Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father came to America from Kenya, which is a country in Africa. His parents, Ann and Barack, met when they were students at the University of Hawaii. Since Barack had the same name as his father, young Barack went by the nickname “Barry”.

    In 1979, after he finished high school, Barry went to Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. There, he started to learn about his African roots and decided to use his African name, Barack. After two years in L.A., he went to Columbia University in New York City to study politics.

    After college, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked to help poor people in his city. He traveled to Africa to meet his grandmother and cousins for the first time. He went back many times over the years to visit with his family and learn about where he came from. At work, he met a lawyer named Michelle Robinson. They worked together in a big law firm. Then he left Chicago to go to Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did very well in law school.

    After he was done with school, Barack moved back to Chicago and in 1992 he married Michelle. He worked as a lawyer, devoted to helping poor people for free who had been treated unfairly. He worked hard to get the people he helped to vote.

    He made many people believe that their votes were important, and helped them feel like they could make a difference.

    Do you intend to study at an American university? It takes a long time to get accepted at most American schools, perhaps as much as a year. That's why you should start choosing a school as soon as possible. It's a good idea to apply to several different institutions, so that you'll have a better chance of acceptance at one. You should start looking for information now, because the more information you have about each college, the better choice you can make.

    There are two good ways to get information you need. One is a general reference (参考) book, called Guide to American Colleges and Universities. The other good source of information is the catalogue (目录) published by each school.

    You can study the general guide in almost any American library. This book has many useful statistics, such as the number of students, the average test scores for people accepted to the school, the number of books in the library, and the number of teachers. You can also find the address of each school in this book.

    Although the general guidebook has helpful information, some of the facts may be out-of-date. For example, many schools raise their tuition every year. Since you'll need to know what your education will cost, out-of-date information will not be good enough. Also, schools sometimes change their requirements for entrance. To be sure that you are getting present information, write to the university and ask for its catalogue. The catalogue has more detailed information. For example, the catalogue can tell you if there is a special foreign student advisor, what kind of courses are offered, and what kind of housing is available. Some universities have dormitories, but at others you have to find your own place to live.

    With all of this information, you should be able to pick out several good schools.

    My wife and I went to this vegan(严格的素食主义的)restaurant to give it a try.As we were eating our pepper and salt tofu, a young lady named Debra walked in. She wasn't aware that the place is vegan and was looking for some meat. My wife and I talked up the place and invited her over to try some of our tofu. Debra tried it, nodded and went out.

    After a few minutes, she and her mother both walked back in. We were having the rest of our meal at that time, so we told her what we had ordered. Debra then asked the waitress to just repeat our order for them. Next, Debra said, "And we want to pay for their meal", pointing to my wife and me. We tried to say no, but Debra wouldn't listen.

    That was not the end of it. Hugs were in order. Debra came over to our table and my wife got up to hug her. Debra hugged my wife and put $100 into her hand. My wife firmly said NO, but Debra insisted. Debra kept talking about our kindness, and we did the same about hers and her mother's. With tears in the eyes, the workers were blown away by this whole exchange between four strangers. I left the waiters a tip that would cover all of our meals and we were on our way.

    I've been witnessing so much kindness, especially over the last few years, as I began to pay more attention. We now have a new favorite restaurant and every time we go there my plan is to pay for someone else's meal.

    Psychology has a new application in the field of medicine. Many doctors, together with their patients, are looking for alternative methods of treatment of physical problems. In large hospitals, modern therapy(疗法)seems to focus on the physical disease. Patients may feel they are treated like broken machines. Some doctors have recognized this as a problem. They are now using psychological therapy, in which the patient is working with the doctors against the disease with the help of medicine. The patient does not wait for the medicine and treatment to cure him or her, but instead the patient joins in the fight.

    The doctor knows that a disease affects a patient's body physically. The body of the patient changes because of the disease. He is not only physically affected, but also has an emotional response to the disease. Because his mind is affected, and his attitude and behavior change. The medical treatment might cure the patient's physical problems, but the patient's mind must fight the emotional ones. For example, the studies of one doctor, Carl Simonton, M.D., have shown that a typical cancer patient has predictable attitudes. She typically feels depressed, upset, and angry. Her constant depression makes her acts unfriendly toward her family, friends, doctors, and nurses. Such attitudes and behaviors prevent recovery. Therefore, a doctor's treatment must help the patient change that. Simonton's method emphasizes treatment of the "whole" patient.

