Put your car keys away and forget about your travel pass — it's time to do a bit of walking.

    National Walking Month is organized every May by Living Streets, an organization that campaigns for the rights and the needs of pedestrians — indeed, the organization was previously known as the Pedestrians' Association. The association's aim is to make streets safe, attractive and enjoyable spaces for people to live, work, shop and play. By putting people (rather than vehicles) first, Living Streets wants to create streets and spaces where people feel happier, healthier and more sociable.

    The annual campaign gives participants a great opportunity to experience the many virtues（优点）of walking. These include the physical health benefits of becoming fitter; the environmental advantages of not using vehicles（车辆）; the joy of local discoveries seeing more of your local area on foot; the enjoyment of walking with other people, whether family, friends or work colleagues and finally the stress relief that comes from walking—walking can clear your head.

    Walk to School Week, 19 to 24 May, is part of the month's activities and its aim is to encourage parents to send children to school on foot, rather than take them in the car or let them use public transport. The movement was started in 1995 with only five participating schools and now two decades later, more than one million children take part.

    Similarly, there is Walk to Work Week, 12 to 16 May, where grown-ups are encouraged to walk. In the morning, getting off the bus a stop early or parking a few streets away is a good way to add more steps to the daily total. And during the working day, rather than having lunch at the desks or in the canteen, take a walk and get some fresh air. Walk home with your workmates and chat away about everything under the sun but work!

    One day an old woman was traveling alone in the mountains. Suddenly she saw something shining in the stream. When she came close, she found it was a precious （珍贵的） stone. She put the stone into her bag and went on with her trip.

    The next day the old woman met a young man, who was also a traveler in the mountains. The young man looked very hungry, so the old woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked carefully, “The stone is beautiful. Would you like to give it to me?”

    “Sure. Why not?” the woman said, and handed the stone to him.

    The young man left happily with the stone. He knew it was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman.

    “I've been thinking,” he said. “I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back and hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within your bag.”

    The woman opened her bag. It was almost empty. She looked at the young man and smiled, “I have nothing special in my bag, but I do have something precious — the joy of giving!”

    The young man felt ashamed and left silently.

    The other day I was shopping at the local Chinese grocery store. There was a line at the fish counter, but only one staff person was there to take care of the customers. Some customers ordered quite an amount of fish for that staff person to work on. At last I was the second in line; all I wanted was a couple of crabs and should get out of there in no time.

    Noticing it was very busy at the fish counter, another staff person came over to help. I was ready to be served,  but the staff person went to the end of the line and began to help a couple of ladies with snails （蜗牛）.The customer in front of me, being served, turned around and looked at me sympathetically, and the customer behind me called to the staff person, "You should start her, "pointing at me. He was, well, ignored.

    If someone asked me, "What is the most important rule to follow in America？"I would reply without hesitation, "Wait your turn at all times." Wherever you go here in this country, you will find people waiting in a line quietly to get anything: whether in the supermarkets, department stores, bus stops, or gas stations, it's just a matter of waiting your turn. In a larger sense, "wait your turn" is more than just a guideline﹣it is a very basic norm （准则）that reflects the fundamental value of the western cultures. But in some situations your turn does not always come based on when you get there and how long you have waited in line, just like my case at the store. Even though this did not often happen, it did make me feel upset.

    Dolphins, African gray parrots and some other animals understand the idea of “zero,” but researchers were surprised to find that honeybees also comprehend this abstract concept, considering the insects' tiny brains, according to a new study. Honeybees have fewer than one million neurons (神经元), compared with the 86 billion neurons in humans—and yet, they grasp a concept that humans, by some measures, don't start to understand before preschool.

    The researchers set up two cards, each of which had a set of symbols on them, like triangles or circles. Then, they trained a group of the bees to fly to the card with the lower number of symbols. The bees quickly learned what the humans wanted them to do to get their delicious, sweet rewards. The trained bees were then shown a card that was empty and one that had symbols on it. There is no need for the bees to be trained to fly more often to the empty card—thus showing that they understood that “zero” was a number less than the others.

