What Does the Length of Your Fingers Say About You? Are you the peace-loving type or the ambitious go-getter?

    Your finger length might be a clue. Take a look at your fingers. Would you believe me if I told you that the length of your fingers in relation to one another can predict your personality? I know that it sounds like one of those silly tests you see on Facebook, but I have to admit that it is exactly correct for me. Here's how it works.

    Look at your three middle fingers of your hand. Is your index finger longer than your ring finger? Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? Or are the two of the same length? Find the situation that best matches your hand and see if what follows is an accurate description of your personality.

Longer ring finger: The Sweet Talker

    If your ring finger is longer than your index finger, research shows that you're likely a charming type, and you can probably talk yourself out of any situation. Others often find this personality type irresistible and will go to great lengths to help you. You're more likely to take risks, and you're good at problem-solving. People in this category make great engineers, soldiers and crossword-puzzle solvers.

Longer index finger: The (Over) Confident One

    If your index finger is longer than your ring finger, chances are you are full of confidence—possibly even to the point of being over-confident and proud. You are not necessarily introverted (内向的), but you do enjoy time to yourself, especially when you're trying to complete a project. You are a dream pursuer who can make things happen, but you may be shy when it comes to taking the first step in a relationship. You are also probably happy with what you have, but you're always wishing for more.

Index and ring finger are of the same length: The Peacemaker

    If your index finger and ring finger are roughly of the same length, you are likely to avoid conflict at all costs and seek to keep the peace in your relationships. You are well-organized, faithful and sympathetic. But deep down under all of that caring and peace-loving, you also have a hot-tempered side that can appear unexpectedly when you're pushed too far. You will try your hardest to avoid a fight.

    How well do these descriptions match your personality? I was surprised at the accuracy in my case, but I'm not going to tell you which one it was!

    Plastic waste has polluted the Arctic. Two new studies have spied bags, fishing rope and tinier bits of rubbish in the Barents Sea. This sea sits north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. It mixes with the Arctic Ocean, which is even farther north.

    Plastic waste in the Arctic could harm wildlife and may hint that large volumes of human rubbish are collecting there, says Melanie Bergmann. She is one of the scientists who spotted the waste. She studies Earth's oceans at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. She first started counting bits of plastics in the Barents Sea because she kept spotting signs of the stuff there in images taken with deep-sea cameras.

    Bergmann and her colleagues counted pieces of plastic from an icebreaker, a boat designed to break through large blocks of ice in very cold waters. They also tracked plastic pieces they saw during helicopter rides over Arctic waters. The team found 31 pieces of plastic. “That doesn't seem like much, but it shows us that we've really got a problem, one that extends even to this remote area, far from civilization,” Bergmann says. She and her colleagues described their findings October 21 in Polar Biology.

    Another team has also been counting plastics in the area. Those scientists took water from the Barents Sea and counted the number of smaller bits of plastics, called microplastics.

    Plastic in the ocean is dangerous to animals. Some may get caught in rope or bags. And wildlife may swallow bags and other plastic bits. That makes them feel full. But some may eventually starve because they are not getting the nutrients they need to live. Sometimes plastics also may break down in an animal's body and release poisonous chemicals. If another animal later eats the one that swallowed plastic, it too can end up with poisonous chemicals in its body. This, in turn, can travel up the food web, endangering predators (肉食动物) — even people.

    I'm sitting in my kitchen in London, trying to figure out a text message from my brother. He lives in our home country of Germany. We speak German to each other, a language that's rich in odd words, but I've never heard this one before: fremdschämen. I'm too proud to ask him what it means. I know that eventually, I'll get it. Still, it's slightly painful to realize that after years of living abroad, my mother tongue can sometimes feel foreign.

    Most long-term migrants know what it's like to be a slightly rusty(生疏的) native speaker. The process seems obvious: the longer you are away, the more your language suffers. But it's not quite so straightforward.

    In fact, the science of why, when and how we lose our own language is complex and often different to what we think. It turns out that how long you've been away doesn't always matter. Socializing with other native speakers abroad can worsen your own native skills. And emotional factors like trauma(精神创伤) can be the biggest factor of all.

    It's not just long-term migrants who are affected, but to some extent anyone who picks up a second language. The minute you start learning another language, the two systems start to compete with each other, says Monika Schmid, a linguist at the University of Essex.

    Schmid is a leading researcher of language attrition, a growing field of research that looks at what makes us lose our mother tongue. In children, the phenomenon is somewhat easier to explain since their brains are generally more flexible and adaptable. Until the age of about 12, a person's language skills are relatively easy to change. Studies on international adoptees have found that even nine-year-olds can almost completely forget their first language when they are removed from their country of birth.

    But in adults, the first language is unlikely to disappear entirely except in extreme circumstances. For example, Schmid analyzed the German of elderly German-Jewish wartime refugees(难民) in the UK and the US. The main factor that influenced their language skills wasn't how long they had been abroad or how old they were when they left. It was how much trauma they had experienced as victims. Those who left Germany in the early days of Nazi occupation, before the worst violence, tended to speak better German – despite having been abroad the longest. Those who left later, tended to speak German with difficulty or not at all.

    "It seemed very clearly a result of this trauma", says Schmid. "Even though German was the language of childhood, home and family, it was also the language of painful memories." The most traumatised refugees had held them back. As one of them said: I feel that Germany betrayed me. America is my country, and English is my language.

