{#blank#}1{#/blank#} If you are growing tomatoes in your backyard for sale you are producing for the market. You might sell some to your neighbor and some to the local manager of the supermarket. But in either case, you are producing for the market. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} If people stop buying tomatoes, you will stop producing them.

    If you take care of a sick person to earn money, you are producing for the market. If your father is a steel worker or a truck driver or a doctor or a grocer, he is producing goods or service for the market.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} You may spend money in stores, supermarkets, gas stations and restaurants. Still you are buying from the market. When the local grocer hires you to drive the delivery truck, he is buying your labor in the labor market.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} But for each person or business that is making and selling something, it is very concrete(具体的). If nobody buys your tomatoes, it won't be long before you get the message. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} It is telling you that you are using energies and resources in doing something the market doesn't want you to do.

    The human athlete has a special trick that no other animal has. It is called self-talk. Athletes talk to themselves to warm up, to focus and to help themselves believe they will win. A few simple words like “I can do it!” and “It is now or never!” can make the difference between winning gold or not.

    Self-talk is also used by speakers, actors and other performers. Before a speech, politicians believe that their words will win votes. And, self-talk helps students stay calm even when stumped by hard exam questions. Self-talk is a life skill you can use wherever you are, whenever you need it.

    The whole idea of talking to themselves seems strange to many people. Imagine your teacher saying, “For homework, talk to yourself for half an hour tonight.” You might think he is playing a joke on your class. Instead, adults teach kids all about talking to other people. There are many books on why, when, what and how to communicate with the rest of the world. Thus, you can grow up knowing a lot more about people around you than about yourself.

    It is good to speak and listen to others. But there is great value in making time to listen to yourself. When you do, you get to know yourself better. Along the way, you may discover the power you have for using words well.

    Such ideas are so exciting to psychologists that they have been trying to learn more about self-talk. In the study, people found certain lost items at home more easily when they talked to themselves while searching for the things.

There is plenty of complaints about how social media-texting in particular—may be harming children's social and intellectual development. But a new study suggests that constant instant messaging (IM'ing) and texting among teens may also provide benefits, particularly for those who are introverted (内向的).

British researchers studied instant messages exchanged by 231 teens, aged 14 to 18. All of the participants were “regular” or “extensive” IM'ers. In the U. S., two thirds of teens use instant messaging services regularly, with a full third messaging at least once every day.

The researchers analyzed 150 conversations in the study, and reported the results in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. In 100 of these chats, the study participant began IM'ing while in a negative emotional state such as sadness, distress or anger. The rest were conversations begun when the participant was feeling good or neutral. After the chat, participants reported about a 20% reduction in their distress—not enough to completely eliminate it, but enough to leave them feeling better than they had before reaching out.

“Our findings suggest that IM'ing between distressed adolescents and their peers may provide emotional relief and consequently contribute to their well-being,” the authors write, noting that prior research has shown that people assigned to talk to a stranger either in real life or online improved their mood in both settings, but even more with IM. And people who talk with their real-life friends online also report feeling closer to them than those who just communicate face-to-face, implying a strengthening of their bond.

    Why would digital communication do better than human contact? The reasons are complex, but may have something to do with the fact that users can control expression of sadness and other emotions via IM without exposing emotional elements like tears that some may consider as embarrassing or sources of discomfort. Studies also show that the anonymity (匿名) of writing on a device blankets the users in a sense of safety that may cause people to feel more comfortable in sharing and discussing their deepest and most authentic feelings. The research has shown that expressive writing itself can vent the stress and provide a sense of relief—and doing so, knowing that your words are reaching a sympathetic friend, may provide even more comfort and potentially be therapeutic(治愈的). Researchers also found that introverted participants reported more relief from IM conversations when they were distressed than extroverts did. Susan Cain, author of Quiet wrote recently for TIME: Introverts are often overfilled with thoughts and care deeply for their friends, family and colleagues. But even the most socially skilled introverts sometimes long for a free pass from socializing or talking on the phone. This is what the Internet offers: the chance to connect—but in measured doses and from behind a screen.

    “To educate a girl is to educate a thousand people,” says Maimouna Samaké, a mother of six children (including five girls). “If you put one seed in the ground and rain comes, it will grow to produce many seeds.”

    Samaké, one of 2,000 residents, lives in a small village, Sounkala, in one of the world's poorest countries. Now she has a chance to see this wish come true thanks to Build On, an American non-profit organization that is building a school in her community.

    For 17 years, build On has been sending American high school students overseas to create schools in places where literacy (文化) and formal education are usually out of reach. The organization has built about 300 schools in Mali, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal, Nicaragua and Haiti. Its goal is to get young Americans in mostly urban areas to get involved in education. At the same time it can bring literacy to children and adults in poor villages in the developing world.

    Sounkala's current school only has about 70 children; mud floors, poor lighting, few desks and an absence of books mean that the school is not the most ideal learning environment. Therefore they certainly could use Build On's help.

    Samaké hasn't been to school, but she wants a better future for her five daughters, including Ramatou, 12, and Mariam, 10. “When a woman attends school, she will teach what she learns to her children,” said Ramatou, who wants to become a doctor. “She will also know how to take better care of her family.”

    Build On tries to build schools for grades one to three. If things go well over those three years, they return to help build another school for grades four to six, and then set up evening adult literacy classes.

    Ramatou and Mariam will not learn inside the walls of build On school since they are already in the sixth grade, but Samaké hopes that they will be able to attend evening classes to continue learning.

Best sellers in children's activities ＆ crafts books

On Monday, a scientist and doctor Robert Winston is to formally ask a question in congress about what assessments the government has made "for requiring adults riding bicycles in city centres to heave a licence and third-party insurance". The letter below is the entirely imagined response I would like the government to make to him.

Dear Robert,

You ask what assessments we've made for your proposal about obliging cyclists to have licences and insurance. The brief answer is: none. Nor do we have any plans to do so.

Why? Again, the short answer is this: it's a silly and pointless thing to suggest, as evidenced by the fact that practically no countries or territories anywhere in the world require cyclists to be licensed, or to have compulsory insurance.

I suppose it's only fair if I explain why I think it is such a non-issue. It's pretty simple: such a plan would achieve pretty much nothing, while causing significant problems. More widely, any sensible governments will do everything in their power to get more people cycling, not to put pointless obstacles in their way.

Let's just take one example. As I'm sure you know as a doctor, one of the problems facing our nation is that the National Health System is likely to collapse under the caring for an increasingly overweight population. Inactive living is central to this. Even a fairly brief daily bike trip can have miraculous benefits for people's health.

Next, how would such rules even work? Would the licensing and insurance be just for adults, or also children? How would the system even be enforced-would it also require all bikes to be registered with number plates?

Finally, what would you hope to achieve by this? If you believe licensing transport users stops wrongdoing, can I point to you the data showing how a third of drivers admit to using handheld phones while driving, despite the law forbidding it.

So, to summarize：your plan would be to introduce a hugely new administrative scheme that would most likely have limited effect on the behaviour of averagely law-abiding (守法的) transport users who rarely harm others, while putting people off from this beneficial type of transport.

I'm afraid I just don't get it.