It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and Maggie and I were returning from our walk through the woods. We were only a couple of blocks from home when I spotted a cell phone and a credit card sitting on the road. We took them home. We always find amazing things on the street and she looks upon them as a movable feast-a chicken wing here or a barbecue rib there.

    I found another cell phone a few years back, too, and called a number in its phone book. I explained the situation to the guy who answered. He said it was his sister's and that he'd come to pick it up, which he did.

    And that was that. No verbal thank-you, no written thank-you, no “here's a box of chocolates” thank-you.

    I didn't have time to call anyone on my latest found cell phone. I was pouring myself coffee when it started to vibrate(震动) and dance across the kitchen counter.

    “Who's this?” someone asked when I picked up.

    “Who's this?” I countered（反问.“Sarah?”

    She was surprised at my knowing her name until she realized her name was on the credit card. “Could you send them to me?” she asked.

    She lives in Arlington, which is 2 miles from my house.

    “Hmm, no, ”I replied, adding that I thought she could come to get them, and that if I wasn't at home, they would be in my mailbox.

    A day later, when I was out for a run, someone retrieved(取回) them. There wasn't even a piece of paper put in the mailbox with “Thanks” on it. In this age of e-mail and cell phone, there's really no excuse. Years ago, I found something more precious than a $100 bill on the street: a driver's license. I saw  that its owner lived a couple of blocks from me, so I called him up. He asked whether I could slip the license through his front door.

    “I guess I could, ”I replied.

    And that was that.

    Sonya and her family have been homeless since she was 3 years old. Over the years, they have moved more than 15times to different shelters around New York City. Moving around was hard on Sonya。At school, Sonya hid her homeless from teachers and other students. She didn't want to be treated differently from other kids.

    In sixth grade, Sonya discovered a way to deal with some of her stress. She began studying dance at her middle school. “IT was a way for me to express myself, instead of just holding everything in,”she explains. Soon, Sonya auditioned（试演）for a summer dance camp run by Alvin Alley, a famous dance company. She was accepted. “I was excited,”says Sonya.

    Dancing became an even more important part of Sonya's life in high school. But things were not going well for Sonya at school. Each time her family moved to a new shelter, Sonya often took care of her younger sisters and brothers. She helped them get ready in the morning and took them to school. They would be on time, but Sonya would be late.

    Worrying about her family kept Sonya from thinking about her own future. That changed the summer after 11^th grade. Sonya learned she would have to go to summer school to graduate. She became determined to succeed, no matter what. “It was a wake-up call,”she says.“I had to focus on school and on myself.”

    Sonya made up the work that she had missed, and finally graduated from high school. No one in her family had gone to college before. But in September 2015, Sonya enrolled in the State University of New York at Potsdam. She plans to become a doctor for kids and to teach dance to children who have disabilities.

    Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbors, even pets, will all help, but the biggest longevity (长寿) seems to come from marriage. The effect was first noticed in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers (鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than the married people. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man's life and two to a woman's. The effect can be seen in all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

    Even if the chances are all against you, marriage can more than compensate you. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Similarly, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn't smoke. There's a flip side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their husband or wife's death, and caring for your husband or wife with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the chances favor marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

    So how does it work? The effects are complicated, affected by socio-economic factors, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms(生理机制). For example, social contact can promote development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

    A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100. The overall social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: "People are inter-connected, so their health is inter-connected."

    Dubai(迪拜)is one of the economically richest places in the world. With its numerous malls, hotels, and beautiful beaches, Dubai has always been a popular holiday destination. This city was visited by around 5 million tourists each year. The government wanted to increase this number to 15 million. However, Dubai has only 45 miles of coastline, which is nowhere enough for so many people. To solve this problem, an island that looked like a palm tree was built in 2006, and named the Palm Jumeirah.

    The plan for the island was extraordinary. It was to host several hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and homes. Although the initial plan was to build the island from concrete(水泥), a decision was taken to create it from sand and gravel(砾石), so as to give it a natural look.

    To make sure that this project was a success, the best engineers from across the world were employed. Engineers from Holland formed the majority in this group. To begin with, the engineers calculated the strength of storms at sea, and also the expected amount of rise in water levels due to global warming. And then they found that, the proposed location for the island was neither very wide nor deep.

    One of the difficulties the engineers came across was to put sand on the sea bed to create the breakwater(防浪堤).Finding the right sand for the project was also a daunting task, as the sand from Dubai's deserts was too fine. Instead, sand from the sea was used, as it was coarser(粗糙). Once the breakwater was built, construction of the island began.

    The Palm Island are really impressive in terms of engineering. However, these projects are so large that they may have changed the ecology of the region. Also, an immense amount of money and resources go into maintaining the islands, which is a major concern at the moment. Only time will tell if building the Palm Islands was actually a good decision.

    It was Sunday, so Dad and I were at the second-hand goods market, looking for tools, appliances(家用电器), and other things that needed cleaning. Some were broken; others, like silver cups, just needed to be cleaned and polished. It was 1974, and the Depression(经济大萧条) was very serious. Dad worked full-time at a factory, but the money wasn't enough. Dad had tried a second job for a while, but he found it was too hard on the family. One day, he had an excellent idea that set me on a lifelong course of making money to support myself. Standing beside a crowded table at the second-hand goods market, I looked over an ancient manual sewing machine. Someone had changed it to run on electric power. It was much older than Mom's machine, but it looked like it had quality and a long life built into it. "Dad!" I called. "This is a beauty!"

    Dad walked over, pulling a cart full of audio equipment, tools, worn-out appliances, and what appeared to be a block of dull kitchen knife." What have you got, Son?" I described what I saw and what I figured I could do to x the beauty up. Dad paid for my discovery, and we headed home.

    Every day after school I worked on the ancient machine, and every night Dad and I sharpened tools and knives, sanded off rust, polished metal, and replaced missing parts from various items. The next Saturday we headed off, as we did every weekend, to that same market, where we sold the treasures we'd purchased the week before—at a tidy profit. My antique beauty brought in more money than anything else, and Dad let me keep every penny.

    Dad's gone now, but I can never thank him enough. Even if we hadn't needed the extra money Dad and I brought in, I wouldn't have traded those weekends for all the picnics or Little League games in St. Louis—not in a million years.