When 12-year-old Taylor Smith wrote a special letter to herself last spring, to be read in 10 years' time, she didn't know it would be opened before even a year had passed— and that it wouldn't be her eyes reading the words.

  “She had told me that she had written a letter to herself, and that she was excited that she was going to open it when she was older,”said Taylor's  mother, Mary Ellen Smith.

    Instead, it was opened by Taylor's parents after she died last spring. They posted the letter to Facebook, hoping it would inspire others.

    It has. “We've gotten letters from lots of parents who have said it has encouraged them to love their kids and love each other,” said Mary Ellen Smith.

    In the letter, Taylor congratulated herself on graduating from high school and asked, “Are you in college?”

    She also wanted to know if she had been on a plane yet and if the show “Doctor Who” was still on the air.

    Taylor also had some words for her future kids. After considering the idea of selling her iPad and getting an iPadmini instead, she told her future self to mention to her kids that “We're older than the tablet.” She included a drawing of an iPad for them to see.

    Taylor died suddenly of pneumonia (肺炎), leaving behind both her parents and an older brother.

  “I just want people to know just what an awesome, awesome person she was,” her father, Tim Smith said.

    Her mother said, “I can't bring her back, but I'm so grateful people have been inspired by her story.”

    Taylor's father read the closing g words of her letter, which said, “It's been years since I wrote this. Stuff has happened, good and bad. That's just how life works, and you have to go with it.”

    New Orleans, Louisiana, was established as part of the French Empire in 1718.

    Its location on the east bank of the Mississippi River gave it control of the American hinerland and it became strategically important to many nations. It was transferred from France to Spain, returned to France, and finally sold by Napoleon to the United States in 1803. The city was the site of a famous battle fought in 1815 between the British, who hoped to control it, and the Americans under General Andrew Jackson.

    The riverbed of the Mississippi is constantly silting（淤积）and the river is now actually higher than the city. Levees hold back the river and giant pumps are used to move water from the city into the river.

    Although New Orleans has been a part of the United States for almost two centuries, its population takes great pride in its French heritage. Louisiana still retains parts of the Code Napoleon which, for many years, was its only law.

    New Orleans is carefree city and it boasts its hot, spicy Creole seafood and its native Dixieland Jazz. The Jackson Square neighborhood maintains its French colonial homes and in other sections are pre-Civil War mansions. Visitors are surprised to find that behind this interesting surface of yesteryear is a busy industrial and port city. Grain and coal come from the Midwest and foreign goods are unloaded here. New Orleans is no longer a sleepy Southern town—but it's still fun to visit.

    I was in a rush as always, but this time it was for an important date I just couldn't be late for! Thinking of my upcoming evening, I hurried into a store to pick up some flowers, for I did not want to be late for this date. When I paid the bill at a checkout counter, I found myself behind an elderly woman who seemed in no hurry when she paid for her groceries. She looked up at me and smiled. It was a nice smile –warm and friendly –and I returned her gift by smiling back.

    “Must be a special lady, no matter who will be getting those beautiful flowers,” she said.

    “Yes, she's special,” I said, and then to my embarrassment, the words kept coming out.

    “It's only our second date, but somehow I am just having the feeling that she's 'the one'. Jokingly, I added,“The only problem is that I can't understand why she'd want to date a guy like me.”

    “Well, I think she's very lucky to have a boyfriend who brings her such lovely flowers and who is obviously in love with her,” the woman said.” “My husband used to bring me flowers every week –even when times were hard and we didn't have much money. Those were wonderful days; he was very romantic and – of course – I miss him after he died.

    I paid for my flowers as she was gathering up her groceries. I walked up to her, touched her on the shoulder and said,“You were right, you know. These flowers are indeed for a very special lady.” I handed her the flowers and thanked her for such a nice conversation.

    It took her a moment to realize that I was giving her the flowers I had just bought.“You have a wonderful evening,” I said. I left her with a big smile and my heart warmed as I saw her smelling the beautiful flowers.

    I remember being slightly late for my date that night and telling my girlfriend the above story. A couple of years later, when I finally worked up the courage to ask her to marry me, she told me that the story I had told her that night helped me win her heart.

