While most of us are happy to take the credit when things go well, few of us are willing to take the blame when things go wrong. Rather than trying to hide our shame or embarrassment, experts found that we are simply less aware when our actions result in a negative outcome.

       The research may explain why we often feel it hard to take the blame for our actions. “Our result suggests that people may really experience less responsibility for negative than for positive outcomes，” said Patrick Haggard, leading researcher and professor of the institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.

      In a series of tests, participants were asked to press a key. A sound then followed, either disapproving, neutral or approving, and they were then asked to estimate the time between the action and when they had heard the sound.

      Researchers found that individuals experienced different levels of responsibility depending on the outcomes. They also discovered they were significantly slower to recognize if their actions had resulted in a bad consequence, compared to when they had done well.

   “Effectively, we have found that we experience a negative outcome differently, not just retell it differently. We make a weaker connection when there is a bad result. And respond much more strongly when something good happens，” said Professor Haggard. When something goes right, everyone wants to take the credit, and when things go wrong, nobody is interested in putting their hands up.

        The researchers say our brain is “very much concerned” with reward, as good results are key to survival. Although our own perception (认知) of whether we are guilty of something or not is changed by the outcomes, this does not provide a defense if we have done something wrong. “Our experience of our own responsibilities can be misleading and can be strongly colored by the outcomes of our actions，” said Professor Haggard. “We have to take responsibility for what we actually do, not just for how we experience things.”

    In the sea there are many islands. In its warm waters there are some little ones. We call them “Coral Islands”.

    A coral island is very nice to look at. It looks like a ring of land with tress, grass, and flowers on it. One part of the ring is open to the water. There is a little round lake inside the island.

    If you look into this lake, you will see beautiful coral. You may think they are flowers.

    If you look at a piece of coral, you will see many little holes in it. In each of these holes a very small sea animal has lived . These sea animals make the coral.

    They began to build under the water. Year after year, the coral grew higher and higher.

    At last it grew out of the water.

    Then the sea brought to it small trees and something else. After some years, these things changed into earth. Sometimes the wind brought seeds to this earth. Sometimes birds flew over it and brought seeds to the island.

    The little seeds grew. In a few years there were plants all over the island. In a few more years there were trees growing there.

    So you see, these islands were built little by little. The workers were very small. Do they not teach us a lesson? Can you think what the lesson is?

    On October 31st, 2009, Chinese famous scientist Qian Xuesen, died in Beijing when he was 98 years old. He is famous as “the country's father of space technology and king of rocketry”.

    Qian was born in 1911 in Hangzhou. He left for the United States after winning a scholarship to graduate school in 1936. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at the California Institute of Technology.

    Qian began his career in the US and was regarded as one of the brightest minds in the new field of aeronautics（航空学) before returning to China in 1955.

    After he returned, Qian set up the first missile（导弹）and rocket research institute（学院) of China. The institute later helped start Chinese space program. He led the development of China's first nuclear-armed ballistic missile (弹道导弹) and worked on its first satellite.

    He retired in the year before Chinese manned space program was launched in 1992. But his research formed the basis（形成基础）for the Long March CZ -2F rocket that carried astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit in 2003.

    In August, 2009, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Qian and praised him for devoting his life to Chinese defense technologies. Qian told him, “I'm trying to live to be 100 years old”.

    By trying to tickle(挠痒痒) rats and recording how their nerve cells respond, Shimpei Ishiyama and his adviser are discovering a mystery that has puzzled thinkers since Aristotle expected that humans, given their thin skin and unique ability to laugh, were the only ticklish animals.

    It turns out that Aristotle was wrong. In their study published on Thursday, Ishiyama and his adviser Michael Brecht found that rats squeaked and jumped with pleasure when tickled on their backs and bellies. These signs of joy changed according to their moods. And for the first time, they discovered a special group of nerve cells. These nerve cells made this feeling so powerful that it causes an individual being tickled to lose control.

    To make sure that he had indeed found a place in the brain where tickling was processed, Ishiyama then stimulated that area with electrical currents. The rats began to jump like rabbits and sing like birds.

    “It's truly ground-breaking,” said Jeffrey Burgdorf, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who reviewed the paper. “It takes the study of emotion to a new level.”

    Burgdorf has played a central role in our understanding of animal tickling. He was part of a team that first noticed, in the late 1990s, that rats made special noises when they were experiencing social pleasure. Others had already noted that rats repeatedly made short and high sounds during meals. But the lab where Burgdorf worked noticed that they emitted similar sounds while playing. And so one day, the senior scientist in the lab said, “Let's go and tickle some rats.” They quickly found that those cries of pleasure doubled.

    “The authors have been very adventurous,” said Daniel O'Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies touch. To him, that finding was very surprising.

    “Why does the world literally feel different when you are stressed out?” he said. “This is the first step towards answering that question. It gives us a way to approach it with experimental rigor(严谨).”

    There is an English saying that “Laughter is the best medicine.” Until recently, few people took the saying seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to look into laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found that laughter can really improve people's health.

    Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their hearts, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, makes the heart beat quicker and makes people breathe deeper; it also works on several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial(有益的).

Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effects of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group that tolerated（忍耐）the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny program. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce a kind of chemical in the brain which diminishes both stress and pain.

    As a result of these discoveries, some doctors in the United States now hold laughter clinics(诊所), in which they help to improve their patients' condition by encouraging them to laugh. They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.

    For many, music is as important to the human experience as eating and breathing. We hear music everywhere—at home, the gym, parties and stores. But what kind of music do we prefer to listen to, and when and why do our musical preferences change?

    The relationship between the change of seasons and musical preferences was the focus of a study led by psychologist Terry Pettijohn. He and his team based their research on a previous study that examined the relationship between popular music preferences and the Environmental Security Hypothesis(假设). The results showed that over time, when social and financial conditions were more risky, the songs of the year that were slower, longer, more comforting and serious were most popular. And during periods in which social and financial conditions were generally stable, the result was opposite.

    Building on these findings, Pettijohn and his team wondered if the Hypothesis could also be applied to the change of seasons. For college students, the participants in this study, autumn begins at the start of the school year. Gone are the carefree days of summer, when school is out. Winter means colder temperatures, shorter days, and, in many places in the country, snow. Spring, however, is a different story. It represents a fresh start and when clocks spring forward, we gain an extra hour of daylight. As students walk into summer, they're absorbed in the sunshine and social activities—and enjoy a break from school.

    But do changing seasonal conditions influence musical preferences? To answer this question, the researchers designed two studies. What did they find? Both groups of college students favored more serious music during the seasons of fall and winter, and more active and energetic music during the spring and summer seasons. And these findings, Pettijohn argues, have practical significances.