Mark Twain, the famous American writer and a great master of humor, liked to play jokes on others. But once a joke was played on him. One day Mark Twain was invited to give a talk in a small town. At lunch he met a young man, one of his friends.

    The young man said that he had an uncle with him. He told Mark Twain that his uncle never laughed or smiled, and that nobody and nothing was able to make his uncle smile or laugh.

    "You bring your uncle to my talk this evening," said Mark Twain. "I'm sure I can make him laugh."

    That evening the young man and his uncle sat in the front. Mark Twain began to speak. He told several funny stories and made everyone in the room laugh. But the man never even smiled. Mark Twain told more funny stories, but the old man still kept quiet. Mark Twain continued to tell his funny stories. Finally he stopped. He was tired and quite disappointed.

    Some days later, Mark Twain told another friend what had happened." Oh," said his friend, "I know that man. He's been deaf for years."

    Best friends may be priceless but the cost of keeping the relationship alive is £23,870.

    According to a study, a BFF (best friends forever) does not come cheap with devoted friends spending £4,679 on birthday presents alone over a lifetime. And while it costs nothing to be a shoulder to cry on, big-hearted Britons go the extra mile and spend £168 on pick-me-ups(提神物品) to get their mate through a rocky patch (艰难时刻)like the breakup of a relationship.

    There's a further £242 spent on presents to show how much they mean from gifts bought on holiday to treats for no reason. And distance does not break up a close friendship as BFFs spend a whopping(巨大的) £18,000 on travel to see each other despite being miles apart because of university, jobs and marriage.

    The study by cashback site TopCashBack found on average BEFs who marry can expect £431 spent on them and a further £283 on gifts when they have children. And they can rely on their pals to help out when they move houses as they will obtain £127 worth of housewarming presents and takeaways(a kind of food).

    The survey based on a friendship lasting 40 years found more than eight in ten adults with a BFF felt their friendships were worth every penny.

    TopCashback spokesperson Natasha Smith said: “Those friendships which stand the test of time are often the most important in our lives. However, they come at a cost. From train tickets once a month to flights and a new dress for a wedding on the Italian coast, the price paid for having a best mate can soon add up. But when we asked people to compare their friendship with the financial investment(投资), only 14% thought their friendship was equal to their investment with the vast majority thinking it was worth more."

    Finding your feet in a new town can be hard, especially if you're covered in fur and don't speak the language. But for pets new to Marlborough, help is at hand.

    Marlborough SPCA and the Railway Café, in Blenheim, have joined forces to help welcome pets and their people to the region with a fortnightly morning tea. They hope the morning teas will get tails and tongues wagging as well as giving advice on how to make the move smoother.

    Railway Café owner Leanne Harris came up with the innovative（创新的） plan as a way to help welcome people to the area. Leanne moved to Marlborough from Auckland two years ago and said she initially struggled to find friends and feel part of the community. “Coming from Auckland I thought people would open their doors and that there would be neighbours calling round with cake. I expected people to come to me and, of course, it wasn't like that. I did get lonely. “I hope to save newcomers having to wait as long as I did to feel part of it all. I would like to welcome them to the town.”

    Free platters of sandwiches, cakes and other goodies will be on offer, for the people, while there will be special handmade yoghurt and banana treats for the dogs. The morning teas will take place in the covered area at the back of the popular café beside the railway station off Grove Rd.

    Leanne said she was happy to devote both her time and effort into giving back to the community and felt the venture was a great fit with the SPCA.

    “Volunteering is such an amazing thing to do and it changed things for me completely, and I met some amazing people with similar interests.”

    SPCA Op Shop manager Karina Greenall, originally from the United Kingdom, said she also wanted to help. “I can give advice on how to resettle pets, the best parks to go to , where the best walks are and where the vet centers are in town.” There will be volunteering opportunities too for people where they can help out and hopefully make friends too.”

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    There are an extremely large number of ants worldwide. Each individual (个体的) ant hardly weigh anything, but put together they weigh roughly the same as all of mankind. They also live nearly everywhere, except on frozen mountain tops and around the poles. For animals their size, ants have been astonishingly successful, largely due to their wonderful social behavior.

