While watching the Olympics the other night, I came across an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world record broken, but a show of courage.

    The event was swimming and started with only three men on the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them false started, so they were disqualified. That left only one to complete. It would have been difficult enough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock is important.

    I watched the man dive off the block and knew right away that something was wrong. I'm not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a good dive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he resurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold—his arms were waving in an attempt at freestyle. The crowd started to laugh. Clearly this man was not a medal competitor.

    I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes and you could tell he was worn out.

    But in those few awful strokes, the crowd had changed.

    No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer. Some even began to stand and shout “Come on, you can do it!” and he did.

    A clear minute past the average swimmer, this young man finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought that he had won the gold, and should have. Even though he recorded one of the slowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors.

    Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alone race. His country had been invited to Sydney.

    In a competition where athletes remove their silver medals feeling they have somehow been cheated out of gold, or when they act so proudly in front of their competitors, it is nice to watch an underdog.

    We all know the feeling: looking at the computer screen, pretending to be interested in our homework, even though we really feel bored. But such feelings may soon be at an end, says Dr. Harry Witchel, head of the Essex Medical School. He believes that computers of the future will notice when people feel bored and even take action to stopit.

    Before you get concerned, the machine won't be reading your mind. It will be observing the many movements you make while using a computer. It's not interested in the big movements needed to use the machine — like moving a mouse or touching a screen — but small, barely noticeable movements like closing your eyes, moving in your seat or rubbing your face. Witchel calls these “boredom movements" and says they show how interested the person is in what they are reading or watching. The higher the interest level, the less movement!

    To test his theory, Witchel invited 27 people to perform various computer-based tasks. The activities ranged from playing online games (an interesting task) to reading documents like government laws that most people would find boring.

A special video camera followed the participants' movements as they completed each task. Just as the researcher expected, the “boredom movements" greatly decreased, by as much as 42%，when the subjects were very interested in what they were reading or seeing.

    Fortunately, Dr Witchel isn't planning to use his results to create machines that report students who are not paying attention at school. Instead, he wants “movement sensing” technology to be built into future computers in order to improve students' computer-based learning experience.

    The scientist says that by measuring the students' interest level as they work, educators will be able to adjust their materials in real-time to keep students focused. Witchel also believes that the technology can provide filmmakers with honest audience opinions and in the future, help to develop more intelligent robots.

    Crystal Cruises（乘船浏览）-Luxury Every Day

    What do you plan to do this winter vacation? Do you want to travel over the sea, experience the ocean wave and enjoy the wonderful sea views? If that's what you want, come and sail on a Crystal Cruise ship. We have three ships: The Crystal Queen, The Crystal Princess, The Crystal Palace.

Come and sail in luxury（奢侈）on cruises around the Caribbean Sea for 7 or 14 days.

    Our seven-day cruise costs $2,000 and our two-week cruise is $3,500.

A typical one week cruise:

    Day One—set off from Miami

    Day Two—free day in Nassau, in The Bahamas

    Day Three—near Haiti

    Day Four—visit Puerto Rico and Antigua

    Day Five—free day in Barbados

    Day Six—free day in Port of Spain, Trinidad

    Day Seven—travel to Caracas, Venezuela

    Day Eight—fly home.

    All food and drink is included in the price of your cruise (except for wines). Our cruise ships all have a cinema, a five-star restaurant, a theatre, a library and a gym. However, you have to pay extra money to enjoy the films and plays.

    If you prefer to go on a cruise in another part of the world, we also organize cruises in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean.

    Our ships carry over 2,000 passengers and we have nearly 600 crew members in all.

    So come on board today for the holiday of a lifetime!

Call immediately: 020-4455832

    I'm sure you will enjoy your luxury cruise ship journey very much!

    Scientists say we are all born with a knack for mathematics. Every time we scan the cafeteria for a table that will fit all of our friends, we're exercising the ancient estimation center in our brain.

