Read the questions and answer YES or NO, then you will find out how good you are.

⒈When you don't understand something, you ask questions.

⒉You like listening to older people talk about the past.

⒊You think that you can learn something interesting from everyone around you.

⒋You are brave enough when you have to talk to people you don't know.

⒌You enjoy reading books about famous people.

⒍You always see and talk to different people.

⒎You are interested in learning new ways of doing things.

⒏You enjoy sharing experiences with friends and learning from people of all ages.

⒐You talk a lot about yourself.

⒑Even if you are often wrong, you make your own decisions.

⒒You hate teaching what you are good at: sports, technology and so on.

⒓Your parents don't understand you, so you don't talk to them much.

Score Now! (开始计分 )

    Score2 points if you answer YES to each of the first 8 questions, and 0 if you choose NO.

    Score 2 points if you answer NO to each of the last 4 question, and 0 if you choose YES.

    18-24. You are friendly and open-mind. You make people feel important by listening to what they have to say. You'll probably succeed in learning all kinds of interesting things.

    10-16. Remember that every single person you know can teach you something. You will great make your life rich and colorful.

    0-8 About 400 years ago, a famous writer wrote, “No man is an island.” This is still true today. Try to be more open and interested in people around you.

    What do Napoleon, Clinton and Wang Nan have in common? They are all left-handed.

Today about 15% of the people are left-handed. But why are people left-handed? The answer is the way the brain (大脑) works. The brain has two halves—the right half and the left half. The right half controls (控制) the left side of the body, and the left half controls the right side of the body. So right-handed people have a strong left brain, and the left –handed people have a strong right brain.

    The two halves of the brain are about the same size. But each side controls different things. The left side controls language, Math and logic (逻辑). When you remember new words, or when you put things in order, you use your left side.

    The right side of the brain controls color and music. It is also good at recognizing (认出)faces. This does not mean that all artists are left-handed and all accountants (会计师) are right-handed. Some right-handers have a strong right brain, and some left-handers have a strong left brain.

    Trees are useful to man in three important ways: they give him wood and other useful things, they give him cool places, and they help to stop drought and flood.

    Unluckily, in many parts of the world, man has not found that the third of these points is the most important. Man wants to make money from trees, so he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had. And also, he is usually too careless to plant and look after new trees. So the forests slowly disappear.

    This does not only mean that man will have fewer trees. The results are even worse: for where there are trees, their roots break up soil make the rain in——and also bind the soil, thus stopping it from being washed away easily; but where there are no trees, the rain falls on hard ground and flows away, causing floods and carrying away the rich top-oil. When all the top soil is gone, nothing is left but useless desert.

    It took 13 years of international effort to map the human biological blueprint of all the genes (基因) that make us different people. The first rough draft (草图) made in 2000. The last of our 23 chromosomes (染色体) was clearly described in 2006. Ever since then, the age of personal genetic testing has been upon us. Since that time, a growing number of private companies have come on the market mostly through the Internet, offering to scan your personal DNA and compare it to some disease markets of the blueprint, called DTC genetic tests.

    But over the last five years the medical world has been discussing excitedly about whether these DTC tests are helpful or harmful, scientifically believable or completely useless. One of the usual criticisms (批评) is that the science is so new that no one really knows yet how to explain the information.

    "At present they largely remain in the period of research studies," notes Dr. Greg Ferro, special advisor to the director of genomic medicine at the US National Human Genome Research Institute. Ferro says there are two reasons." The first is that when they offer a test, are they really checking what they should check? And then the next is that even if it is believable, does what the test is checking really mean anything to your health?"

    Other worries include the privacy of the results and how your personal genetic information might be used by insurance (保险) companies to refuse your insurance or your boss to dismiss you. Or you could learn information with a huge social or personal impact (冲击), such as finding out that genetically you cannot possibly be the father of your child. It can also give you risks that may break your life, such as whether you are at high risk of cancer, Parkinson or other terrible diseases.

    Criticisms over the tests are such that some countries, such as Germany, have banned them. In 2011, some scientists advised the US government that most tests should be done under the guidance of medical professionals (专家). The UK government also expressed its worries about DTC genetic tests and in August 2010 made a set of rules to guide the development of genetic tests.

    In 2011, three medical researchers published a review article in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, saying that such tests offered more risks than benefits. The most important reason is that the tests might create worries or unreal results or drive unnecessary medical treatments. They also noted some of the genetic information the tests are based on at present is far from being perfect.

    Art, as we know, is subjective. What one person considers a priceless masterpiece others might see as nothing more than a giant black square. But there's one very specific kind of painting that almost everyone sees the same way-the kind with the" "strange" eyes that seem to follow you around the room. So what causes this optical illusion (视觉错觉) and how do artists achieve this effect?

    It turns out, for even a moderately skilled artist, this effect isn't a difficult thing to achieve, In fact, the artists need to use a little illusion of depth, making the person depicted on the canvas appears somewhat 3D on a 2D canvas, and to adjust .the gaze (凝视) of the eyes so that they would be looking at someone standing right in front of the picture.

    So what exactly is going on here in our brains that then makes it seem like the eyes follow you even if you move away from being front and center? As demonstrated by a team of researchers from Ohio State University, as you move to the side, the "near? and "far" points of the 2D image don't really change. These near and far points are defined as visible points that, if the image was 3D, would appear nearest and furthest away from the viewer at a given angle.

    The idea is simple. No matter what angle you look at a paining from, the painting itself doesn't change. You're looking at a flat surface. The key is that the near points and far points of the picture remained the same no matter the angle the picture was viewed from. When observing real surfaces in the natural environment the near and far points vary when we change viewing direction. When we observe a picture on the wall, the visual information that defines near and far points is unaffected by viewing direction. Still, we willingly accept and interpret the thing in the painting as if it were a real object.

    Thus, because the perspective, shadows, and light on the painting don't change as you move around, if the eyes in the painting would be staring directly at the observer who is standing in front of the painting, it creates something of an optical illusion in your brain so that the eyes will continue to seem to stare at you as you move to the side.

    In contrast to the eyes following you trick, if the artist tweaks the painting a bit, for example the artist adjusts the gaze of the eyes so that the eyes are looking off somewhere else instead of directly looking at a potential observer, no matter where you stand, the eyes will never seem to be looking at you.

    The technique first began popularly showing up in art around the 14th century when the artist and architect Fillipo Brunelleshi introduced the art world to the idea of "linear perspective", being painting with the idea of everything in the picture converging (聚集) on a specific point on the horizon, creating the illusion of depth. Linear perspective, combined with skilled use of light and shadow, allows artists to create masterfully realistic paintings, including sometimes of people that stare at you creepily no matter where you stand.