Scientists investigated why Ebola virus is so deadly when it spreads from animals to humans and then from human-to-human contact. The research team looked at the Zaire Ebola virus in an animal system to understand how it gains strength. This virus is responsible for the current outbreak in West Africa. They found that initially the animal systems were not affected by the virus, but succeeding transmission(传送) into other animals caused the virus to “hot up” and become more severe.
The team analyzed the viruses at different stages and were able to identify several changes in its genetic material that were associated with increased disease.
Professor Julian Hiscox, who led the study from the University's Institute of Infection and Global Health, explains: “The work tells us that the evolutionary goal of Ebola virus is to become more fatal.”
“We were able to show through genetic analysis which parts of the virus are involved in this process. The information we have gathered will now allow us to monitor for such changes in an outbreak as well as develop future treatment strategies.”
Professor Roger Hewson, leading the study from Public Health England, Porton Down, said: “Ebola virus is such a destructive infection to the people affected by the disease and the economy of West Africa.”
“Our understanding of Ebola virus biology is way behind that of other viruses and our cooperation shows how we can bring together our specialists' skills to close this knowledge gap.”
Professor Miles Carroll, a co-author of the work, said: “This study has allowed the team to be at the forefront of developing methodologies to analyze patient samples recently taken by the European Mobile Laboratory from West Africa to understand disease evolution during the current outbreak.”
A Book Review—The Snake-Stone by Berlie Doherty
The setting: Urban England (the cities), but also rural England (the countryside) including remote English villages.
The theme: The main theme is a teenage search of self-discovery, in this case the search for a mother from whom the hero was separated at an early age. Its other concerns are love, getting on with others, being persistent and courageous and trying to deal with doubts, troubles and worries. As the book moves to a close, James' swimming coach says to him: “You are not like a kid obeying instructions any more. You are diving like a young man who knows where he is going.”
The characters: James is the hero of the story. He is a championship diver, and has a comfortable life with his foster parents (养父母). Yet he also has the qualities to take him on a long journey to find his birth mother. The other characters in The Snake-Stone, James' parents, his diving instructor, best friend, the villagers, people he meets on his journey, are pictured realistically.
The turning point: The turning point in the story comes while James' foster parents are away in London, and he wonders about the identity of his birth mother. The only clue he has is a fossil, “the snake stone” which she left behind along with a note on which she had written: “Take good care of Sammie. It was written on a torn envelope with parts of an address still there.
The journey: Instead of going to London, James decides to find his birth mother. With help from his geography teacher, James sets out for the remote country village where his mother might be found. James has painful, challenging, but also humorous and happy travels. The mother he finally meets, Anne, has a minor yet powerful voice in the novel. He comes to understand why she left him at a stranger's door fifteen years before. Although the meeting is not long, it leaves him with a feeling of completeness. As a journey of self-discovery The Snake-Stone also provides its readers with a happy ending. Its hero says, on returning to his foster parents, “I was home.”
Most people have flown a kite or have seen one ride and dip in strong spring wind. Not so many people know that kites were first made in China thousands of years ago. The ancient Chinese were making and flying kites even before they were writing.
A long time ago, the Chinese made kites to use in wars. They would fly these war kites in the dark. The kites were fixed so that they made strange sounds. Men who were at war with them would hear these sounds and run away. They thought those strange sounds were made by gods in the sky.
The ancient Chinese also flew kites to bring good luck and to make their crops grow rich and tall. Sometimes they tied long strings and hooks to their kites. Then they would fly the kites over water, letting the hooks hang down to catch fish.
The Chinese use sticks, strings and paper for their kites. Some of these kites look like animals or trees. Others look like birds or houses.
Time flies, but the tracks of time remain in books and museums. This is what made a recent tragedy in Brazil even more terrible.
On Sept.2, a big fire ripped through the National Museum of Brazil.“ Two hundred years of work, research and knowledge were lost,” Brazilian President Michel Temer wrote on Twitter after the fire. “It's a sad day for all Brazilians.”
