Grandparents often have interesting names. My sister-in-law was known as Mimi. Her husband goes by Peeka. Why? Their firstborn grandchild decided on those names.

My firstborn grandchild named me as well. I will never forget the day Joshua hugged me and, in front of a roomful of people, called me “Doll. My Doll Baby!” From that point on, I was known as Doll or Doll Baby. Even my sons-in-law call me Doll. Friends of my children and grandchildren call me Doll. It’s a given.

For the most part, it’s fine, even endearing, to hear my grandchildren call me Doll. But there was one time… My daughter and her husband were going out of town, so the plan was for me to pick up five-year-old Spencer from kindergarten, take him to their house to wait for Joshua’s school bus, and bring both boys home to spend the night with us. Spencer and I arrived long before the school bus. While we waited for Joshua, Spencer wanted to show me a new trick he learned on his skateboard.

Spencer was pretty good. He had learned how to step on the back of the skateboard so that the front tipped up (一边翘起), and then put his front foot down on the board and take off. Cool!

Then it was my turn. I had played around with skateboards in my day. Of course, they weren’t the high-tech kind of toys my grandchildren enjoyed. Ours were made by mounting the wheels of our old sidewalk roller skates to the bottom of a plank of wood. Still, I had this. I put my right foot on the back of the board and tipped up the front. So far, so good. I brought my left foot down with every intention of rolling forward.

Good intentions. Bad form. I fell hard on my elbow as the skateboard flew across the concrete driveway. My injury was minor, but Spencer raced into the house and got Boo-Boo Bunny from the freezer to bring me comfort. It helped my arm, but not my pride.

When I made my way home safely with the boys, my husband blamed me.

My husband helped Spencer practice calling 911 emergency call, pretending I hurt my head seriously. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5 . Extinctions are seldom a cause for celebration. Humans are wiping out species at a frightening rate, whether hunting them into history or, far more threateningly, damaging the habitats on which they depend. How, then, to think about a new technology that will make driving a species to extinction far easier?

That technology is known as a gene drive, so called because it uses genetic engineering to drive certain features through a population. Those characteristics need not be harmful: they might become stronger against disease among crops or, perhaps, greater tolerance to warming waters on the part of corals. And if the species in question were the three types of mosquito responsible for spreading malaria(疟疾), it could save close to half a million lives a year, many of them children. The same approach could be used against other diseases such as Lyme disease, and Zika. Gene drives also offer us a potential weapon against foreign species such as foxes, mice, rabbits and rats, which are threatening native species in some parts of the world.

Normally genes have a 50:50 chance of being passed on during reproduction. Gene drives tip the evolutionary scales. One area of research focuses on genes that can copy themselves to the second, ensuring that they will be passed on by all offspring(后代). Like many technologies, however, gene drives may lead to bad outcomes as well as good. They could in theory make a species extinct. One concern is practical: removing a species from the food chain could have unintended consequences, particularly if gene drives can move to a closely related species. Another relates to governance. Genetically modified crops can be kept relatively contained; animals carrying gene drives could be mobile and respect no borders. One country’s decision to use gene drives will have consequences for its neighbors. A third worry concerns improper uses of the technology, and not only by states. A mosquito, engineered to inject toxins(毒素), could be used as a weapon. But putting the brakes on research may pay real costs: not just the annual rising number of deaths taken by malaria and other killers before an answer is found, but also slower progress towards making gene drives safer.

6 . Decan Andersen unexpectedly became a father of three and in the cutest way possible. One damp afternoon in 2014, a baby red squirrel _______ from his apartment building and landed in the middle of his garden, _______ and bleeding. Although concerned, Andersen _______ the squirrel alone and went inside, _______ that the mother would come and _______ him. But when that didn’t happen, he _______ what he had to do.

_______ picking up the four-week-old baby from the _______ grass, he took him inside, where he was _______ comforted by Andersen’s cat, Coco, who washed him with her ________ and warmed him up. Later, after a veterinarian(兽医) had dressed the squirrel’s wounds, Andersen made his ________ housemate some tiny sweaters and socks to prevent him from ________ his wounds.

Because his children, Nicole, now 11, and Markus, 6, had been watching the cartoon movie, The Adventures of Tintin, Andersen ________ the squirrel Tintin and decided to make him part of the family, since he couldn’t be released back into the wild without weeks of ________.

Using a little ________ to protect Tintin from other animals that weren’t as ________ of squirrels as Coco, Andersen began taking his lively little pet everywhere he went,________ their adventures on social media.

“With so much negativity in the world, I thought it could help ________ people up,” Andersen said. “Most people feel surprised and want to know more. He makes people forget about their ________ for a moment so they can laugh and smile. We have a special ________ and are pretty much together.”