The ability to speak more than one language certainly has its special benefits.It enables you to work in another country or interact with people whose language is different from your mother tongue.Cognitive（认知的）  psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism（双语能力）shapes the mind for almost a century.There are those who suggest that in order to speak one language,bilinguals have to suppress（抑制）the influence of the other.In the past three decades,research had argued that this unique form of language processing trains the brain in the use of abilities known as "executive（执行的）functions" such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention. Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual（单语的）peers when performing cognitive tasks demanding these abilities.Furthermore,it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset（发作）of symptoms associated with dementia（痴呆）.

    But the scientific community recently has become increasingly skeptical of the bilingual advantage.One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive functions are not always apparent.It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point.We need to pursue a new approach to understand,beyond those individual examples of executive functions,how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performances.This ability is called meta cognition and is associated with other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage.

    In our research,we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots.Sometimes the difference was obvious,making the decision easy,while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example,one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49).Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.

    During the course of two experiments,we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots.However,monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong.In other words,bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals.This went against our initial predictions,as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in meta cognitive processing.These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.

    Sometimes I have to admire people's imagination but what I admire most is the businessmen's sense of smell. China's Singles Day, which falls on Nov. 11 every year, has far surpassed its U.S. counterparts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday—combined. Last year, Americans spent a record $12.8 billion online between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. It's impressive until you compare it to the $17.6 billion in sales made by Chinese consumers in a single 24-hour period during 2016's Singles Day.

    Singles Day is known as “Bare Sticks Day” or “Bare Branches Day” in Chinese—because the date “11/11” looks like bare branches and “one” is the loneliest number. Singles Day began in the early 1990s in the dorm rooms of Nanjing University when a group of single friends were sorry about the lack of significant others and decided to mark the day by organizing activities as a group of singles and reducing their loneliness by buying themselves a gift.

    Then in 2009, sensing s break between the sales period of China's National Day on Oct. 1 and Chinese New Year in late January or early February, Alibaba's Jack Ma saw an opening: sell to comfort lonely hearts.

    The first year did only $7.5 million in sales, but just 8 years later, shoppers spent $25.3 billion, or 168.2 billion yuan, this year—a 40 percent jump from last year's $17.6 billion. Foe comparison, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. only netted $6.79 billion in 2016. Amazon doesn't release sales figures for July's Prime Day, but it's pretty safe to believe the not-quite-national-holiday doesn't come close to $25 billion.

    “More than $25 billion in one day is not just a sales figure,” Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement. “It represents the desire for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully accepted the combination of online and offline sales.”

    If you want to get something done, you might want to put your mobile phone back in your pocket. Researchers have found that the mere presence of a phone is distracting (分心) — even if it is not your own. And the devices (设备) are likely to distract you, even if they are not ringing or “pinging” with text messages. People asked to carry out electronic tests of their attention spans were found to perform worse when a mobile phone was present than other people performing in the presence of a paper notepad.

    Scientists from Hokkaido University in Japan said that their findings show that it is harder to concentrate when one of the electronic devices is present. The effect was most marked on people who are not regular users of phones. In tests on 40 undergraduates. Associate Professor Junichiro Kawahara and a colleague divided the subjects into two groups — one asked to carry out tests in the presence of an Apple iPhone next to a computer monitor, and the other in the presence of a notebook.

    The test involved asking the participant to search for a particular character among a mess of other characters on the screen. Researchers measured the time it took to find the target. The results of the experiment found that those with the mobile phone took longer to find the character, indicating that participants were automatically distracted by the presence of the phone. The researchers suggest that people are drawn to the presence of a mobile phone, although there are individual differences in how one attempts to ignore it. In conclusion. Professor Kawahara said. “The mere presence of a mobile phone was a distraction among infrequent internet users.”

    Another finding is that listening to one half of a mobile phone conversation also distracts people, and other studies have found that placing a mobile phone in view has a negative impact on the quality of face-to-face communications. Holding a mobile phone makes you less likely to get a fair hearing from others.

    Thirteen-year-old American Jessica Goldstone wants to be a fashion designer when she finishes school. She thinks her designs would be more exciting than clothes bought from stores. But until this month, Jessica has never touched a sewing machine(缝纫机).

    After her first class, Jessica and six other girls aged 9 to 13 said that sewing was fun, cool and challenging.

