Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? A short time ago, a test was given in the United States. People of different ages, from 12 to 83, were asked to have a test. During the test, these people were given all kinds of breakfast, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Scientists wanted to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten different kinds of breakfast.

    The results show that if a person eats a right breakfast, he or she will work better than if he or she has no breakfast. If a student has fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he or she will learn more quickly and listen more carefully in class. The result is opposite to what some people think. Having no breakfast will not help you lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch. They will gain weight instead of losing it. You will lose more weight if you reduce your other meals.

    When you are travelling in Thailand, which means of transport is the best choice?

    You can rent a variety of motorbikes or bikes in Thailand. It seems to be very popular in most of the beaches and islands along the places in the north. The most popular bikes are the little 125 cc Honda Dream which you can get for about 150 baht (铢) a day or as little as 3,000 baht per month, making it the cheapest way to tour Thailand for the people from other countries.

    Sometimes you will have to go somewhere by taxi. When you are in cities in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, always remember to get a taxi that is traveling on the roads. Some drivers outside hotels refuse to use the meter (计程表). They will ask a price which is several times the price when they use the meter!

    The quality of the roads in Thailand is generally pretty good, so renting cars is another way to get around. The big car rental companies may offer you slightly older cars at a very reasonable (合理的) price. It is a little surprising considering that the cost of buying a car in Thailand is more than that in the West. Petrol is also reasonably priced in Thailand, more expensive than American prices, but much cheaper than what is paid in Europe. In the past, Bangkok could be a difficult place to drive in—signs were generally in Thai only, making it a hard job to find exactly where you were by looking around. But now, the situation is improved. In a lot of places, even the farthest corners of the country, street signs are in both Thai and English.

    Oct.15th was International White Cane Safety Day. You may have never heard of it, but it was a day to remember for Peng Baier, 17, of Nanjing Foreign Language School. After school that day, he visited his local Disabled Persons' Federation (残疾人联合会). He wanted to know about the sales and feedback (反馈) of his newly published book, How to Help a Disabled Person.

    Since he lives with his disabled grandparents, he understands that life can be hard for this group of people. Peng decided to write the book because he wanted to create a better life for disabled people in China.

    “Crossing the street is a big problem for them,” Peng said. “Speeding cars, people walking in a hurry, bikes on the sidewalk for the blind - accidents can happen everywhere. That's why we hardly ever see disabled people on the street, even though there are millions of disabled people in China.”

    Peng's book with pictures is easy to understand. It is a guide to the right and wrong ways to treat disabled people. The left-hand pages show the reader the right way; the right-hand pages point out mistakes that are commonly made.

    The teenager had 2,000 copies of his book printed. With the help of the Disabled Persons' Federation, he gave them to the disabled community.

    “The book is bilingual, so foreigners can also use it,” said Peng.

    Peng put great effort into the book. For example, he interviewed many disabled people to get first hand materials. He also studied textbooks from different schools for the disabled. Peng finally completed his handbook, but he still had the problem of getting it printed.

    How does a high school student raise money needed for that?

    With a smile, Peng said how he went about it. “I visited three local companies, dressed up in a suit and tie. I was lucky. The companies were warm-hearted and willing to give me a hand.”

    Birdbrain has long been a term when laughing at somebody. The common opinion is that birds' brains are simple. But that opinion has increasingly been called into question because crows and parrots, among other birds, have shown behaviors as smart as that of chimpanzees.

    The conflict of simple brain and complex behavior has led some neuroscientists (神经学家) to create a new map of the birdbrain.

    Today, in the journal Nature Neuroscience Reviews, an international group of bird experts is showing their opinion. Nearly everything written in anatomy (解剖学) textbooks about the brains of birds is wrong, they say. The bird brain is as complex, and creative as any mammal brain, they argue, and it's time to use a more exact term that shows a new understanding of the anatomies of bird and mammal brains.

