In the 19th century, doctors tried to transfuse blood (输血)to patients who had lost blood in accidents or to try to save them. However, in most cases there would be a horrible reaction. When the donated blood mixed with the patient's own blood，it clotted (凝结)almost immediately. That stopped the circulation (循环)and the patient would die. Born on 14th June 1868，Karl Landsteiner，a doctor in Vienna, was very concerned about this. He knew there was something in the blood that caused reactions, but some people did manage to escape. Perhaps different people had different kinds of blood? He got a lot of blood samples (标本)from people, and mixed and matched them. Blood has two parts，the blood cells and the liquid serum(血清).You take blood cells from one person and mix them with the serum of another. If they react, the cells will clot and form a big lump. That means it is not safe to transfuse blood between these people. Landsteiner matched hundreds of samples like this，to find out who was safe for whom and who wasn’t. In fact, there were blood groups now called A, B, AB and O.

So what was going on in the blood? All our red blood cells have sugar molecules(糖分子) that are stuck on their surfaces. The red blood cells of people with group A have one kind of sugar, while those with B have another. People with AB have both of these while people with O have none.

People with the A blood group have a chemical substance called anti-B, while those of B blood group have anti-A in their serum. People with AB group have neither anti-A nor anti-B, while people with O have both. If you were B group and got blood from an A person,the anti- A in your blood would cause all the cells with A-sugar on them to clot immediately, stopping the circulation of blood.

In 1907, Dr. Reuben Outenberg carried out the first safe blood transfusion by matching blood groups. Blood transfusion became quite common from then on. And it helped saved thousands of lives in the First World War.

One of the important subjects in contemporary poetry is identity—with an open-ended explanation of that word. Poets, young and old, are exploring what identity is, using their own lives as the background.

British poet Phoebe Power, in her first collection of poems, Shrines of Upper Austria, explores a different aspect of identity: a personal understanding of national identity. The collection received the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was on the final list for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Power was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne and raised in Cumbria. She has taken part in a number of performance art and video art projects. She received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012. Now she lives in York in northern England.

Power’s starting point is her grandmother. She came to England from Austria as a new bride married to a British soldier in 1946, the first year after the end of World WarⅡ. Imagine the reactions of her British neighbors and her new British family. Imagine what she had left behind. The grandmother’s experiences influenced Power greatly.

In Shrines of Upper Austria, we walk with the poet to see her grandmother’s life before Britain. We can learn about the small town where she lived, the bodies of water, and buildings that existed when her grandmother lived there. Power also added some prose(散文) to the book, which tells us some stories of her grandmother’s early life. For example, it tells the stories about how her grandmother was found as a baby and given to a farmer when she was two.

The poems in the collection are pieces of a life. We can no more walk in our grandparents’ shoes than they can walk in ours. However, we can study old family photographs. We can see pieces of their lives—where they lived, perhaps; where they played as children; what lakes or rivers they swam in. Like Power, we are left with pieces. These pieces don’t all make sense, but collectively they show a life.

When some people hear self-discipline, they think that it’s boring. They equate a disciplined life to feelings of entrapment. Allow me to tell you a story.

On a hot sunny day, Bertha is buzzing by her hive with some other bees, just relaxing and having a good time. Suddenly a bear starts to approach her hive for some honey and bee eggs. To save her hive, Bertha stings the bear. But its skin is so thick that once she tries to pull her sting out she dismembers(肢解) herself and dies.

The sad part is that Bertha has no choice. Through years of evolution she has developed a biological reaction to dangers—to sting threats. If she had known she would die, she might have flown away and saved her own life.

Bees are prisoners of their own biology, but humans can override their biology through self-discipline.

Most people have long-term desires for lasting relationships, meaningful careers or healthy bodies but are constantly tempted by short term pleasures, such as junk food or video games. Deep down they really want the life that comes in the long term. Yet they keep giving in to short-term pleasures.

The only difference is self-discipline. Luckily, humans have the ability to practice self-discipline. It gives us the freedom to achieve what we truly want in life and allow us to break free of the biological or societal cages around us. But it’s not that simple.

Companies are aware of our natural, biological reactions and use this against us by using supernormal stimuli. An example is junk food. Our ancestors were wired to seek out and enjoy fat and salty food because it was so rare at the time. But now companies have genetically engineered food to include more fats and salts than ever before in order to make us desire it even more.

Social media and the Internet as a whole is another form of supernormal stimuli. Humans are biologically wired to seek out novelty. For our ancestors novelty could lead to more knowledge about the world, which could lead to more wisdom that helped us thrive as a species. It has its usefulness. However, the Internet has been designed to take advantage of this desire for novelty by showing you more novelty than you can ever dream of. Every page links out more pages. And every video to a video with even more novelty. Videogames do the same thing.

On the plus side, however, you and I are not like the bee, because we are not cased by our own biology. With self-discipline, we can live the life we truly want. We have the choice to be free.