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    In 2006，Paul Letourneau of Worcester，Mass，lost his parents，his home and his pet dog.And that August，his life­long mild depression took a turn for the worse as he became suicidal(有自杀倾向的)．

    “I said I didn't want to be alive anymore，”Letourneau,67，recalled telling his best friend.

    He and his friend had gone for a walk when Letourneau stopped and asked his friend about ways to die painlessly.His friend advised him to admit himself to a hospital.

    “When I went back home，physically，I was shaking so much－and emotionally，I couldn't stop，”Letourneau said，“I knew I had to get help.”

    For many men，it takes a lot more than feeling down to recognize that they are depressed and then step through the doors  of a hospital，or a friend's or relative's home to ask for help.Men who are depressed usually refuse to get appropriate treatment，depression experts and patients say.

    “When men get depressed，the depression can be quite severe，”said Dr.lan Cook，professor of psychiatry at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.“The challenge is getting men to acknowledge that they're depressed.”

    Depression affects about 15 million people in the United States，according to the National Institutes of Mental Health，and men get depressed about half as often as women.

    “It's unclear how much of this is a reporting bias，”Cook  said.“The stigma(耻辱)issues are somewhat different for men than they are for women.”

    “Men intend to consider that asking for help is a sign of  weakness，but when they can't complete the task of bringing themselves to the Promised Land，they become at risk.” said  Steven Lappen，who was once a depression patient.

    Recently, my mother asked me to drop off some letters at the post office and pick up some stamps for her. Without giving it a thought, I took the letters and purchased her stamps.

    A few days later, she mentioned that one of the letters I had mailed was missing a stamp, and asked me if I had put a stamp on it. She had remembered asking me to put a stamp on it, though I certainly had not heard her. So, unfortunately, it looked like the letter, which was a bill of course, would come back marked "Return to Sender for Insufficient Postage". A few days went by and I returned to the post office to pick up our mail. While I was there, I saw the postmaster and happened to tell him about Mom's letter missing the stamp. I asked him to be on the lookout for it coming back. It was then that he told me his story. "You know," he said, "I immediately saw after you had dropped the mail off that your letter was missing a stamp. I also noticed that it was a bill for a credit card company. I thought to myself that you have always been kind to me and my partner, and I wanted to return the favor. So, to prevent your mother from getting charged a late fee from the credit card company, I took money from our change dish (extra pennies for folks who need one), and purchased a stamp for you."

    When I heard it, I couldn't believe it. What a blessing that was! I thanked him over and over again for putting the stamp on the letter for us. Then, I immediately dumped(倾倒) all the change out of my purse and into the penny dish in order to help others out in the future. When I got home, I was able to tell Mom the good news. This was kindness karma(因果报应) in action, I believe!

    Sam Allred suffers from a rare and incurable kidney (肾脏) disease. One day, when his sister was playing a song repeatedly, Sam sang along. His sister thought it was funny so she recorded it and posted the video online. The video — and Sam — became a hit. Only 8 years old at the time, he couldn't have expected the response.

    "The Doctors (The television show) called and wanted me on their show so they paid for me to go to California," says Sam, now 13, "and we got to stay in a hotel where all the movie stars stayed."

    During that visit to California, Angie Allred, Sam's mother, had an idea about Sam writing a children's book. Together, she and Sam wrote Opening Hearts, which tells Sam's experience of living with a chronic (慢性的) illness.

    "I wrote the book to teach people to be kinder to people," Sam says. Moreover, Sam wanted to send pillows to sick children staying in hospitals around the country to make their stay more comfortable, an idea that came from a time when he was in the hospital.

    "A few kind boys came in with pillows and they gave me one and it meant a lot to me that someone cared about kids in the hospital," says Sam.

    Angie thought of starting a nonprofit organization to provide a way for people to contribute money to realize Sam's ideas. She named the nonprofit Kindness for Kids.

    Since then, Sam has taken pillows to children staying at Providence Hospital in Anchorage.

    Sam's father, Scott Allred, owns a small business that contracts (承包) shipping services with FedEx Ground. He asked the company for help.

    "FedEx Ground learned about Sam's pillow project," says Erin Truxal, manager of public relations for FedEx Ground. "We thought, 'What a perfect way for us to get involved.' "

    The company provided shipping services for Sam to ship about 5,000 pillows to hospitals.

    Sam wants to send more pillows to all of the children's hospitals in every state. His goal is simple: "Kids in the hospital as happy as they were before they got sick," he says.

