More than 25 years ago, Saroo Brierley lived in rural（农村）India. One day, he played with his brother along the rail line and fell asleep. When he woke up and found himself alone, the 4-year-old decided his brother might be on the train he saw in front of him-so he got on.
That train took him a thousand miles across the country to a totally strange city. He lived on the streets, and then in an orphanage（孤儿院）. There, he was adopted by an Australian family and flown to Tasmania.
As he writes in his new book, A Long Way Home, Brierley couldn't help but wonder about his hometown back in India. He remembered landmarks, but since he didn't know his town's name, finding a small neighborhood in a vast country proved to be impossible.
Then he found a digital mapping program. He spent years searching for his hometown in the program's satellite pictures. In 2011, he came across something familiar. He studied it and realized he was looking at a town's central business district from a bird's-eye view. He thought, “On the right-hand side you should see the three-platform train station”—and there it was. "And on the left-hand side you should see a big fountain"-and there it was. Everything just started to match.
When he stood in front of the house where he grew up as a child, he saw a lady standing in the entrance. "There's something about me, " he thought—and it took him a few seconds but he finally remembered what she used to look like.
In an interview Brierley says, "My mother looked so much shorter than I remembered. But she came forth and walked forward, and I walked forward, and my feelings and tears and the chemical in my brain, you know, it was like a nuclear fusion（核聚变）. I just didn't know what to say, because I never thought seeing my mother would ever come true. And here I am, standing in front of her. ”
At the start of the 20th century, an American engineer named John Elfreth Watkins made predictions about life today. His predictions about slowing population growth, mobile phones and increasing height were close to the mark. But he was wrong in one prediction: that everybody would walk 10 miles a day.
Today, in Australia, most children on average fall 2, 000 steps short of the physical activity they need to avoid being overweight. In the early 1970s, 40 per cent of children walked to school, while in 2010, it was as low as 15 per cent.
The decline is not because we have all become lazy. Families are pressed for time, many with both parents working to pay for their house, often working hours not of their choosing, living in car-dependent neighborhoods with limited public transport.
The other side of the coin is equally a deprivation: for health and well-being, as well as lost opportunities（机会）for children to get to know their local surroundings. And for parents there are lost opportunities to walk and talk with their young scholar about their day.
Most parents will have eagerly asked their child about their day, only to meet with a “good”, quickly followed by "I'm hungry". This is also my experience as a mother. But somewhere over the daily walk more about my son's day comes out. I hear him making sense of friendship and its limits. This is the unexpected and rare parental opportunity to hear more.
Many primary schools support walking school-bus routes（路线）, with days of regular, parent-accompanied walks. Doing just one of these a few times a week is better than nothing. It can be tough to begin and takes a little planning-running shoes by the front door, lunches made the night before, umbrellas on rainy days and hats on hot ones-but it's certainly worth trying.
Researchers say they have translated the meaning of gestures that wild chimpanzees (黑猩猩) use to communicate. They say wild chimps communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a "vocabulary" of 66 gestures. The scientists discovered this by following and filming groups of chimps in Uganda, and examining more than 5,000 incidents of these meaningful exchanges.
Dr Catherine Hobaiter, who led the research, said that this was the only form of intentional communication to be recorded in the animal kingdom. Only humans and chimps, she said, had a system of communication where they deliberately sent a message to another group member.
"That's what's so amazing about chimp gestures," she said. "They're the only thing that looks like human language in that respect. ”
Although previous research has shown that apes and monkeys can understand complex information from another animal's call, the animals do not appear to use their voices intentionally to communicate messages. This was a significant difference between calls and gestures, Dr Hobaiter said.
Chimps will check to see if they have the attention of the animal with which they wish to communicate. In one case, a mother presents her foot to her crying baby, signaling:" Climb on me. " The youngster immediately jumps on to its mothers back and they travel off together. "The big message from this study is that there is another species (物种) out there. that is meaningful in its communication, so that's not unique to humans," said Dr Hobaiter.
Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester, said the study was praiseworthy in seeking to enrich our knowledge of the evolution of human language. But, she added, the results were "a little disappointing".
"The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggests either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions," she said. "Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other animal convey with non-verbal communication. So, it seems the gulf remains. "
You run into the grocery store to pick up one bottle of water. You get what you need, head to the front, and choose the line that looks fastest.
You chose wrong. People who you swear got in other lines long after you are already checked out and off to the parking lot.
It turns out, it's just math working against you; chances are, the other line really is faster.
Grocery stores try to have enough employees at checkout to get all their customers through with minimum delay.Any small interruption - a price check, a chatty customer-can have downstream effects, holding up an entire line.
