1 . Sometimes you’ll hear people say that you can’t love others until you love yourself. Sometimes you’ll hear people say that you can’t expect someone else to love you until you love yourself. Either way, you’ve got to love yourself first and this can be tricky. Sure we all know that we’re the apple of our parents’ eyes, and that our Grandmas think we’re great talents and our Uncle Roberts think that we will go to the Olympics, but sometimes it’s a lot harder to think such nice thoughts about ourselves. If you find that believing in yourself is a challenge, it is time that you built a positive self-image and learn to love yourself.

Self-image is your own mind’s picture of yourself. This image includes the way you look, the way you act, the way you talk and the way you think. Interestingly, our self-images are often quite different from the images others hold about us. Unfortunately, most of these images are more negative than they should be. Thus changing the way you think about yourself is the key to changing your self-image and your whole world.

The best way to defeat a passive self-image is to step back and decide to stress your successes. That is, make a list if you need to, but write down all of the great things you do every day. Don’t allow doubts to occur in it.

It very well might be that you are having a negative self-image because you can’t move past one weakness that you see about yourself. Well, roll up your sleeves(卷起你的袖子) and make a change of it as your primary task. If you think you’re silly because you aren’t good at math, find a tutor. If you think you’re weak because you can’t run a mile, get to the track and practice. If you think you’re dull because                                 you don’t wear the latest trends, buy a few new clothes. But remember, just because you think it doesn’t mean it’s true.

The best way to get rid of a negative self-image is to realize that your image is far from objective, and to actively convince yourself of your positive qualities. Changing the way you think and working on those you need to improve will go a long way towards promoting a positive self-image. When you can pat yourself on the back, you’ll know you’re well on your way. Good luck!

5 . Today we know Antarctica as an extreme environment containing ice and snow. But new research provides evidence that the area had a rainforest in the past.

The researchers collected a piece of Earth sediment from under the seafloor off the coast of Antarctica. In the sediment, they discovered forest material that was estimated to be about 90 million years old. This would have been in the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs were the main land animals. The sediment was removed by scientists on the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in the Amundsen Sea near Pine Island Glacier.

Johann Klages is a geologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. He was the lead writer of a study on the findings, published in the journal Nature. He said the sediment was collected from a depth of about 30 meters below the ocean floor. Klages said an examination showed that the material didn't form in the ocean.

The researchers estimate that the area — about 900 kilometers from the South Pole — had average yearly temperatures of about 12 to 13 degrees Celsius. During the warmest summer months, average temperatures likely reached between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius. The soil included fine dirt particles and hard clay, as well as substances linked to at least 65 different kinds of plants, the study found. Klages added that the plants included trees, ferns and flowering plants. While no animal remains were found, Klages said there were likely dinosaurs, flying reptiles and many insects in the environment.

The research represents new evidence of the major climate changes Earth has experienced in the past — and is currently undergoing today. The soil in the sediment dates back to the planet’s warmest period of the past 140 million years, with sea level about 170 meters higher than today. The researchers said that the rainforest environment in Antarctica was especially surprising because each year, the area experiences a four-month polar night when there is no sunlight to fuel plant life. Klages said no ice sheets were present during the time, but seasonal snowfall was likely.

6 . Predictions about higher education's future often result in two very different visions about what is next for colleges and universities. In one camp: those who paint a rosy picture of an economy that will continue to demand higher levels of education for an increasing share of the workforce. In the other: those who believe fewer people will enroll in college as tuition costs go out of control and alternatives to the traditional degree emerge.

"We are living in an age for learning, when there's so much knowledge available, that one would think that this is good news for higher education." Bryan Alexander told me recently, Alexander writes often about the future of higher education and is finishing a book on the subject for Johns Hopkins University Press. "Yet we've seen enrollment in higher education drop for six years."

Alexander believes that for some colleges and universities to survive, they need to shift from their historical mission of serving one type of student (usually a teenager fresh out of high school) for a specific period of time. "We're going to see many different ways through higher education in the future" Alexander said' "from closer ties between secondary and postsecondary( 放学后) schools to new options for adults. The question is, which institutions adopt new models and which try desperately to hang on to what they have?

“The fact is that to maintain affordability, accessibility and excellence, something needs to change," Rafael Bras, Georgia Tech's provost (院长), told me when he unveiled the report at the Milken Institute Global Conference this past spring..

The commission's report includes many impressive ideas, but three point to the possibility of a very different future for colleges and universities.

(1) College for life, rather than just four years. The primary recommendation of the Georgia Tech report is that the university turns itself into a place for lifelong learning that allows students to “associate rather than enroll.”

(2) A network advisers and coaches for a career. If education never ends, Georgia Tech predicts, neither should the critical advising function that colleges provide to students.

(3) A distributed presence around the world. Colleges and universities operate campuses and require students to come to them. In the past couple of decades, online education has grown greatly, but for the most part, higher education is still about face-to-face interactions.

Georgia Tech imagines a future in which the two worlds are blended in what it calls the "atrium"—a place that share space with entrepreneurs and become gathering places for students and alumni.

In some ways, as the report noted, the atrium idea is a nod to the past, when universities had agricultural and engineering experiment stations with services closer to where people in the state needed them.

