When 12-year-old Taylor Smith wrote a special letter to herself last spring, to be read in 10 years' time, she didn't know it would be opened before even a year had passed— and that it wouldn't be her eyes reading the words.

  “She had told me that she had written a letter to herself, and that she was excited that she was going to open it when she was older,”said Taylor's  mother, Mary Ellen Smith.

    Instead, it was opened by Taylor's parents after she died last spring. They posted the letter to Facebook, hoping it would inspire others.

    It has. “We've gotten letters from lots of parents who have said it has encouraged them to love their kids and love each other,” said Mary Ellen Smith.

    In the letter, Taylor congratulated herself on graduating from high school and asked, “Are you in college?”

    She also wanted to know if she had been on a plane yet and if the show “Doctor Who” was still on the air.

    Taylor also had some words for her future kids. After considering the idea of selling her iPad and getting an iPadmini instead, she told her future self to mention to her kids that “We're older than the tablet.” She included a drawing of an iPad for them to see.

    Taylor died suddenly of pneumonia (肺炎), leaving behind both her parents and an older brother.

  “I just want people to know just what an awesome, awesome person she was,” her father, Tim Smith said.

    Her mother said, “I can't bring her back, but I'm so grateful people have been inspired by her story.”

    Taylor's father read the closing g words of her letter, which said, “It's been years since I wrote this. Stuff has happened, good and bad. That's just how life works, and you have to go with it.”

What's On?

Electric Underground

7:30pm－1:00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an exciting evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract (合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7:30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce your music.

Gee Whizz

8:30pm-10:30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7:00pm for drinks and snacks (快餐).

Simon's Workshop

5:00pm-7:30pm    Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

Charlotte Stone

8:00pm-11:00pm Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta (面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

    Traffic jam and cities, it seems go hand in hand. Everyone complains about being stuck in traffic, but, like the weather, no one seems to do anything about it. In particular, traffic engineers, transportation planners, and public officials responsible for transportation systems in large cities are frequently criticized for failing to solve traffic jam.

    But is traffic jam a sign of failure? Long lines at restaurants or theater's box offices are seen as signs of success. Should transportation systems be viewed any differently? I think we should recognize that traffic jam is an unpreventable by-product of successful cities and view the “traffic problem” in a different light.

    Traffic jam occurs where there are lots of people but limited spaces. Culturally and economically successful cities have the worst traffic problems, while decaying cities don't have much traffic. New York and Los Angeles are America's most crowded cities. But if you want access to major brokerage houses（经济行）, you will find them easier to reach in crowded New York than in any other large cities. And if your company needs access to post-production film editors or satellite-guidance engineers, you will reach them more quickly through the crowded freeways of LA than through less crowded roads elsewhere.

    Despite traffic jam, a larger number and wider variety of social communications and economic dealings can be made perfect in large, crowded cities than elsewhere. Seen in this light, traffic jam is an unfortunate result of success, not a cause of economic decline and urban decay.

    So while we can consider traffic jam as increasing costs on the areas of big cities, the costs of inaccessibility in uncrowded places are almost certainly greater.

    There is no doubt that traffic jam brings the terrible economic and environmental damage in places like Bangkok, Jakarta, and Lagos. But mobility（移动性）is far higher and traffic jam levels are far lower here in the US, even in our most crowded cities. That's why, for now, we don't see people and capital streaming out of San Francisco and Chicago, heading for other cities in California, and Illinois.

    Best Smartphone Games to Put Your Brain to Test

    I am a fan of NMORPGs. But sometimes I play brain games. Here are four games for you that will surely put your brain to test.

    Real Chess

    Chess has been bursting brains for many centuries, and this virtual(虚拟的) change of chess really brings a new taste. It's not an ordinary game, for it's a 3D virtual chess that lets you play with users from all around the world.

    You can chat with opponents, play with AI, get newbie(新手) tips and much more. The animations and 3D structures are really cool as well.

    Juice Cubes

    Juice Cubes is a light and colorful game full of fruity juice cubes that you need to connect to pop and clear levels. There are multiple types of challenges, power-ups, and more than 550 levels to keep you addicted.

    It might seem easy at the start, but it will burst your brain when you reach higher levels.

    WorldBrain2

    WorldBrain 2 is really a fun word game where you need to guess words based on the number of letters provided. Each word puzzle has a theme category, such as food, human body, color or even space.

    And you can also use hints (暗示) to solve the level when you get stuck. Your vocabulary is sure to be challenged in it.

    Puzzlerama

    Puzzlerama basically joins some of the top puzzles in one single app, making it a perfect app for puzzle lovers. It lets you play popular puzzle games such as flow, jigsaw, unblock, pipes, tangram and more. There are hundreds of levels available for each puzzle type and things get really tough as you advance.

    The game interface(界面) is also very colorful, and smooth animations make the game fun to play.

    Family Fun in Canadian Museum of Nature

    Bring the whole family to rediscover our fully redecorated museum.

    WHAT TO SEE AND DO

    Check out What's On for all the events, educational activities and HD movies happening during your visit. Care for birds, dive down into the depths at the helm (舵柄) of a research submersible(潜水器) or explore a cave… on the first floor. Don't miss our gallery play areas on the third floor when visiting with kids. By visiting here, your children will learn more about nature. Check out Our Exhibitions which presents our special exhibitions and our galleries. Be sure to stop at our Nature Boutique on the second floor for a vast selection of games, books and nature-related souvenirs from 9:30 am until the museum closes for the day.

    HOURS, ADMISSION, SERVICES AND MORE

    The Canadian Museum of Nature provides a lot of information, images and videos on our websites about nature, such as http://www.nature.ca/en/family-fun and http://www.expeditionarctic.ca/. The museum also participates in several social networks. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

    An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford have found that the way people use the Internet is closely tied to the seasonal movements in the natural world. Their online species searches follow the patterns of seasonal animal migrations (迁徙).

    Migratory birds (候鸟) flood back to where they reproduce every spring. That migratory behavior is accompanied by some human behavior. "In English-language Wikipedia (维基百科), the online searches for migratory species tend to increase in spring when those birds arrive in the United States," said the lead author John Mittermeier.

    And not just birds. Mittermeier and his team surveyed nearly 2.5 billion Wikipedia search records, for 32,000 species, across 245 languages. They also saw variable search rates for insects, horsetails and flowering plants. Seasonal trends seemed to be widespread in Wikipedia behavior for many species of plants and animals.

    This finding suggests new ways to monitor changes in the world's biological diversity. It also shows new ways to see how much people care about nature, and which species and areas might be the most effective targets for conservation.

    Mittermeier is encouraged by the search results. He commented, "I think there's a concern among conservationists (生态环境保护者) that people are losing touch with the natural world and that they're not interacting with native species anymore. And so in that sense, it was really exciting and quite unexpected for me to see people's Wikipedia interest closely related to changes in nature."

    Richard Grenyer, Associate Professor from the University of Oxford, says search data is useful to conservation biologists, "By using these big data approaches, we can direct our attention towards the difficult questions in modern conservation: which species and areas are changing, and where are the people who care the most and can do the most to help."