Reasons to Take Part in Student Clubs and Organizations

    Many college students don't know what they're missing by not taking part in the student clubs and organizations that are offered at most colleges and universities. Taking part in one can be a rich and rewarding experience.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} Check them out and see what's available. Here are a few reasons why you should take part in student clubs and organizations.

Meet new people.

    It can be hard to meet new people in college especially in your first year.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} However, in a club, you'll find yourself in a smaller group of people who likely share your interest.

Help your major.

    There are many student clubs and organizations for different majors and departments. Such clubs can be a lot of fun as well as a great academic resource for you. By joining an academic club you will probably have an easier time to know professors in your departments{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Learn important leadership skills.

    Student clubs and organizations can be a good way to learn important leadership skills that would look great on job applications.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} These skills could be event planning, finance management, and so on. Find a club that you love being a part of your school life and if you work hard, you might be able to gain such a position.

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    Lastly, student clubs and organizations can simply be a lot of fun. Make sure to take advantage of student clubs and organizations to make the most out of your time in college!

A. Have fun.

B. Never waste energy.

C. Class sizes can be big.

D. Take advantage of your major.

E. In a club, you will be able to gain other important skills.

F. So don't just walk past those tables during clubs week.

G. And you might even get access to study help and other academic advice.

    They already guide blind and disabled people; now dogs are to be trained to help people with dementia(痴呆) or Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's can make people confuse night and day or forget basic things such as washing and drinking enough water.

    The dogs will be trained to respond to sound triggers(触发器) in the home that make them perform tasks. The duties will include reminding their owners to take medicine, as well as encouraging them to eat, drink and sleep regularly.

    The idea was developed by design students at the Glasgow School of Art and will now be put into practice by Alzheimer's Scotland and Dogs for the Disabled. The first dogs will be distributed to four Scottish couples, where one of the partners is in the early stages of dementia. 670,000 people in Britain have dementia and one in three over 65 will develop the condition. By 2021 this is expected rise to one million.

    John Gray of Alzheimer's Scotland said, "People in the early stages of dementia are still able to live a relatively normal life, and dogs help to maintain routine. " Another advantage of using the pets as companions is that dogs can give them a sense of silent support and companionship. Ms Gray said: "The evidence is that people may forget familiar faces but not pets. It's such a strong bond that people often remember them longest. People don't need to communicate verbally(口头上) but they can still interact. You can have a speechless bond."

    Helen McCain, director of Dogs for the Disabled, said, "People with dementia often forget to take medicine. If a dog presents them with a bag with pills in it, there is a greater chance of them taking it. The dogs would also encourage the owners to take them out for walks, ensuring they keep exercising and interacting with other people."

    Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.

    "I think we are knocking at the door of immortality(永生)," said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. "I think by 2075 we will see it and that' s a conservative estimate(保守的估计)."

    At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology(纳米技术) make it likely that humans will live in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. "There is a great effort so that people can live from 120 to 180 years," he said. "Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years."

    However, many scientists who specialize in aging are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.

    Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. "It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?" said Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Centre. "At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all."

    What to Do When Someone Doesn't Like You

    When someone tells me, “I don't care if people like me,” they are showing me the emotional wall they use to block the hurt of rejection.

    As humans are social animals, all of us care if people like us. Based on the need for social connection, your reactions to rejection and negative judgment can range from minor hurt to breakouts of depression. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    The first step to handle a negative situation is to recognize your reaction. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Any betrayal (背叛) or embarrassments in your heart? Identify what feeling has shown up in your body? So you can choose what to do next.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}When you sense yourself shutting down or feeling defensive, ask yourself what the person actually meant to do to you. Did they truly mean to offend you, or make fun of you? Your brain works very hard to keep you safe, so it will judge a situation as threatening if there is any possibility of social harm.

    When our brains sense a possible threat, we react as if we were personally attacked. Take a breath to relieve the stress, {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Finally, if you believe the person doesn't like you, ask yourself if this matters. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}If not, what can you do to release your need to be liked by this person? And, what can you do to stay neutral and not return the dislike? The more you can come to accept others as who they are , the more you can move forward with your goals regardless if someone likes you or not.

