When I spent the summer with my grandmother, she always set me down to the general store with a list. Behind the counter was a lady like no one I'd ever seen.

    “Excuse me,” I said. She looked up and said, “I'm Miss Bee.”

    “I need to get these.” I said, holding up my list. “So? Go get them. ” Miss Bee pointed to a sign. “There's no one here except you and me and I'm not your servant, so get yourself a basket from that pile.”

    I visited Miss Bee twice a week that summer. Sometimes she shortchanged me. Other times she overcharged. Going to the store was like going into battle. All summer long she found ways to trick me. No sooner had I learned how to pronounce “bicarbonate of soda” and memorized its location on the shelves than she made me hunt for it all over again. But by summer's end the shopping trip that had once taken me an hour was done in 15 minutes. The morning I was to return home, I stopped in to get some run.

    “All right, little girl,” she said. “What did you learn this summer?” “That you're a meanie!” I replied. Miss Bee just laughed and said, “I know what you think of me. Well, I don't care! My job is to teach every child I meet life lessons. When you get older you'll be glad!” Glad I met Miss Bee? Ha! The idea was absurd.

    Until one day my daughter came to me with homework troubles. “It's too hard,” she said. “Could you finish my math problems for me?”

    “If I do it for you, how will you ever learn to do it yourself?” I said. Suddenly, I was back at that general store where I had learned the hard way to add up my bill by myself. Had I ever been overcharged since?

    In the tenth grade, I began working for free at a vet's that was run by a friend. I wanted to get experience for what I thought would be my future job. However，on one particular Saturday morning I learnt something perhaps more important.

    The hospital was in the middle of one of the poorer sections of the city and some people could only pay for the most basic treatments. On this Saturday，a man and his young son，who was probably about 7 years old，walked in with a small cat in a cardboard box. There was something wrong with the cat's left eye. But the man could not afford to pay for the cost of the medicine. He kept quiet for a while，and then he asked where the nearest animal shelter was. Hearing this，his son cried and started to argue with him. All of a sudden，an older woman who was sitting in the waiting room stood up，walked up to the counter，and told the man that she would pay for the cost. The man thanked her and the son got to keep a healthy cat.

    I always thought it was the right thing to help out a needy person，but I only saw people do acts of kindness on TV or in movies. What the woman did made me believe that these things do happen in real life，and quite often.

    Now，when I can't decide whether to help someone who is in need，I remember this woman，and then I have the courage to step up to the plate. Sometimes other people follow.

    Time flies, but the tracks of time remain in books and museums. This is what made a recent tragedy in Brazil even more terrible.

    On Sept.2, a big fire ripped through the National Museum of Brazil. "Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge were lost," Brazilian President Michel Temer wrote on Twitter after the fire. "It's a sad day for all Brazilians."

    Most of the 20 million pieces of history are believed to have been destroyed. Only as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived, Time reported. Among all the items, there were Egyptian mummies, the bones of uniquely Brazilian creatures such as the long－necked dinosaur Maxakalisaurus, and an 11,500－year－old skull called Luzia, which was considered one of South America's oldest human fossils.

    Besides these, Brazil's indigenous(本土的，土著的) knowledge also suffered. The museum housed world－famous collections of indigenous objects, as well as many audio recordings of local languages from all over Brazil. Some of these recordings, now lost, were of languages that are no longer spoken.

    "The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide, a crime against our past and future generations," Bernard Mello Franco, one of Brazil's best－known columnists, wrote on the O Globo newspaper site.

    The cause of the fire is still unknown, as BBC News reported on Sept. 3. After the fire burned out, crowds protested outside the museum to show their anger at the loss of the irreplaceable items of historical value.

    According to Emilio Bruna, an ecologist at the University of Florida, museums are living, breathing stores of who we are and where we've come from, and the world around us.

    Just as underwater grass floats on the surface if it loses its roots, a nation is lost without its memories. The fire at the National Museum of Brazil teaches the world an important lesson: We should never neglect history.

