【推荐1】Over the phone, Jack's mother told him, “Mr. Belser died last night. The funeral is Wednesday." Memories flashed through his mind like an old newsreel as he sat quietly remembering his childhood days.

“Jack, did you hear me?"

“Oh, sorry, Mum. Yes, I heard you. It's been so long since I thought of him. I'm sorry, but I honestly thought he died years ago," Jack replied.

“You know, Jack, after your father died, Mr. Belser stepped in to make sure you had a man's influence in your life,' she said.

As busy as he was, he kept his word. Jack caught the next flight to his hometown. Mr. Belser's funeral was small and uneventful. The night before he had to return home, Jack and his Mum stopped by to see the old house next door one more time.

Standing in the doorway, Jack paused for a moment. It was like crossing over into another dimension, a leap through space and time. The house was exactly as he remembered. Every step held memories. Every picture, every piece of furniture. Jack stopped suddenly ...

“What's wrong, Jack?” his Mum asked.

“The box is gone," he said.

“What box?" Mum asked.

"There was a small gold box that he kept locked on top of his desk. I must have asked him a thousand times what was inside. All he'd ever told me was the thing he valued most. Now I'll never know what was so valuable to him," Jack said.

Returning home from work one day Jack discovered a note in his mailbox. 'Signature required on a package. No one at home. Please stop by the main post office within the next three days,' the note read. Early the next day Jack retrieved the package. There inside was the gold box and an envelope. Jack s hands shook as he read the note inside.

"Upon my death, please forward this box and its contents to Jack Bennett. It's the thing I valued most in my life.'

Jack carefully unlocked the box. There inside he found a beautiful gold pocket watch. Running his fingers slowly over the finely etched casing, he unlatched the cover. Inside he found these words engraved (雕刻): 'Jack, Thanks for your time!- Harold Belser.'

【推荐3】Once there was a famine in the town. A rich and kind baker sent some bread to twenty of the poorest children. He said to them, “In this basket there is some bread for you. Each of you can have one loaf every day until the hard days end.”

The impatient children couldn’t wait to gather around the basket. They shouted and fought for the bread because each wished to have the largest loaf. At last they went away without even thanking the good gentleman. But Shirley, a poorly-dressed little girl, did not join them. Instead, she remained standing modestly in the distance. When the other children had left, she took the smallest left in the basket, kissed the gentleman’s hand and went home.

The next day the children were as rude as before. Poor shy Shirley still took the smallest loaf . When she got home, her mother cut the bread open. Many new shining pieces of silver fell out of it. Her mother was very surprised and said, “Take the money back to the good gentleman at once, for it must have got into the loaf by accident. Be quick, Shirley! Be quick!”

But when the little girl gave the rich man her mother’s message, he said, “No, no, my child. It was no mistake. I put silver pieces into the smallest loaf to reward you because you are a kind and honest girl. Go home and the money is yours now.”

【推荐2】I was doing some Christmas shopping in a toy store and decided to look at Barbie dolls for my nieces. A nicely dressed little girl was excitedly looking through the Barbie dolls as well. As she was looking, a little boy came to the Pokemon toys. He was dressed neatly, but his clothes were obviously old. He was with his father as well, and kept picking up the Pokemon video toys. Each time he picked one up and looked at his father, his father shook his head and said, "No."

The little girl had chosen her Barbie. However, she stopped and was watching them. Rather dejectedly, the boy had to give up the Pokemon toys and choose something else. The little girl put her Barbie back on the shelf, and ran over to the Pokemon toys. She excitedly picked up one and raced towards the checkout. I picked up my purchases and got in line behind them. Then, much to the little girl's delight, the little boy and his father got in line behind me. After the toy was paid for and bagged, the little girl handed it back to the cashier and whispered something in her ear. The cashier smiled and put the package under the counter.

