Jack threw some papers on my desk and looked at me angrily. “What's wrong?” I asked. “Next time you want to change anything, ask me first,” he shouted and left.

    “How dare he treat me like that?” I thought. I had just changed one long sentence, and correct grammar—something I thought I was paid to do. In fact I had been warned. On the first day one of  my workmates took me aside and reminded me of his temper. As the weeks went by, I came to look down on Jack.

    One day Jack's other papers left me in tears so I stormed into his office angrily. “What?” he asked.

    Suddenly I knew what I must do. After all, he earned it. “Jack, the way you've been treating me is wrong. I've never had anyone speak to me that way. As a professional, it's wrong for me to allow it to continue,” I said. Jack smiled nervously, “Susan, I make you a promise that I will be a friend. I will treat you as you should be treated, with respect and kindness,” he said. With these words, I left.

    Jack avoided me the rest of the week, and never questioned my work again. I brought cookies to the office one day and left some on his desk. Another day I left a note: “Hope your day is going great.” Over the next few weeks, Jack reappeared , but there were no more Jack's papers. One year later I discovered I had breast cancer, and was scared. The statistics (统计数字) were not great for my long-term survival.

    On the last day of my hospital stay, Jack came and silently handed me a bundle with several bulbs inside. “Tulips (郁金香) ,” he said. I smiled, not understanding. He cleared his throat. “If you plant them when you get home, they'll come up next spring. I think you will be there to see them when they come up.” Tears clouded my eyes and I whispered: “Thank you.”Jack held my hands firmly, saying, “You are welcome. You can't see it now, but next spring you will see the colors I picked out for you.”

    I have seen those red and white striped（有条纹的） tulips push through the soil every spring for over ten years now. This past September the doctor declared me cured. At a moment when I was praying for just the right word, a man with very few words said all the right things. After all, that's what friends do.

    A bite from a tsetse fly (采采蝇) is an extremely unpleasant experience. It is not like a mosquito, which can put its thin mouthpart directly into your blood, often without you noticing. In contrast, the tsetse fly's mouth has tiny saws on it that saw into your skin on its way to suck out your blood.

    To make matters worse, several species of tsetse fly can transmit diseases. One of the most dangerous is a parasite that causes ＂sleeping sickness＂, or ＂human African trypanosomiasis＂to give it its official name. Without treatment, an infection is usually fatal.

    Like so many tropical diseases, sleeping sickness has often been neglected by medical researchers. However, researchers have long endeavored to understand how it avoids our bodies' defence mechanisms. Some of their insights could now help us eliminate sleeping sickness altogether.

    There are two closely-related single-celled parasites that cause this deathly sleep: Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense and T. b. gambiense. The latter is far more common: it is responsible for up to 95% of cases, mostly in western Africa. It takes several years to kill a person, while T. brucei rhodesiense can cause death within months. There are still other forms that infect livestock.

    After the initial bite, sleeping sickness symptoms often start with a fever, headaches and aching muscles. As the illness goes on, those infected become increasingly tired, which is where it gets its name. Personality changes, severe confusion and poor coordination can also happen.

    While medication does help, some treatments are toxic and can themselves be deadly, especially if they are given after the disease has reached the brain.

    It is worth noting that sleeping sickness is no longer as deadly as it once was. In the early 20th Century several hundred thousand people were infected each year. By the 1960s the disease was considered ＂under control＂ and had reached very low numbers, making its spread more difficult. But in the 1970s there was another major epidemic, which took 20 years to control.

    Since then, better screening programmes and earlier interventions have reduced the number of cases dramatically. In 2009 there were fewer than 10,000 cases for the first time since records began, and in 2015 this figure dropped to fewer than 3,000, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation. The WHO hopes the disease will be completely eliminated by 2020.

    While this decline looks positive, there may be many more cases that go unreported in rural Africa. To eliminate the disease completely, infections have to be closely monitored.

    More problematically, a series of new studies have shown that the parasite is more complicated than previously believed.

    Sleeping sickness has always been considered —— and diagnosed —— as a blood disease, because T. brucei parasites can readily be detected in the blood of its victims.