    "Names have a powerful influence on the experiments we do and the way we think," said Dr. Erich, a neuroscientist at Duke University and a leader of the Bird Brain Terms Association. "Old term has prevented scientific progress."

    The association of 29 scientists from six countries met for seven years to develop new, more exact names for structures in both bird and mammal brains. For example, the bird's seat of intelligence or its higher brain is now named the pallium (大脑皮层).

    "The change of terms is a great advance," said Dr. Jon Kaas, a leading expert in neuroanatomy at Vanderbih University. "It's hard to get scientists to agree about anything."

    Scientists have come to agree that birds are indeed smart, but those who study bird intelligence differ on how birds got that way. Experts are split into two warring camps. One holds that birds' brains make the same kinds of internal (内在的) connections as do mammal brains and that intelligence in both groups arises from these connections. The other holds that bird intelligence developed through increasing an old part of the mammal brain and using it in new ways and it questions how developed that intelligence is.

    Some of the best research on daily experience is rooted in rates of positive and negative interactions, which has proved that being blindly positive or negative can cause others to be frustrated or annoyed or to simply tune out.

    Over the last two decades, scientists have made remarkable predictions simply by watching people interact with one another and then scoring the conversations based on the rate of positive and negative interactions. Researchers have used the findings to predict everything from the likelihood that a couple will divorce to the chances of a work team with high customer satisfaction and productivity levels.

More recent research helps explain why these brief exchanges matter so much. When you experience negative emotions as a result of criticism or rejection, for example, your body produces higher levels of the stress hormone, which shuts down much of your thinking and activates(激活) conflict and defense mechanisms(机制). You assume that situations are worse than they actually are.

    When you experience a positive interaction, it activates a very different response. Positive exchanges increase your body's production of oxytocin, a feel-good that increases your ability to communicate with, cooperate with and trust others. But the effects of a positive occurrence are less dramatic and lasting than they are for a negative one.

    We need at least three to five positive interactions to outweigh every one negative exchange. Bad moments simply outweigh good ones. Whether you're having a conversation, keep this simple short cut in mind: At least 80 percent of your conversations should be focused on what's going right.

    Workplaces, for example, often see this. During performance reviews, managers routinely spend 80 percent of their time on weaknesses and "areas for improvement". They spend roughly 20 percent of the time on strengths and positive aspects. Any time you have discussions with a person or group, spend the vast majority of the time talking about what is working, and use the remaining time to address weaknesses.

Tips for Writing Short Stories

    I was reading an article with David Vann's top tips for writing short stories -- he is a published writer, his most famous book being, "Legends of a Suicide." First of all he stats that there are no rules, but if he were forced to create rules for short stores, then they would be something like the following.

    He says there is no room for anything that is not related to the protagonist -- the main character of the story -- or indeed the problem of the protagonist. He makes it clear that the protagonist must have a problem, and this problem must divide the protagonist: he doesn't know what he is going to do to solve the problem. There is no point, then, in having a short story about a man who says he is hungry and then just goes to the shops to buy food. Nothing exciting happens. But if the man is hungry and he has a child who is hungry, then he has a problem; who does he give the food to?

    There should also be an antagonist, that is, somebody who works against the protagonist. The antagonist should ideally have the same problem as the protagonist but will have a totally different way of looking at it. This presents the possibility of having battles in the short story.

    Furthermore, the antagonist and the protagonist must know each other. But because they are viewing the same problem from different angles, they will probably drive each other crazy.

    Finally, the short story has to acknowledge a change in the protagonist. We must then, as a reader, see how the character will continue their life differently as a result of the events of the story. There is no point in going back to the beginning; the short story is a waste of time if nothing actually happens that is significant.

    It is very hard to create a character whom a reader cares about and a plot that a reader is interested in with just a few hundred words. But it is possible: Edgar Allen Poe, Anton Chekhov, and JG Ballard -- amongst many others -- have proved repeatedly that short stores can be little pieces of perfection. The best don't just see the protagonist change; they see the reader change, too.