【推荐1】It began as a game: High school and college students studying computer technology figured out they could use personal computers to break into telephone company computers and make free, long-distance telephone calls. These young computer talents soon gained the name "hackers".

Police arrested a few hackers, but many went on to even more complex hacking. One of them was arrested for making illegal telephone calls and later he used a phone to change a police officer's credit records to get back at the officer for arresting him. He also used a computer to change his college records to give himself better grades.

As hackers gained experience, they began invading computers at banks, airlines and other businesses. In one case a hacker instructed an airline' s computer to give him free airplane tickets.

The U.S. government is worried that hackers may break into its networks of defense computers. The government's secrets are easily attacked because thousands of government computers are connected by telephone lines that hackers can get into.

In November 1988, a college student entered a U.S. Defense Department computer network called Arpanet. The hacker injected a computer program that made copies of itself throughout Arpanet. Some hackers use viruses to destroy all the data in a computer. But in this case, government officials shut down the network before the program reached every computer in the system. Shutting down the system angered many researchers who were using the computers. The hacker turned himself in to the police and he was charged with a crime.

The incident put the spotlight on computer hacking in the United States. Many companies have hired experts to protect their computers from hackers, and many computer experts now advise companies on how to protect their computers.

The U.S. government believes foreign governments have hired hackers to try to break into top-secret defense computers.

Experts disagree over whether a computer network can ever be safe from hacking. But in the future, some of the most outstanding minds in the U.S. will be working to frustrate the attempts of computer hackers.

【推荐1】A wildfire is a fire that burns strongly and out of control in the wild. Wildfires are becoming even more powerful and harmful over time. That is in part because of climate change. Hotter temperatures and drier forests are helping to cause wildfires. The fires start from natural causes, like lightning. Humans can start fires with cigarettes or campfires, accidentally.

Sometimes, people can set fires on purpose. This is to help an ecosystem and those that live there. For thousands of years, humans have set fires on purpose. Fire does put living things in danger, but this happens naturally, Over time, ecosystems have adapted to the benefits from regular fires, because fires clear out dead material. Some plant and animal populations actually need fire to survive and reproduce. The fires help encourage healthy ecosystems. Of course, these are controlled burns. Modern fire experts now know how to set controlled burns that are well planned and safe.

Why is fire necessary? As dead or decaying(腐朽的) plants begin to build up on the ground, they may prevent organisms in the soil from getting nutrients(养分).They may keep animals on the land from getting to the soil. This coating of dead matter can also choke the growth of smaller or new plants.

Fire removes that layer of decay. The soil gets nutrients from the burned material faster than if it had slowly over time. This allows healthy parts of the ecosystem to grow stronger and stronger.

Some plants actually need fire to continue their life cycles. Seeds from some pine trees grow in pine cones that are covered in a thick sap(汁液). The seeds release from the pine cones when fire melts the sap. Fires allow more seeds to get to the soil and grow. The healthier plant populations after a fire can help animals, too Animals that live in nine trees benefit from more growing trees. Plant growth provides the food sources of animals.

Humans should prevent most uncontrolled damaging wildfires. But trying to prevent all fires might make matters worse. Understanding the benefits of fire is the only way to truly keep our ecosystem safe from its dangers.

【推荐2】Another milestone has been passed in the adoption of 3D printing. Daihatsu，a daughter company of Toyota，announced that it would begin offering car buyers the opportunity to customize（订制）their vehicles with 3D-printed pars. This brings to drivers with more modest budgets the kind of individual tailoring of vehicles，which is restricted to the luxury cars and sports cars of the super-rich.

The service is available. only to buyers of the Daihatsu Copen，a tiny changeable two-seater. Customers ordering this car from their local dealer can choose one of 15 "effect skins". The buyers can then use a website to improve the designs further to create exactly the look they want.

Copen buyers will like selecting unique add-ons rather than choosing from a list of standard accessories（配件），says Osamu Fujishita of Daihatsu. The company is testing the service in a few markets. "I think the Copen project is just the start," adds Mr Fujishita.

Other carmakers are watching closely. Generally. personal customization is available only where money is no object –on cars such as Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. But 3D printers change the economics of production. Since software is behind the process，changes can be made easily and cheaply. Besides 3D printing saves on retooling（更换）costs to make small runs of parts and spares if they suffer damage later.

The aerospace industry is already well advanced in using 3D printers for custom parts. Airlines often clearly customized fittings for the inside of their aircraft. Specialized parts are 3D-printed for acing cars too，but until Daihatsu's move，mainstream carmakers have mainly used 3D machines to make prototype（原型）vehicles rather than production pars.

