When I was a kid, I used to spend hours listening to Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky on their Sunday night radio show Loveline. I listened so often that I began to use one of their well-known phrases—"good times"—in my daily conversations. Scientists have a name for this phenomenon: behavioral mimicry.

    You've probably experienced this before: after spending enough time with another person, you might start to pick up on his or her behavior or speech habits. You might even start to develop your friend's habits without realizing it. There is a large body of literature concerning this sort of phenomenon, and it regularly happens for everything from body gesture to accents to drink patterns (模式). For example, one study found that young adults were more likely to drink their drink directly after their same-sex drinking partners, than for the two individuals to drink at their own paces.

And the effect isn't limited to real-life face-to-face activities. Another study found that the same you-drink-then-I-drink pattern held even when watching a movie! In other words, people were more likely to take a drink of their drinks in a theater after watching the actors on the screen enjoy a drink. At least I don't feel so strange anymore, having picked up on Adam Carolla's "good times".

    New research published today in the journal PLOS ONE indicates that the same sort of behavioral mimicry is responsible for social eating, at least among university-age women of normal weight. That's right: the young women were more likely to adjust their eating according to the eating pace of their same-sex dining companion.

As with most experiments, these results raise a whole new set of questions. However, the finding that behavioral mimicry may at least partly explain eating behavior is important, and has real effects on health. The researchers note that "as long as people don't fully recognize such important influences on intake (eating), it will be difficult to make healthy food choices and keep a healthy diet, especially when people are exposed to the eating behavior of others".

    I was sure that I was to be killed. I became terribly nervous. I fumbled(摸索) in my pockets to see if there were any cigarettes, which had escaped their search. I found one and because of my shaking hands, I could barely get it to my lips. But I had no matches, they had taken those. I looked through the bars at the guard. He did not make eye contact with me. I called out to him “Have you got a light?” He looked at me, shrugged and came over to light my cigarette. As he came close and lit the match, his eyes unconsciously locked with mine. At that moment, I smiled. I don't know why I did that. Perhaps it was nervousness, perhaps it was because, when you get very close, one to another, it is very hard not to smile. In any case, I smiled. In that instant, it was as though a spark jumped across the gap between our two hearts, our two human souls. I know he didn't want to, but my smile leaped through the bars and caused a smile on his lips, too. He lit my cigarette but stayed near, looking at me directly in the eyes and continuing to smile.

    I kept smiling at him, now thinking of him as a person and not just a guard. "Do you have kids?" he asked. “Yes, here, here.” I took out my wallet and nervously fumbled for the pictures of my family. He, too, took out the pictures of his family and began to talk about his plans and hopes for them. My eyes filled with tears. I said that I feared that I'd never see my family again, never have the chance to see them grow up. Tears came to his eyes, too. Suddenly, without another word, he unlocked my cell and silently led me out. Out of the prison, quietly and by back routes, out of the town. There, at the edge of town, he released me. And without another word, he turned back toward the town.

    When we're in need, we always turn to our parents for help. But would you like them to hear the conversations you have with your friends on the school playground or lunch queue? Social networking sites have become extensions (延伸) of the school hallways, so would you add your parents as “friends” and allow them to view your online activities and conversations with friends?

    In the past the generation gap included a technology gap, where children were up to date with latest technology and parents were left behind, content to continue their day to day lives as they always had because they had no need to know more about technology. However, more and more parents are beginning to realize just how important social networks are in their lives. This realization has given many parents the motivation to educate themselves about social networking sites.

    These days many people are attracted to social networking sites because they can choose who they have around them; there's also a certain amount of control over privacy that we don't get in real life. Sometimes we feel that privacy is violated (侵犯）when we must accept a “friend” request from a parent or family member.

    It's a difficult choice whether or not to allow a parent to become a part of our online lives. On the one hand we don't want to “reject” their request because that might hurt their feelings or make them feel you have something to hide. On the other hand if you do accept, then you could have a sense of being watched and no longer feel free to comment or communicate the way you did before.

    A recent survey suggested that parents shouldn't take it personally if their child ignores their request: “When a teen ignores a parent's friend request, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are hiding something, but it could mean that this is one part of their life where they want to be independent.”

    Perhaps talking with parents and giving explanations would help soften the blow if you do choose not to add them to your friends list.

    A student is learning to speak British English. He wonders: Can I communicate with Americans? Can they understand me? Learners of English often ask: What are the differences between British and American English? How important are these differences?

    Certainly, there are some differences between British and American English. There are a few differences in grammar. For example, speakers of British English say "in hospital" and "Have you a pen?" Americans say "in the hospital" and 'Do you have a pen?' Pronunciation is sometimes different. Americans usually sound theirs in words like "bird" and "hurt". Speakers of British English do not sound theirs in these words. There are differences between British and American English in spelling and vocabulary. For example, "colour" and "honour" are British, "color" and "honor" are American.

    These differences in grammar, pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary are not important, however. For the most part, British and American English are the same language.

    Becca was 6 when she was told she had cancer on Sept. 8, 2014. She clearly remembers the bad days of her 26 months of non­stop treatment. Luckily, Becca celebrated her final treatment on Nov. 13, 2016, and she has been cancer­free ever since. But she was thinking about what her life was like while experiencing treatment.

    I was never able to do much, and that's what the kids lying in their hospital beds right now experience, asking their mom and dad, "When are we leaving? When can I play with my friends？" So I decided I have to help them.

    In February, 2017 Becca came up with the idea for Knots and Arrows, a company that makes bracelets (手镯) out of swimsuit materials (泳衣布料). Part of the money made from each bracelet goes to the organizations that help people with cancer.

    Becca created the company with her father, Gerhard Salmins. Gerhard Salmins once had cancer and already recovered from it. "I would be in the hospital sitting there crying and then my dad would come in and he would play games with me，" she said. "It made me forget about what I was going through." Becca said the name of the organization shows the motto (座右铭) she stuck to through her personal cancer journey.

    Her organization has already given thousands of dollars to research organizations and families in need. Becca said she hopes her bracelets will make people remember that great things can result from small changes. "No matter what age you are, what you look like, how you act, you can make a difference!" she said.

Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who has a passion for literature and reading. It can be a family inheritance (继承) or it can be just to impress people around you about the fact that you are a person of culture. On the other hand, there are many persons who cannot afford to buy books, because some of them are quite expensive, but they usually go to libraries and spend hours reading something that interests them a lot, or just borrow books to read at home.

From my point of view, literature is very important in our lives from several points of view. For example, reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas of activities. It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field, or you can express your opinion about a political aspect, just because you have read something connected to that.

Secondly, literature offers us the possibility to enter the world of imagination, and to leave apart the real one for a couple of hours. We come to meet kings and queens many years ago, dream in the world of the rich or imagine how life will be in the future. Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve our problems and how to react in certain circumstances.

To conclude, I would like to say that literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express correctly and have a rich vocabulary, to be able to interfere (干涉) in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered an erudite person.