As I went down the wooden snowy steps, I held the rough fence with one hand, held my crying daughter Kelly with the other and made my way into the yard. I knew everything would be okay if I located my mother.

Instead of a smile, she greeted me with concern. I knew she had read my face as I’d approached. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

I held the baby out. “I can’t take care of this baby,” I said simply. My mother didn’t take her from my arms as I expected. She smiled slightly, and then replied firmly, “You have to take care of that baby.” This was not the reply I wanted. Couldn’t she hear the baby crying? I wanted her to fix this problem. Instead, she took off her gloves and asked me in for some coffee.

Mom held Kelly while I held the coffee cup. At that moment the baby finally stopped crying. I glanced over at Kelly, content in my mother’s arms. Her tiny blue eyes were fixed on me, as if to ask, “What’s the problem here, Mama?” Her sweet, familiar breath eased the stress in the air. I looked at my mother, feeling foolish but relieved. She stood and placed an arm around my shoulders. “By the time you came along, things were quite the opposite for me. But with your elder brother, you can bet that I often felt helpless.”

The baby showed no signs of our afternoon struggle, while my own hair remained damp and messy from sweat and worry. “Crying is the only way babies have to communicate. Try to listen to her cries and hear them as language. She’s not crying to annoy you; she’s trying to send a message with the only voice she has.”

Once again, her gentle guidance had supported me through a storm and back into clear skies.

Many of us in China enjoy adding chilies(辣椒) to our food, but did you know that this spicy vegetable could also be dangerous? A 34-year-old US man recently ended up in hospital after eating a Carolina Reaper, the spiciest chili in the world. After taking just a single bite of one, the man suffered from serious headaches in the following few days, reported BBC News.

In fact, reports of stomachache and headache caused by eating spicy food are not something unusual. But if chilies are harmful, why is it that human beings are the only animals to eat this vegetable? According to the website Huanqiu, about 600 million Chinese people — almost half of the national population — are chili eaters. So what makes people love chilies so much? The human body reacts to the burning feeling that comes from eating chilies by releasing natural chemicals that “produce a sense of happiness”, noted BBC News.

And the benefits go even further than just personal enjoyment. A survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences found that the death rate of those who eat spicy food once or twice a week is 10 percent lower than those who eat it less than once a week. The number experiences a downturn for those who eat spicy food six to seven times a week. And another study done by the University of Vermont came to a similar conclusion. “The data encourages people to eat more spicy food to improve health and reduce death risk at an early age,” Liu Qi, a nutritionist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told BBC News.

Chilies have anti-cancer quality and the ability to increase our metabolism (新陈代谢). So, don't worry if you love spicy food. It seems that chilies are actually good for us — except for the Carolina Reaper, perhaps.

Cities are likely to be affected by overheating, thanks to something called the urban heat island effect. Cities tend to be short of trees, which provide shade, and they are covered with black pavement, which absorbs heat from the sun. Think of how it feels to wear a dark shirt versus a white shirt on a sunny day. A black shirt absorbs light, heating you up. But a white shirt reflects light, keeping you cool.

The average temperature in a city of a million or more people can be more than 5 degrees hotter than surrounding areas. That extra 5 degrees can turn a hot day from uncomfortable to deadly.

As temperatures rise, cities will be an especially dangerous place to be during a heat wave. To protect public health, city officials are going to make the city cooler.

As part of that effort, Los Angeles is coating its roads in CoolSeal, a gray paint that keeps streets and parking lots 10 degrees cooler than black asphalt(沥青). It will help Angelinos save money during the summer, when air conditioning sends power bills soaring. And it will save lives by lowering temperatures and improving air quality. Hot weather worsens air pollution by turning car exhaust into smog, which can make life miserable for people with asthma(哮喘)and other breathing problems.

Of course, LA will have to do more than paint over a few streets to cool off the city. Angelinos will also need to plant more trees and apply white paint to rooftops—at least those not already covered in solar panels. While LA is a pioneer of reflective streets, other cities, like New York, are already experimenting with reflective roofs or, like Melbourne, lowering the temperature by planting trees. LA is hardly alone in its effort to stay cool.

“This is an urgent challenge, and it’s much bigger than one person,” said Mayor Garctti in a recent statement. “Climate change is a fact of life that people in Los Angeles and cities around the world live with every day.”