If you feel yourself turning into an old grouch(脾气坏的人), don't worry — happiness is just around the bend. A survey has found that although happiness dips in those in their 30s and 40s, people start to feel more content with life after the age of 50.

    However an economist found that older people will never again regain the excitement of youth. Rather it is thought that with age, individuals become more pragmatic about the ups and downs that life brings and accept their fortune.

    He questioned those in Britain, Switzerland and Germany and applied the findings to people's life cycle.

    Mr. Van Landeghem, 29, said:“A happiness curve does not necessarily imply that a 65-year-old prefers his own life to the life of a 25-year-old.”

    “Both the 25-year-old and 65-year-old might agree that it is nicer to be 25 than to be 65. But te 65-year-old might nevertheless be more satisfied, as he has learned to be satisfied with what he has.”

    It was suggested the mid-life happiness dip is because this is when people have the most responsibilities — taking care of a family, paying a mortgage (抵押贷款) and having a demanding career. The middle-aged dip in happiness was also compared to that of losing a close relative or suddenly becoming unemployed.

    The study is just one of many put forward as an indicator of what makes for a happy life.

    Psychologists concluded that having money makes you happier, but only if you have a lot more than your friends and neighbors. At the same time, you'd better have enough tie to enjoy yourself instead of spending all your time on making money.

    Separate research found that owning the house of your dreams, the car you always longed for and having millions in the bank doesn't stop that desire to keep up with the Joneses (攀比). And if the Joneses have more than you do, you'll be miserable. It seems envy at being lower in the social pecking order (权势等级) reduces the satisfaction of being well off.

    If you just do what you love and you are good at, which society also values much, you may have a higher probability to be happy. But if your job pays less, how can you stick to it in disregard of responsibilities? Happiness means different things from different points of view, and point of view grows from one's experience and knowledge. Perhaps it comes with you when you don't need to think about adult problems or when you are wise enough to understand what satisfaction is.

    You're in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation: “I can't believe it—Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn't it beautiful? And it's a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome.”

    They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It's nice and the price is right. You've never heard of the brand of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. Their clothes follow the fashion. They must know. So, you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes to be heard by others.

    Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too. This is the secret of undercover marketing. Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.

    Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don't pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation-consumers between the age of 18 and 34.It's a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don't trust ads.

    So advertising agencies hire young actors to “perform” in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice misleading, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative. “Look at traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing.” It is true, because everyone knows an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. However, you don't know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance.

    Here's an idea whose time has come: A flu shot that doesn't require an actual shot.

    For the first time, researchers have tested a flu vaccine patch (疫苗贴) in a human clinical experiment and found that it delivered as much protection as a traditional injection with a needle. Doctors and public health experts have high hopes that it will increase the number of people who get immunized (免疫的) against the flu.

    Seasonal flu is responsible for up to half a million deaths around the world each year according to the World Health Organization. A team led by Georgia Tech engineer Mark Prausnitz has come up with an alternative method that uses “microneedles”. These tiny needles are so small that 100 of them, arranged in order on a patch, can fit under your thumb (拇指). Yet they're big enough to hold vaccine for three types of flu.

    None of the study volunteers had serious side effects. The groups that got patches had mild skin reactions that were not seen in the regular needle group, while the volunteers in the regular needle group were more likely to experience pain. Overall, 70 percent of the volunteers who got vaccine patches said they'd rather use them again than get a traditional flu shot. The study authors declared it a success on all fronts.

    The biggest beneficiaries could be people in low- and middle-income countries, where flu vaccines are hard to come by. Reducing pain is nice, but other benefits—the patch costs less, is easier to transport, doesn't require refrigeration, can be self-administered and doesn't cause waste of needles—are even better.

    "Microneedle Patches have the potential to become ideal candidates for vaccination programs," wrote Katja Hoschler and Maria Zambon of Public Health England.

This famous site features one of the largest and most representative collections of Buddhist architecture and art in China. It was rated as a 5A-class tourist attraction in 2010.