I paid for my purchases and was rearranging things when the little boy came up to the cashier. The cashier checked his purchases and said, "Congratulations, you are my hundredth customer today, and you win a prize!" With that, 'she handed the little boy the Pokemon toys, and he could only stare in surprise. It was exactly what he had wanted!

The little girl and her father had been standing at the doorway during all of this. Then they walked out. As I walked back to my car, I heard the father ask his daughter why she had done that. I'll never forget what she said to him. "Daddy, didn't Grandparents want me to buy something that would make me happy?" He said, "Of course they did honey." To which the little girl replied, “Well, I just did!"

I feel very shocked to have witnessed the true spirit of Christmas in that toy store, in the form of a little girl who understands more about the meaning of this festival than most adults I know.

【推荐3】Jose Hernandez made his dream of becoming an astronaut a reality and he did so despite unbelievable difficulties.

“I was working in a field near Stockton, and I heard on my radio that Franklin Chang-Diaz had been selected for the Astronaut Corps," said Jose, who was a senior in high school at the timed was already interested in science and engineering, Jose remembered, "but that was the moment I said, "I want to fly in space.' "

As one of four children in a migrant（移民）farming family from Mexico, Jose - who didn't learn English until he was 12 years old - spent much of his childhood traveling with his family from Mexico to southern California each March, then working northward to the Stockton area by November, picking strawberries and cucumbers at farms along the route. They would then return to Mexico for Christmas and start the cycle all over again in the spring. "Some kids might think it would be fun to travel like that,“ Jose laughed, "but we had to work”.

After graduating from high school, Jose was admitted into the University of the Pacific, In 1987, he accepted a full-time job with Lawrence National Laboratory. In 2001, Jose joinedtheJohnson Space Center, where he came face-to-face with Franklin Chang-Diaz.

“We actually had common experiences —asimilar upbringing, the same language issues. That built up my confidence. Any barriers that existed, he had already overcome them.” Jose smiled. "Now it's my turn!^,,

“NASA rejected me not once, not twice, not three times but 11 times. It wasn't until the 12th time that I got selected, he said. Jose was selected as part of the 19th class of astronauts in 2004. He circled the globe 217 times but remains a down to Earth guy.

Jose Hernandez received the 2016 National Hispanic Hero Award and he continues his long history in the field of engineering and space.

【推荐1】Uggs(雪地靴) are certainly ugly, or at least inelegant. The shapeless boots, pulled on in a hurry, can make anyone look like a slob（懒惰的人）, which has made them the target of disrespect. It hasn’t been hard to find someone strongly condemning them. “Ugg boots are no sexy,” The Independent declared in 2003, “unless you’re Mrs. Bigfoot on a lone mission across Antarctic to find Mr. Bigfoot. When wearing the boots, a writer of The Gloss complained, “There’s nothing to indicate that you don’t have square, horrible shoeboxes in place of human feet.” In 2015, one coffee shop on Brick Lane in east London ever banned ugg-wearers.

And yet, over the years, plenty of strange and unattractive shoes have met with the approval of the fashion establishment. The problem with uggs wasn’t that they were ugly; it’s that they were common.

But a funny thing happened on the way to fashion’s tomb: the universal ugg has not gone anywhere. Uggs have quietly stayed here since their best time. Once you start paying attention, you’ll be shocked to discover how many people are still wearing them. They are worn by mothers in town and in the country, by teenagers on Saturday shopping trip and by people in fashion.

Perhaps the secret of uggs’s unstoppable success is that, if there is a dividing line between public appeal and private style，it might be a pair of cozy boots. They are certainly comfortable, soft and warm, as if your feet were in the hugging of someone who really loves you. At $150 a pair, they are neither cheap nor entirely out of range. They are casual and indulgent(纵容的）.

Somehow uggs, the boots that so many people hate, have managed to challenge the cruel logic of the fashion cycle and carry on whether you approve of them or not.

【推荐2】Bullying（欺凌）at school is a problem around the world. Most schools have. tried to reduce bullying by- making more rules. And many schools even have made their teachers supervise（监督）their students' behavior more strictly But one school in Auckland, New Zealand has done something different. Instead of making more rules for the playground, they reduced the number of rules. What happened? There's less bullying and other injuries.