    Although they flew more often to an empty card than to one that had one symbol on it, it became easier for them to distinguish when the symbols on the card increased in number. For example, they more often flew to the zero when the other card had four symbols than when it had one.

    Perhaps these findings will explain the brain mechanism (机制) behind what allows us to understand the concept of “nothing,” Adrian Dyer, a researcher said. This understanding, in turn, could help in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) that also understands this concept. “If bees can understand 'zero' with a brain of less than a million neurons, it suggests there are simple, efficient ways to teach AI new tricks,” Dyer said in the statement.

    People all have something to say. Some express their passion (强烈的感情) through clothe, art, or community involvement. Others express themselves with poetry, which has diverse poetic forms to express unique thoughts, experiences, and imagination at the fourth annual People's Poetry Festival held Feb. 28 through March 2.

    "The People's Poetry Festival keeps getting bigger and bigger—it's an event we're really proud of," said Dr Mark Hartlaub, College of Liberal Arts Dean at Texas. The festival covered a wide variety of topics including nature, humor, women and history. From the panels to the open microphone night, the islander's community, along with 43 published poets from around the country, local high school students, and the general public came together to share their love of poetry.

    The panels were full of passionate readings and lively discussion. For the first time ever, musical poetry was performed at the event. The "Homebrewed" panel was made up of all local poets. The "From Page to the Stage" panel focused on slam (抨击) poetry, and the "Humor" panel greeted levels of laughter from the crowd. All the panels were live streamed on the People's Poetry Facebook page. "The poetry and poets were all my students wanted to talk about in class this week," said Dr. Chuck Etheridge, professor of English who attended many of the panel readings.

    Celebrating exceptional writers is another part of People's Poetry Festival. On opening night, the People's Poetry Festival committee named Madeline Ricondo of Tuloso-Midway as the winner of the Robb Jackson Writing Award for high school students. This award honors the late Dr. Robb Jackson, Texas A&M University System Regents Professor and professor of English at A&M-Corpus Christi, whose poetry shared his life experiences and observation of Corpus Christi. Ricondo received a $100 gift card, plus, three poetry books with local ties including a copy of Jackson's "Open Heart". The people's Poetry Festival committee also recognized Juan Manuel Perez, award-winning poet and local history teacher, as the 2019—2021 Poet Laureate (桂冠诗人) of Corpus Christi.

On one side of the room sits the cutest life-size stuffed animal(填充玩具) you've ever seen. On the other side rests a real dog—the same size, shape and even the same name as the stuffed version. You get to sit next to both of these furry friends and pet their fur. Guess which one will make your brain light up?

If you guessed the real dog, you're right. Stuffed animals, as cute and lovely as they may be, just don't effectively activate our frontal cortex(额叶皮层), the part of the brain overseeing how we think and feel, according to a new study published in the journal PLOSONE. The study found an even stronger rise in brain activity when the person petted the fur of a real dog versus a stuffed animal.

"We chose to research the frontal cortex because this brain area is involved in several executive(执行) functions, such as attention, working memory, and problem-solving. But it is also involved in social and emotional processes,"said study lead author Rahel Marti, a doctoral student in the division of clinical psychology at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Why is this finding important? It provides additional evidence that live human-animal interaction therapy(疗法) may promote cognitive and emotional activity in the brain. Marti said,"If patients with deficits in motivation, attention, and socioemotional functioning show higher emotional involvement in activities connected to a real dog, then such activities could increase the chance of learning and of achieving treatment aims."

"This is an interesting, seriously conducted study that provides new insight into associations between human-animal interaction and regional prefrontal brain activity in healthy adults. We found that brain activity increased when the contact with a real dog or a stuffed animal became closer. This confirms previous studies relating closer contact with animals to increased brain activity,"Marti said.