Many people tend to complain about not having good friends in their lives. Sadly, they seem to think that their own company is not enough to make them happy. Nothing could be further from the truth though. In order to get along with others, the first thing you need to do is learn to get along with yourself. Only in this way will you succeed in developing healthy, solid relationships with others.

    Listen to your inner voice. Remember that inner voice that keeps whispering to you what you really want and need as well as what you do not really want and need. It is about time you started listening to it. In order to get to know yourself in depth, it is important to learn and accept what you want and what you do not want.

    Learn to enjoy your own company. You will be surprised to find out how many things you can do by yourself and actually have fun in the process. Reading romantic novels, poetry or science fiction is only a few of the things that you can do by yourself, which not only can offer you hours of enjoyment, but also the chance to get to know yourself better.

    Satisfy yourself. Pay special attention to your personal hygiene(卫生). Do your hair and nails often and experiment with new styles. Follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly to stay in good shape. No matter how busy your daily schedule is, always find at least an hour per day for yourself, when you can either relax doing absolutely nothing, or doing something that you enjoy most.

    Learn to respect your own boundaries. Find out what your boundaries are and learn to respect them. You are the only one who knows what you can accept and what you cannot.

    Many of us have had this experience: we lie down in a bed other than our own, perhaps at a friend's house or in a hotel room, and find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep. Is it because the bed is uncomfortable? Maybe, but perhaps there can be other reasons.

    According to a new study published in Current Biology, a significant reason is what the scientists call "first night effect". They believe that one side of the brain acts as a "night watch" to warn us about potential dangers. It forces us to stay awake on the first night in a new environments.

    For the study, 35 young volunteers were asked to sleep in a sleep lab for several days. Meanwhile, researchers watched their brain activities.

    According to the researchers, on their first night, the left brain was more active than the right brain and people had a hard time sleeping. However, left-brain activities decreased as days went by, falling even to the point of complete calm. In this process, the participants got an increasingly better sleep experience.

    The findings suggest that the different rhythms of the sides of the brain affect our sleep. When the two sides work differently, the balance between them is broken. Thus, the brain can't relax and is sensitive to anything strange in the surroundings, just as it is in the daytime.

    "At some level, the brain is continuing to analyze things, even though you are not aware of the analysis, " US professor Jerome Siegel told Smithsonian

    "If something unusual happens - if a door opens or you hear a key in a lock --you can be alert, even though the intensity of the stimulus (刺激强度) is quite low." More surprisingly, this phenomenon is similar to the way some animals sleep.

    The researchers think that it is the result of evolution (进化), and works to protect us in potentially dangerous environments.

    If you have ever had what you think is "first night effect", researchers suggest that you bring your own pillow or sleep in a room similar to your bedroom next time you sleep away from home.

    You may have heard that humans only use ten percent of their brain, and that if you could unlock the rest of your brainpower, you could do so much more. You could become a super genius, or acquire psychic powers like mind reading.

    This "ten-percent myth" has inspired many references in the cultural imagination. In the 2014 movie Lucy, for example, a woman develops godlike powers thanks to drugs that release the previously inaccessible 90 percent of her brain.

    Contrary to the ten-percent myth, however, scientists have shown that humans use their entire brain throughout each day.

    Over the years, brain scientists have shown that different parts of the brain are responsible for specific functions, whether it's recognizing colors or problem solving. Contrary to the ten-percent myth, scientists have proven that every part of the brain is integral for our daily functioning.

    Research has yet to find a brain area that is completely inactive. Even studies that measure activity at the level of single neurons(神经元) have not revealed any inactive areas of the brain.

    Many brain imaging studies that measure brain activity when a person is doing a specific task show how different parts of the brain work together. For example, while you are reading this text on your smartphone, some parts of your brain, including those responsible for vision and reading comprehension, will be more active.

    A more direct counter to the ten-percent myth lies in individuals who have suffered brain damage – like through a stroke(中风)– and what they can no longer do, or do as well, as a result of that damage. If the ten percent myth is true, then damage too many parts of our brain shouldn't affect your daily functioning. Studies have shown that damaging a very small part of the brain may have devastating consequences.

