Our spiritual intelligence quotient(精神智商), or SQ, helps us understand ourselves, and live fuller, happier lives.

    Though we're all born with SQ, most of us don't even realize that we have it. Fortunately, you don't have to sign up for classes to learn how to improve your SQ. Here are some simple steps that can lead you to this new level of understanding.

    Sit Quietly. The process of developing spiritual intelligence begins with solitude(独处) and silence. To tune in to your spirit, you have to turn down the volume(强度) in your busy, noisy, complicated life and force yourself to do nothing at all. Start small by creating islands for silence in your day. In the car, instead of listening to the music, use the time to think. At work, shut the door to your office between meetings, take a few breaths and let them out very, very slowly. Enjoy the stillness in your home after the kids are finally in bed.

    Step Outside. For many people, nature sets their spirit free. Go outside to watch a beautiful sunset. If you are walking with the dog, take the time to admire flowers in bloom; follow the flight of a bird and watch clouds float overhead.

    Ask Questions of Yourself. Ask open-ended questions, such as ‘What am I Feeling? What are my choices? Where am I heading?'

    But don't expect an answer to arrive through some supernatural forms of e-mail. ‘Rarely do I get an immediate answer to my question,' says Reverend Joan Carter, a Presbyterian minister in Sausalito, California. ‘But later that day I suddenly find myself thinking about a problem in a perspective(角度) I never considered before.'

    Trust Your Spirit. While most of us rely on gut(本能的) feeling to realize danger, spiritual intelligence pushes us, not away from, but towards some action that will lead to a greater good.

    In the latter part of the 20th century, child labor remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. Studies carried out in 1979, the International Year of the Children, showed that more than 50 million children below the age of 15 were working in various jobs often under dangerous conditions. Many of these children live in underdeveloped countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Their living conditions are crude and their chances for education small. The poor income they bring in, however, is necessary for the survival of their families. Frequently, these families lack the basic necessities of life—adequate food, decent（得体的、合适的）clothing and shelter, and even water for bathing.

    In some countries industrialization has created working conditions for children that are comparable to the worst features of the 19th-century factories and mines. In India, for example, some 20,000 children work 16-hour days in match factories.

    Child-labor problems are not, of course, limited to developing nations. They occur wherever poverty exists in Europe and the United States. The most important efforts to eliminate（根除）child-labor abuses throughout the world come from the International Labor Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 and now a special agency of the United Nations. The organization has introduced several child-labor conventions（规定）among its members, including a minimum（最低）age of 16 years for admission to all work, a higher minimum age of specific types of employment, compulsory（强制的）medical examinations, and It depends on voluntary obedience（服从）of member nations.

    To err is human. To blame the other guy is even more human.

    Common sense is not all that common.

    Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

    These three popular misquotes (戏谑的引语) are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don't want to accept the responsibility for having made a mistake. They naturally look for someone else who could be responsible for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this: “To err is human, to forgive, divine (神圣的).” This saying mirrors an ideal: people should be forgiving of others' mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite —— find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a mark of great maturity.

    Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large organizations, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, “the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”

    And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it's okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary (直接推论) to that: if a good excuse is “good” even if it isn't honest, then where is the place of the truth?

    Humans and many other mammals have unusually efficient internal temperature regulating systems that automatically maintain stable core body temperatures（核心体温）in cold winters and warm summers. In addition, people have developed cultural patterns and technologies that help them adjust to extremes of temperature and humidity（湿度）.

In very cold climates, there is a constant danger of developing hypothermia（低体温）, which is a life threatening drop in core body temperature to below normal levels. The normal temperature for humans is about 37.0℃. However, differences in persons and even the time of day can cause it to be as much as 6℃ higher or lower in healthy individuals. It is also normal for core body temperature to be lower in elderly people. Hypothermia begins to occur when the core body temperature drops to 34.4℃. Below 29.4℃, the body cools more rapidly because its natural temperature regulating system usually fails. The rapid decline in core body temperature is likely to result in death. However, there have been rare cases in which people have been saved after their temperatures had dropped to 13.9-15.6℃. This happened in 1999 to a Swedish woman who was trapped under an ice sheet in freezing water for 80 minutes. She was found unconscious, not breathing, and her heart had stopped beating, yet she was eventually saved despite the fact that her temperature had dropped to 13.7℃.

In extremely hot climates or as a result of uncontrollable infections, core body temperatures can rise to equally dangerous levels. This is hyperthermia. Life threatening hyperthermia typically starts in humans when their temperatures rise to 40.6-41.7℃. Only a few days at this extraordinarily high temperature level is likely to result in the worsening of internal organs and death.

    A study showed that the experiences children have in their first few years are important. These experiences affect the development of the brain. When children receive more attention, they often have higher IQs. Babies receive information when they see, hear and feel things, which makes connections between different parts of the brain. There are a hundred trillion(万亿)connections in the brain of a three-year-old child.

    Researcher Judit Gervain tested how good newborns are at distinguishing different sound patterns. Her researchers produced images of the brains of babies as they heard different sound patterns. For example, one order was mu-ba-ba. This is the pattern"A-B-B". Another order was mu-ba-ge. This is the pattern “A-B-C”. The images showed that the part of the brain responsible for speech was more active during the" A-B-B" pattern. This shows that babies can tell the difference between different patterns. They also were sensitive to where it occurred in the order.

    Gervain is excited by these findings because the order of sounds is the building block of words and grammar." Position is key to language," she says. "If something is at the beginning or at the end, it makes a big difference: John caught the bear.' is very different from 'The bear caught John.'”

    Researchers led by scientist Patricia Kuhl have found that language delivered by televisions, audio books, the Internet, or smartphones－no matter how educational－doesn't appear to be enough for children's brain development. They carried out a study of nine-month-old American babies. They expected the first group who'd watched videos in Chinese to show the same kind of learning as the second group who were brought face-to-face with the same sounds. Instead they found a huge difference. The babies in the second group were able to distinguish between similar Chinese sounds as well as native listeners. But the other babies－regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio－learned nothing.

    How a few members of the animal kingdom handle the transition to adulthood?

    African elephants

These beautiful beasts come close to imitate teen rebellion. Calves spend a decade with their mothers in female-dominated groups —- and ladies stay there —- but adolescent boys leave mom for noisy crews of bros. In their 20s, they often downsize to smaller male groups.

    Orangutans (猩猩)

Slow metabolism allows these primates to survive food shortages —- times when weather makes ripe fruit scarce. But energy efficiency comes at a cost; growth and maturation take time. Orangutan mamas nurse their young longer than any other wild creature does.

    Orcas(逆戟鲸)

    Killer whales join their mother's familial group for life. This lasting-relationship seems to increase a pup's chance of survival; if mom dies  a young male (under 30) is three times more likely to die than a peer whose mother is alive. Risk of death post-mom-mortem rises as kids get older.

Harp seals

A harp seal's "childhood" lasts just 12 days. A pup's sole purpose during that brief period of coddling(宠爱) is to constantly nurse, gaining a fifth of its birth weight in blubber(鲸脂) every day. Once it's fat —- they become greater from 25 to 80 pounds —- it slides off the ice and takes on the sea.

    Wolf spiders

    Every parent knows that tired toddlers love to hitch a piggyback ride. The wolf spider straps all her babies (40 or 50, on average) onto her back at once, carrying the brood until they are capable of fully functional spider-hood. But luckily she only has to pull them for a few days.