Four simple ways to stay positive

    Trying to stay positive, both in good times and bad, is a great way to improve your quality of life. Try these four methods on a daily basis.

1）. Don't think a lot about negativity.

    Of course. Staying positive 24 hours a day, seven days a week is a bit difficult. Letting things get to you is normal, and it's actually healthy to cry or express frustrations once in a while.

    It's when those negative moments control your life that your emotional balance is at risk. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} However, don't give that sadness another second in your day.

2）. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    What you put into your body directly affects how you feel on the outside. Fill yourself with good, healthy foods like fruits and vegetables and limit snacking. Exercise is equally of great importance. Take a few days out of your week for at least half an hour of activity, and try to stick to it. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

3）. Be kind to others.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Making someone's day a bit brighter not only puts a smile on his or her face, but also yours as well. Remember to smile and treat each person with pity and respect. Good deeds are contagious（传染的）, and your positive attitude may spread among others.

4）. Take it one day at a time.

    Being positive isn't an instant thing. It's a steady effort that we follow every hour of every day. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Instead, focus on living at the moment and doing what you can to make each moment better.

A.Eat healthy and stay fit.

B.Take your lunch breaks outside.

C.Don't worry about what the future may bring.

D.Gratefulness helps you appreciate life in bad times.

E.Good feelings come from acts of kindness and selflessness.

F.Take a few minutes to feel sad and accept what happened.

G.Even going outside for a walk and enjoying the sunshine improves your mood.

    Alex Elman runs a big business—something hard to imagine after she lost her sight in her twenties. But Elman says that losing her sight helped her focus on finding success.

    Elman's father planted a hillside vineyard(葡萄园)in western Massachusetts in 1981. It's where Elman spent the darkest period of her life. When she was 27 years old, she went blind as a result of diabetes(糖尿病) 17 years ago. She recalled，“I hid in my home. I hid in the place，to me, that was the safest place in the world.”

    However, she found a new way forward.

    Elman is the founder of Alex Elman Wines, a growing competitor of organic wines from all around the world: Chianti from Italy, Torrontes from Argentina.

    Elman's isn't solitary in her work. Instead, she has a good assistant, a guide dog named Hanley. Hanley is something of a professional wine taster and travels to all of the wine factories that Elman runs, from South America to Europe.

    At first, Elman wouldn't accept a guide dog. Now it's hard to imagine her life, or her business, without him. She said, "When someone tells me something is organic and I don't really believe it because I taste something funny on it, m put it in front of his face and if he likes the wine, he'll actually go in and sniff it. If if s not right, he'll turn his head away. That's how we know whether the soil is actually organic.”

    Elman believes the loss of her sight was a gift from God. She said, “It allowed me to pay attention to what I thought was important. Therefore, adapt to a situation, and you'll be all right. Because you can't change it anyway, right?”

    Education is not a bystanders sport. Numerous researchers have shown that when students participate in classroom discussion they hold more positive attitudes toward school, and that positive attitudes promote learning. It is no coincidence that girls are more passive in the classroom discussion and score lower than boys on SATs.

    We found that at all grade levels in all communities and in all subject areas boys controlled classroom communication. They participated in more interactions than girls did, and their participation became greater as the year went on.

    Our research contradicted the traditional assumption that girls control classroom communication in reading while boys in math. We found that whether the subject was language arts and English or math and science, boys got more than their fair share of teacher attention. That teachers talk more to male students is simply because boys are more aggressive in grabbing their attention by calling out answers to the teachers' questions first. While girls sit patiently with their hands raised or keep silent. Psychologist Lisa Serbin and K.Daniel O'Leary, then at the state university of New York at stony brook studied classroom interaction at preschool level and found that teachers gave boys more attention, praised them more often and were at least twice as likely to have extended conversations with them.

    Years of experience have shown that the best way to learn something is to do it yourself. It is also important to give students specific and direct feedback about the quality of their work and answers. Teachers behave differently depending on whether boys or girls are active to provide answers during discussions. During classroom discussion, teachers in our study reacted to boys answers with powerful, precise and effective responses, while they often gave girls mild and unclear reactions because of their silence. Too often, girls remain in the dark about the quality of their answers. Active students receiving precise feedback are more likely to achieve academically. And they are more likely to be boys.

    This kind of communication game is played at work, as well as at school. As reported in numerous studies, it goes like this.

    Men speak more often and frequently interrupt women.

    Listeners recall more from male speakers than from female speakers, even when both use a similar speaking style and cover the same content.

