On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that 42% of Americans could be overweight by 2030. Our expanding waistlines lead to not only a medical problem, but according to a recent article In The New York Times, it could also endanger personal safety in some situations—in an airplane crash, for example.

    The New York Times' Christen Negroni reports that engineers and scientists are questioning whether airplane seats are adequately constructed to protect overweight travelers. Government standards for airplane seat strength（强度）— first set moe than 60 years ago — require that the seats be made for a passenger weighing 170 pounds (77kg). Today, the average American man weighs nearly 194 pounds (88kg) and the average woman 165 pounds (75kg). Negroni reports:

    “If a heavier person completely fills seat, the seat is not likely to behave as intended during a crash,” said Robert Salazar, the leading scientist at the Center for Applied Biomechanics at the University of Virginia. “The energy absorption that is built into the aircraft seat is likely to be overpowered and the passengers will not be protected properly.”

    “Nor would the injury be limited to that passenger only,” Dr. Salzar said. “If a seat or a seat belt fails,” he said, “those people who are seated nearby could be endangered from ‘the uncontrolled movements of the passenger'.”

    Most complaints about airplane seats focus on their lack of comfort and high ticket price, and whether overweight passengers should be made to buy two seats. But The New York Times' article brings up another reason to feel anxious about flying. Investigators of the issue got in touch with the airplane seat and seat belt makers, but they refused to comment on the problem. Experts agreed that crash testing should be done with overweight dummies （人体模型）. Both airplane seats and seat belts should be tested, they said.

    Fortunately, however, according to Nora Marshall, a senior adviser at the National Transportation Safety Board, the board's investigators have never seen an accident involving a commercial plane in which the weight of a passenger was a problem.

    Mother Teresa was born on August 26^th,1910 in Skopje, Macedonia. She always wrote her birthday as 27^th of August because it was the day of her baptism(洗礼), which was always more important to her than her birthday. For her work with the poor around the world, she received the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

    In 1928, she accepted a religious order and took the name Teresa. The order immediately sent her to India. A few years later, she began teaching in Calcutta. In 1948 the Catholic(天主教的) Church agreed her request and let her enter the convent(女修道院) and she began to work for the poor people. She became an Indian citizen in the following year. In 1950, she set up a religious organization in Calcutta. The organization provided food for the poor people and then she set up hospitals, schools, youth centers, and homes for the sick and the dying poor. It now has branches in 50 Indian cities and 30 other countries.

    Besides the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa has received other awards for her work with the poor people. On September 5^th,1997, Mother Teresa passed away, but she will continue to inspire people all over the world through her lasting present of love and faith.

    When we see well, we do not think about our eyes very often. It is only when we cannot see perfectly that we realize how important our eyes are.

    People who are near-sighted can only see things that are very close to their eyes. Everything else seems ­­blurry. Many people who do a lot of work, such as writing, reading and sewing become near-sighted. People who are far-sighted suffer from just the opposite problem. They can see things that are far away, but they have difficulty in reading a book unless they hold it at arm's length. If they want to do much reading, they must get glasses, too.

    Other people do not see clearly because their eyes are not exactly the right shape. They have what is called astigmatism (散光). This, too, can be corrected by glasses. Some people's eyes become cloudy because of cataracts (白内障). Long ago these people often became blind. Now, however, it is possible to operate on the cataracts and remove them.

    Having two good eyes is important for judging distances. Each eye sees things from a slightly different angle. To prove this to yourself, look at an object out of one eye; then look at the same object out of your other eye. You will find the object's relation to the background and other things around it has changed. The difference between these two different eye views helps us to judge how far away an object is. People who have only one eye cannot judge distances as people with two eyes.

    The hit movie Notting Hill（诺丁山）begins with a famous scene. Hugh Grant bumps into Julia Roberts and spills orange juice all over her. After the collision, Grant repeatedly says, “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.”

    His actions in this scene are very British. If Roberts' character were from the Britain, than she would probably apologize repeatedly as well – even if the crash were not her fault. But this doesn't happen in the movie, as Roberts is from the US.

