Four houseplants that anyone can grow
Filling your home with greenery is something that can improve the quality of your indoor air, and help you to relax. So turn your brown thumb green by picking some of these houseplants.
Snake Plant
Snake plants have thicker leaves for keeping water even in drought conditions. They can also tolerate （经受） medium to bright light so you should keep them near a window. But one of the best things about snake plants is that they are great for cleaning indoor air.
Christmas Cactus
The Christmas cactus is one of the most beautiful plants of the holiday season and it seems to be able to do best even if you ignore it. The cactus can tolerate low light but will produce more pink or red flowers in bright light. Getting the plant to produce flowers for the season is a bit harder because it will have to be kept cool beginning in November. Just leave the cactus beside a window at home with the heat off.
Jade Plant
Jade plants can make your home more beautiful with its bright egg-shaped leaves. The plant does well in any lighting and doesn't need to be watered very often because it stores water in its leaves. This plant is also simple to propagate（繁殖） so you can have one in every room of your home.
Aloe Vera
Aloe vera needs very little water, indirect sunlight, and can live in the same pot for years. But you may not know that aloe vera is a plant that can help heal（治愈） minor cuts and burns like sunburns so it is a great addition for your home. When you are cutting leaves to use, don't cut off more than a third of the plant at one time.
Hiao Khanh,29, is a member of the Community Malaria（疟疾）. Action Team in Chư Rcăm commune, Krông pa district, Gia Lai province, which is known for having the highest number of malaria cases in Vietnam. In 2020, more than 200 cases were reported across the district.
Hiao Khanh has been working in malaria prevention and control since 2019, after he recovered from malaria. "It was a near-death experience," said Hiao Khanh. "I had a high fever before getting medical support. After that, I was determined to help reduce sickness and deaths from malaria in my community."
People in this community depend heavily on the forest to earn a living. They go into the forest to work, and sleep there, putting them at high risk of contracting（感染） malaria. When it rains, the community's various forest settlements are nearly cut off as the dirt roads are flooded. Hiao Khanh and his team need to use motorbikes to reach different parts of the community to help protect people from malaria.
The team's main activities are to raise awareness about malaria prevention, provide protective items, and find out people who might have malaria and then transport them to healthcare facilities for testing.
With the right treatment, patients can now be cured in a shorter period of time. However, ensuring individuals stay on track with their treatment remains a challenge. Forest workers, for example, often prefer to return to work as soon as their fever breaks. Part of Hiao Khanh's work is to find and persuade （说服）patients to come back for treatment. Communication is an important aspect of his team's work. They actively listen to people's concerns, respond to their questions, and stress the importance of completing the full treatment course. "Just a ‘thank you' from the people is enough to give me strength to continue this job to reduce malaria in my homeland," said Hiao Khanh.
As a young music therapist in Colorado, Shannon de L'Etoile saw that when mothers were encouraged to sing to their babies, they were amazed by the positive responses they received. She quickly realized that music could be a powerful tool for helping mothers learn more about their infants（婴儿）. Soon, de L'Etoile began researching the practice, called infant-directed singing. She says it helps babies learn to regulate their feelings, which allows them to later behave well in school, and in the social and professional world.
"If a mother can sing in a way that catches the infant's attention, it can help to promote the development of the infant's brain," said de L'Etoile. "Infant-directed singing is a way in which mothers can communicate with their babies that most infants can recognize and respond to. But mothers need to be sensitive to infant cues（提示）."
De L'Etoile is working with people at the Linda Ray Intervention Center to create a coaching program that will guide mothers in the practice. She is now in the process of training workers at the center, who will coach mothers for a month in the most beneficial ways to sing to their infants. The process includes watching and recording mothers as they sing to their infants and then showing these mothers how they can be sensitive to their infants' feelings while singing. Mothers will be able to notice if the infant is benefiting because the baby will look longer at the mother and reach a happy state.
As part of the study, after each mother completes the training, de L'Etoile will work with a music engineering program to study recordings of the mother's voice. The study result can show changes over time in the mother's ability to change her singing according to the infant's feelings. Videos of the babies will also be studied to discover their connections with their mothers over time. De L'Etoile has been working closely with center workers to develop the program so that it will meet the needs of different families.
Robots doing chores is nothing new, with Tesla having put forward its cool Optimus robot and DeepMind revealing its latest achievements in robotics. Recently, a robot called Mobile Aloha caught the attention of many at the beginning of 2024, with short videos of it cooking at someone's home going viral in January.
Developed by a team of researchers at Stanford University in the US, the robot can handle everything for a dish, whether it is chopping（切） vegetables or cracking eggs.
It is also good at various household tasks like watering plants, petting cats, cleaning the floor and doing laundry. It even knows to shake the pillow after putting on a pillowcase （枕套）. An Internet user joked under one video that as long as this thing doesn't try to kill him while he is asleep, he is in real need of it.
