To those normal kids, it's not unusual to hear "Goodnight" when you kiss them, saying "Goodnight" to them. For most parents, it's just a storm in a teacup. However, for me it's opposite.

My son James, suffered from the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain. Some people with ASD may have advanced conversation skills whereas James is an exception.

 Pre-diagnosis, I'd give James a big kiss and whisper goodnight when putting James to bed. Post-diagnosis, the silence that I received in return was deafening. It had never occurred to me before to be concerned that when I said" Goodnight, James. I love you", my toddler said nothing in response.

I needed to hear him say something. My husband and 1 began to promote James to say goodnight back to us. "Say goodnight, Mommy. " For over a year, "Say goodnight, Mommy" was the parting routine of the day. Every night, it made me cry. I never got used to it. But I never gave up hope.

With more efforts one night, I'd hear something more organic come out of James's mouth. He dropped the "say"—and his response became "goodnight, Mommy" when James turned four. It was fantastic—but it was still prompted. At six, I got my first unprompted, "Goodnight, Mommy. I love you "Next to my wedding, and births of my children, this was the most exciting night of my life.

James, now eight, routinely kisses us goodnight and tells us he loves us. The other evening, after giving me a big hug and kiss. James told me, "You're a great mom! You're not a mom with feathers, or a mom with colors and markers. I'm glad you're a…a person!" I don't know if he had the book Are You My Mather? on his mind, or if this was just one of the many random thoughts that crossed my son's brain on a daily basis. 1 do know it was music to my ears.

A robot the size of a large bulldozer（推土机）moves along the bottom of the deep sea. It eats metallic.（含金属的）rock and soft mud. The stuff travels up a long pipe to a ship, where workers and machinery separate out the rock and throw the mud back into the ocean. This is a mining operation. The rock contains a mixture of metals, including ones called rare earth metals. People use these materials to make batteries and electronics like computers and phones.

Deep-sea mining hasn't happened yet. But it probably will occur within the next decade. No country owns any part of the deep sea. So an organization called the International Seabed Authority（ISA）decides who is allowed to mine there. The ISA has allowed 29 organizations to explore the deep sea and make plans for mining. One company plans to begin mining in the year 2027.

Scientists and environmentalists, though, warn that mining could destroy deep-sea ecosystem. In 1989, ecologist Hjalmar Thiel carried out a test. His team searched the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean, in a spot with lots of the metallic rocks that miners want. They didn't actually collect any of the rocks. But they disturbed the mud, just as a mining operation would. The plume（飘升之物）of mud fell back down over the ocean floor burying creatures living there. As of 2015, the area they disturbed had not recovered. Signs of the search are still there. Sponges（海绵动物）, corals, and other animals have not moved back in. That means mining could have harmful, long-lasting consequences for deep ocean life. Scientists want to understand the deep sea better before disturbing it.

Leaving the deep sea alone sounds great, but people need those metals. "Mines on land are soon going to run out," geologist Steven Scott of the University of Toronto told Smithsonian Magazine, "Every electronic device in the world has rare earth metals in it…we need raw resources." New energy technologies including solar and wind power and electric cars, rely on these metals as well. We may need to mine them from the sea in order to switch to greener energy sources.

 The latest housing trend in America has nothing to do with decoration, but rather the rise of intergenerational roommates. Described as separated by at least one generation, intergenerational roommate arrangements arc growing in the United States, and intergenerational houses have increased four times since 1971. 

Pick your explanation- growing isolation among the elderly, rising rents, average life-expectancy increasing, an aging population, or rising college tuition, the fact of the matter is that older folks have space available, and tend to be happy to have a young person around. 

In March 2021, there were 59. 7 million U. S. residents who lived with multiple generations under one roof. 

"It was perfect-Judith has become like my family, " said Nadia Abdullah, a 25-year-old robotics student who in 2019 moved in with the 64-year-old lawyer, Judith. The arrangement of $700 a month plus help around the house has put her just 6-miles from Boston, and 30 minutes from her robotics job in Beverly Mass. Judith and Nadia were matched together thanks to Nesterly, a renting center specifically designed to create intergenerational roommates. 

"Through Nesterly, I lived with Sarah while attending Harvard, " writes a young Nesterly reviewer named Kaplan who provided the exact sort of insight into the service one would imagine. "She provided the type of profound knowledge you just can't Google-showing me how to garden, to cut a fish, and inject French Romanticism into life. "

Biologically-speaking, an arrangement such as Sarah and Kaplan is kind of the natural state of humanity. Scholars believe this is because our intelligence and life experiences, passed down to the next generation, acts as a secondary way to ensure our genetics are passed on; i. e. if you can live long enough to explain to your children and grandchildren exactly which mushrooms they can eat, which snakes are poisonous, how to hunt with a bow and arrow, those offspring will have a better chance of survival.