Most of the 20 million pieces of history are believed to have been destroyed. Only as little as 10 percent of the collection may have survived, Time reported. Among all the items, there were Egyptian mummies, the bones of uniquely Brazilian creatures such as the long－necked dinosaur Maxakalisaurus, and an 11,500－year－old skull called Luzia, which was considered one of South America's oldest human fossils.
Besides these, Brazil's indigenous(本土的，土著的) knowledge also suffered. The museum housed world－famous collections of indigenous objects, as well as many audio recordings of local languages from all over Brazil. Some of these recordings, now lost, were of languages that are no longer spoken.
“The tragedy this Sunday is a sort of national suicide, a crime against our past and future generations,” Bernard Mello Franco, one of Brazil's best－known columnists, wrote on the O Globo newspaper site.
The cause of the fire is still unknown, as BBC News reported on Sept. 3. After the fire burned out, crowds protested outside the museum to show their anger at the loss of the irreplaceable items of historical value.
According to Emilio Bruna, an ecologist at the University of Florida, museums are living, breathing stores of who we are and where we've come from, and the world around us.
Just as underwater grass floats on the surface if it loses its roots, a nation is lost without its memories. The fire at the National Museum of Brazil teaches the world an important lesson: We should never neglect history.
How to fight California's wildfires? It's an “all of the above” respond.
There might, indeed, be a need to make it easier to thin dying or dead trees out of thickly forested areas, reducing the fuel for wildfires. But the problem is actually more complicated. Even if dead trees are removed, the dry bushes act like kindling (引火物) when wildfires spread.
Even more to the point, thick forests were not a factor in these recent California's fires. “They're using these fires to talk about forest management that has nothing to do with the landscape in which the fires are occurring,” says Chur Miller. W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Climate change is making wildfires worse. The resulting unpredictable weather patterns have created shorter, wetter winters in California, producing a sudden, heavy growth of brushes, grasses and trees. After winter, the state's ongoing drought and record- high summer temperatures draw water out of the plants, making them near-perfect kindling. With the hot and dry Santa Ana winds of fall, fires explode out of control.
Yet these tragedies can't be blame only on global warming. Wildfires are actually a vital of the state's ecosystem. Lodgepole pines (松树), for example, grow well in fire-prone areas where millions of structures have been built in rural areas of California since the 1940s.When they bum, the cost in lives and treasures skyrockets.
Answering these disasters with a one-dimensional solution helps no one, although it might score short-term political points. The proper response includes placing limits on residential expansion into wildlands; better management and removal of dry brushes and continuously addressing the growing concern of climate changes.
In other words, the solution isn't either/or. It's all of the above.
It's 11 p.m., and I'm still sitting here writing this article for the school magazine! I've had two weeks to write it, and my teacher, Julia, wants it tomorrow. She's always complaining (抱怨) that I leave things till the last minute. Maybe she's right.
A month ago I made a decision to be more efficient (有效率的) this year. Well, I've clearly failed. I've also been trying to get fitter for four weeks now. I've started going to the health club. I've even been going to bed earlier. But I'm not feeling any fitter, just a little unhappier. I miss my bad habits. Why is leading a better life so hard?
I've just read an article on a website, and I've discovered that it isn't my fault (过错)! In fact, it isn't anyone's fault. It's our brain's. It's programmed to make it difficult to break bad habits. There's nothing we can do. Scientists have done experiments that show we use one part of our brain when we think about ourselves and another when we think about other people. However, when we think about ourselves in the future, we use the same part of the brain that we usually use to think about other people. In other words, the brain sees the “future you” as a different person than your “present you.” That's why we don't always find it easy to make good decisions for ourselves in the future.
But that's not all. Scientists have also discovered that it takes around ten weeks to form a good habit. That's the amount (数量) of time the brain needs to accept new behavioral patterns (形式). The good news is that once you make it to ten weeks, everything becomes a lot easier. The bad news is that ten weeks is a really long time, so it's easy to give up what you want to do before then.
