Before I studied psychology, I used to think that people would laugh when funny things occurred. While I was right about that, I discovered there are lots of other psychological factors that make people laugh other than the funny part of a joke. When someone laughs at a joke, there will usually bemore than one reason that makes him laugh—and the more reasons there are, the more powerful the joke will be.

    I was attending a stand-up comedy show in Egypt, and when the man started to make fun of pedestrians crossing streets, everyone laughed their hearts out. The main reason those people strongly laughed was that almost allof them felt angry towards pedestrians who crossed streets carelessly. The joke wasn't only funny, it also made the audience feel that they were right about being angry at those pedestrians. That is, people were laughing both because ofthe funny joke and because of the happiness experienced as a result of the psychological support they got.

    The better a joke makes a person feel, and the more it includes other psychological factors, the more the person will like it. For example, if you envy one of your friends, and someone tells a joke that is funny and, at the same time, makes your friend seem stupid, then you will probably laugh atit louder than if you weren't jealous of him.

    In short, we don't laugh only when we hear something funny; we also laugh when we experience some kind of happiness that results from the other psychological factors involved in the joke. I strongly discourage making fun of anyone or belittling someone to make someone else laugh. All Iwant to explain is that if your joke supports a person's emotions, he will certainly like it a lot.

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    LONDON－Scientists have found an unusual way to prevent our planet from overheating: move it to a cooler spot. All you have to do is send a few comets (彗星) in the direction of Earth, and its orbit will be changed too. Our world will then be sent spinning into a safer, colder part of the solar system.

    This idea for improving our climate comes from a group of U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engineers and American astronomers. They say their plan could add another six billion years to the useful lifetime of our planet－effectively doubling its working life.

    The plan put forward by Dr. Laughlin, and his colleagues Don Korycansky and Fred Adams, needs carefully directing a comet or asteroid so that it passes close by our planet and sends some of its gravitational energy to Earth.

    “Earth's orbital speed would increase as a result and we would move to a higher orbit away from the Sun,” Laughlin said.

    Engineers would then direct their comet so that it passed close to Jupiter or Saturn. The comet would pick up energy from one of these giant planets. Later its orbit would bring it back to Earth, and the process would be repeated.

    In the short term, the plan provides an ideal way to global warming, although the team was actually concerned with a much greater danger. The Sun is certain to heat up in about a billion years and so “seriously compromise” our biosphere (生物圈) －by cooking us.

    That's why the group decided to try to save Earth.

    The plan has one or two worrying aspects, however. For a start, space engineers would have to be very careful about how they directed their asteroid or comet towards Earth. The smallest miscalculation (误算) in orbit could fire it straight at Earth--with deadly consequences.

    There is also the question of the Moon. As the current issue of Scientific American magazine points out, if Earth was pushed out of its current position, it is “most likely the Moon would be stripped away from Earth”. This would greatly change our planet's climate.

    Amazon is breaking into physical retail in a new way. The online retail giant revealed a new kind of physical store concept in a video published on Monday.

    The store, called Amazon Go, doesn't work like a typical Walmart or supermarket. Instead, it's designed so that shoppers will use an app, also called Amazon Go, to automatically add the products that they plan to buy to a digital shopping cart by scanning a QR code(二维码). They can then walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line because Amazon will charge their Amazon account and send them a receipt.

    The first Amazon Go store is located in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. For years, there have been rumors the e-commerce company would expand its dominance from digital to physical shopping. Amazon began experimenting with physical bookstores a year ago, but Amazon Go may mark its boldest bet on physical ones yet. By removing much of the staff needed to operate a store, Amazon keeps costs lower than traditional competitors. It's also in a strong position to bring together data on its customers' shopping habits online and offline to make better suggestions in all situations.

    However, Amazon's move deeper into physical retail shops comes in a sensitive political climate. The company could be perceived as being a threat to some of the 3.4 million Americans who work as cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos for “getting away with murder tax-wise” and having “a huge antitrust(反垄断) problem.” Will the President& shy; elect add “job killer” to the list of criticisms?

    Amazon's effort to launch a new kind of retail store predates(在……之前) the rise of Donald Trump. “Four years ago we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout? Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go?” The company says on an informational page about Amazon Go. For now, Amazon is starting slow. The Amazon Go is only open to Amazon employees in our Beta program, and is scheduled to open to the public in early 2017.

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    Books are for reading, but man must bring to their reading a desire to learn and a power of absorbing. Reading should be active, not passive.

