People can be addicted to(沉溺于) different things — e.g. alcohol, drug, certain foods, or even television. People who have such an addiction are compulsive(强迫的):They have a very powerful psychological（心理上的）need that they feel they must satisfy. According to psychologists, many people are compulsive spenders. They feel that they must spend money. This compulsion, like most others, is impossible to explain reasonably. For compulsive spenders who buy on credit(以赊欠方式), charge accounts are even more exciting than money. In other words, compulsive spenders feel that with credit, they can do anything. Their pleasure in spending large amounts is actually greater than the pleasure that they get from the things they buy.

    There is even a special psychology of bargain hunting. To save money, of course, most people look for sales, low prices, and discounts. Compulsive bargain hunters, however, often buy things that they don't need just because they are cheap. They want to believe that they are helping their budgets(预算), but they are really playing an exciting game. When they can buy something for less than other people, they feel that they are winning. Most people, experts claim, have two reasons for their behavior: a good reason for the things that they do and the real reason.

    It is not only scientists, of course, who understand the psychology of spending habits, but also business people. Stores, companies, and advertisers use psychology to increase business. They consider people's needs for love, power, or influence, their basic values, their beliefs and opinions, and so on in their advertising and sales methods. Psychologists often use a method called “behavior therapy(疗法)” to help individuals solve their personality problems. In the same way, they can help people who feel that they have problems with money.

    Someone had given our name and phone number to a charity, and its staff were bringing us Christmas presents.

    I made sure the house was as spotless as it could be with four children living in it, as the due time drew near, I sat on the edge of the couch. Each time I heard a car, I jumped up to see if they were here. Each time it wasn't them, I was relieved, yet disappointed.

    Finally a huge car pulled into the driveway, and four people got out. Now I was embarrassed as well as grateful, excited and nervous. I greeted them with a smile. They made several trips and soon my living room was full of boxes and bags.

    I tried to say “thank you” but my throat suddenly closed up and tears welled up in my eyes.

    I watched through the window as they drove away, wondering what they thought of me. I had always donated, but not received. We weren't always like this. My husband had been out of work, and we were struggling. I'd wanted to say this to them, but the words wouldn't come out.

    I quickly put away the gifts before the school-aged children came home. I hid them in closets and under beds as quickly as I could. On Christmas morning I felt a little guilty as our four children tore open the boxes and bags with pleasure, thinking they were from us.

    My nine-year-old son opened a game box and taped inside the lid was an envelope. I opened it and read aloud: May the joy of Christmas be with you all through the year. At the bottom of the card, written in small, neat letters was a sentence, it said: Although the sea gets rough, no storm lasts forever.

    I was suddenly ashamed of being ashamed. I finally understood.

    Christopher Thomas, 27, was a writer by night and a teacher by day when he noticed he was always tired and was losing weight fast. Diagnosed with diabetes (糖尿病), Thomas would need to inject himself with insulin (胰岛素) three times a day for the rest of his life or risk nerve damage, blindness, and even death. And if that weren't bad enough, he had no health insurance.

    After a month of feeling upset, Thomas decided he'd better find a way to fight back. He left Canton, Michigan for New York, got a job waiting tables, nicknamed himself the Diabetic Rockstar, and created diabeticrockstar.com, a free online community for diabetics and their loved ones—a place where over 1,100 people share personal stories, information, and resources.

    Jason Swencki's son, Kody, was diagnosed with type diabetes at six. Father and son visit the online children's forums (论坛) together most evenings. “Kody gets so excited, writing to kids from all over,” says Swencki, one of the site's volunteers. “They know what he's going through, so he doesn't feel alone.”

    Kody is anything but alone: Diabetes is now the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, with 24 million diagnosed cases. And more people are being diagnosed at younger ages.

    These days, Thomas's main focus is his charity (慈善机构), Fight It, which provides medicines and supplies to people—225 to date—who can't afford a diabetic's huge expen­ses. Fight－it.org has raised about $23,000—in products and in cash. In May, Thomas will hold the first annual Diabetic Rockstar Festival in the Caribbean.

    Even with a staff of 22 volunteers, Thomas often devotes up to 50 hours a week to his cause, while still doing his full­time job waiting tables. “Of the diabetes charities out there, most are putting money into finding a cure，” says Bentley Gubar, one of Rockstar's original members. “But Christopher is the only person I know saying people need help now.”

