How did people in ancient China change their luck? Most of them would take the exam, Keju, which began during the Sui Dynasty and lasted for 1,300 years before it was ended in the Qing Dynasty.

    Keju, the early “gaokao”, played a very important role in choosing qualified persons to work for the king.

    The Keju exams were mainly based on classical literature(文学) and philo- sophy. Poetry was very important in earlier Keju exams, and later Keju focused more on writing.

    All candidates had to write an article explaining ideas from those books, which was called Eight Part Essay. Two sentences were required at the start of the article, about the main idea of the title, which was called “to clear the topic”. The exams also focused on more practical matters.  

    Most candidates in ancient China had to go a long way to the capital city for the exam. As transportation in ancient times was not developed, they usually went to the capital on foot, and some took several months to reach the capital.

    The exam was held once every three years and it was made up of four levels: the county examination, provincial examination, academy examination and palace examination. Candidates had to first pass one level in order to take part in the next level. Each examination would take from one to three days to finish, and they were locked in a small room and received cold meals.

    On the exam day, candidates had to first go through safety check. They had to let their hair loose so that it could be checked and their trouser legs, shoes and socks, even bottoms were also checked.

    THURSDAY, July 9 (Health Day News) — A new study that found that a lower calorie diet slowed the aging process in monkeys could be the best proof yet that restricted diets might do the same for humans.

    “The big question in aging research is, ‘Will caloric restriction in species closely related to humans slow aging？'” said Richard Weindruch, senior author of a paper appearing in the July 10 issue of Science. This is the first clear demonstration that, in a primate species, we' re inducing a slowdown of the aging process — showing increased survival, resistance to disease, less brain atrophy and less muscle loss.

    “This predicts humans would respond similarly，” added Weindruch, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin and an investigator at the Veterans Hospital in Madison. Another expert noted that, despite some highly publicized studies in certain species, the link between restricted eating and longer lifespan has been far from proven.

    “The idea that dietary restriction extends lifespan in all species is not true. Many strains of rats and mice do not respond. In some strains, it's actually deleterious,” explained Felipe Sierra, director of the biology of aging program at the US National Institute on Aging (NIA), which supported the new study. “The fact that it doesn't work in some mice but it does seem to work in monkeys is surprising and it gives us hope.”

    But there's a larger question: how to change humans' increasingly careless eating habits. “This finding doesn't give me hope that humans are going to go into dietary restriction,” added Marianne Grant, a registered dietitian at Texas A&M Health Science Center Coastal Bend Health Education Center in Corpus Christi.

    Houses have been getting progressively "smarter" for decades, but the next generation of smart homes may offer what two Case Western Reserve University scientists are calling an "Internet of Ears."

    Today's smart home features appliances, entertainment systems, security cameras and lighting, heating and cooling systems that are connected to each other and the Internet. They can be accessed and controlled remotely by computer or smartphone apps.

    But a group of electrical engineering and computer science professors in the Case School of Engineering have been experimenting with a new suite of sensors (传感器). This system would read not only the vibrations (震动), sounds and even other movements associated with people and animals in a building, but also any slight changes in the existing electrical field.

    While there still maybe a decade or so away, the home of the future could be a building that adjusts to your activity with only a few small, hidden sensors in the walls and floor with-out the need for monitoring cameras.

    "We are trying to make a building that is able t0 61isten' to the humans inside," said Ming-Chun Huang, an assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science. "We are using principles similar to those of the human ear, where vibrations are picked up and our algorithms (计算程序) recognize them to determine your specific movements. That's why we call it the 61nternet of Ears'. "

    “There is actually a constant 60 Hz electrical field all around us, and because people are somewhat conductive, they short out the field just a little," Huang said. "So, by measuring the disturbance in that field, we are able to determine their presence, or even their breathing, even when there are no vibrations associated with sound.”

    Huang said they have used as few as four small sensors in the walls and floor of a room.

    As for privacy concerns, the system would not be able to identify individuals, although it could recognize people's different ways of walking.

    A food chain is a simple way of explaining how each living thing gets its food. For example, a simple African food chain might consist of three parts: first, trees and bushes; second, giraffes; and third, lions. Each link in a food chain is food for the next link. Food chains always start with plants and end with animals.

