A new study shows students who write notes by hand during lectures perform better on exams than those who use laptops(笔记本电脑)．

    Students are increasingly using laptops for note­taking because of speed and legibility(清晰度)．But the research has found laptop users are less able to remember and apply the concepts they have been taught.

    Researchers performed experiments that aimed to find out whether using a laptop increased the tendency to make notes “mindlessly” by taking down word for word what the professors said.

    In the first experiment，students were given either a laptop or pen and paper. They listened to the same lectures and were told to use their usual note­taking skills. Thirty minutes after the talk，they were examined on their ability to remember facts and on how well they understood concepts.

    The researchers found that laptop users took twice as many notes as those who wrote by hand. However，the typists performed worse at remembering and applying the concepts. Both groups scored similarly when it came to memorizing facts.

    The researchers' report said，“While more notes are beneficial，if the notes are taken mindlessly，as is more likely the case on a laptop，the benefit disappears.”

    In another experiment aimed at testing long­term memory，students took notes as before but were tested a week after the lecture. This time，the students who wrote notes by hand performed significantly better on the exam.

    These two experiments suggest that handwritten notes are not only better for immediate learning and understanding，but that they also lead to superior revision in the future.

    It's time to stop complaining. The economy might be melting down like butter in a hot pot, but for some people — you , maybe? — this could be a very good thing.

    Here's why. At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let's call these start-ups LILOs, for “a little in, a lot out;” These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers.

    How do you get started? All that's required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you'd do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money. And launching now will make your company stronger later — you'll learn to survive on fumes until the economy improves.

    That's what John Tayman is doing. He's an author who lives in San Francisco, where I met him; he wrote reviews for a business magazine I edited. Tayman knew little about technology and even less about business. And yet he dreamed of a website that would summarize car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new car. “It'll be like RottenTomatoes.com meets Kelley Blue Book,” he explained to me during lunch one day last June. Tayman said he intended to build the site on the side while continuing to write for a living. He'd work on his new company only at night and on weekends. Oh, yes, and he had only about $10,000. “Good luck with that!” I thought. Ideas are much easier to produce than they are to put into practice.

    Tayman went to work with nothing more than his PowerBook laptop. A very well-organized fellow, he quickly discovered a bunch of free stuff online — instructional manuals and sites that walk you through the process from start to finish. Within months, Tayman had a staff of 20 employees working for him in five different countries. MotorMouths.com went live in January. Tayman figures he has worked about 10 hours a week on it and hasn't spent a cent on marketing or advertising. Growth is modest but steady: nearly 10,000 people visit each week.

    You may think, salt is just a simple cooking element we shake on our food for a little extra taste. But salt is much more than that. Without salt our muscles would not move. Our nervous systems would not operate. Our hearts would not beat.

    But do not think rubbing salt in a wound will help. Doing that would be painful and not heal the wound. To rub salt in a wound is an idiom that means to purposefully make a bad situation worse.

    Early humans got the salt they needed to stay alive from the animals they killed. But advances in agriculture led to a diet low in salt. So, humans needed to find other sources. Those who lived near the ocean or other natural sources for salt were lucky. Those who did not had to trade for salt. In fact, people used salt as a method of payment in many parts of the ancient world. The word “salary” comes from the word “salt”.

    Salt also played an important part in population movement and world exploration. Explorers understood that if they could keep food fresh, they could travel longer distances. So they used salt to preserve food and explored the world.

    Salt was so important that, according to food historians, it was traded pound-for- pound for gold. Today, people still use the expressions “to be worth one's salt” or “worth one's weight in salt”. The expressions describe a person of value.

    A person might also be called “salt of the earth”. That description means he or she is dependable and trustworthy. However, when you say “I think we should take what he said with a grain of salt” you mean you accept it but maintain a degree of doubt about its truth.

Unusual incidents are being reported across the Arctic. Inuit(因纽特人) families going off on snowmobiles to prepare their summer hunting camps have found themselves cut off from home by a sea of mud. There are also reports of sea ice breaking up earlier than usual, carrying seals beyond the reach of hunters. Climate change may still be a rather abstract idea to most of us, but in the Arctic it is already having great effects—if summertime ice continues to shrink at its present rate, the Arctic Ocean could soon become almost ice-free in summer. The knock- on effects(连锁反应) are likely to include more warming, cloudier skies, and higher sea levels. Scientists are increasingly eager to find out what's going on in the Arctic.

