The art of growing dwarf trees, or "bonsai"（盆景） as their Japanese planters call them, is increasing in popularity in the United States. Growing bonsai can make a fascinating hobby for anyone who enjoys plants and creating beautiful effects with them.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}．

    In growing bonsai, in fact, one must be careful in choosing the type of tree, as the growing conditions are unusual.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}．Varieties of pines with small needles and hardwood trunks are especially suitable.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}This is necessary because the major growth of bonsai is kept confined(被限制) to the tree's trunk and leaves, not its root system-a process quite unlike what is done with other plants.

    Another thing the bonsai-grower must do is to trim （修整） the roots and branches of the tree periodically （定期地）. Unless this is done, the plants will not have the proper proportions(比例) and will look unnatural.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    The last thing one must do is to be careful to keep the tree well-watered. Because bonsai are grown in smaller-than-usual containers, they often need more water than ordinary houseplants do.

    As can be seen from the above, the art of bonsai-growing is one which requires a certain amount of time and effort.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Imagine having such a tree in your living room and passing it down through several generations of your family. That is exactly what bonsai-growing is all about: establishing a tradition of beauty which lasts for years and years and is a symbol of the beauties of the natural world.

    Trust has been regarded as the basis of any relationship, including friendship. No relationship can last long with a lack of trust. Not many of your friends will have real faith in you as you would like to believe. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Sometimes, it takes years, even a complete lifetime, to trust someone. However, how do we know if our friends have faith in us?

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}With whom will you share things that you don't want everyone to know? It would be with a close friend, whom you trust as much as you trust yourself. While a few of your friend may be fiercely protective of their privacy and may not tell their secrets to anyone, those who do, surely find you trustworthy and reliable.

    Whom do you look up to for advice when you need it the most? It has to be either your parents or your friends. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} This is a shining example of trust. You only seek advice from people you hold in high regard and find dependable. The friends who trust you will never forget to include you in the important decisions of their life.

    Arguments and heated discussions are a part of every relationship, and this is also true for friendship. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} While some people find it difficult to forgive and forget, your friends will never have problems moving on. It is because they trust you and believe that you will never cause any pain to them on purpose.

    There are times in life when you find yourself a lonely soldier. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Your friends will never let you down and will strongly stand for you when you need encouragement. You can determine that they trust you and believe in your beliefs, if they side with you when you need them the most.

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    A recent study points out a so-called “gender-equality paradox(性别平等悖论)”: there are more women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) in countries with lower gender equality. Why do women make up 40 percent of engineering majors in Jordan, but only 34 percent in Sweden and 19 percent in the U.S.? The researchers suggest that women are just less interested in STEM, and when liberal Western countries let them choose freely, they freely choose different fields.

    We disagree.

    From cradle to classroom, a wealth of research shows that the environment has a major influence on girls' interest and ability in math and science. Early in school, teachers, unconscious prejudice push girls away from STEM. By their preteen years, girls outperform boys in science class and report equal interest in the subject, but parents think that science is harder and less interesting for their daughters than their sons, and these misunderstandings predict their children's career choices.

    Later in life, women get less credit than men for the same math performance. When female STEM majors write to potential PhD advisors, they are less likely to get a response. When STEM professors review applications for research positions, they are less likely to hire “Jennifer” than “John,” even when both applications are otherwise identical—and if they do hire “Jennifer,” they pay her $4,000 less.

    These findings make it clear that women in Western countries are not freely expressing their lack of “interest” in STEM. In fact, cultural attitudes and discrimination are shaping women's interests in a way that is anything but free, even in otherwise free countries.

    “Gender-equality paradox” research misses those social factors because it relies on a broad measure of equality called the Gender Gap Index (GGI), which tracks indicators such as wage difference, government representation and health outcomes. These are important markers of progress, but if we want to explain something as complicated as gender representation in STEM, we have to look into people's heads.

    Fortunately, we have ways to do that. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a well-validated tool for measuring how tightly two concepts are tied together in people's minds. The psychologist Brian Nosek and his colleagues analyzed over 500,000 responses to a version of the IAT that measures mental associations between men/women and science, and compared results from 34 countries. Across the world, people associated science more strongly with men than with women.

    But surprisingly, these gendered associations were stronger in supposedly egalitarian (主张平等的) Sweden than they were in the U.S., and the most pro-female scores came from Jordan. We re-analyzed the study's data and found that the GGI's assessment of overall gender equality of a country has nothing to do with that country's scores on the science IAT.