However, a following video posted by one of the researchers, Tony Zhao, and showing Mobile Aloha's failures proved that the idea of having a robot servant may just be wishful thinking. In the video, Mobile Aloha randomly smashed（打碎） glasses and plates, collided（碰撞） with cabinets（橱柜） and even burned a pot.
It turns out that Mobile Aloha is not a complete self-learning system that can independently navigate new environments. It relies on demonstrations by human operators in its surroundings, meaning that the robot needs to learn from human behavior before completing each task. Also, according to the team, the robot achieves a 95 percent success rate in wiping red wine stains（污渍）, 80 percent in pushing chairs, and a me re 40 percent in frying shrimp（虾）. In short, it's far from perfect.
The behavioral problems of AI robots have been bothering scientists for decades. Although AI robots do pretty well in things requiring high-level reasoning like math, they perform worse than a one-year-old child when it comes to simple tasks demanding abilities of perception, reflexes（反射） and mobility, among others.
As the team observed, the interaction between the arm and the base of Mobile Aloha would get quite complex if more flexibility is required in a task. Even a slight deviation（偏差） in the base settings might lead to significant drift in the arms' motions, resulting in failure to complete the task.
How to Create a Personalized Daily Routine
Figuring out how to create a daily routine（常规） that works for you—and how to stick to it—can take some time. Here are a few steps to help you make a daily routine for yourself, even if you've never had one.
●Make a list
Figuring out how to write a daily routine begins by writing down everything you need to get done daily, both at home and at work.
. This is a brain dump, not a to-do list. Simply take down everything you do each day, as well as everything you should get done. No task is too small—if you want to work "brush teeth" into your daily routine, put it on the list.
● .
The point of creating a daily routine is to use your most productive （富有成效的） hours for challenging tasks and your least productive hours for the simple r tasks. . For example, you might have a doctor's appointment during the time you usually set aside for work. Arranging free time in your daily routine will help to keep things flowing smoothly despite atypical events.
●Test drive your new routine
Once you've created your daily routine, take it for a test drive. Did you schedule your tasks at times that make sense? Stick to the routine for at least 30 days. . Once your tasks are arranged into the
right spots, you should find sticking to your daily routine to be easier than you ever thought.
. But you will soon see the benefits when your productivity rises and you find you actually have pockets of free time.
A. Be open to flexibility （灵活性）
B. Keep the structure every day
C. Change any scheduling that isn't working
D. Don't worry about how you organize this list
E. Creating a daily routine may seem like a difficult task at first
F. You also need to create a reasonable routine you can stick to
G. But life can get in the way of even the most detailed routines
Cats bring bad luck. Cats cannot be 1 . This is what I was taught when I was growing up. I hated cats.
And then I married a woman who was brought up with cats. So it was unavoidable that she would want us to 2 one. My parents-in-law lived with Maggie, a big cat that made me quite 3 . When we used to take our baby daughter to their home, I watched Maggie 4 . Whenever she went near my daughter, I ran to ensure that Maggie did not 5 her. My wife always laughed and told me Maggie wouldn't hurt our daughter.
6 from my wife to get a cat became greater after we had two more children. Under stress, I finally gave in and 7 . And then Masala came to our home. Our children loved the new " 8 ". They played with Masala and slept with her. At first, I was a bit 9 . I was not sure what would happen next. But slowly I started liking that small animal.
We were happy with life. But then, something 10 happened, and my wife got lung cancer. This terrible time was also when I came to really 11 the cat. Masala provided my wife with good 12 . She stayed by my wife's bedside around the clock. My wife fought the disease bravely but didn't 13 at last. After my wife died, Masala also 14 me during my darkest days. Her warm welcome after I came home meant a lot to me. Masala helped me 15 my prejudices（偏见）against cats. She really taught me a lesson.
Born in 551 BC, Confucius has made the greatest contribution to Chinese culture of anyone in history. When he began teaching in his early （twenty）, he soon began to attract many disciples（弟子）. He was not only a scholar, but also a man had political ideals. But when his ideals could not （realize）, he resigned. After his resignation from government service, he spent his last years （teach） and editing earlier writings. It is generally believed that Confucius preserved the literature of China for later times. Fearing that it would be lost during the troubled era in which he lived, he gathered earlier writings to prepare are called the Five Classics. He also left behind him the Analects, collection of sayings, which were put together by his disciples. Confucius was born only a few years after the Buddha. Unlike the Buddha, however, he did not seek to escape from the world, but wanted to find a way man to be happy on earth. He thought that human nature was good, not bad. If men would think and act （proper）, he believed, most evils would disappear. In government he believed that the ruler was like the father in a family. He also stressed the importance of education, good manners, and tradition. Highly （value） by the Chinese people, his thoughts and teachings formed the foundation of a great philosophy, Confucianism. Over the last 2,000 years, his philosophy （continue） to influence China and the rest of the world.
