【推荐1】Nothing good generally comes of a conversation that start with the words, “I think you should probably sit down before I tell you this.”

And so it came to pass. Away for Christmas, we got a call from kind friends at home, our neighbor's house had caught fire while they were out. The fire didn't spread to our house but the smoke very much did.

It's weeks of either throwing out, or sending away for specialist cleaning, every single thing into which smoke could have permeated because the particles are an ongoing health risk and washing isn't enough. Anything soft-sofas and carpets and children's teddy bears, clothes — is suspected. We will be seeing in the New Year in a decidedly minimalist fashion.

What I didn't expect to feel, however, is lucky. Friends and neighbors have come together with incredible generosity. We will never again underestimate the closeness of the village community in which we live, or the innate kindness that is most people's natural reaction to trouble, and are grateful to be reminded of so much that is good. But that's not the only thing I've learned. For in a sense, we have a chance to start again.

The surprise on being forced to think about what might urgently need replacing is how short the list of essentials seems; how much we must have been hanging on to out of habit, and how much we have been conditioned to think was important.

It's all too easily assumed that family history lives in tangible things — old photographs, a dress bought decades ago for a night heavy with memories — but that's not quite right. These things were only reminders of what we already carry with us in head and heart.

Walking through the house, sweeping up the broken glass, I realized that the answer to the old question of   “What would you save in a fire?” is actually that nothing really matters but each other.

【推荐2】When the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969, millions of people were rather sad. The person to blame for this was an artist named Chesley Bonestell. For many years, Bonestell had been creating beautifully detailed paintings of the Moon and planets. Viewers of his artwork were unhappy because the real Moon did not look like Bonestell's pictures of it.

As a space artist, Bonestell tried to make his drawings look exciting and as true as the Moon is. He worked closely with astronomers and scientists to get the most up-to-date scientific information available. But in the 1940s and 1950s, no one had ever seen another planet up close. Yet Bonestell's paintings looked so real that some people thought they were photographs.

Even though Bonestell was interested in astronomy, he did not start out as a space artist. As a young man he studied architecture-the art and science of designing and making buildings. In 1938 Bonestell became a special effects artist in Hollywood. It was here that he learned he could improve his paintings by following the methods used in the movies.

In 1944, a popular magazine published a series of Bonestell's paintings of the planet Saturn. He drew Saturn as if it were seen by someone standing on each of the planet's moons. The results were dazzling. Within a few years, Bonestell's artwork was appearing regularly in magazines and books on astronomy and space flight.

Many of Bonestell's artworks had been right all along. But the biggest surprise was the Moon. Someone asked Bonestell what he was thinking when he saw the first pictures from the Moon. "I thought how wrong I was!" he said. "My mountains were sharp, and they aren't on the Moon."

But he shouldn't have felt bad. No space artist had ever before taken so many people to so many faraway worlds. In the years just before the first manned space flights, Bonestell's artworks prepared people for the amazing space adventure to come.

【推荐3】The jaguars(美洲豹) didn't bother me much during the day. Adonis, our local guide who was leading us deep into the Guatemalan jungle, guaranteed that we wouldn't come under attack from the jaguars. The most recent time he had seen one was more than a year ago. Last week, he had spotted some jaguar tracks, which was probably about as close to the animals as we would get, he said.

But his guarantee meant little that night as I cowered in my hammock(吊床) under the Central American stars. Now my mind turned every soft sound of waving leaves into a moving big cat full of murderous intent(probably to get back at the rude human who had interrupted its life.)And, if it wasn't a jaguar ready to attack, it was a poisonous snake, picking which of my bottoms to sink its long sharp tooth into.

Tiredness calmed my overactive imagination and I slept slightly. Next day, big surprise: no death by either snake bite or jaguar attack and injury. We packed up our stuff and continued toward our destination Mirador, the site of the tallest temple in the Mayan world.

Although we may have questioned why we had left a perfectly nice beach to come here, that night no doubts remained. Just before sunset we took our places at the top of the temple hill. A Mayan astrologer(占星家)had probably sat in the   same place 2,000 years before and improved his knowledge of the Milky Way.

Tonight, as with every night, spectacular pink shades marked the western skyline. The sky darkened and, one by one, the stars shone with a soft light into life.

