Mark was a great kid from a tough neighborhood. Crime, drugs, fighting and poverty: You name the problem and his neighborhood had it. A scholarship fund provided his tuition to Catholic High, where he was a great baseball player.

    Mark struggled in the classroom, though. He was bright, just behind, due to a more than difficult home environment. But there were problems finding the time for all he needed to do. After-school tutoring seemed impossible because of baseball practice. Some suggested Mark abandon sports and concentrate on “schooling”. But, in reality, if he was going to attend college he would need his sports; so to miss practice and then perform any less than at his best on the field was not wise.

    A fellow teacher, Mrs. Jones, offered to tutor Mark in math at her home. I asked Mark to come to my house for other areas of work. No one paid us. Mrs. Jones summed it up this way: “Pay day doesn't always come on Mondays”.

    When we were not working with Mark to improve his skills for the ACT, the coach and Mark's dad took him to various colleges to talk with both baseball and football program coaches. He settled on the college that offered him scholarships to play both sports. But he needed a good ACT score.

    It takes months to receive the results of college entrance exams. One afternoon after school, while I was grading papers in my room, there was a noise outside the door.

    Mark came in, lifted me out of the seat behind my desk, spun(旋转) me around in the air, and yelled over and over: “I'm going to college! I'm going to college!”

    “I guess you got your scores!” I asked.

    “Well, yeah!” he laughed. “And guess what? I got one point more than I need to be admitted. One point extra. Thank you! Now, where's Mrs. Jones? I've got to tell her too!”

    Until that moment, I had never quite understood what the expression “Pay day doesn't always come on Mondays” meant. But it was clear to me the instant Mark ran into the room to announce his news. No amount of money could ever replace my spin in the air at the hands of a boy who finally had a chance at a better life.

    Every time a new year is coming, people set out to better themselves. They promise they will lose weight, find a new job, or maybe even take that vacation they've always talked about. But why do we make these promises to ourselves, and where did this tradition come from? Why does this tradition live on when so many people fail to keep the resolutions(决定) they made? Well, we can start by blaming the ancient Babylonians.

    Around 4, 000 years ago in Babylon, the earliest recorded celebration honoring the coming of a new year was held. Calendars weren't as they are today, so the Babylonians did it in late March during the first new moon after the Spring Equinox(春分). The festivities were meant for the rebirth of the sun god, but the Babylonians made promises in order to please their gods. They felt this would help them start the new year off well.

    Resolutions continued on with the Romans. When the early Roman calendar no longer synced(同步) up with the sun, Julius Caesar decided to make a change. He consulted with the best astronomers and mathematicians of the time and introduced the Julian calendar, which more closely represents the modern calendar we use today. Caesar declared January 1 the first day of the year to honor the god of new beginnings, Janus. The Romans celebrated the New Year by offering sacrifices to Janus.

To this day, the traditions of the ancient Babylonians and Romans continue around the world. So much that Google launched a Resolution Map in 2013 where people could add resolutions and see others adding theirs in real time. However, no matter how many people participated in Google's project, the numbers are bleak when it comes to the number of people who maintain their resolutions—-only eight percent of people are successful in sticking them out.

    Knowing a little first aid could be life-saving if you see someone lying unconscious.

    Too often people don't do anything because they think they will kill the patient, but by learning simple rules you could make the difference between life and death.

    First, you need to find out if they're unconscious, asleep or drunk, by squeezing the skin between their neck and shoulder and shouting. If there is no response at all, you need to establish if they are dead or just unconscious—sometimes it's very difficult to tell the difference.

    Open the airway by placing one hand on their forehead and gently tilting the head back while lifting the chin.

    If there are no signs of life—no obvious pulse and their chest is not going up and down—call an ambulance and then start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) (心脏复苏) to maintain (获得) a flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and heart.

    Do this by pushing up and down on the centre of the chest, with your hands interlocked together, constantly until an ambulance arrives.

    Push at a rate of 100 beats a minute. You can't harm them doing this and might just save a life.

