Many studies have shown that the company of pets can help lower blood pressure and raise chances of recovering from a heart attack, reduce loneliness and help control body weight.

    Any pet owner will tell you how much joy a pet brings. For some, an animal provides more comfort than a husband/wife. A 2002 study by Karen Allen of the State University of New York measured stress levels and blood pressure in people (half of them were pet owners) while they performed 5 minutes of mental arithmetic (算术) or held a hand in ice water. People completed the tasks alone, with a husband/wife, a close friend or with a pet. People with pets did it best. Those tested with their animal friends had smaller change in blood pressure and returned most quickly to baseline heart rates. With pets in the room, people also made fewer math mistakes than when doing in front of other companions. It seems that people feel more relaxed around pets, says Allen, who thinks it may be because pets don't judge.

    A study reported last fall suggests that having a pet dog may also have an effect on your body weight. Researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital spent a year studying two groups of fat people who were put on a diet-and-exercise program: one group with pet dogs, and the other without. On average，dog owners lost about 11 pounds，or 5% of their body weight; While those without dogs lost about 8 pounds. The pet owners, said researchers, got more exercise overall (mostly with their dogs) and found it worth doing.

    What's small, buzzes here and there and visits flowers? If you said bees or hummingbirds, you got it. You wouldn't be the first if you mixed the two up. Now a group of researchers even say we should embrace our history of considering the two together in the same group. The way scientists study bees could help them study hummingbird behavior, too.

    Scientists first compared the two back in the 1970s when studying how animals search for food. The idea is that animals use a kind of math to make choices in order to minimize the work it takes to earn maximum rewards. Researchers at the time focused on movement rules, like the order in which they visited flowers, and where flowers were located relative to others .It was “almost like an algorithm（算法）”for efficient searching, said David Pritchard, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Hummingbirds and bees had similar solutions.

    As the field of animal cognition（认知）appeared, hummingbird and bee research parted. Neuroscientists and behavioral ecologists developed ways to study bee behavior in naturalistic settings. Hummingbird researchers compared hummingbirds to other birds and borrowed methods from psychology to study their ability to learn in the lab. To be fair, hummingbirds and bees differ. For example, hummingbirds have more advanced eyes and brains than bees. Honeybees and bumblebees are social; hummingbirds typically aren't.

    But however they perceive（感知）or process information, they both experience similar information, Dr. Pritchard said. In day-to-day searching for food, for example, hummingbirds may rely on more of a bee's-eye view than a bird's-eye view. Like other birds, they rely on landmarks, distances and directions to make maps when travelling long distances, but they don't use these cues to find flowers. Move a flower just an inch or so away from where a hummingbird thought it was and it will hover over the flower's original location. Dr. Pritchard is investigating if, like bees, hummingbirds engage in view matching — hovering, scanning snapshots of a place to its memory and using those as references later.

    Years ago, the American writer Kurt Vonnegut often said there was one story that would always make a million dollars: Cinderella.

    Cinderella made more like $ 70 million in ticket sales when it opened last weekend. But the movie got a mixed reaction. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised the movie and said, “Anyone will find something to enjoy in it.” Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the movie “a winning re-do”. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote that “Disney finally got Cinderella right. ” Other people were not as happy with the movie. Sara Stewart of the New York Post wrote, “This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere very interesting to go.”

    Although different people think differently towards the movie, what is clear, however, is the movie's business success. It is not only popular in the theaters but also in sales. And Disney has widened its usual market for Cinderella products.

    There are products connected to the Disney movie targeted (面向) not only at little girls, but women, too. For example, the famous shoe designer Jimmy Choo worked with Disney to create Cinderella's shoes”. You can buy them for about $ 5,000. At that price, you would not want to lose one at the party, even if that is the way you get your prince (王子).

    The make-up (化妆品) company MAC quickly sold all its products connected to Cinderella. HSN is a popular website selling clothing and objects for the home. The marketer is now also selling Cinderella products.

    So, is there anything left for the children, those people we think of as the traditional audience (观众) for the age-old tale? Yes, you can find toys and other children's products at the American store JCPenney. Of course, you can also visit a Disney store.

    The Great Fire of London started in the very early hours of 2 September 1666. In four days it destroyed more than three-quarters of the old city, where most of the houses were wooden and close together. One hundred thousand people became homeless, but only a few lost their lives.

