Your smartphone(智能手机) can do a lot of things. It can call people. It connects to the Internet. It enables you to play fun games. But there is a dark side to this smart little device（设备）of yours – it might also spread disease.

    “People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom,” Jeffrey Cain, the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told The Wall Street Journal.

    This may be hard to believe, but scientists reached this conclusion after they tested eight random cell phones from an office in Chicago. All the tested phones showed high numbers of coliforms(大肠菌), a kind of bacteria found in excrement(粪便)，with about 2,700 to 4,200 units of the bacteria on each phone. In drinking water, the healthy limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water. This bacteria can cause flu, pinkeye（红眼病）and diarrhea(腹泻).

    Although computers, keys and pens all carry germs(细菌), our smartphones get far dirtier. They touch a lot of stuff, including our hands and the inside of our pocket or purse. We take them almost everywhere: the bus, the subway and who hasn't played Angry Birds of Fruit Ninja while sitting on the toilet?

    “Some things that we think are personal are actually more public than we imagine,” Cain said.

    What's even worse is that after the phone returns from its dirty trip, it then spends most of its time cozying up to our faces. You don't think about how often you touch your phone to your face, do you? Our noses, mouths and ears are all warm and rich in grease（油脂）, an environment that germs really like.

    Compared to traditional keypads（键盘）, touch screens transmit（传播）germs more easily to hands. According to Time magazine's website, an expert in Australia warned that playing with iPads and iPhones at Apple stores is a health risk.

    So how do you keep your smartphone clean? Alcohol is effective when used to kill germs from the back and side of your phone. But it might harm the screen. There is one simple and reliable way you can reduce the germs on your phone's surface: wash your hands regularly.

    Long ago，poems were recited out loud instead of being written down. Back when the Greeks first started the Olympics, they held poetry contests as well as athletic competitions.

    Now，poetry competitions have been revived (恢复). This year 120,000 high school students competed in the first Poetry Out Loud national recitation contest，performing poems from memory for $100,000 in prizes.

    The first competitions were held in classrooms. The winners went on to school－wide contests, and then they competed in city and state competitions. Finally, the 50 state champions，along with the District of Columbia champion came to Washington D．C．last week for the last showdown. After the 51 champions competed against one another, 12 went on to the finals. Then the field was narrowed to five. The final five had one last chance to “perform” a poem. The overall champ, Jackson Hille, a high school senior from Ohio, won a $20,000 scholarship.

    The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation started Poetry Out Loud, because they realized that bearing a poem performed is a different experience from reading it on a page.

    It's not just a matter of saying the words in the right order. It's the tone of voice, the pauses, the gestures and the attitude of the person performing that bring the words to life. “Each time we hear somebody recite a poem, we understand again what we found fresh and interesting about it，” said National Public Radio Broadcaster Scott Simon, master of ceremonies for the finals. Hearing it in a new voice offers something new to the listener.

    Not only do the people hearing poems have a new experience, but memorizing and presenting poems helps the participants (选手) understand those poems in a new way. Another benefit of a competition such as Poetry Out Loud is that the participants learn public－speaking skills that can help them for life.

    If you analyze people's actions, you will come to the conclusion that they all seek happiness. Every act is in fact a search for it, even if on the surface it doesn't look so. Happiness is always the main target.

    Going to the movies, eating in a restaurant and going to a party are all motivated by the desire to be happy. Who does not dream of a vacation in some fascinating locations, a new car, a new house, or the ideal match? All people daydream, and some even try to make their dream a reality. And why is that? In order to be happy!

    Many people endanger themselves by climbing steep mountains, entering unexplored caves, or diving into the deep of the ocean in order to enjoy the few moments of happiness. A thief may steal because he loves the thrill of danger, or because he desires to have quick money to spend. He is actually looking for happiness, though in a perverted way.

    Of course not all actions end in happiness. The motive is happiness, but the results do not always bring the desire. According to some spiritual traditions, we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. The spiritual part is always happy. Rather, it is happiness itself. But the physical body covers this happiness essence(本质). There is a constant desire to find out this happiness. This is the reason why happiness is constantly sought.

    However, there is no need to search for happiness or to create it, or to have all kinds of outer experiences and actions in order to feel it. On the contrary, everything has to be dropped in order to experience it. Every technique, which helps to relax the mind and calm the rush of thoughts will lead to happiness.

    Have you ever wished you could grow fresh fruit in your garden but worry about there not being enough space, or it won't look pretty, or it's too difficult?

