Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mum, you must come and see the daffodils(水仙花)before they are over.” I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Lake Arrowhead. "I will go next Tuesday," I promised, a little unwillingly, on her third call.

    The next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged and greeted my grandchildren, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible (看不见的) in the cloud and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see!"

    My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this weather all the time, Mum. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

    After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign that read "Daffodil Garden."

    We got out of the car and each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up amazed. Before me lay the most beautiful sight. Flows of flowers of different colors seemed poured down the peak and slopes. There were five acres of flowers! A sea of daffodil! It was like a fairyland all beyond description.

    "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. "It's just one woman." Carolyn answered. "That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio (露台), we saw a poster." Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline.

    The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs (鳞茎)" it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

    I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than fifty years before, had begun one bulb at a time to bring the beauty and joy to the mountain top. Just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world where she lived and created something of magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

    When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small amounts of daily effort, we too can accomplish great things. Everyone can do something to change the world.

    A handshake is one of the most common ways to greet others, but US President Donald Trump's unusual method has been put under the microscope lately.

    Much like an arm wrestler in a match, the recently-elected leader has a habit of yanking (猛拉) people's hands toward himself during handshakes. And while a typical handshake is only brief, the one between him and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Feb 10 lasted a full 19 seconds.

    Simply having a strong hand is not the explanation here. According to Darren Stanton, a body language expert from the UK, while handshakes are usually an exchange of kindness, Trump uses his as a way to show power and control, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people. “It is as if to say, 'Hey, I'm in charge, don't mess with me,' ” Stanton told The Independent.

    Apart from Trump's “yank-shake”, there are other ways people display power with their hands. At business talks or political meetings, for example, some people may rotate (旋转) their wrists during handshakes so that their hand ends up on top instead of underneath. Some may squeeze so hard that it leaves the other person's hand in pain.

    According to Stanton, by pulling people into his personal space, Trump is also testing whether they are willing to cooperate with him. “For example, if someone was resistant to being yanked towards him and stood their ground, he would know that he has work to do with them before he got what he wanted,” Stanton told Express.

    This is probably why on Feb 13 when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the White House, all eyes were on how he was going to handle Trump's handshake. Fortunately, Trudeau managed to avoid the embarrassment by grabbing Trump's shoulder to stop himself being pulled in. Afterward, some Twitter users wrote that this proved Trudeau's strong leadership, with one even calling the moment “one of Canada's greatest victories”.

    Vice magazine summed up the exchange between the two leaders as: “... no regular handshake. This was the first shot in a bloodless war.”

    Stay-at-home kids are named “generation nini” in Spain. They are those adults who still live at home and are neither working nor studying. But the problem is not limited to Spain. It is a worldwide problem.

In Italy, they are known as “bamboccioni” or big babies. There nearly 60 percent of 18-34-year-old adults still live in their parents' home, up from almost 50 percent since 1983. Once kept there by the love for their mama's home-cooked food, the economic crisis（经济危机）has seen a rise in adults left unable to hold down a steady job or afford a home of their own. Last year, an Italian government minister admitted that his mother washed his clothes and made the bed for him until he was 30. He demanded a law forcing young Italians to leave their parents' home at 18 to stop them becoming hopelessly dependent on their parents.

In the UK, the government has made the term NEETS—not in employment, education or training for these children. In England alone the percent of NEETS aged 19-24 surged to 18.8 percent of the age group-in the last quarter of 2010, up 1.4 percent on the same period a year before. The number of British men in their 20s living with their parents has risen from 59 percent to 80 percent in the past 15 years, while the number of women has risen from 41percent to 50 percent. The average age of the first-time house buyers is now 38.

    In the US, the problem is known as the “full nest syndrome（综合症）”. Adults there are left struggling to support adult children who have stayed at home with student debts and facing few job opportunities in a weak economy. A recent study showed almost a third of American adults aged 34 and under are living with their parents

    A. High tech with traditional life at Green Bank.

    Over millions of years, penguins（企鹅）have developed a keen sense of where to find food. Once they're old enough, they set off from the shores on which they were hatched for the first time and swim long distances in search of tasty fish like anchovies and sardines. But they don't search directly for the fish themselves.

    For example, when young African penguins head out to sea, they look for areas with low surface temperatures and high chlorophyll(叶绿素) because those conditions signal the presence of phytoplankton（浮游植物）. And lots of phytoplankton means lots of plankton（浮游动物）, which in turn means lots of their favorite fish. Well, that's what it used to mean.