    The fire started on Sunday morning in the house of the King's baker(面包师)in Pudding Lane. The baker, with his wife and family, was able to get out through a window in the roof. A strong wind blew the fire from the bakery(面包房)into a small hotel next door. Then it spread quickly into Thames Street. That was the beginning.

    By eight o'clock three hundred houses were on fire. On Monday nearly a kilometer of the city was burning along the River Thames. Tuesday was the worst day. The fire destroyed many well-known buildings, old St Paul's and the Guildhall among them.

    Samuel Pepys, the famous writer, wrote about the fire. People threw their things into the river. Many poor people stayed in their houses until the last moment. Birds fell out of the air because of the heat.

    The fire stopped only when the King finally ordered people to destroy hundreds of buildings in the path of the fire. With nothing left to burn, the fire became weak and finally died out.

    After the fire, Christopher Wren, the architect(建筑师), wanted a city with wider streets and fine new houses of stone. In fact, the streets are still narrow; but he did build more than fifty churches, among them new St Paul's.

    The fire caused great pain and loss, but after it London was a better place: a city for the future and not just of the past.

    The search engine Google celebrated on Thursday the 110th birthday of the first Native American woman engineer. Google honored Mary Ross with a special Google Doodle on its homepage.

    Ross was born on August 9, 1908, in the state of Oklahoma. She was the great-granddaughter of John Ross, the longest—serving chief of the Cherokee Nation. Her work is considered important to the early stages of the age of space travel.

    Ross showed special abilities in math and science from an early age. As a student, she developed an interest in aviation, or the practice of flying aircraft. She went on to earn a master's degree in mathematics from Colorado State Teachers College, now called the University of Northern Colorado.

    During World War II, Ross began working for the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation as a mathematician. She earned a special certification in the field from the University of California in1949.Ross was later chosen to join Lockheed's top—secret Skunk Works team that worked on aircraft designs. The name refers to a group that is permitted to work independently on advanced projects. She was the only female engineer among the team's 40 members.

    Early on, she researched defense systems. By the late 1950s, her work centered on satellites and a series of space rockets called Agenda. The rockets were extremely important in the 1960s during the Apollo moon program.

    Ross also helped develop early design ideas for space travel between planets, including flyby space flights to study Venus and Mars. Ross retired from Lockheed in 1973.But she continued to give talks at high schools and colleges to encourage more women and Native Americans to study engineering. She died in 2008, a few months before her 100th birthday.

    Many celebrated Ross' life on social media. Twitter user Aaron Perez, for example, wrote: “Mary Ross was an engineer who pioneered in the field of satellites. I never would have known if it wasn't for the doodle. Women engineers deserve more recognition.”

    MacDonald's will soon remove cheeseburgers and chocolate milk from its Happy Meal menu to set a good example in offering a healthy diet for kids at its restaurants.

    Customers can still ask for cheeseburgers or chocolate milk with kids' meal, but MacDonald's said that not listing them would make them less likely to be ordered. Since it removed soda from the menu four years ago, orders for it with the Happy Meal have fallen by 14%.

    As MacDonald's is known for getting more business from families with children, it is especially important for it to offer a healthy diet instead of junk food. And the Happy Meal is a key part of that. The Happy Meal has long been a target(目标) of health advocates(拥护) and parents who link it to childhood obesity(肥胖症). To get rid of its bad image, MacDonald's has made many changes on the Happy Meal over the years, including cutting the size of its fries and adding fruit.

    Recently, the company replaced its former apple juice with a new kind of juice that has less sugar. MacDonald's wants all its Happy Meal choices to have 600 calories or fewer. It also wants less than 10% of the meal calories to come from fat and added sugar. The cheeseburger and chocolate milk didn't meet those new standards. However, MacDonald's is trying to cut sugar from chocolate milk and believes it'll be back on the menu eventually.

    There will be other changes. For example, bottled water will be added as a choice to the menu, but it will cost extra. Currently, the Happy Meal menu lists milk, chocolate milk, and apple juice.

    For international restaurants, MacDonald's said that a least half of the Happy Meal choices available must meet the new standards. Some MacDonald's restaurants are adding new menu items to obey. For example, In Italy, a grilled chicken sandwich was added to the Happy Meal menu.