Kathy Fletcher and David Simpson have a son named Santi. He had a friend who sometimes went to school hungry. So Santi invited him to occasionally eat and sleep at his house.

    That friend had a friend and that friend had a friend, and now when you go to dinner at Kathy and David's house on Thursday night there might be 15 to 20 teenagers gathering around the table, and later there will be groups of them crashing in the basement or in the few small bedrooms upstairs. The kids who show up at Kathy and David's have suffered the pains of modern poverty: homelessness, hunger, abuse.

    And yet by some miracle, hostile soil has produced beautiful flowers. Kids come from around the city. Spicy chicken and black rice are served. Cellphones are banned. The kids who call Kathy and David “Momma” and “Dad,” are polite and clear the dishes. Birthdays and graduations are celebrated. Songs are performed. Each meal we go around the table and everybody has to say something nobody else knows about them. Each meal the kids show their promise to care for one another.

    The adults in this community give the kids the chance to present their gifts. “At my first dinner, Edd read a poem that I first thought was from Langston Hughes, but it turned out to be his own. Kesari has a voice that somehow appeared from New Orleans jazz from the 1920s. Madeline and Thalya practice friendship as if it were the highest art form.”

    “They give us a gift — complete intolerance of social distance. When I first met Edd, I held out my hand to shake his. He looked at it and said, “We hug here,” and we've been hugging since.”

    Bill Milliken, a veteran youth activist, is often asked which programs turn around kids' lives. “I still haven't seen one program change one kid's life,” he says. “What changes people is relationships. Somebody is willing to walk through the shadow of the valley of adolescence with them.” Souls are not saved in bundles. Love is the necessary force.

    Food storing is common in members of the crow（乌鸦）family. A new study tested the birds outside this naturally occurring behaviour, which may have evolved（进化）specifically because it gives crows a survival advantage. Some crow species are known to naturally use tools to recover food. So the researchers tested whether the birds could store and recover a tool so they could get it at their food after a gap of 17 hours—something we wouldn't expect them to do naturally. But they were able to instantly select the tool out of a number of unnecessary items.

    In another experiment, the researchers taught crows to select a token （礼品券）from a number of items so that they could then exchange for food. Again, the birds then showed that they could plan for the future using this new behaviour. This is different from all of the previous studies in future planning, which have focused on naturally occurring behaviour. For example, we know that chimpanzees select, transport and save appropriate tools for future needs.

    These studies have shown that animals can plan for the future—but they left an important question open for debate. Are animals only able to plan to use abilities that have evolved to give them a specific advantage, or can they flexibly and intelligently apply planning behaviour across various actions? Most critics would say the former, as the animals were tested in naturally occurring behaviours.

    But the new research provides the first evidence that animal species can plan for the future using behaviour that doesn't typically occur in nature. This supports the view that at least some recognitive abilities in animals don't evolve just in response to specific problems. Instead, it suggests that animals can apply these behaviours flexibly across problems in a similar way to humans. We need to investigate how flexible behaviour evolved. Then we might be able to see how crows' ability to plan for the future fits in with their broader cognitive powers.

    A couple near Pittsburgh finally removed an alarm clock from inside their walls. It had been stuck there for more than ten years.

    Every night between 6:50 and 7:50, the alarm clock stuck in the living room wall rang. Sylvia and Jerry Lynn heard the alarm ring at the same time every evening for 13 years. And they finally had the clock removed after their story gained national attention.

    Keith Andreen and Dawn Michelucci work for Low-Cost Heating and Air Conditioning. They came to get the clock out of the wall through the couple's garage.

    “This is the first time that I had to remove a clock from inside a wall,” Andreen told CBS Pittsburgh.

    Jerry accidentally dropped the clock down an air vent (通风口) while making home repairs in 2004. The couple expected the clock to die after a few months. However, its battery remained undamaged even as it was pulled from the wall. Jerry said they finally got used to the nightly alarm and even considered it “kind of cute”. So he chose to leave it in the wall as a conversation starter. “You're sitting around playing cards and it goes off,” he told Inside Edition. “Is that an alarm clock? Why is the alarm clock going off? It's in the wall.”

    After 13 years, Jerry said the clock looked almost exactly how he remembered it when he dropped it in the wall. “It is a travel alarm clock,” he said. The couple plans to keep their nightly routine going by placing the clock in their room and keeping the alarm set for 7:50 p.m.

Let E-bikes Power New York's Transit Future

    Providence, R. I., just became the 13th city to develop an electric-assisted bike-share system, which runs or is developing bike-share networks in cities across the United States. Ironically, the Brooklyn-based company cannot operate in its hometown of New York City,due to the wrongheaded ban on electric bicycles.

    In many major cities in the U. S. and abroad, e-bikes are flourishing and helping to solve major urban challenges. Stockholm is adding 5, 000 e-bikes to its bike-share system. UPS is delivering packages in Hamburg using electrically-assisted cargo tricycles. And San Francisco's DoorDash food delivery service has found e-bikes to be the best mode to navigate heavy traffic and limited parking.

