People have used pigeons to carry messages to one another for hundreds of years. In fact, pigeons were a common way to send messages right up through Would War II.

    In 1815, English troops were fighting Napoleon's forces in France, and the English were believed to be losing. A financial panic swept over London. Government bonds（债券）were offered at low prices. Few people noticed that Nathan Rothschild, an English banker, was snapping up these bonds when everyone else was trying to sell them. A few days later, London learned the truth: the Duke of Wellington had defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo. The value of the bonds soared（暴涨）, and Rothschild became wealthy…all because his pigeons had brought him news of the victory before anyone else knew of it.

    Carrier pigeons were used by countries in both World War I and World War II. Not only were the birds often the fastest, most reliable way to send messages, they could also be used to reach soldiers far behind enemy lines, where radios and field telephone lines were useless. Since they could easily be released from airplanes or ships, every branch of the armed services used the birds.

    Carrying messages could be a dangerous job. Some pigeons performed with such bravery that they became famous and were even awarded medals. The most famous pigeon of all may have been Cher Ami. Stationed in France during World War I, he carried twelve important messages for American forces. On his last mission, though wounded, he carried a message that saved the lives of 194 American soldiers. For his amazing service, he was awarded the French “Croix de Guerre.”

    Today, modern communication methods can carry information from one place to another hundreds of times faster than a pigeon could do it. However, few people would argue with the fact that carrier pigeons — especially those that served in the military — have earned their place in history.

    In 1971, UN scholar Paolo Lugari started an eco-social experiment in Gaviotas, Colombia. Located in one of the most extreme climates, Gaviotas was described as a sustainable, self-sufficient village in an area that Lugari called 'just a big, wet desert'.

    'They always put social experiments in the easiest places,' Lugari said.'We wanted the hardest place. We figured if we could do it here, we could do it anywhere.'

    'Lugari just thought that someday the world would become so crowded that humans would have to learn to live in the planet's least desirable areas,' wrote Alan Weisman, author of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World.

    Today, Gaviotas is an eco-village with about 200 people. They farm organically. They use wind and solar power. Since 2004, Gaviotas has been 100% fossil fuel independent. The residents also enjoy free housing, schooling, and community meals. Shockingly, there are no weapons, no police, no jail and no mayor. But though these elements would make any social experiment a success, perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment is the planting of 1.5 million pine trees and palm trees. The various results of this new tree growth have been incredible. The shade of the trees has inspired the return of many rainforest species that were once native to the region. Additionally, the residents of Gaviotas enjoy a sustainable source of income from the resin(松香) harvested from the trees.

    The United Nations named Gaviotas a model of sustainable development. The Colombia novelist and Noble Prize winner Grabriel Marquez called Lugari the 'inventor of the world'.

    A new study by a team of researchers has found that 'nature's capacity to store carbon is steadily falling as the world's farmers expand croplands at the cost of the native ecosystem such as forests'.

    Considering this disturbing fact—and as the world population increases towards an estimated 9 billion by the year 2050 and global warming continues to increase the planet's surface temperature—Gaviotas stands as one shining example of how things could be different.

    Here's this week's list of four open jobs throughout the local area. Whether you're unemployed and need a job or you are just sick of the one you have, Roswell Patch wants to help. We know new jobs can be hard to come by these days, which is why we will try to post a selection of jobs we've found in the area on the site each week. Happy hunting!

    Part-time Spanish Instructor-World Language Institute, Inc. –Roswell World Language Institute, Inc. in Roswell is currently hiring a part-time, native-speaking Spanish instructor. Applicants must be able to pass a background check and drive a 15-passenger bus to pick up students from several schools, from 2 pm-6pm .Monday-Friday. The position pays $10 per hour. More information about the job is available online.

    Experienced Servers-Chill's-Alpharetta

    Chili's in Alpharetta is seeking experienced servers to add to its team. Qualifications will include being clean and neat and having great attitude and customer service skills. The pay is $2. 13, plus tips. Stop by the store to fill out an application. More information about this position is available online.

    Registered Nurese-North Fulton Regional Hospital-Roswell

    North Fulton Regional Hospital is looking for a RN/Registered Nurse to fill a 12-hour night shift. Applicants must be registered and previous hospital experience is preferred. More information about the position is available online.

    Software Engineer-Controlscan-Alpharetta

    Controlscan in Alpharetta is hiring a software engineer, Applicants should have five or more years of relevant experience, as well as advanced knowledge of computer technology. Pay is commensurate(相称)with experience. More information about the position can be found online.

    Last year, I lived in Chile for half a year. I lived with a Chilean family and had the responsibilities of any Chilean teenager. I had good days and bad days I didn't understand.

    Chuquicamata, my host community, is a mining camp. When I arrived there, I was scared. It was so different from what I was used to. There were lots of dogs on the streets, and there was no downtown, few smoothly paved streets, and little to do for entertainment. Rain was not seen very often, earthquakes and windstorms were frequent.

