How Room Designs Affect Our Work and Feelings

    Architects have long had the feeling that the places we live in can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But now scientists are giving this feeling an empirical(经验的，实证的) basis. They are discovering how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep people focused and lead to relaxation.

    Researches show that aspects of the physical environment can influence creativity. In 2007, Joan Meyers-Levy at the University of Minnesota, reported that the height of a room's ceiling affects how people think. Her research indicates that higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. Low ceilings, on the other hand, may inspire a more detailed outlook.

    In additions to ceiling height, the view afforded by a building may influence an occupant's ability to concentrate. Nancy Wells and her colleagues at Cornell University found in their study that kids who experienced the greatest increase in greenness as a result of a family move made the most gains on a standard test of attention.

    Using nature to improve focus of attention ought to pay off academically, and it seems to, according to a study led by C. Kenneth Tanner, head of the School Design & Planning Laboratory at the University of Georgia. Tanner and his team found that students in classrooms with unblocked views of at least 50 feet outside the window had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, language arts and maths than did students whose classrooms primarily overlooked roads and parking lots.

    Recent study on room lighting design suggests than dim(暗淡的) light helps people to loosen up. If that is true generally, keeping the light low during dinner or at parties could increase relaxation. Researchers of Harvard Medical School also discovered that furniture with rounded edges could help visitors relax.

    So far scientists have focused mainly on public buildings. "We have a very limited number of studies, so we're almost looking at the problem through a straw(吸管)," architect David Allison says. "How do you take answers to very specific questions and make broad, generalized use of them? That's what we're all struggling with."

    Winter sports tend to be more dangerous than summer sports — they take place mostly outside at the mercy of ice or snow, involving (牵涉) metal edges, extreme speeds and crashes. Skeleton (俯视冰梭), however, stands apart as one of the most difficult and least accessible of all the winter sports. Adam Edelman, Israel's first Olympic skeleton athlete, would like to change that.

    Edelman was the 10th athlete named to the 2018 Israeli Olympic Team. Qualifying for the Olympics in any sport is impressive. But it's more impressive if you qualify for the Olympics after only four years in the sport — and without a coach.

    Edelman was first introduced to skeleton watching the game on television in late 2013. Sports have always been a part of his life. He grew up playing football and was a goalkeeper on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology football team. Ready for a new challenge, he set his sights on the Olympics.

Without a coach, Edelman learned to drive by watching endless hours of YouTube videos and taking more runs than anybody else on the track. “When everybody else would take three runs per day, I would take six to eight.” he recalled.

    Succeeding in skeleton takes a large amount of athletic ability and technical skill, but there's one more element (因素) required, one that can't be taught. “These tracks but built in the middle of nowhere, and it's gray and cold. You haven't seen your family in seven months and you really just want to give up. To continue, it takes tenacity.” Edelman said.

    Edelman is already looking beyond Pyeongchang. The 2022 Olympics could be in his future, but whether he continues to compete or not, he promises to stay in Israeli sports as long as possible-as instructor or as a coach.

    Nanjing and Hangzhou summer camps offered

    We are looking for hard-working and open-minded English teachers to join the Nanjing(Jiangsu Province) and Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province) summer camps!

    Both of the summer camps will run from the beginning of July to the end of August. You will be expected to teach spoken English to Chinese students of different ages. We encourage you to bring your own culture to the classes to make things more interesting.

    The information of the Nanjing camp:

    Working hours: 40 hours per week, 5 working days per week.

    Salary: about 7,000 RMB per month.

    Accommodation (食宿): free (single room).

    The information of the Hangzhou camp:

    Working hours: 5 hours per day (= 50 min. / class × 6 classes), one day rest per week.

    Salary: 20,160 RMB in total (420 RMB per day = 70 RMB / class × 6 classes).

    Accommodation: free (shared room).

    The requirements of the summer camps:

    Native English speakers (US, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).

    A university degree.

    Teaching experience.

    Please send us your resume (简历), copies of certificates (证书) and passport if you are interested in the camps. E-mail: teacher1324@sina.com.cn

    For more information you can visit our website at http://www.Englishsummercamps.com.cn/

    Look forward to hearing from you soon!

    That people often experience trouble sleeping in a different bed in unfamiliar surroundings is a phenomenon known as the 4Tirst-nighf, effect. If a person stays in the same room the following night they tend to sleep more soundly. Yuka Sasaki and her colleagues at Brown University set out to investigate the origins of this effect.