    High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a problem in her class. But not even the students realized how much of a problem the devices were until Chavis did an in-class experiment.

    For one class period, students used a whiteboard to count every Snapchat, Instagram, text, call that appeared on their phones. Chavis is among a growing number of teachers, parents and health experts who believe that smartphones are now partly to blame for increasing the levels of student anxiety. "One girl, just during the one hour, got close to 150 Snapchat notifications. 150!" she said.

    Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University in California, said it is not a coincidence that youth mental health issues have risen with the number of phones. "This use of phones has led to a loss of sleep and face-to-face interactions necessary for their growth," she said.

    Researchers are still not sure whether phones cause student depression or depression causes phone use. But nearly 60 percent of parents said they worry about the influence of social media on their child's physical and mental health.

    Both schools and parents are starting to take steps to deal with the problem. Many public schools pay outside companies to watch students' social media activity for signs of anxiety. Other schools invite in yoga teachers and comfort dogs to help calm students.

Coca-Cola is to test a paper bottle as part of a longer-term goal to get rid of plastic from its packaging entirely. The prototype(样本) is made by a Danish company from an extra-strong paper shell that still contains a thin plastic liner (衬垫). But the goal is to create a 100% recyclable, plastic free bot tle capable of preventing gas escaping from carbonated(碳酸) drinks. The barrier must also ensure no fibers get into the liquid. 

That may have a risk of changing the taste of the drink ——or potentially can't meet the requirements of health and safety checks. But industry giants (巨头)are backing the plan. Coca-Cola, for example, has set a goal of producing zero waste by 2030. Coca-Cola was ranked the world's number one plastic polluter by charity group Break Free From Plastic(摆脱塑料) last year, closely followed by other drink-producers Pepsi and Nestle. 

The Paper Bottle Company, or Paboco, is the Danish firm behind the devel-opment of the paper-based container. Part of the challenge has been to create a structure capable of standing the forces exerted by carbonated drinks —— such as cola and beer —— which are bottled under pressure. On top of that, the paper needs to be mouldable to create different bottle shapes and sizes for different brands and take ink for printing their labels. 

After more than seven years of lab work, the firm is now ready to host a trial in Hungary this summer of Coca-Cola's fruit drink Adez. Initially, this will in-volve 2, 000 bottles distributed via a local retail chain. 

But it is also working with others. Absolut, the vodka maker, is due to test 2, 000 paper bottles of its own in the UK and Sweden of its pre-mixed, carbonated raspberry drink. And beer company Carlsberg is also building prototypes of a paper beer bottle. 

Michael Michelsen, the firm's commercial manager, says the bottles are formed out of a single piece of paper-fiber-based material to give them strength. 

Can you imagine there being a community where boys and girls growing up together can finally speak different languages? In Ubang Nigeria, it really happens. It's not exactly clear what percentage of the words in the men's and women's languages are different, but there are enough examples to make sentences sound different when spoken by the opposite sex. For "clothing", men use the word "nki", while women say "ariga"; "kitchi" means tree for men, while women say "okweng". These are not just some slight pronunciation differences, but totally different words. "It's almost like two different lexicons (词汇集)," a language expert, Chi Chi Undle said. "There are a lot of words that men and women share in common, but there are others which are totally different depending on your sex. They don't sound alike, and don't have the same letters. They are completely different words."

Interestingly, both men and women are able to understand each other perfectly in Ubang, as both boys and girls grow up around their parents and get to learn both languages, but by the age of 10, boys are expected to speak in the male tongue. It seems that there is a stage the male will reach and he discovers he is not using the rightful language. When he starts speaking the men's language, you know the maturity is coming into him.

No one really knows how or why the double-language tradition of Ubang began. Chi Chi Undie believes the two languages are the result of a "double-sex culture" where men and women operate in two separate spheres (范围) and live in separate worlds that rarely come together. However, she admits this is a weak theory, as the double-sex culture is present in many parts of Africa, where there are no different languages for men and women.

Today, with English words constantly entering the lexicon of young Nigerians, Ubang's two languages are in danger of being lost forever. Worse still, neither the male nor female language is written down, so they both rely on young people passing them down to the next generation.