El Nifio, a Spanish term for “the Christ child", was named by South American fishermen who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nifio sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.

        The weather effects, both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nifio, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nifio in 1997 helped American's economy grow by $15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest, farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural incomes in rich countries is greater than the fall in poor ones.

          But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought (干旱）in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.

The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute(ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards.This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.

Simple improvements to infrastructure (基础设施）can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers (下水道）make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr. Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino's harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.

    Mark Twain, the famous American writer and a great master of humor, liked to play jokes on others. But once a joke was played on him. One day Mark Twain was invited to give a talk in a small town. At lunch he met a young man, one of his friends.

    The young man said that he had an uncle with him. He told Mark Twain that his uncle never laughed or smiled, and that nobody and nothing was able to make his uncle smile or laugh.

    "You bring your uncle to my talk this evening," said Mark Twain. "I'm sure I can make him laugh."

    That evening the young man and his uncle sat in the front. Mark Twain began to speak. He told several funny stories and made everyone in the room laugh. But the man never even smiled. Mark Twain told more funny stories, but the old man still kept quiet. Mark Twain continued to tell his funny stories. Finally he stopped. He was tired and quite disappointed.

    Some days later, Mark Twain told another friend what had happened." Oh," said his friend, "I know that man. He's been deaf for years."

    They had a dozen children, six boys and six girls, in seventeen years. One reason Dad had so many children was that he was confident anything he and Mother teamed upon was sure to be a success.

    Our house at Montclair, New Jersey, was a sort of school for scientific management and the removal of wasted motions — or “motion study,” as Dad and Mother named it.

    Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he could determine how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry through the task. Each child who wanted extra pocket money put forward an offer saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the contract(合约).

    Dad put process and work charts in the bathrooms. Every child old enough to write — and Dad expected his children to start writing at a young age — was required to sign their names on the charts in the morning after he had brushed his teeth, taken a bath, combed his hair, and made his bed. At night, each child had to weigh himself, mark the figure on a graph, and sign the process charts again after he had done his homework, washed his hands and face, and brushed his teeth. Mother wanted to have a place on the charts for saying prayers, but Dad said as far as he was concerned prayers were voluntary.

    It was strict management, all right. Yes, at home or on the job, Dad was always the efficiency expert. He buttoned his vest from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, because the bottom-to-top process took him only three seconds, while the top-to-bottom took seven. He even used two shaving brushes to make his face smooth enough, because he found that by so doing he could cut seventeen seconds off his shaving time. For a while he tried shaving with two razors, but he finally gave that up.

    “I can save forty-four seconds,” he complained, “but I wasted two minutes this morning putting this bandage on my throat.” It wasn't the injured throat that really bothered him. It was the two minutes.

    Many animals recognize their food because they see it. So do humans. When you see an apple or apiece of chocolate you know that these are things you can eat. You can also use other senses when you choose your food. You may like it because it smells good or because it tastes good. You may dislike some types of food because they do not look, smell or taste very nice. Different animals use different senses to find and choose their food. A few animals depend on only one of their senses, while most animals use more than one sense.

    Although there are many different types of food, some animals spend their lives eating only one type. The giant panda eats only one particular type of bamboo. Other animals eat only one type of food even when given the choice. A land of white butterfly will stay on the leaves of a cabbage, even though there are plenty of other vegetables in the garden. However, most animals have a more varied diet. The bear eats fruits and fish. The fox eats small animals, birds and fruits. The diet of these animals will be different depending on the season.

    Humans have a very varied diet. We often eat food because we like it and not because it is good for us. In countries such as France and Britain, people eat foods with too much sugar. This makes them overweight, which is bad for their health. Eating too much red meat and animal products, such as butter, can also be bad for the health Choosing the right food, therefore, has become an area of study in modern life.

    How does a sunset work? We love to look at one, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her eighth-graders to really think about it and question.

    So Blackwell had her students watch a video of a sunset as part of a physics lesson on motion. "I asked them: ' So what's moving And why' " Blackwell says. Some thought the sun was moving; others knew that a sunset is the result of the Earth spinning around on its axis. "Usually, my biggest challenge is trying to keep them patient," she says. "They just have so many burning questions."

    "Every day, we meet new information," says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist. Ranganath was curious to know why we keep some information and forget other things. So he got 19 volunteers and asked them to review more than 100 questions. When the participants' curiosity was aroused, the parts of' their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the brain, which is involved in greater memories.

    "Curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand but also dull information. This is a phenomenon teachers can use in the classroom," says Evie Malaia, a professor. "Say a kid wants to be an astronaut," she says. NL Well, how do you link that goal with learning multiplication tables(乘法表)" "A teacher may choose to ask her class an interesting word problem that involves space exploration," Malaia says. Students may remember the answer to the word problem, but they'll also remember how they found the answer through multiplication.

    What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs  affect dopamine(多巴胺) processing in the brain. "If we could figure these things out, we could help those who may just seem bored," Ranganath says.

    Blackwell says she doesn't have to deal with that problem too often. She says her students love exploring the mysterious unknowns in science: What happens when a car crashes. How do rainbows work "I tell my kids there's no dumb questions," Blackwell says. "That's science: asking questions and seeking answers."

    Researchers have been investigating for years the ways in which screens affect the quality of a person's reading. The magazine Scientific American reported that at least 100 studies have been published on the issue since the 1980s.

    Virginia Clinton carried out a research examination. She is a professor of Education, Health and Behavior at the University of North Dakota. She found what she called a "small but significant" difference in reading text from screen versus paper.

    Clinton looked at 33 past studies that examined paper versus screen reading. All of the studies were done between 2008 and 2018. The studies collectively had 2,799 study subjects, including both children and adults. Clinton's examination found that reading from paper generally led to better understanding and improved a person's performance on tests connected to the reading material. And, she found no major differences in reading speed between the two.

    Clinton and other researchers have found screen readers often believe they understand a text better than they really do. And, they are more likely than paper readers to overestimate how well they would do on a test of the materials they have read.

    Yet, this overestimated sense of understanding is especially common among screen readers. Clinton said, "There are many possible reasons for such findings. Overconfidence of reen readers, for example, could be the result of a distracted, less focused mind. Readers' preferences are also important. Research shows the majority of people of all ages prefer reading from paper. If you are enjoying the reading process, you're going to be more involved. You're going to be paying better attention. Preferences are a key issue here."

    Several studies have found that people often think of paper materials as something more important and serious. "If you are reading from paper, your mind thinks this is something important. I need to pay attention to it," Clinton said.