Terrible disasters in the last 50 or 100 years have become increasingly common. Over the last 30 years, the number of weather-related disasters has increased quickly, and the disasters have also affected more people and caused more economic loss. However, much of this could be avoided through disaster risk reduction(DRR降低灾难风险).

    A meeting, held in Sendai, Japan last month, opened one day after Cyclone Pam（飓风Pam）hit Vanuatu, which struck the islands with winds of up to 340km/h and destroyed the island nation. The speech by the President of Vanuatu was given shortly after that. He begged the international community for support and stronger commitment (承诺)to helping them manage climate and disaster risks. In the face of disasters, it is always the developing countries that suffer most. Damage in these countries is often worse and unluckily, there is limited money and technique to prevent these disasters.

    In fact, we have seen Asian countries-especially those that have suffered a lot in disasters can't pay the price. Great loss Asia has suffered comes to a total of almost $ 53 billon yearly over the past 20 years.

    At the same time, studies have shown once again that proper prevention saves lives and damage. With this in mind, people at the Sendai meeting were able to come up with new agreements that effective ways of disaster risk reduction will be carried out in the coming years for those who easily get damaged in disasters.

    Jack threw some papers on my desk and looked at me angrily. “What's wrong?” I asked. “Next time you want to change anything, ask me first,” he shouted and left.

    “How dare he treat me like that?” I thought. I had just changed one long sentence, and correct grammar—something I thought I was paid to do. In fact I had been warned. On the first day one of  my workmates took me aside and reminded me of his temper. As the weeks went by, I came to look down on Jack.

    One day Jack's other papers left me in tears so I stormed into his office angrily. “What?” he asked.

    Suddenly I knew what I must do. After all, he earned it. “Jack, the way you've been treating me is wrong. I've never had anyone speak to me that way. As a professional, it's wrong for me to allow it to continue,” I said. Jack smiled nervously, “Susan, I make you a promise that I will be a friend. I will treat you as you should be treated, with respect and kindness,” he said. With these words, I left.

    Jack avoided me the rest of the week, and never questioned my work again. I brought cookies to the office one day and left some on his desk. Another day I left a note: “Hope your day is going great.” Over the next few weeks, Jack reappeared , but there were no more Jack's papers. One year later I discovered I had breast cancer, and was scared. The statistics (统计数字) were not great for my long-term survival.

    On the last day of my hospital stay, Jack came and silently handed me a bundle with several bulbs inside. “Tulips (郁金香) ,” he said. I smiled, not understanding. He cleared his throat. “If you plant them when you get home, they'll come up next spring. I think you will be there to see them when they come up.” Tears clouded my eyes and I whispered: “Thank you.”Jack held my hands firmly, saying, “You are welcome. You can't see it now, but next spring you will see the colors I picked out for you.”

    I have seen those red and white striped（有条纹的） tulips push through the soil every spring for over ten years now. This past September the doctor declared me cured. At a moment when I was praying for just the right word, a man with very few words said all the right things. After all, that's what friends do.

    The old man walked with a cane (拐杖) slowly into the restaurant. His poor jacket, patched (打补丁的) trousers, and worn-out shoes made him stand out from the usual Saturday morning breakfast crowd. Unforgettable were his pale blue eyes that sparkled (闪光) like diamonds, large rosy cheeks, and thin lips that held a steady smile. He walked toward a table by the window. A young waitress watched him and ran over to him, saying, “Here, Sir. Let me give you a hand with that chair.” Without a word, he smiled and nodded a thank you. She pulled the chair away from the table. Supporting him with one arm, she helped him move in front of the chair, and get comfortably seated. Then she pushed the table up close to him, and leaned his cane against the table where he could reach it. In a soft, clear voice he said, “Thank you, Miss.” “You're welcome, Sir.” She replied. “My name is Mary. I'll be back in a moment. If you need anything, just wave at me.”

    After he had finished a hearty meal of pancakes, bacon, and hot lemon tea, Mary brought him the change, helping him up from his chair and out from behind the table. She handed him his cane, and walked with him to the front door. Holding the door open for him, she said, “Come back and see us, Sir!” He nodded a thank you and said softly with a smile, “You are very kind!”

    When Mary went to clean his table, she was shocked. Under his plate she found a business card and a note written on the napkin, under which was a $ 100 bill. The note on the napkin read, “Dear Mary, I respect you very much, and you respect yourself, too. It shows by the way you treat others. You have found the secret of happiness. Your kind gestures will shine through those who meet you.”

