Once upon a time, there was a tiger. His name was Kamau which means the quiet soldier. Kamau wondered, “Will I ever live up to my name?” Kamau is young and makes friends with everyone, but thinks low of himself. His leg disability makes it hard to walk. It makes him feel useless. But what he doesn’t know is that today will change it all.

One bright morning, Kamau spotted a bird in a tree, whose bright colors are so cheerful. She looked old. And he noticed one of her wings was cut. Kamau kept on walking towards the bird. “My name is Jelani,” she squawked as if she could read his mind. “I am Kamau,” he roared. “I know,” she said as if she had been watching over him his whole life. They spent a moment studying each other. At last, Kamau continued going past the tree.

“Do you know the meaning of your name?” she asked. Kamau stopped. The pain showed in his eyes. This is a question he has asked himself every day.

“My name means quiet soldier,” he said. Then he paused. “But I have been given the wrong name, for I am no warrior.”

“Do you know what my name means?” she asked. There was silence. “It means mighty. But as you can see, my body is not fit for it.” Then she looked up.

Kamau asked, “What are you looking at?”

“I am dreaming of flying free. Have you ever thought of running through the jungle, pride in your face?”

“We will never get that kind of life.” Kamau said angrily.

Jelani expected this. So, she explained why she didn’t care about it. “Sometimes, you have to let go of the things you don’t have and make do with what you have.”

“But even if I know this, I can’t be happy because I can’t do anything about my body. My mind knows it,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’ll be, but your mind tells you. It’s telling you that you’re useless, but if you ask your mind to stop, you will find your true self!” Jelani tells him.

Kamau realizes how lucky he was to have met Jelani. How fortunate he was to be able to change his mind.

Kamau finishes the story, making his sons think. It’s a year later and Kamau is a father. He hopes to teach his sons the same lesson that Jelani taught him. “Sons, we can’t always depend on physical abilities to show us who we are. First, think about what your mind can do to change your bad feelings into good ones.”

5 . Putting Pen to Paper: The History of Ballpoint Pens

Ballpoint pens may not seem like anything special, but they’ve made our lives more convenient than you might realize. The story behind their invention may also surprise you.

László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist, is said to have invented the ballpoint pen in 1938. Before the ballpoint pen, people used fountain pens. These old-fashioned pens had to be refilled often, and they leaked and easily made paper dirty.     1    

Many inventors had tried to design similar types of pens before Bíró, but none had succeeded. Bíró’s ballpoint pen design used a small ball instead of a nib（钢笔尖）. When the ball is pressed onto paper, it rolls to pick up ink inside the pen and transfer it onto paper. The inspiration for this design came from an unexpected source. One day, Bíró happened to see children playing with marbles（弹珠游戏）. A boy rolled a marble through a puddle, creating a line of water on the street and giving Bíró the idea for the ballpoint design.     2    . He developed a thick, fast-drying ink for Bíró’s pen.

Bíró began selling his pen in Argentina, where he and his brother had fled to during World War Ⅱ. His biggest customer was UK’s Royal Air Force, which ordered 30,000 pens to allow its crews to write more easily while in the air.     3     Instead, American businessman Milton Reynolds was the man responsible for that. After seeing the pens in Argentina, he changed the design just enough to sell them as his own. Though expensive, the pens were a big hit with American customers in the 1940s.

Eventually, mass production made plastic ballpoint pens more affordable, and soon they were a household necessity.     4     Ballpoint pens can be less comfortable to write with because more pressure must be applied when writing with them. In addition, it doesn’t feel natural to join letters together because of the way the ink flows. Some say these factors contributed to the decline of cursive writing（草书）.

    5     Who would have thought that this amazing invention was inspired by something as simple as children playing with marbles?

6 . A Mission to Remove Space Junk

In video games and movies, we often imagine spaceships avoiding giant asteroids (小行星) in the solar system. However, a greater concern for our world is space debris. Space debris refers to the 8, 000 metric tons of junk that orbits around the Earth. These millions of pieces floating in space threaten to destroy satellites and machinery that are necessary for weather forecasting, GPS, and telecommunication.

