In my living room, there is a plaque (匾) that advises me to “Bloom (开花) where you are planted.” It reminds me of Dorothy. I got to know Dorothy in the early 1980s, when I was teaching Early Childhood Development through a program with Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky. The job responsibilities required occasional visits to the classroom of each teacher in the program. Dorothy stands out in my memory as one who “bloomed” in her remote area.

    Dorothy taught in a school In Harlan County, Kentucky, Appalachian Mountain area. To get to her school from the town of Harlan, I followed a road winding around the mountain. In the eight-mile journey, I crossed the same railroad track five times, giving the possibility of getting caught by the same train five times. Rather than feeling excited by this drive through the mountains, I found it depressing. The poverty level was shocking and the small shabby houses gave me the greatest feeling of hopelessness.

    From the moment of my arrival at the little school, all gloom (忧郁) disappeared. Upon arriving at Dorothy's classroom. I was greeted with smiling faces and treated like a queen. The children had been prepared to show me their latest projects. Dorothy told me with a big smile that they were serving poke greens salad and cornbread for “dinner” (lunch). In case you don't know, poke greens are a weed-type plant that grows wild, especially on poor ground.

    Dorothy never ran out of reports of exciting activities of her students. Her enthusiasm never cooled down. When it came time to sit for the testing and interviewing required to receive her Child Development Associate Certification, Dorothy was ready. She came to the assessment and passed in all areas. Afterward, she invited me to the one-and-only steak house in the area to celebrate her victory, as if she had received her Ph. D. degree. After the meal, she placed a little box containing an old pen in my hand. She said it was a family heirloom (传家宝), but to me it is a treasured symbol of appreciation and pride that cannot be matched with things.  (360 words)

    People have been enjoying the benefits of cycling（骑自行车） in Amsterdam(阿姆斯特丹) for years. It is a good city for cycling because it is flat and there are plenty of places for bicycle parking. Today some people call Amsterdam "City of Bicycles" because of the convenience for bicycles there.

    In the 1960s, a group of cycling fans had an idea. They believed that it would be better for everybody if cars weren't allowed in the city center and only bicycles were. They were hopeful that this would help to save energy, reduce pollution and provide free public transport. The group painted hundreds of bicycles white and placed them in lots of neighborhoods around Amsterdam for people to use. Then a problem came-- thieves took all the bicycles within weeks!

    However, more than thirty years later, the "white bike' is back in town--this time with a computer chip（芯片） to record its every move! To take a bicycle, you have to insert(插入) a special card. The new "white bike" is not actually white but is an unusual design with bright colours. The bikes are parked at special parking places and people who want to use them have to take them to another special parking place that has enough room.

    There is already less traffic in central Amsterdam, because both locals and tourists have been using the white bikes. Instead, thanks to the good ideas of lots of people, like the cycling fans in the 1960s, many people around the world have been enjoying city centre streets without cars many years.

Welcome to your future life!

    You get up in the morning and look into the mirror. Your face is firm and young-looking. In 2035, medical technology is better than ever. Many people at your age could live to be 150, so at 40, you're not old at all. And your parents just had an anti-aging(抗衰老的) treatment. Now, all three of you look the same age!

    You say to your shirt, "Turn red." It changes from blue to red. In 2035, "smart clothes" contain particles(粒子) much smaller than the cells in your body. The particles can be programmed to change clothes' color or pattern.

    You walk into the kitchen. You pick up the milk, but a voice says," You shouldn't drink that!" Your fridge has read the chip (芯片) that contains information about the milk, and it Knows the milk is old. In 2035, every article of food in the grocery store has such a chip.

    It's time to go to work. In 2035, cars drive themselves. Just tell your "smart car" where to go. On the way, you can call a friend using your jacket sleeve. Such "smart technology" is all around you.

    So will all these things come true? "For new technology to succeed," says scientist Andrew Zolli," it has to be so much better that it replaces what we have already." The Internet is one example what will be the next.

    You know those nutrition guidelines the government issues every few years? It turns out that following them isn't just good for your health. It's good for the planet, too.