So even when we want to change our ways and become better people, our brains won't let us. Or is this just an excuse? Look — I've finished my article on time! Anything is possible!
Girls can easily get sad. If your friend is feeling blue and calls you, what will you do? Here are some tips on how you can make her smile again.
Listen to her. When people feel sad, they often have the feeling of needing to be heard. So, listen carefully to what she is saying and do nothing else. Your friend will surely thank you for being the shoulder she can cry on.
Once you are done with listening, you can offer some advice or remain silent and let her feel everything and let it all out by crying. As a friend, you might think you should give her some advice. But if you have no idea about what to say, just remain silent and be there for her.
In order to be able to help your friend in need, don't be sad for yourself. How can you help your friend when you are also feeling down?
A hug can make a difference in the word. It makes you feel warm and special. A hug makes you feel safe. So give your friend a hug when she needs it the most.
Spend more time with your friend who wants to be happy. Do things together like washing dishes, cleaning, or going out for fun. The more time you spend together, the stronger your friendship will become.
Sometimes, it is much better that you avoid a crying friend in your life. But by doing so, you are also keeping your friend at a distance and will make her wonder if you are her true friend. If you are there when she needs you, your friendship will be much stronger.
Slowly but surely, we're moving closer and closer to 5G world. From smart-home security to self-driving cars, all the internet-connected devices in our life will be able to talk to each other at lightning-fast speeds with reduced delay. Objectively speaking, the fastest 4G download speeds in the US top out at an average of 19. 42 Mbps. But by comparison 5G promises gigabit (千兆)speeds.
"5G is one of those heralds (使者), along with artificial intelligence, of this coming data age," said Steve Koenig, senior director of market research for the Consumer Technology Association. "The self-driving vehicle(车辆) is a great emblem of this data age, and that is to say, it is a sign of time, because with one single task, driving, you have massive amounts of data coming from the vehicle itself, and a variety of sensors(传感器) are collecting a lot of information to model its environment as it moves. It's pulling in data from other vehicles about road conditions down the lane(车道). It could be weather information, and also connected infrastructure (基础设施)construction. There's lots of data behind that task, which is why we need the high speed.
And virtual reality glasses and headsets haven't yet broken the mainstream(主流), but tech companies are joyfully betting that these devices will eventually replace our smartphones. With 5G, that could actually happen. This is notable because companies such as Apple are reportedly developing AR glasses to assist—or even replace— smartphones.
Ericsson stated at February's Mobile World Congress how smart glasses could become faster and lighter with a 5G connection, because instead of being weighed down with components, the glasses could rely on hardware for processing power.
But don't get too excited. There's still a lot of work to be done in the meantime, including various trials to make sure the radios play nicely with hardware and infrastructure construction so 5G isn't concentrated only in big cities.
Erik Kobayashi-Solomon spent a day with Dr. Paul Gauthier, a plant physiologist specializing in vertical (垂直的) farming research and came away with several important ideas about vertical farming.
Humans have 12,000 years of experience in growing food, but only a generation's worth of experience or so in growing crops indoors. We are still progressing up the technology learning curve (曲线). What's more, traditional farming techniques are based on conditions that are not applicable to vertical farming. Therefore, without taking time to understand the science, vertical farming is not likely to be able to live up to its implied promise.
The cost of powering LED grow lights is one of the biggest problems a vertical farm must overcome. Dr. Louis Albright at Cornell has characterized vertical farms as the "pie-in-the-sky" business. He famously calculates, for instance, that the cost of a loaf of bread would be $ 24 if farmed indoors—the cost is too high. Gauthier acknowledges that energy prices are high but points out that scientific work has shown that only about 6% of available sunlight is used in crop photosynthesis (光合作用), so there may be ways of growing the same plants with less light.
Gauthier also points out that while energy costs are a bit high, vertical farming does create enormous efficiencies in other areas. Water usage may be significantly reduced because the same water can be recycled time and again. Fertilizer use can be greatly reduced and pesticides for pest control are unnecessary. It's clear that vertical farming offers real value to society.