    If someone experiences damage to Broca's area(布罗卡氏区), for example, they can understand language but can't speak fluently.

    In one highly publicized case, a woman in Florida permanently lost her" capacity for thoughts, perceptions, memories, and emotions that are the very essence of being human" when a lack of oxygen destroyed half of her brain.

    Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous scientists in this century. He was born in 1942. He's world well-known on space and time. Stephen was searching some very big questions, such as "How did the universe begin? How will it end?"

    Stephen was a student at Oxford University. He studied math and science. Then, at the age of twenty, he became sick. He was so young, but the doctors said to his family, "He has only two more years to live." As a matter of fact, the doctors were wrong – he didn't die. He can't walk but he uses a wheelchair. He can't feed himself and get in or out of bed himself. But he refused to give in to the condition. He talks with the help of a computer. After Oxford, Stephen went to Cambridge University. Three years later, in 1965, he became a doctor of philosophy(哲学).

    Because of his serious health problems, it was difficult for him to draw or to write. So he started to think in pictures. With this new way of thinking, he became one of the most famous scientists in the world. In 1981, he met the Pope(教皇) in Rome. They talked about his ideas. Then in 1988, he wrote his first important book, A Brief History of Time. It sold more than 5.5 million copies in 33 different languages. He was once invited to China, he impressed us with his self-confidence, humorous and witty(风趣的) conversation.(谈话)

Elizabeth Bishop is considered one of the best American poets of the 20th century. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911. Her dad died when she was just a baby and her mom never recovered from the loss; she went to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, Canada when she was five. Eventually Bishop attended Vassar College, where she began to write poetry.

At Vassar she discovered Marianne Moore's poetry and met "Ms. Moore" and began their life-long friendship. She later met poet Robert Lowell. She wrote tons and tons of letters to both of them, which is good for us because we would otherwise know very little of her personal life. Bishop's poetry is sometimes considered objective and cold because it shows almost nothing about the poet or her life.

Bishop published her first book of poetry in 1946 and wrote until her death in 1979. She would spend years working on a single poem. Her poems are not the result of hasty scribbling (匆忙乱写) on paper while eating breakfast. Over a lifetime of writing, she only published about 275 pages of poetry, and about 40 of those are translations. She would look through drafts of poems again and again and improve them until they were as close to perfect as she could get them.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop is like being transported to the very place, the very moment she's writing about. She leads us to a microscope so we can see every smallest part of the scene. It seems she's always asking us to notice more, and more until the poem is so clear in our minds that it's almost painful — like a light that's too bright. It might take your eyes a while to get used to it, but once they do, you'll like what you see.

At age 22, Hikari Oberman has already been a lifeguard for four years. Last week, Oberman talked to The Garden Island about how he helped save lives during a recent rescue.

On Dec. 30, Oberman and his coworker Cope were parked in their truck at Anini Beach when two workers ran up to them and said, "I think someone's getting stuck in the channel!"

"I grabbed our equipment. We started rolling out down there," Oberman said. When he got out there, Oberman found a standup paddler, a man in his late 30s, struggling against the current, with an elderly man holding tightly to the back of the paddleboard (冲浪板).

He said, "My coworker grabbed the standup guy. Meanwhile, I'm stuck with the older man. "

Normally, Oberman said he would pull the paddler up, lay him on the surfboard, climb up behind and paddle from there. He tried that technique at first and quickly realized it was not a practicable option. They are not going anywhere.

Waves hit against the extremely sharp reef very hard about 30 yards behind them, and the current was pulling them into it.

"It's right behind us. If I stop paddling, we're definitely going to be in that zone." He said.

They started making progress toward the reef, where they might safely be able to climb out. Oberman just focused on forward movement.

After about five minutes-"even though it felt longer" -Oberman said his partner had gotten the paddleboarder safely to shore and started coming back out to help.

"I look back, and I see our Jet Ski. He's finally coming in the channel. We're not going to have to worry about that now. "

It was a good rescue.

When asked what it feels like to save someone's life, Oberman responded, "I love it! That's why we do it!" But as exciting as it might be to perform a big rescue, he explained that the most important part of his job is to keep people from getting into trouble in the first place.