Patricia Blues, 29, has a new aim in life: to keep drivers' hands on their steering wheels and off their cell phones. On November 2, 2007, Blues lived through a horrible experience. A motorist dialing a cell phone drove through a stop sign at 45 miles per hour and ran into the side of Blues' car. Blues' 2-year-old daughter was killed immediately in the crash.

    Blues has since devoted her time top pushing for laws that would prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.

    Cell phones are not the only distractions（分神） that cause accidents. Eating, changing CDs, reading maps, talking to passengers, and just reaching for an object on the floor can be dangerous. Therefore, the emphasis should be on educating drivers to avoid all distractions. However, talking on cell phones might be easier to regulate than eating or changing music. At least 34 states have already passed laws to restrict cell phone use in moving cars. No state has banned it yet, but several US. cities. Worldwide, 13 nations, including Australia, England, Germany, Japan and China have banned drivers' use of cell phones in moving cars.

    To date, no scientific evidence has been published showing that talking on the phone affects driving safety. But according to a test by some high school students, “driving while on the phone does affect safety and probably shouldn't be done”.

    Some materials are obtained from natural resources that are changed by chemical processes in a laboratory. The resulting artificial materials are synthetic, or human-made.

    Plastic is a synthetic substance, obtained from petroleum, a fossil fuel. The molecules（分子）in petroleum are split and then linked into chains. Plastic is an example of a polymer, a material made of repeating patterns of atoms linked together. Most polymers are synthetic. They are made by polymerization, the process of chemically linking many smaller molecules to form a larger molecule that has different physical features. Some polymers, such as proteins, occur naturally.

    Plastic is a key component of many products. When heated into an almost-liquid form, plastic can be made into fibers, sheets, or molds（模具）. It can be mixed with other elements to remain flexible, or it can harden into a solid. Plastic fibers can be made into clothing or carpeting. Sheets of plastic can be made into plates. Molded plastic can be sued for protective helmets or car bumpers.

    Most plastics can be reheated and remolded repeatedly. This feature makes plastic very easy to use. Polymers can be pulled into fine strings or molded into almost any kind of shape. For example, tubes of plastic can be shaped into bottles by different processes. One such process is extrusion blow-molding. Most plastics are also resistant to many chemicals that might harm other materials. This quality is the reason that so many cleaning liquids are packaged in plastic bottles.

    Plastics are good insulators that can stop electricity or heat to pass through. Look around your kitchen, and observe where plastics are used. Pot handles are sometimes made of plastic, as are cooking tools, toaster controls, and microwave cookware. Food-storage wraps and containers may be made of plastic. Take a walk outdoors, and note all the plastic items you see. Gardening tools, such as watering cans and sprayers, are often made of plastic. Swings and slides made of plastic do not become as hot as metal, so they are safer for play. Because plastics can be heated, remolded, and made into something else, they can be recycled and reused.

                                                                                              America's top comic book stores

    New York City, NY － JHU Comic Books

    NYC has a number of impressive comic book stores. While other comic book stores in the city fill their shelves with other products like cards and board games, JHU focuses only on the comics themselves, with shelves filled with great selections of the latest releases and back issues from wall to wall. (32 East 32nd St, 212 — 268 — 7088)

    Austin, TX－Austin Books & Comics

    Opened in 1977, Austin Books &. Comics is one of Texas' biggest and longest running comic book stores. Not only do they sell the latest issues, they also carry many first editions and back issues. Good news is that they often hold regular book purchase discount activities, which means that you'd better consult them before your visit. (5002 N Lamar Blvd, 512－454－4197)

    Washington D. C. － Big Planet Comics

    This store, originally from Georgetown, prefers the more independent, small-press titles as well as stuff from Europe and Japan that your kids probably haven't even heard of, but they also carry the more popular ones. True to its name, BPC has established its own comic book world, with book signing and meet-and-greet events, and their very own, though tiny, comic book publishing house. (1520 U St NW, 202 —342 —1961)

    Portland 9 OR － Floating World Comics

    Floating World Comics is not only a comic book store but a community hosting art shows. Priding itself on cool style, this is an ideal place for comic books, where art books fill shelves just as much as the more mainstream comics. Both the future artists and the comic book lovers in your family will more than appreciate a stopover during your Portland vacation. (400 NW Couch St, 503－241－0227)

    Researchers have created a backpack that has a computer and medicines in it that can help even untrained soldiers save the lives of wounded troops. Wounded soldiers have a better chance of survival if they get help soon after being hurt and are quickly taken to a hospital or clinic. But soldiers who do not have medical training may not know how to help their injured friends.