    The attitude of a cancer patient receiving radiation therapy, an X-ray treatment, can become more positive. The physician who is following Simonton's psychological treatment plan suggests that the patient imagine that he or she can see the tumor(肿瘤)in the body. In the mental picture, the patient "sees" a powerful beam of radiation like a million bullets of energy. The patient imagines the beam hitting the tumor cells and causing them to shrink. For another cancer patient, Dr. Simonton asks him to imagine the medicine going from the stomach into the bloodstream and to the cancer cells. The patient imagines that the medicine is like an army fighting the diseased cells and sees the cancer cells gradually dying and his blood carrying away the dead cells. Both the medical therapy and the patient's positive attitude fight the disease.

    Doctors are not certain why this mental therapy works. However, this use of psychology does help some patients because their attitudes about themselves change. They become more confident because they use the power within their own minds to help stop the disease.

    Another application of using the mind to help cure disease is the use of suggestion therapy. At first, the doctor helps the patient to concentrate deeply. The patient thinks only about one thing. He becomes so unaware of other things around him that he is asleep, or rather in a trance(催眠状态). Then the physician makes "a suggestion" to the patient about the medical problem. The patient's mind responds to the suggestion even after the patient is no longer in the trance. In this way, the patient uses his mind to help his body respond to treatment.

    Doctors have learned that this use of psychology is helpful for both adults and children. For example, physicians have used suggestion to help adults deal with the strong pain of some disease. Furthermore, such treatment may help the patient with a chronic diseases. Suggestion has been used to change children's habits like nail­biting, thumb­sucking, and sleep­related problems.

    Many professional medical groups have accepted the medical use of psychology and that psychology has important applications in medicine.

A new book called "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua has caused a debate (争论) about cultural differences in parenting. Amy Chua is a teacher in an American university and both of her parents are Chinese. In the book, Ms. Chua writes about how she taught her daughters. She told NBC television that she had a clear list of what her daughters were not allowed to do, such as having a play date, watching TV or playing computer games and getting any grade less than an A.

Many people are against Amy Chua's parenting style (风格), even her husband, who is American. They say it is rude and unfair to children. But she says her parents raised her and her three sisters in that way.

Ms. Chua says after her younger daughter shouted "I hate my life! I hate you!" she decided to retreat because she was afraid of losing her daughter. But she also says American parents often have low expectations of their children's abilities.

"The debate is about what it means to be a successful parent and what it means to be a successful child," said Stacy DeBroff, who has written four books on parenting. She says Amy Chua's parenting style is not limited to Chinese families. It is a tradi-tional way of parenting among immigrants (移民). They hope to get a better future for their children.

She also sees a risk (风险). When children have no time to be social or to develop their own interests, they might not develop other skills that they need to succeed in life. DeBroff advises parents to develop their own style of parenting and not just repeat the way they were raised.

As the pandemic makes clear, cities are possibly humanity's greatest invention, but cities with huge populations also make us easily suffer from the rapid spread of disease. Yet humans aren't the only species that face this problem. Honeybees have lived social lives for tens of millions of years, making them some of the most experienced in the battle against infection. And over time, natural selection has given them quite a few impressive strategies for reducing transmission within bee groups.

However, these strategies are not enough to prevent every threat. Honeybees are battling their own global disease, for which they were totally not prepared. A parasitic mite (寄生螨) originally existed only in the groups of Asian honeybees, but later jumped to infect Western honey bees. Today, it has spread to every region where honeybees are kept except Australia and a handful of remote islands, quickly becoming a global disease of the bees.

If left untreated, a group of bees will typically die from the mites within two years. These infections, plus farm chemicals and poor nutrition, have forced beekeepers to struggle to keep their bees alive. Of the 2.6 million honeybee groups in the US, over half of them have parasitic mite.

And that's only the count of those bees that are tested and reported; the actual numbers are likely much higher. Beekeepers have still managed to slowly increase the number of groups they keep, on average, but at a much higher cost.

Western honeybees did not grow with parasitic mite, and the Western bees lack the behavioral features those Asian honeybees have, like permanently burying the members infested by parasitic mite and, perhaps the most extreme strategy, where the bees are so sensitive to parasitic mite that they completely die as soon as infected, sacrificing themselves to prevent the mite from reproducing.