Let's say you want to hit the gym more regularly this year. How do you make that happen? Consider putting the habit loop to use.

    Here's how it works:

    A habit is a 3-step process. First, there's a cue, something that tells your brain to operate automatically. Then there's a routine. And finally, a reward, which helps your brain learn to desire the behavior. It's what you can use to create-or break-habits of your own.

    Here's how to apply it:

    Choose a cue, like leaving your running shoes by the door, then pick. a reward-say, a piece of chocolate when you get home from the gym. That way, the cue and the reward become interconnected. Finally, when you see the shoes, your brain will start longing for the reward, which will make it easier to work out day after day. The best part? In a couple of weeks, you won't need the chocolate at all. Your brain will come to see the workout itself as the reward. Which is the whole point, right?

    A five-year-old dog named Kelsey has been praised as a hero for helping to save the life of her owner who slipped in the snow and broke his neck.

    The man, Bob, was alone when he left his Michigan farmhouse on New Year's Eve to collect firewood. Expecting a journey of only several meters, Bob was wearing just long johns (衬裤), a shirt and slippers when he went outside, although the temperature was around -4℃.

    After the accident, he was unable to move in the snow. Fortunately, Kelsey came to his assistance.

    "I was shouting for help, but my nearest neighbor is about 400 meters away, and it was 10:30 pm, Bob explained." But my Kelsey came. By the next morning, my voice was gone and I couldn't yell for help, but Kelsey didn't stop barking."

    Kelsey's companion kept him warm by lying on top of him. She licked his face and hands to keep him awake." Kelsey kept barking but never left my side," Bob recalled. "She kept me warm. I knew I couldn't give up and that it was my choice to stay alive."

    Bob spent 20 hours in the freezing cold. When he finally lost consciousness, his dog kept barking. Finally, hearing the barking, Bob's neighbor discovered him at 6:30 pm on New Year's Day and called the emergency services at once. When Bob arrived in hospital, his body temperature was below 21℃. However, doctors were surprised to find that he didn't have any frostbite (冻疮). They believed it was because of Kelsey's determination to keep him warm, Dr. Chaim Colen, the doctor who treated Bob, said, "Animals can help and his dog really saved him... He was very fortunate.”

    Bob said he was "enormously" grateful to both Dr. Colen and his Kelsey, "They saved my life. They are truly heroes!"

    Living in the wild can be hard. Finding food and staying safe aren't easy. Each day, animals try to survive in their habitats. Not all animals get by on their own. Some animals form a close partnership with other kinds of animals. These pairings are called symbiotic(共生的)relationships.

    In a symbiotic relationship, the animals depend on each other. One animal helps the other meet its needs. Sounds good, right? Not always. Some animals are not very kind to their partners. In some cases, one animal meets its needs but hurts its partner. Take ticks(扁虱), for example. These insects suck blood to live. To get blood, they attach themselves to other kinds of animals. Ticks can pass germs(细菌)that cause disease instead of helping their hosts.

    In other relationships, animals don't treat their partners so poorly. Both animals benefit from living with the other animal.

    Small animals called cleaner shrimps(清洁虾)have found a way of helping fish. As their name suggests, the shrimps clean the fish. They hang out at what scientists call a cleaning station. A fish stops by. Then a shrimp climbs onto the fish and even steps into the fish's mouth. The shrimp uses its tiny claws to pick stuff off the fish's body. That can include dead skin and tiny pieces of food that can hurt the fish. The fish gets a nice cleaning. The shrimp enjoys a tasty meal of fish trash.

    Small birds called plovers(灰斑)are also in the cleaning business. They have big customers-crocodiles. Crocodiles have long noses filled with sharp teeth. Cleaning them is funny. When a crocodile opens its mouth, the plover hops right in. It lets the plover eat small, harmful animals attached to the crocodile's teeth. The plover gets an easy meal while the crocodile gets clean teeth.

    E-Sports, short for electronic sports, is one of the growing industries in the world, with prizes totaling around $25 million up for grabs in some tournaments. E-Sports are professional multiplayer video game competitions. Any video game with a strong competitive element is considered e-Sports. The competition models itself after traditional professional sports in several ways: it uses corresponding tournament formats, involves player contracts, and is governed by regulations. The athletes who compete in e-Sports competitions are gamers．

    The history of e-Sports dates back to 1972 when some Stanford University students competed in the Intergalactic Space War Olympics for the opportunity to win a one-year subscription to the Rolling Stone Magazine. E-Sports pretty much continued on the rather quiet path until the 80s when competitions like the Space Invaders Championship shot them to the spotlight. 2002 marked the beginning of a new era for the sport and laid the foundation for what e-Sports would become thanks to the release of the Xbox live, which brought online play to consoles. Halo Ⅱ became the first game to be shown on national television for Major League Gaming in 2004, paving the way for e-Sports to become a global phenomenon.

    Today, e-Sports are growing at a rapid pace thanks to advance in technology and the arrival of streaming services like Twitch which have exposed video game competitions to a new audience due to their extensive reach.

    To understand how much impact Twitch has made, data from gaming analyst group Newzoo show that e-Sports global audience increased 43 percent from 204 million to 292 million between 2014 and 2016. Interestingly, this coincides (一致) with Amazon's acquisition of Twitch in 2014 and its effort to make the competition a spectator sport.

    This was the first real task I received in my new school. It seemed simple: go on the Internet and find information about a man named George Washington. As I searched the name, I found that there were two famous people having the same name who looked completely different! One invented hundreds of uses for peanuts(花生), while the other led some sort of army across America. I stared at the screen, wondering which one my teacher meant. I called my grandfather for a golden piece of advice; let the coin decide. I flipped(掷) a coin and Ah! Tails (背面)! My report would be about the great man who invented peanut butter, George Washington Carver.

    Weeks later, I stood in front of the classroom and proudly read my homework. But things started to get strange. I looked around the room, only to find my classmates with big smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes and my stone-faced teacher. I was completely lost. "What could be causing everyone to act this way?"

    Oh well, I dropped the paper and sat down at my desk, burning to find out what I had done wrong. As a classmate began his report, it all became clear, "My report is on George Washington, the man who started the American War of Independence." The whole world became quiet! How could I know that my teacher meant that George Washington?

    Of course, my subject result was awful. Sad but fearless, I decided to turn this around. I talked to the headmaster Miss Lancelot, but she said firmly: No re-dos; no new score. I felt that it was not fair, and I believed I deserved a second chance. So I threw myself heartily into my work for the rest of the school year. Ten months later, I sat in the headmaster's office again, but this time a completely different conversation. I smiled and flashed back to the terrible moment at the beginning of the year as the headmaster told me I was good enough to skip(跳过) the 6th grade and started the 7th grade next term.