【推荐1】It’s quite a time for the strange weather, and it does not get much stranger than snow falling in one of the hottest places in the world.

On Sunday morning, Ain Sefra, a desert town in Algeria known as the “Gateway to the Sahara”, experienced a large amount of snow for reportedly the third time in 40 years. Some reports said parts of the area got as deep as 15 inches of snow, but Ain Sefra officially reported less than one inch in some places. Some people were very excited about it. It was strange enough to provide some very special pictures from an area that usually sees some of the hottest temperatures on earth during the summer.

Now, it’s not uncommon for the temperature across even the hottest of deserts to drop tens of degrees Fahrenheit at night, meaning any unusual snow could stay there around for a while. But photographers at the scene said the snow actually stayed intact (完好无损的) for a good portion of the day.

“We were really surprised when we woke up to see snow again,” photographer Karim Bouchetata told Shutterstock. “It stayed all day on Sunday and began melting at around 5 p. m.” While snow is not often falling down in the desert area, a similar snow phenomenon happened just last year. Before that, it had been 37 years since Ain Sefra’s last snowfall.

【推荐1】MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Studies have shown most people greatly underestimate how much time they spend on their smartphones each day.

Frank and Amelia’s family were put to a test, using a free app called “Moment-Screen Time Tracker”. The Vascellaros — Frank, Amelia, 14-year-old twins Frankie and Joe, and 17-year-old Sam — all said they did not really know they were spending so much time on their phones each day.

“Honestly, I don’t feel like I’m on my phone a lot,” Amelia Vascellaro said. Amelia was on her phone far less often than Frank, according to the app. While Amelia spent about an hour per day on the phone, Frank spent closer to four hours on his phone, which came as a shock to him. The children’s times varied but they often spent more than a couple of hours on the phone as well. While the parents spent time on email or managing plans online for the kids, the children reported they were often spending time texting or on social media.

Minneapolis-based Dr Kirsten Lind Seal sees phone usage come up a lot among families. Lind Seal said many family members’ phone use has become problematic.

“If we hear more than once, ‘Do you have to be on your phone right now? Can you please put your phone down? Did you hear what I said?’ it may be sign that it is negatively influencing our family relationships and our daily lives,” said Lind Seal.

Lind Seal said actually paying attention to how much time one spends on the phone is a good first step in deciding when to put it down.

She asks parents to encourage more face-to-face communication for teens and young adults as they continue developing their social and emotional skills. “What we find is that we are really losing out on empathy — the ability to understand other people’s feelings and problems — when we spend a lot of time on our smartphones to communicate with other people,” she said.

【推荐2】Christmas Traditions

Since about 400 AD, Christmas Day has been celebrated on 25th December. This date was the old mid-winter festival in pre-Christian times, around the time of the longest night and the shortest day. Christmas in the 21st century has many traditions.

Shops can make about 60 percent of their year's income in the three months before Christmas. So most shops get ready for it in October. The shopping centres are beautifully decorated and stay open late at night. The first time this happened was in 1867 when Macy's, a famous shop in New York, stayed open until midnight on Christmas Eve （24th December）。

By mid-December, almost every house, shop and street has a Christmas tree. This tradition was started by the Germans as early as 700 AD. In the northern countries of the world, winter is cold and dark and most trees lose their leaves. The beautiful green trees decorated with lights and coloured glass balls give people hope that spring will come again.

Father Christmas is known across the world with his white hair, red coat and big bag of toys. Young children are told that he lives in the north of Finland and makes toys for them. By tradition, he brings the toys to children at midnight, on the night before Christmas.

On Christmas day a traditional meal is eaten, usually turkey and a rich, spicy cake. Some people hate Christmas.

Others feel it is a magical and exciting time. They love seeing family and friends; they also love the traditions. Love it or hate it, Christmas is a time to look back over the old year and forward to the new one.

【推荐3】Although it has been shown in recent years that plants can see, hear and smell, they are still usually thought of as silent. But now, for the first time, they have been recorded making ultrasonic（超声的）cries when stressed, which researchers say could open up a new field of agriculture where farmers listen for water-hungry crops.

Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel found that tomato and tobacco plants made cries that humans cannot hear when stressed by not having enough water or when their stem is cut.

Microphones placed 10 centimeters from the plants picked up sounds in the ultrasonic range of 20 to 100 kilohertz, which the team says insects and some mammals would be able to hear and respond to from as far as 5 meters away. A moth may refuse to lay eggs on a plant that sounds water-stressed, the researchers suggest. Plants could even hear that other plants are short of water and react accordingly, they infer.

