Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new material that can move heat out of buildings and into space. The researchers say the material can cool buildings even on hot days. The cooling material is a very thin sheet with many layers that could be placed on a roof like solar panels(板). However, instead of turning sunlight into energy as solar panels do, the material turns heat into infrared（红外线的）radiation.

    Shanhui Fan is an electrical engineering professor at Stanford University. He says that the panels have a layer of material that is like sand. The panels act like a mirror. They take heat out of buildings and reflect the light from the sun. And he says both the heat and sunlight arc sent 100 kilometers into outer space. "It's a structure that cools itself without electricity input, even under the sun. So, what it does is basically radiate heat to outer space and also reflect the sunlight so it doesn't get heated up by the sun. Mr. Fan says it is like having a window into space. The heat is sent directly into space without increasing the air temperature

    He says buildings in developing countries that do not have electricity or air conditioning could use the panels. "In areas where electricity is out of reach for many people, there is a potential benefit for storing medicine or even food. In many of these situations, being able to reduce the temperature is important. And this would provide a way to do it.”

    The researchers say the main problem is creating actual cooling systems using the high-tech panels. They say it may be possible to develop a cooling spray(喷涂）that could be used on present solid structures. They believe the cooling spray technology could be developed in the next three to five years. They say as much as 15 percent of the energy used in the United States is spent providing power to air conditioning systems.

    A 60-year-old homeless woman named Smokie has been sleeping outside in the dirt a few doors down from a man named Elvis Summers.

    Most mornings, she stops by Elvis's Los Angeles apartment and asks if he has any recyclable materials for her. Through these conversations, they struck up a friendship.

    One morning, Elvis saw a news article about man in Oakland who has been making tiny houses out of deserted materials. He was inspired to put off paying a few bills so he could buy the wood and hardware to make Smokie a brand new shelter. It took him five days to build it, and now, for the first time in ten years, Smokie has a place to hang the sign “Home Sweet Home”.

    “I had nowhere to really build it, so I just built it in the street outside of my apartment,” Elvis told Good News Network. “The local LAPD police have been super cool, and have told me they support it—as long as we move it to a different spot every 72 hours.”

    He made this pretty time-lapse(延时的) video showing how he did it. The materials, including two locks on the front door and strong wheels for moving it around, cost him about $500.

    “I've met so many homeless people, good people,” Elvis said in an email, “Since I built Smokie's , I've had several people asking me to make them a tiny home and it's turned into much more than just the one house I wanted to build.”

Although he runs an online retail store that sells EDM clothes, he has decided to launch an ambitious project to fund more shelters. He plants to get lighter and cheaper materials—without sacrificing the strength of the house—for the next round. Rick Sassen, a branch manager, kindly donated the roof shingles and cedar supporting Smokie's house, final items Elvis couldn't afford on his own. Sassen has promised to work out a deal on future building materials for the same cause.

    Valerie Jarrett, 58, is serving as a top adviser to President Obama and has been close to the first family since the early 1990s. Joe Heim from WashingtonPost had an interview with her.

    Joe Heim: What do you think of a reporter who interviews you for 25 minutes, then later finds out his recorder stopped working and asks you to do the interview again?

    Valerie Jarrett: That he's human. Everybody could make mistakes.

    Joe Heim: You're considered the president's closest adviser. What do you think the role of an adviser is?

    Valerie Jarrett: I think so as that the president's management style is very effective (有效的), all of his advisers should speak openly about their advice.

    Joe Heim: What misunderstandings are there of you?

    Valerie Jarrett: A little-known fact is that I started my life very shy and remained very shy well into adulthood. Painfully shy, I would call it. And I often share this, particularly with young people, because it's something I really had to work hard to overcome. And for all the shy people out there I say, you, too, can overcome it. But it took a lot of hard work on my part, and I discovered along the way that just because you're nervous and you have butterflies in your stomach doesn't mean that it has to show. My point in sharing it with you is that part of life is pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone (舒适区). And if you're going to grow, you have to learn how to take on new challenges that you might not be good at.

    Joe Heim: Will you stay until the end of his term?

    Valerie Jarrett: I serve at the pleasure of the president. If he wants me to stay, I will.

    Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

    I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund(基金）(our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor)

    For weeks, I've been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball-simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

    We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.

    A growing number of Chinese tourists are helping to save a dying town, after a like-known tourist attraction was featured on a number of Chinese travel blogs.

    The residents of Sea Lake, a town of just 600 people, barely see travelers stop at their gas station while driving by, but the sudden influx of Chinese tourists is helping keep the town's economy alive.

    The tourists come to see Lake Tyrrel—a shallow, salt crusted and often dry lake just out of town. According to a local teacher, Rachel Pearce, the extremely beautiful nightscape combined with the mysterious appearance of stars reflected on the salt lake gives people the impression of walking among the stars. Besides, the town is so far away that no light pollution ruins the particularly attractive views, and as it is situated in a barren(寸草不生的), dry part of the country, there are rarely any clouds to spoil the night sky.

    The attraction's growing sought-after status has resulted in the town's motel rooms being full almost every night, and while local farmers are suffering in a two-year drought, tourism is keeping the town's agricultural-based economy stable.

    Despite the popularity of the town and its attraction, locals are still confused as to why their little town deserves so much attention. Sea Lake's population has fallen from around 1, 200a decade ago to 600 today. "We're still unsure why Lake Tyrrel is such a big, big tourist attraction," one local says. "It's quite a shock."

Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who has a passion for literature and reading. It can be a family inheritance (继承) or it can be just to impress people around you about the fact that you are a person of culture. On the other hand, there are many persons who cannot afford to buy books, because some of them are quite expensive, but they usually go to libraries and spend hours reading something that interests them a lot, or just borrow books to read at home.

From my point of view, literature is very important in our lives from several points of view. For example, reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas of activities. It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field, or you can express your opinion about a political aspect, just because you have read something connected to that.

Secondly, literature offers us the possibility to enter the world of imagination, and to leave apart the real one for a couple of hours. We come to meet kings and queens many years ago, dream in the world of the rich or imagine how life will be in the future. Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve our problems and how to react in certain circumstances.

To conclude, I would like to say that literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express correctly and have a rich vocabulary, to be able to interfere (干涉) in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered an erudite person.