【推荐3】Check out our tsunami facts and learn some interesting information related to these great walls of water that can cause so much destruction. Find out what causes tsunamis and read about some recent examples of tsunamis that have occurred around the globe.

The Japanese word for tsunami means harbor wave.

Tsunamis are sometimes referred to as tidal (受潮汐影响的) waves but this term has fallen out of favor because tsunamis are not related to tides.

Tsunamis are huge waves of water that are usually caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

As a tsunami approaches the shore (海岸), water may move back from the coast. If it is shallow (浅的) enough the water may be pulled back hundreds of meters. If you are in the area, you can know that a tsunami is on the way when you see this phenomenon.

Regions in tsunami danger zones often have warning systems in place to give people as much time as possible to move to a safe place.

When tsunamis hit shallow water (often near the coast) they slow down but increase in height.

An earthquake in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia in December 2004 caused a tsunami that killed over 200,000 people in 14 countries.

In March 2011, the Tohoku earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan caused a tsunami that was a major factor in the death of over 15,000 people.

The tsunami waves created by the Tohoku earthquake reached heights of over 40 meters in some areas, wiping out coastal towns and causing a number of nuclear accidents.

【推荐1】Parents' love for their children can make them do crazy things, like driving 40 miles to deliver a single soccer cleat (护腿板). But one of the weirdest thing parents do is love their children more than their partners.

Before you call child services, let me be clear: Of course you have to love your kids. Of course you have to put their needs first. But doing so is also a no-brainer. Children, with their urgent and often tricky-to-understand needs, easily attract devotion. Partners don't need to be fed and dressed or have their tears dried. Loving your kids is like going to school-you don't really have a choice, Loving your partner is like going to college—it's up to you to show up and participate.

So why do the harder work for the less adorable, more capable being in your life?

One reason, actually, is for the kids. Research strongly suggests that children whose parents love each other are much happier and more secure than those raised in a loveless environment. They have a model of not just what a relationship looks like but also of how people should treat each other.

Diary studies, in which parents log their day's activities each evening, have shown that mishandled tensions between a couple are likely to turn into parent’ bad interactions with their kids, especially for fathers. Children, whose parents are often quarrelling with each other, blame themselves for the fighting and do worse at school, another research has found. In fact, a 2014 survey of 40,00 U.K. households showed that teenagers were happiest overall when their mothers were happy with their relationships with their male partners. And this is for parents who say together; the outcomes for kids of divorce are generally darker. One of the best things you can do for your kids is to love your partner as much as you can.

【推荐2】Jason had trouble making out what his friend was saying in noisy bars, but when he got a hearing test, the result was normal. Recent research may have found an explanation for problems like his, something called “hidden hearing loss”.

Scientists have been finding evidence that loud noise damages our hearing in a formerly ignored way. It may not be immediately noticeable, and it does not show up in standard hearing tests. But over time, Harvard researcher Charles Liberman says, “it can rob our ability to understand conversation in a noisy setting. It may also help explain why people have more trouble doing that as they age. And it may lead to constant ringing in the ears.”

To understand Liberman’s research, we should know just how we hear. When sound enters our ears, it’s picked up by so-called hair cells. They change sound waves to signals that are carried by nerves to the brain. People can lose hair cells for a number of reasons—loud noise, some drugs or aging—and our hearing degrades(退化) as these hair cells are lost. That loss is what is picked up by a standard test called an audiogram that measures how soft a noise we can hear in a quiet environment.

Liberman’s work suggests there’s another kind of damage that doesn’t kill off hair cells, but leads to experiences like Jason’s. The connections between hair cells are called synapses(突触)，and a given hair cell has many of them. Animal studies suggest you could lose more than half of your synapses without any effect on how you score on an audiogram. “But it turns out,” Liberman says, “that losing enough synapses damages the message the nerves send to the brain, removing details that are important for selecting conversation out from background noise.” “It’s as if there’s a big screen showing a picture,” he says, “but as more and more of its bulbs go black, it gets harder and harder to realize what the picture shows.”

One encouraging indication from animal studies is that a drug might be able to stimulate nerves to regrow the lost synapses, according to Liberman, who holds a stock in a company that is trying to develop such a treatment.

【推荐1】Fire Capt. Kevin Lloyd arrived at the scene of a car accident in West Point, Utah, north of Salt Lake City. A pregnant woman and her screaming 2-year-old daughter were trapped in the car.

While his partner, Allen Hadley, was tending to the driver, Lloyd couldn't get the frightened girl to calm down. He saw she was holding several bottles of nail polish(指甲油), and then he had a better idea. He asked her if she wanted to paint his nails. Soon she entirely lit up. At the same time, Hadley showed up to check on the scene.

