Like many thickly populated urban neighborhoods, Lincoln Park also has rats. A lot of rats. “Every night when I walk down the sidewalk, I see rats, ” says 36-year-oId Kelly McGee, who has come to accept this aspect of city living. “It's an urban area; I don't know what else we can expect.”

McGee lives just down the block from the old Children's Memorial Hospital, which is about to be torn down as part of a massive redevelopment project. “Construction all over the city often disturbs rats that are living underground,” says Lincoln Park's City Council representative, Alderman Michele Smith. “Every developer has to do active rat reduction on site, ”Smith says. Already, there are poisonous and inviting food boxes all around the old hospital complex. But the developer of the hospital site still warned residents in a recent community meeting that when digging begins later this month, the rat problem could be awful.

Victoria Thomas, who lives a few miles north of Lincoln Park in Chicago's Lake View neighborhood, says she tried everything from underground fencing to poison traps to wipe out rats, but nothing worked until she got some cats. From the first day she got the cats, Thomas says the rats started to disappear.

“The cats will kill off a great deal of the initial population of the rats, ”says Paul Nickerson, who manages the Cats at Work program for Tree House Humane Society. “And through spreading their pheromones, a chemical produced by an animal, the cats will keep other rats from filling their absence.” Nickerson says that is what makes the cat program so successful in keeping rats away for the long term. ” The rats are far from stupid. They smell the cats' pheromones so they'll stay out of the cats' territory(领域).”

    After Smith highlighted the program in a recent newsletter, Nickerson and Tree House Humane Society have been getting lots of calls from people seeking their own cat colonies. That means a lot more wild cats that might otherwise be killed out of pity will be cared for while doing something that they love: hunting rats.

    Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.

    Release date: January 1, 2016

    Price: $8

    Plot: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson travel back to the Victorian era to solve the case of “The Abominable Bride”

    The Revenant

    Release date: January 8, 2016

    Price: $6

    Plot: In the 1820s,a frontiersman，Hugh Glass，sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.

    The Fifth Wave:

    Release date: January 15,2016

    Price: $6.5

    Plot：Four waves of increasingly deadly attacks have left most of Earth decimated. Against a backdrop of fear and distrust, Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother. As she prepares for the fifth wave, Cassie teams up with a young man who may become her final hope-if she can only trust him.

    Kung Fu Panda 3

    Release date: January 29, 2016

    Price:Adult$7.5   Child（aged six &up）$3.5

    Plot：Po reunites with his biological father and travels with him to a secret sanctuary of pandas where, to his surprise, he does not fit in. There he meets Mei Mei, an overly eager panda, who had been promised to Po through an arranged marriage when they were children. To make matters worse, an evil ancient spirit called Kai begins terrorizing China and stealing the powers of defeated kung fu masters. Now, in the face of incredible odds, Po must learn to train a village of clumsy, fun-loving pandas to become a band of Kung Fu Pandas.

    My professor brother and I have an argument about head and heart, about whether he overvalues IQ while I lean more toward EQ. We commonly have this debate about people—can you be friends with a really smart jerk（怪物）?—but that also applies to animals as well .I'd love it if our dog could fetch the morning paper and then read it to me over coffee, but I actually care much more about her loyal and innocent heart. There's already enough thinking going on in our house, and we probably spend too much time in our heads. Where we need some role modeling is in instinct, and that's where a dog is a vivid example.

    I did not grow up with dogs, which meant that my older daughter's respectful but firm determination to get one required some adjustment on my part. I often felt she was training me: from ages of 6 to 9, she gently schooled me in various breeds and their personalities, whispered to the dogs we met with so they would charm and persuade me, demonstrated by her self-discipline that she was ready for the responsibility. And thus came our dog Twist, whom I sometimes mistake for a third daughter.

    At first I thought the challenge would be to train her to sit, to follow, to walk calmly beside us and not go wildly chasing the neighborhood rabbits. But I soon discovered how much more we had to learn from her than she from us.

    If it is true, for example, that the secret to a child's success is less rare genius than raw persistence, Twist's ability to stay on task is a model for us all, especially if the task is trying to capture the sunbeam that touches softly around the living room as the wind blows through the branches outside. She never succeeds, and she never gives up. This includes when she runs straight into walls.

    Then there is her unfailing patience, which breaks down only when she senses that dinnertime was 15 minutes ago and we have somehow failed to notice. Even then she is more eager than annoyed, and her refusal to complain shows a self control of which I'm not always capable when hungry.

    But the lesson I value most is the one in forgiveness, and Twist first offered this when she was still very young. When she was about 7 months old, we took her to the vet to be spayed（切除卵巢）. We turned her over to a stranger, who was to perform a procedure that was probably not pleasant. But when the vet returned her to us, weak and tender, there was no accusation, no how could you do that to me? It was as though she already knew that we would not intentionally cause her pain, and while she did not understand, she forgave and curled up with her head on my daughter's lap.

    I suppose we could have concluded that she was just blindly loyal and obedient. But eventually we knew better. She is entirely capable of disobedience, as she has proved many times. She will ignore us when there are more interesting things to look at, scold us when we are careless, bark into the twilight when she has urgent messages to send. But her patience with our failings and carelessness and her willingness to give us a second chance are a daily lesson in gratitude.

