Manners nowadays in big cities like London are particularly non-existent. It's nothing for a big, strong schoolboy to push an elderly woman aside in the dash for the last remaining seat on a bus, much less stand up and offer his seat to her, as he ought to. In fact, it is saddening to note that if a man does offer his seat to an older woman, it is nearly always one from the older generation.

    This question of giving up seats in public transport is much argued by young men, who say that, since women have claimed equality, they no longer deserve to be treated with courtesy and that those who go out to work should take their turn in the rat race like anyone else. Women have never claimed to be physically as strong as men. Even if it's not agreed, however, that young men should stand up for older women, the fact remains that courtesy should be shown to the old, the sick and the burdened. Are we really so lost to all ideals of unselfishness that we can sit there indifferently reading the paper or a book, saying to ourselves "First come, first served", while a gray-haired woman, a mother with a young child or a cripple stands? Yet this is too often seen.

    Older people, tired and easy annoyed from a day's work, aren't angels, either-far from it. Many an argument or an insulting quarrel breaks out as they feel tired of pushes in the queue and shove(猛推) each other to get on buses.

    If cities are to remain pleasant places to live in at all, however, it seems necessary, not only that communication in transport should be improved, but also that communication between human beings should be kept smooth and polite. Shop assistant won't bother to assist, taxi drivers shout at each other as they dash dangerously round comers, bus conductors pull the bell before their desperate passengers have had time to get on or off the bus, and so on. It seems to us that it's up to the young and strong to do their small part to stop such deterioration(恶化).

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Dear Editor,

    I'm a Senior 1 student in a middle school. This term, my favourite teacher, Miss Mao, no longer teaches us. I want to see her, but I'm afraid that she no longer likes me and I don't want to trouble her. I really miss her. What should I do?

Tian Yan

Dear Tian Yan,

    It's bad luck that you have lost your favourite teacher. But, if she is still in your school, nothing can stop you going to see her. When she isn't busy, ask her if she minds having a quick chat. You can then tell her she was your favourite teacher. Everyone is happy to know they are liked!

    If she has left the school, it will be more difficult to meet her. It will be hard, but remember people always come and go in our lives. We can't depend on them being with us all the time.

    You may be sad to say goodbye to her, but we can remember and learn from her. Think of her best qualities.    

    You could also try looking for similar qualities in your other teachers. Study hard and give your new teacher a chance. In time, you might start to see that he or she has different qualities to learn from.

    Finally, you can not completely depend on other people getting you through your studies, or even your life.

Editor

    According to official government figures, there are more than twice as many kangaroos as people in Australia, and many Australians consider them pests(有害动物). Landholding farmers say that the country's estimated 50 million kangaroos damage their crops and compete with livestock for scarce resources. Australia's insurance industry says that kangaroos are involved in more than 80 percent of the 20,000-plus vehicle-animal collisions reported each year. In the country's underpopulated region, the common belief is that kangaroo numbers have swollen to “plague proportions."

    In the absence of traditional hunters, the thinking goes, killing kangaroos is critical to balancing the ecology and boosting the rural economy. A government-sanctioned(政府认可的) industry, based on the commercial harvest of kangaroo meat and hides, exported $29 million in products in 2017 and supports about 4,000 jobs. Today meat, hides, and leather from kangaroos have been exported to 56 countries. Global brands such as Nike, Puma, and Adidas buy strong, supple “k-leather" to make athletic gear. And kangaroo meat is finding its way into more and more grocery stores.

    Advocates point out that low-fat, high-protein kangaroo meat comes from an animal more environmentally friendly than greenhouse gas-emitting sheep and cattle. John Kelly, former executive director of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, says, “Harvesting our food and fibers from animals adapted to Australia's fragile rangelands is extremely wise and sustainable. Many ecologists will tell you that there is no more humane way of producing red meat."

