3 . Behavioral scientists have found that good listening is one of the most important things we can do to improve our relationships.     1     At its core, listening in a one-on-one conversation is about taking an interest in another person and making him/her feel understood.    2     But some recurring (重复出现) features include attentiveness, conveying understanding, and showing a positive intention towards the speaker.

In addition to actively attending to a speaker’s words, good listeners also use questions and body language that indicate their understanding and their desire to understand. This might feel awkward at first, and what’s most effective might depend on your relationship with the speaker.    3     Another great way to show your understanding is by summarizing what you just heard and asking if you have missed anything. Summaries like this show the speaker that you’re truly trying to understand him/her rather than just waiting for your turn to talk. But while a good conversation requires back and forth, planning out your response while the speaker is talking is a common way to miss what’s being said.    4     This might feel embarrassing, but asking for clarification actually shows that you’re committed to understanding.

    5     It’s okay to ask for a moment to formulate your response and taking a beat to think can help speakers reflect on their speech as well.

These might seem like small changes, but together they make a big difference. And when people feel heard, they report more satisfaction, trust, and connection in their relationships.

4 . The periodic table of elements is a common sight in classrooms, campus hallways and libraries. The mode periodic table arranges the elements by their atomic numbers and periodic properties (周期性). Several scientists worked over a century to assemble the elements into this format.

In 1789, French chemist Antoine Lavoisiertried grouping the elements as metals and nonmetals. Forty years later, German physicist Johann Wolfgang Dobereiner observed similarities in physical and chemical properties of certain elements. He arranged them in groups of three in increasing order of atomic weight and called them triads, observing that some properties of the middle element, such as atomic weight and density, approximated the average value of these properties in the other two in each triad.

A breakthrough came with the publication of a revised list of elements and their atomic masses at the first international conference of chemistry in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1860. They concluded hydrogen would be assigned the atomic weight of 1 and that the atomic weight of other elements would be decided by comparison with hydrogen. For example, carbon, being 12 times heavier than hydrogen, would have an atomic weight of 12.

In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev created the framework that became the moder periodic table, leaving gaps for elements that were yet to be discovered. Mendeleev predicted the properties of some undiscovered elements and gave them names such as “eka-aluminum” for an element with properties similar to aluminum. Later “eka-aluminum” was discovered as gallium.

German chemist Lothar Meyer produced a version of the periodic table similar to Mendeleev’s in 1870. He left gaps for undiscovered elements but never predicted their properties. The Royal Society of London awarded the Davy Medal in 1882 to both Mendeleev and Meyer. The later discovery of elements predicted by Mendeleev verified (证实) his predictions and his periodic table won universal recognition. In 1955 the 101st element was named mendelevium in his honor.

On UNESCO website, it wrote, “The Periodic Table of Chemical Elements is more than just a guide or catalogue of the entire known atoms in the universe; it is essentially a window on the universe, helping to expand our understanding of the world around us.”

8 . The Federal Communications Commission of the US recently issued the first-ever fine for space junk, against the Dish Network. The satellite television company failed to properly deal with one of its satellites, leaving it at a lower orbit than it promised when securing its license.

Some space junk was discarded during missions — maybe an astronaut dropped his lucky penny, or released an instrument’s camera cover after it was no longer needed. Other junk, however, is the result of collisions: Even that lucky penny, traveling at 15 times the speed of a bullet, can cause huge damage — ending a satellite’s mission or, worse, breaking that satellite into pieces.

That’s obviously bad news for satellites. The solution isn’t to demand the launch of fewer satellites; these bring real benefits to people on the Earth.

And while traffic management is certainly necessary, pieces of garbage are never going to be able to follow even the most sensible rules of the orbital road. That means two things need to happen: People need to stop littering, and they need to take out some trash.

The professionals, unsurprisingly, have more carefully considered names for these processes — mitigation (减轻) and remediation (补救). Any time a company wants to put a satellite in the sky, it should have a clear plan for the instrument’s end of life. For objects in very high geostationary orbit (地球同步轨道), this usually involves sending the item to the out-of-the-way “graveyard” orbit. For objects lower down, it tends instead to involve moving them lower still, so that they will bum up upon reentering the atmosphere.

Active removal of garbage that has failed to get out of the way is technically tricky, but at least for large objects, remediation is possible.

Encouragingly, some countries are beginning to try. No nation, however, can save space on its own. A global convention (协定) to set a 21^st-century code of conduct for space is in order.