Two recent studies have found that punishment is not the best way to influence behavior.

    One showed that adults are much more cooperative if they work in a system based on rewards. Researchers at Harvard University in the United States and the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden did the study.

    They had about two hundred college students play a version of the game known as the Prisoner's Dilemma. The game is based on the tension between the interests of an individual and a group. The students played in groups of four. Each player could win points for the group, so they would all gain equally. But each player could also reward or punish each of the other three players. Harvard researcher David Rand says the most successful behavior proved to be cooperation. The groups that rewarded the most earned about twice as much in the game as the groups that rewarded the least. And the more a group punished itself, the lower its earnings. The study appeared last month in the journal Science.

    The other study involved children. It was presented last month in California at a conference on violence and abuse（虐待）. Researchers used intelligence tests given to two groups. More than eight hundred children were aged two to four the first time they were tested. More than seven hundred children were aged five to nine. The two groups were retested four years later, and the study compared the results with the first test. Both groups contained children whose parents used physical punishment and children whose parents did not.

    The study says the IQs of the younger children who were not spanked were five points higher than those who were. In the older group, the difference was almost three points. The more they are spanked, the slower their mental development.

A

    About three hours after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas as a Category ( 级 别 ) 4 storm, it was downgraded to a Category 3 storm after winds decreased to 125 mph from maximum winds of 130 mph.

    Harvey also made a second landfall on the northeastern shore of Copano Bay around the time it was downgraded.

    The storm is the strongest to hit the state in decades, with serious flooding expected. The last Category 4 storm to hit the U.S. was Charley in 2004 in Florida, while the last Category 4 storm to hit Texas was Carla in 1961.

    Residents staying in the area madly stocked up on(备足) food, water and gas, while others heading out of the storm's path boarded up windows and doors of their homes and businesses.

    Airlines canceled flights, schools were closed while concerts and other planned events in Houston and coastal cities were postponed.

    The hurricane's effects are expected to last for days, with heavy rainfall through next week estimated to be as high as 40 inches in some areas.

    The National Weather Service warned Harvey could bring a potentially destroying storm surges( 风 暴 潮 ), heavy rainfall and wind hazards( 危 害 ) to the Lone Star State's coast. A tornado watch is in effect for areas of southeastern Texas and southwest Louisiana.

    Life-threatening storm surge waters could reach 9 to 13 feet above ground level. Destroying flooding is expected across parts of the area. And rainfall will be heavy, with an estimated 15 to 30 inches of rain falling in many areas and as high as 40 inches in some from today through Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

    People say that text messages and e-mails lack emotion compared to phone or face-to-face conversations. But one thing seems to improve it – the emoticon(表情符).

    These little symbols – whether it's a wink(眨眼); -), a smiley : -) or a sad face : -) - always add a little something to whatever you are sending out, making it more expressive than cold words on a screen.

    To be sure, emoticons have changed the way that we communicate with each other. But there is more: a new study found that they are even changing how our brains work – we now react to emoticons in the same way as we would to real human faces, reported Live Science.

    It's actually amazing when you start to think about it: what an emoticon consists of is simply three punctuation marks(标点符号) – on their own, they carry no meaning as a pair of eyes, a nose or a mouth, but after they were first put together as symbols for faces in 1982, they began to appear more and more in our written materials.

    Owen Churches, a scientist at Flinders University in Australia, wanted to find out what people see in emoticons that make them so popular. So he showed 20 participants images of real faces, a smiley emoticon and a series of meaningless characters while their brain activities were monitored.

    Previous studies have already shown that our brains process human faces differently than they do other objects – they analyze the position of the mouth relative to the nose and the eyes to “read” for emotions. As a result, certain parts of our brain, such as the occipital-temporal cortex, are activated(激活).

    When Churches compared participants' brain activities, he was surprised to find that the brain areas that were activated when people looked at smiley emoticons were the same as when they were shown pictures of real faces.

    According to Churches, this is a good example of how culture is shaping our brains. “Emoticons are a new form of language that we're producing,” Churches told ABC Science. “Before 1982 there would be no reason that ':-)' would activate face-sensitive areas of the cortex, but now it does because we've learnt that this represents a face.”

    Next time you chat with your friends online, try to use emoticons where they are needed. It'll be almost like you're smiling or winking at them yourself.

    Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people were always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experienced ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky. Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research. Over the years I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and had them take part in various experiments.

    In one of the experiments, I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, asking them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper, saying, "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and you will win $50." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

    Unlucky people are generally more nervous than lucky people, and this anxiety affects their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to gatherings concentrating on finding their perfect partners and miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

    Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually showed that lucky people are skilled at noticing opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition (直觉), are open to new experiences, and adopt a never-say-die attitude that transforms bad luck into good luck.

    Artificial intelligence can predict when patients with a heart disorder will die, according to scientists.

    The software learned to analyze blood tests and scans of beating hearts to spot signs that the organ was about to fail. The team, from the UK's Medical Research Council, said the technology could save lives by finding patients that need more aggressive treatment. The results were published in the Journal of Radiology.

    According to the researchers, high blood pressure in the lungs damages part of the heart, and about a third of patients die within five years after being diagnosed. There are treatments: drugs, injections straight into the blood vessels, a lung transplant. But doctors need to have an idea of how long patients might have left, in order to pick the right treatment.

    The software was given scans of 256 patients' hearts, and blood test results. When this data was combined with eight years of patient health records, the artificial intelligence predicted when patients would die.

    The software could look about five years into the future. It correctly predicted those who would still be alive after one year about 80% of the time. The figure for doctors is 60%.

    The team now want to test the software works in other patients in different hospitals before assessing whether it should be made widely available to doctors. The researchers also want to use the technology in other forms of heart failure, such as cardiomyopathy, to see who might need a pacemaker or other forms of treatment.

    Dr Mike Knapton, from the British Heart Foundation, said, "This exciting use of computer software in medical practice will help doctors in the future to make sure that patients are receiving the correct treatment before the condition deteriorates and leaves them needing a lung transplant. The next step is to test this technology in more hospitals with heart disease."

A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people hardly visited.The house was very old and the owner hardly ever came out.When he did come out he would not say hello to neighbors or passers-by but simply just glare(瞪眼看)at them.

The boy knocked on the door and waited,sweating from fear of the old man.The boy's parents told him to stay away from the house.A lot of the other neighborhood children were told the same from their parents.

As he was ready to walk away,the door slowly opened."What do you want?" the old man said.The little boy was very afraid but he had a quota(份额) to meet for school with selling the magazines.

"Uh,sir,I uh am selling these magazines and uh I was wondering if you would like to buy one." The old man just stared at the boy.The boy could see inside the old man's house and saw that he had dog figurines(小狗雕像) on the wall."Do you collect dogs?" the little boy asked."Yes,I have many collections in my house.They are my family here.They are all I have." The boy then felt sorry for the man,as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul."Well,I do have a magazine here for collectors.It is perfect for you.I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much." The old man was ready to close the door on the boy and said,"No,boy,I don't need any magazines of any kind,now goodbye."

The little boy was sad that he was not going to make his quota with the sale.He was also sad for the old man being so alone in the big house that he owned.The boy went home and then had an idea.He had a little dog figurine that he got some years ago from an aunt.The figurine did not mean nearly as much to him since he had a real live dog and a large family.

注意：1）续写词数应为150左右;

2）请按如下格式作答。

The boy headed back down to the old man's house with the figurine.

From that day on something changed inside the old man.