6 . A year ago when I was traveling alone in Guatemala I broke my back. I was surrounded by many kind strangers that day.     1     One of them I had met once in Mexico and the other I had just met the day before. We were planning on traveling to the next village together, but before we left, we decided to jump on one of those big Blob Bouncy Bags on the lake.

    2     I missed my target. An ambulance took me to a hospital. They both got car sick pretty bad, but still offered to come to support and translate for me.

When we got to the hospital, they helped me get through it.     3     So every time I needed to update my parents, they had to go somewhere else with my phone to text them.

The ambulance employers wanted me to pay in cash. I didn’t have that much cash and the ATMs there never worked for my cards.     4     I felt terrible about borrowing that much money from them. But when I asked them to write down their bank details, they simply told me to text them later when I was out of the hospital.

They stayed with me for hours. But even after they left, they stayed in touch asking me how I was and how everything was going—even a year later. I may have been unlucky for breaking my back, but I was so lucky for the people there when it happened.     5    

7 . Screen time is often considered the enemy when it comes to teaching kids to be active. However, a new research found that for 9 and 10 years old children greater social media use was related to some positive effects, including increased physical activity, less family conflict (冲突) and fewer sleep problems.

The findings come from an analysis of data from about 4,500 young people and their parents collected by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. The study gathered information about how young people’s brains develop.

In the study, children self reported activities like watching TV, texting or visiting social media sites — and the time spent on each. They were also asked about whether they play mature (成年的) video games. They rated their time on them as never, once in a while and all the time. Kids and parents report on family conflict. Parents also kept track of how well the kids slept and filled out a checklist that assessed (评定) their children’s behavior.

The results haven’t been published yet, but are being presented Tuesday at the Research Society on Alcoholism in San Diego. Previous research has been done. largely in older kids or teenagers with less focus on younger kids. Communities and social networks can have beneficial effects, so kids who are using social media to build connections may see positive outcomes.

Do these findings mean that parents should ban TVs and sign their kids up for Twitter? Probably not. Psychologist Chris Ferguson of Stetson University says that the differences identified in the research are small.

8 . He was the last person who should have run into a burning building—he had lung disease. But that didn’t stop him. Michael Surrell and his wife was parking when they got a call from their daughter: “The house next door is on fire!” He went to investigate.

Though the fire department had been called, Surrell ran inside. The thick smoke burned his eyes and made it impossible to breathe. The conditions were life-threatening for Surrell.

After a few minutes, he went outside to catch his breath. Taking a deep breath, he went in again. The house was similar to his, so he made it to the second floor. He couldn’t see anything. Then a soft moan (呻吟声) came. Still unable to see, Surrell crawled (爬行) toward the sound, feeling around for any sign of the trapped.

Finally, he touched something. He pulled the kid toward him and held her into his arms and stood. He fought through the smoke and ran into the blackness. The next thing he knew, he was at the front door, then outside. Surrell put Tiara down on the porch. He started CPR. Soon a cough came from Tiara’s throat. Surrell gave five more breaths. She coughed again, opened her eyes and took a breath on her own.

Surrell woke up in the hospital days later, having suffered severe burns to his lungs. He spent a week in the hospital. The fire worsened Surrell’s condition, and he feels the effects even two years later. “It’s a small price to pay,” he says. “I’d do it again without a second thought.”

10 . Single - use plastic waste is a huge problem, worsened these days by the fact that people cannot go out to many places to eat and have to order takeout. It’s been really hard on those companies that were trying to do something about the waste. Now, many businesses in New York have signed up with a new operation, DeliverZero.

New Yorkers do order a lot of takeout and don’t want to stop doing that since they are too busy to cook on their own. However, takeout consumes countless containers. And the containers — used once and for mere seconds — usually sit in landfills as far as 400 miles away from NYC.

But with DeliverZero, you get your order in reusable containers. There is no deposits (押金); you just return them to the delivery person the next time you order, or you drop them off at any of the restaurants on the platform.

When asked why DeliverZero doesn’t call for deposits, founder Adam Farbiarz explained, “When we started, we were collecting deposits. But that made everyone’s head spin because they had to choose how many containers they needed. It became complex to collect deposits while giving the restaurant the flexibility to pack the food. So now we just let the restaurant use containers as they want. After the restaurant packs the food, the customer gets an email that says, ‘You’re getting X containers with your meal.’ If the customer doesn’t return the containers within 6 weeks, we charge them. And the system works! Restaurants have no problem counting the containers, and customers appreciate that the restaurant has the freedom to use containers in a manner that best packages the food.”

DeliverZero shows that takeout doesn’t have to be related to single - use packaging. It is just starting out and is only in New York for now, but the founder said, “We have plans to march into other cities as quickly as we can. We are hoping to make a contribution to going zero waste and building a truly circular food delivery system.”