Wild weather, unexpected coral reefs and dangerous sea creatures… these are the nightmares (噩梦) you can imagine a teenager on a solo voyage (独自旅行) around the world might suffer from. But for Laura Dekker, sailing around the globe seems less a price to be paidthan a prize to be treasured.

    As the 19-year-old Dutch sailor said in Maidentrip, a documentary（纪录影片） released last year about her experience of becoming the youngest person to sail around the world alone in 2012, “I was born on a boat. I lived my first five years at sea. And ever since, all I have wanted is to return to that life.”

    With her yacht(游艇) Guppy, Dekker began her journey at 14 and sailed 50,004 kilometers in 519 days.

    The flying fish keeping her company, the dolphins following in her wake and the warm days spent on deck playing the flute (长笛) as she watched another unforgettable sunset were enough to make others jealous.

    But these didn't always go well. There were terrible moments in which Dekker feared death. On one occasion, a whale almost turned Guppy over. Another time, she battled extreme winds and Guppy surfed down 8-meter-high waves.

    Out on the open sea alone, she also got used to living without a fridge, a flushing（用水冲洗） toilet, and a hot shower.

   “As a human being you don't need much,”she told Stuff.co.nz. “ They might make life more comfortable, but you really don't need them to be happy.”

    In fact, her outlook on life was shaped by the trip. “I wanted the storms. I wanted the calms. I wanted to feel loneliness,”she told The New York Times. “And now I know all these things. It's the end ofthe dream I had as a child, and it's the beginning of my life as a sailor.”

When someone is happy, can you smell it?

    You can usually tell when someone is happy based on seeing them smile, hearing them laugh or perhaps from receiving a big hug. But can you also smell their happiness? Surprising new research suggests that happiness does indeed have a scent, and that the experience of happiness can be transmitted through smell, reports Phys.org.

    For the study, 12 young men were shown videos meant to bring about a variety of emotions while researchers gathered sweat samples from them. All of the men were healthy and none of them were drug users or smokers, and all were asked to abstain from drinking or eating smelly foods during the study period. 

    Those sweat samples were then given to 36 equally healthy young women to smell, while researchers monitored their reactions. Only women were selected to smell the samples, apparently because previous research has shown that women have a better sense of smell than men and are also more sensitive to emotional signaling—though it's unclear why only men were chosen to produce the scents.

    Researchers found that the behavior of the women after smelling the scents—particularly their facial expressions—indicated a relationship between the emotional states of the men who produced the sweat and the women who sniffed them. 

    “Human sweat produced when a person is happy brings about a state similar to happiness in somebody who breathes this smell,” said study co-author Gun Semin, a professor at Koc University in Turkey.

    This is a fascinating finding because it not only means that happiness does have a scent, but that the scent is capable of transmitting the emotion to others. The study also found that other emotions, such as fear, seem to carry a scent too. This ensures previous research suggesting that some negative emotions have a smell, but it is the first time this has proved to be true of positive feelings.

    Researchers have yet to isolate(分离) exactly what the chemical compound for the happiness smell is, but you might imagine what the potential applications for such a finding could be. Happiness perfumes, for instance, could be invented. Scent therapies（香味疗法）could also be developed to help people through depression or anxiety.

    Perhaps the most surprising result of the study, however, is our broadened understanding of how emotions get communicated, and also how our own emotions are potentially managed through our social context and the emotional states of those around us. 

    Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony (和声) is learnt and not based on natural ability, a new study by University of Melbourne researchers has found. The researchers said previous theories about how we appreciate music were based on the physical functions of sound, the ear itself and a born ability to hear harmony.

    The study shows that musical harmony can be learnt, and it is a matter of training the brain to hear the sounds. So if you thought that the music of some foreign culture (or Jazz) sounded like the crying of cats, it's simply because you haven't learnt to listen by their rules.

    The researchers used 66 volunteers with a range of (一系列的) musical training and tested their ability to hear combinations (组合) of notes (音符) to determine if they found the combinations familiar or pleasing. They found that people needed to be familiar with combinations of notes. If they couldn't recognize the notes, they found the notes dissonant. This finding put an end to centuries of theories claiming (声称) that physical functions of the ear determine what we find attractive.

    The study found that trained musicians were much more sensitive (敏感的) to unpleasant notes than non-musicians. When they couldn't find the note, the musicians reported that the sounds were unpleasant, while non-musicians were much less sensitive. This shows the importance of training or nurturing (培养) the brain to like particular sound of combinations of notes, like those found in jazz or rock.