    " What we found is that impacts vary across nations, but in the high­impact nations, in general, you can see that, if you follow a nationally recommended diet, despite the fact that these diets don't mention explicitly—or most of them don't explicitly mention—environmental impacts, that you are going to have lower environmental impacts due to that. So that's sort of fairly clear across all the high­income nations." said Paul Behrens, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

    The food we eat takes a big toll on the environment. A third of the ice­free land on Earth is used for agriculture, and according to some estimates, producing food accounts for roughly a fifth of all human­caused greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer runoff also leads to other problems, like the algae blooms in Lake Eerie and the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

    However, following dietary guidelines would reduce those impacts, especially in wealthy countries like the US. "Most of the reductions come from meat and dairy," which have an outsized impact on land use and pollution, and are a major source of greenhouse gases.(That's partly due to cow farts. Seriously.) Following the suggestions would also mean eating fewer calories, since many people here eat more than they need.

    Overall, in high­income countries, Behren's team estimates that following the rules could result in as much as a 17 percent reduction in land use, a 21 percent reduction in nutrient pollution, and a 25 percent drop in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Cutting down on how much food we waste—which is roughly a third in the US—could help even more. The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Of course, people are notoriously bad at following diets. But: "These nationally recommended guidelines do actually have a knock­on effect on other areas of policy making. So if I'm developing a new healthy­eating­for­schools program then that's going to be based off a lot of detail that I get from the nationally recommended guidelines. So while it might not necessarily be the case that people follow directly …they actually are quite influential on the preparation of other advice."

    It seems that a smaller environmental footprint and a healthier lifestyle could go hand in hand.

    By analyzing the fossilized teeth of some of our most ancient ancestors, a team of scientists led by the universities of Bristol (UK) and Lyon (France) have discovered that the first humans significantly breastfed their infants (婴儿) for longer periods than their contemporary relatives.

    The results, published in the journal Science Advances, provide a first insight into the practice of weaning (断奶)that remain otherwise unseen in the fossil record.

    The team sampled minute amounts from nearly 40 fossilized teeth of our South African fossil relatives, early Homo, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus. They measured the proportions of their stable calcium isotopes (同位素）in the tooth enamel(牙釉质), which are a function of the mother milk intake by infants. They show that early Homo offspring(后代) was breastfed in significant proportions until the age of around three to four years, which likely played a role in the apparition of traits that are specific to human lineage(血统), such as the brain development.

    In contrast, infants of Paranthropus robustus, that became extinct around one million years ago and were a more robust species in terms of dental anatomy, as well as infants of Australopithecus africanus, stopped drinking sizeable proportions of mother milk in the course of the first months of life.

    These differences in nursing behaviors likely come with major changes in the social structures of groups as well as the time between the birth of one child and the birth of the next.

    One of the study's lead authors, Dr Theo Tacail said: "The practice of weaning -- the duration of breastfeeding, age at non-milk food introduction and the age at cessation of suckling -- differs among the modern members of the hominid family which includes humans and modern great apes: orangutan, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

    The development of such behavioral differences likely played major roles in the evolution of the members of human lineage, being associated for instance with size and structure of social groups, brain development.

    However, getting insights into these behavioral changes from fossils that are millions of years old is a challenge and, so far, little evidence allow discussing nursing practices in these fossil species.

    The findings stress the need for further exploration of calcium stables isotopes compositions in the fossil record in order to understand the co-evolution of weaning practices with other traits such as brain size or social behaviors."

http://www.dentaldailynews.com/first-human-ancestors-breastfed-for-longer-than-contemporary-relatives/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190829115427.htm

PRACTITIONERS

Jacqueline Felice de Almania(c.1322) highlights the suspicion that women practicing medicine faced.Born to a Jewish family in Florence,she moved to Paris where she worked as a physician and performed surgery.In 1322 she was tried for practicing unlawfully.In spite of the court hearing testimonials(证明)of her ability as a doctor,she was banned from medicine.

Tan Yunxian(1461-1554) was a Chinese physician who learned her skills from her grandparents.Chinese women at the time could not serve apprenticeships(学徒期) with doctors.However,Tan passed the official exam.Tan treated women from all walks of life.In 1511,Tan wrote a book,Sayings of a Female Doctor,describing her life as a physician.

James Barry(c.1789-1865) was born Margaret Bulkley in Ireland but,dressed as a man,she was accepted by Edinburgh University to study medicine.She qualified as a surgeon in 1813,and then joined the British Army,serving overseas.Barry retired in 1859,having practiced her entire medical profession living and working as a man.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler(1831-1895) worked as a nurse for eight years before studying in medical college in Boston in 1860.Four years later,she was the first African American woman to receive a medical degree.She moved to Virginia in 1865,where she provided medical care to freed slaves.