The future is probably mixed. In some environments—the Middle East, for instance—a move to vertical farming is a no-brainer. An indoor farm in Saudi Arabia, for instance, can use solar energy to power LEDs at low cost without shading other farmland. In other environments, though, the expense of establishing a facility places a high bar on growth and profitability. A large vertical farming and equipment operation only started generating a small profit eight years into its nine-year life.
Shop with Your Doc is part of a broader and still growing movement in US medicine to shift the focus away from simply treating disease toward caring for the whole person. It is meant to help people make educated, healthy choices, one grocery cart at a time. Across the country, hospitals are setting up food banks and medical schools are putting cooking classes on the curriculum. Nonprofits are connecting medical centers with community resources to ensure that low-income Americans have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.
For centuries, Western medicine's mission was to cure disease. "But over the past generation, two significant trends are of concern to the medical community, "says Timothy Harlan, executive director of Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. Healthcare costs began to increase sharply, and relatively inexpensive, poor-quality food became more common. "There's a very straightforward link between people improving their diets and improving the condition that they have, "Dr·Harlan says.
The connection drove the medical and nonprofit communities to rethink their approach 10 health. What emerged(浮现)was the concept of the" social determinants of health"-the concept of taking into account the biological, physical, and socioeconomic circumstances surrounding a patient. A healthy person isn't just someone who is free from disease, the theory goes；he or she also enjoys" a state of complete mental, physical and social well-being. "
The question the medical community now faces is how to get patients-especially low-income families-to recognize these determinants and make it possible for them to eat and live healthier. In Boston, medical experts responded by creating an on-site pantry(食品室)at Boston Medical Center. Since its founding in 2002, the pantry has evolved into a kind of nutrition center when primary care providers at BMC send patients food. Today the pantry, which gets 95 percent of its stock from the Greater Boston Food bank, hosts free cooking classes and serves about 7, 000 people a month. The Greater Boston Food Bank has also launched its own initiatives(倡议), striking partnerships with four community health centers across the state to offer free mobile produce markets. The organization also helped develop toolkits(软件包)that map local pantries, markets that accept government food vouchers(代金券), and other resources.
At Tulane in New Orleans, Harlan is leading the development of a curriculum that combines medicine with the art of food preparation. His philosophy: Doctors who know their way around a kitchen are better at helping their patients. And empowering(增强自主权) patients to take charge of their own diets is one way to help them deal with the incredible costs of health care, Harlan says. The curriculum has since been adopted at 35 medical schools around the United States. "Chipping away at bad habits is a good place to start getting patients to think about the choices they make for themselves and their families, "says Dr Maureen Villasenor, the Orange County pediatrician(儿科医生).
"Don't tell anyone". We hear these words when someone tells a secret to us. But it can be hard to keep a secret. We often tend to "spill the beans", even if we regret it later.
According to Asim Shah, professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, US, keeping a secret may well "become a burden". This is because people often have an "obsessive and anxious urge to share it with someone".
An earlier study, led by Anita E. Kelly, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted (受委托的) with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.
But with secrets so often getting out, why do people share them at all? Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. "Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone," according to Shah.
He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out (泄露). But this doesn't mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.
Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you'd better put yourself in their position. Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn't give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone's secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn't so secret anymore.
While quite complicated at times, coding is a way of communicating with a machine ——in many ways similar to a human writing script and virtually anyone can learn it. It's made up of a set of rules and commands, and once you master them all, you can control a machine in any way you want!
Now, in the brave new world we live in, coding has become a new form of literacy, and the way of technology is progressing, understanding how machines work and how to "communicate" with them is going to be the new norm in future education.
So, what is coding in the first place? Responsible for bringing machines, websites, and applications to life, coding represents the act of issuing commands written in a programming language to achieve a specific result Most of everything you've seen on your desktop screen, a laptop or on an iPhone has been programmed by writing code sheets.