    The market for products designed specifically for older adults could reach $30 billion by next year, and startups (初创公司) want in on the action. What they sometimes lack is feedback from the people who they hope will use their products. So Brookdale, the country's largest owner of retirement communication, has been inviting a few select entrepreneurs just to move in for a few days, show off their products and hear what the residents have to say.

    That's what brought Dayle Rodriguez, 28, all the way from England to the dining room of Brookdale South Bay in Torrance, California. Rodriguez is the community and marketing manager for a company called Sentab. The startup's product, Sentab TV, enables older adults who may not be comfortable with computers to access email, video chat and social media using just their televisions and a remote control.

    "It's nothing new, it's nothing too complicated and it's natural because lots of people have TV remotes." says Rodriguez.

    But none of that is the topic of conversation in the Brookdale dining room. Instead, Rodriguez solicits residents' advice on what he should get on his cheeseburger and how he should spend the afternoon. Playing cards was on the agenda, as well as learning to play mahjong(麻将).

    Rodriguez says it's important that residents here don't feel like he's selling them something. "I've had more feedback in a passive approach." he says. "Playing pool, playing cards, having dinner, having lunch, all work better than going through a survey of questions. When they get to know me and to trust me, knowing for sure I'm not selling them something—there'll be more honest feedback from them."

    Rodriguez is just the seventh entrepreneur to move into one of Brookdale's 1,100 senior living communities. Other new products in the program have included a kind of full-body blow dryer and specially designed clothing that allows people with disabilities to dress and undress themselves.

    "First and foremost, the residents love it." says Smith. "It also provides Brookdale the opportunity to learn about and experience new technologies quickly and inexpensively and to make sure that we understand what residents want and need."

    Mary Lou Busch, 93, agreed to try the Sentab system. She tells Rodriguez that it might be good for someone, but not for her.

    "I have the computer and FaceTime, which I talk with my family on." she explains. She also has an iPad and a smart phone. "So I do pretty much everything I need to do."

    Rodriguez takes it pretty well.

    "I'm not going to lie to you, I would've liked a more positive response." he says. But "if people don't need it or want it, it's up to us to change, adapt it or make it more useful."

    To be fair, if Rodriguez had wanted feedback from some more technophobic (害怕技术的) seniors, he might have ended up in the wrong Brookdale community. This one is located in the heart of Southern California's aerospace corridor. Many residents have backgrounds in engineering, business and academic circles.

    But Rodriguez says he's still learning something important by moving into this Brookdale community: "People are more tech-skilled than we thought."

    And besides, where else would he learn to play mahjong?

    Polish President Andrzej Duda has signed a bill into law that largely limits trade on Sundays, saying it will benefit family life.

    The legislation（立法）, worked out by the government and the Polish trade union, is expected to draw protests from large western supermarket chains that are the main target of the law. A large part of their profit is earned on weekends.

    As of March 1, shops and markets are closed on two Sundays per month; in 2019 only one Sunday a month will be open for shopping; and starting in 2020, there will be no Sunday shopping with a few exceptions.

    Duda praised the law as giving children a chance to be with parents and giving shop workers some needed time off. He also said big traders will need to adjust their practices to the new system and asked them for "understanding". But critics say some of them make employees work long hours for modest pay.

    "A family should be together on Sundays," Olszewska said after buying some food at a local Biedronka, a large discount supermarket chain. She said that before she retired she served cold cuts in a grocery store, and was grateful she never had to work on Sundays.

    There are some exceptions to the ban. For instance, gas stations, cafes, pharmacies and some other businesses are allowed to keep operating on Sundays.

    Anyone breaking the new rules faces a fine of up to 100,000 zlotys （$ 29,500）, while repeat offenders may face a prison sentence. Polish trade union appealed to people to report any violators to the National Labor Inspectorate, a state body.

    On December 26, 2004, hundreds of tourists relaxed on Sri Lanka's Yala National Park's beaches. But at mid-morning the park's elephants began crying wildly and running away from the ocean and up a nearby hill. The puzzled keepers could tell the animals were worried about something but what?

    What the keepers did not know was that a 30-foot wall of water was headed straight toward them. This tsunami(海啸) had been caused by an earthquake more than 1, 000 miles away in the Indian Ocean. When the huge wave hit the coast, it caused severe damage. Many people died. The elephants, however, were not swept away by the water. They stood safely on the hill.

    Scientists have long suspected that animals sense natural disasters before humans do. People have told stories of dogs refusing to go outside and sharks swimming to deeper waters before a hurricane. After the 2004 tsunami, people said they saw tigers, monkeys, and water buffalo escaping to higher ground before the waters rushed in. Even in the hardest-hit areas of southern Asia, there were few animal deaths.

    It's unlikely that an animal's so-called sixth sense comes from some magical power to see into the future. Experts believe that animals may be more sensitive than humans to changes in temperature and other environmental conditions that take place before a natural disaster. The elephants in Sri Lanka, for example, may have picked up vibrations from within the Earth, a sign that earthquake was coming. Because vibrations in the ground travel much faster than an ocean wave, the elephants may have felt the earthquake that caused the tsunami well before the tsunami itself came to the coast.

    A few scientists are calling for a system to track reports of strange behavior in people's pets, hoping that these reports can serve as a warning system that a natural disaster is about to happen. But Marina Haynes, an animal behavior scientist at the Philadelphia Zoo, says, "It would be an unreliable way to predict disasters. It can be difficult to know what an animal is doing. Is the animal nervous because an earthquake is about to happen or is it frightened because there is an enemy nearby?"