    What's the one thing every child wants in school? More breaks! And that is exactly what some schools are giving students, which turns out to be beneficial for everyone. Eagle Mountain Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, is one of four public schools carrying out the LiiNK program, a project that increases breaks per day to improve creativity, develop character, and heighten school success.

    LiiNK was inspired by Scandinavian approaches to learning based on the simple concept （观念）of giving children more outside playtime and less time spent indoors. In Finland, where the system has been in place for decades, students have some of the highest scores on global assessment tests. Instead of spending increasing amounts of time inside the classroom, they're putting more and more focus on physical activity. Finnish kids get to enjoy 15 minutes of playtime for every hour of class.

    After spending six weeks in Finland in 2016, Debbie Rhea, the creator of LiiNK and professor at Texas Christian University, discovered that the additional breaks of "outdoor play" actually helped students improve their performance inside the classroom. "You start putting 15 minutes into these kids every so often and it gives the platform for them to be able to function at their best level," she says.

    Other studies have shown that outdoor playtime decreases restlessness, anxiety, and has a whole other benefits such as improved motor skills, physical fitness, and social development. Rhea started carrying out the program in private schools in 2017, and has since expanded her program to districts in Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Utah and the children in these schools are all the happier for it. It just goes to show that the best way to raise happy and successful children, is to simply let them be kids every once in a while.

Sargassum is the smelly seaweed piling up on beaches across the Caribbean. It isn't something most people 1 kindly. But for Omar de Vazquez, a gardener, it was something like a(an) 2 .

Years ago, as part of his gardening business, Omar launched a beach cleanup service to 3 the leafy seaweed. But, as its 4 intensified, he started considering how to turn it into something useful, and in 2018 he 5 a way to use it in building blocks. He started his company—SargaBlock to market the bricks which are being 6 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a sustainable solution to a current environmental problem.

"When I look at SargaBlock, it's like looking in a 7 ," he says, comparing his company to overcoming his personal 8 , including drug and alcohol addiction. "That was a time when I felt unwanted and 9 , like the sargassum people complained about."

Luckily, Omar grew up in nature and poverty, which 10 his character and turned him into someone who takes action. He wanted to make something good out of something everyone saw as bad. Omar then put his idea into 11 , mixing 40% sargassum with other organic materials, like clay, which he then puts into a block-forming machine. The process was 12 .

The UNDP selected Omar's work for their Accelerator Lab, which 13 and recognizes innovative solutions to environmental challenges globally. The idea is that some of the most timely and creative 14 come from locals suffering from environmental dilemmas 15 .

Those who had the pleasure of watching Benny Goodman at work saw a rather ordinary-looking man in rimless glasses and a conservative business suit; but they also saw a human being who could play the clarinet （单簧管） like no one before or since. This made Benny Goodman a unique individual.

Other Americans who have stood out from the flock include Joe DiMaggio, Beverly Sill, Ernest Hemingway and Jonas Salk. They, like Benny Goodman, were recognized and honored for no other reason than excellence.

It is doing something better than other people that makes us unique. Yet a surprising number of people still see individuality as a surface thing. They wear garish clothes, dye their hair strange colors and decorate their skin with tattoos to make some kind of social statement. But an ordinary guy who has dyed his hair purple or orange is nothing more than the same person with a funny-looking head.

The whole purpose of individuality is excellence. Those who invent, who improvise （即兴发挥）, who know more about a subject than other people do, and who take something that doesn't work and make it work—these people are the very soul of capitalism.

Charles Kettering didn't like the idea of cranking a car to make it start, so he invented the electric starter. Henry Ford figured out the assembly-line technique and made it possible to mass-produce automobiles, and Elisha Otis, inventor of the elevator, indirectly created the city sky-line. These people understood that individualism means working at the top of one's capacity.

The ones with the purple hair and the funky jewelry are just along for the ride, trying to be "different" and not knowing how to go about it.

The student who earns straight A's on his report card has grasped the idea and has found the real meaning of individuality. So has the youngster who has designed his own spaceship, who gives piano recitals, who paints pictures of the world around him.

Benny Goodman understood it too. This is why he was at his best, blowing his clarinet, in a blue suit and black shoes.