    Doctors and engineers have developed what they call an “intelligent backpack”. It has a computer and electronic measuring devices. The backpack also has robotic instruments and medicines ready to give to injured troops.

    About 16 doctors and engineers from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and several other places are working on the project. The U. S. Department of Defense has given money to the project.

    Ron Poropatich leads the project. He is a retired army surgeon. He says the backpack will help soldiers care for those who are injured. The devices included in the backpack can monitor a person's heart rate and blood pressure. The robotic instruments can even tell whether the soldier has a collapsed lung.

    The intelligent backpack's computer can compare information gathered about the injured soldier with thousands of similar cases, and quickly tell the best methods to use to save the soldier's life.

    Sometimes, it is not always possible to quickly remove the injured soldier from the battlefield. So, Dr. Poropatich says, the researchers hope to create a backpack that will have devices that can keep a soldier alive for a long time. Dr. Poropatich hopes the backpack and its instruments will be ready for testing animals in about three years.

    A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that too many kids are eating too much pizza and too many calories are doing harm to children's health.

    "There are a lot of takeaways from the study. But the biggest thing is that parents are serving their kids too much pizza," said Dr. William Dietz, one of the study's authors and the director of the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at the Milken Institute of Public Health at the George Washington University.

    The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the diets of more than 11,000 children and teenagers. Researchers figured how many children eat pizza in the United States, how often they eat it, and how much they eat when they do.

    Pizza, pretty alarmingly, is the second leading source of calories in the diets of America's children, next only to grain desserts, such as cookies and other sweets. On any given day, roughly 20 percent of all children aged 2 to 11 and adolescents aged 12 to 19 eat pizza. And when they do, they eat a lot of it. When children eat pizza, they eat roughly 400 calories, according to the study. For teenagers, it's upwards of 600 calories.

    All that is pretty problematic, according to Dietz largely because kids don't tend to balance the pizza slices with salads, vegetables and other more nutritional(有营养的) foodstuffs. Days on which children and teenagers eat pizza are not only associated with considerably higher intakes of fat, but also, quite simply, with more food: on average, children consume 84 extra calories on the days they eat pizza, while adolescents consume an extra 230 calories.

    "When you eat extra calories and don't compensate(抵偿) for them at another point of the day or week, it can lead to weight gain and even obesity." Dietz said.

    There is a Silver lining. Pizza consumption is still too high by nutrition standards, but it's lower than it used to be. Consumption(消费) fell by roughly 25 percent between 2007 and 2016, according to the study. Much of that has come at dinner where it's fallen by 40 percent for children and about 33 percent for teenagers. It's unclear whether the decline has been in connection with a growing concern over obesity, especially among the country's youth.

    But the drop in pizza consumption, while significant hasn't been big enough "It's a positive trend," Dietz said. "But we're not quite them yet."

    It's easy to see the appeal of pizza. It's cheap. Parents can buy a lot of pizza for not a lot of money. Besides, they can buy pizza from a chain shop, a mom-and-pop store or a grocery freezer. And it's universally loved. The estimated 3 billion pizza eaten each year in the United States is a proof of the food's unmatched popularity. Given how much the country loves pizza, what's to be done? Dietz suggests pizza with smaller serving sizes and healthier toppings(配料). "We're not suggesting that kids avoid pizza altogether." said Dietz. "But when parents serve it, it's important that they understand it's extremely caloric. They should serve smaller pizza, or at least smaller slices."

    Where to stay in Boswell? The following are some choices for you:

    First Hotel. 222 Edward Road. Tel. 414-6433. Number of Rooms: 120.

    Price: Single: $ 25; Double $ 35;

    Special attractions: Air conditioned rooms, French restaurant, Night club, Swimming pool, Shops; Coffee shop and bar, Telephone, Radio and TV in each room, close to the city center.

    Fairview Hotel. 129 North Road. Tel. 591-5620. Number of Rooms: 50.

    Price:  Single:$ 12; Double: $ 18;

    Special Attractions: Close to the airport, Telephone in each room, Bar, Restaurant, Garage, Swimming-pool.

    Orchard Hotel. 233 Edward Road. Tel.641-6641. Number of Rooms: 150.

    Price:  Single: $ 15; Double: $ 20;

    Special Attractions: Facing First Hotel, European restaurant, Coffee shop, Dry-cleaning, Shops, TV, Night-club.

    Osaka Hotel. 1264 Venning Road. Tel. 643-8206. Number of Rooms: 180.

    Price:  Single: $ 30; Double: $ 50.

    Special Attractions: Air-Conditioned rooms, Japanese and Chinese restaurant, Shops, Swimming pool, Large garden.