    Plants are at the bottom of the food chain. Scientists call them producers, because they use light energy from the sun to produce food from carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis（光合作用）. Animals, unlike plants, can't produce their own food. Instead, they must eat plants or other animals. This is why scientists call them consumers.

    Consumer animals fall into three categories. Herbivores（食草动物）eat only plants. Carnivores（食肉动物） eat only other animals. Omnivores eat both plants and animals. In addition to producers and consumers, there are also decomposers(分解者).These organisms, such as bacteria and fungi, feed on decaying(腐烂) matter. They help the food chain by speeding up the decaying process that releases minerals back into the soil to be absorbed by plants as nutrients.

    Most food chains have only four or five links in them. As you go up a food chain, the amount of energy at each level diminishes, because some of the energy is lost in the form of waste or is used up by the organism at the level. That is why it takes many plants, for example, to feed a few giraffes who in turn feed one lion.

    Most animals are part of many different food chains, because they must eat more than one type of food to satisfy their energy needs. All of these interconnected food chains form a more complex structure called a food web. Humans, for example, are at the center of a very complex food web, because we tend to eat many different types of plants and animals.

    The recession (衰退) of 2008-09 was remarkable in rich countries for its intensity, the following recovery for its weakness. The labour market has also broken the rules, as new research from the OECD, a think-tank of mainly rich countries, shows in its annual Employment Outlook.

    Young people always suffer in recessions. Employers stop hiring them; and they often get rid of new recruits because they are easier to dismiss. But in previous episodes, such as the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, older workers were also kicked off. This time is different. During the financial crisis in 2008, and since, they have done better than other age groups.

    The researchers focus on movements in "non-employment" as a share of the total population in three age groups between the final quarters of 2007 and 2012. This measure has the advantage of including not just unemployment, where people are looking for work, but also inactivity, where people are not seeking jobs. Whereas the average non-employment rate in the OECD has risen by four percentage points among young people and by one-and-a-half points among 25-to 54-year-olds, it has fallen by two points among the 55-64 age group.

    Why have older employees done so well? In some southern European countries they benefit from job protection not afforded to younger workers, but that did not really help them in past recessions. What has changed, says Stefano Scarpetta, head of the OECD's employment directorate, is that firms now bear the full costs of getting rid of older staff. In the past, early-retirement policies provided by governments (in the mistaken belief that these would help young people) made it cheaper to push grey-haired workers out of the door. These have largely stopped.

    Many will argue that older workers have done better at the expense of the young. That view is wrongheaded. First, it is a fallacy that a job gained for one person is a job lost for another; there is no fixed amount of work. And second, as the report shows, young and old people are by and large not substitutes in the workplace. They do different types of work in different types of occupation: younger people are keen on IT firms, for example, whereas older folk tend to be employed in more traditional industries. There are plenty of things that should be done to help the young jobless, but kicking older workers out of the workplace is not one of them.

What Is a Superiority Complex?

A superiority complex is a behavior that suggests a person believes they are somehow superior to others. People with this complex often have overstated opinions of themselves. They may believe their abilities and achievements are better than those of others. However, the complex is believed to be a defense system for feelings of inadequacy that we all struggle with.

It is unclear why a person develops a superiority complex. Multiple incidents may be the root cause. For example, it may be the result of many failures. A person tries to complete a specific goal or achieve a desired outcome, but they don't succeed. They learn to handle the anxiety and stress of the failure by pretending to be above it. If they feel protected from their failures in this way, they may repeat this behavior in the future.

These behaviors can begin at an early age. When a child is learning to cope with challenges, they may learn to control feelings of inadequacy or fear. A superiority complex may develop. Likewise, it may also happen later in life. As teens and adults, a person has many opportunities to try new things among new people. If these situations are not successfully coped with, a person may develop a superiority complex to overcome feeling isolated.

People with a superiority complex are unlikely to be a threat to anyone's physical health. However, the continuous lies and overstatements can become annoying to others and may negatively affect relationships. It can push away other people in your life and shrink your social circle. If you are in a relationship with a person who you think has the issue, encourage the person to seek help. For example, never hesitate to reach out to mental health professionals. They can find healthier ways to deal with hidden feelings.