    I had studied Spanish for two and a half years and was always one of the best students in my class. But in my first week in Chile I was only able to communicate and needed one person to whom I could explain my shock. I couldn't speak the thoughts in my head and there were so many.

    Most exchange students experience this like me. Culture shock presents itself in everything from increased aggression towards the people to lack of appetite (食欲). I was required to overcome all difficulties.

    As time passed, everything changed. I began to forget the words in English and to dream in Spanish and love Chilean food. I got used to not depending on expensive things for fun. Fun in Chuquicamata was being with people. And I took math, physics, chemistry, biology, Spanish, art, and philosophy.

    But the sacrifices were nothing compared to the gain. I learned how to accept and to succeed in another culture. I now have a deeper understanding of both myself and others.

    Reading is the ability to process text, understand its meaning and to integrate it with what the reader already knows. Of all the reading skills speed-reading is a necessary skill in the Internet age. We skim over articles, e-mails and WeChat to try to grasp key words and the essential meaning of a certain text. Surrounded with information from our electronic devices, it would be impossible to cope if we read word by word, line by line. But a new trend calls on people to unplug and enjoy reading slowly, listing benefits beyond the intelligent stimulation.

    A recent story from The Wall Street Journal reported on a book club in Wellington, New Zealand, where members meet in a cafe and turn off their smartphones. They sink into cozy chairs and read in silence for an hour. Unlike tradition book club, the point of the slow reading club isn't exchanging ideas about a certain book, but to get away from electronic devices and read in a quiet, relaxed environment. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Wellington book club is just one example of a movement started by book lovers who miss the old-fashioned way of reading before the Internet and smartphones.

    Slow readers, such as The Atlantic's Maura Kelly, say a regular reading habit sharpens the mind, improves concentration, reduces stress levels and deepens the ability to sympathize. Another study published last year in Science showed that reading novels helps people understand others' mental states and beliefs, a fundamental skill in building relationships.

    Yet technology has made us less attentive readers. Screens have changed our reading patterns from the top-to-right, left-to-right sequence to a wild skimming and skipping pattern as we hunt for important words and information. Reading text punctuated with links leads to weaker comprehension than reading plain text. The Internet may have made us stupider, says Patrick Kingsley from The Guardian. Because of the Internet, he says, we have become very good at collecting a wide range of interesting news, but we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, reflect, and relate all these facts to each other.

    Slow reading means a return to an uninterrupted, straight pattern, in a quiet environment free of distractions. "Aim for 30 minutes a day," advises Kelly from The Atlantic. "You can squeeze in that half hour pretty easily if only during your free moments, you pick up a meaningful work of literature," Kelly said. "Reach for your e-reader, if you like. Kindles make books like War and Peace less heavy, not less substantive, and also ensure you'll never lose your place."

    In the first few years of their lives, children brought up in English-speaking homes successfully master the use of hundreds of words, including those for objects, actions, emotions, and many other aspects of the physical world. However, when it comes to learning colour words, the same children perform very badly. If shown a blue cup and asked about its colour, typical two-year-olds seem as likely to come up with "red" as "blue".

    Cognitive (认知) scientists at Stanford University in California supposed that children's incompetence at colour-word learning may be directly linked to the way these words are used in English. They are used mostly in pre-nominal position (e.g. "blue cup"), in contrast to post-nominal position (e.g. "The cup is blue."). The difficulty children have may simply come down to the challenge of having to make predictions from colour words to the objects they refer to, rather than from the objects to the colour words.

    To explore this idea further, the research team recruited 40 English children aged between 23 and 29 months and carried out a three-phase experiment. It considered of a pre-test, followed by training in the use of colour words, and finally a post-test that was identical to the pre-test. The pre- and post- test materials comprised six objects that were unfamiliar to the children. There were three examples of each object in each of three colours — red, yellow and blue. The objects were presented on trays (托盘), and in both tests, the children were asked to pick out objects in response to requests in which the colour word was either a pre-nominal ("Which is the red one?") or a post-nominal ("Which one is red?").

    In the training, the children were introduced to five sets of familiar items (balls, cups, crayons, glasses, and toy bears) in each of the three colours. Half the children were presented with the items one by one and heard them labeled with colour words used pre-nominally, while the other half were introduced to the same items described with a post-nominal colour word. After the training, the children repeated the selection task on the novel items in the post-test. Correct choices on items that were consistent across the pre- and post-tests were used to measure children's colour knowledge.

    According to the assessment, children's performance was consistent when they were both trained and tested on post-nominal adjectives, and worst when trained on pre-nominal adjectives and tested on post-nominal adjectives. Comparing the pre- and post-test scores across each condition revealed a significant decline in performance when children were both pre- and post-tested with questions that placed the colour words pre-nominally.