What if our babies could somehow tell us what they're thinking about, what they want, and what makes them unhappy? Robyn Holt, researcher for Baby Talk New Zealand, says they can. Holt heard about baby sign language through an advertisement and decided to go along to a workshop (研讨会).

    “Sign language is something that's always interested me, and I thought, it could be really cool to try this with a baby because we are always guessing all the time what they actually want.”

    Holt started using baby sign language with her baby son Benjamin, now 12, and within two weeks he started to sign the sign for milk. She has since used it with her two younger sons Dominic, 8, and Matthew, 3.

    Baby sign language is nothing new: the practice (which is based on adult sign language) has been out in America for more than 30 years. But it is enjoying a rebirth in New Zealand.

    The idea behind baby sign language is that babies do have the ability to communicate their needs if they are given the right tools to do so. Although many mothers develop an intuition (直觉) about whether their baby's crying is from hunger, tiredness, or pain, baby sign language creates a direct form of communication that unlocks the mystery.

    When babies are between 6-months and 12 to 13-months, parents can begin to teach them sign language: use the sign for milk while feeding, and also talk about milk, so that the child begins to make the link (关联) in their brain. Then they can begin to add other signs, i.e. food, sick or pain.

    “I know of one parent. Her child was signing the sign for hurt by his mouth, and she realised his first teeth were growing. It makes life so much easier,” said Holt.

    Animal Farm by George Orwell

    Animal Farm is probably one of the most popular school reads in the world. George Orwell wrote it as a political allegory(讽喻)and has since then inspired the minds of not only adult revolutionaries but also the younger ones who start feeling the spark of being right and free for all of the humanity in their hearts.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

    This is a wise, funny, and heartbreaking memory of Marjane Satrapi's years growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, and how she dealt with life while experiencing the ruinous effects of the war with Iraq. The mistakes she felt she made opened her eyes and shaped her into becoming the influential individual she is today.

    To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Regarded as a masterpiece of literature—-it is no wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize. The plot and characters are based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 16 years old. The novel is famous for its warmth and humor, despite telling a story of innocent Tom Robinson being accused of raping(强暴)a white woman because he was black.

    The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

    A story showing the absolute courage of a young boy, who was never afraid to speak his mind in the face of injustice and would always defend the helpless. A boy shows us the importance of believing in ourselves and others. Harry Potter reminds us that the true power to defeat any enemy is not found in others, but found within each of us.

    Mariah, 35, was a single mother. She had four kids under the age 9, and was hardly keeping up payments on her small two-bedroom home by working extra weekend hours as a waitress. There were times when she lay in bed and cried. She didn't know how she could pay that bill. But she knew she must find a way to change her life.

    She knew how hard it was to mop(拖)the floor. “I was tired of bending down, putting my hands in dirty water and wringing (拧)out a mop,” Mariah says. “So, I got a better way.” How about a “self-wringing” mop? She designed a special tool. You could twist in two directions and still keep your hands clean and dry.

    She set out to sell her mops, but the mops didn't sell well at the market. Then Mariah met with the media. But would people buy a mop by reading an advertisement? They gave it a try, and it failed. Mariah was sure it would sell well if they let her do the on-camera show. “Get me on that stage, and I will sell this mop because it's a great thing,” said Mariah. So QVC let her have a try. “I got on the stage and the phones went crazy. We sold every mop in minutes.”

    Today Mariah is the president of Ingenious designs, a multimillion-dollar company, and one of the stars of HSN, the Home Shopping Network. Talking about her household inventions is as natural for her it is for parents to talk about their child.

    Today one of her favorite products is Huggable Hangers(衣架). The thin, space-saving tool are the most successful goods ever sold on HSN, with 100 million hanging out in closets across the country.

    A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    “It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just a bunch of individual components (零件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. “The added difficulty with such a project is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to make them all on our own,” he said.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, and then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect- scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications (应用). “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

    How far would you go for your kids education? That's a question many parents are asking in the wake of the college cheating scandal(丑闻)involving 38 wealthy parents around the country, including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Here's how far I went. In the fall of 2017 my husband and I lost our jobs. We had to tell our daughter, Casey, that we couldn't afford to send her back to school for her junior year at Fordham University. We decided the best choice for our family would be for Casey to sit out a year. We promised that we would get her back the following year. Casey decided to spend the year volunteering in South Africa On Sept 30, 2017, we put our oldest child on a plane halfway around the world. Casey worked as a tutor teaching kids math, English and music in Johannesburg. We did get Casey back in school in time. When she returned to the campus, she studied harder. She isn't what she used to be. Each day is marked by gratitude because she knows what it is like not to be able to get an education.

    I wonder why the college cheating scandal happened and I think it boils down to this: Parents want to create a comfort zone for their kids. Of course, we want the best for our kids but sometimes we forget that real growth doesn't happen in times of comfort; those valuable lessons come when we are forced to think in ways we otherwise wouldn't have.

    While I did less for my child than these wealthy parents did in terms of means, in other ways I did more. I taught her that disappointment is a part of life and we should face it bravely rather than avoid it. My husband and I showed Casey that her strength is in her struggle. That's how far I went for my kid s education. And I dare say she is wiser and better off for it.

The Coolest Inventions

    An Oceans Vacuum(吸尘器)

    There's a collection of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's bigger than Texas and growing. The way to clean it up now is to catch it with nets. That is both costly and slow. Instead, the Ocean Cleanup Project proposes a 62-mile-long floating barrier that would use natural currents to trap trash. If next year's trials succeed, a full cleanup operation would aim to start in 2020. It could reduce the trash by 42 % over 10 years.

    Easy-On Shoes

    In 2012, Matthew Walzer, a high school student with a disability, sent a note to Nike. "My dream is to go to college," he wrote, "without having to worry about someone coming to tie my shoes every day." Nike assigned a design team to the challenge. This year, they came out with their solution: the FlyEase. The basketball shoe can be fastened with one hand. A pair of Nike FlyEase shoes sells for $ 130.

    An Airport for Drones (无人机)

    As Amazon, Google, and others get ready for drone delivery service, there is one big question: What kinds of home bases will their drones have? Rwanda, in Africa, may have the answer. There, workers will soon start work on three "drone ports". The goal is to make it easier to transport food, medical supplies, electronics, and other goods through the hilly countryside. Construction is set to be completed in 2020.