    Climate change plus overfishing have made the penguin feeding grounds a mirage(海市蜃楼). The habitat is indeed plankton-rich—but now it's fish-poor. Researchers call this an “ecological trap.”

    “It's a situation where you have a signal that previously pointed an animal towards good quality habitat. That habitat's been changed, usually by human pressures. The signal stays, but the quality in the environment deteriorates.”

    Richard Sherley, a zoologist at the University of Exeter and his team used satellite imaging to track the African penguins from eight sites along southern Africa. Historically, the birds benefited from tons of fish off the coasts of Angola, Namibia and western South Africa, but now they're going hungry.

    “I was really hoping we'd see them going east, and finding areas where the fish had moved to but it ends up being quite a sad story for the penguins.” said Richard.

    The researchers calculate that by falling into this ecological trap, African penguin populations on South Africa's Western Cape have declined by around 80 percent.

    Some research groups are exploring the idea of moving chicks to a place where they can't get trapped, like the Eastern Cape. But Sherley thinks that a longer-term solution means making and carrying out rules to create more sustainable(可持续的) fishing industry, something that he says needs public support.

    Dubai(迪拜)is one of the economically richest places in the world. With its numerous malls, hotels, and beautiful beaches, Dubai has always been a popular holiday destination. This city was visited by around 5 million tourists each year. The government wanted to increase this number to 15 million. However, Dubai has only 45 miles of coastline, which is nowhere enough for so many people. To solve this problem, an island that looked like a palm tree was built in 2006, and named the Palm Jumeirah.

    The plan for the island was extraordinary. It was to host several hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, and homes. Although the initial plan was to build the island from concrete(水泥), a decision was taken to create it from sand and gravel(砾石), so as to give it a natural look.

    To make sure that this project was a success, the best engineers from across the world were employed. Engineers from Holland formed the majority in this group. To begin with, the engineers calculated the strength of storms at sea, and also the expected amount of rise in water levels due to global warming. And then they found that, the proposed location for the island was neither very wide nor deep.

    One of the difficulties the engineers came across was to put sand on the sea bed to create the breakwater(防浪堤).Finding the right sand for the project was also a daunting task, as the sand from Dubai's deserts was too fine. Instead, sand from the sea was used, as it was coarser(粗糙). Once the breakwater was built, construction of the island began.

    The Palm Island are really impressive in terms of engineering. However, these projects are so large that they may have changed the ecology of the region. Also, an immense amount of money and resources go into maintaining the islands, which is a major concern at the moment. Only time will tell if building the Palm Islands was actually a good decision.

    Emmoni Lopez used to take dance lessons while her older brothers wrestled – but it turned out that she liked wrestling better.

    Her mom wasn't surprised when Lopez told her she liked wrestling more than dance, and three years after Lopez took up the sport, she enjoys watching her daughter wrestle. Still, when a coach first asked Lopez to join his program, her mom hesitated– she never thought her daughter would want to be a wrestler.

    Lopez is among a growing number of girls who are taking up wrestling. Officials with youth organizations in Chicago and the Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation (IKWF) said they've seen the number of girls participating in the sport take off in recent years.

In Lopez's program, about half of the students participating in the organization's free youth wrestling camp this summer are girls, coach Frankie Zepeda said.

    Many of the girls Zepeda sees become interested in wrestling through their brothers, he said.

    “They probably just learn to … fight back,” he said.

    One of those was Yamilet Aguirre. She took up wrestling because she was bored just watching her brother wrestle, she said.

    “I can have fun doing it,” she said. “And I can prove girls are just as strong as boys are.”

    Though girls have competed on high school wrestling teams in Illinois for years, coaches and female wrestlers said there weren't many participating a decade ago.

    “It's really picked up over the last few years,” said Jim Considine, president of the IKWF.

    Between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 seasons, the number of girls registered with IKWF grew from 363 to 503, and more of the organization's events are featuring a girls-only division. Girls and boys wrestle together during the season through IKWF, but there's a girls-only championship at the end of the year.

    And by adding female wrestling programs, colleges are giving girls and young women another option.

    “Female wrestling isn't something unacceptable anymore,” Considine said. “Things have happened so quickly. Ten years ago, you'd never have dreamed of doing this.”