After I visited my elder sister's house, I was reminded just how different the apartment living with a child was. She has a nice big house with a few floors, a big backyard and lots of toys. Her house is my son Tom's little piece of heaven. At her house there are little toys, big toys, a doll house, a play house and more! There are bedroom stocked with train tables, ride-on toys and big trucks.

    The main difference about being an apartment mom is that you cannot become a collector of “things”. I continually get rid of anything too large. When Tom was born, we made a rule that there would never be any stuffed animals in our apartment that were larger than him at that time. We also made a rule that we would only ever have at most five stuffed “anything” at one time. So far this had worked out well for us. These rules left Tom with a few special soft creatures to play with, but that can be easily put away.

    Since we want to keep the appearance of being clean city dwellers, we have limited Tom's play things to one toy basket in the main living space and one big storage bin in his bedroom. I am constantly thinking about living space when I buy anything for our little Tom. We love the storage bin in Tom's room. It is filled with fun play things. It is a place to keep his toys and everything gets pulled in and out daily. Anything that doesn't fit is often weeded out to create space.

    Tom absolutely likes going to his aunt's house and pulling out every single toy available to him. Of course, Tom does not notice that when he returns home he only gets one basket of toys instead of many rooms of toys. Right now Tom lives fully in his 1,100-square-foot apartment and seems very satisfied with his basket of toys.

    Elephants might be the most well-known and well-loved animal in African wildlife. But conservation (保护) of the African elephant still faces special difficulties. While the elephant population is half of what it was 40 years ago, some areas of Africa have more elephants than populated areas can support. That's why AWF scientists are studying elephant behavior, protecting habitats and finding ways for humans to live peacefully with elephants in Africa.

    Years ago, overhunting and the ivory trade were the biggest threats to elephants' survival. Luckily, ivory bans (禁令), hunting rules and protected areas protect elephants from these dangers today.

    The 21st century brings a different challenge to elephant conservation—land-use. Elephants walk across borders and outside parks and other protected areas. So they often destroy crops, causing conflicts (冲突) between local farmers and these big animals.

    Successful conservation strategies (策略) must allow elephants to walk freely in their natural habitats while reducing conflicts between elephants and local people.

    AWF researchers are searching for a way to give both elephants and people the space they need. The AWF is collecting information on elephant habitats and behavior. The information they gather will help to develop the widest possible space for elephants.

    The AWF is helping elephants by protecting their habitats. And they also work with local famers to improve their life in order to encourage them to protect rather than destroy elephants.

    People can't see you when you're speaking on the phone, but they can hear you. So, the way you speak is especially important. In fact, researchers have calculated that 80% of communication over the phone is through your tone of voice; and only 20% is from the words you use. Here are our top tips on how to speak over the phone.

    ①Facial Expressions

    Your facial expression can influence your voice. For example, if you smile, your voice will sound warm and friendly, just the opposite, if you have an angry look on your face, it can make you sound unpleasant.

    ②Volume

    If you speak too loudly, you could sound angry. And if you speak too softly, it'll be difficult to hear you. So, speak loudly enough to be heard clearly, but not so loud that you're shouting.

    ③Pace

    The pace of your voice is how quickly you speak. And this can show how you feel. For example, an angry person might speak faster than normal. Or a downhearted person might speak very slowly. Try speaking a little more slowly than normal. This will make you sound confident, and it'll make it easier for the other person to understand you.

    ④Gestures

    Gesturing can influence the tone of your voice. When you gesture, you bring more air into the lungs, which can make your voice sound warmer. Gestures are also useful to help you stress the right words or even find the words you need. The best thing about gesturing during a phone call is that no one can see what you're doing, so you can gesture as wildly as you like!

    ⑤Movement

    If you're feeling nervous, stand up and move around. It will reduce the nervousness in your body and help your voice to sound more confident.

    ⑥Pauses (停顿)

    Using pauses every now and then can help you to slow down. This will make you sound more confident and in control. Also, if you pause after giving some new information, it'll give the other person time to understand it. At the same time, listen to how the other person uses pauses. They could tell you something about the speaker's feeling. For example, when a speaker is really angry, he might use pauses and says, "I…am…so…angry…"

    D. Mike Miles hadn't had a stable job in years. He bounced around from temporary agency to temporary agency, never sure when his last day would be. Sometimes, he lost a job with less than a day's notice. This was not due to a poor work ethic (职业道德) - from arriving early to staying late, Miles said he did everything he could to leave good impressions on employers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the US. But because Miles had a criminal record, he was always cut loose when it was time to let staff go.

    "It was like walking on eggshells. You just never knew when you'd be gone," he said.