Why should kids learn how to code? On one hand, coding develops problem-solving skills. Writing code into a platform to make something "come to life" is a fairly high-precision craft. Through trial and error, a child will learn how to make something work and then even fix it if it fails along the way! On the other hand, coding gives them better job opportunities in the future. For all intents and purposes, programming is becoming increasingly popular and will be even more so in the future!
Learning how to code doesn't happen overnight. So, considering that the future has plenty of programming and technology for our children and us, having them get acquainted with this subject matters while they're still young. It is possibly the best way to give them an upper hand in education and find a well-paying job!
Who doesn't want to live life in style? Life is like a road on which you never get a chance to return, and is not a very long road either. So we should try to live life to the fullest and enjoy every bit of it.
Every individual has unique likings and preferences, and all of us try to live the lives that suit us best. The world is like a painting cloth on which different people with different races, different languages, and different cultural backgrounds interact. But among these, the arts provide an easy and natural way for people to connect.
People with a knack for the arts usually discover it in childhood. But art isn't only for the talented; it can help everyone grow. Those with a strong artistic background are often more energetic, and more successful in all fields of life. Art widens the range of a person's life.
Painting is one of the most popular art forms. Those who are interested in taking it up as a career need to go through extensive training to get familiar with the various styles. Professional painters often host art exhibitions, with art lovers from all over the world coming to see and buy their creations. Sometimes the paintings are sold at high prices.
Performing arts are equally popular and admired. Dance, instrumental music, drama and so on require unusual artistic talent as well as a long period of education and training before audiences start to applaud the performances. But anyone with some artistic sense can make art part of his/her life, and benefit from it.
Most people shake hands and make eye contact when they meet people for the first time. Among very good friends, a woman may give another woman a little hug, and a man may kiss a woman quickly on the cheek. Males don't hug one another, which, however, is changing. Men usually shake hands with the right hand. Sometimes they use the left hand to either cover the handshake or lightly hold the other person's arm. This shows greater warmth and friendship. Most people wave hello or good-bye by extending the palm(手掌) facing outward, and twisting the hand at the wrist. Another way is to raise the arm, palm outward, and move the whole arm and hand back and forth. This is important to know because in many other countries, the same movements mean "no".
When people are waiting in a public place, such as the post office, they usually form lines. Some people get angry and complain if someone pushes their way into a line or jumps ahead of other people. Moreover, many women like men to open doors for them. They also like men to give up their seats on public transportation. However, some women do not like this type of behavior. They feel that men and women should be treated in the same way.
In the United States, it's important to make direct eye contact in business and social situations. If you don't make eye contact, people will probably think that you are bored or not interested. If there is silence in these situations, people usually try to make conversation. Periods of silence make many people uncomfortable. People in the United States usually stand about one arm's length away from each other while talking or standing together. This space is called "the comfort zone".
In the United States, mothers sometimes show that they are angry with children by shaking an index finger(食指) at them. People may show that they like children by patting them on the head.
A culture guide named Persephone welcomes travellers to Greece and takes them through a famous cave in the north. The guide moves smoothly around the underground area and can talk about it in 33 languages. It can also answer 33 questions, but only in the Greek language.
Persephone is intelligent and it is a human-sized robot. The robot has been in operation for about a month at the Alistrati Cave. Persephone guides visitors through the first 150 metres of the cave that is open to the public. For the remaining 750 metres, a human guide takes over.
The idea of creating the robot guide was put forward by Nikos Kartalis, who is the scientific director at the Alistrati site. He had this idea when he saw one on television guiding visitors at an art show. Persephone was built by the National Technology and Research Foundation and cost about 139,000 dollars. "People who had visited in the past are coming back to see the robot guide," said Nikos. "Many foreign visitors couldn't believe Greece had the ability to build a robot and use it as a guide in the cave."
