The latest Chinese “god song”(an Internet term to describe pop songs that spread virally through the Internet(像病毒一样传播开来) is still making debates(争论) between those who view it as a milestone for Chinese pop music going global and those who regard it as a bad image of China.

    Last week, Little Apple, written and performed by the Chopsticks Brothers, won the AMA International Song Award and the duo performed the song at the 2014 American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Another Chinese pop singer, Zhang Jie, won the International Artist Award.

    But while fans of these singers are thinking highly of the awards(奖) and the performance by the Chopsticks Brothers at the AMA celebration, there are others who are less excited. They have questioned the value of the awards and what effect it will have on Chinese culture's “going abroad”, saying it may leave foreign audiences with a poor impression(印象) of Chinese pop music, and even Chinese culture.

    The Little Apple phenomenon, both home and abroad, can be more easily understood and judged if we look at it from a business view rather than a cultural view. The professional promoters behind the duo have developed a clear strategy(策略) to promote the duo and their works, not just this particular song. Little Apple was originally released(发行) to promote the duo's film Old Boys: The Way of the Dragon.

    From the very beginning a marketing strategy was used to promote(提升) the song, which immediately went viral on the Internet due to its repetitive rhythm(重复的韵律)，easy-to-remember lyrics(歌词), simple and funny dance and, most importantly, grass roots (草根) nature. The video accumulated(积攒) more than 1 billion bits on China's major video websites.

    Although the song was generally disliked by music professionals who criticized(批评) it as “musical junk food”, Little Apple's popularity nationally paved the way(为…铺平道路) for promoting the duo internationally.

Decision-making under Stress

    A new review based on a research shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the advantages and disadvantages, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative (负面的) consequences of a decision.

     The research suggests that stress may change the way people make choices in predictable ways.

    “Stress affects how people learn,” says Professor Mara Mather. “People learn better about positive than negative outcomes under stress.”

    For example, two recent studies looked at how people learned to connect images(影像) with either rewards or punishments. In one experiment, some of the participants were first stressed by having to give a speech and do difficult math problems in front of an audience; in the other, some were stressed by having to keep their hands in ice water. In both cases, the stressed participants remembered the rewarded material more accurately and the punished material less accurately than those who hadn't gone through the stress.

    This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while under stress –at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind. But the findings further suggest that stress may bring about a double effect. Not only are rewarding experiences remembered better, but negative consequences are also easily recalled.

    The research also found that stress appears to affect decision-making differently in men and women. While both men and women tend to focus on rewards and less on consequences under stress, their responses to risk turn out to be different.

    Men who had been stressed by the cold-water task tended to take more risks in the experiment while women responded in the opposite way. In stressful situations in which risk-taking can pay off big, men may tend to do better, when caution weighs more, however, women will win.

    This tendency to slow down and become more cautious when decisions are risky might also help explain why women are less likely to become addicted than men: they may more often avoid making the risky choices that eventually harden into addiction.

    Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists, runners and walkers, but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear. It is a challenge many disabled athletes face, unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

    Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs vision－and hearing－impaired（视觉和听觉受损的）athletes with a person who would like to guide them.

    “When we go out, we're always going out into an unknown course,”said Achilles Brisbane president Jane Britt, who is both vision and hearing impaired. “It's much less frightening to have someone beside you that has full hearing to listen for you and tell you what's there.”

    Ms. Cullen and Ms. Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the free five－kilometer Southbank park run. Their partnership is built on trust, but Ms. Britt said that it took time to develop.

    Ms. Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms. Cullen completely. “There was violent rain, my glasses were broken and we were walking together,”she said. “I suddenly had to tell her I couldn't see anything, and I was going to have to completely trust her. From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in. ”

    Isabella Allen and her seeing-eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles programme. Ms. Allen kept active by running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse. After nearly giving up completely, she worked up the courage to ask Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

    Ms. Alien said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane. “But, they found people and matched me to them.”she said, “It's the best thing I've ever done. ”

    It happens from time to time: you feel terrible when you take your first bite of a certain food, but after eating more, you find yourself enjoying it. This is what is called an acquired taste. But why do our tastes change?

    The answer, according to a recent study presented at an American Chemical Society meeting in Boston, lies in proteins in our saliva (唾液).

    Most of us tend to think saliva, almost entirely made up of water, is “only a mouth lubricant (润滑剂) helping us to swallow food,” the New York Times said. However, it also contains many proteins, which can help break food down, protect our teeth and help in tasting food.

    To explain how these proteins affect taste, a team of scientists from Purdue University in the US invited 64 volunteers to drink a bitter-tasting chocolate milk three times a day for six weeks and rated their tastes at the same time.