    For the Inuit the problem is urgent. They live in unsteady balance with one of the environments on earth. Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct danger to their way of life. Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what's happening. In Canada, where the Inuit people are trying hard to guard their hard-won autonomy in the country's newest land, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science. This is a challenge in itself.

    The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that's covered with snow for most of the year. Adventure into this area and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home. Farming is out of the question and nature offers few pickings. Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by taking advantage of sea first. The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the settlers were successful; sometimes they failed and disappeared. But around a thousand years ago, one group appeared that was uniquely well adapted to deal with the Arctic environment. These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing dogs, iron tools and the like. They are the ancestors of today's Inuit people.

    Life for the descendants(后代) of the Thule people is still tough. Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometers of rock and ice, and a handful of islands around the North Pole. It's currently home to 2,500 people, all but a handful of them Inuit. Over the past 40 years, most have abandoned their nomadic(游牧的) ways and settled in the area's 28 isolated communities, but they still rely heavily on nature to provide food and clothing.

    Supplies available in local shops have to be flown into Nunavut on one of the most costly air networks in the world, or brought by supply ship during the few ice-free weeks of summer. It would cost a family around ￡7,000 a year to replace meat they obtained themselves through hunting with imported meat. Economic opportunities are few, and for many people state benefits are their only income.

    People born in winter are more likely to suffer mental health disorders, according to a recent study carried out by researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

    Researchers raised baby mice from birth to weaning (断奶) in either “summer” light cycles of 16 hours of light and 8 hours of dark or “winter” cycles of 8 hours of light and 16 hours of dark. A third group experienced 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark a day.

    Then half the winter mice stayed in a winter cycle, while half switched to a summer schedule. The summer mice were similarly split. The mice raised in equal periods of light and dark were split into three groups, one of which stayed on the 12­hour schedule, one of which joined the winter group, and one of which joined the summer group.

    After 28 days, it turns out the summer­born mice behaved the same whether they stayed on the summer cycle or switched to winter. But among the winter­born mice, those that stayed in winter kept their previous schedule, while those that switched to summer stayed active for an extra hour and a half, which indicates that mice born and weaned in a winter light cycle showed dramatic disruptions（破坏） in their biological clocks.

    The finding is the first of its kind in mammals, and it could explain why people born in winter are at higher risk for mental health disorders.

    “We know that the biological clock regulates(管理) mood in humans,” said study researcher McMahon. “If the mechanism (机制) similar to the one that we found in mice operates in humans, then it could not only have an effect on a number of behavioral disorders, but also have a more general effect on personality.”

    You must have heard of Mr. No Ears. This earless, one-eyed cat from Albufeira, Portugal, is a Facebook phenomenon and has his own book: Saudades Mr. No Ears. But for those of you who don't know him, here is his story.

    Often referred to as the “Lion King of Albufeira”, this adorable cat was the head of a eat colony in the region. Viewed from a distance, he appeared to be a king, sitting on a wall. On most days, this was usually where you would find Mr. No Ears, with the members of his colony scattered around on the walkway. At other times, he was jumping cliffs and running on the beach. No one knew on which day he was born, so his caretakers decided to celebrate his birthday on World Animal Day on October 4th.

    Although there were no ears, his hearing functioned well. One of his eyes was open and purulent (有脓的), with no sign of an eyeball…...Despite all of his problems, he was a strong-minded and happy cat. Some hotel owners found him annoying, ordering his caretakers to send him away so he wouldn't “upset tourists.” But there were just as many people who loved him to pieces, and once he got his own Facebook page, the entire world was at his paws.

    On the evening of 11 September 2015, Mr. No Ears was taken away against his will. Less than an hour later a request was made via a Facebook page asking for money, making false claims that he was “in pain” and “had bone cancer.” It was said that in an attempt to prove cancer which he did not have, Mr. No Ears suffered a heart attack. He then suffered organ damage, including his kidneys and liver. The taking-away of this much-loved cat from his home and family and the circumstances of his death were very emotive subjects, causing shockwaves throughout the animal-loving world.

    Thanks to Mr. No Ears, the Albufeirafs Peneco beach Colony became a household name and a “must see” on cat lovers, holiday choices. You will recognize Mr. No Ears' favorite seat under a palm tree because Mr. No Ears' love-lock is attached to it.