    A report in The Telegraph once said that three quarters of British people apologize when they bump into someone in the street – regardless of whether they are responsible or not. In fact, Britons use “sorry” in many situations. For example, if they mishear someone, they say “Sorry?” The person they are talking to will also apologize by replying, “No, I am sorry!” This can go on for up to five minutes as they compete over who is the most sorry.

    Why are Britons so sorry? Mark Tyrell, a psychology writer in the UK, thinks that their apologetic tendencies are rooted in British class system. “We say sorry because historically the new middle class in Britain had to apologize for not being the working class, but also for really being the upper class.” Another theory is that they apologize to avoid conflicts. For example, if they bump into someone, he might get angry. To avoid this, they instantly say “Sorry!”

    True manners are about being considerate, and today's constant use of apologizing shows that we are perhaps not as thoughtful as we once were. The word “sorry” has lost some of its meaning.

    Do you see my point? Sorry, it might just be a British thing.

    Kieron Graham has known from a young age that he was adopted. While he loves his adoptive family, he has always wondered about his birth mother and brother. When his adoptive mom gave him a DNA test tool, they both hoped it might lead to his birth family. But neither guessed it would work so quickly, or that when it did, Graham would learn he and his long-lost brother may have crossed paths every day.

    It took just one week from the time Graham, a college student at Georgia's Kennesaw State University, received his DNA results on Ancestry.com for him to connect with his brother. Graham's DNA results showed that his closest match was a man named Vincent Ghant, and it turned out Ghant lived just a few minutes away.

Graham reached out and learned that the two were in fact long-lost brothers. Their mother, Shawn Ghant, made the difficult decision to place Kieron in adoptive care when he was just a baby. And she has worried and wondered about her youngest son ever since. Graham has since been reunited with his mother and both of his brothers on his mother's side.

    “It's all surreal(离奇的), too many emotions to describe exactly what I'm feeling about the entire situation, but it's a good situation,” Graham tells MNN.

    As fate would have it, Kieron and Vincent are both students at Kennesaw State. They even have the same major: political science. So it's a safe bet the two crossed paths many times over the past three years. And now, thanks to some DNA sleuthing(筛查), the two will cross paths many more times in the years to come.

    “We're getting together on Christmas with everyone, birth mother included,” Graham says. “That's sure to be a very indelible Christmas indeed, which will always be treasured by us.”

    One of the most expensive parts of flying is the cost of gas, not to mention the environmental effect it brings. An Israeli startup called Eviation Aircraft hopes to solve the problems. They displayed the world's first all-electric passenger airplane this week at the Paris Air Show.

    The lightweight plane­playfully called Alice­will be able to fly about 600 miles between charges. So it will focus on transportation between cities. It seats nine passengers and two crew members. A typical flight should cost a customer about $200.

    "The fact that we' re building an electric plane from scratch instead of just refitting an existing plane with a battery means that we can design our aircraft to be more effective and efficient than present planes," said Eviation co-founder Omer Bar Yohay. He predicts that per seat, per mile, the cost would be equal to that of a taxi or train.

    The demand for electrically powered aircraft is projected to reach hundreds of planes per year within the next decade. The change from gas to electric in power is expected to save millions of dollars in fuel costs, not to mention the environmental benefits including significant reduction of air pollution and noise levels.

    When it comes to the new possibilities, Yosef Abramowitz, an energy industry expert, said, "In modern life, it is important to fight climate change and now we have a path to do so in flying." Abramowitz, a tireless advocate for solar power, added, "The batteries will hopefully be charged with solar energy too."

    To help further save fuel costs, the designers have also invented a "taxibot" that drags planes from the passenger gate to the runway, so the planes needn't run their engines.

    After appearing at the Paris Air Show, the Alice will travel to the U.S. for further tests. It is expected that the first commercial flights will take off in 2022.

    "I think for the first time in a very, very long time, we can look at flight again and talk about the next revolution," Bar Yohay said.