Nowadays, especially in China, everything seems to favor social intercourse, such as gatherings of friends, KTV, group travel, dining togethter, playing cards and Mahjong, plus the Chinese-style “street-crossing group.” Back home, discussions can still be boisterously carried on within the “circle of friends” of WeChat.

      However, these scenes cannot always ease a sense of loneliness. Zhu Ziqing, a well-known professor of Tsinghua University, signed with emotion: “My loneliness increases as scene becomes much busier.” One popular song today is also called “A lonely man in crowds.” Actually, engaging in social intercourse requires ability, while being alone involves the whole character.

    These days, it is not easy to calm down totally and return to one's true self. Willpower, intellect and discipline are required. Einstein said: “It is not your working time but your spare time that determines the possibility of whether you will be successful or not.” The “spare time” he referred to could be taken as “spending time by yourself.”

    Lonely life could be either dull, boring and tasteless or abundant, interesting and colorful, depending on one's quality, ambition and inspiration.

    Just as the body constantly requires energy, the mind and soul also demand unceasing inputs. However, information, to processed and integrated(融入)into knowledge, thoughts and feelings, instead of bustle(忙碌)seems to be the right condition. Successful careers in all walks of life worldwide have proved that “the soul grows in peace and talent is nurtured in loneliness”. In a sense, it may be reasonable to say that “Happiness tends to be shallow while loneliness involves profundity”.

    Man, in fact, needs loneliness more than happy time, and only abundant loneliness can produce quality happiness.

    Ninety years ago a man named Howard Carter made a great find. But he didn't discover an unknown people group or a new plant. He found the resting place of a king.

    People had seen signs of King Tutankhamun's tomb (坟墓) but had never found it. Finally, Carter's team discovered a set of steps that led down to some underground rooms. There Carter found the king's body and many of his treasures.

    Carter recorded his first impression in his popular book, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen：

At first I could see nothing, the hot air coming from the room causing the candle light to flicker (闪烁), but later, as my eyes grew used to the light, details of the room within appeared slowly and clearly, strange animals and gold—everywhere the light of gold... I was struck speechless with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the silence any longer, asked anxiously,  “Can you see anything?” it was all I could do to get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”

    The discovery has made King Tutankhamun, Tut for short, one of the best-remembered kings of Egypt. Tut became king when he was only 9 years old and ruled ancient Egypt from 1332 to 1323 B.C. No one is sure why, but he died suddenly before he turned 20. Because he died so young, there wasn't time to prepare a great tomb for him. So he ended up with a smaller tomb. Its small size was actually the reason why it stayed hidden for so long. And, Tut's tomb was not like other Egyptian kings'—it was not as damaged by time or robbers as other tombs. King Tut's tomb remains the best-kept royal (皇室的) tomb ever discovered. The discovery of this little tomb has helped people learn a great deal about ancient Egypt.

    Let's face it. No one drinks diet sodas for the taste. People drink diet sodas in the hope that it will help them lose weight or at least keep them from gaining it. Yet it seems to have exactly the opposite effect, according to a new study.

    Researchers from the University of Texas said those who drank two or more diet sodas a day had waist size increases that were six times greater than those who didn't drink diet sodas. "What we saw was that the more diet sodas a person drank, the more weight they were likely to gain," said Sharon Fowler.

    The study was based on data from 474 participants in a large, ongoing research project, where the participants were followed for nearly 10 years.

    While the findings are surprising, they also offer some explanations.

    Nutrition expert, Melanie Rogers, who works with overweight patients in New York, has found that when patients are switched from regular to diet sodas, they don't lose weight at all. "We weren't seeing weight loss necessarily, and that was confusing to us," said Rogers.

    So why would diet soda cause weight gain? No one knows for sure yet, but it could be that people think they can eat more if they drink diet sodas, and so over-compensate(补偿) for the missing calories.

    A related study found some sweeteners (甜味剂) raised blood sugar levels in some mice. "Data from this and other potential studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners may be risky," said Helen P. Hazuda, professor at the University of Texas's school of medicine. "They may be free of calories, but not of consequences."

    We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices (装置)well after they go out of style. That's bad news for the environment—and our wallets—as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.

    To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life—from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s.Devices were grouped by generation. Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992.Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997.And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.

    As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones.“The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house,” said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007.We're not just keeping these old devices—we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (排放)more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.

    So what's the solution (解决方案)?The team's data only went up to 2007,but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

    In the waters off Brisbane, Australia, a seven­foot­long sand tiger shark swims in pain. A two­foot­long spike sticks out of her side. It's a piece of fishing equipment that the shark ate carelessly. After traveling into her body, the spike punctured(刺) through the shark's stomach.

    A man swimming in the water notices the shark. Then, he warns Sea World Marine Park in the nearby town of Gold Coast. Sea World sends a 12­person team from its rescue center to where the shark was discovered in Moreton Bay Marine Park. Soon, they find her lying on the seafloor. "She'll die without help，"says Trevor Long, leader of the rescue center.

    Using an onboard crane(吊车), the rescuers move the shark into their boat's 13­foot­long tank(缸). Then Dr. David Blyde gives the shark pain medicine and performs an operation to remove the spike. After that, the team sails with the shark to Sea World 33 miles away. They place the fish in a 49­foot­long tank and wait to see if she gets better.

    To give the shark's stomach time to get better, she isn't fed for the first few days. A week after her operation, Long offers the shark a small, dead fish. The animal refuses to eat. But days later when he drops another fish into her tank, the shark enjoys her meal. By now the shark's wounds are getting better.

    Two weeks after her rescue, they take the shark back to the boat and return her to Moreton Bay Marine Park. As the fish is lowered by the crane to the water's surface, two rescuers jump into the ocean and guide her into the sea. From the boat, Long watches her swim away." The shark has another chance," Long says.

For nearly two decades, a thin, sun-burnt postal worker could frequently be seen carrying packages along a dangcrous mountain trail in the Taihang Mountains.

The 10-kilometer-long route, which is between 20 centimeters and 1 meter wide, is known as the "cat road" by locals, meaning that it is so dangerous that only cats could walk on it. Whereas, Zhao Yuefang, a postal worker in Ewu township in Huguan county, Shanxi province, had to walk the route every day to deliver mail.

Every day at the crack of dawn, he would start his journey along the "cat road". From picking up the day's post to delivering it to villagers and returning along the same route, it took Zhao four days. During rainy and snowy seasons, the mountain road, part of which hugs the cliffs, would become slippery and dangerous. One day in the winter of 2003, the "cat road" was covered in thick snow and he slipped off the trail. Fortunately, he was able to stop his sharp descent by grabbing a tree branch and slowly managed to climb to safety.

By 2012, Zhao had walked more than 300,000 km and delivered over 800,000 pieces of mail. Born and raised in the deep mountains, Zhao truly understands the significance of mail deliveries to villagers. "They depend on the mail to keep in touch with the outside world," he said. "Their sheer joy written on their face while receiving any post struck me," he added.

In 2012, a 67-km-long tourist highway was built and gone were those days when Zhao risked his life to walk on the "cat road". But Zhao was even busier than before. "The number of packages I handle daily now exceeds the number I used to deal with in the past," said Zhao, adding that villagers are turning to online shopping and ordering more and more goods by post.