(268 words)

    The number of accidents involving pedestrians (行人) wearing headphones is on the rise, a report suggests, causing fresh warning from road safety groups in Britain.

    A US-based study found a total of 116 reports of death or injury to pedestrians wearing headphones between 2004 and 2011, jumping from 16 in 2005 to 47 in 2011.

    Most victims were men (68%) and under the age of 30 (67%), with around one in ten of all cases (9%) under the age of 18.Some 89% of the cases occurred in urban areas and more than half (55%) of the victims were struck by trains .

Eighty-one of the 116 accidents (70%) resulted in the person's death—even though a warning was sounded in around a third of the cases.

    The study concluded, “The use of headphone may be a safety risk to pedestrians , especially in environments with moving vehicles（cars）. Further research is needed to determine if and how headphone use threatens pedestrian safety.” British road safety groups warned pedestrians to be careful.

    Floor Lieshout, director of Youth For Road Safety, said,“ This study shows once more the importance of using all of our senses while we are near traffic. It is important that we find an attractive way to make youth learn about the risks of wearing headphones in traffic.”

    Andrew Howard, who is the head of road safety at the Automobile Association, added that some pedestrians can be “so focused in their own little world they forget the world going on around them”. That can include headphone wearers, Howard said, but also people talking on phones.

    However, Howard said that more researches needed to be done.

    Earlier studies have shown that people wearing headphones or talking on phones can suffer “inattentional blindness” which makes them isolated (孤立) from the world around them .

    Ian Harvey, at the charity Civic Voice, said that “ to defeat isolation and to help build a civic(文明的) society, people need to interact(交往) with each other .

    He said,“ A basis for any civilized society is communication—Surfing the web, listening to MP3s, reading blogs or sending e-mail is not interacting with a person; it's interacting with a machine.

    “If people feel socially isolated, they need to have more face-to-face interactions with other human beings and in time, will begin to feel happier and more connected to the world and place they live in.”

D

    Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

    I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund(基金）(our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor)

    For weeks, I've been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball-simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

    We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.

    If you go into the forest with friends, stay with them. If you don't, you may get lost. If you get lost, this is what you should do. Sit down and stay where you are. Don't try to find your friends—let them find you. You can help them find you by staying in one place. There is another way to help your friends or other people to find you. You can shout or whistle(吹口哨) three times. Stop. Then shout or whistle three times again. Any signal given three times is a call for help.

    Keep up shouting or whistling. Always three times together. When people hear you, they will know that you are not just making a noise for fun. They will let you know that they have heard your signal. They will give you two shouts or two whistles. When a signal is given twice, it is an answer to a call for help.

    If you don't think that you will get help before night comes, try to make a little house with branches(树枝). Make yourself a bed with leaves and grass.

    When you need some water, you have to leave your little branch house to look for it. Don't just walk away. Pick off small branches and drop them as you walk in order to go back again easily. When you are lost, the most important thing to do is to stay in one place.

    Jealousy is such a powerful emotion that at least one study has characterized it as the third leading cause of non-accidental homicide(杀人) in all cultures. In a recently published study, researchers experimented with dogs to see whether they, like humans, have the nature of jealousy.

In an experiment, the authors took 36 dogs—along with their owners—and observed the dogs' behavior as their masters interacted with three non-living objects. One object was a children's book, which they read aloud; another object was a plastic pumpkin lantern; and the third was a mechanical stuffed dog that gave out a bark when the owner pressed a button.

    Former studies concluded that babies were probably capable of jealousy. In the experiment, their mothers showed attention to a life-like doll instead of their child, and other objects. The babies were reportedly more likely to respond with “negative” behavior if their mother turned to pay her attention to the doll.

    In the dog experiment, authors instructed the dog owners to push the bark button on the stuffed dog's head, and then speak to it sweetly, while ignoring their own dog. After that, they showed attention to the pumpkin lantern, and read the children's book, while also ignoring their dog.

    It is interesting to see the dogs were far more likely to act aggressively when their owners spoke to the stuffed dog than when they paid attention to the other objects. One-fourth of the dogs snapped at the stuffed dog, while only one dog snapped at the lantern or the book. The dogs were also more likely to push or touch their owners as they interacted with the mechanical dogs, and tried to get in between the owner and the stuffed dog more frequently than the other objects.

    “One possibility is that jealousy developed in species of many young relying on the parents, the young compete for parental resources such as food, attention, care, and affection,” the authors wrote.

    With a focus now on the environmental influence over the fashion industry, some bloggers who cut their teeth sharing details of endless clothes and products are changing their direction-enter the "no-buy" movement. The idea is simple: instead of buying new clothes or beauty products, you make a promise to use the things you already own. Some people sign up to a "no-buy year". Others decide not to buy for a few weeks or months or choose "low-buy" with a strict spending cap.

    This life style has caught the attention of many people who struggle to keep up with the latest fashion. Modern people's desire for material things is often not caused by poverty (贫穷) , but by anxiety, which is further enlarged by the rise of social media.

     "Social media puts pressure on people to spend money," says Katherine Ormerod, author of Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life. Many online influencers are given the items they use and wear for free, but Ormerod is determined not to wear any new products she is given. "Really I just want to convince people they don't have to spend a lot of money on fashion to look stylish and there's no such thing as 'last season' anymore," she says. "True style has never been about that anyway."

    However, self-satisfied expressions of minimalist (极简主义的) living have earned plenty of doubts. "Minimalism is a good quality only when it's a choice, and it's telling that its fan base is from the well-off middle class. To people who don't have enough in the first place, celebrations of 'less is more' can sound more like a luxury (奢侈) than a considerable loss." Stephanie Land wrote in The New York Times.