When I was a kid, I always used to wonder how in the world my father worked outside in the winter without a coat. It could be minus 20 degrees centigrade and there'd be Dad, removing snow, or perhaps chopping(砍) some wood — his coat thrown aside — wearing a shirt, a cap, and a pair of gloves.

    “Aren't you cold, Dad?” I'd ask. “No,” Dad would reply. “I'm not cold—working too hard to be cold.”

    Many times I wondered whether my father was an extremely tough man, or whether he was foolish.

    One time when I was quite young, perhaps five or so, I went ice fishing with Dad. It was a bright, clear day—and bitterly cold.

    After we'd been out on the ice for a little while, my feet started getting cold.

    “Daddy, my feet are cold.” I said.

    “Yeah, it's cold out here today,” he replied.

    “Tell you what,” he said. “Walk around. Make some circles in the snow. See how many different patterns you can make. That will get your feet warm.”

    I was just a little girl at the time but I remember thinking, “How in the world will walking around in the snow make my feet warm? Dad must be out of mind.”

    But he was my father, after all. I made circles in the snow. I made squares. Pretty soon I was having so much fun making patterns in the snow. I forgot about my feet being cold.

    Now, all these years later, I know, too, from personal experience how my father was able to take his coat off and work outside in the winter wearing just a shirt, a cap and gloves. Because I do it, too. “Aren't you cold?” my husband asked one winter day. “No,” I replied. “I'm not cold—working too hard to be cold.”

    I hope my husband has decided I'm both tough and smart. But I guess quite a bit of the time he thinks I'm foolish.

    Wherever Dad is on that great big farm in the sky—I'm sure he can't help but smile whenever I take my coat off while I'm working outside in the winter.

    A new keyboard can tell whether you are its owner. The keyboard records information about the typing pattern and sends it to a computer program. The program then checks to see if the pattern matches the right user. If not, an alarm sounds, and the computer locks the typist out. It locks out anyone else, even if the person knows password. What's more, this device needs no batteries. It harvests all the energy it needs from the action of your typing. Besides, the keyboard is also self-cleaning and the keys are free of damage from water, oil and dirt.

    The keys of the new keyboard are made of the same inexpensive plastic that might be found on any other standard keyboard. But instead of being smooth, the keys have millions of tiny plastic nanowires (纳米线) on their surface area to every key, increasing the effective contact area between the plastics and fingers. This ensures that there's enough power to run the keyboard as someone types.

    Liming Dai, a scientist, did not work on the new keyboard, but he thinks the design could be important in getting better performance from a variety of devices. “It could also be applied to a touch screen, for instance,” Dai says. “Then smart phones and notepads could harvest energy from the action of someone typing or drawing.”

    “Future work might make the keyboard even more useful,” Dai adds. “A later design might build tiny capacitors(电容器) onto the nanowires,” he suggests. Capacitors are little devices that temporarily store electric charges. Those might then LEDs to light a Keyboard in the dark.

    Zhonglin Wang is a co-designer of the new keyboard. His team has build a working model of the keyboard. “If a company decides to fund(投资) its production, this keyboard could be in stores in as little as two years,” says Wang.

    Fix it on your own

    Did you know that a bowl of rice could save your iPod if you drop it in a swimming pool by accident? Or that the camera on your phone could tell you what's wrong with your TV remote control(遥控器)? The experts at Geek Squad have made a gadget (小机件) rescue guide. So, let's take a look at some of their useful advice.

    How to get more juice out of your phone battery (电池)

    If your battery goes dead but you need to get a number or send one last text, try warming it up. That may give you a tiny bit of power. Take the battery from the phone and rub it between your hands. Or warm it under your arm for a few minutes. Then try to start the phone-but use it quickly.

    What to do if your gadget gets wet

    First, try drying it out with a vacuum cleaner(真空吸尘器). If a vacuum cleaner isn't at hand, fill a pot or bowl with uncooked rice and put your wet gadget inside. The dry, uncooked rice will absorb all the water and, after a few hours, you should be able to use the gadget. Don't forget to remove the battery and SIM card before you dry it.

    What to do if your TV remote control stops working

    If replacing the batteries doesn't work, get the camera function up on your phone and point the remote at the lens (镜头). When you press a button on the remote, if it is working, the glass bobble (小球) at the front of the remote will light up when you look at it on the screen of your phone. This is because the screen on a phone or digital camera picks up infrared rays (红外线), even though your eyes don't. If the glass bobble doesn't light up, the remote is broken. If it does, the receiving device is broken.

    Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists, runners and walkers, but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear. It is a challenge many disabled athletes face, unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

    Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs vision－and hearing－impaired（视觉和听觉受损的）athletes with a person who would like to guide them.

    “When we go out, we're always going out into an unknown course,”said Achilles Brisbane president Jane Britt, who is both vision and hearing impaired. “It's much less frightening to have someone beside you that has full hearing to listen for you and tell you what's there.”

    Ms. Cullen and Ms. Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the free five－kilometer Southbank park run. Their partnership is built on trust, but Ms. Britt said that it took time to develop.

    Ms. Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms. Cullen completely. “There was violent rain, my glasses were broken and we were walking together,”she said. “I suddenly had to tell her I couldn't see anything, and I was going to have to completely trust her. From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in. ”

    Isabella Allen and her seeing-eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles programme. Ms. Allen kept active by running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse. After nearly giving up completely, she worked up the courage to ask Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

    Ms. Alien said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane. “But, they found people and matched me to them.”she said, “It's the best thing I've ever done. ”

    Carrots are grown on farms and in family gardens throughout the world. Carrots are easy to raise and easy to harvest. They taste good.

    When people think of carrots, they usually picture in their minds a vegetable that is long, thin and orange in colour. But carrots come in many different sizes and shapes. And not all carrots are orange. For the best results, carrots should be grown in sandy soil that does not hold water for a long time. The soil also should have no rocks. To prepare your carrot garden, dig up the soil, loosen it and turn it over. Then, mix in some plant material or animal fertilizer. Weather, soil conditions and age will affect the way carrots taste. Experts say warm days, cool nights and a medium soil temperature are the best conditions for growing carrots that taste great.

    Carrots need time to develop their full sugar content. This gives them their taste. But carrots loose their sweetness if you wait too long to remove them from the ground. The best way to judge if a carrot is ready to be harvested is by its colour. Usually, the brighter the colour, the better the taste.

    Carrots are prepared and eaten in many different ways. They are cut in thin pieces and added to other vegetables. They are cooked by themselves or added to stews. Or, once they are washed, they are eaten just as they come out of the ground.

    This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. As I searched the name, I found that there were two famous people having the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts(花生), while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice; let the coin decide. I flipped(掷) a coin and Ah! Tails (背面)! My report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, I stood in front of the classroom and proudly read my homework. But things started to get strange. I looked around the room, only to find my classmates with big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes and my stone-faced teacher. I was completely lost. "What could be causing everyone to act this way?"

    Oh well, I dropped the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, "My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American War of Independence." The whole world became quiet! How could I know that my teacher meant that George Washington?

    Of course, my subject result was awful. Sad but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to the headmaster Miss Lancelot, but she said firmly: No re-dos; no new score. I felt that it was not fair, and I believed I deserved a second chance. So I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, I sat in the headmaster's office again, but this time a completely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the terrible moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster told me I was good enough to skip(跳过) the 6th grade and started the 7th grade next term.