    According to the research, the participants found a strong bitterness on the first day, but the unpleasant flavor came to decrease as time went on and finally disappeared.

    That is not all that was changing. A noticeable increase in the levels of proline-rich (富含脯氨酸的) proteins was found in the saliva samples of the test subjects in the research period. These proteins serve to reduce the bitterness we taste and improve our adaptation to this flavor.

    “We think the body adapts to reduce the negative feeling of these bitter compounds,” said Cordelia Running, a food scientist at Purdue University. “Saliva changes flavor, which in turn changes eating choices.”

    This change in taste not only makes the food tastier, but also helps people keep an appetite for healthy food whose flavor might otherwise keep them away.

    One day, these proteins may even be extracted (提炼) and used as a separate food additive that could help people stick to healthy food whose flavor they continue to dislike, researchers told Science Alert. And according to Running, even it doesn't happen, the idea that “maybe some little piece of your body is actually trying to help you” could really benefit some people. Let's wait and see.

    Most people who own iPhones use them as their alarm clocks―making it very easy to check emails one last time before falling asleep and hard to ever feel away from work and social networks.

    Several years ago, my boss fainted due to exhaustion after staying up late to catch up on work. She banged her head and ended up with five stitches (缝针) and became what she calls a "sleep evangelist (传教士)." Now she leaves her phone charging in another room when she goes to bed and encourages her friends to do the same.

    "I sent all my friends the same Christmas gift―a lovely alarm clock―so they could stop using the excuse that they needed their very attractive iPhones by their beds to wake them up in the morning." she said.

    If your phone wakes you up in the morning, it may also be keeping you up at night. A 2008 study showed that people exposed to mobile radiation took longer to fall asleep and spent less time in deep sleep. "The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals, components of sleep believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear are severely affected," the study concluded.

    A quarter of young people feel like they must be available by phone around the clock, according to a Swedish study that linked heavy cellphone use to sleeping problems, stress and depression. Unreturned messages carry more guilt when the technology to deal with them lies at our fingertips. Some teens even return text messages at midnight.

    Most of us choose not to set limits on our nighttime availability. Nearly three quarters of people from the age of 18 to 44 sleep with their phones within reach, according to a 2012 Time poll. That number falls off slightly in middle age, but only people aged 65 and older are leaving the phone in another room as common as sleeping right next to it.

    Don't put it off, do it now!

    Why do we spend so much time not doing the work we should do, or putting off small jobs that have piled up to create a big problem? Procrastinating, as putting things off like this is called, is in our character we have naturally since birth; we avoid dull or difficult jobs until it's too late to do anything else.

    "We often put things off although we know it will make life more stressful," says Dr. Steel, an authority on the science of motivation. "If these tasks were fun, we'd just do them now. We put off what is difficult or unpleasant, such as the paperwork that needs doing before leaving the office or cleaning the bits of your home that people can't see. But the fact is, the less people procrastinate, the more money they have, the better relationships they have, and the healthier they are." This is obvious when you look at the couples who don't argue about whether anyone has cleaned the kitchen, and the people who simply go for a run instead of endlessly rescheduling it in their heads.

    Of course, there are the rest of us, who feel the small jobs piling up around us daily. "We've evolved to respond to the moment, and not to set our sights too far in an uncertain world," Dr. Steel adds. "We are not set up to appreciate long-term rewards, whether it's the benefit of a four-year degree, doing exercise or dieting. We usually feel the cost now and the reward comes much later." According to Dr. Steel, we have two decision-making systems. They are the limbic, which is responsible for the short term, and the prefrontal cortex, which deals with the future. We bounce between long-term goals and short-term temptations, so we need goals that will translate our plans for the limbic system.

    Let's take the example of students' writing essays. They should set themselves targets and word counts per day. These are thus turned from seemingly endless tasks into something concrete with measured progress. Dr. Steel recommends such techniques, or "pre-commitments", adding that leaving you a month before the "deadline" makes it more likely a task will be completed. The benefit is that you'll avoid the embarrassment of not following up on something people are expecting you to do—telling everyone you are going to take up jogging makes you more likely to do so.

    Overcoming procrastination finally comes down to planning, which, if you're not careful, becomes procrastination in itself. But it is worth making sure you have everything in place. "Successful people don't pretend they don't procrastinate," Dr. Steel says. "People who pretend they have willpower are less successful." Instead, plan for procrastination: make your work environment a temple of productivity by cutting out what stops you paying your attention, so you can really focus on moving forward.