【推荐2】Green Living Solutions for Small Budgets

There are plenty of major environmental changes you can make when you have an unlimited budget.     1     Make a few small, inexpensive changes to cut your carbon footprint and save some money in the process.

    2     It might make the biggest eco- change. Living in the smallest amount of square footage that works for your family means you'll need less heat, have room for less stuff, and are more likely to find a home in an urban area that lets you live without a car.

Want to cut your home utility bill(水电账单）？    3     Wear another sweater to stay cozy even after you drop the temperature a few degrees. You can also invest(投资） in a high-tech system that will automatically adjust the heat when you're out of the house. It's costly but can save your money in the long run.

Maybe selling your car altogether isn't entirely practical, but cutting out the number of trips you take in it is an easy way to save money. Invest in a used bike,buy a public transit pass, and plan your weekend trips according to neighborhoods.     4    

Growing all your food can end up being a major investment.     5     Spend a few dollars on seeds and dirt, and you'll have fresh and free vegetable dishes.

【推荐1】When you picture doing a science project, you might imagine looking through a microscope or building a model volcano. But science projects can be done anywhere. Many teens get inspired from playing musical instruments to doing gymnastics. All it takes to transform your favorite activities into a science project is identifying a problem you want to solve.

Elizabeth, 14, who is in seventh grade at Davis Drive Middle School in Cary, N. C, designed a program. Her method is based on the golden ratio (比例). This ratio is often used to create pleasing parts in artworks. The ratio also appears in nature. Elizabeth’s data storage strategy helps computers write data evenly (均匀地) across memory devices. This could help such devices last longer.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve been an artistic person,” Elizabeth says, “In fourth grade, my art teacher taught us about the golden ratio. And at that point it was just, you know, something to use when we were painting.” But last year, Elizabeth had to replace the memory in her own computer, thinking the golden ratio might work in information storage, too. Elizabeth tested her golden-ratio technique by running programs on a computer.

But before this project, Elizabeth had no coding experience. To prepare, she spent months reading a textbook on how to code. She says, “It wasn’t like an ‘ah-ha’ moment. Writing programs is such a boring process. But it was just exciting to explore and see the computer actually just doing stuff that I told it to do after those hours.”

“Don’t limit yourself,” Elizabeth adds, “One of the biggest challenges you face is changing your mindset. I never thought that science or computer science would be my kind of thing, but after learning a bit about programming, I found that it was actually a new way to express myself. Words, painting, now programming.”

【推荐2】There is no way they just drove into that water, thought Corion Evans. The 16-year-old was hanging out with friends in a parking area underneath a Moss Point, highway in July when a car with three teenage girls inside fell into the Pascagoula River. It came to rest some 20 feet from land, then sank. The driver, Evans would learn, had blindly followed wrong directions from her GPS.

It was around 2:30 a. m. by the time Evans and brothers Karon and Caleh Bradley got to the river’s edge. In the darkness, they could barely make out the girls clinging to the roof, the only part of the car still, barely, above water. But they could hear screaming.

Evans took off his shirt and shoes, put his phone down, and then dived into the water, a river he knew alligators (鳄鱼) called home. He helped the first girl he saw and, keeping her head above water, led her ashore.

Just then, a man called out. Police Officer Garry Mercer had arrived. He dived into the river to help another of the girls. But halfway back to shore she panicked and went underwater, pulling Mercer down with her. Evans jumped back into the water and helped them until they could stand. “If he hadn’t been there, who knows?” Mercer told the Washington Post.

There was still one girl in the water. Cora Watson, 19, could not swim. She was gulping water, struggling to stay afloat. And scared.

“I heard Watson screaming ‘Help! And I thought she was done,” Caleh told WLOX in Biloxi.

“I just knew my last breath was coming,” Watson said. “My mind said, You’re slowly losing yourself.” She began to go under. Then, a surprise. “Corion had grabbed me.”

All of them were taken to the hospital and released. They’re alive because Corion Evans risked his life to save them. They’re alive, says his mother, Marquita Evans, because Corion Evans broke his curfew (宵禁). But she’s not mad, she told the Post, “He had a good reason.”

【推荐1】My nephew came for a visit one hot, July weekend. I persuaded him to stay inside by joining him in a Nintendo game. After being mercilessly defeated by a more experienced player, I suggested that we relax for a while. He slipped out of the room and I caught a few moments of peace and quiet.

“Look, Alice,” he said enthusiastically as he ran over to the chair where I was recovering. “I found a kite. Could we go outside and fly it?”

Glancing out of a nearby window, I noticed there was not a breeze (微风). “I'm sorry, Tripper,” I said, sad to see his disappointed eyes, but thankful for the short period of rest from more activities. “The wind is not blowing today. The kite won’t fly.”

The determined 10-year-old replied. “I think it’s windy enough. I can get it to fly,” he answered, as he hurried out through the back door. I peeked through the curtains to watch determination in action. Up and down the yard he ran, pulling the kite attached to a small length of string. The plastic kite, proudly displaying a picture of Batman, remained about shoulder level.

He ran back and forth, as hard as his ten-year-old legs would carry him, looking back hopefully at the kite trailing behind. After about ten minutes of unsuccessful determination, he came back in.

I asked, “How did it go?” “Fine,” he said, “I got it to fly some.” As he walked past me to return the kite to the closet shelf, I heard him say under his breath, “I guess I'll have to wait for the wind.”

At that moment I heard another voice speak to my heart. “Alice, sometimes you are just like that. You want to do it your way instead of waiting for the wind.” And the voice was right. We usually want to use our own efforts to accomplish what we want to do. We wait for the wind only after we have done all we can and have exhausted our own strength. We must learn how to rely on Him in the first place!

【推荐3】Pat McGee noticed her daughter hadn’t returned to the dentist’s waiting room just before her surgery (外科手术) was supposed to start. She walked to the bathroom and found Jessica,32, there, crying. “We’re going to say goodbye to the old Jessica,” she said. “And hi to the new Jessica.”Jessica, from St. Louis, US, had been wishing for this day since high school, when the bullying (欺凌) about her teeth started. Now that it was finally happening, she was nervous.

It was a social media post two months ago that got her there. Someone posted a photo of Jessica with a comment about her overbite—a serious problem that affects the teeth. The post was shared many times with many people making unkind remarks about her appearance.

The bullies didn’t know the road Jessica had traveled. She underwent nine operations on her ears from age 2 to 12 years old. She was almost deaf in her right ear. Her adult teeth didn’t start coming in until she was 11 or 12, and doctors couldn’t figure out why they were pushed outward. It got worse as she got older. Jessica had been trying for years to get her teeth fixed, but it was always too costly.

When her story got out, dentists wanted to help her. One of them, Maryann Udy, got in contact with Jessica and offered her new smile free of charge. The surgery was long and complicated. It took weeks for the swelling (肿胀) to go down and several months before Jessica’s new smile was ready.

Later that year, she looked at her old photos online and smiled. “I loved her,” she said. She’s grateful to be in less pain, to be on the path to a new smile. Sometimes, though, it feels like something is missing from who she was. Still, she loves taking selfies (自拍) and admiring her new appearance. “I looked good before,” she said. “I look even better now.”