    Whenever I talk about personality (个性) in relation to choosing a career, someone always complains like this: those tests are so stupid. When I was in the sixth grade, I took one of them and it said that I should be a farmer. While I don't think I would be a very good farmer, the results are probably a lot more accurate (准确) than I'd like to admit. At the time, it seemed ridiculous­I hated the outdoors and physical work, and was particularly sick of being dirty or sweaty. Now, though, as I think in terms of personality, it might have had something to do with my personality: I like long­term planning, working by myself, and being the master of my own fate.

    Personality tests are various, and some are complete nonsense. Be careful of any personality test that claims to be capable of concluding what your dream job is from your favorite food for breakfast, or by the type of animal you like best. While there are many personality assessments (评估) that are very accurate, I'd love to say that they are a second (and often expensive) step. The best choice is to find out about yourself for yourself.

    Before determining the ways to examine your work preferences, it's important to know the difference between liking a topic and liking the work. I once had a young guy who was a third­year marine (海洋的) biology student at a large state school in Ohio. He applied for and was placed into the Whale Watch program, where he found out that he became terribly seasick on any kind of boat­a big disadvantage for a student who thought he wanted to study whales in the wild.

    A single dose(剂量) of an experimental vaccine(疫苗) can protect mice against the Zika(寨卡) virus, raising renewed hope of a vaccine for humans, say scientists. The US team say the results, published in Nature, are "striking" and should encourage research efforts.

    Tests in humans could begin in months. But even if these go well, a licensed vaccine for widespread use to protect those at most risk ­ such as pregnant women ­ would still be years away, experts advise. Zika has been spreading across Central and South America and, most recently, Africa. More than 60 countries and territories now have continuing transmission(传播) of the disease, which is carried by mosquitoes. The virus causes serious birth damages during pregnancy and has been declared a global public health emergency.

    Now, developing a vaccine for pregnant women to protect their unborn babies is an international research priority(优先事项). US scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School tested two types of Zika vaccine in mice – one based on bits of genetic(基因的) code from the virus and another that is an inactive (and therefore harmless) copy of Zika. Both worked well, protecting every mouse that was immunised against the virus. In comparison, all of the mice not given the vaccine caught Zika after they were exposed to it.

    Researchers say they will push ahead with developing the needed virus vaccine. There are many existing vaccines for other disease that use this type of technology, while there are relatively few DNA­based vaccines. Of course, future tests will need to check the vaccine is safe and effective in humans, as well as how long the immunity might last.

    There is a very long list of rules for the New York City subway. Don't put your feet on a seat, don't carry open cups of coffee or soda, don't take more than one seat... Those are just a few of the rules. There are hundreds more.

    With so many rules, why is it still unpleasant to ride the subway?

    Some people think that the problem is that no one enforces the rules. Other passengers sometimes try to enforce rules. But you can't rely on them because New Yorkers have unwritten rules against talking to strangers and making eye contact with strangers. How can you tell someone to take her shopping bags off the seat and throw away her Coke without talking to her or looking at her? It is difficult.

    There are other New Yorkers who think that the subway is unpleasant because there are not enough rules. One rider wrote a letter to The New York Times a couple of weeks ago suggesting a few more subway rules. Here are some of the rules that she would like to see:

    —Don't lean on the poles. You prevent other people from holding on. They can fall down.

    —Talk quietly. The trains are already too noisy.

    —Give your seat to elderly passengers or to parents with small children.

    If those unwritten rules of etiquette are written down, will the rude people be more likely to follow them? It doesn't make sense to make more rules that no one will enforce.

    The real problem is that we are forgetting how to be nice to each other. It is embarrassing that we need a rule to tell us to give our seat to elderly passengers. Nobody should need to be reminded to do that.

    I say we stop talking about the rules and try to remember our manners. Let's be nice to each other not because a police officer might tell us to get off the train, but because it is the right thing to do. Then New York City would be more civilized —both above ground and below.