Start Reading More in 2021

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab

In 1714, Addie LaRue made a bargain to live forever. Since then, she's traveled the globe trying to leave her mark on the world — but when you live for centuries, it's hard for anyone to remember your name. That is, until she meets a man in a hidden bookstore hundreds of years later who does. This time-traveling tale will fill your heart with magic and wonder.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson

Through stories about real people （like Martin Luther King Jr.） and intense historical research, author Isabel Wilkerson links the hidden caste（等级）systems of America with India and Nazi Germany, and examines the solutions that are necessary in order for the country to move forward. This novel is eye-opening, informative and an absolute must-read.

Midnight Sun

Stepbenie Meyer

"Midnight Sun" was one of the most highly expected books of 2020. In this fifth companion book to the popular “Twilight” series, readers get a glimpse into the vampire Edward Cullen's views on his relationship with Bella Swan, accompanied with details of his past and inner thoughts. Fans. of the series will finally be able to understand the star-crossed lovers' tale as a whole.

The Girl With the Louding Voice

Abi Dare

This tale follows Adunni, a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village, who wants nothing more than an education. Despite many barriers that come her way, Adunni manages to escape poverty in order to build the life she dreamed of. This story of determination and hope will teach you about the power of reaching for your dreams and never giving up.

We have the most friends at the age of 26 after having spent the first quarter of our lives building up our friendship circle, a new research has claimed.

The research into friendship shows that our social circle peaks at 26 years and 7 months, at which we typically have five close friends. Women are the most popular at 25 years and 10 months, with men hitting the highest friendship point a little later at 27 years and 3 months.

The research, by Forever Friends, shows that about a third of adults meet their closest friends while at school, with about a fifth saying they meet them at work.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter now also play a major role in building new friendship. The research points out that 25 to 34-year-olds make 22 friends via Facebook, compared to 18 to 24-year-olds who make 12, and 35 to 44-year-olds who make just four.

Forever Friends’ relationship coach Sam Owen says, “It is no coincidence that over a third of us meet our best friends at school. It is a key time in our lives when friendship is growing through sharing notes, giving gifts, seeing each other regularly and laughing a lot. As adults we can often forget how powerful these small things are and how the little things can make a difference. ”

Later in life we find ourselves losing friends. Over half of us lose friendship through moving, while 36% say that over time they grow apart from close pals. Having children also causes 19% to drift away from childhood friends.

With growing pressures being put on friendship these days, it’s important to make time for our friendship.

A new study found the greater the improvement in people’s handwashing habits at airports, the more noticeable the effect on slowing the infectious (传染的) diseases, including the flu. The findings were published in late December, 2019, just before the recent coronavirus (冠状病毒) outbreak, but the study' s authors say that its results would apply to any such disease and are relevant to the present outbreak.

People can be surprisingly casual about washing their hands, even in crowded locations like airports where people from many different locations are touching surfaces such as chair armrests, check-in entrances, security checkpoint trays, and restroom doorknobs and taps. On average, only about 20 percent of people at airports have clean hands. The others are potentially polluting everything they touch with whatever infections they may be carrying.

Improving handwashing at all of the world's airports to be three times that rate, so that 60 percent of travelers have clean hands at any given time, would have the greatest effect, potentially slowing global disease spread by almost 70 percent, the researchers found. Adopting such measures at so many airports and reaching such a high level of obedience may be impractical, but the new study suggests that it could potentially be accomplished through education, posters, public announcements, and perhaps improving access to handwashing facilities. It could slow the global rate of the spread of a disease by about 24 percent, they found.

The findings are consistent with recommendations made by both the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Both have indicated that hand hygiene (卫生) is the most efficient and cost-effective way to control disease spread. While both organizations say that other measures can also play a useful role in limiting disease spread, such as use of surgical face masks, airport closures, and travel limitations, hand hygiene is still the first line of defense-and an easy one for individuals to implement.

It is good news that you didn't get hit by China's Tiangong-1 space station when it fell to Earth on April 1. The not-so-good news is that there's a lot more space debris (碎片) where that came from.All the same, you can take off your hard hat, because your chances of getting struck are extremely small.

At any moment, there are more than 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting(沿轨道运行) Earth. Some are no bigger than a millimeter or two; others—like Tiangong-1, which was the size of a school bus—are a potential threat. But the reason why none of these presents a danger is that when satellites reach the end of their useful lives, they can be controlled and sent on dives to the middle of the ocean. It's when something goes wrong—when communications are lost or fuel is exhausted—that re-entry becomes a crapshoot (运气). That's what happened when NASA's Skylab space station fell to Earth in 1979. Even in those situations, the odds are very much on safety's side. Roughly 70% of Earth's surface is water, and much of its landmass is unpopulated.

If you're still worried, take comfort in some numbers: in the long history of spaceflight, only one person has ever gotten on the wrong side of a piece of falling space junk.That was Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Okla, who was conked on the shoulder by a piece of a Delta II rocket in 1997. She was unhurt.

According to the Aerospace Corp, a nonprofit group that tracked Tiangong-1's fall, the likelihood of an individual being hit by space debris is less than 1 in 1 trillion.The European Space Agency says getting struck by lightning is 10 million times as likely as the 1-in-300 trillion odds of being hit by space debris.