Along with other efforts to minimize space debris, the company Astroscale has launched End-of-Life Service by Astroscale, or Elsa-D. It aims to model a space debris removal system and includes two spacecraft: a servicer and a client. Let’s look at the danger of space debris and how Astroscale’s technology would work.

What Really Is Space Debris?

Space debris forms when old satellite and spaceship parts gather in the low Earth orbit. This build-up of waste can range from large rocket parts all the way to small pieces of metal that form when the parts explode or hit.

Because all the pieces travel at high speeds of 28, 000 km/h in orbit, they pose a threat to active satellites. It is reported that at least 26, 000 pieces of space junk are as small as a softball, yet they could “destroy a satellite on impact.”

Over 500, 000 pieces of debris could damage protective systems, fuel tanks, and spacecraft cabins. More commonly, over 100 million pieces of space debris are as small as a grain of salt. These pieces are dangerous as they could break spacesuits and threaten the safety of the crew.

Scientists are able to track debris particles (微粒) larger than 10cm, but pieces near 1cm in size are vey difficult to monitor. As a result, the removal of space debris is essential to ensure that new satellites will not hit old ones. The European Space Agency reports that 3, 600 satellites are currently operating with 28, 000 pieces of debris being tracked. In the next decade, 10, 000 new satellites will orbit Earth. The need for an effective space debris removal system is growing.

Astroscale hopes to develop a system where the spacecraft attaches to dead satellites and direct them towards Earth to burn up in the atmosphere. The technology would be used on future satellites, not dead satellites that are already in orbit. The purpose of this specific mission is to show how the capture system will work. The client spacecraft will play a piece of space debris.

The servicer spacecraft will use GPS sensors and magnetic (磁对接) docking technology to capture the client spacecraft. Like a cat and mouse, the servicer will capture and release the client several times over 6 months and the tasks will become more difficult.

Astroscale hopes that all satellites being developed in the future will include the magnetic docking plate which allows the servicer to capture the debris. As companies and governments take on more space projects, a system to remove waste in space is going to be increasingly important.

7 . Do Trees Talk to Each Other?

Did you know that trees can communicate with each other? Suramme Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, has conducted research into the cooperative and social behavior of trees.

Growing up in the forests of Canada, Simard observed how logging (伐木) companies would cut down diverse forests and replace them with a single tree species. Loggers believed that by removing competition, the newly planted trees would thrive, as they would receive more space, water, and sunlight. However, Simard noticed these trees were actually more likely to suffer disease and environmental stress. As she investigated this question, Simard realized that tree communication was the answer to this.

Trees communicate through underground networks of helper fungi (真菌). The fungi connect with tree roots, forming links, which can connect trees of different kinds across a forest. The fungi transport water and nutrients to the trees. In return, trees provide fungi carbon-based sugars. The fungi not only allow for tree-fungi cooperation but also for communication. Trees can transport carbon, water, nutrients (营养), chemical warning signs, and hormones. This system allows them to balance resources and warn neighboring trees of danger. Trees are also connected through the “mother” trees, which are the oldest and largest trees. Through this connection, young trees can get the resource and information network.

These findings have many effects, including the way we structure our own societies and ecological practices. Mother trees are key for providing the information, medicinal, and resource capacity to future generations of trees. Also Simard believes that with climate change stressing out plants and threatening the survival of species, humans may need to step in to help — perhaps even by moving some species to cooler climates as the world warms.

While Simard wholeheartedly believes in the cooperative nature of trees, other scientists argue that competition is still the main reason why these trees end up sharing resources. The fungi that transport resources might actually be sending nutrients to resource-poor trees because they can demand more carbon-based sugars in return from plants on the edge of survival.

Regardless of whether cooperation or competition drives tree behavior, stronger evidence of forest communication and networks is an exciting discovery with much to learn!

Tu Youyou, 84, was the first Chinese female scientist to win a Nobel Prize in science. She     1     (honor) for developing artemisinin（青蒿素） that has saved millions of lives worldwide. Tu and her colleagues joined a government project     2     (find) a new malaria drug in the late 1960s. In 1971, after more than 190 failures, Tu’s team     3     (final) found a chemical that was 100 percent effective against malaria — artemisinin. In 2001, the World Health Organization made artemisinin its first choice in the treatment of malaria.