    When Johnny, a homeless man, spent his last $20, he wasn't looking at it as an investment — but it's about to pay him huge profits. After he helped a woman who ran out of gas, she returned the favor by raising a lot more on the Internet.

    Kate McClure, 27, was driving to visit a friend when she ran out of gas halfway. “He saw me pull over and knew something was wrong," she wrote. "He told me to get back in the car and lock the doors. A few minutes later, he came back with a red gas can, using his last 20 dollars to make sure I could get home safe."

    She couldn't repay him at that time because she had no cash with her. "I have been stopping by his spot for the past few weeks. I repaid him for the gas and gave him some clothes."

    Kate decided to do more for him, so she started a crowdfunding(众筹) campaign on GoFundMe.com, and it quickly gained far beyond its initial $10,000 goal. When it reached $100,000, the fundraising page was shut down for a time at Johnny's request. Because he didn't want to seem like he was taking advantage of the situation. Finally, Kate said that she restarted it because the public interest had not decreased. She also added that Johnny planned to donate the rest to a good cause.

    According to the New York Post, Johnny wants to get a job at an Amazon warehouse and a department manager from the tech company has already reached out, saying he wants to help Jonny.

    A small school in rural India is gaining attention over the fact that all 300 students are ambidextrous(左右手都灵巧的). Data shows that only one percent of the global population is ambidextrous, but the ambitious founder of Veena Vandini School, in Madhya Pradesh, is aiming to change that, starting at a local level.

    A former soldier and Veena Vandini School founder VP Sharma stated that he was inspired to focus on ambidexterity training by India's first president Rajendra Prasad who was in office from 1950 to 1962. Unexpectedly, the president was ambidextrous. "I read in a magazine that Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India's first president, used to write with both hands. This inspired me to give it a try, “Mr. Sharma said.”Later when I launched my school at my native village, I tried training the students. "

    "We begin training students from standard Ⅰ and by the time they reach standard Ⅲ, they are comfortable writing with both the hands,” Sharma added. "Students of up to standard Ⅶ can write with speed and accuracy. Further, they can write two scripts at the same time, one with each hand. Students also know several languages, including Urdu."

    Every 45-minute class at Veena Vandini includes 15 minutes devoted to handwriting practice, ensuring that every student develops the ability to write with both hands. VP Sharma also believes that the skill better enables students to learn multiple languages, and has them practice writing the same words in different languages at the same time. Although it is widely believed to help increase concentration, more recent studies have found that this is false and studying to become ambidextrous can, in fact, harm cognitive development.

    A Scientific American study revealed that ambidextrous children performed worse than left- or right-handers on a range of skills, especially in math, memory, and logical reasoning. A study in northern Finland indicated that children who are ambidextrous are much likelier to develop mental health issues, including ADHD, language problems, and academic problems.

    Six months after a Chinese scientist was widely condemned for helping to make the world's first gene­edited babies, he remains out of public view, and new information suggests that others may be interested in undertaking the same kind of work outside the United States.

    A clinic in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai emailed scientist He Jiankui to seek training in gene editing, Stanford University bioethicist Dr. William Hurlbut said ahead of a speech Tuesday at the World Science Festival in New York.

    Hurlbut, whose advice He often sought, said He told him that scientists from multiple countries and families with inherited health problems had messaged support and interest in altering the genes of embryos(胚胎)to prevent or treat disease. Hurlbut gave The Associated Press the email the Dubai clinic sent to He in December but decided to hide the clinic's name.

    "It reveals what eagerness there is out there to use this technology" and the need "for some sort of practical governance" of it, Hurlbut said.

    Jennifer Doudna, a University of California, Berkeley, co­inventor of the CRISPR gene­editing tool that He used, said that she also has heard of others who want to edit embryos.

    "I think they're entirely credible," she said of such reports. Doudna, who was also a speaker at the New York festival, said the field needs to focus on setting specific principles for how and when such work should proceed.

    "The technology is frankly just not ready for clinical use in human embryos," although research should continue, she said. Doudna is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports AP's Health and Science Department.

    Scientists and policy leaders have been debating how to set international standards or controls since He claimed in November that he had altered the genes of twin girls at conception(怀孕)to try to help them resist possible future infection with the AIDS virus.

    Editing embryos is outlawed in many countries because it risks damaging other genes, and the DNA changes can be passed to future generations. Many scientists have condemned He's work, and attention has fallen on other scientists who knew or strongly suspected what He was doing.