    That means the GGI fails to account for cultural attitudes toward women in science and the complicated mix of history and culture that forms those attitudes.

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    The 17^th-century French tragedian Pierre Corneille wrote: The manner of giving is worth more than the gift”. He had a point, according to Charles Spence, head of Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford.

    The professor's work focuses on how our brains sense the world around us. His research has shown that high-frequency sounds and curved shapes seem to increase the sweetness wine tastes better if it is accompanied by the popping sound of a cork and drunk from all these created multisensory experiences.

    So, what's his advice if you want to impress this holiday season?

Bulk it up hide

    “We've just published research on eating a box of chocolates，” Mr Spence said. “If you are 30-gram weight in a box of chocolates, that weight translates to a significant increase perceived(感知)quality of the chocolate.”

    There are exceptions, but the association between weight and the perception of luxury(奢侈)applies to many items including tableware， perfume(香水)and wine， Mr. Spence said. “That's why in a restaurant， a waiter might artfully give you the bottle to weigh in your hand,” he added.

    Black is basic

    Black is the color most associated with luxury because, Mr. Spence said ，“it seems to be the color that we perceive to be the heaviest.”

    Such luxury indications are learned, rather than inborn, so they can change over time. I'm doing a lot of work on transparency(透明) at the moment; high-quality packaged goods should have a transparent window because it suggests freshness or quality,” he said.

    But the trend is recent， the professor added, because “traditionally luxury goods used to have nontransparent packaging. I think it has to do with the current desire for originality.”

    Layer it on

    Unnecessary wrapping(包裹)can be an ecological concern but, when it comes to luxury goods like wine in a presentation case, it does make an impression.

    “Tissue layers are really good,” Mr. Spence said， “because the crinkle adds an extra sense to the experience.”

    Consider a little perfume in the box or wrapping, and, if you want to involve other senses, work out some way for classical music to be playing when the gift is opened because we associate it with quality.

    Engaging several senses at once is beneficial.“ The brain combines the inputs from each sense, both to determine what something is, but also to determine a reward value,”Mr. Spence said. Also, the more stimuli(刺激)to the senses， the more activity is produced in the orbitofrontal cortex, a small part of brain situated just beside the eyes. And the more activity there, the more rewarding something is perceived to be.

    You can go too far

    “Engaging an extra sense is more effective, but you can potentially have a disagreement if that extra sense doesn't match the others.” the professor said.

The urge to share our lives on social media

    People have long used media to see reflections of themselves. Long before mobile phones or even photography, diaries were kept as a way to understand oneself and the world in which one lives. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as diaries became more popular, middle-class New Englanders, particularly white women, wrote about their everyday lives and the world around them.

    These diaries were not a place into which they poured their innermost thoughts and desires, but rather a place to chronicle (记录) the social world around them. The diaries captured the everyday routines of mid-19th-century life, and women diarists in particular focused not on themselves but on their families and their communities.

Diaries today are, for the most part, private. But things were different for these New England diaries. Young women who were married would send their diaries home to their parents as a way of maintaining kin (血缘) relations. When family or friends came to visit, it was not uncommon to sit down and go through one's journal together.

    Diaries are not the only media that people have used to document lives and share them with others. We have long used media like photo albums, baby books and even slide shows as a means of creating traces (痕迹) of our lives. We do this to understand ourselves and to see trends in our behaviour. We create traces as part of our identity and part of our memory.

    Sharing everyday life events can strengthen social connection and intimacy (亲密感). For example, you take a picture of your child's first birthday. It is not only a developmental milestone: the photo also strengthen the identity of the family unit itself. The act of taking the photo and proudly sharing it further reaffirms (再次证实) one as a good and attentive parent. In other words, the media traces of others figure in our own identities.

    Today's social media platforms are, by and large, free to use, unlike historical diaries, which people had to buy. Today, advertising subsidises (补贴) our use of networked platforms. Therefore these platforms encourage use of their networks to build larger audiences and to better target them. Our pictures, our posts, and our likes are commodified—that is, they are used to create value through increasingly targeted advertising.

    Instead of social media merely connecting us, it has become a craze (狂热) for information, continually trying to draw us in with the promise of social connectivity—it's someone's birthday, someone liked your picture, etc. There's a multibillion-dollar industry pulling us into our smartphones, relying on a longstanding human need for communication.

    The urge to be present on social media is much more complex than simply narcissism (自恋).

    Social media of all kinds not only enable people to see their reflections, but to feel their connection as well.