Chimps(黑猩猩) will cooperate in certain ways, like gathering in war parties to protect their territory. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to help one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly decline to share food with their children, who are able from a young age to gather their own food.

In the laboratory, chimps don't naturally share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no great effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull at random —he just doesn't care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.

Human children, on the other hand are naturally corporative. From the earliest ages, they decide to help others, to share information and to participate in achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this cooperativeness in a series of experiment with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see an unrelated adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.

There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught, but naturally possessed in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very young age before most parents have started to train their children to behave socially. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence develops in children before their general cognitive（认知的）skills, at least when compared with chimps. In tests conducted by Tomasello, the human children did no better than the chimps on the physical world tests but were considerably better at understanding the social world.

The core of what children's minds have and chimps' don't is what Tomasello calls shared intentionality. Part of this ability is that they can infer what others know or are thinking. But beyond that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a “we”, a group that intends to work toward a shared goal.

    Staying positive through the cold season could be your best defense against getting ill,a new American study suggests.

    In an experiment that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or flu virus,researchers found that people with a generally sunny character were less likely to fail ill.The findings,published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, build on evidence that a “positive emotional style” can help ward off the common cold and other illness.

    Researchers believe the reasons may be both objective―as in happiness improving immune function―and subjective―as in happy people being less troubled by a sore throat or runny nose.“People with a positive emotional style may have different immune responses to the virus,” explained lead study author Dr Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.“And when they do get a cold,they may interpret their illness as being less severe.”

    Cohen and his colleagues has found in a previous study that happier people seemed less likely to catch a cold, but some questions remained as to whether the emotional quality itself had the effect.

    For the new study,the researchers had 193 healthy adults complete standard measures of personality qualities, physicals health,and emotional “style”.Those who tended to be happy,energetic and easy –going were judged as having a positive emotional style,while those who were often unhappy,tense,and hostile had a negative style.

    Afterwards,the researchers gave them nose drops containing either a cold virus or a particular flu virus.Over the next six days,the volunteers reported on any aches,pains,sneezing they had,while the researchers collected objective data.Cohen and his colleagues found that happy people were less likely to develop a cold.

    What's more,when happy folks did develop a cold,their symptoms were less severe than expected based on objective measures.

    On the contrary,people with negative characters were not at increased risk of developing a cold based on objective measures,though they did tend to get down about their symptoms.

    “We find that it's really positive emotions that have the big effect,” Cohen said,“not the negative ones.”

    So can a bad-tempered person fight a cold by deciding to be happy?

    Chinese people are, quite rightly, proud of their food. However, when foreigners like Britons and Americans think of Chinese food, their impression of it is different to what you might think.

    Growing up in the UK, the Chinese food I was used to eating was food I now recognize as being from Guangdong. For example, a typical dish I would order would be pork in sweet and sour sauce, probably with some rice and spring rolls on the side. This is the type of food we generally eat because most Chinese immigrants(移民) to the UK have come from Guangdong. You can tell, because when most British people try to copy the sound of Chinese, they actually copy the sound of Guangdong people—hearing the real Putonghua is sometimes a shock to British people who have grown up thinking it sounds completely different!

    British attitudes to Chinese food may be changing, though. Chinese-American chef Ken Hom has been on British TV for 30 years, and he told BBC Food: "Chinese food at the beginning of the 80s (in the UK) was sweet and sour pork, mainly. Most Brits had the unchangeable view of Chinese food… Now you are seeing more local Chinese food from Sichuan, Hunan and other areas of China. It is no longer just Guangdong food." Similarly, to most Americans, Chinese food doesn't go too far past orange chicken and fortune cookies, but more Chinese local dishes are becoming successful, especially in big cities like New York.

    Attitudes have not quite changed completely, though. Many foreigners who live in China will be familiar with this question from a relative back at home: "Have they given you dog yet?" Yes, perhaps because people still know too little about Chinese culture, many people believe that Chinese people love to eat dog meat. And of course, some people do eat dogs, which to Americans is like "eating a member of one's family" according to Vision Times. Also, Chinese people eat many other things people in the West do not—chicken claws, duck heads and some animals' organs.

    But what do foreigners think when they come to China and taste real Chinese food? You'll be glad to know that in my experience, the impressions have been very good.

    Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, there is nothing fixed about attitudes to dirt.

    In the early 16^th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, as medical opinion had it that washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. So did the king of England in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. Henry IV, King of France, was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.

    Though the belief in the merit of dirt was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbor ever since the 18^th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War Ⅱ. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?

    Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist(免疫学家)，encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.

    Amsterdam is a special city. There are many places you should not miss during your visit. Here is our list of the best.

    Amsterdam canal ring

    The city old centre is formed from canal rings, which give you the feeling of space, freedom and peace. Walk through these canal streets or better—take a trip by renting a boat yourself. Another way to explore the Venice of the North is to take a ride on a bicycle. Any way you decide for - enjoy this city.

    The National Maritime Museum

    The Maritime Museum is an attractive place to visit, especially with children. With many attractions in it, this colourful and enjoyable museum will help you understand the history of the Netherlands—a small nation which was one of the world's greatest sea powers.

Amsterdam Brown Cafe

    When you enter Amsterdam old cafes called Brown, at first it will seem too much from the past and too crowded, but the atmosphere is unique. Relax and watch - most of people around will be locals. Feel like one of them—the real Amsterdammers.

    Civic Guards Gallery

    This gallery is filled with old paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. The exhibited canvas may be not always the masterpieces of art, but these group portraits of Amsterdam citizens and their wives are an exquisite (精致的) document of the Dutch civilization and culture centuries ago.

    To avoid waiting lines we advise you to buy your tickets in advance online through our Amsterdam attractions and museums tickets webpage.

Nick Torrance, a junior in high school, suffers from muscular dystrophy, and attends school in a specialized wheelchair. The muscle disease prevents him from accomplishing many everyday tasks, such as carrying his books and putting things away in his locker. So he had a fellow student assigned to help him. But Amy Smith, the school's occupational therapist, thought that being able to do something simple like opening his locker on his own would be empowering.

Amy initially thought they would be able to buy a device to help. But searching online turned up nothing that could meet their needs—everything needed a keycode or some other physical action, things her disabled student couldn't do. After the outside search for a method came up short, she looked within the school itself for an answer. Amy turned to the school's robotics instructor.

The instructor, in turn, suggested that two of his most capable students take on the project: Micah Stuhldreher and Wyatt Smrcka. They took first place in a national robotics competition, so they were a natural choice to tackle the locker door problem with a robotics solution. Micah and Wyatt wasted no time getting down to work and for an hour each school day, the boys brainstormed, built, and rebuilt various versions of the device until they landed on the perfect solution one year later.

Like in any device development, it took a lot of trial and error for Micah and Wyatt to make something that would work for their target audience. For example, they initially built a locker-opening button, but Nick wasn't strong enough to push it, so they replaced it with a sensor.

Now, between classes Nick steers his electric wheelchair to his locker and waves his hand over a sensor on the arm of the wheelchair. A few seconds later, the locker door swings open. Another wave closes the door. Nick can make it with ease—it may be a small thing, but it gives him a sense of independence.