A handshake is one of the most common ways to greet others, but US President Donald Trump's unusual method has been put under the microscope lately.

    Much like an arm wrestler in a match, the recently-elected leader has a habit of yanking (猛拉) people's hands toward himself during handshakes. And while a typical handshake is only brief, the one between him and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Feb 10 lasted a full 19 seconds.

    Simply having a strong hand is not the explanation here. According to Darren Stanton, a body language expert from the UK, while handshakes are usually an exchange of kindness, Trump uses his as a way to show power and control, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people. “It is as if to say, 'Hey, I'm in charge, don't mess with me,' ” Stanton told The Independent.

    Apart from Trump's “yank-shake”, there are other ways people display power with their hands. At business talks or political meetings, for example, some people may rotate (旋转) their wrists during handshakes so that their hand ends up on top instead of underneath. Some may squeeze so hard that it leaves the other person's hand in pain.

    According to Stanton, by pulling people into his personal space, Trump is also testing whether they are willing to cooperate with him. “For example, if someone was resistant to being yanked towards him and stood their ground, he would know that he has work to do with them before he got what he wanted,” Stanton told Express.

    This is probably why on Feb 13 when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the White House, all eyes were on how he was going to handle Trump's handshake. Fortunately, Trudeau managed to avoid the embarrassment by grabbing Trump's shoulder to stop himself being pulled in. Afterward, some Twitter users wrote that this proved Trudeau's strong leadership, with one even calling the moment “one of Canada's greatest victories”.

    Vice magazine summed up the exchange between the two leaders as: “... no regular handshake. This was the first shot in a bloodless war.”

From: Lee Haojie

Subject: Handheld Scanners

    Ms. Hu, I received the parcel from Scan Technology 1 piece. The scanner model they sent is correct, and the quantity is right. However, I've discovered the cables and connectors are all wrong. They are not suitable for the model 8021101.

    Can you do me a small favor and go through the product information website and see if the cables and connectors are still compatible (兼容的）with the 8021101 scanners? I have no wish to unpack the cables and connectors and try connecting them to the scanners. I believe we will have problem asking for an exchange if the cables and connectors are not compatible. If the website suggests an incompatibility, please contact Dan Richman and request an exchange for the collect model. (Refer to the invoice for his e-mail address.)

    I will only use the scanners for our project once we have resolved the exchange issue. We should not proceed unless we get confirmation (证实）on their compatibility. I am looking to resolve this in the shortest possible time as it would be disastrous to wait for this exchange without making progress on the project.

Haojie

    One half of the brain remains on high alert during the first night of sleep in a new space.

    Over the course of three experiments on 35 young, healthy volunteers, researchers measured brain activity during two nights of sleep. They found that part of the left side of the brain remained more active than the right side only on the first night, specifically during a deep sleep stage.

    “When you sleep in a new place for the first time, a part of one side of the brain seems to stay awake, so you could wake up faster if necessary,” said senior study author Yuka Sasaki of Brown University.

    While this may be bad news for business travelers who regularly make brief overnight trips, it may not be as troublesome for people who go away for longer periods of time, Sasaki added by email.

    To see how being in a strange place affects sleep, Sasaki and colleagues performed a series of lab tests on their subjects.

    When they stimulated（刺激） the left side of the brain with sounds in the right ear during deep sleep on the first night, that led to greater possibility of waking and faster action upon waking, than if sounds were played in the left ear to affect the right side of the brain. On the second night, there wasn't any difference in reactions to tests between the left and right sides of the brain, even during deep sleep. This suggests that there is a first-night-only effect specifically in one side of the brain during deep sleep, the authors conclude.

    One limitation of the new study is its focus on healthy volunteers, which means the results may not apply to people with sleep disorders, the authors note.

    While it's possible that the findings may explain poor sleep among frequent travelers, the study wasn't designed to test whether these “first night effects” continue to happen to people every time they hit the road, said Patrick Finan, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

    Everyone needs friends. We all like to feel close to someone. It is nice to have a friend to talk, laugh and do things with. Surely, there are times when we need to be alone. We don't always want people around. But we would feel lonely if we never had a friend.