    I'm big into reading, and since you're on this page, I guess you like reading as well. This page is an ongoing log of books I find to be awesome or useful. If you're looking to create a well-rounded, successful college experience, you can't go wrong with any of these.

    The Power of Habit

    This book is absolutely amazing. As it turns out, habits shape much more of our behavior than we realize. The habits we do have largely determine the progress (either good or bad) we make in life. Luckily, the way habits are formed can be understood—which means they can be changed—and The Power of Habit is the best overview of how habits work that I've ever read.

    A Mind for Numbers

    If you're looking for practical techniques you can use to increase your ability to learn new information effectively, you should read this book. Contrary to what the title would imply, Dr. Barbara Oakley's A Mind for Numbers is applicable to any learning discipline--not just math and science. This book will quickly give you an understanding of how your brain learns and encodes (编码) new information, and will also equip you with strategies for learning more while studying less.

    Brain Rules

    If you know how the brain works, you'll be better equipped to manage your own and understand the ones contained inside the heads of the people you know and meet In Brain Rules, John Medina expertly shows us how the brain does things, and lays out 12 rules that form a basis for using that pile of mush (糊状物) more effectively. It's not just an excellent brain book—it's an excellent business book and an excellent college success book as well.

    Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

    I firmly believe that a solid foundation of nutrition, exercise, and sleep will help you succeed in college better than any study hack, which is why I recommend this book. Reading it will educate you on how exercise affects your brain, which in turn will give you more mental ammunition (弹药) that you can use to shoot down excuses when you're feeling lazy or “busy”, and don't want to work out. By the way, how much exercise have you gotten today?

    When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes(定式)keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, kind, cautious and emotionally enthusiastic. Men tend to be more competitive, confident, rude and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear.

    What's not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists think that these are natural features from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists argues that both sexes' personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time taking care of children and more time in jobs outside the home.

    To test these hypotheses(假设), a series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the change is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India's or Zimbabwe's than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal(男权的)Botswanan clan(部族)seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to separate.

    These findings are so unbelievable that some researchers have argued they must be due to cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But according to new data from 40.000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level(使平等)the barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being developed.

    The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women.

    Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less confident and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

    To explain these differences, Dr. Schmitt and his partners from Austria and Estonia point to the hardships of life in poorer countries. They note that in some other species, environmental stress tends to extremely affect the larger sex. And, they say, there are examples of stress decreasing biological sex differences in humans.

The concept of a space elevator, while once confined to the realm of science fiction, is gaining traction as a potential reality within the next few decades. This belief is not unfounded, but rather stems from the ongoing advancements in aerospace engineering and materials science.

As an aerospace engineer and a physics professor, the allure of a space elevator—a colossal cable extending from Earth's surface into space, facilitating the transportation of both people and cargo—remains a compelling subject of study. In recent years, innovative approaches to design and engineering have surfaced, providing new insights into the feasibility and functionality of space elevators.

The rationale for constructing a space elevator is multifaceted. Firstly, it presents a significant opportunity for energy and cost efficiency, offering a more practical alternative to traditional rocket-based space travel. 

The economic and environmental benefits are substantial, as the space elevator would reduce the need for fuel-intensive rocket launches.

Secondly, the space elevator would revolutionize accessibility to space. The term "space mission" could evolve into "transit," reflecting the routine and weather-independent nature of space travel. This shift would not only make space travel safer for astronauts, mitigating the risks associated with rocket launches, but also open up the cosmos to a broader range of individuals and purposes.

Moreover, the space elevator acts as a gateway to the solar system. By releasing a payload at different points along the elevator, one could achieve orbit around Earth or the sun, depending on the release point, all without the need for propulsion.

While it may seem that I am an advocate for the space elevator, my true passion lies in the study of its mechanics and the potential it holds for our future. In a world facing numerous challenges, the pursuit of such ambitious projects allows us to dream of a time when humanity becomes responsible stewards of our planet, reaching for the stars while preserving our home.