John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose.

    His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

    During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like.

    When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting -- 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York. “You'll recognize me,” she wrote, “by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel.” So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.

    I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened: A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small, attractive smile curved her lips. “Going my way, sailor?” she murmured.

    Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own.

    And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her.

    This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment. “I'm Lieutenant（中尉）John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?”

    The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. “I don't know what this is about, son,” she answered, “but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!”

    It's not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom. The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unattractive. “Tell me whom you love,” Houssaye wrote, “And I will tell you who you are.”

    Part of the fun of watching sports events is following an exciting rivalry (竞争关系).

    But where do all these rivalries come from?

    Some rivalries start because athletes spend a lot of time close to opponents (对手).

    Other rivalries get personal. Things that one rival says that are thought to be not respectful to the other can cause a rivalry, even if the words are misunderstood. And sometimes, rivalries grow just because the athletes don't like each other's personalities.

    Some sports may also be more likely than others to cause rivalries. “Some sports only meet a few times, so there is less chance for rivalries to build,” For example, in sports where athletes perform on their own, such as diving, rivalries might also take longer to appear than in sports in which athletes compete at the same time. But in tennis, players often face each other, and rivalries are more likely to happen.

    So do the rivalries do good or harm to the athletes?

    Some believe that rivalries can be a good thing because they encourage athletes to try harder to win. But rivalries can also become too personal, taking athletes' attention away from their sports.

    Keegan agreed that rivalries often do athletes more harm than good. “They can be a huge distraction (分散注意力的事) and lead to focusing on the opponent more than the game,” he said.

    “Top athletes often have physical and mental training that they follow in order to worry less and prepare to compete”, Gould further explained. An important part of that preparation is preventing from distractions, including rivalries.

    “The better athletes don't care too much about a rivalry – they try to treat every competition the same,” Gould told LiveScience.

    Like many other people, I love my smart phone, which keeps me connected with the larger world that can go anywhere with me. I also love my laptop, because it holds all of my writing and thoughts. In spite of this love of technology, I know that there are times when I need to move away from these devices and truly communicate with others.

On occasion, I teach a course called History Matters for a group of higher education managers. My goals for the class include a full discussion of historical themes and ideas. Because I want students to thoroughly study the materials and exchange their ideas with each other in the classroom, I have a rule —no laptop, iPads, phones, etc. When students were told my rule in advance of the class, some of them were not happy.

    Most students assume that my reasons for this rule include unpleasant experiences in the past with students misusing technology. There's a bit of truth to that. Some students assume that I am anti-technology. There's no truth in that at all. I love technology and try to keep up with it, so I create to my students.

    The real reason why I ask students to leave technology at the door is that I think there are very few places in which we can have deep conversions and truly engage complex ideas. Interruptions by technology often break concentration and allow for too much dependence on outside information for ideas. I want students to dig deep within themselves for inspiration and ideas. I want them to push each other to think differently and make connections between the course materials and the class discussion.

    I've been teaching my history class in this way for many years and the evaluations reflect students' satisfaction with the environment that I create. Students realize that with deep conversation and challenge, they learn at a level that helps them keep the course materials beyond the classroom.

    I'm not saying that I won't ever change my mind about technology use in my history class, but until I hear a really good reason for the change, I'm sticking to my plan. A few hours of technology-free dialogue is just too sweet to give up.

    A crew of six teenage girls completed a nine-day sailing trip in the US recently, after braving seasickness and strong winds.

    For the past three years, the Sea Cadet teenagers who set sail were all male. Roger Noakes, who captained the boat, said this was the first time he'd taken out an all-female crew.

    The girls asked for an all-girls trip in August this year. The crew set sail along with three adults, Noakes and two Sea Cadet representatives. The original plan was for the girls to sail 24 hours a day in rotating shifts(轮流换班)along the coast and then return. Things turned out differently, however. “The first night was rough because the wind was really hard. The waves were going up and down,” said Abby Fairchild, 16. “Everybody got seasick.” Noakes gave the girls the option of just sailing in the bay and not going into open water. “But they decided they were going.”

    The teenagers then sailed a long way overnight and slept in shifts. “We've learned everything from steering(掌舵)the boat itself to putting up the sails to cooking while we have rough seas, ” said 15-year-old Olivia Wilcox.

    The teenagers stopped on land in Massachusetts. They didn't make it to their original destination in Maine, where they were supposed to have a celebratory dinner, due to the weather and winds. They said they weren't disappointed, however, as they'd learned a lot. “They learned about boating, and above all, they built confidence and character,” said Noakes.

    When pups are between 2 and 3months old, their mothers will abandon them for any number of reasons. With no mother to watch out for them, infant (婴儿) mortality of pups under one year skyrockets (飞涨) to around 90%. So, only about 10% of motherless, homeless pups survive.

    Without mothers, how are these abandoned pups supposed to survive? For the study, researchers Clive Wynne at Arizona State, Nadine Chersini at Utecht University, and Nathan Hal at Texas Tech University brought in 51 college students and asked them to rate the attractiveness of headshots (头部特写) of puppies at different ages.

    The pups peaked at different ages, but they were all ranked likable between six to eight weeks, since newly abandoned pups are competing with each other for human heartstrings (怜悯), evolution says they should be most likable around 6 and 11 weeks. This is around the time they are weaned (断奶) and let go of by their mothers.

    There are a few characteristics that humans find particularly adorable across species: big, forward-facing eyes, floppy and unstable limbs (肢), and a soft, rounded body shape. We're also keen to scream when animals have large heads in comparison to their bodies, and this reaction goes back to evolution.

    Called kinderschema (婴儿萌), these qualities are also apparent in human babies and necessary for their survival. The characteristics activate the decision-making part of the brain to encourage you to protect and nurture the baby. At the same time, the brain's pleasure center releases dopamine (多巴胺). With these two reactions, your brain makes you want to protect the baby and rewards you for doing so. With your protection, the baby can survive.

    Walk through the Amazon rainforest today and you will find it steamy, warm, damp and thick. But if you had been there around 15,000 years ago, during the last ice age, would it have been the same? For more than 30 years, scientists have been arguing about how rainforests might have reacted to the cold, dry climate of the ice ages, but till now, no one has reached a satisfying answer.

    Rainforests like the Amazon are important for mopping up CO2 from the atmosphere and helping to solve global warming. Currently the trees in the Amazon take in around 500 million tons of CO2 each year: equal to the total amount of CO2 given off in the UK each year. But how will the Amazon react to the future climate change? If it gets drier, will it survive and continue to draw down CO2? Scientists hope that they will be able to learn in advance how the rainforest will manage in the future by understanding how rainforests reacted to climate change in the past.

    Unfortunately, collecting information is incredibly difficult. To study the past climate, scientists need to look at fossilized pollen (花粉) kept in lake mud. Going back to the last ice age means drilling down into lake sediments (沉淀物), which requires specialized equipment and heavy machinery . There are very few roads and paths, or places to land helicopters and aeroplanes. Rivers tend to be the easiest way to enter the forest, but this still leaves vast areas between the rivers completely unsampled (未取样). So far, only a handful of cores have been drilled that go back to the last ice age and none of them provide enough information to prove how the Amazon forest reacts to climate change.