    No two people are the same. Sometimes friends don't get along well, which doesn't mean that they no longer like each other. Most of the time they will go on being friends. Sometimes friends move away, then we feel very sad. We miss them much, but we can call them and write to them. Maybe we would never see them again, and we can make new friends. It is surprising to find out how much we like new people when we get to know them. Families sometimes name their children after a close friend. Many places are named after men and women, if they are friendly to people in a town. Some libraries are named this way. So are some schools. We think of these people when we go to these places.

    There is more good news for people, if they have friends. These people live longer than those who don't have friends. Why? It could be that they are happier. Being happy helps them keep Healthy. Or it could be just knowing that someone cares. If someone cares, they take better care of themselves.

    Eudaimonia is an Ancient Greek word, particularly stressed by the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, which deserves far more attention than it has because it corrects the shortfalls (缺失)in one of the most central, but troubling words in our modem language: happiness.

    When we nowadays try to clearly express the purpose of our lives，it is the word "happiness" that we commonly turn to. We tell ourselves and others that the most important principle for our jobs, our relationships and the conduct of our day-to-day lives is the pursuit of happiness. It sounds like an innocent enough idea, but too much reliance on the term means that we frequently unfairly tend to quit or, at least, heavily question a great many challenging but worthwhile situations. The Ancient Greeks did not believe that the purpose of life was to be happy; they proposed that it was to achieve Eudaimonia, a word which has been best translated as "fulfilment".

    What distinguishes happiness from fulfilment is pain. It is very possible to be fulfilled and—at the same time—under pressure, suffering physically or mentally, overburdened and, quite frequently, in an irritable (易怒的)mood. This is a slight psychological difference that is hard for the word "happiness" to capture, for it's tricky to speak of being happy yet unhappy, or happy yet suffering. However, such a combination is readily accommodated within the respected and noble-sounding idea of Eudaimonia.

    The word encourages us to trust that many of life's most worthwhile projects will sometimes be in conflict with contentment, and yet will be worth pursuing. Properly exploring our professional talents, managing a household, keeping a relationship going, creating a new business venture or engaging in politics... none of these goals are likely to leave us cheerful and grinning on a daily basis. They will, in fact, involve us in all manner of challenges that will deeply exhaust and weaken us, provoke (激怒)and wound us. And yet we will perhaps, at the end of our lives, still feel that the tasks were worth undertaking. Through them, we'll have achieved something deeper and more interesting than happiness.

    With the word Eudaimonia in mind, we can stop imagining that we are aiming for a pain-free existence—and then blaming ourselves unfairly for being in a bad mood. We'll know that we are trying to do something far more important than smile all the time: we're striving to do justice to our full human potential.

5 books I loved in 2018

By Bill Gates

    A great read is the perfect gift and I think everyone could use a few more books in their lives. My book list covers various topics, including an autobiography on learning throughout a life, a deep search on autonomous weapons (武器), a thriller about the fall of a once­promising company and a guide about meditation (冥想)­there's something for everyone.

    The Head space Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, by Andy Puddicombe. The book starts with Puddicombe's personal journey from a university student to a Buddhist monk and then becomes an entertaining explainer on how to meditate. If you're thinking about trying mindfulness, this is the perfect introduction.

    Army of None, by Paul Scharre. It's an extremely complicated topic, but Scharre offers clear explanations and presents both the advantages and disadvantages of machine­driven warfare. His fluency with the subject should come as no surprise: he's an ex­soldier who helped draw up the U.S. government's policy on autonomous weapons.

    Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou. Carreyrou gives you the definitive insider's look at the rise and fall of a company. I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the failure of a company once valued at nearly $10 billion.

    21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari. I'm a big fan of everything Harari has written, and his latest is no exception. If 2018 has left you stressed out by the state of the world, 21 Lessons offers a helpful framework for processing the news and thinking about the challenges we face.

    Educated, by Tara West over. Tara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I loved this life story of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a P.h.D. from Cambridge University.