It is hardly surprising that clothing manufacturers(生产商) follow certain uniform standards for different features of clothes. What seems strange, however, is that the standard used for women is the opposite of the one for men. Take a look at the way your clothes button. Men's clothes tend to button from the right, and women's from the left. Considering most of the world's population—men and women—are right-handed, the men's standard would appear to make more sense（更有道理） for women. So why do women's clothes button from the left?

    History really seems to matter here. Buttons first appeared only on the clothes of the rich in the 17th century, when rich women were dressed by servants. For the mostly right-handed servants, having women's shirts button from the left would be easier. On the other hand, having men's shirts button from the right made sense, too. Most men dressed themselves, and a sword（剑） drawn from the left with the right hand would be less likely to get caught in the shirt.

    Today women are seldom dressed by servants, but buttoning from the left is still the standard for them. Is it interesting? Actually, a standard, once it is set, resists change. At a time when all women's shirts buttoned from the left, it would have been risky for any single manufacturer to offer women's shirts that buttoned from the right. After all, women had grown so used to shirts which buttoned from the left and would have to develop new habits and skills to switch. Besides, some women might have found it socially awkward to appear in public wearing shirts that buttoned from the right, since anyone who noticed that would believe they were wearing men's shirts.

    Sometimes people call each other “scared-cat”. But have you ever thought about this expression? When a cat is frightened, its heart starts beating faster, its muscles get tense, and there are changes in the chemicals in its blood stream. Although the cat doesn't realize this, its body is getting ready for action. If the danger continues, the animal will do one of two things .It will protect itself, or it will run away as fast as it can.

    Something like this also happens to people. When we are excited, angry or seared by other feelings, our bodies go through many physical changes. Our hearts beat faster, and our muscles get tense. All of these changes make us more alert and ready to react. We, too, get ready to defend ourselves or run.

    Human beings, however, have a problem that animals never face. If we give way to our feelings and let them take over, we can get into trouble. Have you ever said something in anger or hit somebody and regretted it later? Have you ever shouted at a teacher, told someone you were lonely, or said you were in love, and then wished later you had kept your mouth shut? It isn't always clever to express your feelings freely.

    Does this mean that it's smarter always to hide our feelings? No! If you keep feelings of anger, sadness hidden away or bottled up inside, your body stays tense. Physical illnesses can develop, and you can feel disturbed badly inside. It can actually be bad for your health. It isn't good to keep pleasant feelings inside either; all feelings need to be expressed.

    Feelings that you keep all bottled up inside, don't just go away. It's as if you bought some bananas and put them in a cupboard. You might not be able to see them, but before you'd smell them. And if you opened the cupboard, chances are that you'd see little fruit flies flying all over them. They are bad.

    You can try to treat feelings as if they were bananas in the cupboard. You can hide them and you can pretend they don't exist, but they'll still be around. And at last you'll have to deal with them, just like those bananas.

    Spend any time in London, England's capital, and you'll quickly gather that it's a multicultural (多元文化的) community. Look around at your fellow passengers on the Tube(地铁) or the bus. They're of every skin color and dress differently to one another. Listen, and you'll hear many other languages besides English spoken. Some of these people, no doubt, will be tourists who are in London to see the sights. But others — in fact probably most — will be living their lives there, along with millions of others.

    Along with white British people, there are Britons from, or with parents and grandparents from, the Caribbean, India, China and most other places. This makes London a fascinating place in which to live. The reason is that when people settle in a place, they don't just buy a house and live there, but bring aspects of the culture of their “old country” with them.

    The most visible sign of this is the number of restaurants offering dishes from different parts of the world. In a city in which it's estimated 250 different languages are spoken, you can expect a similarly wide range of foods to be available. You would expect in one of the world's leading cities to encounter(遇到) French, Italian, Chinese and Indian eateries. But in London you'll also find Polish, Patagonian and Palestinian restaurants.

    However, London's multiculturalism isn't just about food. Many types of people are gathered in one space, but the way they live differently shows in that space. They worship(崇拜) differently, for one thing. Alongside the famous old English churches by Nicholas Hawksmoor and Christopher Wren — responsible for one of the capital's most famous landmark, St Paul's Cathedral—you'll find mosques(清真寺), temples and synagogues (犹太教堂).

    London even speaks its own special kind of English. Language experts created the term “Multicultural London English” to identify the dialect of English that appeared at the end of the last century.

    All of this makes London a very surprising and varied place to call your home. But, in a way, this has long been true. In the 18^th century, the compiler(编纂者) of the first English dictionary, Samuel Johnson, once said: “ He who is tired of London is tired of life.”

