Recently, a cartoon created by studentsfrom China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobilephone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of theworld.

    Although the ending sounds overstated the damage phubbing can bring is real.

    Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cellphone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cellphones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, accordingto the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cellphones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    I climbed Kilimanjaro with Lava Expeditions (探险队) during the rainy season.

    I flew to Nairobi in Kenya and spent several days there. At my hotel in Nairobi I met the rest of the group with whom I would spend the next week. We all travelled on the bus together for a 6-hour journey into Tanzania and then Arusha, a quiet town.

    After we arrived at our hotel in Arusha, we had dinner and a few drinks. Then we were introduced to more members including Taddeus Minja, the main guide, who was very experienced — climbing Kilimanjaro runs through the generations (代) of his family.

    The next day the Lava Expeditions members checked if we had the correct and enough clothing for our expedition on Kilimanjaro. Only one person needed to bring more clothes.

    After that we set off, walking in the rain through the beauty of the rainforest, all the way to the first camp. I was happy the next few days as the view was so wonderful and changed every day. I suffered a little during the trip and I felt so tired. But the members of Lava Expeditions provided me with lots of encouragement, which was one of the best memories. Finally we reached the top of Kilimanjaro in bright blue skies.

I felt excited about climbing Kilimanjaro and the feeling didn't change during my trip. Lava Expeditions looked after me so well that I was deeply thankful for their help.

    If you are taking vitamin supplements to reduce your risk of heart disease or cancer, a group of health experts want you to know that those vitamins may actually increase your risk of cancer.

    The US Preventive Services Task Force came to this conclusion after reviewing dozens of studies.

    Nearly half of adults in the US take at least one vitamin or mineral supplement on a regular basis. These pills are advertised as a way to promote general health. In some cases, manufacturers promote them as cancer fighters and heart protectors.

    Studies in animals and in laboratory dishes suggest that oxidative(氧化性的) stress contributes to diseases like cancer and heart disease. If so, there is a reason to believe that antioxidants—including beta-carotene, vitamins A, C, and E—could be useful as preventive medicines.

    But when the Task Force examined the medical evidence on vitamins, it found “inadequate(不充分的) evidence” to support the claims that vitamin and mineral supplements benefit healthy adults.

    “Cardiovascular(心血管的) disease and cancer have a significant health impact in America, and we all want to find ways to prevent these diseases,” Dr. Virginia Moyer, who heads the Task Force, said in a statement. But so far, she added, the medical evidence does not show that taking vitamins is helpful in this regard.

    However, the Task Force did find “adequate evidence” that people with a raised risk for lung cancer actually increase their risk further by taking beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A.

    The Task Force recommendations of taking vitamins regularly apply to healthy adults aged 50 and older who don't have “special nutritional needs”. The advice does not apply to children, women who are pregnant or may become pregnant, people with chronic illnesses, or people who have to take supplements because they can't get all their essential nutrients from their diet.

    What do Leonardo da Vincii, Marie Curie, and Albert Einstein have in common? They were all left-handed, along with other famous people including Brad Pitt Prince William, and Barack Obama. In fact, an estimated 13 percent of the world's population may be left-handed and still most people around the world are right-handed.

    What makes a person become right-handed rather than left-handed? As yet no one really knows for sure. One simple idea suggests that people normally get right-handedness from their parents. Studies have found that two right-handed parents have only a 9.5 percent chance of having a left-handed child, whereas two left-handed parents have a 26 percent chance of having a left-handed child. Another common theory is that left-handed people suffer mild brain damage during birth, which makes them left-handed. However, if this theory were true, it would not explain why the percentage of left-banded people is so similar in every society, when birth conditions vary so much from society to society.

    Whatever the reasons behind it, people's attitudes toward left-handedness have changed a lot over the years. Statistics show that although 13 percent of young people (10-20 years old) are left-handed, only 6 percent of the elderly are left-handed. Left-handed children used to be punished until they began using their right hand like other children, but today people who are left-handed are no longer looked down on nor are they considered abnormal. For most people today, either case is perfectly acceptable.

Letter One

Dear Editor,

    After I finish my homework, I often go online and chat with my friends. Sometimes I play computer games. But my parents hate to see me playing games on the computer. Maybe they have heard too much news about how QQ and computer games harm children. Once I went to a net bar(网吧) to play games after school. But after that I told my parents that I was playing basketball at school. I said so because I didn't want to make them unhappy. I feel bad about it. However, I need to rest for a while by playing computer games after studying for a long time. I really want my parents to understand that. Do foreign parents do the same to their children? Please help me.

Li Ping,

Beijing

Letter Two

Dear Li Ping,

    I don't think it's strange for parents to keep their children away from anything bad. Foreign parents will do the same as your parents! They may not let their children watch TV for too long a time, or like your parents, they don't want their children to play computer games.

    Talk to your parents and be honest to them, I think. Tell them what you are doing and why you are doing so to make them understand you. It's never good to do things behind your parents. They aren't fools as you think sometimes! Our parents seem to know what is the best for us.

Remember: to be honest is the best way.

Good luck,

Rebecca

    Nearly 20 U.S. states have started carrying out former president Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which places limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in an effort to reduce the impacts of climate change. The plan has been in legal limbo (边缘) for the past year. Yet scientists have now calculated another outcome of the policy: harm to crop yields (产量) if the plan is cancelled. Along with carbon pollution, coal-fired power plants spew (喷出) pollutants that form what we know as smog. The contribution of smog to increased rates of asthma (哮喘) and premature deaths was already known. The new research estimates the extent to which smog, under air-pollution policies-4n place before the Clean Power Plan, would limit production in 2020 of four major crops: corn, cotton, potatoes and soybeans.

    Led by environmental engineer Shannon L. Capps, now at Drexel University, the team also sketched the extent to which those crop production losses would reduce under three nationwide scenarios (方案). One improved the efficiency of individual power plants. Another modeled a policy similar to the Obama plan, setting state CO₂ emissions goals for the electricity department. A third established a tax on carbon emissions, under which emissions fell the most. But the greatest drop in smog-forming pollutants—and greatest gains in crop yields—came from policies such as the Clean Power Plan.

    Researchers calculated how well each scenario would reduce the potential productivity loss (PPL) of each crop. PPL is a projected value for 2020 and indicates how much crop growth would suffer because of smog. Scenario 2 most closely agrees with results expected from the Clean Power Plan.