【推荐2】As for child vaccinations, parents usually get paperwork lost, or forget whether their child is up to date. Now a group of MIT researchers has developed a new way to address this problem: inserting the record directly into the skin. Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with an app that shines special light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years.

The system would provide quick and easy access to vaccination history, and add little to the cost or risk of the procedure. “In developing countries where medical records may not be as complete or as accessible, there can be value in having medical information directly associated with a person,” says Ana Jaklenec, lead author of the study.

Delivering the dye required the researchers to find something that was safe and would last long enough to be useful. “That’s really the biggest challenge we overcame in the project,” says Jaklenec, adding that the team tested a number of dyes hut could not find any that lasted when exposed to sunlight. The team ended up using a technology called quantum dots, which were originally developed to label cells during research. The dye has been shown to be safe in humans.

“When people were still getting vaccinated against smallpox, they got a visible scar on their arm that made it easy to identify who had been vaccinated and who had not. But obviously, we didn't want to give people a scar.” Jaklenec says, noting that her team was looking for something that couldn’t be seen. The researchers also wanted to avoid technologies that would raise even more privacy concerns, such as databases with names and identifiable data.

The researchers hope to add more detailed information to the dots, such as the date of vaccination. Along with them, the team eventually wants to inject sensors that could also potentially be used to track aspects of health such as insulin levels in diabetics.

You’re only three years old, and at this point in your life you can’t read, much less understand what I’ll tell you in this letter. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the life that you have ahead of you, about my life so far as I reflect on what I’ve learned, and about my role as a dad in trying to prepare you for the trials(磨难) that you’ll face in the coming years.

You won’t be able to understand this letter today, but somebody, when you’re ready, I hope you will find some wisdom and value in what I share with you.

You are young, and life has not yet to show a cold face to you, to throw disappointments and loneliness and pain into your path. You have not been worn down yet by long hours of thankless work, by the slings and arrows of everyday life.

For this, be thankful. You are at a wonderful time of life. You have many wonderful stages of life still to come, but they are not without their costs and perils.

I hope to help you along your path by sharing some of the best of what I’ve learned. As with any advice, take it with a grain of salt. What works for me might not work for you.

There will be people in your life who won't be very nice. They’ll tease you because you’re different, or for no good reason. They might try to bully you or hurt you.

There’s not much you can do about these people except to learn to deal with them, and learn to choose friends who are kind to you, who actually care about you, who make you feel good about yourself. When you find friends like this, hold on to them, treasure them, spend time with them, be kind to them, love them.

There will be times when you are met with disappointment instead of success. Life won’t always turn out the way you want. This is just another thing you’ll have to learn to deal with. But instead of letting these things get you down, push on. Accept disappointment and learn to persevere, to pursue your dreams despite pitfalls. Learn to turn negatives into positives, and you’ll do much better in life.

You will also face heartbreak and abandonment by those you love. I hope you don’t have to face this too much, but it happens. Again, not much you can do but to heal, and to move on with your life. Let these pains become stepping stones to better things in life, and learn to use them to make you stronger.

Yes, you’ll find cruelty and suffering in your journey through life, but don’t let that close you to new things. Don’t move back from life, don’t hide or wall yourself off. Be open to new things, new experiences, new people.

You might get your heart broken 10 times, but find the most wonderful woman the 11^th time. If you shut yourself off from love, you’ll miss out on that woman, and the happiest times of your life.

You might get teased and bullied and hurt by people you meet, and then after meeting dozens of jerks, find a true friend. If you close yourself off to new people, and don’t open your heart to them, you’ll avoid pain…, but also lose out on meeting some incredible people, who will be there during the toughest times of your life and create some of the best times of your life.

You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success.

You will meet many people who will try to do better than you, in school, in college, at work. They’ll try to have nicer cars, bigger houses, nicer clothes, cooler gadgets. To them, life is a competition—they have to do better than their peers to be happy.

Here’s the secret: life isn’t a competition. It's a journey. If you spend that journey always trying to impress others, to outdo others, you’re wasting your journey. Instead, learn to enjoy the journey. Make it a journey of happiness, of constant learning, of continual improvement, of love.

Don’t worry about having a nicer car or house or anything material, or even a better-paying job. None of that matters a whit, and none of it will make you happier. You’ll acquire these things and then only want more. Instead, learn to be satisfied with having enough—and then use the time you would have wasted trying to earn money to buy those things… use that time doing things you love.

Finally, know that I love you and always will. You are starting out on an unknown, tiring, scary, but badly wonderful journey, and always remember I will be there for you when I can. Godspeed

Love, Your Dad

【推荐2】The trouble started at 9：30 p. m. last New Year’s Eve, in Newmark. When the fire engines（消防车）arrived at the fire, a very old woman was sitting in a third floor window. The firefighters placed a ladder（梯子）against the wooden house, and 26-year-old Marcus Reddick climbed 35 feet to the third floor.

