【推荐3】Eliana Yi dreamed of pursuing piano performance in college, never mind that her fingers could barely reach the length of an octave (八度音阶). Unable to fully play many works by Romantic-era composers, including Beethoven and Brahms, she tried anyway — and in her determination to spend hours practicing one of Chopin’s compositions which is known for being “stretchy”, wound up injuring herself.

“I would just go to pieces,” the Southern Methodist University junior recalled. “There were just too many octaves. I wondered whether I was just going to play Bach and Mozart for the rest of my life.”

The efforts of SMU keyboard studies chair Carol Leone are changing all that. Twenty years ago, the school became the first major university in the U.S. to incorporate smaller keyboards into its music program, leveling the playing field for Yi and other piano majors.

Yi reflected on the first time she tried one of the smaller keyboards: “I remember being really excited because my hands could actually reach and play all the right notes,” she said. Ever since, “I haven’t had a single injury, and I can practice as long as I want.”

For decades, few questioned the size of the conventional piano. If someone’s hand span was less than 8.5 inches — the distance considered ideal to comfortably play an octave — well, that’s just how it was.

Those who attempt “stretchy” passages either get used to omitting notes or risk tendon (腱) injury with repeated play. Leone is familiar with such challenges. Born into a family of jazz musicians, she instead favored classical music and pursued piano despite her small hand span and earned a doctorate in musical arts.

A few years after joining SMU’s music faculty in 1996, the decorated pianist read an article in Piano and Keyboard magazine about the smaller keyboards. As Leone would later write, the discovery would completely renew her life and career.

In 2000, she received a grant to retrofit a department Steinway to accommodate a smaller keyboard, and the benefits were immediate. In addition to relieving injury caused by overextended fingers, she said, it gave those with smaller spans the ability to play classic compositions taken for granted by larger-handed counterparts.

Smaller keyboards instill many with new confidence. It’s not their own limitations that have held them back, they realize; it’s the limitations of the instruments themselves. For those devoted to a life of making music, it’s as if a cloud has suddenly lifted.

【推荐3】As a boy I was always small for my age. I was also five years younger than one of my brothers and seven years younger than the other. As a result, I often felt left out when their friends came over to play. I was either too small or too young for whatever they were doing and they didn't want me to listen to their conversations either. More often I found myself outside playing alone and feeling forgotten.

I remember one spring afternoon feeling especially lonely as I sat in the yard behind our house. I heard my brothers laughing from inside the house and felt tears coming down my cheeks. At that moment I saw a large, brown dog walking over to me. His face was panting happily and his tail was wagging as well. Even though he didn't know me, he licked my feet and sat beside me on the spring grass.

It must have been for at least an hour that I petted and talked to this four-legged angel. He let me pour out all my troubles and shared my deepest thoughts before he kissed my cheek goodbye. I went back, knowing that no matter what life may hold I was loved. Now over 40 years later I still remember that furry angel with a smile. I believe that god sent him in that moment of sadness to remind me just how much he loved me.

In truth, nothing brings us greater joy than knowing we are loved. Knowing we are loved gives us the strength to love others as well. Knowing we are loved helps us to be the people God meant for us to be. Knowing we are loved aids us in making Earth more like Heaven. Embrace that love, take joy in it, and then go out and share your own love with the world.

【推荐1】Solar energy for your home is coming. It can help you as a single home owner. It can help the whole country as well. Whether or not solar energy can save your money depends on many things. Where you live is one factor. The type of home you have is another. Things like insulation(隔热材料) add to energy costs, and the type of system you buy are added factors.

Using it can help save our precious fuel. As you know, our supplies of oil and gas are very limited. There is just not enough on hand to meet all our future energy needs. And when Mother Nature says that's all. The only way we can delay hearing those words is by starting to save energy now and by using other sources, like the sun.

We won't have to worry about the sun running out of energy for another several billion years or so. Besides being an endless source of energy, the use of the sun has other advantages as well. The sun doesn't offer as many problems as other energy sources. For example, fossil fuel plants add to already high pollution levels. With solar energy, we will still need sources of energy, but we won't need as much. That means we can cut down on our pollution problems.