On average, drought-stressed tomato plants made 35 sounds an hour, while tobacco plants made 11. When plant stems were cut, tomato plants made an average of 25 sounds in the following hour, and tobacco plants 15. Unstressed plants produced fewer than one sound per hour, on average.

Enabling farmers to listen for water-stressed plants could “open a new direction in the field of agriculture”, the researchers suggest. They add that such an ability will be increasingly important as climate change make more areas dry.

“According to the new research, it seems possible that the sounds that drought-stressed plants make could be used in agriculture if it is not too costly to set up the recording in a field situation." says Anne Visscher at the royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the UK.

She warns that the results can't yet be broadened out to other stresses, such as salt or temperature, because these may not cause sounds. Besides, there have been no experiments to show whether moths or any other animal can hear and respond to the sounds the plants make, so that idea is still based on guesses for now, she says.

【推荐1】When choosing pearls there are a number of things to consider besides just the quality of the pearls. While there is no right or wrong way to choose pearls, here are a few tips you should consider.

Necklace Length-You can buy pearl necklaces in a number of different lengths. Generally speaking, shorter necklaces suit long necks, while long necklaces are nice for smaller necks. The lengths and names areas follows.

→Collar-12-13"

→Choker-14-16"

→Princess-17-19"

→Matinee-20-25"

→Ppera-26-36"

→Rope-37" or longer

The most popular is the Princess length since it is a good length for both long and smaller necks.

Pearl Color-The pearl color does not affect the value of the pearl; instead, it is completely in the eye of the beholder(旁观者).Most people buy pearls that best match their skin tone(肤色). People with light skin usually buy white or pink pearls while people with darker skin tones tend to buy black pearls. In America, white pearls are the most popular, while in Asia, silver are favorites.

Pearl Sets-When buying pearl jewelry you should consider first if you want an entire set, or just a certain piece. If, for example, you buy the necklace, and then later decide to buy the bracelet/earrings, they may not match as well as if you had bought a set. Even if you buy the same size, and color, the style may not be the same. Some stores will allow you to buy the individual pieces of a set. So if you want to buy the other pieces at a later time, they will still match.

【推荐2】Our great-value gym in Piccadilly has everything to satisfy your fitness needs. Not only is there no contract（合同）as part of your membership, but also we are open 24 hours a day. So whether you’re a night owl（猫头鹰）or an early bird, our doors are always open for you.

More than 50 free gym classes

Members can choose from more than 50 free classes from the high-energy dance to the slow-paced yoga（瑜伽）to help improve your health. We have various periods to achieve your goals in a friendly environment and with instructors to give you a helping hand.

How to join us

Becoming our new member couldn’t be easier. The whole process can be completed online by selecting PureGym Piccadilly from the drop-down menu on our joining page and filling out your details. Join today for £32.99 per month and you could get our new membership offer.

How to find us

You’ll find us in Rex House at 4-12 Regent Street, next door to the Pinarello bike shop.

If you’ re coming by public transport, bus numbers 6, 13, 23, 139 and 159 will drop you off nearby at bus stop Z on Regent Street. We’ re a 6-minute walk away from Piccadilly Circus tube station. When you exit the station, walk down Regent Street and you’ll find the club on the left.

【推荐3】Unforgettable Things to Do in Tanzania

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is among the most adventurous things to do in Tanzania. It’s a big tourist attraction with around 35,000 visitors attempting the hike each year. However, it’s not overcrowded. And it’s still an adventure to be especially proud of because not everyone makes it all the way. You won’t need any special climbing equipment. Just bring proper clothing, food, water, and an adventurous attitude.

In Arusha, you can experience what city life is like in the country. The city sits at the foothills of Mount Meru, surrounded by large fields of corn, beans, coffee, and wheat. You can buy cheap, fresh local produce in markets throughout the town. The cultural center hosts African art and culture exhibits. It’s good place to purchase a souvenir or two.

The great rift (裂缝) valley runs all the way from Lebanon to Mozambique. This rift is where human life is believed to have begun. At Isimila Gorge, you can look at stone age tools from almost 100,000 years ago. There’s also a collection of fossils of extinct animals. This find, dating back3 million years, helps us to learn how humans evolved (进化) in Africa.

Lake Manyara is not only a beautiful piece of nature. It’s also home to about 300 species of migratory birds. You can find various eagles, storks, and kingfishers. But what makes this lake most famous is the pink flamingo (火烈鸟) population. You can find thousands of flamingos here. It’s a big attraction for bird watchers and photographers.

