The Pacific island nation of Nauru used to be a beautiful place. Now it is an ecological disaster area. Nauru's heartbreaking story could have one good consequence — other countries might learn from its mistakes.

    For thousands of years, Polynesian people lived the remote island of Nauru, far from western civilization. The first European to arrive was John Fearn in 1798. He was the British captain of the Hunter, a whaling ship. He called the island Pleasant Island.

    However, because it was very remote, Nauru had little communication with Europeans at first. The whaling ships and other traders began to visit, bringing guns and alcohol. These elements destroyed the social balance of the twelve family groups on the island. A ten-year civil war started, which reduced the population from 1,400 to 900.

    Nauru's real troubles began in 1899 when a British mining company discovered phosphate (磷酸盐)on the island. In fact, it found that the island of Nauru was nearly all phosphate, which a very important fertilizer for farming. The company began mining the phosphate.

    A phosphate mine is not a hole in the ground; it is a strip mine. When a company strip-mines, it removes the top layer of soil. Then it takes away the material it wants. Strip mining totally destroys the land. Gradually, the lovely island of Nauru started to look like the moon.

    In 1968, Nauru became one of the richest countries in the world. Every year the government received millions and millions of dollars for its phosphate.

    Unfortunately, the leaders invested the money unwisely and lost millions of dollars. In addition, they used millions more dollars for personal expenses. Soon people realized that they had a terrible problem — their phosphate was running out. Ninety percent of their island was destroyed and they had nothing. By 2000, Nauru was financially ruined. Experts say that it would take approximately $433,600,000 and more than 20 years to repair the island. This will probably never happen.

    Looking almost as fresh as the day it was bought, this McDonald's Happy Meal is in fact six months old. Photographed every day for the past six months by Manhattan artist Sally Davies, the kids meal of fries and burger hasn't any signs of mould(霉菌) or decay(腐烂).

    Sally put the Happy Meal on a shelf in her apartment and watched it with increasing shock. Even her dogs stopped trying to steal a free tasty snack.

    “I bought the meal on April 10 this year and brought home to see how it changed,” she said. “I chose McDonald's because it was nearest to my house, but the project could have been about any other fast food. The first thing that shocked me on the second day of the experiment was that it no longer gave out any smell. And my dogs stopped circling the shelf.”

    Sally expected the food to go mouldy after a few days. In fact, Mrs. Davies' surprise turned to shock as the food still had not shown any signs of decay after two weeks. “It was then that I realized that something strange might be going on with this food that I had bought,” she explained. “The appearance of the food did not change as the weeks turned to months. And now, at six months old, the food is plastic to touch. The only change that I can see is that it has become as hard as a rock.”

    The experiment has brought her amusement rather than fear. “Maybe I would be frightened at seeing this if I were a meat eater.” she said.

Do you like spicy food?

    What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can't get enough of it.

    Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

    "We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,"said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

    But before you look at the study, you should first know that "spicy" is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

    In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

    By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

    Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. "It's not that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn," Hayes explained.

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Cala didn't like us. Any of us. We didn't do anything to offend her and she didn't know us but that didn't matter; she still didn't like us.

As new teachers in the Emirati school, we Westerners greeted her every day. She ignored us. She came into our rooms and bypassed us as she shook hands with all the non-Westerners. Whenever we saw her, she avoided eye contact with us. Eventually, we stopped trying to befriend her.

I wouldn't say her nationality but her friends had been fired from the school. We had been employed in their places and that was enough for her to have nothing to do with us.

Well after 16 months in the school we had a secret friend gifting. To my surprise, I drew her name from the glass jar and that meant she was my secret friend. My role was to buy her a gift and say something about her when we publicly acknowledged who our secret friend was.

I decided to gift her a coloured bangle (手镯). I added a postcard and wrote "Love and Blessings, Rose Marie.

Then came the day. We all gathered in the meeting room. When you gave your gift, you said a few kind words about your secret friend and passed the gift to her. What could I say? Everyone knew she didn't like the Westerners. She taught music in the school so I said "My secret friend is someone who brings music to our ears every day." She came forward with a huge warm smile. She hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks and accepted my gift.

Since then, she smiles often. We hug and shake hands when we meet. I have seen her wear my gift several times and I am so pleased.

Spending all day glued to your smartphone probably isn't doing you any favors. Too much phone use has been linked with a range of concems, including sleep issues, joint pain and even relationship problems. But if it's radiation you're worried about, experts say you don't have to ditch your phone. 

"There's no risk of anything hazardous or dangerous with radiation from cellphones, "said Gayle Woloschak, an associate dean and professor of radiology at the Northwesterm Univerity Feinberg School of Medicine. As with all cellphones, along with Wi-Fi networks, radio stations, remote controls and GPS, smartphones do send out radiation, said Emily Caffrey, an assistant professor of health physics at the University of Alabama at Birningham. They use invisible energy waves to transmit voices, texts, photos and emails to nearby cell towers, which can carry them to almost anywhere in the world. But nearly three decades of scientific research has not linked such exposures to medical issues like cancer, health authorities including the Food and Drug Administration say. Here's what we know. 

"Radiation"describes many types of energy, some of which do carry risks, explained Dr. Howard Fine, director of the Brain Tumor Center at NewYork —Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, "It is often sent out from radioactive substances", Atomic bombs, or, to a far lesser degree, X-ray machines, send out energy called ionizing radiation that in high enough or frequent enough amount can damage DNA and cause cancer, Dr. Fine said. 

But smartphone energy falls into a category called non-ionizing radiation, Dr. Caffrey said, which isn't powerful enough to cause this damage. "A lot of people think‘radiation is radiation, 'but it's not all the same, "Dr. Woloschak said. "There's no DNA damage seen from cellphone use. "

Most experts and health authorities like the F. D. A. and World Health Organization agree that there's no evidence that smartphone radiation causes health problems. Still, several studies over the years have made headlines for suggesting their links to brain diseases. Many of these studies have since been proved to be false, Dr. Fine said, including those focused on fifth-generation.