Having experienced a shocking electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, James Franco's world became completely dark and quiet for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by lightning. Witnesses (目击者) thought he was dead but he woke up 20 minutes later, lying face down in muddy water. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw: a tree and a muddy road. When Mrs. Franco came running up to him, shouting to their neighbors to call for help, he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of James regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from lightning. However, none of them could give a compelling answer as to why this should happen. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since James lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

    How fit are your teeth? Are you lazy about brushing them? Never fear: An inventor is on the case. An electric toothbrush senses how long and how well you brush, and it lets you track your performance on your phone.

    The Kolibree toothbrush was exhibited at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. It senses how it is moved and can send the information to an Android phone or iPhone via a Bluetooth wireless connection.

    The toothbrush will be able to teach you to brush right (don't forget the insides of the teeth!) and make sure you're brushing long enough. “It's kind of like having a dentist actually watch your brushing on a day-to-day basis,” says Thomas Serval, the French inventor.

    The toothbrush will also be able to talk to other applications on your phone, so developers could, for instance, create a game controlled by your toothbrush. You could score points for beating monsters among your teeth. “We try to make it smart but also fun,” Several says.

    Serval says he was inspired by his experience as a father. He would come home from work and ask his kids if they had brushed their teeth. They said “yes,” but Serval would find their toothbrush heads dry. He decided he needed a brush that really told him how well his children brushed.

    The company says the Kolibree will go on sale this summer, for $99 to $199, developing on features. The U.S. is the first target market.

    Serval says that one day, it'll be possible to replace the brush on the handle with a brushing unit that also has a camera. The camera can even examine holes in your teeth while you brush.

Dear Alcohol,

    You've been around forever. I can remember all the pain you've caused for me.

    Do you remember the night when you almost took my father's life? I do. He loves you. Sometimes I think he loves you more than he loves me. He's addicted to you, to the way you promise to rid him of his problems only to cause more of them. You just sat back and laughed as his car went spinning through the street, crashing into two other cars. He wasn't the only one hurt by you that night.

    Do you remember the night of my first high school party? You were there. My friends were intrigued by you. They treated you as if they were never going to see you again, drinking all of you that they could. I spent two hours that night helping my friends who had fallen completely. “I'm so embarrassed,” they said as I patted them on the back so that they could vomit(呕吐). “I'm sorry,” they said when I called taxies for them, walking them out and paying the drivers in advance. “This won't happen again,” they said as they were sent to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. Two 15-year-old girls slept in hospital beds that night thanks to you.

    Do you remember the night when you took advantage of my 17-year-old neighbor who had to drive to pick up his sister from her dance lessons? Do you know how we all felt when he hit another car and killed the two people in the other car? He died the next morning too. His sister walked home from her dance lesson, and passed police cars and a crowd of people gathering on the sidewalk just two blocks away from the dance studio. She didn't realize her brother was in the midst of it at all. She never saw him again. And it's all your fault.

    I wish you'd walk out of my life forever. I don't want anything to do with you. Look at all the pain you've caused. Sure, you've made people happy too from time to time. But the damage you've caused in the lives of millions is inexcusable. Stop luring(引诱) the people I love. Stop hurting me, please!

Sincerely,

Anonymous

    Throughout the world, parents talk differently to babies than they do to adults. With their young kids, parents use baby talks, featuring long pauses and a roller coaster of pitch（音高）changes.

    While parents may feel a bit silly using baby talks, they shouldn't in fact. Babies not only prefer listening to them, but they also learn new words more easily from them. By highlighting the structure of speech, such as the differences between the vowels（元音）“a” and “o”, baby talks help babies translate sounds into meaningful units of language.

    Actually, the timbre（音色）plays a role. The timbre of an instrument clearly affects how we experience music, but its role in language is less obvious. Looking into the timbre of baby talks, researchers made some surprising discoveries. In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers reported for the first time that mothers shifted their overall vocal timbre when speaking to their babies, as if they were changing their voice into a different instrument to address these unique little listeners.

    In the Princeton Baby Lab, where researchers study how children learn, they recorded English-speaking mothers while they talked with their 7-to-12-month-old babies and while they spoke to an adult experimenter, and found that adult-directed and baby-directed speech had consistently different timbres.

    Most surprising, in a second sample of non-English-speaking mothers, researchers found that this timbre shift was also highly consistent across nine diverse languages. This suggests these timbre shifts may represent a universal form of communication with babies.

    Being able to identify baby talks across multiple languages could give us rich information about the amount and type of language children hear at preschool across different cultural environments. This could help researchers and educators predict and improve outcomes such as vocabulary and success at school.

    Parents should feel self-conscious about their own baby talks: with them they're helping their baby learn.

    China plans to launch 156 small satellites by 2025 to provide Internet services in low signal areas and places with adverse natural environment, according to China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC).

    Due to environmental conditions of deserts, mountains and seas, half of the world's population has no access to the Internet, and the information deficiency hampers local development.

    It will be China's first broadband Internet access system with small satellites hovering in low orbit, which will also help meet the needs of commercial space development.

    The project, named Hongyun, plans to send the first satellite by 2019, and launch four more by 2020. By the end of 2025, CASIC plans to have all of the 156 satellites in operation.

    The Hongyun Project, which focuses on communication, remote sensing and navigation, can offer communication and Internet services for China and less-developed 3 countries with reduced latency. Meanwhile, the project can also benefit emergency communication, sensor data collection and remote control of unmanned equipment.

    Currently, international maritime satellites are widely used in communications in mountainous areas and airplanes, but those satellites, 36, 000 kilometers above the Earth, have time and signal delay as well as high cost for providing services.

    The small satellites sent by the Hongyun Project will hover in low orbits only hundreds of kilometers to 1, 000 kilometers above the Earth, and thus could improve the Internet access. However, the low orbit satellites may face challenges in power supply, as they need more energy to reduce the influence of air-resistance compared to high orbit satellites. Experiments are needed to determine whether solar energy alone is enough.

    Here are some great people and their achievements.

    Mary Anderson ­ windscreen wiper.

    Back on a freezing winter's day in 1902, Mary Anderson was travelling by train through New York City. Snow was falling, forcing the driver to stop repeatedly and get out to clear it. Each time the door opened, Mary suffered a gust of sub-zero air. She had an idea: why not make some kind of a rubber blade that could be operated from inside the vehicle? And that's exactly what she did.

    Josephine Cochrane ­ dishwasher

    The dishwasher dates back even earlier to the 19th century, and to the dinner parties thrown by a lady called Josephine Cochrane. As a frequent host, she wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than people. Her response was to develop what was to become the first commercially successful dishwasher. Interestingly, innovation was in her blood: her grandfather had invented the steamboat.

    Stephanie Kwolek ­ Kevlar

    Kevlar is the lightweight fibre used in bulletproof vests. The material is used by millions every day and has saved countless lives. The super tough fabric is also used in objects ranging from gloves to airplanes. Incredibly, its strength-to-weight ratio(比强度) is five times higher than steel. Again, it was invented by a woman, the American chemist Stephanie Kwolek, in 1964.

    Grace Hopper ­ first compiler(编译程序)

    One of the most important inventions of the 20th century must surely be the computer programme. The world of programming is unbalanced in terms of gender. Men vastly outnumber women, and take home around 30% more pay than their female counterparts on average. But back in the 1940s and 1950s, women were at the forefront of this new field. Grace Hopper is credited with inventing the first compiler in 1952, which serves as the bridge between code and the binary(二进制的) ones and zeros understood by computers.