    After his release from prison in 2007, Miles struggled to find stability – both mentally and financially. During this time, he lived in his mother's house and she helped him raise his daughter. When his mom passed away two years later, Miles said he became more determined than ever to create a healthy environment for his family.

    "I'm all she has, and she's all I have," he said. "I had to build a whole new relationship with my daughter, while building a whole new life for myself."

    It wasn't until October 2015, nearly a decade after he got out of prison, that a cousin told Miles about a food company that hires people who have difficulty finding jobs.

    Hoping this would clear up what felt like a thick cloud of uncertainty over his future, Miles submitted an application. He got an interview and soon after that, began his new job. His work involves everything from food production to maintenance (保存), not to mention it pays a livable wage of $15 an hour. He said it's the best job he's ever had.

    Miles' story is rare in Lancaster, where the poverty rate is around 30 percent – about double the national average. This figure annoyed Charlie Crystle, the co-founder and CEO of the company that gave Miles his job.

    Crystle said he wanted to inspire other companies and entrepreneurs (企业家) to rethink their current practices and ignite(引发)conversations about minimum wage and employment opportunities for everyone, including ex-offenders (有犯罪前科的人).

    Beyond providing employment and livable wages, the company also helps employees deal with the many challenges of reentry into society. This means anything from helping them find housing and health benefits to changing their schedules.

    Miles is now saving for a house. "It doesn't have to be a big house," he said. "I just want to be stable."

Kids and science seem to be made for each other!

The basic science is a combination of thought and experiment called the scientific method. It's where you start with an idea, create a way to prove or disprove your idea, and show what you learned based on facts. Learning to follow this process helps you think logically (逻辑地) and carefully. These important thinking skills can be used in many areas of study. To give a child practice with these thinking skills is like giving vitamins (维生素) to a developing mind.

One of the greatest things we can teach our children is to love learning. Learning science is a great way to do so. Children are easy to be interested in science. Because much of science is hands-on, it attracts most children. Nothing makes a child sit up and take notice like the "WOW!" of a great science showing.

Science opens doors to many subjects at school. Building love for science can be helpful in other areas of study. For example, one cannot love science for very long without becoming good at its language-math! So science encourages children to study math. An interest in science is an interest in how things were once understood compared to how they are understood now. Thus studying science lends itself easily to studying history. And after you do an experiment, you need to write a lab report. Therefore, writing becomes an important part of science.

Science is the basic thing for much of our life. The science of farming shows how our food is produced; biomedical science keeps us healthy; even our beds these days are designed according to scientific facts. We almost eat, sleep and breathe with the help of science! When we prepare the next generation (一代) of voters, creators and policy makers, it is important to make sure they are not only comfortable but also good at science.

A seismic (地震的；重大的) shift in climate science might be heating up.

New research shows that sound waves, produced by earthquakes can be used to measure temperatures in the ocean which traps 90% of the heat Earth absorbs from the sun，making long-term changes in ocean warmth, a major factor in how the world might respond to global warming.

For years the main approach of measuring ocean temperature has been Argo, an array (阵列) of 4000 automatic floats, which drifts the globe, sampling ocean water and measuring its temperature. Yet Argo measurements stop at 2000 meters.

The new technique called "Seismic Ocean Thermometry", would be especially useful in detecting long-term changes in ocean temperatures deeper than Argo's reach.

"Ocean Acoustic Tomography", the basis for the current research, was first tested nearly 30 years ago. The initial studies created sound waves artificially, basically increasing the volume on giant underwater speakers. Scientists measured the sound's travel time from the speakers to receivers thousands of kilometers away. Because ocean temperatures affect the speed of the waves, the researchers could calculate average temperatures along their paths. But some believed the noise was a threat to ocean life and the technique never took off.

The new study instead uses a natural sound source for investigation: earthquakes making a low, continuous noise beneath the seafloor off the coast of Sumatra that drum up sound waves in the ocean. On the shores of the Chagos Islands in the East Indian Ocean, between 2005 and 2016 Seismic Station Diego Garcia recorded seismic waves produced by those earthquakes. Some of those waves created physical changes in land and sea as they traveled. Others were sound waves or T waves that moved through the deep ocean, delivering valuable data about ocean temperature.

12 years of data coupled with mathematical models pointed to a temperature change of roughly 0.044 degrees per decade, a trend larger than those predicted by Argo. The findings suggest that Seismic Ocean Thermometry is a feasible method to measure changes in ocean temperature. Further data from other regions of the globe and other timeframes would help improve the warning models and predictions.

And in future studies the researchers plan to listen directly for sound waves, using a network of hydrophones, microphones which detect sound waves under water. Sound waves set the tone for a deep dive into our warming oceans even if they fail to reach 60000 miles under the sea?