People seem to have a natural need for friends and with good reason. Friends increase your enjoyment of life and relieve feelings of loneliness. They even can help reduce stress and improve your health. Having good friends is especially helpful when you are going through any kind of hard time such as when you are experiencing anxiety, panic(恐慌) attacks, or depression.

    When you are with good friends you feel good about yourself, and you are glad to be with them. A friend is someone who —

●you like, respect, and trust, and who likes, respects and trusts you

●doesn't always understand you, but accepts and likes you as you are, even as you grow and change

●allows you the space to change, grow, make decisions, and even make mistakes

●listens to you and shares with you both the good times and the bad times

●respects your need for secrets, so you can tell them anything

●lets you freely express your feelings and emotions without judging, laughing at or criticizing you

●accepts the limitations you have put on yourself and helps you to remove them

    A person once said, “Friendship is a continuing source of bonding（连接）, releasing, and creating in yourself and with the other person. There is an emotional bond between the two people.”

    A good friend or supporter may or may not be the same age or the same sex as you, and may not have the same educational, cultural, or religious background, or share interests that are similar to yours. Friendships also have different depths(深度). Some are closer to the heart and some more superficial, but they're all useful and good.

    Founded in 1764 by French traders, St. Louis today is the fifteenth largest urban area in the United States. There are many attractive destinations for tourists.

American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog

    Dog lovers who visit St. Louis won't want to miss this 14,000-square-foot museum. Inside are over 500 paintings, prints, watercolors, and a variety of other dog art objects.

    The Museum is open year round, Tuesday through Saturday 10 AM to 4 PM, and Sunday 1 PM to 5 PM. Admission is $ 5 for adults, $ 2.50 for seniors, and $1 for children up to 14.

Anheuser Busch Brewery

    The Anheuser Buxch Brewery tour is not just for beer lovers. The tour includes the historic Brew House. Then the tour continues to the modern Bevo Packaging Plant. The best will be the Budweiser Clydesdale stables. The tours are always free.

Gateway Arch

    Designed by Eero Sarinen and Hannskari Bandel, it took over two years and 900 tons of stainless steel to build. It is the tallest of the country's National Monuments. The Arch is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. About one milion people per year come to the top of the Arch, where there is an observation platform providing a great view of the city.

St. Louis Zoo

    First version of the St. Louis Zoo opened in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, but in the century since it has grown into one of the chief zoos in the world. The passenger train takes visitors around the Zoo, which contains over 9,000 animals of over 800 species.

    The Zoo is open every day but Christmas and New Year, with summer hours of 8 AM to 7 PM, and hours the rest of the year of 9 AM to 5 PM. Admission to the Zoo is free.

    Scientists have been interested for years in the observation that ratios(比率）of finger lengths differ in men and women. In men, the ring (fourth) finger is usually longer than the index (second); their so-called 2D :4D ratio is lower than 1. In females, the two fingers are more likely to be the same length. Because of this sex differences, some scientists believe that a low ratio could be a marker for higher prenatal hormone(产前激素）levels, although it's not clear how the hormone might influence finger development. The 2D : 4D ratio has also been fingered in connection with brain-related characteristics—most often in males--such as depression, left-handedness, musical ability, and homosexuality.

    In the latest such study, psychologist Mark Brosnan and colleagues at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom photocopied the hands of 74 boys and girls aged 6 and 7.They compared the measurements of the second and fourth fingers with the children's scores on a standard UK test of math and literacy. In boys, the lower the ratio, the better their math score, the team reports in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychology, The boys with the lowest ratios also were the ones whose abilities were most skewed in the direction of math rather than literacy. These differences are small but significant, says Brosnan. With the girls, there was no correlation between finger ration and numeracy, but those with higher ratios—probably indicating low hormone levels—had better scores on verbal abilities.

    These sex-specific correlations show how tricky it is to define the roles of sex hormones, says psychologist S .Marc Breedlove of Michigan State University in East Lansing. The range of normal levels of the hormone is different in males and females, so comparable levels would have very different meanings depending on the sex of the individual. And the timing of hormone surges is as important as levels.

    Nevertheless, Brosnan believes finger measurements might be useful for predicting cognitive abilities—although he acknowledges that “we are not suggesting that finger length measurements could replace SAT tests”. Others are more cautious, pointing out that scientists still have not confirmed that finger ratio is a reliable marker for prenatal hormone levels.

How to get siblings (兄弟姐妹) to get along

    One of the greatest gifts of parenthood is seeing your children form a relationship with each other that is independent of you. By giving hem someone else to play with, you can free up some time for yourself. Here are four techniques you can use to help your children appreciate each other while they're young.

    ⒈{#blank#}1{#/blank#} The No.1 thing parents can do to help their kids stay on good terms with each other is not to compare them with each other. Never say “Your sister never. . ”or “Why can't you do what your brother does?”{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    ⒉Try out of the way. Try not to get too involved in your kids' arguments. Learning cooperation and problem-solving is an important skill in life{#blank#}3{#/blank#}And don't blame the older one for not “knowing better,” That puts pressure on the older child and leads to unhappiness.

    ⒊Activities and opportunities. Have your kids go to their siblings' games and activities{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    “My kids go to each other's activities, and take part in activities together,” says Patricia Walters-Fischer, mother of two. Not only do her children go, but they also offer support, encouraging each other before a big game or performance and offering comfort when things don't go well.

    ⒋Vacations. Don't ignore the value of a family vacation for bringing siblings together. When kids are away from their friends and forced to spend time together, they often enjoy each other{#blank#}5{#/blank#}In fact, a weekend camping trip offers some of the best opportunities for working together, having fun and experiencing something new.

A. Never shout at them.

B. Don't compare.

C. It doesn't need to be anything extremely great.

D. That only serves to fuel the competition.

E. Give them a project, and they will learn how to work together.

F. They may need help solving a conflict, but try not to take sides.

G. Get them involved in one another's lives, so they can have a better appreciation of who their sibling is.

    Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers , small tightly knit (联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 1,200 languages between them.

    Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialization, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalization and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

    At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number (中位数) of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

    Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction (消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busum in Cameroon (eight remaining Speaker), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark) none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

    Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that perfect portable bike would be "like a magic carpet... You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag". Then he paused: "But you'll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel."

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that was divided into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout's Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

    Grout's aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn't that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout's day, tyres were solid, which made the business of dividing a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn't do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated(充气的) tyre.

    So, in a 21st-century environment, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons , has developed a wheel that can be folded into something like a slender ellipse(椭圆). From beginning to end, the tyre remains inflated.

    Will the young Fitzsimons's folding wheel make it into production? I have no idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It's as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there's plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that can be carried on a plane ——minus wheels, of course ——as hand baggage.

    Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie's imagination? No. But it's progress.