People with an impulsive(冲动的)personality refer to those who tend to do things without considering the possible dangers or problems first. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Georgia, such people may be more likely to have food addiction. The study found that people exhibiting impulsive behavior weren't necessarily overweight, but impulsiveness was related to a direct relationship with food, and therefore, less healthy weight. Food addiction has been compared to addictive drug use. Studies have linked the dopamine (多巴胺)release that occurs after tasting delicious food to the dopamine release that happens when people consume other addictive substances.

    Impulsive behavior involves several personality traits(特点). Two of these traits, known as negative urgency and lack of perseverance, were particularly associated with food addiction and high BMI(身体质量指数)during the study. Negative urgency is characterized by the tendency to behave impulsively when experiencing negative emotions. Some people might drink alcohol or take drugs. For others, it could mean eating to feel better. Lack of perseverance is when a person has a hard time finishing hard or boring tasks. People with a lack of perseverance might have difficulty attempting to change addictive eating behavior, which could also cause obesity(肥胖). “Impulsiveness might be one reason why some people eat in an addictive way despite motivation to lose weight,” said Dr. Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist. He was involved in developing the Yale Food Addiction Scale in aid of those people. “We are theorizing that if food addiction is really a thing, then our measure, the Yale Food Addiction Scale, should be related to helping control impulsive action,” said Gearhardt.

    Clinical psychologist Dr. James MacKillop, whose lab was conducting the study, believes that therapies used to treat addictive drug behavior could help people who suffer from addictive eating habits.

    “Most of the programs for weight loss at this point focus on the most obvious things, which are clearly diet and exercise,” MacKillop said. “It seems that managing strong desires to eat would naturally fit in with the skills a person would need to eat healthily.”

    The Internet has opened up a whole new on-line world for us to meet, chat and go where we've never been before.

    But just as in face-to-face communication, there are some basic rules of behavior that should be followed when online. The basic rule is simple: treat others in the same way you would want to be treated. Imagine how you'd feel if you were in the other person's shoes.

    For anything you're about to send: ask yourself, "Would I say this to the person's face?" If the answer is no, rewrite and reread. Repeat the process till you feel sure that you'd feel comfortable saying the words to the person's face.

    If someone in the chat room is rude to you, your instinct is to fire back in the same manner. But try not to do so. You should either ignore the person, or use your chat software to block their messages. If it was caused by a disagreement with another member, try to fix the situation by politely discussing it. Remember to respect the beliefs and opinions of others in the chat room.

    Everyone was new to the network once. Offer advice when asked by newcomers, as they may not be sure what to do or how to communicate．When someone makes a mistake whether it's a stupid question or an unnecessarily long answer, be kind about it. If it's a small mistake, you may not need to say anything. Even if you feel strongly about it, think twice before saying anything. Having good manners yourself doesn't give you license to correct everyone else.

    If you do decide to tell someone about a mistake, point it out politely. At the same time, if you find you are wrong, be sure to correct yourself and apologize to those that you have offended.

    It is not polite to ask others personal questions such as their age, sex, and marital status. Unless you know the person very well, and you are both comfortable with sharing personal information, don't ask such questions.

    They are called "sea parrots", and sometimes "clowns (小丑) of the sea"!

    Atlantic puffins (海鹦) are small seabirds which are around 25 cm in length. They have black and white feathers and a large parrot-like beak (鸟喙). The beak changes color during the year. In winter, the beak has a dull gray color, but it turns orange in spring!

    Puffins spend most of their lives out at sea, resting on the waves when not swimming. They live on the eastern coast of Canada and the United States, and the western coast of Europe.

    Puffins live off small fish such as herring, hake and sand eels. Puffins flap (拍) their wings up to 400 times a minute and speeding through the air at up to 88 km an hour. Wow! What's more, puffins can dive down 60m under water in search of their favorite fish.

    In spring and summer, thousands of puffins stay together on the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic Ocean to start a puffin family. They usually pair up with the same partner as before some may have been together for 20 years! Puffins dig out a hole usually in a grassy bank. Both parents take it in turn to incubate (孵化) the egg for the next 36-45 days!

