It’s been over a year since I started my job for neuropathy (神经病) treatments at a well-known healthcare center here in Oklahoma. Since then I seem to become very popular, shown nothing but love, kindness and consideration each time I arrive.

Anyway, two weeks ago I met a lady named Judith, who received neuropathy treatments there. She came here for treatments every a few days. She lived alone, without any children or family members around.

One day, I talked with a worker there. I told her I was once a caregiver and ran into some problems with my right leg after a terrible fall. That fall broke some bones in my right leg and left me with a large steel plate and 20 screws (螺丝).

Realizing my new challenges led me to have to make some personal changes. So I created some of my latest home projects: vegetables and gardens, chickens and ducks and other animals in my house like dogs, cats and birds. I was just sharing how I kept busy as part of my new exercise plan.

Then Judith wheeled over and politely interrupted (打断) and began asking about my animals but she was more interested in my birds. So I shared that I had several birds and she mentioned she had two new bird cages (鸟笼) that were given to her by her neighbor. And she had been hanging on to them and now she would like to give them away. Honestly, I could use them because the cage I use now was handmade but without any doors to move away waste. I felt like this offer from Judith was made for me.

So I decided to get the cage from her house after her treatment.

Later, Judith had an operation and needed someone to look after her.   

2 . “Going wireless is the future for just about everything!” That is a quote from scientist Sreekanth Chalasani, and we can’t help but agree. Realizing this, a team of scientists has made a breakthrough toward wirelessly controlling human cells using sound, in a technique called “sonogenetics (声遗传学).” This concept may seem strange but let us explain.

Basically, the term “sonogenetics” means using ultrasound (超声波) to change the behavior of cells in a non-invasive manner. “We already know that ultrasound is safe, and that it can go through bone, muscle and other tissues, making it the ultimate tool for controlling cells deep in the body,” says Chalasani.

Low-frequency ultrasound waves can target a particular protein that is sensitive to the signal. This research, published in Nature Communications, focused on TRPA1. When this protein is stimulated through the ultrasound waves, it also stimulates the cells which carry it. What type of cell is being stimulated depends on the outcome. For example, a muscle cell may contract with stimulation, or a neuron (神经元) in the brain will fire. In this experiment, scientists genetically marked cells with an increased concentration of TRPA1, making them the key targets of the ultrasound waves.

Currently, treating conditions like Parkinson’s disease requires scientists to implant electrodes (电极) in the brain which stimulate certain disordered cells. Researchers hope that sonogenetics can one day replace these invasive treatments.

In the future, the team wants to adjust the placement and amount of TRPAI around the body using the gene treatment. Gene delivery techniques have already been shown to be successful in humans, such as in treating blindness. Therefore, it’s just a case of adjusting this theory to a different sound-based setting.

“Gene delivery techniques already exist for getting a new gene—such as TRPA1—into the human heart,” Chalasani says. “If we can then use an external ultrasound device to activate those cells, that could really change pacemakers.” There is still a while to go before this treatment can become a reality. The future for sonogenetics, though, looks bright.

Jack made his own kites. He carefully cut the paper to size and stuck it to thin, but strong branches. He then added a flying string (线) and a tail. As he pulled the string, the kite flew into the sky. It rose above all other kites. Other kite flyers called him “Kite King”.

One morning, Jack went out to fly his yellow-green kite. He threw the kite upward and pulled the string. The kite wobbled (摆动) a bit; he quickly pulled the string and let it go. The kite steadied (保持平稳) itself and then rose a few feet. Jack continued to pull the string and the kite went higher.

With no other kites in sight, Jack lost interest. He decided to go home. Just then, a competitor arrived. It looked like another kite, or so he thought. He was surprised it had no string. No, the competitor was not a kite. It was a big butterfly (蝴蝶).

The butterfly had spread its wings. It seemed to like Jack’s kite. It flew closer and then started to rise. Jack pulled and then let go of the string quickly. His kite caught up with the butterfly. The butterfly rose further up, leaving the kite behind. Jack was quick to pull the string, sending his kite flying above the butterfly.

By then other kids had arrived. No one flew their kites. They all stood watching the flyers in the sky-the bright yellow-green kite and the bright orange butterfly. There was complete silence. One moment the kite was up and above the butterfly, and the next, the butterfly   flew higher. It was a neck-and-neck race.

Suddenly the butterfly started losing height. It was unbelievable but true. The butterfly was left far behind as the kite raced ahead. Jack gave a shout of success. In the next moment, he frowned. The butterfly was losing height rapidly. At that speed it would hit the ground fast.

Jack started lowering the kite fast.

Jack got down on his knees and looked at the butterfly sitting on the kite.

In my free time, I like hiking challenges. It’s how I feed myself, physically, mentally, spiritually.