    Opponents(反对者) of the industry call the killing inhumane, unsustainable, and unnecessary. Population estimates are highly debatable, they say, but “plague proportions" are biologically implausible. Little kangaroos grow slowly, and many die, so kangaroo populations can expand by only 10 to 15 percent a year, and then only under the best of circumstances. Dwayne Bannon-Harrison, a member of the Yuin people of New South Wales, says the idea that kangaroos are destroying the country is laughable. “They've been walking this land a lot longer than people have," he says. “How could something that's been here for thousands of years be 'destroying' the country? I don't understand the logic in that."

    Can Australians' conflicting attitudes toward kangaroos be reconciled(和解)? George Wilson says that if kangaroos were privately owned, then graziers(放牧人)—working independently or through wildlife conservancies—would protect the animals, treating them as possessions. They could feed them, lease them, breed them and charge hunter a fee for access. “If you want to conserve something," Wilson says, “you have to give it a value. Animals that are considered pests don't have value."

    Privatization could also help reduce grazing pressures. If kangaroos were more valuable than cattle or sheep, farmers would keep less live-stock, which could be good for the environment. Under this scheme, landholders would work with the kangaroo industry on branding, marketing and quality control. The government's role would be oversight and regulation.

    Scientists are attempting to extract (提取) cells from a 40,000-year-old horse in hope of using the sample to clone the extinct (灭绝的) species back into existence. The male baby horse was discovered in 2018 in permafrost (永冻土) in northeastern Siberia of Russia.

    A team of scientists from South Korea and Russia believes the young horse, called the Lenskaya or Lena horse, was about 20 days old when it died. The species of horse, now extinct, is between 30,000 and 40,000 years old. Thanks to the terrible coldness, the animal's tissue was preserved enough for the scientists to obtain samples.

    Semyon Grigoriev, head of the lab at the Mammoth (猛犸象) Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, said the horse was "well - preserved" and a "great find". There is no damage to the horse's body and even its hair is undamaged. The unfortunate animal, according to Gngo-riev, "could have drowned after falling into some kind of a natural trap."

    Hwang Woo-suk, a researcher from South Korea working on the project, said, "If researchers find a cell, they will do their best to clone the animal. If we get live cells from this ancient baby horse, it would be wonderful in terms of cloning."

    After that, they will make a cloned embryo (胚胎) and a female horse carry it as its mother. Hwang said modern-day horses are "very similar to the ancient one," so there would be no problem getting help from a modern-day female horse.

    The scientists are hoping the experiment on the baby horse will give them experience in progressing toward their ambitious goal-bringing back the extinct woolly mammoth.

    "If we manage to clone the horse-it will be the first step to cloning the mammoth." Hwang said.

Writing out the same word again and again may bring back bad memories for some, but handwriting can boost connectivity across brain regions, some of which are involved in learning and memory, a new study shows.

In the study, psychologists Audrey and Ruud, both at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, stuck electrodes (电极) on the participants' heads. They asked the participants to type out or hand write with a digital pen words that appeared on a computer screen. Sensors in a cap recorded electrical brain activity. Then the psychologists looked for when two brain areas are active with the same frequency of electrical waves at the same time. This result can reveal the connectivity among different regions across the brain.

With handwriting, the researchers saw increased activity, specifically in low frequency bands, not only in the expected motor areas but also in others associated with learning. These low frequency bands have previously been shown to support memory processes. When the team compared the two tasks, they realized that handwriting —but not typing —increased the connectivity across parietal (顶叶) brain regions, which are involved in sensory and motor processing, and central regions, many of which are involved in memory.

"Even when the movements are very similar, the activation seems much, much higher in handwriting," Audrey says. "It shows that there's more involvement of these brain regions when you're handwriting, which might give you some specific advantages."

These findings suggest that there are distinct processes of brain activation happening while a person types or writes. This boost of stimulation of handwriting facilitates learning because these particular waves between these areas are involved in memory formation and encoding (编码) .

And although handwriting may help with learning processes, typing is often easier, faster and more practical. "Students and teachers alike should therefore consider the task at hand to decide to hand write or type," Audrey says. Despite the need for more studies to determine the best learning strategy, experts say that handwriting shouldn't be left behind in the digital age. "Schools need to bring in more writing into curriculum design," Ruud says.