【推荐3】Salome Thomas-El, the headmaster of Thomas Edison Charter School, has spent more than 30 years teaching his students life lessons through the game of chess. 90% of the students at the school live at or below the poverty level. "These children are playing chess and graduating high school and going to some of the top colleges in the nation," Thomas-El said.

As Thomas-El was looking for innovative ways to teach children math early in his career, he turned to a game from his childhood: chess. "I started actually teaching students math on the chessboard where knights move on right angles, bishops move on diagonals (对角线)…I fell in love with the game as a teacher. Through chess, Thomas-El saw that his students were learning more than just math — they developed confidence and self-respect. Thomas-El decided to get more students involved in chess. He provided chess sets and students began playing during breakfast and lunch. He also opened up the school on Saturdays to give students the chance to play chess, learn and get weekend meals.

Soon, Thomas-El was able to form his own chess team of 40 students. Because some tournaments are all-female, he decided to also create an all-girls team. Over his career. Thomas-EI's all-girls teams have taken on men twice their age and come out victorious. One of his teams even went three years undefeated.

Thomas-El said his proudest moments as an educator do not come from watching his students win games, but from watching them succeed in life. Many of the girls he's coached in chess have gone on to attend schools like Cornell and the University of Virginia on scholarships. Some of them became teachers themselves and come back to help their community.

In the future, Thoma-El hopes to expand chess's impact on students as a board member of America's Foundation for Chess, which has launched a new chess program for kids in school called"First Move."

【推荐1】When you step off the elevator on the fourth floor of Kentucky Children's Hospital (KCH),you’re greeted by a magical unicom (独角兽) in a combination of greens,blues,and purples.

It is a collaborative art piece, created by the staff of KCH and UK Arts in HealthCare. This mosaic (镶嵌图案) , roughly five feet tall and six feet wide, is made up of nothing but thousands of vial (药水瓶) caps, oral syringe caps,clamps,and tubes to create an image of a unicorn, silently greeting and comforting every patient and visitor.

The idea for this mosaic was inspired by Tilda Shalof, a nurse in Canada who spent nearly 30 years collecting abandoned medical plastic to create a colorful mosaic. KCH nurses approached the Child Life staff about creating something analogous for their hospital. The staff agreed, and collection of plastic began.

Soon the collection numbered in the thousands, but the question remained what would this become? After many meetings and discussions, KCH staff settled on the idea of a unicorn. After all, unicorns become the source where all dreamy thoughts can be achieved. Meeting a unicorn and making friends with it could be so appealing to children. More than stories about the healing power, for children, a unicorn might even have the magic power to change anything.

Lexington artist Christine Kuhn joined the team to provide guidance on the design and construction process, but the work was done entirely by KCH staff who volunteered their time.“As the unicorn started to take shape, it became even clearer that many hands were present in the artwork,”said Joey Burke, a nurse ethicist. “Several music therapists asked if they could add a guitar pick and a member of the maintenance crew added a wire nut. In the end, medical waste became fantastic as the unicorn took shape.”

When completed, this grand creature needed a name, so a contest was held among KCH staff and patients. The name with the most votes was Unity "MoonPie"McSparkles.

【推荐2】During the five-day Labor Day holiday that began on April 30, tourist attractions that offered ancient Chinese, or guofeng, experiences attracted large crowds, some members of whom wore traditional clothing and makeup to enhance the authenticity of their experiences.

Qujiang New District in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, charmed tourists with a new attraction themed on TV serial The Longest Day in Chang’an. It offers visitors a chance to “travel back in time” and experience a day in the life of people living in the Tang Dynasty(618-907). Xi’an, known as Chang’an back then, was the imperial(皇帝的)capital.

The World Rural Tourist Town in Huzhou, Zhejiang province, staged a cultural festival with a silk and Song Dynasty(960-1279)theme. During the first three days of the holiday, the place received nearly 30,000 visits, putting it into a Tik-Tok list of the 10 most sought—after Huzhou attractions.

