Do you like spicy food?

    What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can't get enough of it.

    Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

    'We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,' said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

    But before you look at the study, you should first know that “spicy” is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

    In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

    By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

    Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. “It's not that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn,” Hayes explained.

    I loved my aunt Suzy. She was such a kind old lady. I loved going to her house on holiday. She had been sick for the last few years and, though my job had taken me away across the town, I tried to visit her as much as possible. I helped with the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning and taking her pet cat Mazy to the vet.

    Sad as her passing away was, what happened to Mazy was even more worrying. Because aunt Suzy had no children, there wasn't anyone who seemed to care for her beloved cat friend. I would have taken her in a short time, but my apartment doesn't allow pets. First, we talked with her neighbors. Mr. Jenkins, who was alone and lived across the street, wasn't interested. Joe and Sally who lived next door had a small child with serious skin allergies(过敏症). My aunt's best friend Molly who had lived just down the road was unable to take care of herself as she had serious health problems.

    Second, we thought about our family members. My brother Bobby and his wife Jill were eliminated at once as they aren't cat people. My cousin in California was a bit interested, but we weren't sure about the trip as Mazy was nearly as old as my aunt (in cat years!). Finally, we came to the local humane society to see whether they would be able to help her find a new home. The problem was that most people and families only welcomed a smart little cat into their home, not a dull old one.

    In the end, we had to put Mazy to sleep. I had spoken with the vet and realized it was possible for the best. It was so hard to lose aunt Suzy and then have nowhere for Mazy to live. A few months went by and I had gone to my aunt's house to clear out some of her belongings. I happened to see her mailman. Jerry and we started to talk about my aunt when he asked about Mazy. I told him that we had to put Mazy to sleep because we couldn't find a home for her. Jerry got really quiet. “I promised Suzy that if anything ever happened to her, I'd take care of Mazy”, he said sadly. “Suzy always said she'd told her lawyer the arrangement.”

    Hearing this, my heart sank to my feet and I almost cried. The saddest part, I realized, was this all could have been avoided. I guess we were just so busy in those final months that we didn't think about it. We could have called my aunt's lawyer to take care of it in less than 10 minutes. I'll never forgive myself for not thinking of it sooner. And I'll never forgive myself for losing Mazy.

    Why do you go to the library? For books, yes—but you like books because they tell stories You hope to get lost in a story or be transported into someone else's life. At one type of library you can do just that—even though there's not a single book.

    At a Human Library, instead of books, you can "borrow" people. People with unique life stories volunteer to be the "books." For a certain amount of time, you can ask them questions and listen to their stories, which are as fascinating as any you can find in a book. (If you attend, make sure to review the habits that make you a good listener.) Many of the stories have to do with some kind of depressing topic. You can speak with a refugee, a soldier suffering from PTSD (创伤后遗症), a homeless person and a woman living with HIV. The Human Library encourages people to take time to truly get to know and learn from someone they might otherwise make a snap judgement about. According to its website, the Human Library is "a place where difficult questions are expected, appreciated and answered."

    The Human Library Organization came to be in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000. Romni Abergel and his colleagues hosted a four-day event during a major Northern European festival. After the success of this event, Abergel founded the Human Library Organization, hoping to raise awareness among youth about depression, which has been growing ever since.

    Though there a few permanent human libraries, most aren't place at all, but events. Though many do take place at physical libraries, you don't need a library card—anyone can come and be part of the experience. There have been human library events all over the globe, in universities and in pubs, from Chicago to Tunis to Edinburgh to San Antonio. Check out the organization's Facebook page to see when the Human Library might be arriving near you.

    When my brother and I were young, my mom would take us on Transportation Days.

    It goes like this: You can't take any means of transportation more than once. We would start from home, walking two blocks to the rail station. We'd take the train into the city center, then a bus, switching to the tram, then maybe a taxi. We always considered taking a horse carriage in the historic district, but we didn't like the way the horses were treated, so we never did. At the end of the day, we took the subway to our closest station, where Mom's friend was waiting to give us a ride home—our first car ride of the day.

