【推荐1】In my living room, there is a plaque(匾) that advises me to “Bloom(开花) where you are planted.” It reminds me of Dorothy. I got to know Dorothy in the early 1980s，when I was teaching Early Childhood Development through a program with Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky. The job responsibilities required occasional visits to the classroom of each teacher in the program. Dorothy stands out in my memory as one who “bloomed” in her remote area.

Dorothy taught in a school in Harlan County, Kentucky, Appalachian Mountain area. To get to her school from the town of Harlan, I followed a road winding around the mountain. In the eight-mile journey, I crossed the same railroad track five times, giving the possibility of getting caught by the same train five times. Rather than feeling excited by this drive through the mountains, I found it depressing. The poverty level was shocking and the small shabby houses gave me the greatest feeling of hopelessness.

From the moment of my arrival at the little school, all gloom(忧郁) disappeared. Upon arriving at Dorothy’s classroom, I was greeted with smiling faces and treated like a queen. The children had been prepared to show me their latest projects. Dorothy told me with a big smile that they were serving poke greens salad and cornbread for “dinner” (lunch). In case you don’t know, poke greens are a weed-type plant that grows wild, especially on poor ground.

Dorothy never ran out of reports of exciting activities of her students. Her enthusiasm never cooled down. When it came time to sit for the testing and interviewing required to receive her Child Development Associate Certification, Dorothy was ready. She came to the assessment and passed in all areas. Afterward, she invited me to the one-and-only steak house in the area to celebrate her victory, as if she had received her Ph.D. degree. After the meal, she placed a little box containing an old pen in my hand. She said it was a family heirloom (传家宝), but to me it is a treasured symbol of appreciation and pride that cannot be matched with things.

【推荐2】Have you ever dreamed of meeting top scientists in person? If so, what would you want to ask them?

For Tan Fanglin, a 15-year-old girl from No. 2 High School of East China Normal University in Shanghai, her dream of meeting top scientists has already come true. In October 2019, she attended the World Laureates Forum for a second time, which had attracted 44 Nobel Prize Winners and 21 other world-class award winners. Tan was by far the youngest participant among the scientists invited to be at the meeting of the world’s sharpest minds.

Her discovery about the relationship between the Fibonacci sequence (斐波那契数列) and Bézout numbers (贝祖数) has won her many prizes in youth innovation competitions both in Shanghai and elsewhere in China. Her finding has been praised by the famous Canadian mathematician, Professor Rankin, who has been studying the same theme for five years but with no conclusions.

From a very young age, Tan has always been fascinated by mathematics. This is largely because her father, who teaches mathematics in East China Normal University, has a profound impact on her. According to Xu Jun, the head teacher, Tan doesn’t take after-school classes or too many extra exercises either. Her mastering of Advanced Mathematics and her good grades in school are thanks to the right study method. Her mother told Guangming Daily that Tan always treats studying and life with a positive state of mind so she can feel happy while studying.

Attending this forum enabled Tan to get more inspiration from top scientists. She even got the opportunity to talk with Gero Miesenbock, the 2019 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize winner. She asked Professor Miesenbock what he considered were the best personal qualities for conducting scientific research. Miesenbock encouraged her not to lose her passion and love for what she does. He said that accepting failures is crucial for researchers. He stressed that people all knew that even Thomas Edison went through hundreds of unsuccessful attempts before finally inventing the light bulb. The words made Tan feel inspired and she promised to keep her curiosity and interests in mathematics and overcome any obstacles in her research.

【推荐3】Cigarette butts (烟蒂) are everywhere - clogging up our streets, littering our beaches - and for decades they’ve been thought of as “unrecyclable”. But a New Jersey-based company, called TerraCycle, has taken on the challenge, and has come up with a way to recycle millions of cigarette butts and turn them into industrial plastic products. Its aim is to take items that people normally consider impossible to recycle, and then use science to figure out a way to do just that.

Despite the increase in anti-smoking ads and messaging over the past 20 years, global sales of cigarettes increased by 8 percent, and a whole lot of those cigarette butts are ending up as trash, which can surely pollute the surrounding environment.

So how do you go about turning all those poisonous ends into something useful? TerraCycle does this by first breaking them down into separate parts. They mix the remaining materials, such as the tobacco and the paper, with other kinds of rubbish, and use it on non-agricultural land, such as golf courses. The filters (过滤嘴) are a little harder. To recycle these, TerraCycle first makes them clean and cuts them into small pieces, and then combines them with other recycled materials, making them into liquid for industrial plastic products.

They now have more than 7,000 cigarette recycling bins in nine countries around the world. They’re also expanding their recycling offerings to the rest of the 80 percent of household waste that currently can’t be recycled, such as chocolate packaging, pens, and mobile phones. The goal is to use the latest research to find a way to stop so much waste ending up in. landfill (垃圾填埋), and then get companies to fund the process. And so far, it’s working.

“We haven’t found anything that we can’t recycle,” communications director of Terra Cycle, Albe Zakes, said. “But with the amount and variety of packaging and litter in the world, we are always looking for new waste streams to address.”

【推荐1】The quick action of Nick helped five people escape a fire on Hope Road. Nick said he usually left his house about 5:30 a.m. to do morning exercises, but that day he decided to stay at home to get his daughter ready for school. As he looked at his neighbor’s house, he realized that it was on fire. “I saw smoke and flames and ran over and started beating on the side of the house shouting, ‘Your house is on fire! Your house is on fire!’” Nick remembered it was at about 9 a.m. that the firefighters put out the fire.

Beverly Penny and her husband, Clark, along with their younger daughters, were sleeping in the living room, next to the kitchen, when they heard Nick beating on the walls. She opened the bedroom door and black smoke came in. She managed to get her kids out. Her dog tried to hide under the bed, but Penny caught it by the leg and threw it out of the door. However, chickens in one of the rooms weren’t so lucky.

Firefighters got the call at about 7:05 a.m. “When we arrived with our fire trucks, there were heavy flames outside on the house,” Jerry said. He called Nick a hero, saying that without his quick responses(回应) the result could have been much worse. “The firefighters were fast,” Nick said. “They arrived here within about three minutes.”

“They did a great job, and I can’t thank them enough,” Penny said, then looked at what remained in the house and shook her head as tears rolled down in her eyes. “Everything I have is gone. Luckily nobody was hurt in the fire.” She said the fire could have been caused by an electrical problem. “We’ve been having problems with mice, so that we could have had something to do with it,” she added.

【推荐2】    1    

Have you ever found yourself waiting at the stop for your bus to arrive and have a stranger ask a commonplace question? Perhaps you've stood in line waiting for a coffee and feel the need to just look over to the person next to you and ask about the weather.

This is small talk, it's actually a big part of daily life.

"Small talk may seem unimportant, but it's a natural way for people to connect. It may seem like a waste of time.

    2    Big relationships are built on small talk," Lindy Pegler, who has a master's degree in psychology, wrote on Medium.

    3    Often, we find ourselves making small talk with the same people on a regular basis. Coming up with small conversations is the foundation of these relationships.

The benefits of such conversations can actually contribute to our happiness and benefit our lives as a whole.    4    It can be as simple as complimenting（称赞）one's shirt, asking about their day or commenting on the traffic.

Who knows where this can lead?    5    You might find someone who has a common interest, or maybe even someone who turns out to be a close friend. There is one thing for sure: Making small talk can brighten our day—even if it's just a nice comment or a thoughtful question.

So the next time you find yourself waiting for the bus or checking your watch while you wait in a line, take the opportunity to look up and talk to someone around you. After all, it takes a small connection to lead to a larger one.