When I graduated from college I dreamed of being a television news reporter. Having no experience, I had to work in a small town until I finally got my big break in the form of a job in Boston. I made it.

    Soon, reality set in. I was too often sent to run after accused criminals out of courts, waiting outside of crime scene tape or at the doorstep of a family still crying for tragedy (悲剧). My breaking point came the day I accidentally informed a young woman that her mother died. It was the worst day of my professional life and the day I decided I no longer wanted to shine a light on these stories. My career was ebbing, and at the same time my personal life was too-I divorced.

    My mom had always told me “When you're feeling extremely upset, go help someone else.” So I started seeking out stories of people who had been in the news under tragic circumstances but were doing something inspiring with their lives: a young girl who was paralyzed (瘫痪的) by an accident but was uplifting her classmates with her positive spirit, a blind and autistic (自闭的) musician who learned to play 27 instruments, a disabled soldier who opened his own art studio. I started to tell and promote stories like them.

    Over the last 10 years I have discovered my kindness gift: my ability to see the beautiful side of a person and reflect it back to them and the world. In telling stories of people turning their own hurt into acts of helping others I have become more sympathetic, more grateful and kinder. I have learned kindness is who we are, that our power for it is limitless and that, as we shine a light on it, it grows.

    Money is the root of all evil (邪恶) and new study claims there may be some truth behind the saying. Scientists at the University of California Berkeley, US, announced on February 27 that rich people are more likely to do immoral things, such as lie or cheat, than poorer people. The scientists did a series of eight experiments. They published their findings online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNA《美国国家科学院院刊》).

    They carried out the first two experiments from the sidewalk near Berkeley. They noted that drivers of newer and more expensive cars were more likely to cut off other cars and pedestrians at crosswalks. Nearly 45 percent of people driving expensive ears ignored a pedestrian compared with only 30 percent of people driving mow modest cars.

    In another experiment, a group of college students was asked if they would do immoral things in various everyday situations. Examples included taking printer paper from work and not telling a salesperson when he or she gave back more change. Students from higher — class families were more likely to act dishonestly.

    According to the scientists, rich people often think money can get them out of trouble. This makes them less afraid to take risks. It also means they care less about other people's feelings.

    Finally, it just makes them greedier. “Higher wealth status seems to make you want even more, and that increased want leads you to bend the rules or break the rules to serve your self- interest,” said Paul Piff, lead scientist of the study.

    Piff pointed out that the findings don't mean that all rich people are untrustworthy or all poor people honest. He said the experiments were to show how people living in different social situations express their instincts（本能）and values in different ways.

    A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    “It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components,” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing the components together. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, and then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

    Football, to me, is more than just a game. I have probably learned more valuable lessons from it than from school.

    When I joined the team freshman year, I didn't realize what I was getting into. Even though I had been playing since fourth grade and knew it was hard work, nothing would prepare me for the effort I would put into football that year. We worked all summer in the weight room and ran on the track to get in physical and mental shape before the season.

    See, football is more of a mental sport than anything else, so running on the track wasn't only about getting in shape, we would push our minds by running as hard as we could even if we were going to pass out. At the beginning, I was immature（幼稚）and only thought of myself, sometimes even gave up when I was tired or hurt. Then after the third game I had a season-ending injury. Imagine working all summer and then only being able to play three games! I needed surgery（外科手术）on my arm and at least five months to recover.

    Needless to say, I missed the rest of the season, but this actually helped me realize that since you never know when your last play will be, you should try your hardest in football and life.

    After freshman year I decided that I would always give my best effort. Playing varsity（校队的）football has taught me so much more than just what my assignments are on a particular play or how to block. I have learned to think about others first and realized how important working hard is. Being with all my friends, even sweating and bleeding with them, really made us bond as a group of hard-working young men who I know will succeed in life.

    Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was one of the greatest artists of all time. He was born on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, Holland. Rembrandt began painting at an early age. At the age of 15, he traveled to Amsterdam to study art. But he soon returned home to paint on his own.

    Rembrandt's first paintings were of subjects from history. He used bright colors and shiny paints. These paintings were popular. Rembrandt became well-known in his community.

    In 1628, Rembrandt began to teach art. He was a respected teacher with many students. In 1632, Rembrandt again moved to Amsterdam. He began painting portraits (肖像) of many well-known people in Amsterdam. He soon became famous in Holland for his beautiful portraits.

    In 1634, he married a wealthy and educated girl named Saskia. She served as a model for many of his paintings. They moved into a large home where Rembrandt hung many of the paintings that he had collected. He enjoyed buying paintings by other artists.

    Rembrandt continued to succeed as an artist. But tragedy (悲剧) began to strike his family. Three of his four children died at a very early age. His wife, Saskia, died in 1642.

    Rembrandt became very sad. He began to paint with darker colors. But somehow, his painting grew even more beautiful. He used dark colors around the figures in his paintings. The figures themselves were painted as if a soft light were shining on them. One of Rembrandt's most famous paintings, The Night Watch, is from this period.

    Rembrandt began to paint more for himself and less for other people. Although his work was excellent, he was not able to make enough money to keep his house.

    Until he died on October 4, 1669, Rembrandt continued to paint. Rembrandt created over 600 paintings, 300 etchings (蚀刻画), and 1,400 drawings. Some of his most fascinating paintings were the portraits that he painted of himself. About 100 self-portraits leave a great record of his lifetime.

    Family sizes are shrinking around the world. In many countries, families are having fewer than two children. Smaller families mean many children now grow up with fewer cousins. This is hard to imagine, as I come from a large extended family with 23 first cousins on one side and 25 on the other.

    Sometimes when I can't sleep, I try to name all my relatives. Of course, almost all of those cousins have married and had children and now their children are having children. With extended families growing so large and spreading so far, get-togethers have nearly become a thing of the past.

    One of the last gatherings on my father's side was at the home of a cousin who has a place in the country on top of a hill. A tent was set up, holding long tables creaking(嘎吱作响) under the weight of fried chicken, potato salad and chocolate cake. A fishing hole waited nearby for the kids. Vehicles poured in from every direction, parking on the drive, the grass, wherever they could find a spot. There was talking and laughing and joking and food.

    While such gatherings had grown infrequent, we were all happy to be together. Although some of us had not seen one another since so-and-so's wedding or somebody's father's funeral, most people were still easy to recognize. Three sisters who sat together all had the same beautiful skin their mother had. The cousin with bright blue eyes who raced her horse as a teenager still had bright blue eyes. An older cousin who gave me piano lessons when I was young and naughty seemed to have forgiven me. We share a gene pool of people who work hard and laugh often.

    It was very dark when the last set of taillights disappeared into the night. As we gathered our things, said our goodbyes and prepared to leave, a cousin called to me saying, "Don't forget where you come from." I never could. And I'd never try.