    The man she had served was the owner of the restaurant. This was the first time that she, or any of his employees, had seen him in person.

    People often go to cafes to relax themselves and keep themselves from falling asleep, but Mr. Healing, a popular cafe chain in South Korea actually does the opposite. Customers can come in, order a drink, lie down a comfortable massage（按摩）chair, and take a nap.

    Many Koreans suffer from a lack of sleep as a result of overworking, so any opportunity to relax and even take a nap is greatly appreciated. Mr. Healing is the perfect place to go when you're on a short work or school break and you need to catch up on sleep. The cafe offers massage periods in various modes, depending on how much time you have and how you choose to spend it.

    The 20-minute session is priced at $ 3.5, the 30-minute massage costs $ 7, and the 50-minute session is $ 9, all of which also include a drink. Once you make your choice, you are taken to the "healing center". You are asked to take off your shoes as well as any jewelry that might damage the chairs, after which you can choose a massage mode, from "stretch" or "sleep". You can start with stretch for a few minutes, and then switch to sleep if you want to take a short nap. After it comes to an end, you are taken back to the cafe area to enjoy a coffee or one of the many other refreshing drinks on the menu.

    Mr. Healing cafes are so popular in Korea that customers are advised to make reservations in advance to be sure that a massage chair is available. "I have to sit on a chair and stare at a computer monitor all day due to my job, the healing room was truly effective to relieve tiredness and stress from weekdays," said Park Hye-sun, a 24-year-old officer.

    Some have described Mr. Healing and other similar cafes in South Korea as simple fashions, but others see them as a sustainable business model, because they offer a service that Koreans really need.

    As any plane passenger will confirm, a crying baby is almost impossible to ignore, no matter how hard you try. Now scientists believe they may have worked out why. A baby's cry pulls at the heartstrings(扣人心弦)in a way while other cries don't, researchers found.

    Researchers found that a baby's cry can trigger unique emotional responses in the brain, making it impossible for us to ignore them—whether we are parents or not. Other types of cries, including calls of animals in great pain, fail to get the same response…suggesting the brain is programmed to respond specifically to a baby's cry.

A team of Oxford University scientists scanned the brains of 28 men and women as they listened to a variety of calls and cries. After 100 milliseconds — roughly the time it takes to blink (眨眼) —two parts of the brain that respond to emotion lit up. Their response to a baby's cry was particularly strong. The response was seen in both men and women—even if they had no children.

    Researcher Dr Christine Parsons said, "You might read that men should just notice a baby and step over it and not see it, but it's not true. There is a special processing in men and women, which makes sense from an evolutionary(演化的)view that both men and women would be responding to these cries." The study was in people who were not parents, yet they are all responding at 100ms to these particular cries, so this might be a fundamental response present in all of us regardless of parental status.

    Fellow researcher Katie Young said it may take a bit longer for someone to recognize their own child's cries because they need to do more "fine-grained analysis". The team had previously found that our reactions speed up when we hear a baby crying. Adults performed better on computer games when they heard the sound of a baby crying than after they heard recordings of adults crying.

    Most of us have looked up at the stars that fill the night sky and wondered whether we're alone in the universe. Indeed, the question of whether there's life out there has been something humankind's been asking itself for countless years. But thanks to China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the answer to this question may come a lot sooner than we expected.

    The telescope has a huge round reflector, which measures 500 meters across and has a perimeter(周长)of 1.6 kilometers. Because of its great size, it would have been both difficult and inefficient to get FAST to move like a regular telescope. Instead, FAST's designers came up with a great solution: its surface is made up of 4450 panels which can be individually adjusted. This clever design feature allows scientists to detect radio signals from any angle with a great degree of accuracy. "Panels can change their positions through connected wires and parallel (关联的) robots. We can control their position with an accuracy of 1mm," Zheng Yuanpeng, chief engineer of the telescope's panel project, told Xinhua News Agency.

    FAST's engineers also had the task of finding a suitable location. As any interference would affect its ability to detect distant radio waves, it needed to be built in a remote area. Luckily, the perfect spot was found in the beautiful mountains of Guizhou Province. "There are three hills about 500 meters away from one another, creating a valley that is perfect to support the telescope," Sun Caihong, chief engineer of FAST's construction, told Xinhua.

    And although it wasn't yet fully operated, FAST had already made great discoveries by October 2017. Since 1967, only around 2000 pulsars (脉冲星) have been discovered, yet FAST had detected six more by October 2017. Once FAST is fully up and running, we may finally have the answer to one of the biggest questions in history.