A. If you can, look the person in their eyes.

B. Do you feel any fear or anger in your head?

C. Ask yourself what is true about the situation.

D. Often people do not realize the impact of their words.

E. Will the person's judgment of you impact your work or life?

F. The ability to let a show of dislike roll off your back is a learned skill.

G. This will ground you in the present and take you out of your trembling mind.

    According to new research from the University of Cambridge in England, sheep are able to recognize human faces from photographs.

    The farm animals, who are social and have large brains, were previously known to be able to recognize one another, as well as familiar humans. However, their ability to recognize human faces from photos alone is novel.

    The recent study, the results of which were published in the journal Royal Society: Open Science. Show the woolly creatures could be trained to recognize still images of human faces, including those of former President Barack Obama and actress Emma Watson.

    Initially, the sheep were trained to approach certain images by being given food rewards. Later, they were able to recognize the image for which they had been rewarded. The sheep could even recognize images of faces shown at an angle, though their ability to do so declined by about 15 percent – the same rate at which a human's ability to perform the same task declines.

    "Anyone who has spent time working with sheep will know that they are intelligent, individual animals who are able to recognize their handlers," said Professor Jenny Morton, who led the Cambridge study. "We've shown with our study that sheep have advanced face-recognition abilities, comparable with those of humans and monkeys."

    Recognizing faces is one of the most important social skills for human being, and some disorders of the brain, including Huntington's disease, affect this ability.

    "Sheep are long-lived and have brains that are similar in size and complexity to those of some monkeys. That means they can be useful models to help us understand disorders of the brain, such as Huntington's disease, that develop over a long time and affect cognitive abilities. Our study gives us another way to monitor how these abilities change," Morton said.

    Depression(抑郁) can be a destructive illness, plaguing millions of people worldwide with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and fatigue. Despite numerous antidepressant drugs, as many as a third of patients don't respond to medication. This has forced doctors to be more creative in finding different treatments for the condition.

    In the past two decades, researchers have tied depression to a seemingly unrelated condition: inflammation(炎症), the body's natural response to stress. It could rise from injury or inflection, or even emotional issues like an unhappy marriage or problems at work. Some amount of inflammation is generally beneficial, as it increases production of cytokines(致癌因子)，proteins that help us heal and protect us from the effects of overwork.

    But excessive cytokine levels, and the inflammation they bring on, could come at a cost—a number of studies suggests that high levels of cytokines could contribute to depression.

    Cytokines can reach the brain several ways: directly through the blood-brain barrier or indirectly by binding to nerve fibers elsewhere, which send signals to the brain to produce the inflammation molecules. In the brain, cytokines can disturb the production and release of several important signaling chemicals, including serotonin, dopamine and glutamate, which help control emotion, appetite, sleep, learning and memory. It's though that a lack of serotonin activity in the brain causes depression; most antidepressants increase the activity. But cytokines also have been shown to activate stress hormone signaling in the brain, which man also serve to develop depression.

    With all the evidence implicating inflammation in depression, doctors have been anxious to test anti-inflammatory drugs as a potential treatment. Four small studies published between 2006 and 2017 by research groups in Europe and Iran found that adults diagnosed with depression who took aspirin or another anti-inflammatory drug called Celecoxib, along with an antidepressant, got more relief from feelings of sadness, hopelessness, guilt and fatigue compared with those taking an antidepressant alone. However, Andrew Miller, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, thought something was wrong in these small, limited studies. None of them looked at whether the participants had to have high levels of cytokines before they'd see a benefit from anti-inflammatory drugs.  "Unfortunately, much of the field has fallen into the trap of viewing inflammation as the be-all, end-all," Miller says. He and his colleagues wanted to see whether the effect of these drugs was limited to the depression patients with high cytokine levels, or if it helped all people diagnosed with depression.