Loneliness is like a disease, and what's worse, it's contagious. It can spread from one person to another, according to the recent research that stresses the power of one person's emotions to affect even people he doesn't know.

    The new analysis, involving 4,793 people who were interviewed every two years between 2005 and 2015, showed that a friend of a lonely person was 52％ more likely to develop feelings of loneliness by the time of the next interview. A friend of that person was 25％ more likely, and a friend of a friend of a friend was 15％ more likely.

“Loneliness is not just the property of an individual. It can be transmitted across people—even people you don't have direct contact with,” said John T. Cacioppo, a psychologist of the University of Chicago who led the study published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

    Loneliness has been linked to medical problems, including depression, sleep problems and generally poorer physical health. Identifying some of the causes could help reduce the emotion and improve health, experts said.

Although the study did not examine how loneliness spreads, Cacioppo said another research has provided clues. “Let's say for whatever reason you get lonely. You then interact with other people in a more negative fashion. That puts them in a negative mood and makes them more likely to interact with other people in a negative fashion and they minimize their social ties and become lonely,” Cacioppo said.

According to Cacioppo, loneliness spread more easily among women than men, perhaps because women were more likely to express emotions.

Lonely people become less and less trusting others. This makes it more and more difficult for them to make friends－and more likely that society will reject them. Therefore, it is important to recognize and deal with loneliness．Cacioppo emphasizes people who have been pushed to the edges of society should receive help to repair their social networks.

     To me, inspirations mean to put my thoughts, heart, and creations into my jewelry. Sometimes I become so inspired with what I'm working on that I can finish one or more sets in less than an hour. Because of that feeling, I have named my jewelry collection “Inspirations”.

     I am a 17-year-old student with sickle-cell anemia. With this, I am in and out of the hospital a lot. So I started making jewelry a year ago when I was in the hospital. I really needed something to do, so I was introduced to jewelry making by a child life expert.

     One day while lying in my hospital bed, I decided to get up and go to the patient's playroom ,and look through the craft designs. That was when I became inspired to design my jewelry collection, and named it “Inspirations”.

     When I'm  not sick, I try to keep a positive attitude through reading, schoolwork and craft activities. Even though there is a lot of work, I try to stay focused all the time. When I need a break or just to be free I turn to my craft activities. This is a way to ease my mind and it always helps me to especially get through those stressful times.

     I am getting very excited about graduating next year and preparing myself for college. Who knows my collection of “Inspirations” would take me to the places I always dreamed of? I may see celebrities I admire and even sell them some of my beautiful “Inspirations”. If they wear my “Inspirations”, it will be well known and in great demand. What a great way to make some extra money for college! I never thought being sick would bring me “Inspirations”. I want people to look beyond my illness and see the creations I've made in my collection called “Inspirations”.

    Do you want to live with a strong sense of peacefulness, happiness, goodness, and self-respect? The collection of happiness actions broadly categorized(把……归类) as “honor” help you create this life of good feelings.

    Here's an example to show how honorable actions create happiness.

    Say a store clerk fails to charge us for an item. If we keep silent, and profit from the clerk's mistake, we would drive home with a sense of sneaky (暗中的) excitement. Later we might tell our family or friends about our good fortune. On the other hand, if we tell the clerk about the uncharged item, the clerk would be grateful and thank us for our honesty. We would leave the store with a quiet sense of honor that we might never share with another soul.

    Then, what is it to do with our sense of happiness?

    In the first case, where we don't tell the clerk, a couple of things would happen. Deep down inside we would know ourselves as a type of thief. In the process, we would lose some peace of mind and self-respect. We would also demonstrate that we cannot be trusted, since we advertise our dishonor by telling our family and friends. We damage our own reputations by telling others. In contrast, bringing the error to the clerk's attention causes different things to happen. Immediately the clerk knows us to be honorable. Upon leaving the store, we feel honorable and our self-respect is increased. Whenever we take honorable actions we gain the deep internal rewards of goodness and a sense of nobility.

    There is a beautiful positive cycle that is created by living a life of honorable actions.

    Honorable thoughts lead to honorable actions. Honorable actions lead us to a happier existence. And it's easy to think and act honorably again when we're happy. While the positive cycle can be difficult to start, once it's started, it's easy to continue. Keeping on doing good deeds brings us peace of mind, which is important for our happiness.

    The decisions that we make shape us throughout our lives. No matter what decisions we make, good or bad, each one puts us on a new road in the future. Make a bad decision? No problem. Learn from the decision and make another decision to get on a different path. This is advice that I got from Tony Robbins in his book Awaken the Giant Within. This is a book that I recommend(推荐) to anyone wanting to develop a fire to make changes in their life. It helped me to understand how fear of making poor choices was hindering me from becoming the great man who I am today. Now I am not saying I am a well-known person in any particular circle. But I am the king of my castle working hard and trying to make good decisions in regard to the paths that I have chosen. I am a great man in the eyes of my wife and my children. And that is all the recognition that I need in my lifetime. And I know that my past failures have been the building block that I continue to use to build my career and self-image in my community that I live in.

    Ben Lerer, cofounder of the CEO of Thrillist Media Group, is a good example of this. In an article on the Fast Company website, Lerer talks about this very subject. He says, “I've had to make some really tough decisions but finally, I think the best companies are those that can recognize when something isn't going right, and fix it, instead of just turning a blind eye because it's easier.” Great people make decisions. When a decision does not have the desired result, make a different decision. It does not get any simpler than that.

    NASA might be famous for sending rockets up to space quickly. But it will be more famous for making your next holiday come more quickly.

    The space agency is working on a new plane, which could solve the problems of supersonic(超音速的) flight and vastly increase the speed of journeys abroad. If successful, the plane would be able to fly between New York and London in just three hours. And it would reduce the time spent flying other journeys by a half, since it could be used more broadly. Until now, the problem with such planes has been the sonic boom(声爆), made famous by the original Concorde. That happens when a plane reaches supersonic speeds.

    It is a thunderous noise that upsets people on the ground— disturbing animals and even causing physical problems to materials and houses underneath. It was that effect that led Congress to ban such planes from being used over the US land, a decision that in turn was responsible for Concorde's failing to be commercially used.

    In view of the problem, the space agency has developed a new technology and tried it out in wind tunnels, and now believes that it could be put to commercial use. That plane will fly as high as 55,000 feet—far higher than normal planes—and make a sound of only 60 decibels. That's far less than 90 decibels thrown out by normal planes, and is roughly in line with a car on the motorway or a busy restaurant.

    “As long as we can get endorsement from the general public, the plane will probably be something that's acceptable,” said Peter Coen, project manager for NASA's commercial supersonic research team, in a new Bloomberg report. “If we get approved, we will have the full-sized version of the plane tried out and the plane will be put into use.”