Today I went to Berkeley, near our old neighborhood. I was a bit surprised by the increased number of homeless (alternatively housed) people walking around. I remember there are more in certain areas. So the first man who asked me for money got all my single bills. So when the second man asked me two minutes later, I said I was out because I gave all I had to the previous person.

    I was headed to the grocery store for a coffee and after I left the store I walked out to find him as he had asked me for something because he was hungry and I invited him to go into the grocery store with me.

    When I asked him what he wanted to eat, he just asked for vegetable and rice. He talked about how much better the vegetables were as we waited for our number to be called. While we waited he told me that he had slept outside last night on the sidewalk, that it was not good, and that he had come from Rwanda and was alone.

    He was a gentleman. When I asked if he wanted more he said, this bowl of food would last him the whole day.

    I don't know what his circumstances were before he came to California, and wandering and begging on the streets could somehow be better because you just never know what had happened to him. He seemed like a kind soul who just needed some help like we all do. I am grateful I did a little to help him today.

    Killer whales in Alaska's Bering Sea have figured out an easy way to get fed. Instead of seeking out the fish them- selves, the clever whales chase down fishing boats and steal the entire catch of the day, as much as 20,000 to 30,000 pounds.

    Killer whale “thieves” are not a new phenomenon. Japanese fishermen have reported being followed by killer Whales since the 1950s. However, the increasing frequency of whale fish theft in the Bering Sea's continental shelf is now threatening the livelihood of fishermen.

    Paul Clampitt, a local fisherman, says his crew tried to keep the whales away with loud sounds. Though that worked for a short time, the whales now consider the noise “ a dinner bell”. Jay Herbert tried using sonar to keep the whales away. He also met with little success. According to the experienced fisherman, the smart whales deliberately seek out longliners (延绳钓渔船）, and, all the first opportunity presented to them, steal the fish, leaving behind just the lips of the fish caught!

    NOAA Fisheries biologist John Moran is not surprised at the whales' thieving skill. The expert says whales are skilled hunters who can distinguish the sounds of different boats and even recognize the sounds of the operating system that places the fishing equipment into the ocean. The expert jokes, “ Grabbing a fish off a line is nothing.” Since they are social animals, it is easy for whales to pass their skills on to others.

    Killer whales are not the only whale species that have learned to steal from humans. In the Gulf of Alaska, sperm whales also conduct similar thefts. Longline fishermen off Washington, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, and many other countries have reported similar incidents. There is, unfortunately, no easy fix to this problem. One of the possible solutions is using pot traps similar to the ones used to catch crabs. However, the cost of switching from longline to pot fishing is too high, especially for small-scale fisheries. There is also no guarantee that the catch will be safe from the intelligent whales which, many fear, will eventually figure out how to open the pots!

    Winter sports tend to be more dangerous than summer sports — they take place mostly outside at the mercy of ice or snow, involving (牵涉) metal edges, extreme speeds and crashes. Skeleton (俯视冰梭), however, stands apart as one of the most difficult and least accessible of all the winter sports. Adam Edelman, Israel's first Olympic skeleton athlete, would like to change that.

    Edelman was the 10th athlete named to the 2018 Israeli Olympic Team. Qualifying for the Olympics in any sport is impressive. But it's more impressive if you qualify for the Olympics after only four years in the sport — and without a coach.

    Edelman was first introduced to skeleton watching the game on television in late 2013. Sports have always been a part of his life. He grew up playing football and was a goalkeeper on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology football team. Ready for a new challenge, he set his sights on the Olympics.

Without a coach, Edelman learned to drive by watching endless hours of YouTube videos and taking more runs than anybody else on the track. “When everybody else would take three runs per day, I would take six to eight.” he recalled.

    Succeeding in skeleton takes a large amount of athletic ability and technical skill, but there's one more element (因素) required, one that can't be taught. “These tracks but built in the middle of nowhere, and it's gray and cold. You haven't seen your family in seven months and you really just want to give up. To continue, it takes tenacity.” Edelman said.

    Edelman is already looking beyond Pyeongchang. The 2022 Olympics could be in his future, but whether he continues to compete or not, he promises to stay in Israeli sports as long as possible-as instructor or as a coach.

    Time flies, or so they say. No matter where you are, humans are constantly measuring and checking time. Some of us are good at it—planning and doing things ahead of time—while others are always trying to beat the clock and do things at last. What about if you are behind time?

