【推荐2】When a stranger gave Danille and her husband Nathan a box of onions which they later found they didn’t need, she decided to pass the kindness on.

Mindful of many families struggling to feed their loved ones, Danielle placed the onions outside her home with a sign encouraging locals to “take what you need, share what you can”. Now, one year on, their stand(摊位), called the “Waverley Co-op”, provides thousands of locals with 500kg of fruit, vegetables, and bread each week. “Residents and charities donate some produce, and we top this up with $ 100 of fresh fruit and other foods,” says Danielle, who explains that others began adding to the stand with their own donations.

“A common story we hear is that the items people take from the stand enable them to save a few extra dollars so they can afford to buy meat that week.” For a new mum Stacey, it’d been the lifeline she needed to keep food on the table for her family.

Last year, the 33-year-old’s one-year-old son Kaidan ran into a hot fire screen, badly burning his hands and forehead. Then, her husband lost his job. With Kaidan needing urgent medical care in Hobart 200km away, the mother spent four weeks at her son’s bedside before returning home, which led to piles of overdue bills at home. “Without the help of the Waverley Co-op, we wouldn’t have had food or nappies,” says Stacey, who discovered the volunteer-led stand by word of mouth.

“It has been a blessing to hear the stories and meet the people in our community,” says Danielle, who couldn’t be happier that a box of onions brought so many people together. “The invisible atmosphere of trust, support, and connection—that’s been the biggest success!”

【推荐3】Jeff was diagnosed in 2010 with multiple myeloma(多发性骨髓瘤). It is a disease that is usually noticed when grandpa falls and breaks his hip. The average patient is in his early 70s. But Jeff was only 50 when diagnosed.

“I wondered why me, as a young guy?” Jeff says. But his relative youth and good health has put him in a position to fight the disease in his way.

In January Jeff and his wife Ramona will join a team climbing to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness and funds for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. It’s an adventure he’s dreamed about since the 4th grade.

Jeff will be one of four in the group who are myeloma patients not willing to be threatened by cancer. He and Ramona have raised nearly $18,000 toward their combined goal of $20,000.

Still, he’s confident that his earlier marathon training has prepared him to climb the highest free-standing mountain in the world. “I just have to deal with it and understand my limitations.” he says.

What Jeff sees is a clear future. “Having cancer narrows the focus about what we want to do and who we want to do it with.” he says. He and Ramona now ask themselves, “How do we go out and live the most fulfilling lives? Who are the most important people in our lives? What brings us joy?”

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is their next adventure, but Jeff knows it won’t be just a personal accomplishment. “I do these things for all the people who can’t.” he says.

Jeff is certain that his passion for hiking and adventure will take him to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and that his story will inspire those with multiple myeloma to keep sight of who they are beyond their diagnosis.

“It’s obvious to me,” he says, “that this is part of my fate.”

【推荐1】Born on her family’s farm in Ray, North Dakota, Mary Sherman Morgan had been helping her father with farm work before she could attend the small-town schoolhouse. Being a few years behind didn’t hold her back and she graduated from high school with honors. Aware of her intelligence, she ran away from Ray to attend Minot State University as a chemistry major, where her skill was evident.

The outbreak of World War II resulted in a national shortage of chemists and scientists. In spite of the fact that she was still a student and a woman, she was offered a job as a chemical analyst due to her talents, producing explosives(爆炸物)for the wartime effort. She put her degree on hold and moved to Ohio, taking on the dangerous job of analyzing unstable chemicals to produce weapons.

After the war ended there was a fall in demand for explosives, so she made a move to the field of aeronautics, moving to California to work for NAA(North American Aviation). The only woman out of 900 engineers, she was soon promoted to a role which involved calculating the performance of rocket propellants(推进剂)and designing speciality fuels to work with different engines. However, never having returned to complete her degree, she was not afforded the rank or higher pay of an engineer, even though she had all the skills and knowledge of one.

Her experience with propellants meant that when NAA was tasked to find a fuel capable of lifting the redesigned Redstone missiles into space, Mogan was appointed technical lead on the project. National pride was on the line, so Morgan set about investigating fuels. After countless trails, she finally designed her own mixture, which was named Hydyne.

Hydyne tested well with the Redstone missiles and subsequently other aircraft(飞行器), such as Jupiter-C rockets, proving to be a quick solution to getting to space without a total rocket redesign. The fuel made the first successful US satellite launch possible, even if Morgan silently slipped away from her success, retiring to focus on her family and leaving her chemistry career behind.

【推荐2】What do Neil Armstrong, Ed White and today’s astronauts have in common? They all wear a white spacesuit. Beyond NASA, space programs in countries like Russia and China also use white suits. This basic color has saved countless astronaut lives. NASA didn’t always have white spacesuits. Their very first manned spaceflight, Project Mercury, used silver suits, but none of those astronauts actually explored the vacuum(真空)of space. And that’s the key because out there, spacesuits have to be highly reflective. And the best color for that isn’t silver, but white.

Here on Earth, our atmosphere protects us from 77% of the sun’s radiation. But astronauts in space don’t have that natural protection, making them easily hurt by extreme temperatures, severe sunburn, and even cancer-causing cell damage. So to prevent that, they wear white suits that reflect the sun’s harmful radiation.