    What if I was to tell you that even a beginner can successfully grow a wide variety of fruit from apples and pears to cherries, blueberries and raspberries, and possibly even figs or nectarines?

    The first thing you need to know: the sweeter the fruit, the more sun it will require. If you have a sunny wall it's an ideal place to train a sun-loving fruit tree like a peach or an apricot. Plant the tree at the base of the wall but not too close (about 30cm is about right) in soil enriched with fertilizer (肥料). As it grows, splay (整枝) the branches evenly and attach them to the wall. As the plant grows gradually cut out old untidy branches and tie in new healthy branches. The idea of splaying or “fanning” is that as much sun as possible gets to the fruit, so it can ripen beautifully and maximize your crop.

    Choose a variety that won't grow too large. In slightly shadier spots you can grow gooseberries or raspberries. Most of these come in compact (紧凑的) varieties and can also be fan-trained against a wall if space is an issue.

    I have a tiny orchard (果园) of space-saving apple, pear and plum trees bought as single vertical stems (茎) which I grow in pots. They grow to a maximum of 2m high and no wider than 45cm. My children love them! Simply cut back the side stems to about 10cm at this time of year and you're good to go. Just remember that pot-grown plants rely totally on you for their food and water.

    As a gardener I was quite late to fruit-growing, but I realized quickly that it becomes an addictive hobby. And as a complete bonus I've noticed a definite increase in my bee population over the past few years. There's free food, and it's good for the environment too. What could be better?

Would you drink water that had once been flushed down a toilet? After it's been cleaned, that is. The climate is warming, and the population of drought-prone states California continues to grow. So recycling wastewater into drinking water may become a necessity.

But, it can be really hard for people to get over their disgust at the thought of drinking recycled water. People are grossed out by cycled water, because it was once wastewater—you know, the stuff that goes down your kitchen drains, your showers, your toilets. And even though it's cleaned up to a standard that is identical, if not better, than commercially bottled water, the key barrier to recycled water acceptance is people's disgust regarding it, " said Daniel Harmon, a psychologist in University of California.

In one experiment, the researchers had some participants watch a short video promoting water conservation. And in another experiment, they added a video explaining why recycled water might trigger disgust even though all pollutants have been removed. And neither video had a strong effect on people's willingness to drink recycled water or to support the practice.

The messages were not enough to get them to actually use recycled water more. "Disgust is such a powerful reaction that simply giving more information is not going to really be effective. " The study appears in the journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

Researchers say it's probably going to take a lot more to get people to embrace recycled water. For example, it might help to see members of their community drinking water that's gone, as it's called, from "toilet to tap, " with no ill effects.

It is clear that these kinds of more direct campaigns for acceptance are necessary to get people to get over that psychological barrier—to take that first sip, so to speak. Cheers!

On that hot August day in 2023, as ash rained down and flames closed in, Jim Rhodes didn't want to be anywhere but Coulterville. "My kid called from Alabama. We first heard ·about the fire from him," Rhodes recalls. "He said, ‘Evacuate（撤离）!'I said, ‘Evacuate? To where?'"

Coulterville is a tiny town located among dry hills where local people raise cattle and other livestock. It has a main street, a park and a museum. It's got a cafe, a grocery shop and a post. And with summer temperatures routinely topping 100 degrees, it has fires—sometimes big fires.

Eventually, this big fire got a name: the Moc Fire, for the tiny town of Moccasin-where it began as a brush fire.

It burnt for 10 days, consuming almost 3,000 acres.

Rhodes woke to find his truck covered in ashand the news was broadcasting evacuation orders. Ranchers（牧场主） across the region were fighting to protect their animals, loading them into the truck or just setting them loose to find safety. Volunteers were readying fairgrounds nearby to shelter animals. Already they were filling up with dogs, cats, chickens, horses, cattle, goats, sheep and rabbits.

As residents and animals were brought out, firefighters poured in. "With them came the biggest bulldozer（挖土机）I've ever seen," says Rhodes. "And they were sent to cut the firebreak that could save the town. We knew that if it made the cut, we'd all have to get out of here."

The situation was clear. The danger was growing. But slowly Rhodes realized that he hadn't come to Coulterville just to leave when the town needed him. He stayed, joining the handful of residents who gathered around the main street where fire officials posted updates. He knew he could help somebody, somehow.

Around midmorning, a farmer he'd never met came by asking for help with animal evacuation. Rhodes's phone was still ringing, but he knew what to do. "I hung up my phone, got in the truck and headed down to his farm," he says.