Johnson Smith
Founder and CEO
Johnson Review

    Dogs are wonderful companions all their own, but they can also help change your life so that you're more accepting of new friendships. A new study studied how dogs' brains responded to the human voice and found that “the human brain responds to dog emotions the same way it responds to human emotions” and that the dog's brain does the same.

    Dogs are pack animals, so in terms of pet ownership, your dog will prefer to stay with you rather than somewhere alone. Think about how this concept applies to friendship. People today are getting more and more used to spending time on social networking, email, and text. While all methods of communication are good, there is nothing like seeing your friends and hearing their voice. With good friends, sometimes a look explains everything, and you can only get this when you're together hanging out in person.

    Let's face it, dogs never hide their feeling. They let you know what they enjoy doing most, whether it is chasing a ball, going for a walk, or getting a treat. For people, it's harder to be open with your emotions. But in order to truly find a friend, you'll need to let go of your fears and put trust into your friends. The reality is that you'll never make everyone you meet happy one-hundred percent of the time, so if your friends and family think you're great, put aside the need to be liked by everyone.

    Dogs wait for you to come home and are so happy to see you again that they practically do a happy dance when you walk through the door. Friends, on the other hand, are sometimes so busy that even hearing from a friend becomes an unwelcome interruption. Rather than avoid calls or emails, make a point to talk to friends on a regular basis.

    Not all think laughter is the best medicine, but it seems to help. So scientists carried on a new study of diabetes (糖尿病) patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year to prove it.

    Researchers divided 20 high­risk diabetic patients into two groups. Both groups were given standard diabetes medicine. Group L viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choice, while Group C. the control group. did not. This went on for a year of treatments.

    By two months into the study. the patients in the laughter group had lower level of the hormones epinephrine (肾上腺素), considered to cause stress. which is known to be deadly. After the 12 months. HDL cholesterol rises 26 percent in Group L but only 3 percent in Group C. In another measure. C­reactive proteins, a maker of heart disease. drop 66 percent in the laughter group but only 26 percent in the control group.

    “The best doctors believe that there is a physical good brought about by the positive emotion, happy laughter. ”said study leader Lee Berk of Loma Linda University. And other research has found that humor makes us more hopeful. Still, more study is needed, Berk said. The research by Berk found that humor can bring about similar changes in body chemistry. which was proved in the new study. The research result will be presented this month at the meeting in the US. Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine shows that laughter causes the inner lining of blood vessels to expand. increasing blood flow in a way thought to be healthy.

    “Lifestyle choices have an important effect on health and these are choices which we and patients should pay attention to. rather than prevention and treatment,”Berk said in a statement this week.

    When you're a junior in high school, three little letters quickly become larger than life: SAT.

    At the start of my junior year, I realized that the environment was packed with competition. Surprisingly, this pressure didn't come from adults. It came from the other students. Everyone in my grade had college on the brain. To get into the college of our choice, we all believed, we had to outcompete and outscore everyone else with less sleep, because time for sleeping was time you didn't spend studying for the SAT.

    I let myself get swept up in the pressure. My new motto was, if I wasn't in every single honor level class, I wasn't doing enough. I was bad-tempered and I couldn't focus. I stopped talking to my friends and my mom, and I couldn't figure out who I was. I didn't have the confidence to know that my own passions and unique skills were what would make me stand out to colleges.

That's when I realized: I am not my SAT score. Trying to stick to what I thought colleges wanted masked who I really am. I decided to rely on my strengths and get away from the crazy pressure I was putting on myself.

    Instead of forcing myself into higher levels of math, I took on an extra history class. I learned how to love what I was doing and not what I thought I was supposed to do. I learned to shine as an individual, not a faceless member of the crowd. And I found that not only was this better for my happiness, but it also made me more effective and efficient when I studied.

    To me, individuality means having the confidence to decide who I am and who I want to be, and a number on a page is never going to change that. I am more sure of myself, and more ready to apply for college, than ever.

    A Hong Kong Disneyland park admission ticket is your passport to a full day of magical adventures. Learn the ways to buy your tickets now.

    Three types of 1-day ticket are available:

    Free admission for Child aged under 3.

    Book Online Now

    Purchase tickets conveniently through our website, then pick up your tickets starting from 1 hour after you have purchased online.

    Purchase Tickets Directly at Hong Kong Disneyland Ticket Express

    You can purchase tickets at the Hong Kong Disneyland Ticket Express, conveniently located at the MTR Hong Kong Station. Open from 9:00 am — 8:00 pm on Mondays to Fridays and from 9:00 am — 5:00 pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

    Purchase 2 Park Tickets at one of the following locations and receive a FREE limited-edition Disney gift:

    ★ Avenue of Stars Kiosks

    You can purchase tickets at Avenue of Stars Kiosks in Tsim Sha Tsui. Open daily from 9:00 am — 10:30 pm.

    ★ Asia World-Expo Box Office

    You can purchase tickets at Asia World-Expo Box Office. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10:00 am — 6:00 pm.

    Reserve Tickets for Hotel Guest

    As a hotel Guest of Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel or Disney's Hollywood Hotel, Park tickets are reserved for your purchase at front desk. Open daily from 9:00 am — 8:00 pm.

    Buy at Hong Kong Disneyland Main Entrance

    Guests can purchase tickets on the day of their visit at the Main Entrance Ticket Booths or Guest Relations Windows. Open daily from 30 minutes before Park opening until Park closes.

Biologists from the John Innes Centre in England discovered that plants have a biological process which divides their amount of stored energy by the length of the night. This solves the problem of how to portion out (分配) energy reserves during the night so that the plant can keep growing, yet not risk burning off all its stored energy.

While the sun shines, plants perform photosynthesis (光合作用). In this process, the plants change sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into stored energy in the form of long chains of sugar, called starch (淀粉). At night, the plants burn this stored starch to fuel continued growth.

"The calculations are precise so that plants prevent starvation but also make the most efficient use of their food," said study co-author Alison Smith. "If the starch store is used too fast, plants will starve and stop growing during the night. If the store is used too slowly, some of it will be wasted. "

The scientists studied the plant Arabidopsis, which is regarded as a model plant for experiments. To give the plants some math tests, the biologists let night arrive unexpectedly early or late for them.

During one of the exams, they shut off the lights early on them that had been grown with twelve-hour days and nights. Putting them into darkness after only an eight-hour day means they didn't have time to store as much starch as usual. And this forced the plants to adjust their normal nightly rhythm.

Amazingly, even after this day length trick, the plants did very well in their exams and ended up with just five percent of starch left over at the end of the night. They had neither starved, nor stored starch that could have been used to fuel more growth.

The authors suggested that similar biological calculators may explain how a migratory bird, the little stint, can make a five-thousand-kilometer journey to their summer habitat in the Arctic and arrive with enough fat reserves to survive only approximately half a day more, on average.

The results of the study were published in e Life.