When I was six, Dad brought home a dog one day, who was called “Brownie”. My brothers and I all loved Brownie and did different things with her. One of us would walk her, another would feed her, then there were baths, playing catch and many other games. Brownie, in return, loved each and every one of us. One thing that most touched my heart was that she would go to whoever was sick and just be with them. We always felt better when she was around.

    One day, as I was getting her food, she chewed up(咬破)one of Dad's shoes, which had to be thrown away in the end. I knew Dad would be mad and I had to let her know what she did was wrong. When I looked at her and said, “Bad girl,” she looked down at the ground and then went and hid. I saw a tear in her eyes.

    Brownie turned out to be more than just our family pet. She went everywhere with us. People would stop and ask if they could pat her. Of course she'd let anyone pat her. She was just the most lovable dog. There were many times when we'd be out walking and a small child would come over and pull on her hair. she never barked(吠) or tried to get away. Funny thing is that she would smile. This frightened people because they thought she was showing her teeth. Far from the truth, she loved everyone.

    Now many years have passed since Brownie died of old age. I still miss days when she was with us.

    If you want to get something done, you might want to put your mobile phone back in your pocket. Researchers have found that the mere presence of a phone is distracting (分心) — even if it is not your own. And the devices (设备) are likely to distract you, even if they are not ringing or “pinging” with text messages. People asked to carry out electronic tests of their attention spans were found to perform worse when a mobile phone was present than other people performing in the presence of a paper notepad.

    Scientists from Hokkaido University in Japan said that their findings show that it is harder to concentrate when one of the electronic devices is present. The effect was most marked on people who are not regular users of phones. In tests on 40 undergraduates. Associate Professor Junichiro Kawahara and a colleague divided the subjects into two groups — one asked to carry out tests in the presence of an Apple iPhone next to a computer monitor, and the other in the presence of a notebook.

    The test involved asking the participant to search for a particular character among a mess of other characters on the screen. Researchers measured the time it took to find the target. The results of the experiment found that those with the mobile phone took longer to find the character, indicating that participants were automatically distracted by the presence of the phone. The researchers suggest that people are drawn to the presence of a mobile phone, although there are individual differences in how one attempts to ignore it. In conclusion. Professor Kawahara said. “The mere presence of a mobile phone was a distraction among infrequent internet users.”

    Another finding is that listening to one half of a mobile phone conversation also distracts people, and other studies have found that placing a mobile phone in view has a negative impact on the quality of face-to-face communications. Holding a mobile phone makes you less likely to get a fair hearing from others.

    Are you sick of going to bed late and waking up tired? Then grab your hiking boots and a tent. A new study suggests that camping in the great outdoors for a couple of days can reset your body clock and help you get more sleep.

    The body clock is an internal system that tells our bodies when it's time to go to sleep and when it's time to wake up. Scientists track this clock by measuring the amount of melatonin (褪黑激素) circulating in a person's blood at any given time.

    In a healthy sleeper, melatonin levels rise a few hours before bedtime, stay high through the night, and then settle back down when it's time to wake up.

    In our modern society, however, most of us stay up many hours past sunset and would probably sleep in many hours after sunrise if we could. And the trouble is, your melatonin levels may still be high when your alarm clock goes off in the morning, which leads to fatigue. It may also have other health consequences as well, such as diabetes (糖尿病), overweight and heart disease.

    Professor Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado in the US wanted to see if our body clocks can be reset by a short stay in nature. His team recruited (招募) fourteen physically active volunteers in their 20s and 30s. Nine went on a weekend camping trip, while the other five stayed home. At the end of the weekend, the researchers reported that in just two days, the campers' body clocks had shifted so that their melatonin levels began to rise more than an hour earlier than they did before they left on the trip. By contrast, the body clocks of the group that stayed home shifted even later over the course of the weekend.

    “This tells us we can reset our clocks fast,” Wright said.

    Therefore, if you want to change your sleep patterns you could try to increase your exposure to natural light during the day and decrease the amount of artificial light you see at night. And if that doesn't work，there's always camping.

    Scientists say we are all born with a knack for mathematics. Every time we scan the cafeteria for a table that will fit all of our friends, we're exercising the ancient estimation center in our brain.

    Stanislas Dehaene was the first researcher to show that this part of the brain exists. In 1989, he met Mr. N who had suffered a serious brain injury. Mr. N couldn't recognize the number 5, or add 2 and 2. But he still knew that there are “about 50 minutes” in an hour. Dehaene drew an important conclusion from his case: there must be two separate mathematical areas in our brains. One area is responsible for the math we learn in school, and the other judges approximate amounts.