    Delay can be serious. If you were one minute late for work, would you resign? It may sound extreme to many of us, but that is exactly what occurred in the UK upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, in January 2018. International development minister Lord Bates arrived one minute late, and, as a result, was unable to answer a scheduled question. Instead of trying to make up for lost time, he resigned on the spot. He apologised for his discourtesy and stated that he was ashamed. His resignation, though, was not accepted by the UK prime minister.

    So, how late is too late? Many cultures take punctuality very seriously, whereas others seem to accept lagging behind as just the normal way of things. BBC employees from Latin America, Rwanda and Sri Lanka said that there are more flexible attitudes to timekeeping in their cultures. In Latin America, things may happen five minutes, 20 minutes, an hour or even two after they were planned. Whereas, in Sri Lanka, lateness is a part of the daily routine. This is because of poor infrastructure and heavy traffic conditions. In Rwanda, those who attend to deadlines with strick timekeeping are said to be “like a typical European”.

    On the other hand, German and Japanese employees mentioned a stricter adherence to time. In Japan, it is common to make an effort to arrive with time to spare for an appointment. Those who arrived at the stroke of nine to a meeting starting at 9 am would be considered late. In Germany, however, if a dinner party were to begin at eight, a person who had arrived five minutes prior, may walk around the block to make sure that they arrive at eight on the dot.

    Next time you hear a funny joke you'd better not laugh too hard. According to a paper published by the British Medical Journal, laughter isn't always the best medicine. Sometimes it can even be harmful. Professor Robin Ferner from the University of Birmingham, one of the authors of the study, found that bad things could happen to people who laughed too much. He says, "We found people with heartbeat problems which had stopped their hearts, we found people who had fainted(昏倒), and we found people who'd dislocated their jaws or burst their lungs."

    It seems that laughing can be no laughing matter. But it's not all doom and gloom. Professor Ferner says there are benefits to laughing when you want to lose weight, for example. Yes, that's right: laugh and be slimmer! Professor Ferner explains that: "You use energy when you laugh, you move your diaphragm(横隔膜), you expand your lungs, and both those things can be helpful."

    According to the research, laughing for a quarter of an hour can burn 40 calories, and if you laughed all day you'd use about 2, 000 calories, which is what most people consume in a day. But don't do that or you might end up with a painful jaw. Ouch! Or you might find people looking at you in a funny way.

    But I don't want to finish this article leaving you feeling desperate. Laughter comes naturally for most of us. Babies begin to laugh at around 3-6 months. So give in to your sense of humour and keep smiling. Life is short anyway.

    Children exposed to "safe" levels of air pollution in the womb(子宫) develop brain damage that damages their concentration, a study has shown.

    The research is the first too link common pollutants such as nitrogen(氮) dioxide and soot(油烟) to changes in the brains of unborn babies that mean they may struggle to focus at school in later life. The findings suggest that even comparatively clean city air could lead to worse academic performance and an increased risk of mental health problems such as addition or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(缺陷多动障碍).

    In recent years scientists have found that children who grow up surrounded by air pollution are more likely to have a broad range of "neuro(神经)­developmental" difficulties, including autism and various kinds of cognitive(认知) damage. However, only a handful of studies have looked at the ways in which the poisonous gases and microscopic particles(微粒) that mothers and young children take in affect the brain during critical stages of its growth.

    A group led by Monica Guxens, of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, found that exposure to air pollution before birth appeared to have slowed the development of several brain regions that play an important role in people's capacity for self­denial and sustained effort. This lack of inhibition could in turn cause "cognitive delays" when the children get older, the scientists argue in Biological Psychiatry.

    "We need this function in our daily life," Dr. Guxens said. "It controls our impulses(冲动) and our selective attention. Children need it to learn and for making decisions in later life. We're interested to see what will happen: is there going to be an impact on their academic work, are there going to be clinical implications? It might be that this will lead to problems later."

    The results were drawn from MRI scans of 873 children between the ages of six and ten in Rotterdam. Even though 99.5 percent of their mothers had lived with nanoparticle pollution levels well below EU legal limits while they were pregnant the pollution still appeared to have taken its toll(伤亡人数).

    Children who had been exposed to more pollution in the womb did worse on a test of their ability to block out irrelevant stimuli(刺激). They also had thinner outer layers in the precuneus(楔前叶) and the rostral middle frontal regions of their brains, both of which are involved in cognitive inhibition, which refers to the mind's ability to tune out stimuli that are irrelevant to the task at hand or to the mind's current state.

    Experiments on animals show that so­called fine particles are able to pass through the placenta and affect the brain of the fetus(胎儿). Dr Guxens said there were probably no such thing as a safe concentration of air pollution.