At Swanson Primary School, during playtime, students can play in the mud, climb trees, ride skateboards, and do many such things that aren't allowed at other schools. If they promise that they do not hurt others and do not make trouble for their classmates, they can do just about anything they want.

“They may accidentally hurt themselves, but that's 0K," the teacher Bruce Mclachlan says. " We want kids to be safe and we look after them, but we end up wrapping（包裹）them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over. " Because students are able to do almost anything they want, they are happier. And happier students are less interested in making trouble. That makes parents and teachers happy.

Playtime freedom all helps the students learn the dangers of rude behavior. This will help develop the part of their brain that measures risks. This can be helpful when they are older. For example, if a kid does something rude on a skateboard and gets hurt, he or she will be less likely to repeat the rude activity. And if kids learn not to be rude on a skateboard, they are less likely to be hurt later in life when they're driving cars. Safety is important, but as Swanson Primary School has shown, more rules don't always mean more safety.

【推荐3】Two years ago, Microsoft sank a data centre off the coast of Orkney in a wild experiment. That data centre has now been retrieved from the ocean floor, and Microsoft researchers are assessing how it has performed, and what they can learn from it about energy efficiency. Their first conclusion is that the container packed with servers（服务器）had a lower failure rate than a conventional data centre. When the container was pulled out of the seabed around half a mile offshore after being placed there in May 2018, just 8 out of the 855 servers on board had failed, which compares very well with a conventional data centre.

As more and more of our data is stored in the cloud, there is growing concern about the vast energy demands of data centres. This experiment was an attempt to learn broader lessons about energy efficiency in cloud computing（云计算）. All of Orkney’s electricity comes from wind and solar power, but there were no issues in keeping the underwater data centre supplied with power. “We have been able to run really well on what most land-based data centres consider an unreliable electric-power network,” says Spencer Fowers, one of members in the technical team.

Underwater data centres might sound like an unusual idea, but David Ross, who has been a consultant to the data centre industry for many years, believes the project has great potential. He uses examples where it would be beneficial, such as organisations facing a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. “You could effectively move something to a more secure location without having all the high costs of constructing a building. It’s flexible and cost-effective,” he says.

Microsoft is cautious about saying when an underwater data centre might be a commercial product, but the company is confident that the experiment has proved the idea has value. “We think that we are past the point where this is a science experiment,” says Ben Cutler. “Now it’s simply a question of what do we want to engineer — would it be a little one, or would it be a large one?”

【推荐1】＂Did you hear what happened to Adam last Friday?＂ Lindsey whispers to Tori.

With her eyes shining, Tori brags, ＂You bet I did. Sean told me two days ago.＂

Who are Lindsey and Tori talking about? It just happens to be yours truly, Adam Freedman. I can tell you that what they are saying is (a) not nice and (b) not even true. Still, Lindsey and Tori aren’t very different from most students here at Linton High School, including me. Many of our conversations are gossip(闲话). I have noticed three effects of gossip: it can hurt people, it can give gossipers a strange kind of satisfaction, and it can cause social pressures in a group.

An important negative effect of gossip is that it can hurt the person being talked about. Usually, gossip spreads information about a topic — breakups, trouble at home, even dropping out — that a person would rather keep secret. The more embarrassing or shameful the secret is, the juicier the gossip it makes. Probably the worst type of gossip is the absolute lie. People often think of gossipers as harmless, but cruel lies can cause pain.

If we know that gossip can be harmful, then why do so many of us do it? The answer lies in another effect of gossip: the satisfaction it gives us. Sharing the latest rumor(传言) can make a person feel important because he or she knows something that others don’t. Similarly, hearing the latest rumor can make a person feel like part of the ＂in group.＂ In other words, gossip is satisfying because it gives people a sense of belonging or even superiority(优越感).