If there are three lines in the store, delays will happen randomly at different registers. Think about the probability:So it's not just in your mind: Another line probably is moving faster.
Researchers have a good way to deal with this problem. Make all customers stand in one long, snaking line- called a serpentine line - and serve each person at the front with the next available register.This is what they do at most banks and fast-food restaurants. With a serpentine line, a long delay at one register won't unfairly punish the people who lined up behind it. Instead, it will slow down everyone a little bit but speed up checkout overall.
It takes many registers to keep one line moving quickly, and some stores can't afford the space or manpower. So wherever your next wait may be: Good luck.
A. Why does this always seem to happen to you?
B. So why don't most places encourage serpentine lines?
C. Some of the may have stood in a queue for almost an hour.
D. The chances of your line being the fastest are only one in three.
E.How high is the probability that you are in the fastest waiting line?
F.With three registers, this method is much faster than the traditional approach.
G.But sometimes, as on a Sunday afternoon, the system gets particularly busy.
Last year I decided to do some volunteer work. I began to1on the Internet and discovered Volunteer USA. Three months later I2myself on a plane to Phoenix, Arizona. I was3at the thought of living with loads of new people for three months. However, within fifteen minutes of4, my worries had gone. Everyone was so5and like-minded that it was very6to feel at home.
I was sent to the Coronado National Forest for my first 8-day7. We had to8everything we needed and walk three miles to where we worked. It may not seem like a9way but in 35℃ heat and with a heavy pack, my legs were on fire.
My job was to10a stairway out of rock. This11climbing up and down the side of a mountain inhabited (栖息) by mountain lions, although I should say they were only heard,never12.
Three days later, a beautiful stairway came into being. The13of knowing that my14will be on that mountainside for years to come is massive.
But on the last night we were15in a thunderstorm. I woke up at midnight to find a swimming pool in my tent. The temperature was close to16. I had to spend the rest of the night trembling in the only17part of my tent.
18, I suffered a lot. But I know whatever I have to face in my life I was there and I19. I think I am much20for having taken part in the project.
In a study of 33 years of trends in Body Mass Index (体重指数) across 200 countries, the scientists found that people worldwide are getting heavier that most of the rise is due to gains in BMI in rural areas.
BMI is an internationally recognized measurement toolgives an indication of whether someone is a healthy weight. It is calculated by dividing a (person) weight in kg by their height in meters squared. and a BMI of between 19 and 25 (consider) healthy.
The study found that between 1985 and 2017, average rural BMI increased 2.1 in women and men. In cities, however, the gain (be) 1.3 in women and 1.6 in men. The researchers described “striking changes” in the geography of BMI. Tn 1985，urban men and women in more than three quarters of the countries (study) had higher BMIs than men and women in rural areas. But 30 years later, the BMI difference between urban and rural people in many countries had narrowed (sharp).
This may be due to some disadvantages for people (live) in the countryside, including (low) levels of income and education, higher costs of healthy foods, and fewer sports facilities.
Pumpkin (南瓜) carving at Halloween is a family tradition. We visit a local farm every October. In the pumpkin field, I compete with my three brothers and sister to seek out the biggest pumpkin. My dad has a rule that we have to carry our pumpkins back home, and as the eldest child I have an advantage-I carried an 85-pounder back last year.
This year, it was hard to tell whether my prize or the one chosen by my 14-year-old brother, Jason, was the winner. Unfortunately we forgot to weigh them before taking out their insides, but I was determined to prove my point. All of us were hard at work at the kitchen table, with my mom filming the annual event. I'm unsure now why I thought forcing my head inside the pumpkin would settle the matter, but it seemed to make perfect sense at the time.
With the pumpkin resting on the table, hole uppermost, I bent over and pressed my head against the opening. At first I got jammed just above my eyes and then, as I went on with my task, unwilling to quit, my nose briefly prevented entry. Finally I managed to put my whole head into it, like a cork (软木塞) forced into a bottle. I was able to straighten up with the huge pumpkin resting on my shoulders.
My excitement was short-lived. The pumpkin was heavy. "I'm going to set it down, now," I said,and with Jason helping to support its weight，I bent back over the table to give it somewhere to rest. It was only when I tried to remove my head that I realized getting out was going to be less straightforward than getting in. When I pulled hard, my nose got in the way. I got into a panic as I pressed firmly against the table and moved my head around trying to find the right angle, but it was no use. "I can't get it out!" I shouted, my voice sounding unnaturally loud in the enclosed space.
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It was five or six minutes though it felt much longer.
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The video was posted the Monday before Halloween.