    The good thing about Transportation Days is not only that Mom taught us how to get around. She was born to be multimodal (多方式的). She understood that depending on cars only was a failure of imagination and, above all, a failure of confidence—the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels.

    Once you learn the route map and step with certainty over the gap between the train and the platform, nothing is frightening anymore. New cities are just light-rail lines to be explored. And your personal car, if you have one, becomes just one more tool in the toolbox—and often an inadequate one, limiting both your mobility and your wallet.

    On Transportation Days, we might stop for lunch on Chestnut Street or buy a new book or toy, but the transportation was the point. First, it was exciting enough to watch the world speed by from the train window. As I got older, my mom helped me unlock the mysteries that would otherwise have paralyzed my first attempts to do it myself: How do I know where to get off? How do I know how much it costs? How do I know when I need tickets, and where to get them? What track, what line, which direction, where's the stop, and will I get wet when we go under the river?

    I'm writing this right now on an airplane, a means we didn't try on our Transportation Days and, we now know, the dirtiest and most polluting of them all. My flight routed me through Philadelphia. My multimodal mom met me for dinner in the airport. She took a train to meet me.

    Finding a mountain goat resting high on a cliff(悬崖) might thrill many of the millions of tourists who visit Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park every year, but park officials say it might be time for the bearded animals to go.

    The problem, according to the park, is that Grand Teton's 100 or so mountain goats threaten about 80 bighorn sheep. The bighorn sheep numbered as many as 125 just a few years ago. The strong goats spread disease and compete with bighorn sheep for food. Unlike small-sized bighorn sheep, Grand Teton's mountain goats aren't native to the park. They were introduced to the park in the 1960s.

    Grand Teton spokeswoman Denise Germann said, “We've got a management responsibility to protect the native species. After hearing from the public on the proposal (建议) in January, park officials expect to decide as soon as mid-February on what to do about the mountain goats.”

    The goats are reproducing rapidly. Now might be the best time to reduce the animals before they're too many to bring under control, according to the Park Service.

    One wildlife biologist who studies bighorn sheep praised the proposal. Mountain goats' original habitat is nowhere close to where they've been introduced in the U.S. to provide hunting opportunities, said Rob Roy Ramey II, with Nederland, Colorado-based Wildlife Science International, Inc.

    Wildlife managers should get rid of mountain goats not only in Grand Teton but elsewhere to help struggling bighorn sheep, Ramey said. “Unfortunately, state wildlife agencies sell nonnative wildlife viewing opportunities to the public,” Ramey said. “This is not a zoo in the wilderness. It should really be for native wildlife.”

    Large gatherings such as weddings and conferences can be socially stressful. Pressure to learn people's names only adds to the stress. A new facial-recognition app could come to the rescue, but privacy experts recommend going on with caution.

    The app, called SocialRecall, connects names with faces via smartphone cameras and facial recognition, potentially avoiding the need for formal introductions. "It breaks down these social barriers we all have when meeting somebody," says Barry Sandrew, who created the app and tested it at an event attended by about 1,000 people.

    After receiving an invitation to download SocialRecall from an event organizer, the user is asked to take two selfies and sign in via social media. At the event, the app is active within a previously defined geographical area. When a user points his or her phone camera at an attendee's face, the app identifies the individual displays the person's name, and links to his or her social media profile. To protect privacy, it recognizes only those who have agreed to participate. And the app's creators say it automatically deletes users' data after an event.

    Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert who runs the Privacy by Design Center of Excellence praises the app's creators for these protective measures. She cautions, however, that when people choose to share their personal information with the app they should know that there may be unintended consequences down the road with that information being used in another context that might come back to bite you."

    The start-up has also developed a version of the app for individuals who suffer from prosopagnosia, or "face blindness", a condition that prevents people from recognizing individuals they have met. To use this app a person first acquires an image of someone's face, from either the smartphone's camera or a photograph, and then tags it with a name. When the camera spots that same face in real life, the previously entered information is displayed. The collected data are stored only on a user's phone, according to the team behind the app.