    My friends who grow up with dogs tell me how when they were teenagers and trusted no one in the world, they could tell their dog all their secrets. It was the one friend who would not gossip or betray, could provide in the middle of the night the soft, unselfish comfort and peace that adolescence plots to disturb. An age that is all about growth and risk needs some anchors and weights, a stable model when all else is changing. Sometimes I think Twist's devotion keeps my girls on a benevolent leash, one that hangs quietly at their side as they walk fast along but occasionally pulls them back to safety and solid ground.

We've weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters—what school to send them to and what church to attend, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.

    ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including US citizens, according to officials there. The expected announcement Thursday at Orlando International Airport alarms some privacy supporters. They say there are no formal rules in place for handling data collected from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding.

    Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington D.C. already use face scans for some departing international flights, but they don't involve all international travelers at the airports like the program's expansion in Orlando would. The image(图像) from the face scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security database that has images of people who should be on the flight, in order to check the traveler's identity.

    US citizens at these airports can refuse to be scanned, but the agency “doesn't seem to be doing an adequate job letting Americans know they can,” said Harrison Rudolph, an expert at the Center on Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.

    US citizens at the Orlando airport will be able to refuse face scans just like at the other airports if they don't want to provide their photograph, Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the US Customs and Border Protection said in an email. However, a notice about a possible rule change for the program states that “US citizens may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States.”

    “We're not talking about one gate,” Rudolph said. “We're talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up.”

    Two US senators（参议员） last month sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, urging that formal rules be carried out before the program is expanded. “It will also ensure a full test of this potentially sweeping program that could influence every American leaving the country by airport,” said the letter from the senators.

    In the early decades of the United States, the agrarian(土地的) movement promoted the farmer as society's hero. In the minds of agrarian thinkers and writers, the farmer was a person on whose well-being the health of the new country depended. The period between the Revolution, which ended in 1783, and the Civil War, which ended in 1865, was the age of the farmer in the United States. Agrarian philosophers, represented most eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, celebrated farmers extravagantly for their supposed centrality in a good society, their political virtue, and their Superior morality. And virtually all policy makers, whether they subscribed to the tenets of the philosophy held by Jefferson or not, recognized agriculture as the key component of the American economy. Consequently, government at all levels worked to encourage farmers as a social group and agriculture as economic enterprise.

    Both the national and state governments developed transportation infrastructure, building canals, roads, bridges, and railroads, deepening harbors, and removing obstructions from navigable streams. The national government imported plant and animal varieties and launched exploring expeditions into prospective farmlands in the West. In addition, government trade policies facilitated the exporting of agricultural products.

    For their part, farmers seemed to meet the social expectations agrarian philosophers had for them, as their broader horizons and greater self-respect, both products of the Revolution, were reflected to some degree in their behavior. Farmers seemed to become more scientific, joining agricultural societies and reading the farm newspapers that sprang up throughout the country. They began using improved implements, tried new crops and pure animal breeds, and became more receptive to modern theories of soil improvement.

    They also responded to inducements by national and state governments. Farmers streamed to the West, filling frontier lands with stunning rapidity. But farmers responded less to the expectations of agrarians and government inducements than to growing market opportunities. European demand for food from the United States seemed insatiable. War, industrialization, and urbanization all kept demand high in Europe. United States cities and industries grew as well; even industries not directly related to farming thrived because of the market, money, and labor that agriculture provided.

    Auctions (拍卖行) are everywhere. Here are just a few standouts and some of the areas they specialize in. All have brick-and-mortar (实体的) sales rooms in addition to online buying.

    Leslie Hindman Auctioneers

    Headquarters (总部): Chicago

    Founded: 1982

    Best bets: contemporary art, jewelry

    The founder, Leslie Hindman, has been on an expansion kick from her Chicago base and now runs eight offices across the country. Ms. Hindman said that plenty of items sell at her house for around $500. As in the auction world generally, jewelry and contemporary art receive lots of attention from bidders (出价者), and in 2017 a diamond ring sold for $97,000.

    Swann Auction Galleries

    Headquarters: New York

    Founded: 1941

    Best bets: books, works on paper, African-American art

    Founded as a rare-book auctioneers, Swann still holds dozens of such sales a year. The president, Nicholas D. Lowry, noted that Swann was the first auction house to sell old photographs, in 1952. The house has also had a department of African-American art for 12 years.

    Stair Galleries

    Headquarters : Hudson, N. Y.

    Founded: 2001

    Best bets: English and Continental furniture and paintings, modern and contemporary art

    Colin Stair, the founder and president, comes from a long line of antiques dealers. Stair is frequented by dealers and bargain hunters, and it's a place to find interesting things like a Gorge I carved walnut wing armchair, coming up as part of a sale on April 28 and 29.

    Heritage Auctions

    Headquarters : Dallas

    Founded: 1983

    Best bets: coins, sports memorabilia, movie posters

    With roots in coin auctions Heritage has grown quite large. But their bread and butter are items that the company president, Greg Rohan, calls "the kinds of things that everyone has." "People aren't buying what we're selling for decoration or for resale," he added. "They're buying things they absolutely love."