Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably accomplish what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.

My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren't written until the final threat.

I've been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working toward her master's degree in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student(技校学生). They're called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.

When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”, I was shocked. “Hey, he's a good kid,” I wanted to say. “And smart, really.”

I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don't often make school honor rolls(光荣榜).

But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who labor in clean shirts in offices don't have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was estimated at $800. “Hey, I can fix it,” said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.

      My son, with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts(零件）from a junkyard, non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbours and co-workers trust their car repair to him.a

        Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbors and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.

        These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.

I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don't need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.

        My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.

    Peter Thiel,the billionaire co-founder of PayPal,plans to live to be 120.Compared with some other tech billionaires,he doesn't seem particularly ambitious.Dmitry Itskov,the “godfather” of the Russian Internet,says his goal is to live to 10.000;and Sergey Brin,co-founder of Google,hopes to someday "cure death.

    They aren't being ridiculous.Their search is based on real science that could fundamentally change what we know about life and about death.It's hard to believe,though,since the human search for immortality is both ancient and filled with disastrous failures.Around 200 B.C.,the first emperor of China,Qin Shi Huang,accidentally killed himself trying to live forever;he poisoned himself by eating mercury（水银）pills.Centuries later, the search for eternal life wasn't much safer: In J492,Pope Innocent VIII died after blood transfusions from three healthy boys whose youth he believed he could absorb.

    But historical examples haven't discouraged some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.Thiel,for example,has given $3.5 million to the Methuselah Foundation.Aubrey de Grey,Methuselah's co-founder,says SENS,the nonprofit's main research is devoted to finding drugs that cure several types of age-related damage:"Loss of cells, excessive（过多的）cell division,inadequate cell death,garbage inside the cell,garbage outside the cell,...The idea is that the human body,being a machine,has a structure that determines all aspects of its function,so if we can restore that structure—at the molecular（分子的）and cellular（细胞的）level—then we will restore function too,so we will have comprehensively renewed the body."

    But SENS,which has an annual operating budget of $5 million,is small,compared with the Brin-led Project Calico,Google's attempt to “cure death,”which is planning to pump billions into a partnership with medicine giant AbbVie.Google is secretive,but it's said to be building a drug to copy a gene associated with exceptional life span.

    Then there's the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research,started by Paul F.Glenn in 1965.Since 2007,the foundation has distributed annual "Glenn Awards,"$60,000 to independent researchers doing promising work on aging.The Glenn Foundation also works closely with the Ellison Medical Foundation,a far younger institution (founded in 1997).Ellison's passion project gives out hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to scholars seeking research on aging.Their decision to fund independent research may be paying off.Research projects funded by Ellison and Glenn appear to be developing into a testable means to stave off old age—for lab mice.The question is: Can those lab results be repeated in humans?

    If a trip to Rome or Paris is in your future, be prepared: The European Union Parliament is calling for an end to visa-free travel Americans. EU lawmakers passed a resolution urging the EU Commission to impose visas on U. S. citizens traveling into the 28-nation bloc.

    The dispute(争论)centers on reciprocal treatment of travelers from EU nations and the United States. While Americans have been able to travel throughout EU member nations without a visa, the U. S. still requires citizens of five EU countries-Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania-to apply for entry visas when visiting the U. S, Reuters reports. Citizens of the other 23 EU member nations can use the U. S. visa waiver program to enter America. The EU lawmakers are calling for mutual treatment for all EU citizens, says Reuters. They've given the EU Commission two months to respond.

    The trans-Atlantic visa dispute first came to light in April 2014, according to an EU Parliament news release. At that time, five countries-Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan and the U. S. –required visas for some EU citizens. Since then, Australia, Brunei and Japan have lifted their visa requirements for all EU citizens. Canada, which currently imposes(推行)visa requirements on Bulgarian and Romanian citizens, plans to follow suit in next December, leaving just the United States at odds with the issue of reciprocity of visa-free travel with the EU.

The EU says if a visa requirement for Americans is introduced, it would be temporary, according to a story in Money, which did not give a time frame.

    Microsoft has developed a new smart phone app that interprets eye signals and translates them into letters, allowing people with motor neurone disease to communicate with others from a phone.

    The GazeSpeak app combines a smartphone's camera with artificial intelligence to recognize eye movements in real time and convert(改变) them into letters, words and sentences.

    For people suffering from ALS（渐冻症）, also known as motor neurone disease, eye movement can be the only way they are able to communicate.

    “Current eye-tracking input systems for people with ALS or other motor impairments are expensive, not robust under sunlight, and require frequent re-calibration and substantial, relatively immobile setups,” said Xiaoyi Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft who developed the technology.

    “To mitigate the drawbacks…we created GazeSpeak, an eye-gesture communication system that runs on a smartphone, and is designed to be low-cost, robust, portable and easy to learn.”

    The app is used by the listener by pointing their smartphone at the speaker. A chart that can be stuck to the back of the smartphone is then used by the speaker to determine which eye movements to make in order to communicate.

    The sticker shows four grids(方格) of letters, which each correspond to a different eye movement. By looking up, down, left or right, the speaker selects which grids the letters they want belong to. The artificial intelligence algorithm（程序） is then able to predict the word or sentence they are trying to say.

    Have you heard about "Survival Holidays"? It is for children to go into the lonely place for exciting activities. Now about 1,100 companies are allowed to take children into the great outdoors without their parents.

    The reason why people like "Survival Holidays" is that they think being close to nature is good for children. Many children in big cities spend all time watching TV and playing computer games. "Survival Holidays" gives them an important change.

    Is "Survival Holidays" a wonderful idea? Maybe it is. Children need more free time to play. They need to be left on their own, without adults disturbing (干扰) them. Parents care too much about their children. They like to see the children being busy with activities that are controlled (控制) by adults, which causes many problems. Children don't know what to do when they are in danger. Even something like crossing a small river seems to be a hard challenge. Children are not comfortable with danger. Even slight danger like getting their feet wet or falling down seems very terrible to them.

    Many people think the survival activities are good for children. Even years later, they will still remember what they have learned. Some have learned to stay calm in dangerous times. Some have learned how to keep safe. Others have learned how to work in a team. All these skills will help them a lot in their lives.

    What would it be like to live on Mars? Volunteers are spending eight months in an area that looks much like the surface of Mars. They are isolated(孤立)high on top of Mauna Loa, a volcanic mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii, living on a simulated(模仿的) or make-believe, Mars Base.

    The project called HI-SEAS is in the charge of Kim Binsted. She says this wild environment is as close to Mars as you can find on Earth. Because it is so high, the land is not warm or rich with plants, like the rest of Hawaii.

    "You will see there is really no visible plant life or animal life. And you have got this wonderful volcanic material."

    Mauna Loa, 2,500 meters above sea level, is geologically very similar to Olympus Mons on Mars and almost as tall as the Martian mountain. When measured from its base, deep in the ocean, Mauna Loa is the second largest mountain in our solar system, after the one on Mars.

    The six member HI-SEAS crew is mostly self-sufficient. Food and supplies are brought to them. But the individuals bringing those supplies cannot communicate with volunteers inside the habitat, or base.

    Kim Binsted says this experiment looks at how the astronauts get along with each other. "We study how well they work together, how we can keep them happy and supported, and not wanting to kill each other over these long durations (期间)."

    Crew members communicate with the outside world through e-mail and blogs. They also produce video on the YouTube website, like this one from mission commander Martha Lenio. "I am really enjoying this opportunity to live here and pretend that I'm on Mars and get to learn all sorts of new skills." One of them said. "Whoever gets there first, the trip will not be easy", says Kim Binsted, "It is going to be challenging."