    In colonies (群体) that range in size from a few hundred to tens of millions, they organize their lives with a clear division of labor. Even more amazing is how they achieve this level of organization. Where we use sound and sight to communicate, ants depend primarily on pheromone (外激素), chemicals sent out by individuals and smelled or tasted by fellow members of their colony. When an ant finds food, it produces a pheromone that will lead others straight to where the food is. When an individual ant comes under attack or is dying, it sends out an alarm pheromone to warn the colony to prepare for a conflict as a defense unit.

    In fact, when it comes to the art of war, ants have no equal. They are completely fearless and will readily take on a creature much larger than themselves, attacking in large groups and overcoming their target. Such is their devotion to the common good of the colony that not only soldier ants but also worker ants will sacrifice their lives to help defeat an enemy.

    Behaving in this selfless and devoted manner, these little creatures have survived on Earth, for more than 140 million years, far longer than dinosaurs. Because they think as one, they have a collective (集体的) intelligence greater than you would expect from its individual parts.

A new study of fifth and sixth graders in Germany examined the relation between classmates' gender stereotypes (性别刻板印象) and individual students' reading outcomes to explain how these stereotypes contribute to the gender gap in reading.

"It's a cycle of sorts," explains Francesca Muntoni, a researcher at the University of Hamburg, who leads the study. "Reading is first thought as a female advantage." It stresses that girls are born to have an advantage in reading, which in turn greatly affects boys by causing them to devalue their actual reading ability. So finally, it damages their reading motivation (积极性)."

The study has proven that boys are less motivated to read and hold weaker reading-related beliefs about their own skills if they hold the strong stereotype mentioned above. And accordingly, they perform poorly in the reading test. The effect of classmates' stereotypes is seen over and above the effect of individual stereotypes. The study found fewer individual positive effects and no effects of classmates, stereotyping on reading-related outcomes for girls.

The researchers say although their study provides evidence of lasting negative effects of stereotypical beliefs in a classroom context, they need more experimental findings on the subject. They also note that students' gender stereotypes were measured by self-reports, which might limit their accuracy. Finally, they point out that their study did not settle how gender stereotypes were formed.

"To solve socially the determined gender inequality in reading and help create classroom contexts that discourage students from acting on their stereotypical beliefs, teacher and parents may consider educating boys and girls in ways that change stereotypical behaviors. And thus students can become aware of their gender stereotypes to counteract their effects on other students' outcomes and to create a gender-fair learning environment," says Jan Retelsdorf, professor of the University of Hamburg, who co-authored the study.

Ida Nelson and her sister were relaxing and enjoying themselves in the sauna (桑拿室) when she heard a series of long low sounds from a small airplane circling the nearby airport.

It was 11:30 at night in the Alaskan village of Igiugig, population 70, and, as she told the reporter, "Any time a plane flies over that late, you know something is wrong."

Nelson and her sister leaped out of the sauna, ran to the window, and saw the problem: The airport's runway lights were out.

Nelson threw on some clothes, jumped into her ATV, and floored it to the airport, where she found a local pilot trying to turn on the lights manually.

"Normally, if you push the button 10 or 15 times, the lights will just light up," Nelson told KTOO out of Juneau. Not this time. Meanwhile, she and the pilot learned of the plane's urgent mission: It was a medevac (医疗救护直升机), there to transport a seriously ill local girl to the nearest hospital, 280 miles away in Anchorage.

Nelson had a plan. Driving her ATV to the end of the runway, she shone her headlights for the plane to follow. Great idea, but it wasn't enough. More light was needed, so a neighbor called nearly every home in the village—32 of them.

Within 20 minutes, 20 vehicles arrived at the airport, many of the drivers still in pajamas (睡衣). Following directions from the medevac pilot, the cars lined up on one side of the runway.

The medevac made its final approach and, guided by the headlights, landed safely. The young patient was loaded onto the aircraft, and the plane immediately took off again. Her illness was never publicly revealed, but she has since been released from the hospital.

In a world filled with uncertainty, the little community's positive activism was a big deal. Not so much for Nelson. As she told the reporter, in Igiugig, coming together "is kind of a normal deal."