【推荐1】Google’s self-driving car is designed to work without a gas pedal (踏板) or steering wheel (方向盘). Now, the company has decided that the car doesn’t have any windscreen wipers either, because there’s no need for passengers to see where they are being driven.

The car requires no input from a driver, except telling it the destination. There is no driving in the way we know it and all people inside the cars will be passengers who can spend their time paying no attention to the road. While the car may not need windscreen wipers, the absence of them may make passengers feel helpless if they are unable to see where they are going clearly.

Google’s two-seater “bubble” cars have buttons to begin and end the drive, but no other controls. An on-board computer uses data from sensors, including radar (雷达) and cameras, to make turns and keep away from people walking in the street and other vehicles. Under the vision made public by Google, passengers might set their destination by typing it into a map or using voice commands. The new car can’t go faster than 25 miles per hour (40 km/h). It is electric and has to be recharged after 80 miles (129 km). They can only be used in areas that have been thoroughly mapped by Google.

Google has been testing its self-driving cars since 2009 and its new model without a steering wheel since early this summer. It intends on making its driverless cars available to consumers in the next five years. The final goal of the project is computer-controlled cars that can get rid of human error, which results in about 90 percent of the 1.2 million road deaths worldwide each year and it was also inspiring to start with a blank sheet of paper.

【推荐2】Life can sometimes go_haywire rather like the feeling you get when you've lost control of your moving car. It's a feeling of complete helplessness and panic that makes us feel overwhelmed (被压垮的).

In most cases, there is a difference between our expectations and reality. The greater the difference, the greater the feeling is of being overwhelmed. This difference is often created when our expectations are too demanding or when reality changes in a way we did not expect. Think of the weather ruining your carefully made travel plans to get across the state. Think of that illness that made you stay in bed. While we may be feeling overwhelmed with everything going on in our lives right now, there are some steps we can take to regain a sense of control of our lives.

We all know we should control our emotion properly and we can be affected greatly when we are overwhelmed, but feeling overwhelmed is part of life. When we're feeling overwhelmed, it only means we are living, breathing human beings. For life is like a roller coaster ride with its ups, downs and turns. It's also like the season with its alternating periods of relative calm and periods of varying degrees of stress and anxiety. Sometimes we forget this.

No matter how much we try, we may not be able to control reality. But we can adjust our expectations to match reality. This may mean revising our goals and tasks or quitting projects. It may feel like failure in the moment, like giving up, but this ability is an opportunity to create success in the long term. Working with reality rather than against it can give us hope.

When we're feeling overwhelmed, we can easily fall into an all­or­nothing (孤注一掷). We may overlook the things we manage to accomplish when we feel overwhelmed. But celebrating our small wins creates space for gratitude to take hold in our hearts. Trade our expectations for appreciation and our whole world changes in an instant. Celebrating wins (whatever size！) allows us to clearly see the progress we are making. Acknowledging our small bites and celebrating our wins however small makes us have a more accepting attitude toward the opportunities, the gifts and the joys in our lives.

【推荐3】They're life jacket orange, they’re robots and they're capable of sailing the high seas without human intervention.

On Tuesday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched a pair of Saildrones(海洋无人机) in Pacific Northwest waters for the first time. Their summer long sailing journey will stretch from Vancouver Island to California. The Saildrone operators will collect data to help set future fishing seasons. The government wants to see whether seagoing. robots can extend fishery surveys now performed by expensive manned ships.

Nora Cohen from NOAA said,“The 23 foot tong seagoing robots can follow a remotely programmed course for up to a year at a time. And they don't require any fuel. We use wind and solar power to drive the sensors.”He added,“It means that we're able to go to places where we don't really want to send people, and go into weather that we really don't want anyone ever to be in, and be able to send back measurements.”

The primary mission is to investigate the species and number of fish in existence and the places where they are. Larry Hufnagle, scientist of NOAA Fisheries in Seattle, said a traditional big NOAA research ship-based survey costs around $25，000 per day. By comparison, one Saildrone runs $2,500 per day.

“It could be a significant saving,”Hufnagle said. “But like anything else, there is a tradeoff in what you get and what you don't get. On the manned ship, we have limited time. It takes a lot of people. We spend a fair amount of money. But there is one thing the Saildrone can't do that humans can: cast a net to catch and positively identify the fish detected below. The Saildrones are going to give us additional data, not replacement data.”

Nora Cohen said Sail Drone, a venture capital-backed company based in Alameda, California, expects to launch a total of 11 of its seagoing robots to survey different water bodies for NOAA this year. The Bering and Arctic seas, coastal California and Gulf of Mexico will be the locations of additional missions.