

    In literacy(读写能力) tests there were 76% of 9- and 10-year-olds lacking sleep. This was much higher than the international average of 47% of primary pupils needing more sleep and 57% among the secondary age group.

    Other countries with the most sleep-deprived youngsters were New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Australia, England, Ireland and France. High-performing Finland is also among the most lacking in sleep. Countries with the best records for getting enough sleep include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Japan and Malta.

The analysis was part of the huge date-gathering process for global education rankings, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study(TIMSS)and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study(PIRLS)

    “I think we underestimate the impact of sleep. Our data show that across countries internationally, on average, children who have more sleep achieve higher in maths, science and reading. That is exactly what our data show,” says Chad Minnich of the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center.

    “It's the same link for children who are lacking basic nutrition,” says Mr Minnich, based at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. “If you are unable to concentrate, to attend mentally, you are unable to achieve at your best level, because your mind and body are in need of something more basic. Sleep is a fundamental need for all children. If teachers report such large proportions of children suffering from lack of sleep, it's having a significant impact. But worse than that, teachers are having to adjust their instruction based on those children who are suffering from a lack of sleep. The children who are suffering from a lack of sleep are driving down instruction.”

    That means that even the children who are getting enough sleep are still suffering from this sleep-related lowering.

Young Americans Are Less Wealthy Than Their Parents

    The cost of living in the United States is going up, notes writer Alissa Quartz. As is reported in New York Post, Quartz points to "the costs of housing, education and health care in particular." At the same time, a new study, the report of which is called "The Fading American Dream" found that half of Americans born in the 1980s are falling behind their parents economically.

    These findings show that many younger adults are experiencing "downward mobility." In other words, they are not doing as well economically as their parents were at the same age. The idea of downward mobility is especially troubling for Americans, writes Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post. He says most U.S. citizens believe that, over time, the amount of money they earn will rise and life will get easier.

    Alissa Quartz wrote a book about the financial difficulties of Americans. In the book, Quartz tells about teachers who are struggling to pay for regular costs. One high school teacher drives for ride sharing service Uber at night to earn more money. He corrects students' papers between riders.

    A college professor turned to government assistance to feed her child and pay for a doctor. Quartz says even lawyers increasingly cannot earn an income that enables them to meet their needs. The problem of decreasing incomes in their field is made worse by debt they may have from law school. Quartz and the economists who studied these issues say many things have led to lower incomes and downward mobility. The economic recession(衰退) of 2007 to 2009 is partly to blame, they say. Modern technology also plays a part. Quartz says robots threaten to reduce the earnings of health care workers, reporters, and people who work at supermarkets, drug stores and tax preparation services. In The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson noted that poor schools, a weak housing industry and too many government rules are also to blame.

    With all these things, and more, partly responsible, what is the solution? These experts say the answer is complex. But all point to one issue that needs to be examined: economic inequality. Quartz writes that while America is one of the richest countries in the world, it also has one of the biggest divides between the wealthy and the poor.

    The researchers in "The Fading American Dream" study make a similar observation. They say raising GDP will not significantly improve the economic situation of most Americans. A higher GDP may help only those who are already doing well. Instead, the economists say, the United States could try to repeat something Americans born in the 1940s experienced. As those children grew up, they almost all benefited from a better economy.

    Body language is a broad term for several forms of communication using body movements or gestures, instead of, or as a complement to, sounds, verbal language, or other forms of communication. In turn, it is one category of paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not language.

    Paralanguage including body language has been extensively studied in social psychology. In everyday speech and popular psychology, the term is most often applied to body language that is thought to be involuntary, but in fact the distinction between voluntary and involuntary body language is often blurred: a smile or a wave may be given either voluntarily or involuntarily, for example.

    Voluntary Body Language is less commonly discussed because it seems unproblematic. It refers to movement, gestures and poses intentionally made by the person: smiling, hands, imitating actions, and generally making movements with full or partial intention of making them and a realization of what they communicate.

    The relation of body language to animal communication has often been discussed. Human paralanguage may represent a continuation of forms of communication that our non-linguistic ancestors already used, or it may be that it has been changed by co-existing language. Some species of animals are especially skilled at detecting human body language, both voluntary and involuntary: this was the reason for trying to teach the chimpanzee Washoe American Sign Language rather than speech and perhaps the reason why the Washoe project was more successful than some previous efforts to teach apes how to dance.

    Body language is a product of both genetic and environmental influences. Blind children will smile and laugh even though they have never seen a smile. The ethnologist (文化人类学者) Iraneus Eibl-Eibesfeldt claimed that a number of basic elements of body language were universal across cultures and must therefore be fixed action patterns under instinctive (本能的) control. Some forms of human body language show continuities with communicative gestures of other apes, though often with changes in meaning. More refined gestures, which vary between cultures (for example the gestures to indicate "yes" and "no"), must obviously be learned or modified through learning, usually by unconscious observation of the environment.

Chinese delivery driver, Gao Zhixiao, was featured on the cover of Time magazine in March because of his sense of commitment. Alongside five others, he was picked by the magazine as one of heroes among the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Ever since COVID-19 broke out, many restaurants shut down or switched to takeout-only services. Millions of people have been staying at home to avoid getting infected. "People choose to order food online or buy fruit and vegetables to cook at home," Gao told Time. As a result, delivery orders dramatically increased, placing a huge burden on delivery company.

Born into a poor family in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, Gao started to make a living in Beijing at age 16. After the novel coronavirus broke out, Gao hesitated for a second to continue working, but then picked up orders because he thought customers might be in need.

Due to the danger of person-to-person transmission, Gao must take care to avoid spreading viruses during his route around Beijing, including taking a regular health test and spending 20 minutes disinfecting his motorcycle and clothes each morning. Besides delivering goods, Gao once willingly cooked for an elderly customer who was living alone at her home.

It is the commitment of ordinary people like Gao that has made the biggest contributions in the fight against COVID-19.