1 . Will your kids love your favorite childhood reads? Let’s get to it: Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I’m reaching way back with this one (1881), but after all, who doesn’t love a good rags to-riches story?

Oh, those little Peppers. How well I remember Phronsie, Ben, Polly, Joel and Davie, and how hard they worked in the little brown house to help their poor mother, Mamsie. My kids are not yet at an age when they realize just how poor the Peppers are. But my kids are as drawn to this story as I was as a child. And I am not the one to turn down an opportunity to share an example of children gladly helping their mother.

I’m not reaching back quite as far with 1943’s Cherry Ames, Student Nurse by Helen Wells, but convincing my kids that once it wasn’t easy for nurses to wear caps and dresses. When I was little, I couldn’t get enough of Cherry’s adventures. How pioneering Cherry was! She had a job when there were few jobs available to women, she never got married, and she solved mysteries when men couldn’t. Cherry always knew what to do. She was smart, pretty, strong and ambitious. I love her.

I know the time will come when my son asks, “Come on, Mom, Didn’t you read any books with men in them?” and I’ll have to answer honestly, “No. But maybe one day a few.”

The day will come when we can go back to the library and see what is new on the shelves, and that will be a great day. But for now, I plan not to let any book on our shelves go to waste. It may seem that reaching for a book that’s more than a century older than my kids is just as ambitious as reading Frankenstein, but I’m really confident, this time.

2 . Avi Loeb, a scientist, believes that we are not alone in the universe. The belief fits with Loeb’s alien (外星的) spaceship theory that at least one alien spaceship might be flying over the orbit (轨道) of Jupiter, which won the international attention last year.

Astronomers in Hawaii found the first known interstellar (星际的) object in late 2017. It was a bit of light moving so fast past the sun that it could only have come from another star. Almost every astronomer on the planet was trying to figure out how the object, called “Oumuamua” got to our far-away, part of the Milky way galaxy. “One possibility is that ‘Oumuamua’ is debris (碎片) from an advanced technological equipment,” Loeb said. “Technology comes from another solar system just showed up at our door.”

“‘Oumuamua’ is not an alien spaceship,” Paul Sutter, another scientist wrote. He suggested Loeb was seeking publicity. Most scientists think “Oumuamua” is some sort of rock. They think it could be an icy wandering comet.

Loeb says that “Oumuamua’s” behavior, means it can’t be a block of rock shaped like a long photo. He thinks it's more likely an object that’s very long and thin, perhaps like a long pancake or a ship’s sail. Loeb says that if someone shows him evidence that contradicts his beliefs, he will immediately give in.

Loeb believes himself a truth-teller and risk- taker in an age of very safe, too-quiet scientists. “The worst thing that can happen to me is that I would be relieved of my management duties, and that would give me even more time to focus on science,” Loeb says. He said he wouldn’t mind giving up all the titles he had and returning to the Israeli farming village where he grew up.

3 . When it comes to eating, more and more Americans are ordering online instead of eating out. In some restaurants, cooks make food for other online restaurants at the same time. Online orders are only 5% of all restaurants orders, but they are growing about 20% each year.

The increase in online ordering in the US has created openings for new kinds of businesses. One is called Kitchen United. It builds kitchens for restaurants that want to enter take-out markets. Chick-Fil-A, The Halal Guys and Dog Haus all have opened kitchens through it. Another company, DoorDash, sends food to customers who order online. Fuad Hannon is the head of new business at DoorDash, He says, “The industry is still young. It may be too soon to know how it will grow, but what we know is that people love to get their favorite food sent.”

Two other businesses, Grubhub and Uber Eats, say their virtual (虚拟的) restaurant programs help small businesses compete. Both reach out to restaurant owners with suggestions for online. restaurants based on data from customer searches. This information helps owners. think about everything from how people get their food to what should go on the menu.

Kristen Adamowski heads Uber Eats. She says they have helped start 4,000 virtual restaurants worldwide, about half of them in the US and Canada.