    So what does the brain's estimation center do for us? Harvard University researcher Elizabeth Spelke has spent a lot of time posing math problems to preschoolers. When he asks 5-year-olds to solve a problem like 21+30, they can't do it. But he has also asked them questions such as, “Sarah has 21 candles and gets 30 more. John has 34 candles. Who has more candles?” It turns out preschoolers are great at solving questions like that. Before they've learned how to do math with numerals and symbols, their brains' approximation centers are already hard at work.

    After we learn symbolic math, do we still have any use for our inborn math sense? Justin Halberda at Johns Hopkins University gave us an answer in his study. He challenged a group of 14-year-olds with an approximation test: The kids stared at a computer screen and saw groups of yellow and blue dots flash by, too quickly to count. Then they had to say whether there had been more blue dots or yellow dots. The researchers found that most were able to answer correctly when there were 25 yellow dots and 10 blue ones. When the groups were closer in size, 11 yellow dots and 10 blue ones, fewer kids answered correctly.

    The big surprise in this study came when the researcher compared the kids' approximation test scores to their scores on standardized math tests. He found that kids who did better on the flashing dot test had better standardized test scores, and vice versa (反之亦然). It seems that, far from being irrelevant, your math sense might predict your ability at formal math.

    Mandara seemed to know something big was about to happen. So she let out a yell, caught hold of her 2-year-old daughter Kibibi and climbed up into a tree. She lives at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.

    And on Tuesday, August 23rd, witnesses said she seemed to sense the big earthquake that shook much of the East Coast before any humans knew what was going on. And she's not the only one. In the moments before the quake, an orangutan (猩猩) let out a loud call and then climbed to the top of her shelter.

    “It's very different from their normal call,” said Brandie Smith, the zookeeper. “The lemurs (monkey like animals of Madagascar) will sound an alarm if they see or hear something highly unusual.”

    But you can't see or hear an earthquake 15 minutes before it happens, can you? Maybe you can——if you're an animal.

    “Animals can hear above and below our range of hearing,” said Brandie Smith. “That's part of their special abilities. They're more sensitive to the environment, which is how they survive.”

    Primates weren't the only animals that seemed to sense the quake before it happened. One of the elephants made a warning sound and a huge lizard (蜥蜴) ran quickly for cover. The flamingoes (a kind of birds) gathered before the quake and stayed together until the shaking stopped.

    So what kind of vibrations (震动) were the animals picking up in the moments before the quake? Scientist Susan Hough said earthquakes produce two types of waves——a weak “P” wave and then a much stronger “S” wave. The “P” stands for “primary”. And the “S” stands for “secondary”. She thinks the “P” wave might be what sets the animals off.

    Not all the animals behaved unusually before the quake. For example, Smith said the zoo's giant pandas didn't jump up until the shaking actually began. But many of the other animals seemed to know something was coming before it happened. “I'm not surprised at all,” Smith said.

Incredible experiences in Bucharest

    Admire one of the world's largest buildings

    The world's biggest parliamentary building, Palace of Parliament, happens to be in Bucharest. Hour-long guided tours manage to take in just a fraction of the building's three-million-plus square feet (there are more than a thousand rooms) and focus on the tons of marble, hardwood, and gold used in the building's construction in the 1980s, a time when Romania was trying to feed its own people. Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, both played a direct role in the construction. It was originally intended to house the presidential offices and the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party but was never finished.

    See remains of old “Paris”

    “Paris of the East” was Bucharest's nickname in the decades before World War II. Decades of communist misrule and a tragic earthquake in 1977 brought much of the old city down but there are places here and there where that former elegance can still be glimpsed. The Cismigiu Gardens in the center of the city is a pearl of park built around a romantic lake and featuring old-growth trees and gracious, wrought-iron signposts and benches.

    Learn about Romania's roots

    Walking though Bucharest's busy streets, it's easy to forget that outside the capital and a U large cities, Romania is a largely agricultural country, with a long and rich peasant tradition. The amazing Museum of the Romanian Peasant shows off the elaborate woodworking, pottery-making, egg-painting, and weaving skills of the peasantry in a way that's both educational and amusing. Small tongue-in-cheek signs at the entrance to each room poke fun at modern life, bring a chuckle, and draw you in. Downstairs there's a side exhibition on the Communists' efforts to nationalize the peasantry in the 1970s and 1980s.

    Appreciate 21st-century art

    Romania has exploded onto the contemporary art scene in recent years. The excitement was generated initially by a group of young painters and visual artists from the northern city of Cluj-Napoca, but at least some of the action has shifted to the capital as new galleries and design centers open up. It's hard to pinpoint precisely what constitutes Romanian contemporary art, though critics point to shared elements of wit and dark humor, a somber mood, and bits of surrealism in defining a common style.