Lloyd had calmed her down and was in the process of getting his fingers painted. Then Hadley just put his hand in there. The girl began to color his nails pink. By this time, she was not only calm, but she was also happy.

The girl's mother was not injured. She thanked them for helping her daughter feel better, and they all chuckled, looking at the firefighters' nails, and took some photos.

The firefighters brought the photos back to headquarters and showed them around. The department put them up on Facebook, and thousands of people responded, with many thanking the firefighters for going out of their way to calm down a frightened girl.

Fire Chief Mark Becraft said he had been surprised at all the attention. He said he was proud of his firefighters, and added that he had known members of the department who had done many things that weren't part of the job.

After the fact, Lloyd and Hadley had a small matter to tend to： the layers of polish on their nails. They bought a bottle of nail polish remover, and used almost all of it.

【推荐2】A cancer survivor has become the first woman to complete an exhausting “Sea to Summit” triathlon（三项全能运动） which saw her swim, cycle, and run over 330 miles in just five days. Andrea Mason was overjoyed when she crossed the finish line early Wednesday morning.

The race was set in the French Alps. Setting off at 6:15am on Friday, 39-year-old Mason battled through severe pain, and hallucinations(幻觉)，but she pushed on --managing to complete the race in an impressive four days, 23 hours, and 41 minutes. Andrea had been diagnosed with cancer and needed life-saving surgery. Following a successful operation, she is now hoping to raise awareness of women’s health. In the past year，Andrea set up her own charity, Lady Talk Matters, in order to improve surrounding female’s health.

Andrea, from Blackpool in Lancashire, England, said，“I am so happy all went according to plan as there were so many things that could have gone wrong. I wanted to do it in five days， and I did，but it was very tough. I had some low moments, particularly when I couldn’t sleep in my limited rest periods, and when I couldn’t keep any food down as I was running. For sure I had some doubts along the way as I was exploring the unknown with such a huge run, particularly as large parts of it were in the dark. It was bigger than I imagined, the impact on my body was huge. But every time I felt like giving up，I thought about all the women out there in pain or who still hadn’t been diagnosed. That is why I put myself through this.”

Andrea had to swim 23 miles around Lake Annecy, cycle 205 miles with 30,000 feet of vertical climbing around Mont Blanc, and run 105 miles with 4,000 feet of vertical climbing around The Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc. You could say Andrea’s actually spent a lifetime training for an event like this. She completed her first three-mile race “powered by chocolate bars＂ when she was just four.

【推荐3】It’s possible to admire Oprah Winfrey and still wish Harvard hadn’t awarded her an honorary doctor of law degree and the commencement speaker spot at yesterday’s graduation. There’s no question Oprah’s achievements place her in the temple of American success stories. Talent, charm, and an exceptional work ethic have rarely hurled anyone as far as they have this former abused teenage mother from rural Mississippi who became one of the world’s most successful entertainment icons and the first African-American female billionaire.

Honorary degrees are often conferred on non-academic leaders in the arts, business, and politics. Harvard’s list in recent years has included Kofi fi Annan, Bill Gates, Meryl Streep, and David Souter. But Oprah’s particular brand of celebrity is not a good fit for the values of a university whose motto, Veritas, means truth. Oprah’s passionate advocacy extends, unfortunately, to a hearty embrace of fake science. Most notoriously, Oprah’s validation of Jenny McCarthy’s claim that vaccines cause autism has no doubt contributed to much harm through the foolish avoidance of vaccines.

Famous people are entitled to a few failings, like the rest of us. And the choice of commencement speakers often reflects a balance of institutional priorities and aspirations. Judging from our conversations with many students, Oprah was a widely popular choice.

But this vote of confidence in Oprah sends a troubling message at precisely the time when American universities need to do more to advance the cause of reason. As former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis, noted in a blog post about his objections. “It seems very odd for Harvard to honor such a high profile popularizer of the irrational… at a time when political and religious nonsense so jeopardize the rule of reason in this allegedly enlightened democracy and around the world.”

As America’s oldest and most visible university, Harvard has a special opportunity to convey its respect for science not only through its research and teaching programs but also in its public affirmation of evidence-based inquiry.

Unfortunately, many American universities seem awfully busy protecting their brand name and not nearly busy enough protecting the pursuit of knowledge. A recent article in The Harvard Crimson noted the shocking growth of Harvard’s public relations arm in the last five years and it questioned whether a focus on risk management and avoiding controversy was really the best outward-looking face of this great institution.

As American research universities begin to resemble profit centers and entertainment complexes, it’s easy to lose sight of their primary mission: to produce and spread knowledge. This mission depends on traditions of rational discourse and vigorous defense of the scientific method. Oprah Winfrey’s honorary doctorate was a step in the wrong direction.