If you could have one superpower, What would it be ?

    Dreaming about whether you would want to read minds , see through walls , or have superhuman strength may sound silly , but it actually gets to the heart of what really matters in your life 1

    Every day in our work , we are inspired by the people we meet doing extraordinary things to improve the world.

    They have a different kind of superpower that all of us possess : the power to make a difference in the lives of others .

    We're not saying that everyone needs to contribute their lives to the poor . Your lives are busy enough doing homework , playing sports , making friends , seeking after your dreams . But we do think that you can live a more powerful life when you devote some of your time and energy to something much larger than yourself . Find an issue you are interested in and learn more . Volunteer or , if you can , contribute a little money to a cause . Whatever you do , don't be a bystander . Get involved . You may have the opportunity to make your biggest difference when you're older . But why not start now ?

    Our own experience working together on health , development , and energy the last twenty years has been one of the most rewarding parts of our lives . It has changed who we are and continues to fuel our optimism about how much the lives of the poorest people will improve in the years ahead .

    Tim Richter and his wife, Linda, had taught for over 30 years near Buffalo, New York – he in computers, she in special education. "Teaching means everything to us," Tim would say. In April 1998, he learned he would need a heart operation. It was the kind of news that leads to some serious thinking about life's purpose.

    Not long after the surgery, Tim saw a brochure describing Imagination Library, a program started by Dolly Parton's foundation (基金会) that mailed a book every month to children from birth to age five in the singer's hometown of Sevier, Tennessee. "I thought, maybe Linda and I could do something like this when we retire," Tim recalls. He placed the brochure on his desk, "as a reminder."

    Five years later, now retired and with that brochure still on the desk, Tim clicked on imaginationlibrary.com. The program had been opened up to partners who could take advantage of book and postage discounts.

    The quality of the books was of great concern to the Richters. Rather than sign up online, they went to Dollywood for a look-see. "We didn't want to give the children rubbish," says Linda. The books – reviewed each year by teachers, literacy specialists and Dollywood board members – included classics such as Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day and newer books like Anna Dewdney's Llama Llamaseries.

    Satisfied, the couple set up the Richter Family Foundation and got to work. Since 2004, they have shipped more than 12,200 books to preschoolers in their area. Megan Williams, a mother of four, is more than grateful: "This program introduces us to books I've never heard of."

    The Richters spend about ＄400 a month sending books to 200 children. "Some people sit there and wait to die," says Tim. "Others get as busy as they can in the time they have left."

    The quick action of Nick helped five people escape a fire on Hope Road. Nick said he usually left his house about 5:30 a.m. to do morning exercises, but that day he decided to stay at home to get his daughter ready for school. As he looked at his neighbor's house, he realized that it was on fire. "I saw smoke and flames and ran over and started beating on the side of the house shouting, 'Your house is on fire! Your house is on fire!'" Nick remembered it was at about 9 a.m. that the firefighters put out the fire.

    Beverly Penny and her husband, Clark, along with their younger daughters, were sleeping in the living room, next to the kitchen, when they heard Nick beating on the walls. She opened the bedroom door and black smoke came in. She managed to get her kids out. Her dog tried to hide under the bed, but Penny caught it by the leg and threw it out of the door. However, chickens in one of the rooms weren't so lucky.

    Firefighters got the call at about 7:05 a.m. "When we arrived with our fire trucks, there were heavy flames outside on the house," Jerry said. He called Nick a hero, saying that without his quick responses(回应) the result could have been much worse. "The firefighters were fast," Nick said. "They arrived here within about three minutes."

    "They did a great job, and I can't thank them enough," Penny said, then looked at what remained in the house and shook her head as tears rolled down in her eyes. "Everything I have is gone. Luckily nobody was hurt in the fire." She said the fire could have been caused by an electrical problem. "We've been having problems with mice, so that we could have had something to do with it," she added.

    In 2011, the old style Malta buses were taken off the road and replaced by modern vehicles. Most of the old buses were deserted, a few were sold, and about 100 of them were put into storage in the hope of showing them in a museum at some stage.