    According to Gallup's annual Global Emotions report, people all over the world are more stressed than ever before. Nearly 40 percent of adults from 146 countries reported having experienced worry or stress. And it isn't just adults experiencing these high stress levels; experts have also observed a rise in the number of children and youth. According to another study published in EurekAlert, one in five students are so stressed that they've considered self-harm or suicide. The immense stress they face has been proven to be harmful to their health.

    It's no news that stress can trigger anxiety, depression and self-harming behaviors, and cause sleep problems, social withdrawal, angry outbursts and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. We are moving towards a society where an increasing number of us face mental health problems that stem from high stress levels. If stress increases rapidly, how can we fight it?

    It might sound easier said than done but studies have shown that the best way to deal with stress is to change your perception(认识) of it.

    The University of Wisconsin conducted a study of 30,000 Americans. Researchers asked them how much stress they'd experienced in the past year and whether they believed stress was harming their health. The researchers concluded that people in the study who were exposed to large amounts of stress and viewed stress as harmful had 43 percent higher risk of dying than people who viewed stress as a helpful response.

    More interestingly, those with more positive perceptions of stress had the lowest risk of death out of all involved in the study, even lower than those experiencing very little stress.

    A separate study conducted by researchers from King's College London and the University of Marburg showed students with more negative beliefs about stress experienced more physical symptoms, such as headaches, tension and tiredness during a stressful end-of-semester exam period, compared with students who had more positive beliefs about stress.

    These two studies have proven that stress itself is not actually bad. It is the belief that stress is bad that is bad.

A Brief Introduction to Some Dictionaries

Norman Merriam Webster BES—1850 Dictionary

    This handy translator provides you with 5,000,000 total translation to and from Spanish and English! This dictionary is specially designed for all levels of language skill from beginner to advanced.

Brand V7 Dictionary / Translator

    This special model features the largest and most complete Russian-English dictionary. Advanced English speech, accent correction function and specialized terms database will help you communicate. Business organizers will allow you to stay in touch with the world through all kinds of advanced features.

Seiko WP1500 Rogets III Thesaurus Dictionary

    It is the nearest word finder. It is also great for cross word puzzles. It will show you the time, day and date of local time zone and the same for over 100 cities throughout the world by simply entering the first letter of the name of the city.

Ectaco KD-800 Dictionary / Translator

    This advanced talking handheld translator features the following dictionaries: the general English-Korean dictionary for 215,905 entries（词条）；popular Korean-English dictionary for 183,279 entries, and the dictionary of Chinese traditional characters for 7,744 entries.

The Lingo Traveler 18

    It is a great value as well as an International translator. Draw on over 96,000 words and 8,000 useful phrases. Equipped with a powerful databank, The Lingo Traveler 18 allows you to store all of your appointments, telephone numbers, and addresses.

    Scientists Diego Kersting and Cristina Linares have found that some coral species are able to recover from harmful warming events through a unique survival strategy (策略)—known as "rejuvenescence" (新生)—among corals in the Mediterranean Sea. The findings represent some rare good news for corals around the world, which are facing numerous severe threats—most notably, climate change.

    "The main threats are climate change, overfishing, pollution and coastal urbanization," Kersting said. "But currently, climate change is probably the one causing the most coral cover declines. Warming stresses corals up to a point that may cause death. Some corals bleach (白化) before dying. Other corals do not bleach but die directly." He went on, "Our findings are significant because this survival strategy was only known from fossil corals that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. It is the first time that it has been found in a living coral. Thanks to our findings, we know now that some corals are able to recover, but unfortunately this is not enough in the current climate change context."

    For their research, Kersting and Linares monitored 243 colonies of the endangered reef-building coral Cladocoracaespitosa in Spain's Columbretes Islands Marine Reserve over 16 years, starting in 2002. The monitoring revealed that Cladocoracaespitosa in the Mediterranean uses rejuvenescence to cope with warming events. This process involves the polyps — or the individual coral animals in a colony—shrinking inward and abandoning their skeletons (骨骼) during warm periods, before rejuvenating at a later point. "What happens is that some polyps in a coral colony—sometimes just one— reduces completely its dimensions and partially retreats from its skeleton," Kersting said. "Once the stressful event is over, the shrunken or rejuvenated polyp recovers its size and builds up a new skeleton. Eventually, it begins to reproduce itself through budding and begins to cover the dead colony surfaces."

    He continued, "The results were very surprising because I started to observe colonies that were dead years ago, that were showing living parts many years after their death."