There's a curious thing about people.All of us are driven in some way or another to achieve—we want to run faster,be more creative,win more awards,and earn more money.But here's the thing: if you want to offer warm words of wisdom,constructive criticism or "360-degree feedback",then think again.Most of us would rather not hear it.

    Our easily-broken egos（自尊心）are partly to blame.We all want to meet our own expectations of ourselves,and so being critised can present a huge threat to our egos.Yet as decades of psychological theory and research have indicated,people have endless tricky strategies of remaining positive in the face of criticism.For this reason,rather than us welcoming feedback with open arms,our first response is often an automatic defense.These reactions serve to make us feel better about ourselves.

    Psychological research exposes this unhealthy appetite for ignorance.In one study,students watched a false educational film about a serious disease called "TAA Deficiency".In fact,TAA Deficiency is completely fictional,but the students were not told this information;instead,they were asked whether they wished to provide a cheek test for assessing（评估）their risk of developing the disease.Half of the students were told that if they ever developed TAA Deficiency,then the treatment would involve them taking a two-week course of pills.Of this group,52% agreed to provide the cheek test.The other half of students learned the treatment would involve taking the pills for the rest of their lives.Of this group,only 21% agreed to the test.

    These findings show a common pattern seen in other studies within and beyond the context of healthcare.That is,people are especially resistant to hearing feedback when they believe it could force them to do something difficult or unpleasant.

    Plants are helpful to human: they provide us with wood and other products, they give us shade, and they help to prevent drought and floods.

    Sadly, in many parts of the world man has not realized that the third of these services is the most important. In his eagerness to draw quick profit from the trees, he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had.

    Several thousand years ago a rich and powerful country cut down its trees to build warships, with which to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire but, without its trees, its soil became hard and poor. When the empire fell to pieces, the country found itself faced by floods and starvation.

    Even if a government realizes the importance of a plentiful supply of trees, it is difficult for it to persuade the villager to see this. The villager wants wood to cook his food with, and he can earn money by making charcoal(木炭) or selling wood to the townsman. He is usually too lazy or too careless to plant and look after trees. So unless the government has a good system of control, or can educate the people, the forests will slowly disappear.

    This does not only mean that the villagers? Sons and grandsons have fewer trees. The results are even more serious. For where there are trees their roots break the soil up—allowing the rain to sink in and also hold the soil, thus preventing it being washed away easily, but where there are no trees, the soil becomes hard and poor. The rain falls on hard ground and flows away on the surface, causing floods and carrying away with it the rich topsoil, in which crops grow so well. When all the topsoil is gone, nothing remains but a worthless desert.

    As self — driving cars come closer to being common on American roads, much of the rhetoric (说辞) promoting them has to do with safety. About 40,000 people die on U. S. roads every year, and driver errors are linked to more than 90 percent of crashes. But many of the biggest advocates of autonomous vehicles aren't car companies looking to improve the safety of their existing products. Huge backing for self - driving technologies is coming from Silicon Valley giants like Google and Apple.

    Those of us who have studied the relationship between technology and society tend to look more carefully at the motivations behind any technological push. In this case, it's clear that in addition to addressing safety concerns, Silicon Valley firms have a strong incentive (动机) to create a new venue for increasing the use of their digital devices. Every minute people spend on their mobile phones provides data - and often money - to tech companies.

    At present, digital devices and driving are in conflict: There are serious, often fatal, consequences when drivers use smartphones to talk or to text. Regulators and safety advocates look to resolve dial conflict by banning phone use while driving - as has happened in virtually every state. But the tech companies are taking a different approach. The obvious answer for Silicon Valley is creating an antomobile in which continuous cellphone use no longer poses a threat to anyone.

    In recent years, the amount of time adults spend on their mobile devices has grown rapidly. At the moment, it's around four hours a day for the average adult in the U. S. However, that rapid growth is likely to slow down as people run out of time that ' s available for them to use their devices. Unless, of course, there's a new block of time that suddenly opens up. The average American now spends about 48 minutes in a car every day, a sizable opportunity for increased cellphone use.

    So as the public conversation around autonomous cars highlights the safety advantages, don't forget the tech industry ' s powerful desire for more profits, which goes well beyond simply saving us from ourselves.

    We humans spend about one-third of our lives asleep. This may sound like a lot of time, but it is not wasted. Sleep not only helps us stay healthy but it also helps our brains remember. Our brains need good sleep to remember what we do and learn during the other two thirds of our lives when we are awake.

    Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that sleep helps improve brain performance by shrinking(收缩)synapses in the brain. A synapse is the area where cells pass messages to other cells.

    Scientist Chiara Cirelli is a leader at the school's Center for Sleep and Consciousness. She told the reporter that sleep is when the human brain mixes information it has learned while awake into its general collection of knowledge. Meanwhile, the brain forgets unimportant details. This forgetting is important. It makes space for new learning and new memories.

    Cirelli said that the Centers research began with this hypothesis(假设): We sleep so that our brain can repair and refresh itself. She said the idea seems simple and reasonable. However, testing and discovering how it works has been extremely difficult.

    Synapses are only about 20-40 nanometers(纳米)wide. The team began their study by measuring the size of the synapses to look for changes in these already tiny spaces between nerve cells. Cirelli says the process(过程) is difficult because"all the actual measurements of the synapses have to be done by hand." The team had to wait until improvements in laboratory technology made it possible to see these tiny changes. A University of Wisconsin press release called the research a"huge job." Many research specialists worked for four years to photograph, rebuild and study certain areas of a mouse brain. The report also said the scientists measured 6,920 synapses.

    Cirelli says they found that our synapses shrink as our brains clean themselves during sleep. We wake up refreshed and ready to fill those synapses with new information. The research findings are the result of years of hard work at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

    When you choose a friend, you should be very careful. A good friend can help you study. You can have fun together and make each other happy. Sometimes you will meet fair weather friends. They will be with you as long as you have money or luck, but when you are down, they will run away. How do I know when I have found a good friend? I look for certain qualities of character, especially understanding, honesty and reliability (可靠).

    Above all else, I look for understanding in a friend. A good friend tries to understand how another person is feeling. He is not quick to judge. Instead, he tries to learn from others. He puts himself in the other person's place, and he tries to think of ways to be helpful. He is also a good listener.

    At the same time, however, a good friend is honest. He does not look for faults (过错) in others. He notices their good points. In short, good friends will be honest to each other and accept each other.

    Another quality of a friend is reliability. I can always depend on a good friend. If he tells me he will meet me somewhere at a certain time, I can be sure that he will be there. If I need a favor, he will do his best to help me. If I am in trouble, he will not run away from me.

    There is a fourth quality that makes a friend special. A special friend is someone with whom we can have fun. We should enjoy our lives, and we would enjoy our friendship. That is why I especially like friends who are fun to be with. A good friend likes the same things I like. We share experience and learn from each other. A good friend has a good sense of humor, too. He likes to laugh with me. That is how we share in the joy of being friends. And I know that he is looking for the same quality in me.

    When I meet someone who is reliable, honest, and understanding, I know I've found a friend!

Diving in the ocean, marine biologist Erika Woolsey has seen how coral reefs (珊瑚礁) are being damaged by climate change. It has made her decide to find a way to share her experience —including those who can't easily explore the ocean.

Through her non-profit, The Hydrous, Woolsey is using virtual reality to bring the ocean to everyone. Scientists, filmmakers and divers are taking people on immersive (沉浸式的) virtual dives, attracting attention to reef damage and expecting action to protect our sea. About 25% of marine species depend on coral reefs. However, climate change, pollution and overfishing have done harm to around half the world's shallow water coral reefs.

Twenty years of underwater exploration has given Woolsey a detailed understanding of the dangerous situations facing reefs. "I've seen this first-hand shift. Healthy colourful coral reefs become what look like the moonscape step by step," Woolsey says.

It is through this experience that The Hydrous team set out to recreate with their award-winning film Immerse. Intended to watch with a VR headset, viewers join Woolsey for a nine-minute guided virtual div e on the coral reefs, immersed in a 360-degree underwater view.

They swim alongside sea turtles and sharks before witnessing the worsening of the reefs. The experience often brings out strong feelings. "As soon as people take off that headset and look me in the eye, they want to tell me a story about their ocean experience," Woolsey says. "It's that human connection to our ocean that will solve our ocean problems."

Woolsey hopes advances in camera technology will allow her team to take more and more people to places in the ocean that are underexplored and places further away from human civilization. They are developing a virtual experience that will put the people in the role of a marine biologist, carrying out biodiversity surveys underwater, and even transporting the viewers to space to monitor global sea surface temperatures.