    In striking contrast, New York City insists e-bikes are banned under law. More than 900 e- bikes were seized and more than 1, 800 summonses（召回）were issued by the New York Police Department in 2017,following Mayor de Blasio's decision to limit e-bike usage, despite the fact that no data or records exist to show e-bike-related safety incidents.

    Who does the e-bike restriction hurt? The e-bikes seized in 2017 primarily belonged to food delivery workers, who are immigrants from Asia and Latin America. New Yorkers love their delivery: A new study from the New York City Department of Transportation found that more than half of city residents receive food deliveries at least a few times per month."

    In fact, the top three neighborhoods for e-bike summonses-the Upper East and West Sides and East Midtown-also consisted of more than 70% white residents. It's difficult to divorce the penalty of workers of color from the predominantly white, rich neighborhoods to whom the meals are delivered.

    It is true that the rush to maximize delivery numbers leads to higher speeds and potentially dangerous biking. To that end, the city should improve and enforce safe cycling and expand bicycling infrastructure to ensure safe passage for cyclists and pedestrians.

    Outside New York, cities and companies are finding that e-bikes are convenient, have low carbon footprints and require less space than cars on city streets. As New York City seeks to improve traffic, better air quality and encourage active modes of transportation, it is confusing that a mode that checks all of those boxes would be outlawed.

    The city must stop pedaling backwards on both workable transportation modes and the racially-charged policies surrounding them. It is time for New York City to embrace e-bikes as the very useful, worker-enabling, convenient and environmentally-forward mode that they are.

    Elephants might be the most well-known and well-loved animal in African wildlife. But conservation (保护) of the African elephant still faces special difficulties. While the elephant population is half of what it was 40 years ago, some areas of Africa have more elephants than populated areas can support. That's why AWF scientists are studying elephant behavior, protecting habitats and finding ways for humans to live peacefully with elephants in Africa.

    Years ago, overhunting and the ivory trade were the biggest threats to elephants' survival. Luckily, ivory bans (禁令), hunting rules and protected areas protect elephants from these dangers today.

    The 21st century brings a different challenge to elephant conservation—land-use. Elephants walk across borders and outside parks and other protected areas. So they often destroy crops, causing conflicts (冲突) between local farmers and these big animals.

    Successful conservation strategies (策略) must allow elephants to walk freely in their natural habitats while reducing conflicts between elephants and local people.

    AWF researchers are searching for a way to give both elephants and people the space they need. The AWF is collecting information on elephant habitats and behavior. The information they gather will help to develop the widest possible space for elephants.

    The AWF is helping elephants by protecting their habitats. And they also work with local famers to improve their life in order to encourage them to protect rather than destroy elephants.

The urgency and importance of Covid-19 over (he past year have driven almost everything else from most leaders5 minds. But since the vaccine is kicking in, Britain's government is once again beginning to think about the things that will matter later. Next week, it is expected to publish a 'plan for growth" to boost productivity, with innovation at its centre.

The world may be on the point of a technological boom with life sciences, at which Britain excels. Innovation is crucial to productivity, but on this front Britain's performance has lagged behind its competitors' in recent years. Its low spending on Research and Development (R&D) argues for a boost. Those who attributed the financial failure in the 1970s to the insufficiency of research funds may regard this as a threat to economic growth. Promoting innovation can quickly (um into an exercise in picking winners - or, as is more often the case, losers.

A second danger is that policy agendas get mixed up. The government has promised to "level up" poorer areas of the country, so deprived towns arc campaigning for more money for their universities. But trying to boost innovation by sending money to weak institutions is likely to make our leading universities lose their advantages, thus producing average ideas that could have been remarkable. Britain's research-funding system has always been elitist(精英主义的). It should stay that way.

The government's first move in boosting innovation was the announcement of a plan for an Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). ARlA's purpose is to fund high-risk, high-reward research. But money is not all that mailers. The successful translation of life science research into treatments during the pandemic suggests some inexpensive measures that can also make a difference.

One is to speed up governmental processes. The rapidity with which Britain's medical regulator moved during the pandemic is one reason why the vaccine rollout is racing through the population. Urgency is not unique lo pandemics. Getting things done quickly can make an investment worthwhile and determine where a businessman chooses as a base.

Another useful measure the government should use is its unique ability to overcome barriers. At the beginning of the pandemic. Covid-19 researchers were unable to gain access to different strands of health service data. The government eased restrictions on existing data and allowed researchers to ask people who had tested positive tor Covid-19 to join trials. Both were crucial to the effort.

A last principle is the value of connections between the government and the private sector. Kate Bingham, a venture capitalist who led the vaccine-purchase effort, understood how to deal with drug companies. Many of the civil servants working with her had commercial experience. The governments closeness to business during the pandemic has been criticized. But without it, the vaccine effort would not have succeeded.

Innovation took human beings from caves to computers. Good education, a welcoming immigration policy and a friendly business environment will do most to tend it. But a new sensible principles can help keep the flame burning.