    Depending on their training, a strange chord (和弦) sound was pleasant to some musicians, but very unpleasant to others. This showed us that even the ability to hear a musical note is learnt.

    To confirm (证实) this finding, they trained 19 non-musicians to find the notes of a random (随机的) selection of western chords. Not only did the participants' ability to hear notes improve rapidly; the chords they had learnt sounded more pleasant—regardless of (不论) how the chords were played.

    The question of why some combinations of musical notes are heard as pleasant or unpleasant has long been debated. “ We have shown in this study that for music, beauty is in the brain of the beholder(观看者),” a researcher said.

    For as long as we've known about it, humans have searched for a cure for cancer. Across the world, countless amounts of time and money have been spend on researching a way to stop the terrible disease.

    But now, it seems like the answer could have been inside our own bodies the whole time.

    Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, a government agency that's responsible for healthcare, approved a new form of gene therapy that could mean the end of a certain type of cancer.

    The therapy allows scientists to 'train” the immune cells of sick patients to fight leukemia – a blood cancer that mostly affects young people.

    The exciting new treatment works by removing healthy immune cells from the patient, known as T-cells, which are then altered to be able to “hunt down” cancer cells.

    The cells are then put back into the patient, before they begin to get rid of the patient's leukemia over time, similar to how the body fights off other illnesses.

    'this is truly an exciting new day for cancer patients,” Louis J. DeGennaro, president of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, said in a news release. Up until now, a drawn-out （持续很久时间的）and painful bone marrow transplant was the only option for many leukemia patients.

    In this procedure, healthy blood cells are taken from a donor and placed into the sick patient, who also has to go through chemotherapy to allow their body to adjust to the new cells.

    But with a recovery rate of around 83 percent–according to a news release published by the FDA–it's hoped that the days of painful trips to the hospital, or even death, are over for leukemia sufferers.

    “We're entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient's own cells to attack a deadly cancer,” FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in the release.

    “New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold the potential to transform medicine and... our ability to treat and even cure many intractable（难治的） illnesses.”

    Field Trip Day

    On Friday, May 16, our class will take a field trip to North Park Zoo. The zoo has lions, elephants, and other interesting animals. Many of the animals we have been studying will be there for us to closely examine.

    Our class will be divided into six teams. Each team will have five students and one leader. The leaders are listed in the table.

    What You Need to Know

    The cost is $1.00 for students to enter the zoo. We will leave the school at 9:00 a.m. and return at 2:30 p.m.

    On the morning of the trip, the students will be divided into teams. One student from each team will receive a camera. The cameraman will take pictures of the team, the animals, and other fun sights at the zoo.

    All members should wear blue shirts. Be sure to wear comfortable shoes because we will be walking all day. Please bring a bag lunch and a drink. We will have a picnic at the park inside the zoo. Bring a healthy snack, such as a piece of fruit and a drink, for later in the day.

    When we are at the zoo, always remain with your team. Do not leave the team without asking permission from the team leader.

    Feeding the Animals

    The ONLY animals that students are allowed to feed are those in the children's Zoo. Special food can be bought at the zoo for 25 cents and given to these animals. Do not feed your lunch to them. It is not food for the animals.

Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 55 million people in the U. S. are "gig workers" which is more than 35 percent of the U. S. workforce. That number is projected to jump to 43 percent by 2020.

People are drawn to gig work（零工）because it brings in a little extra income without a major time commitment. And recent technologies like Skype, Slack, and Dropbox have made the gig life a reality, giving you maximum freedom, an ideal work-life balance, and the chance to pursue your passions.

If you're thinking of joining the gig economy, it's never been easier. One of the great things about the gig economy is that you don't have a boss breathing down your neck. As a freelancer, you no longer have to cater to a company culture or work schedule that might cause physical or emotional stress. Instead, you get to choose the type of work you do and who you work with. But this degree of freedom requires a corresponding amount of discipline. With no boss to make sure you're on task, it's all on you.

A lot of gig workers start their careers by hopping on a project because the employer is desperate and in need of help. On the employer's end, it's tough to take on people for higher management positions when the pool of talent is full of gig workers who haven't been given an opportunity to improve their skills. Businesses have to evolve to learn how to account for an influx (涌入) of temporary workers. It is harder for gig workers to become skilled and get promoted.

The workforce is becoming more advanced and educated by the day. You have to keep learning and keep up with industry trends to maintain a competitive edge. This is true even for people in traditional office settings, but it's critical if you're your own boss.