Virtual restaurants have the benefit of testing new ideas without taking on expensive rents or employing more workers like traditional ones. But small restaurants should look at the risks before starting an online restaurant suggested by third-party app businesses. Those businesses offer no training for kitchen' workers to get used to making new foods. Other things to consider: whether their delivery containers are right for new dishes, or whether they want to increase their dependence on outside delivery drivers. Those are not small or easy things.

5 . Here on Earth where most of us live, we spend about a third of everyday lying down sleeping and two-thirds standing or sitting in an upright position.

That's not really how it goes in space when people are weightless and the zero gravity environment causes more liquid to shift to the head. Faces get swollen, legs lose volume and appear to be smaller. Many astronauts have complained of eye and back problems after coming back down to Earth and its gravity.

And now scientists say they have discovered some new risks with long-term space flight. A study published recently in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal, examined 11 healthy astronauts who had been on the International Space Station for six months. Eight of them had unusual characteristics observed in their blood. For instance, six of the astronauts had reverse （反向的）blood flow from their heads.

The lead author of the study says he doesn't know if that's actually harmful. The blood is still leaving the head from other pathways, so flowing backwards through a jugular vein（颈静脉） may not be dangerous. But he says it does show a change in how blood moves through the body while in space.

Another issue the study found was blood clots （凝块）. One astronaut had one. Another showed signs of a partial blood clot. That is potentially harmful as the clots can block the flow of blood to the lungs. The astronaut who had one was treated for the rest of the spaceflight and made it home safely.

What does all this mean? Well, one researcher says these issues have probably been oc- curring since humans first went into space and that they would likely resolve themselves when astronauts came back down to Earth. Knowing about them now gives doctors something else to monitor when people leave our atmosphere.

6 . When I was young, I had a wrong understanding of being great. I believed I was special and different and should be rich and famous because of my talent. I was going to live my dream rather than being a “normal” person. But as time passed, reality set in and my perspective changed.

I am a teacher, married to a salesman with a baby and a mortgage（按揭贷款）. Could my life be more normal? Yet, I am okay with this.

Were I to have a conversation with my twenty-year-old self, she wouldn't understand why I'm not going to NYC to get an audition （试演）. In four years my coworkers have never heard me sing. If I'd bought a house, it should have been in an interesting neighborhood with coffee houses at every corner. She would laugh at the corner house in the neighborhood I now call home.

But I know things she didn't know. Life is so much more complicated, wonderful and terrible. I know what it means to work for love, not just sitting back and letting it happen the way it can when you're young. I know about bringing life into the world, and the complexity of emotions.

My life is simple. It is small, and may seem interchangeable with so many other lives there. I may never make an impact outside my house. But I've learned it is important to be relative. To my little girl, I am irreplaceable. When she cries, she calls for “Mama”. When she reaches out, it's for me alone. So, is it a small life? It's perfectly fine to me. In fact, I think it's what I've wanted all along.

7 . Casa Heiwa comes from the Spanish word “casa” for house, and the Japanese word “heiwa” for peace. It is a special place to live. People in this apartment building speak twelve different languages. In the building are signs in five main languages—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and English—for exits and what to do in case of fire.

People exchange different traditions and customs. Trying food from other cultures is an exciting one that people share. The apartment building managers plan parties for special celebrations . On July, 4^th, people bring their own traditional food to the apartment party. Korean families bring kimchi, and the South American families bring dishes of roasted peppers. On Thanksgiving, the building managers bring a traditional turkey to every family. Each family cooks the turkey in its own way. Central Americans cook the turkey in orange juice. One Asian family cooks it like a Chinese­style duck. People learn to eat new foods and to enjoy new customs , gaining an awareness of how much they share.

Casa Heiwa is an apartment building where people can learn some important life skills and how to live in a new environment. The building managers run a service that offers programs to residents. For the children there is a day­care center that operates from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. The children can learn in the same building they live in while the parents are at work. There are educational programs and a job­training office for older children and adults. There are also programs like Family Movie Night that give everyone a chance to do something together. Everyone who lives there thinks that Casa Heiwa is a good place to live.