    A new Magic Bench designed by Disney Research lets you interact (互动) with lovely animated (动画的) character—and no special glasses or earphones are required. Instead, the complete environment-the seat, the sitter and the cartoon characters-is mirrored on a screen opposite the bench making it possible for others to watch the scene unfold.

    How does the illusion work? A camera and sensor catch images and gather depth information about physical objects the bench and the person. And then computer translates them into the 3D animations. Meanwhile sensors of touch built into the bench deliver shaking that is happening at the same time and speed to animated actions on the screen, creating the illusion that the animated figures are occupying real-world space next to the user.

    "Our goal for this project was: hear a character coming, see them enter the space, and feel them sit next to you," said Moshe Mahler, principal digital artist at Disney Research. Unlike the traditional mobile technology, one of whose limitations is that only a single user can see its illusion, the Magic Bench allows groups of people to gather in a single environment and collectively participate in an augmented—reality (扩充实境) experience, all at the same time.

    In a video show, a small cartoon donkey runs into view and kicks the bench, causing sharp sound and making the seated person jump in surprise. Another test shows two people on the bench, reacting as they feel an animated rabbit skip up beside them and jump up and down. When a user passes his hand over the rabbit, a shadow moves across its head, as though it were occupying the same physical space as the person next to it.

    Recently, as the British doctor Robert Winston took a train from London to Manchester, he found himself having to listen to a loud conversation of a fellow passenger woman. Boiling with anger, Winston took her picture and sent it to his more than 40,000 followers on the Tweet. By the time the train reached the station in Manchester, some journalists were waiting for the woman. And when they showed her the doctor's messages, she used just one word to describe Winston's actions: rude.

    Winston's tale is a good example of increasing rudeness, fueled by social media in our age. Studies show that rudeness spreads quickly and virally, almost like the common cold. Just witnessing rudeness makes it far more likely that we, in turn, will be rude later on. Once infected, we are more aggressive, less creative and worse at our jobs. The only way out is to make a conscious decision to do so. We must have the courage to call it out, face to face. We must say, "Just stop." For Winston, that would have meant approaching the woman, telling her that her conversation was frustrating other passengers and politely asking her to speak more quietly or make the call at another time.

    The anger we feel at the rude behavior of a stranger can drive us to do out-of-place things. Research discovered that the acts of revenge (报复) people had taken ranged from the ridiculous to the disturbing. Winston did shine a spotlight on the woman's behavior—but in a way that shamed her.

    When we see rudeness occur in public places, we must step up and say something. And we can do it with grace, by handling it without a bit of aggression and without being rude ourselves. Because once rude people can see their actions through the eyes of others, they are far more likely to end the rudeness themselves. As this wave of rudeness rises, civilization needs civility (举止文明).

Babies are surrounded by human language, always listening and processing. Eventually, they put sounds together to produce a "Daddy" or a "Mama". But what still confuses neuroscientists is exactly how the brain works to put it all together.

To figure it out, a team of researchers turned to a frequent stand-in (代替) for babies when it comes to language learning: the song-learning zebra finch. "We've known songbirds learn their song by first forming a memory of their father's song or another adult's song. Then they use that memory to guide their song learning," said Neuroscientist Todd Roberts. "It's been a long-term goal of the field to figure out how or where in the brain this memory is. This type of imitative learning that birds do is very similar to the type of learning that we engage in regularly—particularly when we're young, we use it to guide our speech learning."

Roberts and his team had a feeling that the interface (交叉区域) between sensory areas and motor areas in the brain was critical for this process, and they focused on a group of brain cells called the NIf.

"In order to prove that we could identify these circuits, we thought if we could implant a false memory." First, they used a virus to cause the neurons (神经元) in the birds' NIf to become sensitive to light. Then, using a tiny electrode as a flashlight, they activated (激活) the neurons. The length of each pulse of light corresponded with the amount of time the neurons would fire. And the birds' brains interpreted that time period as the length of each note.

Soon enough, the birds began to practice the notes they had learned, even though they never really heard the sounds. Amazingly, the birds produced them in the correct social situations. The researchers say this is the first time anybody has found exactly a part of the brain necessary for generating the sorts of memories needed to copy sounds.

"This line of research is going to help us identify where in the brain we encode memories of relevant social experiences that we use to guide learning. We know that there are several neurodevelopmental disorders in people that have really far-reaching effects on this type of learning."