Whether Georgia Tech's ideas will become real is, of course, unclear. But as Alexander told me after reading it, "There is a strong emphasis on flexibility and transformation so they can meet emergent trends.” This is clear: colleges and universities are about to undergo a period of deep change—whether they want to or not—as the needs of students and the economy shift.

7 . The damage that aging does to a body extends all the way down to the cellular level. But the damage increased by cells in older muscles is especially severe, because the cells do not reproduce easily and they become weaker as their mitochondria (线粒体), which produce energy, reduce in energy and number. A study, however, suggests that certain sorts of exercise may remove some of what time can do to our mitochondria.

Exercise is good for people, as everyone knows. But scientists have surprisingly little understanding of its cellular impacts and how those might vary by activity and the age of the exerciser. So researchers recently conducted an experiment on the cells of 72 healthy but sedentary (久坐的) men and women who were 30 or younger or older than 64. After baseline measures were established for their aerobic (有氧的) fitness, their blood-sugar levels and the gene activity and mitochondrial health in their muscle cells, the volunteers were randomly assigned to a particular exercise program.

Some of them did weight training several times a week; some did interval training three times a week on exercise bicycles; some rode exercise bikes at a appropriate pace for 30 minutes a few times a week and lifted weights lightly on other days. A fourth group, the control, did not exercise. After 12 weeks, the lab tests were repeated. In general, everyone experienced improvements in fitness and an ability io regulate blood sugar.

But more unexpected results were found in the biopsies (活组织检查) muscle cells. Among the younger subjects who went through interval training, the activity levels had changed in 274 genes, compared with 170 genes for those who exercised more appropriately and 74 for the weight lifters. Among the older group, almost 400 genes were working differently now, compared with 33 for the weight lifters and only 19 for the appropriate exercisers.

It seems exercise could help contain the decline in the cellular health of muscles associated with aging, especially if it was intense, says Dr. Sreekumaran Nair, the study's senior author. In fact, older people's cells responded in some ways more strongly to intense exercise than the cells of the young did - suggesting, he says, that it is never too late to benefit from exercise.

8 . It was late, about 10:15 p.m. Janice Esposito got off the train at Bellport, New York, went to her car and started driving home. She was so familiar with the route that she almost drove automatically: turned left to the Station Road, then another left onto Montauk Highway, and then — bam! When Esposito’s car had just crossed the railroad tracks, it hit another vehicle and was plashed back onto the tracks. Injured but mostly shocked by the crash and by the airbags that popped up, she was stuck in the vehicle.

As it happened, Pete Dipinto was just about to go to sleep when he heard a sharp noise and saw the accident not far outside his bedroom window. As a volunteer firefighter and retired teacher, Dipinto who was 65, fetched a flashlight and rushed out without hesitation. “Any firefighter would have done what I did. We're always on duty.” he said.

At first, he spoiled the other car in the accident. After making sure that the driver was all right, Dipinto looked around and discovered Esposito’s car straddling (跨立于) the railway tracks. And then he heard die bell ring, which signaled a train’s arrival.

Dipinto rushed to Esposito’s car and broke the window on the driver’s side. Esposito looked up at him, with her eyes glazing over, “I don't know where I am.” she said.

“You’re on the railroad tracks,” Dipinto yelled. “I have to get you off right now!” The train was running toward them at a speed of some 105, kilometers per hour. The driver’s door cannot be opened due to the collision, so Dipinto quickly ran to the other side and managed to open the door. He put the airbags aside, seized her arms, pulled her toward him across the passenger seat until finally got her out and walked her to safety as swiftly as possible. Several seconds later, the train crashed into the vehicle. It was like a Hollywood movie, Dipinto told reporters the next day.

“Last night?” said Gregory Miglino Jr. Chief of the Department in South Country Ambulance, the hero arrived in pajamas (睡衣), not in a fire truck.”

10 . A Teacher’s Lifesaving Call

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Julia Koch began what was only her second year as a first grade teacher in a virtual classroom.

One September afternoon a few weeks into the school year, she received a call from Cynthia Phillips, who was having technical difficulties with her granddaughter’s tools for online learning.

Koch immediately knew something was wrong with Phillips. The two women had spoken numerous times before, but Koch had never heard the grandmother sound quite like this. Her words were so jumbled that Koch could barely understand her, though she was able to make out that Phillips had fallen four times that day.

Koch called her principal, Charlie Lovelady, who assured her that he would call and check on Phillips himself.

Just like Koch, Lovelady could barely understand Phillips. He suspected she might be having a stroke—he recognized the signs from when his own father had suffered one. Lovelady was able to make out the word “kids” and immediately became concerned that Phillips’s two grandchildren, aged six and eight, were probably home alone with her—she   is   their primary guardian—and scared. Lovelady asked his office manager to send an ambulance to the grandmother’s home. Then Lovelady called two deans in the school district, to tell them what was going on, both of whom dropped everything and drove to the family’s home.

When they pulled up less than ten minutes later, the EMTs(急救人员)were treating Phillips while the two girls, looking visibly shaken, were outside with a neighbor.

The quick response from Koch and Lovelady saved Phillips’s life. She arrived at the hospital in time to get treatment and before chronic damage occurred.

“If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here,” said Phillips from her hospital bed about a month after her stroke.

Thanks to an extended stay in the hospital, she has regained most of the movement throughout her body except for one hand and a portion of her mouth, which affects her speech.