1 . One of my wonderful memories is about a Christmas gift. Unlike other gifts, it came without wrap (包装).

On September 11th, 1958, Mum gave birth to Richard. After she brought him home from hospital, she put him in my lap, saying, “I promised you a gift, and here it is.” What an honour! I turned four a month earlier and none of my friends had such a baby doll of their own. I played with it day and night. I sang to it. I told it stories. I told it over and over how much I loved it!

One morning, however, I found its bed empty. My doll was gone! I cried for it.Mum wept and told me that the poor little thing had been sent to a hospital. It had a fever. For several days, I heard Mum and Dad whispering such words as “hopeless”, “pitiful”, and “dying”, which sounded ominous.

Christmas was coming. “Don’t expect any presents this year,” Dad said, pointing at the socks I hung in the living room.“If your baby brother lives, that’ll be Christmas enough.” As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears. I’d never seen him cry before.

The phone rang early on Christmas morning. Dad jumped out of bed to answer it. From my bedroom I heard him say, “What? He’s all right?” He hung up and shouted upstairs. “The hospital said we can bring Richard home!”

“Thank God!” I heard Mum cry.

From the upstairs window, I watched my parents rush out to the car. I had never seen them so happy. And I was also full of joy. What a wonderful day! My baby doll would be home. I ran downstairs. My socks still hung there flat. But I knew they were not empty; they were filled with love!

2 . What are scientists?They are often described as gray-haired white-coated dull scholars.

But the world has changed.Young scientists are making their voices heard and releasing their powers on the world stage.

This is also true in China.Rising stars include new materials expert Gong Yongji,university professor Liu Mingzhen,and biologist Wan Ruixue.At the age of 28 in 2018,Wan Ruixue received the 2018 Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists.This is a global prize to reward outstanding scientists at an early stage of their careers.

She focuses mainly on biomedicine (生物医学) and artificial intelligence.“Both are cutting-edge (前沿) technologies at an early stage of development,” she said.

“So,I think they have great potential to be developed.I think in the study of cutting-edge technologies,China and other leading countries in the world are standing on the same starting line.And in the study of structural biology,China is likely to become the leader.”

She felt it was her fate to become a biologist.“I grew interested in the natural world,when I was very young,” she said.In 2009,she entered Sun Yat-sen University.

In her third year at the university,she realized that she wanted to do something related to biomedicine.So she emailed China’s top biologist Shi Yigong,hoping to join his lab at Tsinghua University.

Shi recognised her talent and welcomed her.Years of efforts at the lab have paid off.Her research on the high-definition 3D structure of spliceosome led to a scientific breakthrough.

Unlike many of other young scientists who choose to pursue further study abroad,Wan currently has no plan to go overseas.

“The whole ecosystem for scientific research is continually improving in China,” she said,adding that the country has great science facilities.

4 . When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we had a milkman delivering milk to our doorstep. His name was Mr. Basille. He wore a white cap and drove a white truck. As a 5-year-old boy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the coin changer fixed to his belt. He noticed this one day during a delivery and gave me a quarter out of his coin changer.

Of course, he delivered more than milk. There was cheese, eggs and so on. If we needed to change our order, my mother would pen a note — “Please add a bottle of buttermilk next delivery” — and place it in the box along with the empty bottles. And then, the buttermilk would magically (魔术般) appear.

All of this was about more than convenience. There existed a close relationship between families and their milkmen. Mr. Basille even had a key to our house, for those times when it was so cold outside that we put the box indoors, so that the milk wouldn’t freeze. And I remember Mr. Basille from time to time taking a break at our kitchen table, having a cup of tea and telling stories about his delivery.

There is sadly no home milk delivery today. Big companies allowed the production of cheaper milk, thus making it difficult for milkmen to compete. Besides, milk is for sale everywhere, and it may just not have been practical to have a delivery service.

Recently, an old milk box in the countryside I saw brought back my childhood memories. I took it home and planted it on the back porch (门廊) . Every so often my son’s friends will ask what it is. So I start telling stories of my boyhood, and of the milkman who brought us friendship along with his milk.

8 . Everyone experiences tiredness at work sometimes. At some point (usually around 2:00 pm), you find yourself ready for a nap. Your energy changes naturally throughout the day. Productivity expert Chris Bailey recorded his motivation, focus, and energy levels for 21 days and found that all three tend to spike between 7:00 and 8:00 am, 11:00 am and 12:00 pm, and 6:00 and 7:00 pm. For all those highs, he also noticed time when focus, energy, and motivation were nowhere to be found.

Your peak productivity time may be different from Mr. Bailey’s, but you also have your own ups and downs. The amount of sleep you have, the food you eat, and how you exercise are a few of the factors that cause rises and falls in your energy level.

We can fill up on coffee and sugar as much as we want, but we’re fighting a natural downturn (消退期) in energy when we do this. Your tiredness may seem like an inconvenience, but it’s really your body telling you that it needs rest. The best way to beat it is to satisfy this need.

Our bodies operate on a natural clock called a circadian rhythm (生理节奏). This sleep/wake cycle is perfectly adapted to give us enough sleep over the course of a 24-hour period. Natural light is the primary way that your body uses to decide whether or not you should be asleep.

Therefore, circadian rhythms do not agree with the average 9 to 5 job. Irregular sleep schedules, the light from electronic devices, and natural light exposure (暴露) for a long time can also affect the cycle. This is why people working the night shift (夜班) have an increases risk of developing health problems. They must remain awake when their body tells them it’s time for bed, and their sleep schedule is constantly ruined when they try to stay awake on days off.

9 . She was sitting up at four months, walking at eight months and completing 100-piece jigsaw puzzles (拼图玩具) at 15 months. So it is no surprise that Abigail Wilson, 15, from Connecticut, USA, recently made history when she became the youngest black girl ever accepted into an American university! “I’m proud of myself for getting in, but I usually find it hard to get excited. It’s pretty cool, I guess,” said Abigail.

Her mother, Nancy, said that Abigail was a quiet baby. She didn’t speak her first words until she was 22 months old! Her parents thought something must be wrong, but when she started to talk, her speech was perfect. She already knew colors, letters and was able to read. Her parents read her normal bedtime stories and they didn’t know she was learning all of it.

Abigail has always been the youngest person in her class. At six she was in the fourth grade, at ten she took her first high school class in Maths. She has studied several languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and German.

Abigail says that she doesn’t usually plan when she studies, she calls herself scatterbrained (浮躁的) and she always delays things up to the last minute. This gives her the motivation to really do something.

In her free time, Abigail plays basketball, surfs the Internet, reads, cooks and hangs out with her friends. She has also studied music. Her mother says that Abigail’s music lessons helped her to be a normal teen. She believed that Abigail needed to be in a situation where she had to fail in order to learn. “She found playing the piano very difficult, but it made her learn better,” said Nancy. “She can’t always be successful, she won’t be able to learn anything! People always learn more from their failures than from their successes.”