With all these good points, why don't we use more solar power? There are many reasons for this. The biggest reason is money. Decades ago, it was just not practical for a home owner to put in a solar unit. There were cheaper sources of energy.

All that is changing now. Solar costs are starting to equal the costs of oil and electricity.   Experts say that gas, oil and electricity prices will continue to rise. The demand for electricity is increasing rapidly. But new power plants will use more gas, oil or coal. Already in some places the supply of electricity is being rationed(定量配给). Solar energy is now in its infancy. It could soon grow to become a major part of our nation's energy supply.

【推荐2】Do you have a talented young artist, photographer, or designer in your life? It’s never too early to start helping them get their work out there! We’ve rounded up the top art competitions for kids and teens that can help these young creators share their first masterpiece with the world. Most of them are totally free to enter!

Global Canvas Children’s Art Competition

Ages: 16 and under       Mediums: drawing, painting

Organized by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, this art competition wants to inspire the next generation to be more mindful of how we take care of the earth. The judges are looking for artists to discover the wonderful places that wildlife calls home.

Toyota Dream Car Art Contest

Ages: 15 and under       Mediums: drawing, painting

Time to design a dream car! Toyota wants to get junior artists thinking about what the future of transportation might look like. Prizes include a chance to tour one of the Toyota car plants and experience various aspects of Japanese culture.

Advena World Children’s Art Competition

Ages: 15 and under       Mediums: drawing, painting, photos and other original artworks

The competition aims to promote creativity and self-expression. Instead of a theme, it asks the participating artists to simply express their feelings—anything from sadness or joy to anger or excitement—through their chosen medium.

Progressive Young Artists Awards

Open to: high school and college students Mediums: drawing, painting, photograph, mixed media, sculpture

PYAA is all about expressing and celebrating progressive values. So, if there is a creative teen in your life who wants to do good in the world, sign him or her up for this art competition. The prize is a scholarship that winners can put forwards their post-secondary schooling.

【推荐3】Aquaman is an American superhero movie based on the Aquaman line of comic book titles published by DC Comics. Arthur Curry, the human-born heir to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis,goes on a quest to prevent a war between the worlds of ocean and land. And the main power from the Trident(三叉戟) makes him the true protector of the deep in the end.

The movie opens with how Arthur's mother, Queen Atlanna of Atlantis, and his father, lighthouse keeper Tom Curry, met, fell in love, and had a son named Arthur. When the Atlantians come calling,wanting their queen to return and fulfill her part of an arranged marriage, she goes back to Atlantis in order to protect her husband and young son. That boy grows up to be a man with special strength, speed and power. Arthur Curry, half human and half from Atlantis, then goes on a trip of a lifetime. Not only does this adventure make him come to terms with his real identity, but it also forces him to discover whether he is entirely worthy of meeting his own destiny: becoming a king.

This is a big movie, in every sense-big action, big sets and big drama. The special effects are extraordinary, given that much of the action takes place underwater or, at least, has to look like it does. The downside is that the movie starts to feel a bit boring by the second hour. Yes, the movie has elements of other successful fantasy dramas, like the Star Trek movies, Jurassic Park and Romancing Stone, but movies of this nature are somewhat similar these days. In the Marvel or DC universes,with so many heroes and villains(反派角色), it's hard to be entirely fresh but Aquaman has done a pretty good job.

【推荐1】As an educator and health care provider, I have worked with numerous children infected with the virus that causes AIDS. The relationships that I have had with these special kids have been gifts in my life. They have taught me so many things, but I have especially learned that great courage can be found in the smallest of packages. Let me tell you about Tyler.

Tyler was born infected with HIV: his mother was also infected. From the very beginning of his life, he was dependent on medications to enable him to survive. When he was five, he had a tube inserted (插入) in a vein in his chest. This tube was connected to a pump, which he carried in a small backpack on his back. Medications were linked to this pump and were continuously supplied through this tube to his bloodstream. At times, he also needed supplemented (补充的) oxygen to support his breathing.