    Women participate less actively in conversation. They do more smiling and gazing, and they are more often the passive by standers in professional and social conversations among peers.

    Women often their own statements into unsure comments. This is accomplished by using qualifiers and by adding tag question. These uncertain patterns weaken impact and signal a lack of power and influence.

    Only when girls are active and treated equally in the classroom will they be more likely to achieve equality in the workplace.

    For those concerned about wrinkly old skin, it might be a creative solution: an elastic(有弹性的) “second skin” that can be smoothed on to make aged tissue look more youthful.

    The wearable film, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has shown promise in a series of small experiments where it was applied to wrinkles, under-eye bags and areas of dry skin. When applied to the face or body, the thin, transparent layer sticks to the skin and supports the tissue, making it look and behave like younger skin, its producers claim.

    “What we've been able to do is create a cream that you can put on the skin, and then when it's on the skin it can actually form, essentially, an elastic second skin,” said Bob Langer, who led the research. Tests in the lab found that the polymer film (高分子膜), which is only 70 thousandths of a millimeter thick, reduced the appearance of wrinkles and under-eye bags, and helped keep moisture (水分) in areas of dry skin.

    The layer is designed to be applied in the morning, then peeled off at night, In previous studies, the second skin withstood normal daily wear, and the stresses and strains of exercise and swimming, without falling off or causing irritation. It also survived exposure to rain.

    “It's something you can wear for a whole day or longer, depending on the physical forces that get applied to the area where it is worn, "said Daniel Anderson, who helped develop the product at MIT. “You can't tell you're wearing it.”

    While normal cosmetics can mask imperfections on the skin, the new coating changes the way skin behaves by giving it the elasticity of young skin. It was developed with help from two companies.

    While small may be beautiful, tall is just plain uncomfortable it seems, particularly when it comes to staying in hotels and eating in restaurants.

    The Tall Persons Club Great Britain (TPCGB), which was formed six months ago to campaign for the needs of the tall, has turned its attention to hotels and restaurants. Beds that are too small, shower heads that are too low, and restaurant tables with hardly any leg-room all make life difficult for those of above average height, it says.

    But it is not just the extra-tall whose needs are not being met. The average height of the population has been increasing yet the standard size of beds, doorways, and chairs has remained unchanged.

    "The bedding industry says a bed should be six inches larger than the person using it, so even a king-size bed at 6′6″ (6 feet and 6 inches) is falling short for 25% of men, while the standard 6′3″ bed caters for less than half of the male population." Said TPCGB president Phil Heinricy, "seven-foot beds would work fine."

    Similarly, restaurant tables can cause no end of problems. Small tables, which mean the long-legged have to sit a foot or so away from them, are enough to make tall customers go elsewhere.

    Some have already taken note, however. At Queens Moat Houses′ Caledoman Hotel in Edinburgh, 6′6″ beds are now put in as standard after requests for longer beds from taller visitors, particularly Americans.

Isatou Ceesay was born in 1972 in a small village in Gambia, Africa. As a teenager, Ceesay was forced to drop out of school because of poverty. She carried some goods with many girls like her to sell in the market to raise herself At that time, the plastic bags, being strong and light, became popular in Gambia. The problem was that people did not reuse the bags and simply threw them behind their homes. Over time, the houses were surrounded by trash.

Ceesay lived in such an environment for many years. She kept learning from the surrounding environment and planned to take action to change. In 1997, she started a recycling movement called One Plastic Bag in Gambia. She educated women in Gambia to recycle plastic waste into income for themselves. In the beginning, the movement had a mission to educate their village colleagues about the need to reuse garbage and recycle plastic waste, rather than letting the garbage increase behind their homes.

Over time, the movement became big and able to support and provide income for women around. It was also able to greatly reduce plastic waste in Gambia. But the work of collecting trash turned to be taxing. During the rainy season, plastic waste became wet and difficult to take, and after that it still took patience to dry it before it could be processed.

Ceesay said, "As a habit, people are used to pouring their garbage behind their houses, and because it is not visible, they forget it. But the bad effects again knock on your door very quickly — dirty air, various diseases and so on. Of course, if one man's house is clean but his neighbor's is not, then the man is also not healthy."

For 17 years, Ceesay has contributed to one of the most important problems about the plastic waste. In 2012, she got the TIAW Difference Maker Award in Washington, DC, United States. Her story was written into a book, which inspires many others to join or become makers of change in their own communities.