【推荐2】Robert Vallieres hikes for miles, often three times a week, climbing the high mountains, just to get a glimpse of his beloved birds.

Many years ago, as a young engineer in the army, Vallieres was struck in the head in a task in Gulf War, which ended his military career and left him fighting for his life. He was 28 years old and battled stress, survivor’s guilt and PTSD (创伤后应激障碍). “When you’re disabled and you really can’t move too much, you’re wondering if death is nearby.” he said.

Despite his condition, Vallieres still had to be a father to his little boy-a curious child who helped jump start his love for birds.

One day, his three-year-old son noticed a bird and asked his father what kind it was. Vallieres bought a bird identification book and started learning along with his son. He bought some small telescopes and the two began observing birds together near their home in New Hampshire.

Then came another turning point. Vallieres saw an ad in the newspaper for a birding trip in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and signed up.

Now it’s his joy and renewed purpose to track and save the peregrine falcon and the bald eagle-two species nearly wiped out by the chemicals used for killing pests. It’s hard physical work for anyone, which needs patience, keen observation skills and time. But Vallieres is a natural at it, because his military training made him a perfect match, especially in reading maps and navigating.

Vallieres says not only does his volunteering help with physical fitness, but also his mental state. “To find rhythm or purpose in life besides myself,” says Vallieres, “I shouldn’t get stuck on myself but have a way out.”

【推荐3】A Utah man who has been in a wheelchair for more than three decades has created a pheasant hunt for people like him who need help getting into the outdoors.

Clint Robinson broke his neck after being thrown off a horse at a rodeo (竞技) 32 years ago. He’s done his best to keep getting into the outdoors to hunt and fish, the Daily Herald in Provo reports.

The event he calls “Wheelchairs in the Wild” pairs people that have physical disabilities with hunters who help them with whatever they need. Many go in off-road vehicles.

“What we’re trying to do is get new injured people back out into the field trying to get them back out, enjoying the outdoors and wildlife that’s out there and show them that there’s other things that they can do besides sitting in the house doing nothing,” Robinson said.

The youngest hunter at last year’s event was 13-year-old Missy Cowley who has spina bifida (脊柱裂). Her father loves to hunt but didn’t know how to accommodate (安排) her wheelchair. Her mother, Cindy Cowley, said it was amazing to find a program that allowed her daughter to go hunting.

“We always told her when she was little, you can do everything you want to do…but we just got to figure out a way,” Cindy Cowley said. “But we really didn’t know how we were going to get her up there to hunt.”

Missy Cowley said it was a great experience that also allowed her to meet other people who use wheelchairs. “This is wonderful. I can actually do it,” Missy said. “It was really fun. And I love being outdoors.”

Jerry Schlappi, officer from Division of Wildlife resources, who helped with the event, said Robinson is a perfect role model showing other wheelchair users with disabilities that they don’t have to give up what they love.

【推荐2】As we grow old, we realize that we have so little time to read and there are so many great books that we've yet to get around to. Yet re-readers are everywhere around us. For certain fans, re-reading The Lord of the Rings is a conventional practice annually. One friend told me that Jane Austen's Emma can still surprise him, despite his having read it over 50 times.

New sudden clear understandings can be gained from the process of re-reading. Journalist Rebecca Mead first came across George Eliot's Middlemarch at 17. Since then, she has read it again every five years. With each re-reading, it has opened up further; in each chapter of her life, it has resonated differently. Mead evidenced the large number of ways in which really good books not only stand the test of repeat reads, but also offer fresh gifts each time we re-read them. These kinds of books grow with us.

Scientists have also recognized the mental health benefits of re-reading. Research conducted with readers in the US found that on our first reading, we are concerned with the “what” and the “why”, Second time round, we're able to better appreciate the emotions that the plot continues to express. As researcher Cristel Russell of the American University explained, returning to a book “brings new or renewed appreciation of both the great book and its readers.”

It's true that we often find former selves on the pages of old books. (if we're fond of making notes on the pages). These texts can carry us back to a time and place, and remind us of the kind of person that we were then. We're changed not only by lived experience but also by read experience-by the books that we've discovered since last reading the one in our hand.

Perhaps what's really strange is that we don't re-read more often. After all, we watch our favourite films again and we wouldn't think of listening to an album only once. We treasure messy old paintings as objects, yet of all art forms, literature alone is a largely one-time delight. A book, of course, takes up more time, but as Mead confirms, the rewards make it adequately worthwhile.

【推荐3】I don’t think I need to tell you that reading is good for you. Unfortunately, most people don’t read. Sometimes, people do want to read, but can never seem to find the time.

    1    

Have a goal.

Some people set goals for themselves like reading one book a week. You can start by reading a book a mouth, or a book every two months even. It’s up to you, whatever floats your boat.     2    

Apply a little pressure.

You can have a reading partner. Set something up between both of you like what book you’re going to read and when to see your promise through.     3    The return date gives you a sense of pressure to finish your book by a certain deadline.