The Jizhou Kiln scenic area in Jiangxi province held a tourism festival with a Song Dynasty theme. Tourists, wearing period costumes and makeup, tried their hand at the ancient Chinese game of touhu—throwing arrows into wine pitchers—and sampled yonghe tofu, one of the top 10 Jiangxi dishes.

COVID-19 has accelerated changes in consumers, who are increasingly pursuing comfortable and safe tourism products that benefit both the environment and people’s health. For tourism businesses, it’s important to highlight the cultural elements of tourism products by drawing inspiration from China’s traditional culture.

To create a more impressive experience, staff members dressed in hanfu would join the crowd and interact with the tourists by, for example, handing them flower seeds, the staff member said, adding that services such as hanfu rental and traditional makeup design are available in the park.

Hotels are also tapping the guofeng craze to feed the growing passion for traditional Chinese culture. A guofeng hotel of Chinese firm Rezen provides replica costumes from online games based on the Chinese classic Journey to the West, which the guests can try on for photos.

【推荐3】A ship that has spent decades trying to drill nearer to the earth’s mantle (地幔) is preparing for a new voyage to uncover clues to how life began.

With the plan to deepen a hole drilled nearly 20 years ago, two dozen geologists, microbiologists and other scientists will aboard the Joides Resolution to the Atlantis Massif. The hole won’t be the longest in the seafloor but would push closer than ever to the mantle and explore deeper layers of ocean crust (地壳) that haven’t been reached before. Engineers on the ship intend to lower heavy drilling tools through about 5,400 feet of water to find a hole on the seafloor about 15 inches wide. Joides engineers compared the process to standing on a chair and trying to lower a pencil tied to the end of string into the mouth of a soda bottle with a fan blowing.

Samples from the new depths will be taken to investigate whether a special mix of rock and water, Olivine, could have started life on Earth and possibly other planets. This green and magnesium-rich mineral, abundant at such depths, is critical to serpentinization (蛇纹石化), a reaction that occurs when some minerals encounter seawater. Geochemists think the process of serpentinization generates the energy and geochemical conditions favorable to the creation of organic molecules. “These are the building blocks of life,” said Susan Q. Lang, the expedition’s cochief scientist.

The new depth is thought where serpentinization occurs but where temperatures are beyond the limits at which life is known to exist. “If organic molecules are found there, it could help confirm that serpentinization leads to their creation, which contributed to the origin of life.” Dr. Lang said. Finding organic molecules in samples from serpentinization sites could also inform the search for life on other planets. “The geochemistry of fluids in the plumes of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn (土星), have been inferred by astrobiologists to be similar to the makeup of fluids found at the Atlantis Massif.” she added.

【推荐3】In 1955, when Rosa Parks refused an order to give up her seat to a white passenger and moved to the back of the bus, her incredible act of resistance became the fuel for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by none other than Martin Luther King Jr., it led to the civil rights movement in America.

Known as “the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”, Parks moved to Detroit in 1957 where she continued to fight for civil rights. In 1994, at the age of 81, Parks was attacked and robbed in her home.

When word of the attack got out, Judge Damon Keith contacted Mike Ilitch, a real estate (地产) developer. Upon hearing of the incident, Mike Ilitch offered to pay for safer housing for Parks until her death.

Hidden from public knowledge, and known only to a select few individuals, Ilitch’s kindness towards Rosa Parks remained a secret for many years. It wasn’t until an article was published in the Sports Business Daily in 2014 that the secret came out. And it didn’t gain popular attention until it resurfaced after Ilitch’s death in 2017.

The article contained a photograph of Keith holding a copy of a cheque.

“It’s for $2,000, dated November the first, 1994,” Keith said. “It’s from Little Caesars Enterprises to Riverfront Apartments. It’s important that people know what Mr. Mike Ilitch did for Ms. Rosa Parks because it’s symbolic of what he has always done for the people of our city.”

It wasn’t Ilitch’s only act of giving. Throughout his life, the billionaire made significant contributions to various charitable causes. In 1985, he established the Little Caesars Love Kitchen which provides food for those in need.

Mike Ilitch and Rosa Parks may have come from two completely different worlds and lived very different lives, but there is one common thread that ties them together—commitment to creating positive change.