Happy,angry,amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smartphones.That's a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling.Yes,emojis have become a vital tool for communication.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word "emoji" comes from the Japanese words for "picture" and "character".The number of different images has dramatically increased since then and now we have a picture for every mood or situation.

    So now we are giving this new creation the visual "thumbs-up" but have you thought why we've become so addicted to using emojis? Professor Vyv Evans has written a book called The Emoji Code, saying "increasingly, what we're finding is that digital communication is taking over certain aspects of face-to-face interaction...one of the reasons why emojis are so popular is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves more effectively."

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but some pictures so they can be easily interpreted whatever your native language is. However, the emojis can sometimes be misinterpreted—if a friend sends you an emoji of a hammer, you may think he/she is angry when really he/she is saying he/she is clumsy!

    Emojis are a good way for showing similar feelings. But as linguist(语言学家) Neil Cohn says, "To many, emojis are an exciting evolution of the way we communicate, but to others, they are a linguistic Armageddon（大决战）."It does show there is a lot more to our communication than words alone but does this mean the decline in traditional writing?

    For the past four days, the streets of India have been brightly lit and full of festivities. Millions of people around the country have been celebrating the festival of Diwali.

    Diwali has been celebrated in India for hundreds of years. It takes place each year in either October or November. Although the holiday lasts only one night, people continue to celebrate for several days.

    People light oil lamps during the festival. In the tradition of the Hindu religion, the lamps are meant to celebrate the victory of light over darkness and good over evil (邪恶). The holiday also celebrates the start of a new year in the Hindu calendar. But Diwali is an important festival in many other Indian religions as well, including Sikhism and Jainism. In a country of more than 1.2 billion people and different religious beliefs, Diwali is a celebration that touches everyone.

    Diwali means “rows of lamps” in Sanskrit, a language used in many Indian religions. During the festival, families and friends come together to light the oil lamps，which are called diyas. Then they put the lamps in rows outside their homes and temples.

    As in other cultures' winter holidays，sweets and gifts are also a big part of Diwali. Neighbors and friends share treats, called mithai, and exchange presents.

    Employers often use the holiday to express appreciation for their workers. This year, a businessman even bought cars and houses for some of his employees!

    The Diwali spirit can be felt outside India as well. Indians in countries around the world, including the U. S. and Canada，are also celebrating the holiday this week.

    Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of hearing stimulation. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that a baby notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances(讲话，说话). By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling tones. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is happy or angry, attempting to begin or end new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of clues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

    Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating(夸张) such clues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other researchers have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels(元音) longer, and emphasize certain words.

    More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make those precisely perceptual（知觉的，感性的） recognition that are necessary if they are to acquire listening language.

    Babies obviously obtain pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to boring meaning that it often is for adults.

    Qing-Feng Steamed Dumpling Shop. Daniang Dumpling. McDonald's. What do these companies have in common?

    Well, besides all being fast food chains, their logos are all red. And it's not a coincidence. Color is one of the many that companies use to connect with customers. And if fast food wasn't hard enough, those red logos might make it even harder to ignore.

    The average human can see ten million colors, but red is special. It's one of the first colors our ancient ancestors thought important enough to name. Early human languages were uncolorful. There were words for “black” and “white” and “red” but not much else.

    As a result, we have a deeper connection to red than any other color and we react to it in certain ways that actually play to fast food companies' advantage. For starters, researchers have found that red can cause a sense of urgency. On top of that, it also has an ability to whet (刺激) our appetites. And when you pair those two together, you've got the perfect recipe to attract hungry customers who want food, fast.

    So the red logo isn't just a welcoming sign. It's a seduction (诱惑) for your brain. Now, it's unclear why red makes us feel this way. But perhaps it has something to do with where the word comes from. Many ancient languages first named red from their word for “blood”. But red's bloody beginning has transformed. During medieval times, for example, red was worn by royals as a status symbol. And today, brides in many parts of India are married in red dress.

    In fact, red is one of the few colors today that cultures all over the world view positively. And it's no wonder companies attach so much importance to their logos. After all, we're a visual species. Despite having five senses, 80% of the information our brains process on a daily basis comes from our eyes. And according to marketing company WebPageFX, nearly 85% of consumers say the main reason they choose one product over the other is color.

    Just think what McDonald's would look like in blue, green, or pink! It's just not the same, right?

    Have you ever wondered what the longest word in the English language is? Believe it or not, there's no simple answer to the question. You might think it would be as easy as opening a dictionary and looking for the longest word. However, it's far more complicated (复杂的) than that.

    Over time, many people have suggested many different words for the title of the longest word in English. How can that be? That's because the first thing that people have different opinions on is what should be considered a word. Some of the words were simply made up to be the longest! For example, there is one really famous long word that most kids know. It comes from Disney's movie Mary Poppins: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which means wonderful. But since that 34-letter word was made up simply to be sung as a song in a movie, should it count?

    How about long words that actually describe something in the world? Scientists have come up with several possible choices. The name of a virus(病毒) totals 1,185 letters. There's also a protein(蛋白质) whose name totals 1, 909 letters. Should these win the title? "Not so fast!" say some people. Are these words ever actually used? Can they even be pronounced? And are they meaningful just because they are made up to be long?

    If you're wondering about some long words in common English, here are some examples. Those words include uncharacteristically (20 letters), deinstitutionalization(22 letters) and counterrevolutionaries (also 22 letters) Or perhaps the word "smiles" is the longest word in English. Sure, it has only six letters, but there is a "mile between the first and the last letters!

An aspirin a day keeps the doctor away

    Dr. Tim Johnson discusses evidence of a daily dose of aspirin's benefits. That's not the saying, but doctors have agreed, for about a generation, that an aspirin a day is good for you. It may reduce the risk of heart attacks or strokes by 20 percent or more.

    The US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group convened by the Department of Health and Human Services, has published guidelines that it says should end the confusion.

    The key points:

    ⒈Men should start a daily aspirin at age 45, mainly to protect against heart attacks.

    ⒉Women should start at 55, mainly to protect against stroke.

    ⒊For both sexes, a baby aspirin-typically 81 milligram a day-will do the job. There is no evidence that a large dose makes a difference.

    ⒋And both sexes should stop by age 80, unless their doctors say otherwise. As you get older, there's a greater risk of bleeding in the brain or the digestive system, a risk that is small but can be deadly in some cases.

    If people start taking aspirin as the guidelines, doctors say their risk of heart attacks will drop by about 20 percent. "People may ask themselves 'Am I at risk for a heart attack or a stroke?'" said Dr. Randal Thomas, director of cardiovas-cular health at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota "If you are age 45 and male, if you're above age 55 and female, the answer is most likely yes, and you will most likely benefit from taking a small dose of aspirin a day.