The robot, with a white body, black head, and two bright eyes, moves on wheels. It guides visitors to the first three of eight stops along the walkway. It can do two more stops, but it is too slow for the tour. Persephone's creators are considering ways to increase her speed. The robot begins the tour by saying, "My name is Persephone. I welcome you to the Alistrati Cave. "
Evdokia Karafera is a human guide who partners with Persephone. "It is helpful, because it speaks many languages," she said. "There's just a little delay in the touring. Most find it fascinating, especially the children, and find it interesting that it speaks many languages. Robots, at some point in the future, will take over many jobs. But I believe they cannot take the place of humans everywhere."
Recently, parents in parts of America have been seeking a greater role in their children's schooling, from creating policies to making decisions about course content. Taking parenting into a school seems to go from responsible to ridiculous. There should be a degree to which parental involvement is appropriate and desirable, but where is the line?
Some parents see themselves as partners of school staff; other parents attempt to have a significant say in the details of how classrooms are run. If parents must stop and wonder whether they spend too much time complaining and laying down the law, it might be time to do one of two things: unregister the child from the school, or step back to let the school do its job. The only role in which parents can fully be managers occurs in a home school model. If we choose to send our children to a school, we must stand by our decision to entrust their education with outsiders. If that is impossible, it's time to pick a new school setting for the good of everyone involved.
"We value what parents tell us because you are the experts on your children, not us. We are medical experts, but that is different," said Doctor Basel Baker. Parents know things about their children that a doctor does not, and the same holds true for teachers and parents. If a child is not turning in homework, asking parents for a bigger picture is essential to helping find a solution. However, the relay stick is handed to teachers as to instructional practice and methods.
Our feelings often affect rational (理性的) thinking, and that is never truer than when our children are involved. Sometimes, what parents see presents a valuable data point to share, such as a child doing well when relaxed but failing under pressure during test-taking. That's why parents must approach schools about important decisions with information, not anger.
In the early 1990s, my friend Jay was working for IBM and made a good salary. Later, Jay declined an offer from an interesting but small organization because of the low pay. He has regretted it ever since. That small company was Microsoft.
Regret is a reaction to a disappointing event in your life, such as a choice you made that can't be changed, or something you said that you can't take back. It's a heavy and negative emotion connected to pity, sorrow and helplessness and can last for minutes, days, years or even a lifetime. Regret can increase your stress and throw off the balance of immune (免疫) systems.
Fortunately, regret can be overcome through interventions. As a psychologist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, I conducted a research on stressful emotions. In the research, we found people would experience regret for action or inaction. The action-related regrets, although painful, stimulate people to learn from their mistakes and move on. But the regret related to the inaction is more likely to lead to depression and anxiety. Avoiding or denying regret only can increase negative feelings and extend the time people suffer with them. Rather than stay stuck, people can manage these emotions in four steps: First, accept the fact that you are feeling them; determine why you are feeling them; allow yourself to learn from them; and finally, release them and move forward.
In Jay's case, at first he pushed away his feelings of regret. He continued to struggle with thoughts of what he missed. He did not change until he approached and explored his feelings of regret. Eventually he accepted the fact and reminded himself of his rationale at the time- he failed to recognize the potential of Microsoft. On making future decisions, Jay recognized the importance of obtaining information about opportunities and challenged himself to learn about the big players in the field. Doing so allowed him to move on and ultimately forgive himself.
European researchers say they have created a process that can produce oxygen from moon dust. The process could provide a major source of oxygen for humans taking part in moon exploration activities in the future. Researchers from the European Space Agency, or ESA, carried out the experiments at a laboratory in the Netherlands.
The team says ESA's experimental "plant" was able to successfully produce oxygen from simulated moon dust. The dust is part of a material known as regolith, a top layer of dirt and rock pieces that sit on the surface of the moon. Samples of regolith returned from the moon have confirmed that the material contains about 45 percent oxygen by weight. However, the oxygen is chemically locked in the form of minerals or glass, so it is not easily available for use. Having real samples of regolith from the moon made it possible for the researchers to create the simulated moon dust material used during testing.