    4    

If you’re determined and willing, use every possible moment to bury yourself in the art of the written word. On the bus. On the subway. On your lunch break. Or at the gym. You won’t regret it, I promise!

Take action right away.

    5    We will make up all kinds of excuses not to do it. Not get out of bed. Not clean the house... At these moments, the trick to avoiding this mental block is to just pick up the book and read! Once you start reading, it’s quite difficult to stop!

【推荐1】Fitness trackers are damaging youngster's mental health.     1    A leading preparatory school headmaster has issued this warning. William Dunlop, head of Clayesmore Preparatory School in Dorset, said that "well-meaning" mothers and fathers are increasingly buying their children activity trackers as gifts.

    2     Therefore, they are viewed by many parents as a good way to encourage their children to exercise. But parents are buying the gadgets without necessarily considering the negative side-effects.     3    .

"You have physical as well as mental consequences," he said. "I see the early stages of that. It is not long before the competitive instinct (本能) could become quite unhealthy." Then, writing in Attain, the Independent Prep School Association's magazine, he said: "Wearable activity trackers have become steadily more mainstream over the last few years, so much so that an increasing number of children are wearing them.     4    . The trouble is that the data is very rarely used well. In fact, the way it is presented can be positively harmful."

Mr. Dunlop said that some children are "particularly easy to be influenced by obsessive (过度沉迷的) behavior in pursuit of certain goals, such as 30,000 steps a day". He said "responsible, well-meaning parents" may think they are helping their children by responding to the problem of childhood inactivity.

In fact, Mr. Dunlop says that such items are "entirely unnecessary" as in most cases,       5     The fitness trackers can lead to unpredictable risks of obsessive behavior and overwork as well as the issue of online safety, since so much data about a child's health is uploaded.

If parents really want their children to develop active lifestyle, they should encourage them to take part in sociable sporting activities, Mr. Dunlop advised.

【推荐1】With coronavirus (新冠肺炎)outbreaks at different stages around the world, in many countries lockdowns are being carefully eased off while urging citizens to keep on practicing the social distancing rules. Singapore is trying a new way of carrying it out--a robot dog.

The government has arranged Spot, a yellow and black robotic dog made by Boston Dynamics Company, at one local park. The same robot has been previously seen dancing to hit song “Uptown Funk.”However, 2020 is an extremely difficult year and the company is trying to assist the national coronavirus-control effort. In turn, the job has been handed over to Spot.

The four-legged robot dog patrols(巡查) the park and broadcasts a pre-recorded message to encourage visitors to observe safe distancing measures. As it walks around the park, the dog says in a female voice, "Let's keep Singapore healthy. For your own safety and for those around you, please stand at least one meter apart. Thank you.

Spot is one of the world's most advanced robots and unlike wheeled robots, it is capable of going pretty much anywhere a dog can go and can walk up to three miles per hour over different areas, making it ideal for operation in public parks and gardens. Furthermore, it is remotely controlled and has cameras with 360-degree vision and analytic tools to scan the surroundings and help officials estimate the number of people gathering in the park.

For now, the pilot project is currently set to run in a limited trial for two weeks at one park during off-peak(非高峰)hours. But if all goes well, authorities will consider expanding the program to improve enforcement(强制)of social distance throughout on Singapore

Spot is also being used in other ways during the public health crisis beyond just patrolling a park. The government says it's also using Spot in another capacity- at a local isolation facility where the robot helps bring medicine to patients.

【推荐3】Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Standford University, excelled in the lab, where he created the Bose-Einstein condensate (玻色—爱因斯坦凝聚态). However, his mastery in the lab did not extend to the classroom. For years, he wrestled with what seemed to be a straightforward task: making undergraduates comprehend physics as he did. Laying it out for them — explaining, even demonstrating the core concepts of the discipline—was not working. Despite his clear explanations, his students’ capacity to solve the problems he posed to them remained inadequate.

It was in an unexpected place that he found the key to the problem: not in his classrooms but among the graduate students(研究生) who came to work in his lab. When his PH.D. candidates entered the lab, Wieman noticed, their habits of thought were no less narrow and rigid than the undergraduates. Within a year or two, however, these same graduate students transformed into the flexible thinkers he was trying so earnestly, and unsuccessfully, to cultivate. “Some kind of intellectual process must have been missing from the traditional education,” Wieman recounts.

A major factor in the graduate students’ transformation, Wieman concluded, was their experience of intense social engagement around a body of knowledge — the hours they spent advising, debating with, and recounting anecdotes to one another. In 2019, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences backed this idea. Tracking the intellectual advancement of several hundred graduate students in the sciences over the course of four years, its authors found that the development of crucial skills such as generating hypotheses (假设), designing experiments, and analyzing data was closely related to the students’ engagement with their peers in the lab, rather than the guidance they received from their faculty mentors (导师).

Wieman is one of a growing number of Stanford professors who are bringing this “active learning” approach to their courses. His aspiration is to move science education away from the lecture format, toward a model that is more active and more engaged.