    These students at Fabrics' Sew Fun class show that the sewing machine is becoming popular again.

    "There have been a lot of teens getting excited about sewing," said a sewing company worker Donna Smith. "Some of them come from the Project Runway TV show," she said. This TV show is an exciting weekly contest to make a great fashion designer. Every week one contestant (参赛者) fails the test and has to leave the contest.

    The number of people who joined sewing class summer camps grew by 10 percent this year. That's good news for companies that make sewing machines and publish sewing magazines. The Singer Sewing Company sold nearly 3 million sewing machines in the United States last year. This is about twice as many as in 1999.

    Sewing machines have been around for more than 150 years, but they have changed a lot since your grandmother was a girl.

    Spencer Carmel started sewing lessons after getting a sewing machine for her 11^th birthday. She has sewn a lot by hand, but she wants to make more difficult things. Spencer's class recently made hats.

    Another member of the class, Kelsey Oen, 9 years old, needed time to get used to her machine, but soon she could use it well. By the end of the class, Kelsey was happy and wearing her new hat.

The Domestication （驯化）of Cats

    For centuries, the common view of how domestication had occurred was that prehistoric people, realizing how useful it would be to have animals kept for food, began catching wild animals and breeding （繁殖）them. Over time, by allowing only animals with "tame"（驯养）characteristics to produce their babies, human beings created animals that were less wild and more dependent upon people. Eventually this process led to the domestic farm animals and pets that we know today, having lost their ancient survival skills and natural abilities.

    Recent research suggests that this view of domestication is incomplete. Prehistoric human beings did catch and breed useful wild animals, but specialists in animal behavior now think that domestication was not simply something people did to animals—the animals played an active part in the process. Wolves and wild horses, for example, may have taken the first steps in their own domestication by hanging around human settlements, feeding on people's crops and getting used to human activity. The animals which were not too nervous or fearful to live near people produced their babies that also tolerated humans, making it easier for people to catch and breed them.

    In this version, people succeededin domesticating only animals that had already adapted easily to life around humans. Domestication required an animal that was willing to become domestic. The process was more like a dance with partners than a victory of humans over animals.

    At first glance, the laming of cats seems to fit nicely into this new story of domestication. A traditional theory says that after prehistoric people in Egypt invented agriculture and started farming, rats and mice gathered to feast on their stored grain. Wildcats, in tum, gathered at the same places to hunt and eat the rats and mice. Over time, cats got used to people and people got used to cats. Some studies of wildcats, however, seem to call this theory into question. Wildcats don't share hunting and feeding areas, and they don't live close to people. Experts do not know whether wildcats were partners in their own domestication. They do know that long after people had acquired domestic dogs, sheep and horses, they somehow acquired domestic cats. Gradually they produced animals with increasingly tame qualities.

    A first-year undergraduate student in Chengdu, recently complained online that her mother refused to raise her monthly allowance to 4,500 yuan ( $ 633) even when she said her current allowance 2, 000 yuan was not enough to cover her expenses, sparking a debate on how much money a college student needs per month. One expert shares his views on the issue with China Daily: Students should pursue education, not comfort.

    Even for a college student studying in a first-tier city in China, 2,000 yuan is enough to cover all his or her monthly expenses. In fact, for a college student in Chengdu a monthly allowance of 2,000 yuan is more than enough. According to a survey conducted by a bookkeeping platform, the average monthly expense for an undergraduate in cities other than Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou was less than 2,000 yuan in 2019； for Chengdu, it was 1,900 yuan.

    Claiming that she can hardly afford new clothing and cosmetics with her 2,000 yuan monthly allowance, the undergraduate student in Chengdu criticized her mother for refusing to raise her pocket money. Her "meager" allowance, she said, prevented her from buying branded goods that her hostel-mates enjoyed.

    By the time a person enters a college, she or he should have developed a healthy consumption habit. And a youth should adjust her or his consumption according to her or his family income. On a deeper level, the money they spend in college should depend on how much they value their parents' hard work. Besides, some college students could take UP part-time jobs to meet their monetary needs if they feel their parents don't or can't send them enough money. In this way they can also learn to meet the requirements of life in the future and develop healthy consumption habits. More importantly, they should always bear in mind that education is their top priority in college