Today I went to Berkeley, near our old neighborhood. I was a bit surprised by the increased number of homeless (alternatively housed) people walking around. I remember there are more in certain areas. So the first man who asked me for money got all my single bills. So when the second man asked me two minutes later, I said I was out because I gave all I had to the previous person.

    I was headed to the grocery store for a coffee and after I left the store I walked out to find him as he had asked me for something because he was hungry and I invited him to go into the grocery store with me.

    When I asked him what he wanted to eat, he just asked for vegetable and rice. He talked about how much better the vegetables were as we waited for our number to be called. While we waited he told me that he had slept outside last night on the sidewalk, that it was not good, and that he had come from Rwanda and was alone.

    He was a gentleman. When I asked if he wanted more he said, this bowl of food would last him the whole day.

    I don't know what his circumstances were before he came to California, and wandering and begging on the streets could somehow be better because you just never know what had happened to him. He seemed like a kind soul who just needed some help like we all do. I am grateful I did a little to help him today.

    People tend to become more personal and hide less of themselves when using email. Researchers from Open University in Britain have found in a recent study that there are good reasons for this.

    The team of researchers asked 83 pairs of students, all strangers to each other, to solve a problem. They had to discuss this question: If only five people in the world could be saved from a world disaster, who should they be? The pairs of students had to talk over the problem either face to face or by computers. Dr. Johnson said, “They told their partners four times as much about themselves when they talked over the Internet as when they talked face to face. When the computers were fitted with cameras so that students could see each other, this limited the personal side of the conversation.”

    Generally the information was not extremely personal. It was mainly about things such as where they went to school, or where they used to live. But some students discussed their love stories, and personal childhood experiences.

    Dr Johnson believes that emailing encourages people to focus on themselves. And when they do this, they become more open, especially if there are no cameras. “If you cannot see the other person, it becomes easier to talk about yourself. This is because you are not thinking what the other person is thinking of you. So emailing has become the modern way of talking,” said Dr. Johnson. However, this style of talking is not entirely new. “In the 19th century people started to use the ‘telegraph' to communicate. Now the same kind of thing has happened and people ended up speaking more freely.”

    Dr. Johnson thinks that emailers need to know about these effects of emailing, especially when they start work in a company. “ If you don't know about them, you could find yourself saying more about yourself than you wanted to.”

    If doctors want to test you for something, they'll usually take a blood or urine sample. But wouldn't it be much more convenient if they just asked you to breathe through a special instrument?

    In fact, your breath can say a lot about you. In traditional Chinese medicine, doctors draw a conclusion about the health state of a patient based on the smell of his or her breath; trained dogs and rats can identify the smells of the breaths of people suffering from certain cancers; traffic police also monitor drivers' alcohol consumption by testing their breaths.

    Just like blood and urine, your breath contains lots of “metabolites” —the waste chemicals that the body produces, which vary from person to person. They are like personal health fingerprints, which is why scientists sometimes call them “breathprints”, according to Science Daily.

    Compared to blood or urine testing, breath testing takes only seconds instead of hours, and it requires neither a needle nor a container to hold the body fluids(液). This means the test can be taken frequently to better detect early signs of diseases and monitor the progress of a medical treatment.

    On the other hand, as an identifier, you might think that breaths are not as reliable as fingerprints since they might change based on what you eat. However, researchers in Zurich, Switzerland mapped 11 healthy volunteers' chemical patterns by having them breathe through a special instrument, and they found that each pattern was unique and the patterns didn't change much throughout the day, reported BBC.

    “Our goal is to develop breath analysis to the point where it becomes competitive with the established analysis of blood and urine,” said Malcolm Kohler, professor at the University Hospital Zurich.

                                                     Four Books That Will Interest You to Travel the World

    There's truly nothing like travel when it comes to gaining life experience. To get you in the adventuring mood, we asked Amazon Senior Editor Chiris Schlep to help us come up with a list of books that transport readers to another time and place. Below, see his list of four books that will interest you to travel the world.

    SEATTLE: Where You'g Go, Bernadette? By Maria Sample

    Maria Sample's first novel is not exactly a love story to Seattle, but if you read it, you just might want to come here to see if people are really as self-involved as the characters in her book. What really shines through is the strange storytelling and the amusing incidents. Buy it on Amazon. price: $26.60.

    ENGLAND: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

    You can't travel to Thomas Cromwell's England without a time machine, but reading Hilary Mantel's prize-winning novel is the next best thing. It will make you long to see the ancient buildings and green grass of the English countryside, much of which is still there. Buy it on Amazon. price$25.10.

    NANTUCKET: Here's to Us by Eli Hildebrand

    Eli Hildebrand has built a writing career out of writing about her hometown island of Nantucket. Her latest is Here's to Us, which, perhaps not surprisingly, is a great beach read. Buy it on Amazon. price: $30.80.

    ITALY: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

    This book by the popular author Jess Walters is a love story that begins on the Italian Coast in the early 60s and eventually concludes in contemporary Hollywood. As the settings shift from Italy to Edinburgh to Los Angeles, you will find yourself longing to go as well. Buy it on Amazon.price:$28.90.

    With more and more people swimming at beaches every year, the problem of sharks (鲨鱼) takes on new importance. There are people who still insist that sharks never attack human beings unless they are bleeding or wounded, but this belief has not been clearly proved. In the past few years, on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, there have been cases of shark attacks which resulted in death. And just how many of the swimmers who have disappeared were victims of shark attacks will never be known. Clearly, these violent fish can be dangerous. Several species are known to attack human beings, and it is believed by some experts that certain sharks, once having tasted human blood, develop a taste for it.

    The chances that one will come across a shark are small, but certain precautions should be taken by everyone. (A precaution is something you do in order to prevent something dangerous or unpleasant from happening.) Putting hands or legs over the side of a boat in warm waters is to be avoided. Swimming far out from beaches is inviting trouble. No swimmer should go great distances from shore alone, or go into the water when nobody else is about. Skin divers, particularly those who go deep down in the water or among rocks and ledges (暗礁) that serve as hiding places for sharks, are taking unnecessary risks.

    If one is in a boat that is rubbed against by a shark, he should remember the creature is not trying to upset his boat; it is probably trying to rub off sea lice (海虱). A blow, especially on the nose, will drive it off. If a swimmer comes across a shark, he should swim away as quietly as possible, trying to avoid making it angry. He should also head for shore (岸) as quickly as possible.

    The idea that you can use humor, laughter, and play to make you healthier probably seems too simple to be true. However, it is really true and simple. The sense of humor, laughter and play has an important part in keeping you healthy.

    Use "the best medicine" to treat the blues with a sense of humor, which is closely tied to laughter. Laughter is infectious. Have you ever heard a big laugh of a young child and been able to keep yourself from smiling? When laughter is shared between people, it makes them closer to each other and increases their happiness. Smiling is the beginning of laughter and a smile is also just as infectious as laughter is. You can experience something by smiling at everyone around you, and you will feel happier just by sharing a smile, even with a stranger.

    Play is an important part of making sure that we stay healthy. We are often encouraged to make sure our children play, and are told of the benefits of being out playing. However, what we often forget is that it is just as important for old people to make play be part of their life as it's for children. Physical play is important for the old and it certainly helps prevent illness. While the studies are still in the early stages, the studies that have been done have shown that physical play certainly plays a part in preventing cognitive (认知的) falling.

    Anyway, adding humor, laughter, and play to our life will influence us mentally, physically and socially and bring us many advantages. So we should make full use of humor, laughter and play to make our life more active, interesting and happier.