    Dr. Sasaki knew the first-night effect probably has something to do with how humans evolved.

    The puzzle was what benefit would be gained from it when performance might be affected the following day. She also knew from previous work conducted on birds and dolphins that these animals put half of their brains to sleep at a time so that they can rest while remaining alert enough to avoid predators (捕食者). This led her to wonder if people might be doing the same thing. To take a closer look, her team studied 35 healthy people as they slept in the unfamiliar environment of the university's Department of Psychological Sciences. The participants each slept in the department for two nights and were carefully monitored with techniques that looked at the activity of their brains. Dr. Sasaki found, as expected, the participants slept less well on their first night than they did on their second, taking more than twice as long to fall asleep and sleeping less overall. During deep sleep, the participants' brains behaved in a similar manner seen in birds and dolphins. On the first night only, the left hemispheres (半球) of their brains did not sleep nearly as deeply as their right hemispheres did.

    Curious if the left hemispheres were indeed remaining awake to process information detected in the surrounding environment, Dr. Sasaki re-ran the experiment while presenting the sleeping participants with a mix of regularly timed beeps (蜂鸣声) of the same tone and irregular beeps of a different tone during the night. She worked out that, if the left hemisphere was staying alert to keep guard in a strange environment, then it would react to the irregular beeps by stirring people from sleep and would ignore the regularly timed ones. This is precisely what she found.

    Whenever we're introduced to strangers, we make snap decisions about them according to our first impressions. Are they attractive or how much do they earn?

    For most Brits, simply asking someone how much they're worth' financially is considered very impolite. Thankfully, most people are kind enough to drop several hints (暗示)about their relative wealth or successful careers They always post on social media about flying to a meeting for work. They're always wearing clothes with labels big enough to silently scream about how rich they are and how well they're doing.

    It's a worrying trend, and I'm not immune to it. I've felt the warm happiness of knowing I earned more than somebody, and the baseless grey irritation of knowing that I earn less than another. I've checked into places while I know full well that anybody reading it will get jealous.

    It seems as though self-worth is increasingly being tied to the careers we choose and the money we earn. A study in 2013, for example found that nearly 17% of unemployed Americans were depressed compared to almost 6% of those who had a permanent job.

    We need to stop placing so much value on what a person earns. Don't get me wrong-being ambitious is not a fault, and achievements should always be celebrated. But when a person uses their success to judge you negatively it becomes a problem.

    If you want to know what you're really worth, here's a tip: It doesn't have anything to do with your bank account. It's about how many times you've been there for your friends. It's how many times you've been kind to a stranger It's every time you did something unselfish, or told your partner you loved him/her, or treated someone with respect no matter where they were in their own life.

English Language Courses at ELC Los Angeles

At the English Language Center (ELC) Los Angeles you will find a variety of English courses and programs that meet the highest academic standards of any English language school in the United States. Through its 40 years of teaching students at all levels from all over the world, ELC has developed teaching and training techniques and programs that really work for everyone.

ENGLISH COURSES OFFERED AT ELC LOS ANGELES

● GENERAL ENGLISH COURSES

Intensive English Course

Semi-intensive Course

Individual Intensive Course

● TEST PREPARATION COURSES

Cambridge Preparation Course

TOEFL Preparation Course

● BUSINESS ENGLISH COURSE

Individual Executive Business English Course

ENGLISH CLASSES LOS ANGELES FACT FILE

● Length of lesson: 50 minutes

● Number of levels: 12

● Average number of students per class: 8-9

Maximum number of students per class: 10 (14 during July and August only)

ADDITIONAL SERVICES AT ELC LOS ANGELES

The ELC Los Angeles staff is eager to assist international students in achieving their long-term learning goals. ELC offers the following support services to ensure each student's time at ELC is enjoyable, effective and worry-free:

● Student Visa

ELC has been approved by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)to issue the SEVIS Form I-20. Students enrolling in a minimum 24-lesson-per-week course are eligible (有资格的) to receive an I-20 form in order to apply for an F-1 student visa in their country.

● English Level Evaluation with Multi-level- Placement

Each student benefits from our English level evaluation with multi-level placement. Our method means students usually have different teachers for different levels and ensures that students study English in the learning environment that is best for them.

● University Admission Services

ELC is pleased to offer free counseling and university placement services to all ELC students interested in continuing their education at an American college or university in California and around the United States.