I looked over at my husband, Mike, and friends Emily and Jean, who’d joined me on this climb to the top of Nippletop Mountains. They were all fit, experienced hikers, though not as enthusiastic about it as me, Mike especially. He’s more of a tech guy.

We’d set off in the morning, dressed in layers against coldness. It took us just less than five hours to cover the five miles to the peak of Nippletop, with more snow and ice on the rocky trail the closer we got to the top. It was almost 1:30 pm now. We started to head down soon before it got dark.

A friendly young hiker waved to us. “Hey, want me to take your picture?”

“Absolutely!”

Mike gave the hiker his phone. That hiker snapped a few pictures for us.

We continued. I said, “I want to take a different trail so as to save time. It’s steeper (陡峭) but shorter.”

I led the way. They followed me with some distance apart. Carefully I sidestepped down the slope. A quarter mile down, I stopped and looked up the trail for the others. I couldn’t see them. Then a scream broke the quietness. Mike! He sprawled (瘫坐) on a steep, narrow, wooded part of the trail, about 100 feet ahead of me. Ice everywhere. His hands were holding his right leg tightly.

I shouted, “What happened?”

“I slipped on the ice,” he said. “Then I heard this crack. It hurts badly!”

Moments later, we got to Mike. “What should we do?” I asked. Jean checked Mike’s ankle. “We need to splint (夹板) it,” she said.

We fixed a hiking pole to Mike’s leg. What now? There was no way the three of us women could carry him down this mountain.

I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Nothing. No signal. It was the same with the other three phones.

”Can I help?” It was the guy who’d taken our picture at the mountain top.

My words came out in a rush.

An hour went by, then another, and there was nothing we could do except wait for rescue in the coldness.

5 . When thinking about sleep and its relationship to the senses, most people think of sight, sound, and touch. Few immediately think of smell. While it might not be as immediately apparent, smell can directly affect sleep. The connections between smell and sleep are subject to the continuing research. Learning more about what has been discovered so far provides opportunities to make the bedroom environment favor quality sleep.

Smell and sleep have a bidirectional relationship. Sleep can affect the sense of smell. One factor that influences the sense of smell is the circadian rhythm, which is known for how it promotes sleeping during the night and wakefulness during the day. Sensitivity to smell can change throughout the day, and lower sensitivity at night helps encourage sleep. Smell can also affect sleep, including how long it takes to fall asleep, overall sleep quality and quantity.

Distinct smells may do a lot of good regarding sleep. Because of the power of the sense of smell, certain fragrances (芬芳) may contribute to better sleep, some of which promote relaxation that makes it easier to fall asleep and feel well rested the next day.

Despite the aromatherapy (芳香疗法) for sleep, there is no guaranteed fragrance that will help everyone wake up, but the research has highlighted a few fragrances that may be beneficial. Drinking coffee is one of the most popular pick-me-ups, but not everyone likes the flavor or wants to consume caffeine. Another option may be just breathing in the smell of coffee without drinking it.

The research has also found that external stimulating factors during sleep, including smells, can affect dreams. Positively associated smells promoted more positive dreams while unpleasant smells increased negative dreams.

Memories are strengthened during sleep. In a study of school children, they were exposed to a specific fragrance while awake and learning new words. Then, they were exposed to that same fragrance during sleep. It turned out that memory recall on a vocabulary test the next day was improved.

Mr. Birkway was my English teacher, and when I met him on that first day in my new school, I didn’t know what to make of him. He was one of those energetic teachers who loved his subject half to death and walked about the room dramatically, waving his arms and patting (轻拍) people on the back.

He said, “Brilliant!” and “Wonderful!”and “Terrific!” He was quite tall and slim, and his bushy black hair made him look like a wild native at times. He had deep brown cow eyes that sparkled (闪耀) all over the place, and when he turned these eyes on you, you felt as if his whole purpose in life was to stand there and listen to you, and you alone.

Midway through the first class, Mr. Birkway asked if we had our summer journals. I hadn’t a clue as to what he was talking about. Some of the other students started nodding like crazy, and Mr. Birkway spread out his arms and said, “Wonderful!” He received the journals excitedly. “Thank you,” he said to each journal-giver.

I was extremely worried. I had no journal.

When he got to Beth Ann’s desk, Mr. Birkway lifted up her journal and looked inside. “I didn’t write much,” Ann said. “In fact, I can hardly remember what I wrote about at all.”

“Don’t worry about it too much,” Mr. Birkway said with a smile. “Next time, try writing about something you like-a place, a room, a person. Just write whatever comes to mind.” Then he moved on.

On top of Mary Lou’s desk were six journals. Mr. Birkway stood open-mouthed and said, “Is it — can it be — Shakespeare?” He counted the journals. “Six! Brilliant!”