Gossip also can have a third effect: it strengthens unwritten, unspoken rules about how people should act. Professor David Wilson explains that gossip is important in policing behaviors in a group. Translated into high school terms, this means that if everybody you hang around with is laughing at what John wore or what Jane said, then you can bet that wearing or saying something similar will get you the same kind of negative attention. The do’s and don’ts conveyed through gossip will never show up in any student handbook.

The effects of gossip vary depending on the situation. The next time you feel the urge to spread the latest news, think about why you want to gossip and what effects your ＂juicy story＂ might have.

【推荐2】Imagine you enter a car with no steering wheel, no brake or accelerator pedals (踏板). Under a voice-activated command, you say an address. “The fastest route will take us 15.3 minutes. Should I take it?” You say “yes” and you are on your way. The car responds and starts moving all by itself. All you have to do is sit back and relax.

How weird would it be if, one day in the future, everyone had such a car? No crazy driving, no insults, no cutting in; traffic laws would be respected and driving much safer. On the other hand, imagine the cost savings for local police enforcement and town budgets without all those speeding and parking tickets.

A new technology has the potential to change modern society in radical ways. There’s no question that self-driving vehicles could be an enormous benefit. The potential for safer cars means accident statistics would drop: some 94% of road accidents in the U.S involve human error. Older drivers and visually- or physically-impaired people would gain a new level of freedom. Maintaining safe speeds and being electric, self-driving cars would drastically reduce pollution levels and dependency on non-renewable fuels. Roads would be quieter, people safer.

But we must also consider the impact of the new technology on those who now depend on driving for their livelihoods. According to the U.S. Department of Labor. In May 2015 there were 505,560 registered school bus drivers. The American Trucking association lists approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the U.S.

The companies developing self-driving vehicles should be partnering with state and federal authorities to offer retraining for this massive workforce, many of whom will be displaced by the new technology. This is similar to what’s happening in the coal and oil industries, a situation that fuels much of the current political discontent in this country.

New technologies will, and should, be developed. This is how society moves forward. However, progress can’t be one-sided. It is necessary for the companies and state agencies involved to consider the ethical consequences of these potential changes to build a better future for all.

【推荐3】Visit the grocery store on an empty stomach, and you will probably come home with a few things you had not planned to buy. But hunger is not the only culprit behind such purchases. The location of store displays also influences our shopping and may make or break some healthy eating habits.

The checkout area is a particular hotspot for junk food. Studies have found that the products most commonly found there are sugary and salty snacks-and a few studies have suggested that simply swapping in healthier options can shift customer behavior. A 2012 study in the Netherlands found that hospital workers were more likely to give up junk food for healthy snacks when the latter were more readily available on canteen shelves, for example, In 2014 Norwegain and Icelandic researcher likewise found that replacing unhealthy items with healthy ones in the checkout area significantly increased last-minutes sales of healthier foods.

These findings caught the attention of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which has been working with more than 1,000 store owners to encourage them to stock and promote consumption,” says Tamar Adjoian, a research scientist at the department. “Making healthy food more convenient or appealing can lead to increased sales of those products.”

Adjoian and her colleagues wondered if such findings would apply to their city’s dense urban checkout areas, so they recruited three Bronx supermarkets for their own study. They gave one checkout line in each store a healthy makeover, replacing candy, cookies and other processed snacks with fruit , nuts and similar items containing 200 or fewer calories per serving. Then they recorded purchases over six three-hour periods in each store for two weeks.

Of the more than 2,100 shoppers they observed, just 4 precent bought anything from the checkout area. Among those who did, however, customers in the healthy lines purchased nutritious items more than twice as often as those in the standard lines –and they bought unhealthy items 40 percent less often. The findings were reported in September in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

The potential impact may seem small, but Adjoian believes that converting more checkout lines would open customers’ eyes to nutritious, lower-calories foods. Health department officials are now exploring ways to expand healthy options at checkout areas throughout New York City.