    When students first go to a library, they may be at a loss as to what to read of all the different subjects. Well, Bacon tells you to “look at weak places in your armor(盔甲)”, and shows you how to fill up the blanks in your knowledge. On the other hand, it is no good just trying to fill your mind with knowledge. Knowledge in itself is often useless. A mind filled with too much knowledge is like a room too full of furniture; a man cannot walk about freely in it, and look out of the windows. It is much better to concentrate on a few subjects which interest you and to deal lightly with the others than to march heavily through the whole range(范围) of learning, like a silly tourist going through a museum and not missing a single object. If you try to master every subject you may become very wise, but you will be very lonely and you will probably lose all your friends. So you must learn to pick and choose, and you must also learn to look here and there in a library like a camel eating grass on the grassland. If you watch it eating, you will see that although he is supposed to be one of the most stupid animals in the world, he has at least one of the qualities of the cultured man, the power to pick and choose. A student looking for mental food in a library should take the camel as his model.

    Nations in the UN have agreed that the world needs to completely stop plastic waste from entering the oceans. The UN resolution(决议) has no timetable. But ministers at an environment summit believe it will set the course for much tougher policies and send a clear signal to business.

    Under the resolution, governments would establish an international task force(特遣小组) to advise on fighting what the UN's oceans chief has described as a world crisis. One controversial issue is the wish to include businesses on the global task force. Ministers say the problem will not be solved without business, but green groups point out that some firms in the plastics industry have been against restrictions for decades. Vidar Helgesen, a leading voice in the talks, told BBC News, “Business is listening to markets and seeing how marine litter(海洋垃圾) is a growing popular concern. It's possibly the fastest－growing environmental problem and it's therefore a fast－growing problem for business. We need to bring on board those companies that want to change things, and then look at taxes and regulations to make more companies act.”

    Certainly, there has been resistance from plastics firms to the bans. One UN delegate, who did not want to be named, stated that journalists in some countries were being paid by the plastics industry to write stories about job losses following the plastic bag ban. But they did not mention the jobs being created in alternatives, such as labour－intensive basketwork, which provides work for the rural poor. But some governments are standing firm, and the meeting has witnessed individual nations declaring tougher action against single－use plastic bags.

    The UN's spokesman Sam Barratt told BBC News, “Of course we would have liked to have gone further, but this meeting's made real progress. There's now a sense of urgency and energy behind the issue that we haven't quite seen before. What is obvious, though, is that the UN can't solve this problem on its own. We need to do it in partnership with governments, businesses and even individuals.”

    Reading books and looking at pictures is great, but nothing facilitates (促进) learning like travel, especially for teenagers. Not only do they get to see a world beyond their neighborhood, they also get to experience it, feel it, taste it, hear it and better understand the world around them.

    After nearly four decades in the classroom and traveling the world, Phyllis Duvall Bailey knew this perhaps better than anyone else.

    Becoming involved in the work in AKA Sorority Inc in US, she worked to educate children about the United Nations. There was no doubt in Bailey's mind that the lessons would mean so much more if the students could see things for themselves.

    Starting in 2015, Bailey, 82, set out to take her students to the UN Headquarters in New York City to give them a "Window Seat to the World", and thus transformed them into global citizens.

    Indeed, it is a great opportunity to give students national and international exposure. Since Bailey saw the students as future leaders, she was desperate to expose them to the UN, its mission, its agendas (议程) and its supporting organizations.

    She decided to give $10, 000 of her own money to pay for the late June trip, enough to take 10 students aged 14-17 on a four-night stay in New York. There, they had guided tours of the UN Headquarters and the New York City Harbor (海港).

    It was Quenyaun Payne's first trip to the city and Taylor Sappington's second. Payne, 17, is a senior at Mceachem High School in the state of Georgia, US. Sappington, 15, is a junior at Therrell High School in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Both said their visit to the UN was inspiring.

    "I like not only how countries are working together but they're focused on common goals like global warming and keeping peace," Sappington said.

Payne commented, "The trip was amazing. I'm so thankful Mrs. Bailey made it possible."

    Actually, there are a lot of people grateful for the retired teacher's effort. The United Nations Association of Atlanta recently gave Bailey its Humanitarian Award, and the United Nations Association of the US-awarded her with the National Education Award.

    But Bailey wasn't looking for recognition or even gratitude. Over those four days in New York, she'd already felt it and seen it in the eyes of those 10 teenagers, Payne and Sappington included, who made the trip.

    "It has been a real joy to get to see and watch their reaction to new experiences," she said.