But those white EVA suits aren’t the only garment in an astronaut’s closet. When heading into space or coming home, NASA astronauts wear a bright orange suit similar in color to the safety vests Air Force pilots wear, and it’s for similar reasons that loud orange stands out against the blue ocean and sky and is perfect for attracting attention.

That being said, times are changing. Nowadays we have more ways of finding out astronauts in need of rescue like GPS, so space agencies are now free to get creative with their color choices. NASA and other programs are already starting to use other colors like deep blue and mustard yellow. In the future, they could look a lot different because NASA is heading to Mars. It will be the longest crewed space mission(飞行任务)to date, taking as long as three years from start to finish, and during that time, astronauts could suffer from boredom or depression. That’s where colorful spacesuits could be useful.

【推荐3】Kathy Sullivan and an underwater explorer named Victor Vescovo dived 10,915 meters below the surface of the Pacific Ocean in a submarine(潜艇), making the 68-year-old ex-astronaut the first woman ever to reach that depth and Vescovo the only person to have dived to the place three times. Dr. Sullivan was among the first women to join NASA as an astronaut. In 1984，she took part in a 3.5 hour spacewalk and became the first American woman to take part in activities in space outside of a spacecraft. But she has also intended to contribute something to the ocean. After she left NASA in 1993, she began working for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) as its chief scientist.

The goal of the submarine dive was the Mariana Trench, the deepest valley in the ocean floor. And its deepest part, also the deepest point on Earth is known as Challenger Deep that is nearly 11 kilometers below the surface of the ocean.

At present, there’s only one submarine called Limiting Factor in the world that can take two people down that far. It was built for Vescovo. Last year, Vescovo used it to map the deepest points in all five of the world’s oceans. He is the first person to have done this. Because it’s so hard to get down to Challenger Deep, before Dr. Sullivan, only seven people had ever reached it. This time, the two spent about an hour and a half at the bottom, taking pictures of the area to be used for Sullivan’s studies. The time is required to adjust to the changing pressure from the weight of the water above, and it took four hours for the submarine to come back to the surface. After that, they made a phone call to the International Space Station (ISS) to compare ideas with the astronauts about what was similar between their experiences. For Dr. Sullivan, this experience was a “once-in-a-lifetime day”.

【推荐1】Running is undoubtedly a healthy lifestyle, but it is difficult to stick to it. I still remember one 50-minute run in particular in the spring of 2018. I made a detailed plan at first and immediately began creating a long list of excuses as to why this was simply just not going to work, why I wasn’t fit enough and why I would fail. I was afraid that I had no confidence in my plan. Before I even tied my shoes, I’d already convinced myself I couldn’t do that.

How would it go? I had quit the workout mentally before I even started. Who knows how many times I stopped and restarted my watch? I spent an awfully long afternoon sitting by the road feeling sorry for myself. One bad workout would even upset me for days. I questioned my fitness gradually and cut more workouts short. And pretty soon, my fitness gradually came to a steady level or moved backward.

The problem I gradually realized was that I treated my entire training plan like a tempo run—hard, fast, strict. In a tempo run, if you don’t hit your pace early, it’s nearly impossible to catch up. Therefore, I realized I needed to treat my training like my favorite workout: the long run. I love ignoring my watch, settling into a relaxing pace, enjoying the route and focusing on only one goal—finishing. I love that I can have a bad mile in the middle and still end up strong.

Now, when I set a new goal and write a new training plan, I have what I call “the long-run mindset”. I find success and value in my training because I’m not eager for immediate results as before. Yes, there is still an important place for hard fast tempo runs, but I have shifted my attitude to thinking bigger than short-term outcomes and work towards lifelong success.

【推荐2】"Get up, get up, Jim. It's time to get up!" my mother said while she was pushing me. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. "Oh dear! It's a quarter to eight already. I'll be late for school again," I thought. I jumped out of the bed, washed my face, then hurried to the bus stop without breakfast. As soon as I got on the bus, it started running. "I'm sure I can get to the school on time," I said to myself. Suddenly the bus stopped. The bus driver got off the bus, then got on the bus again and said, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. There's something wrong with the bus. Please get off the bus and wait for another one." "I couldn't wait. The school is not far. I'd better run to the school," I thought, and then I began to run. But before I got to the school, it began to rain hard.

I reached the classroom but I was wet shivering with cold. The physics teacher had already begun his lesson. It was Mr. Smith. He was about fifty years old. All the students were a little afraid of him and so was I. I liked neither him nor his physics lessons. I hesitated for a moment and then I opened the door. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Smith. I'm late again," I said with a red face.

"It's you again, Jim," Mr. smith said angrily. "I've told you not be late, but you…" he suddenly stopped and looked at my wet clothes. He turned to the class and said, "I'm very sorry, my boys and girls." With these words he quickly took off his own jacket and handed it to me. "Now take off your wet coat and put this one or you'll catch cold," he said kindly.

I went to my seat with Mr. Smith's jacket on. It was a bit large for me but I felt very warm in it. I found, for the first time, physics was so interesting and how well I could understand it!