The oxygen extraction(提取) process is carried out using a method called molten salt electrolysis(熔盐电解). This includes first placing the regolith in a metal container. Calcium chloride salt is added to the mixture, which is then heated to 950 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, the regolith remains solid. Next, an electrical current is passed through the material. The researchers say it is this step that results in oxygen being extracted from the regolith. The study reported that up to 96 percent of oxygen in the simulated moon dust was extracted during the experiments.
ESA's long-term goal is to design an oxygen-producing "pilot plant" to operate full-time on the moon. The first technology demonstration of the system is expected to take place in the middle 2020s. Beth Lomax, a lead researcher on the project, said, "Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and the local production of rocket fuel. "The researchers reported that "as a bonus", the process also results in the production of usable metallic materials.
ESA and the US space agency NASA are both working on plans to return human beings to the moon. NASA has set a goal for 2024 with the aim to keep humans on the moon for long periods.
Two British teachers have broken the world record for the longest journey in a tuk-tuk after pulling their failing vehicle for 43 miles. Richard Sears and Nick Gough traveled 37,500 kilometers around the world and passed through 37 countries. They did this to support grassroots education project in Africa, Asia and South America.
The pair, who set off from London, thought their expedition was over when the vehicle started to fail. When the tuk-tuk broke, they were only 70 kilometers from their destination. They decided to pull it the rest of the way. The tuk-tuk, which weighs 800 kilograms, was pulled in turns by Rich and Nick over three days. On arrival in Chepen, Peru, they discovered a mechanic who specialized in tuk-tuks and managed to fix it.
The pair were back on the road and aiming for their next goal. Along their journey they had to tackle deserts and jungles. They also survived close encounters with elephants in Uganda and Botswana and an accident in Malaysia. The greatest hardship on the tuk-tuk was the mountain ranges lying in their path, including the Alps, the Himalayas and the Andes.
Nick and Richard uncovered some inspirational projects across Africa, Asia and South America. They witnessed firsthand the educational challenges facing these areas today. They joined street children in the slums of Cairo, Khartoum, Kampala, Mumbai and Phnom Penh. They visited Congolese refugees (难民) in camps in Eastern Burundi. They witnessed how education could free sex-workers in Delhi and victims of human trafficking in Nepal.
The pair established The Tuk Tuk Educational Trust, a U. K. registered charity.
Talking about their motivation, Richard said: "The world's leaders have made a commitment to achieving universal primary education but, in spite of this pledge (誓言,承诺), over 57 million primary-aged children worldwide are still out of school; many more are in school, though still cannot access quality learning opportunities. "
Growing up, David Flink struggled in school—despite his smarts. He had a hard time focusing in class, and he didn't understand why he couldn't learn the way other students did.
"There was a calculation made," he said. "I could either be the silent kid or I could be the bad kid. So, I started acting out. "Flink was often asked to leave the classroom because of the disturbance he caused." At one point, my desk was literally moved to the hallway," he said. "But then I had this message sent to me that I didn't belong in a classroom."
One in five children in the United States has learning disability. At the time, Flink didn't realize he was among them, and his struggles left him feeling alone and isolated. At 11, Flink was diagnosed(诊断) with ADHD and dyslexia. With the support of his parents and the right school, Flink graduated high school and went to Brown University.
When he got to college, he found a community of students who also had learning disabilities. Together with five of them, Flink started a mentoring program for nearby elementary school students who had a learning disability. They called the program Eye to Eye.
Since 1998, Eye to Eye has grown into a nationwide non-profit organization that pairs middle school children who have a learning disability with a college or high school mentor who also has a learning disability. The organization is in 150 schools nationwide and has more than 1350 mentees, influencing middle school children each week. Eighty percent of Eye to Eye students graduate from college—an impressive rate considering children with learning disabilities are three times more likely to drop out of high school.
While Flink enjoys hearing about the academic success Eye to Eye brings to children, there's something more he finds satisfying. "When I hear that because they were in Eye to Eye, they now understand somebody else's experience better—this is what we need in America," Flink said. "We have to love each other across our difference."