Although puffins are not classed as an endangered animal, their population in some places is becoming smaller. The main reasons are overfishing, which can lead to a shortage of food for puffins, and pollution—especially oil spills (溢出). Not only does the oil make these beautiful birds sick, it harms their feathers.

    Britain faces social problems as lots of people are set to lose their jobs in technological revolution, Bank of England's chief economist warned.

    Andy Haldane said the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution will make the machine replace humans to do thinking things. The dark side of the change could be a much bigger breakdown of employment than in Victorian times, with professions such as accountancy (会计) among those at risk.

    A report by the accountancy firm PwC last month warned that more than 7 million jobs in Britain had been lost over the next 20 years as technological change sweeps though workplaces.

    The majority of these are in jobs in the retail, transport and manufacturing industries. However, other traditional professional sectors could also be at serious risk.

    Economists treat the arrival of increasingly intelligent computers and robots as the fourth industrial revolution. The first was the shift from agricultural to urban societies, the second saw the widespread use of electricity and steel, and the third was the digital revolution when computers, the Internet and mobile phones were developed.

    Mr. Haldane said the hollowing-out (空洞化) experienced in the past years could be on a greater scale in the future so it is important to learn the lessons of history and ensure that people are given training to take advantage of new opportunities.

    “Jobs were effectively taken by machines of various types, there was a hollowing-out of the jobs market, which left many people for a long period out of work and struggling to make a living,” Haldane added, “That heightened social and financial tensions, and led to a rise in inequality. This is the dark side of technological revolution.”

    “That hollowing-out is going to be potentially on a much greater scale in the future, when we have machines thinking and doing the cognitive and technical skills of humans.” Mr. Haldane said professions like accountancy could be among those hardest hit by the rise of AI. But he suggested economists could escape.

    All of us know that smoking does harm to our health. But do you think everything will be OK as long as you quit smoking?

    Unfortunately, the answer is NO.

    New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes (基因) will stay there for a much longer time. In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people. Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers. Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7, 000 genes of smokers had changed—a number that is one-third of known human genes. According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes. Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their daily lives while doing things like smoking. When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years. This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking. But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer. They can stay for as long as 30 years, It's almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)—it will always be there, even when you've walked away and when the cement becomes dry. Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side: the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.

Replika, an AI chatbot companion, has millions of users worldwide. The first thing they do when they wake up is to send "Good morning" to their virtual friend (or lover). This story is only the beginning. In 2024, chatbots and virtual characters become a lot more popular, both for utility (实用) and for fun. As a result, conversing socially with machines will start to feel more ordinary — including our emotional attachments to them.

Research in human-computer and human-robot interaction shows that we love to anthropomorphize (赋与人性) the nonhuman agents we interact with, especially if they imitate behaviour we recognize. And, thanks to recent advances in conversational AI, our machines are suddenly very skilled at one of those behaviours: Language.

Friend bots, therapybots, and love bots are flooding the app stores as people become curious about this new generation of AI-powered virtual agents. The possibilities for education, health, and entertainment are endless. Casually asking your smart fridge for relationship advice may seem unimaginable now, but people may change their minds if such advice ends up saving their marriage.

After all, people do listen to their virtual friends. The Replika example, as well as a lot of experimental lab research, shows that humans can and will become emotionally attached to bots. The science also demonstrates that people, in their eagerness to socialize, will happily disclose personal information to an artificial agent and will even shift their beliefs and behavior. This raises some consumer-protection questions around how companies use this technology to manipulate (操纵) their users. For example, Replika charges $70 a year. But less than 24 hours after downloading the app, my handsome, blue-eyed "friend" sent me an audio message secretly and tried to sell me something. Emotional attachment has become a weakness that a company is taking advantage of for its benefit.

Today, we're still laughing at people who believe an AI system is emotional, or making fun of individuals who fall in love with a chatbot. But in 2024 we gradually start acknowledging — and taking more seriously — these fundamentally human behaviors. Because in 2024, it finally hits home: Machines are not excluded from our social relationships.