The Lingshan Grand Buddha is an 88-meter-high open-air bronze statue of Sakyamuni. It is 17 meters higher than the Grand Buddha at Leshan Mountain. It is part of the pattern of Five Buddhas in five directions together with the Big Buddha at Lantau Island in Hong Kong to the south, the Grand Buddha at Leshan Mountain to the west, the Grand Buddha in Yungang Caves to the north and the Grand Buddha at the Longmen Caves in the central area. At the feet of the Grand Buddha, you can feel the loftiness (雄伟) and dignity of Buddhism.

Tips：

Location: Lingshan Road, Mashan town, Binhu district, Wuxi

Tickets: Through ticket: 210 yuan ($ 31. 85), and free tickets for the performance of Ode to Auspiciousness for individual visitors

Opening hours for Lingshan Mountain: 7:00 17:00

Opening hours for Brahma Palace: 9:00 18:00

Recommendations:

The Nine-Dragon Fountain

The Nine-Dragon Fountain in front of the giant Buddha will start to play music and the song, The Birth of Buddha, at 10 am every day. A huge lotus (莲花) slowly blooms with six petals, and a 7-meter golden statue of Prince Buddha rises from the lotus, with one hand pointing to the sky and one hand at the earth, symbolizing Buddha's light shining on all things.

The Brahma Palace

The whole palace shows the mixture of traditional cultural elements with Western architectural features. Many cultural heritage items and art works can be found there. Its splendid design surprises every visitor.

Would a person born blind, who has learned to distinguish objects by touch, be able to recognize them purely by sight if he regained the ability to see? The question, known as Mołyneux's problem, is about whether the human mind has a built-in concept of shapes that is so inborn that a blind person could immediately recognize an object with restored vision. Alternatively, the concepts of shapes are not inborn but have to be learned by exploring an object through sight, touch and other senses.

After their attempt to test it in blind children failed, Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London and his team carried out another experiment on bumblebees. To test whether bumblebees can form an internal representation of objects, they first trained the insects to distinguish globes from cubes using a sugar reward. The bees were first trained in the light, where they could see but not touch the objects. Then they were tested in the dark, where they could touch but not see the items. The researchers found that the insects spent more time in contact with the shape they had been trained to associate with the sugar reward, even though they had to rely on touch rather than sight to distinguish the objects.

The researchers also did the opposite test with untrained bumblebees, first teaching them with rewards in the dark and then testing them in the light. Again, the bees were able to recognize the shape associated with the sugar reward, though they had to rely on sight rather than touch in the test. In short, bees have solved Molyneux's problem because the fact suggests that they can picture object features and access them through sight or touch.

However, some experts express their warnings against the result. Jonathan Birch, a philosopher of science, cautions that the bees may have had prior experience associating visual and tactile (触觉) information about straight edges and curved surfaces in their nests.

ChatGPT, a new chatbot model! Developed by Open AI, has quickly become a hit all over the world because of its powerful conversational abilities.

It can write emails, computer codes (代码), songs, poems, and even short stories, and has passed a number of tests within seconds. Experts around the world are discussing whether AI should be used in education. Some schools have banned(禁止)it. The New York City's Department of Education, for example, banned ChatGPT from its public school networks, and some people are warning that it could encourage more students to cheat, especially in exams.

Many more welcome this app, saying that, like most technologies in history, ChatGPT is a powerful tool for the development of education.

Accepting AI as early as possible is a good choice. Schools should make preparations for including AI in their teaching plans. They can start by offering Al courses, because by understanding how it works, they can make better use of it. Besides, students with good knowledge of AI are more competitive when it comes to getting a job, as an increasing number of jobs are being done by computer programs. AI powered education technologies can be used to make the learning experience more suitable for each student. As for teachers, AI can free them from doing some boring work so they can focus on their teaching.

Since we cannot avoid ChatGPT and other AI powered apps from entering the field of education, we should make efforts to make sure they have a positive impact(积极影响)on society and the future of education. AI helps to make learning much more interesting and enjoyable, but humans need to work very hard to win the race with technology.