Christy and Megan, two girls who had their own club called the GGP (whatever that meant), were whispering over on the other side of the room and casting disapproving looks in Mary Lou’s direction. Mary Lou kept her hand on top of the journals as Mr. Birkway reached for them. In a low voice she said, “I don’t want you to read them.”

”What?” Mr. Birkway said. “Not read them?”

By the time Mr. Birkway got to my desk, my heart was beating so hard that I thought it might jump straight out of my chest.

8 . When the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described nature as “red in tooth and claw”, he was telling us that the natural world can be cruel as well as beautiful.    1    .

Most people living in urban areas rarely encounter wild animals in their natural surroundings.     2     And they are willing to get close to them. But for wild animals, it is “eat or be eaten,” and they can’t distinguish between humans and other animals.

    3     In Canadian woods lives a dog-like animal, coyote, which is a little bigger than a fox, but smaller than a wolf. They usually avoid humans, but the occasional attacks can be deadly. Every year, one or two people end up getting killed by coyotes.

Earlier this year, a herd of elepants in Yunnan left their home in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve and went on a meandering journey through the province. They destroyed crops and buildings along the way. Villages in their path had to be evacuated because of the potential dangers they posed to villagers. Animal experts haven’t determined why the elephants went on their journey.     4     The wild animals we love are in a constant struggle for survival. Our expanding into the natural habitats of wild animals can be dangerous for the animals and then us humans as well.

Maybe we should try to stay away from them.     5     Their lives—red in tooth and claw—are difficult enough without us causing them any more problems than they already have.

I filled my whole childhood with two things. My love for red meat and football. Back then, my room walls were full of posters of my favorite player, Webster Slaughter.

One cold winter, I went with my dad to the nearby mall so he could buy a new coat. We didn’t have a lot of money, but my mom convinced my dad to replace his old coat, which had some pretty sizable holes. I was only eleven, but my memory of that day remains vivid. As we approached the mall, a huge figure caught my eyes. The man was wearing a black jacket and sunglasses, but I immediately recognized him. It was Webster Slaughter.

My heart pounding, I could barely contain my excitement. I looked up at my hero, and in a shaky voice said, “You're Webster Slaughter, right?"I excitedly told him that I was his big fan and he was my favorite player. He smiled but began to walk away saying being in a big hurry. Desperately,I yelled to his back for an autograph (亲笔签名),but he kept going.As fast as he had emerged, he was gone.

“Nothing really, he was in a hurry,” Dad comforted me gently. He dug into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of crumpled (皱巴巴的) bills and handed me a few dollars. He told me to go play at the arcade (拱廊) while he picked out a coat.I grabbed the money and wandered off. About half an hour later, my dad came for me and we headed home. Once there he opened the shopping bag in his hand.

He told me that he had a surprise and reached into it. “After you left, guess who I ran in- to?” he said with a smile on his face. I just stared blankly. “Webster Slaughter came into the store and said he saw me with you. He asked where you were and I said you were at the arcade. He said he went back to his car to get this for you, but you were gone.”

He pulled his hand out of the bag and in it was a Webster Slaughter’s signed photo.

My first emotion was angry that I had been cheated by my father.

10 . Bottlenose dolphins simplify and raise the pitch of their whistles to be heard above underwater shipping noise, Christopher Intagliata reports.

The oceans are getting louder. And coastal areas are some of the noisiest, as in this underwater recording, captured 17 miles off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland.

The noise could be a problem for marine mammals, which, like us, use sound to communicate. “Just like if we’re in a noisy bar, we have to shout to each other. And they might have to do that too.” Helen Bailey is a marine biologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

She and her colleagues recorded two months of underwater sounds, in that same area off the coast of Maryland. They used an automated software to fish out 200 bottlenose dolphin whistles from the noise, and visually compared the spectrograms (声谱图). Here’s a normal whistle.

But what they found was that dolphins dumbed down the complexity of their whistles and raised their pitch, when they were competing with shipping noise, which apparently helps, but could also hurt, their ability to communicate.

“By using simpler calls, yes, there is a risk they’re not communicating as much information as they would if it was quieter. Also for younger dolphins they actually learn these sounds from hearing other dolphins. So they’re hearing this much simpler language.”

The results and a few of those spectrograms are in the journal Biology Letters. [Leila Fouda et al., dolphins simplify their vocal calls in response to increased noise]

The survey site is the proposed future home of a wind farm—which could mean lots of noise as the huge towers are installed. Until then, it’s the chronic roar of ships and boats that Bailey wants people to think about carefully. “I think people think about boats in terms of the emissions, just like with cars. And I think what we need to think about is that sound is also an emission.”