A man came home from work and found his three children outside， still in their pajamas(睡衣) playing in the mud，with empty food boxes and wrappers thrown all around the front yard.

    The door of his wife's car was open，as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog.

    Walking into the entry，he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring(大声播放)a cartoon channel，and the family room was thrown with toys and various items of clothing.

    In the kitchen，dishes filled the sink，breakfast food was spilled on the counter，the fridge door was open wide， dog food was spilled on the floor，a broken glass lay under the table，and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.

    He quickly headed up the stairs，stepping over toys and more piles of clothes，looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill，or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small drop of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he looked inside he found wet towels， soap and more toys thrown over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap(堆) and toothpaste had been put over the mirror and walls.

    As he rushed to the bedroom， he found his wife still sleeping in the bed in her pajamas，reading a novel. She looked up at him，smiled，and asked how his day went. He looked at her puzzled and asked， “What happened here today？”

    She again smiled and answered，“You know every day when you come home from work and ask me what in the world I did today？”

    “Yes，” was his reply.

    She answered，“Well，today I didn't do it.”

    The National Gallery

    Description:

    The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.

    Layout:

    The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th-to15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling.

    The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings and artists include Leonardo da Vinci, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titian and Veronese.

    The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Claude and Vermeer.

    The East Wing houses 18th-to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.

    Opening Hours:

    The Gallery is open every day from 10am to 6pm（Fridays 10am to 9pm）and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.

    Getting There:

    Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk). Leicester Square (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).

    Perhaps no one knows the power of imagination better than Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Until four years ago, Liu worked full-time as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi province. He only wrote science fiction in his spare time. But it was during this time that Liu's imagination took flight. He did what he might never have the chance to do in real life – wander in space, fight with aliens, and visit planets light-years away.

    But even with such a powerful imagination, Liu, 55, probably hadn't expected that he would become the first Asian to win the Hugo Award, science fiction's highest prize, in 2015. Perhaps neither did he think that former US president Barack Obama would read his novel The Three-Body Problem, nor that on Nov 9 in Washington DC, he would win the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. It's the first time a Chinese writer has ever won the award.

    In his acceptance speech, Liu said that he owed his imagination to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), a famous UK sci-fi author. He said that reading Clarke's 1968 classic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in the early 1980s had a great effect on him.

    “My mind opened up like never before. I felt like a narrow river finally seeing the sea,” Liu said. “That night, in my eyes, the starry sky was completely different from the past. For the first time in my life, I was awed (使……敬畏) by the mystery of the universe.”

    But no matter how far away Liu's imagination takes him, somehow his novels always stay rational.

    In The Three-Body Problem, for example, Liu tells a tale of aliens invading Earth. But unlike other alien stories, Liu talks more about relationships between civilizations(文明), rules of survival, and the meanings of life. And in The Wandering Earth, Liu looks ahead to the day when our solar system comes to an end and humans have to look for a new place to live. However, all his visions and solutions are based on “hard science”. Liu's works aren't simply daydreams.

    Back in 2009, China was wrongly accused by the West of "controlling" the Copenhagen talks on climate change. By then China had truly carried out strict policies to reduce the energy consumption of economic activities and at the international level, the top Chinese leaders participated in round-clock efforts to cooperate with the major players to build a united front for efforts to solve global warming. But China was finally misjudged.

    This misjudgment caused China's scholars to rethink China's climate change communicative ways. Among them was Zheng Baowei, journalism professor of Renmin University of China, who realized China had to better shape its communication on its environmental protection.

    Delightfully, the efforts have paid off. Zheng set up a top-level international group advising his research team. He is in charge of doctoral candidates on climate change communication. Climate awareness surveys have been conducted, and a package of communication tools has been designed. Many seminars have been arranged.

    Recently, he arranged a seminar on climate change and health communication on the changing situation both in China and the world. First of all, this stressed that China's policy has developed from reducing its energy consumption and pollution prevention to the important goals of achieving a "Beautiful China" and "'Healthy China, "while coming up with plans to realize an ecological civilization since late 2012. With such goals, China played a leading role in securing the Paris climate change deal in 2015 together with the United States and European Union. In Paris, China promised to let out its carbon to the maximum in 2030.

    It is a demanding job communicating climate change and other topics of lasting development well. Despite that, some foreign scholars have realized China's smart ways in presenting the green concepts. They appreciated China's idea of building a "Beautiful China" and "Healthy China" and said it can he expanded into an idea of a "Beautiful World" and "Healthy World".

    Looking back from how China had followed the steps of the industrialized countries in advocating climate fight, people find now its own green ideas are being recognized.

    Everyday Food by Martha Stewart

    No matter how busy you are, at the end of the day you want meals that are easy to prepare. And you want lots of choices and variations. You'll find all of that in this book: 250 simple recipes for delicious meals that bring freshness and nutrition.

    Paperback, published by Random House, $16.79

    Zeroes

    By Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti

    The New York Times best-selling author Scott Westerfeld teams up with Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti in the book about six teenagers with amazing abilities. These teenagers have powers that set them apart. They can do things ordinary people can't.

    Paperback, published by Simon & Schuster, $12.99

    Mighty Jack

    By Ben Hatke

    Jack dislikes summer. But he's got a good reason: summer is when his single mom takes a second job and leaves him at home to watch his sister, Maddy. It's lots of responsibility, and it's boring, too, because Maddy doesn't talk. But one day, at the market, Maddy does talk—to tell Jack to trade their mom's car for a box of mysterious seeds. It's the best mistake Jack has ever made.

    Hardcover, published by First Second, $14.15

    Only Daughter

    By Anna Snoekstra

    She's caught stealing. She's homeless and on the run. But she happens to look the same as a girl who went missing a decade ago, Rebecca Winter. She takes Rebecca's identity, using it as a way out. Little does she know her new life as Rebecca is itself a prison and it looks like a killer might be after her.

    Kindle edition, published by Harlequin Enterprises, $8.88

As far as we know batteries are playing an important role in our life. We couldn't live without batteries. Why so? Batteries provide power for anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri (MU) researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient.

" To provide enough power, we need certain methods with high energy density (密度)", said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU." The radioisotope(放射性同位素) battery can provide power density that is much higher than chemical batteries."

Kwo n and his research team have been working on building a small nuclear battery, presently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/ nanoelectromechanreal systems(M/NEMS). Although nuclear batteries can cause concerns, Kwon said, they are safe.

" People bear the word‘ nuclear' and think of something very dangerous," he said," However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace- makers, space satellites and underwater systems."

His new idea is not only in the battery's size, but also in its semiconductor(半导体). Kwon's battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor.

" The key part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure(晶体结构) of the solid semiconductor, Kwo n said," By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem."

Together with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, Kwo n is working to build and test the battery. In the future, they hope to increase the battery's power, shrink its size and try with various other materials. Kwo n said that battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.