Tyler wasn’t willing to give up one single moment of his childhood to this deadly disease. It was not unusual to find him playing and racing around his backyard, wearing his medicine-laden backpack and dragging his tank of oxygen behind him in his little wagon. All of us who knew Tyler were amazed at his pure joy in being alive and the energy it gave him. Tyler’s mom often teased him by telling him that he moved so fast that she needed to dress him in red. That way, when she peered through the window to check on him playing in the yard, she could quickly spot him.

This dreaded disease eventually wore down even the likes of a little dynamo like Tyler. He grew quite ill and, unfortunately, so did his HIV-infected mother. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to survive, Tyler’s mom talked to him about death. She comforted him by telling Tyler that she was dying too, and that she would be with him soon in heaven.

A few days before his death, Tyler called me over to his hospital bed and whispered, “I might die soon. I’m not scared. When I die, please dress me in red. Mom promised she’s coming to heaven, too. I’ll be playing when she gets there, and I want to make sure she can find me.”

【推荐2】If you live in a desert, maintaining a supply of fresh water is a challenge. One answer is desalination, but that needs a source from which to get the salt away—which in turn requires that your desert be near the sea. The other is related to moisture. Even in inland deserts, though, moisture is often present in the air as water vapour (水蒸气).

The problem is how to get this vapour effectively and cheaply from the desert air. And that is what two groups of researchers have managed to do.

The ease with which water can be won from air depends on that air’s relative humidity. This is a measure of its current vapour content as a percentage of its maximum possible vapour content at its current temperature. A relative humidity of 100% means the air in question is holding as much water vapour as it possibly can. A good way to get air to give up some of its moisture is therefore to cool it to the point where its relative humidity is more than 100%. Sometimes this happens naturally at night, causing mist and dew to form. These can be collected in special traps in areas where liquid water is otherwise rarer. But, if night cooling does not bring air all the way up to 100% relative humidity, building water traps out of special materials might give nature a helping hand.

Adsorption (吸附) is a process which pulls water molecules from air that has less than 100% relative humidity by attaching them to the surface of a solid material. The molecules are held there by electrostatic (静电的) connections called Van der Waals forces that link them with the molecules of the related surface. To collect a lot of water this way therefore requires a material that has two features. One is a large surface area. The other is an appropriate Van der Waals response. Experimental traps that employ this principle have been made using substances called metal-organic frameworks. These are porous (多孔的) molecular networks through which air can circulate. Their porosity gives them a huge surface area. And by picking the right ingredients, such as zirconium, they can be given the necessary Van der Waals features. Zirconium is, however, costly. Moreover, once absorbed, the water must then be released. This means warming the absorptive material—the warmth being provided by the sun, once it has risen. Here, metal-organic frameworks present a problem. They tend to reflect sunlight rather than absorb it, and so don’t heat up well. To overcome this, engineers build a solid device made of copper into the system. This works, but adding such devices makes an already costly technology even dearer.

【推荐3】When I was 12 years old, I already knew that my teen years were going to be the worst years of my life. I was a total outsider, bullied （欺凌）at school. I felt completely alone in my small town.

But by starting to do volunteer work when I was 14, I turned my problem into a passion for helping others. The opportunity to practice kindness made me feel like my life had a greater purpose. The more positive energy 1 shared, the more kindness and appreciation I received, I realized that my purpose in life would be to reach out to people, specifically teenagers, and help them feel less alone.

Books were my true friends back then. I was so thankful that the authors wrote those books. The kindness they offered me with their books saved my life. One of my biggest dreams was to become an author so I could write books that would help other teenagers the way those books helped me.

After surviving the terrible experiences at school and at home, 1 made a choice to take the optimistic, positive road in the next steps of my journey. My dream career, one I thought was only possible for the authors I loved, is what I am doing now. I have been a full-time author of teen novels since 2007 and am grateful for this amazing opportunity to reach out to readers every single day.

Kindness saved me when I needed help the most. Even small acts of kindness can change someone's life. You never know what someone else is going through. But by practicing daily kindness, you become an architect of positive change.