When you're lying on the white sands of the Mexican Riviera, the stresses of the world seem a million miles away. Hey, stop! This is no vacation-you have to finish something!

    Here lies the problem for the travel writer and critic Edie Jarolim "I always loved traveling and always liked to eat, but it never occurred to me that I could make money doing both of those things," Jarolim said. Now you can read her travel advice everywhere—in Arts and Antiques, in Brides, or in one of her there books, The Complete Idiot's Travel Guide to Mexican Beach Resorts.

    Her job in travel writing began some eight years ago. After getting a PhD in English in Canada, she took a Test.

    Frommer's travel guides, passed it, and got the job. After working at Frommer's, Jarolim worked for a while at Rough Guides in London, then Fodor's, where she fell so in love with a description of the Southwest of the U.S. that she moved there.

    Now as a travel writer, she spends one-third of her year on the road. The rest of the time is spent completing her tasks and writing reviews of restaurants at home in Tucson, Arizona.

    As adventurous as the job sounds, the hard part is fact-checking all the information. Sure, it's great to write about a tourist attraction, but you'd better get the local museum hours correct or you could really ruin someone's vacation.

    People living in the country enjoy several advantages that people living in the city cannot enjoy. They are in close contact with nature. They make friends with trees and stones. They can own dogs. They breathe fresh air. They fight with strong winds. They listen to the songs of birds.

    This contact with nature is good for health. There are many diseases that are common in the city. but are not to be found in the country. For example, near-sightedness is almost unknown to country people.

    Because of the absence of cars, one can walk more freely in the country than in the city. There are no rules of the road, nor traffic signs to obey.

    People living in the country can easily get fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and fresh milk. And they get them at lower prices than in the city.

    Country life is economical in other ways, too. There are practically no temptations（诱惑）to waste money.

    Country people are mostly honest. They say what they mean, and make and keep promises with sincerity（诚意）. They do not put on air. They do not pretend to have those ridiculous（荒谬的）manners which are necessary in what we call polite society.

    In areas like the Central United States that get lots of tornadoes, there^'s a common piece of celestial （天上的）fortune-telling that green skies mean a tornado is on its way. Research has shown that it isn^'t quite as simple as that, but scientists have found that if you see a green sky, you should probably go inside. As far as most scientists can tell, the green skies around powerful thunderstorms are usually a combination of red sunsets and water droplets.

    Daytime skies are blue because blue shorter wavelengths of visible light tend to bounce off （反射）air molecules better than red longer wavelength light. So the blue light gets bounced all over the sky and looks like it's coming from everywhere. Meanwhile, around sunset sunlight travels through so much atmosphere that just about all the blue is bounced away from the horizon, leaving all those reds and oranges behind. The sunset might look exclusively （独有的）red and orange, but there's still some green and even blue light hidden in there, just far less than the other colors. But for us to notice the remaining green light, it needs to hit something that reflects green light much better than red. That's where water comes in.

    Big tall threatening storm clouds are made of water droplets, and even though water is best at reflecting blue light, it can still reflect green pretty well, much better than reds and oranges, so under just the right conditions, the water in and around a cloud can bounce the green light hidden in the sunset right into our eyes making the sky look green.

    Still, none of the conditions that can turn skies green are unique to the clouds that produce tornadoes. Sometimes they just lead to lots of rain, and maybe some hail. So if you see huge storm clouds rolling in and a green tint （色调）in the sky, it doesn't necessarily mean there^'s about to be a tornado, but it does mean you should probably head indoors.

    Students perform less well in final exams if smartphones are allowed in class, for non-academic (非学业的) purposes in lectures, a new study in Educational Psychology finds. Students who don't use smartphones themselves but attend lectures where their use is acceptable also do worse, suggesting that smartphone use damages the group learning environment.

    Researchers from Rutgers University in the US performed an in-class experiment to lest whether dividing attention between smartphones and the lecturer during the class affected students' performance in within-lecture tests and a final exam. 118 students at Rutgers University took part in the experiment during one term of their course. Smartphones were not allowed in half of the lectures and allowed in the other half. When smartphones were allowed, students were asked to record whether they had used them for non-academic purposes during the lecture.

    The study found that having a smartphone didn't lower students' scores in comprehension tests within lectures, but it did lower scores in the final exam by at least 5%, or half a grade. This finding shows for the first time that the main effect of divided attention in the classroom is on the length of time in keeping memory, with fewer things of a study task later remembered. In addition, when the use of smartphones was allowed in class, performance was also poorer for students who did not use them as well as for those who did.

    The study's lead author, Professor Arnold Glass, added: "These findings should alarm students and teachers that dividing attention is having a not obvious but harmful effect that is damaging their exam performance and final grade. To help manage the use of smartphones in the classroom, teachers should explain to students the alarming effect—not only for themselves, but for the whole class."

    This is the first-ever study in an actual classroom showing a relationship between losing attention from smartphones and exam performance. However, more researches are required to see how students are affected by using smartphones after school.

Hot Spots for Retirees to Start Their Encore Career

    Encore Career: Vocational School Instructor

    Retire in: Los Angeles, CA

    Ever since IBM CEO Ginni Rometty coined the term "new collar" to describe well-paid jobs that require specific skills but not necessarily a degree, vocational schools have made a serious comeback. Apparently instructors are in short supply in sunny L.A., where there are 13 jobs at vocational schools for every applicant on the market. This is a great opportunity for skilled retirees since, unlike teaching at a public school that requires a state certificate, the only requirement here is that you be a seasoned expert in your field.

    Encore Career: Business Consultant

    Retire in: Miami, FL

    Consulting is a great option for a retired business professional looking to make their own hours, be their own boss, and earn as much or as little as needed to maintain their standard of living. For every consultant in Miami right now there are 13 businesses hoping to hire them. There's even greater demand here than in Washington D.C., which is typically considered the consulting capital of the world.

    Encore Career: Tourist Wrangler

    Retire in: Austin, TX

    As the economy continues to boom and more Americans have extra income to spend, the tourism industry has taken off. This is particularly true in Austin, TX, where there were astonishing 36 tourism jobs for every applicant in July. Between four-star hotels, the noisy rock n' roll scene, and a new food culture, Austin is the place to be if you want to work in service industry.

    Encore Career: Supporter of the Arts

    Retire in: Charleston, SC

    If you're a Baby Boomer with a degree in the arts, now could be the perfect time to revisit your passion for creativity, especially if you also want to live in the center of southern charm. Between the 14 art galleries on King Street in Old Town, an abundance of acting companies and theaters, and music festivals, it's not surprising there were 25 jobs for every arty applicant iii Charleston.

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, testing or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new "species" of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers (低头族).

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie(自拍照) in front of a car accident site and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. "Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck," Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. "The neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching." Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.