    Stanislas Dehaene was the first researcher to show that this part of the brain exists. In 1989, he met Mr. N who had suffered a serious brain injury. Mr. N couldn't recognize the number 5, or add 2 and 2. But he still knew that there are “about 50 minutes” in an hour. Dehaene drew an important conclusion from his case: there must be two separate mathematical areas in our brains. One area is responsible for the math we learn in school, and the other judges approximate amounts.

    So what does the brain's estimation center do for us? Harvard University researcher Elizabeth Spelke has spent a lot of time posing math problems to preschoolers. When he asks 5-year-olds to solve a problem like 21+30, they can't do it. But he has also asked them questions such as, “Sarah has 21 candles and gets 30 more. John has 34 candles. Who has more candles?” It turns out preschoolers are great at solving questions like that. Before they've learned how to do math with numerals and symbols, their brains' approximation centers are already hard at work.

    After we learn symbolic math, do we still have any use for our inborn math sense? Justin Halberda at Johns Hopkins University gave us an answer in his study. He challenged a group of 14-year-olds with an approximation test: The kids stared at a computer screen and saw groups of yellow and blue dots flash by, too quickly to count. Then they had to say whether there had been more blue dots or yellow dots. The researchers found that most were able to answer correctly when there were 25 yellow dots and 10 blue ones. When the groups were closer in size, 11 yellow dots and 10 blue ones, fewer kids answered correctly.

    The big surprise in this study came when the researcher compared the kids' approximation test scores to their scores on standardized math tests. He found that kids who did better on the flashing dot test had better standardized test scores, and vice versa (反之亦然). It seems that, far from being irrelevant, your math sense might predict your ability at formal math.

    A new study suggests that people who drank a certain amount of alcohol（酒）had a lower risk of cancer and death than those who drank more or none during a nine-year period. And with each additional drink a week, the risk of cancer and death from any cause increased, the scientists reported.

    However, the study found only an association between alcohol and cancer and death, and did not prove cause and effect, the researches said. What sets the new study apart, said lead study author Andrew Kunzmann, is that previous studies looked at cancer and death separately. “What our study does is combine the two outcomes together and we find that lighter drinking is associated with the lowest risk of cancer or death,” Kunzmann said.

    But Kunzmann noted that the participants（参与者）were all older adults. That means that “we're not really showing what happens in younger people if they drink,” he said. Also, it's difficult to account for other lifestyles that could have affected the results. “These could also influence health. But the results did take into consideration differences in diet, smoking and education among participants,” Kunzmann noted.

    The researchers said that they hope their study sparks conversation about reducing the suggested alcohol intake in countries' guidelines. “We're not telling people what they can or can't do or what they can or can't drink,” Kunzmann said. “We're just trying to give them reliable evidence so that they can make their own informed, healthy decisions.”

    Growing up, I was an extremely reserved(腼腆的) boy. I didn't have many friends in primary and middle school and rarely opened up to anyone. I didn't even ask my teacher questions in class. I was scared of the world and the people around.

    As a child, I was scared to do anything without my parents mainly because I was afraid that I would do it badly. I was getting good grades and was well-behaved, but I wasn't happy. It was my belief that I was, for some reason, unable to do the things the others kids could do. I felt inadequate.

    While in my second semester of college, I ran into some information on the Internet about something called social anxiety. I didn't really know much of the disorder. Thus I began to read about some of the symptoms and realized that social anxiety was the thing that hurt me so much.

    It is common knowledge that people with social anxiety experience nervousness in social situations. What a lot of people don't know is that one of the main causes of social anxiety is negative thinking. People having a negative idea of themselves often think that they are ugly or stupid.

    I realized what I was truly afraid of: not being good enough. I was afraid that people would look at me and would not like what they saw; I was scared of rejection. To help deal with these problems, I began to practice meditation(沉思) and other mindfulness exercises. My mind slowly began to change.

    I realized that everyone, from star athletes to noble prize winners, experiences fear in their lives. Whether people are afraid of heights, planes, spiders, or talking to girls, we all experience anxiety and fear. There is no reason for anyone to feel excluded(排除在外的) because something scares them. People with anxiety disorders might have "problems", but there is nothing wrong with them as people. They are just as humans as everyone else.