【推荐2】He Jiang, who was the first person from China to deliver a Harvard University commencement (学位授予典礼) address, has made the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 List.

Forbes’ 30 Under 30 is a set of lists issued annually by Forbes magazine. On Tuesday, the magazine published the sixth annual 30 Under 30, featuring 600 young inventors and leaders who challenge conventional wisdom and rewrite the rules for the next generation.

The list recognizes 30 game-changers in each of 20 industries. All under 30 years old, the candidates were examined by a group of judges in their fields. “The winners are the people that will run every field for the next 50 years,” said Randall Lane, editor of Forbes.

He, a 29-year-old postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was chosen for the healthcare category. He was recommended by his professors at Harvard.

At Harvard, He used a new technology to understand more about how flu infects cells, and discovered human genes with strong anti-viral effects. He is now applying the same techniques to white blood cells. He hopes the lab research he did could be put to practical use in healthcare.

He grew up in a small village with limited educational opportunities. By studying hard, he graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a bachelor’s degree in 2009, and was accepted into Harvard’s PhD program on a full scholarship the same year.

In May, the biochemistry PhD delivered a speech representing the university’s 13 graduate and professional schools at the ceremony. In the speech, he talked about the unbalanced distribution of science and medicine into places they aren’t reaching, like his own village, where his mother once treated his spider bite with fire.

【推荐1】Skyscrapers (摩天大楼) are the symbol of urban life and city people are used to seeing tall buildings and apartments. Farms, on the other hand, are associated with rural life. However, there are experts who think skyscrapers should become farms to meet the increasing food needs.

By the middle of this century, some scientists suggest, almost 80% of the earth’s population could live in cities. In addition, the population could increase to 9.1 billion people during that time yet the amount of land available for farming will be the same. If current farming practices don’t change, we will need an area of new land to produce enough food for the planet.

Vertical farms, where urban farmers could grow crops in environmentally friendly skyscrapers, could be the solution. In spite of concerns over high costs, experts want to make it a reality and use these skyscrapers to grow crops.

Vertical farms would have many advantages, supporters say. Unlike traditional farming, vertical farming could be free of chemicals and diseases. Besides, crops would not suffer from problems like flooding. Finally, vertical farms would reduce the cost and negative effects of transporting food over long distances.

Some argue that although crops growing in a tall glass building would get natural sunlight during the day, it wouldn’t be enough. For this reason, vertical farms would need additional light sources, such as artificial light.

Another way of growing fresh food is to build urban farms on rooftops. This more practical approach may be more achievable than the idea of farms in skyscrapers, researchers suggest. Experts agree that innovative farming practices are needed to support the need for more food at affordable costs, both to the farmer and to the consumer, but the best ideas could be yet to come.

【推荐2】A new study released in the journal Plant and Cell Physiology suggests that ethanol (乙醇) — or alcohol-can help plants survive in times of drought, even for as long as two weeks without water.

To come up with their finding, the researchers grew wheat and rice plants, regularly watering them, and then added ethanol to the soil in one group of plants over three days. They then kept both groups deprived of (中断) water for two weeks and found that drunk plants grew better than untreated ones. Around 75% of the drunk wheat and rice plants survived after rewatering, while less than 5% of the untreated plants did.

The study also looked at how ethanol protected a plant. Using arabidopsis, a small plant commonly used in experiments, the researchers discovered that when ethanol-treated specimens (样品) were deprived of water, tiny openings on the leaves’ surface closed up to preserve water and heat.

The team studied arabidopsis’ gene expression and found that the ethanol-treated plants started behaving if they were experiencing drought, even before they were actually deprived of water. This gene expression gave the plants an advantage in preparing for a drought.

The researchers said, “The finding is not just useful for the world’s gardens, but also for farms growing vital crops like rice and wheat. Drought-resistant crops could help achieve sustainable food security, which is an issue affecting many parts of the world right now.” They added that ethanol was a useful and simple way to increase food production all over the world in times of drought. “The application of ethanol to plants would be a potent agricultural method to enhance drought resistance in different plants,” said Motoaki Seki, the study’s lead author. But, he warned that the ethanol needed to be used reasonably as higher concentration of ethanol prevented plants growing. Seki added, “We will soon begin testing ethanol on plants in real fields.”