    A pre-2011 visit to Malta wouldn't have been complete without a ride on one of the colorful buses. Until 1973 you could tell the destination of the bus just by looking at its color — Sliema was green and white, Zabbar was red and white with a blue stripe(条纹)etc. . Later, the buses all had numbers. For a while, they were all painted green and white before the ‘final' orange, yellow and white.

    In their prime, walking around the Triton fountain at the Valletta bus station, you would have found it very difficult to see two buses of exactly the same design. Most of them had locally built bodies. On the front of the buses carried names like Dodge, Leyland, Bedford etc. You were equally likely to find football pennants(锦旗)and the like decorating the cabs. Real bus experts would have recognized that these were there mainly for decorative reasons, and were seldom an accurate reflection of the vehicle's origins.

    Nowadays much more modern buses are to be found at the Floriana bus station. They are more environmentally friendly and possibly even more comfortable than the older types. However, I miss the old buses. I remember, when you boarded your bus, you had to prepare the correct change to pay the usually bad-tempered driver as you got on. If you were seated anywhere near the front, you would have noticed that most drivers sat well to the right of their steering wheel. The reason for this, as any Maltese would tell you, was to leave space for their pet to sit alongside them. I wonder where the pet sits these days.

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist (生理学家) best known for his discovery of classical conditioning (经典条件反射). During his studies on the digestive systems of dogs, Pavlov found that the animals salivated (流口水) naturally upon the presentation of food. However, he also noticed that the animals began to salivate whenever they saw the white lab coat of an experimental assistant. By associating the presentation of food with the lab assistant, he finally found that a dog would salivate to the presence of a stimulus (刺激物) other than food. He called this response a conditional reflex.

Ivan Pavlov was born in a small village in Ryazan. Russia, where his father was the village minister. His earliest studies were focused on theology (神学), but reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species had a powerful influence on his future interests. He soon stopped his religious studies and devoted himself to the study of science at the University of Saint Petersburg. Pavlov's interests were the study of physiology and natural sciences. He helped found the Department of Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine and continued to manage the program for the next 45 years.

Pavlov received much praise for his work. He worked in the Russian Academy of Science and won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology. The Soviet government also offered lots of support for Pavlov's work, and the Soviet Union soon became a leading center of research on physiology. While Ivan Pavlov was not a psychologist, and reportedly disliked the field of psychology, his work had a major influence on the field, particularly on the development of behaviorism. His discovery and research on reflexes influenced the growing behaviorist movement. and Pavlov's discovery had a major influence on many thinkers, such as John B. Watson.

A Japanese start-up called Ashirase is stepping into the global market with a new navigation (导航) assistance product intended to help people with low vision.

Its new product will feature flexible vibrating (震动) bases around each foot and are put into each shoe, and a small pack that can be removed for charging (充电). Once fitted, the vibrating parts are set along the sensitive nerves on the foot and can send coded walking instructions to the user.

Its present form navigates a route that comes from a smartphone app. It can help clear up distractions by freeing up the attention that is normally needed to either listen to voice directions or check the phone. Visual-damaged users can use their hearing to listen to traffic sounds and signals, like warning beeps at crossings or sidewalks, and use their hands to carry walking sticks or other belongings.

The device is paired with an app through a Bluetooth connection. The app uses information from Google Maps or similar vendors to draw up a walking route to the destination. Based on the destination and how the user is walking, it will send signals to the device that will cause a vibration on the foot.

The device will vibrate at a regular frequency at the front of the foot to let the users know they're on the right track and should keep going straight. It will speed up the vibrations once the user is approaching a turn and needs to stop, and it will vibrate in either the left or right shoe to signal the direction the user needs to turn.

Ashirase's new tech is waterproof and washable. It can be charged at the end of the week to power through seven days of walking, accounting for three active hours each day. And it can be fitted in two types of shoes: sneakers and leather lace-up shoes.