The woman, 60 years old and very fat, was sitting with both feet out of the window. When Marcus reached the top of the ladder, the woman, afraid and nervous, put her two legs around him. Suddenly Marcus fell backwards off the ladder, with the large woman sitting on him. Marcus landed first—hitting a wall beside the front stairs-and broke the woman’s fall. She fell no more, but he fell another ten feet down the stairs. When the fire officer reached him, Marcus was unconscious.

Within an hour, a doctor told the men that Marcus was nearly brain dead, and would only get worse. Doctors talked of turning off the life-saving machine and asked if the family would like to give away his heart. The answer was “yes”.

On January 6, firefighters lifted Marcus’ coffin（棺材）—covered with an American flag-onto a yellow fire engine. Hundreds of firefighters from all over the state joined the procession（行列）through Newmark streets. Children watched silently from school windows. The day Marcus died, his heart was given away to a young girl. His family said that it was the second life Marcus had saved.

【推荐3】There’s nothing magical about the number 10,000. In fact, the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day for health goes back many years to a marketing campaign started in Japan for the sale of a pedometer (计步器). And, in the years that followed, it was accepted in the US as a goal to build up good health. It’s often the default setting (默认设置) on fitness trackers, but what’s it really based on?

“The original basis of the number was not scientifically determined,” says researcher I-Min Lee of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She was curious to know how many steps you need to take a day to maintain good health and live a long life, so she and her workmates designed a study that included about 17,000 older women. Their average age was 72. The women all agreed to wear devices to track their steps as they went about their day-to-day activities.

It turns out that women who took about 4,000 steps per day got an increase in longevity (长寿), compared with women who took fewer steps. In fact, women who took 4,400 steps per day, on average, were about 40 percent less likely to die during the follow-up period of about four years compared with women who took 2,700 steps. The findings were published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Another surprise: The benefits of walking maxed out at about 7,500 steps. In other words, women who walked more than 7,500 steps per day saw no additional increase in longevity.

Janz, who released the new national exercise recommendations last November, says the message that comes from this study was encouraging. “I think it’s really good news for women who may not be particularly active.” says Janz. “All they have to do is walk. To me, this study suggests there are more benefits to light activities than we were previously thinking there might be.”

【推荐1】“Join our exciting wildlife watching tours and experience the holiday of a lifetime!” Eco-wildlife tours like this are becoming more and more popular with tourists. The opportunity to see whales and dolphins swimming in their natural habitat is so much better than seeing these great mammals in zoos and aquariums. As your boat edges out into the blue water, a group of dolphins come to greet you and swim around the boat, jumping playfully around you. In some places, tour companies even encourage tourists to go swimming with the dolphins. These intelligent mammals seem to enjoy our company and interact with us. But is it possible that this kind of human activity putting their survival at risk?

A recent study has shown that the behavior of whales and dolphins changes greatly when they are close to boats. Interpreting the boats as a possible danger, they start to breathe more to breathe more quickly. The boats drive them away from the places where they feed and interrupt their routine of resting and taking care of their young. All of these factors could have a very negative effect on their general health. Another factor that should be taken into account is the effect of human attention on the animals. As they become more used to interacting with humans, they become less afraid of them. There have been several cases of tour boats running into dolphins or whales and causing their deaths. As dolphins live within close communities, events like these cause a lot of stress.

Perhaps the best way to protect these animals is to reduce our interaction with them. We could do by keeping a minimum distance between the animals and the boats, and by limiting the number of boats out on the water at one time. Most importantly, instead of interrupting these animals’ routines, we should try to adapt to them. In this way, we could learn to exist in harmony with these wild animals and ensure our continued co-existence on the planet that we shall share.

【推荐2】Outstanding in the Field, an organization that holds dinners on farms and other currently popular locations(地方), is traveling across the U.S., Canada, France and Bermuda for its annual tour.

Dinners on the farm have become popular in the last several years as the local food movement has grown. A dinner of local foods cooked by local chefs and eaten as close to the source as possible is an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Outstanding in the Field seems to have been ahead of fashion. They’ve been holding these dinners since 1999. In that time, they’ve visited all 50 states and more than 15 countries.

The goal of Outstanding in the Field is “to get people out to the places where the food comes from and honor the people whose good work brings health,” says founder Jim Denevan. “Our moving restaurant without walls may be located wherever good food comes from. There are no limits.

Their main location is a field on a farm, but they also hold events on mountaintops, sea caves, and other places in keeping with their vision.

Their 2018 Tour began on May 5 in California and runs through Nov. 11. Tickets to these dinners on the farm are expensive. Ticket prices ranged from $180 to $300 per person. The price includes a reception with wine and passed appetizers(开胃菜), four courses with wine, all tips, producer discussions and a tour of the farm. The events are intended for adults, and they don’t recommend that children attend.

It’s more than just a meal. The food isn’t the only reason to check out this dining trend. It’s a way to connect in a natural setting with like-minded, food-loving people while also supporting local farmers.