【推荐3】 “We wish you a merry Christmas” with pictures of Elvis Tsui seems to be the latest trend among Chinese netizens during this year’s Christmas.

Born in 1961, Hong Kong veteran actor Elvis Tsui has become the latest internet icon thanks to the classic character he played in the 1992 comedy movie, where he looked a bit similar to Santa Claus, with a red hat and white beard. The movie Tsui starred in was adapted from The Deer and the Cauldron, a novel by late Hong Kong novelist Louis Cha. Tsui played the role of Oboi, a malicious and greedy military officer who conspires to fight for the throne.

Also, the character’s name Oboi is pronounced similar to “all buy” in English, which encourages people to buy some gifts for loved ones during the Christmas season. And the coincidence further increases the popularity of Tsui.

Reputed as China’s Santa Claus, Elvis Tsui has been frequently searched on Dec 24 on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, and his images have been adapted into micro videos, gifts and emojis at very short notice. Some clever business minds have produced tailor-made products on China’s e-commerce platform Taobao.

On Dec 25, an image of Tsui’s character from the film has already been added into the Sina Weibo emoji list for users to choose from. “I have been waiting for more than two decades to find the Chinese Santa Claus, and he just appeared. I believe that he is the perfect image in my heart,” said weibo user Xiao Midou1993.

In response to the enthusiasm shown by online users, the 57-year-old was pleased to receive the new title, and wrote on his official weibo account, “It’s Christmas and the old man with a red hat and white beard is bringing you the best wishes!”

【推荐1】After living, studying and traveling in Rome for over nine months, I finally flew back "across the pond" to America. While the reunion with my friends and family was unbelievable, I began to feel the so-called "reverse (反向的)culture shock".

Before experiencing any psychological distress(忧虑)upon re-entry, I noticed all of the obvious physical and cultural differences between Italy and Indiana-one of which occurred in Walmart. As I walked down the seemingly endless aisles, I was confused. When I finally found the cream cheese, I just stopped and stare. "Is it really necessary to sell over ten different flavors of the same product?" I thought. 1 immediately recalled the small grocery store, Carrefour, a block away from the Rome Global Gateway. While the store was small compared to Walmart, it still sold everything I ever wanted. It seemed that Walmart is a perfect example of over-indulgence(放纵)and materialism, two known negative qualities of American culture.

Because I struggled to communicate with the locals of Rome, who spoke very little English, I was unexpectedly pleased to have the ability to talk to anyone once again. Personally, I have never been the type to strike up conversation with strangers, yet I found myself enjoying conversation with others I hadn’t met before in public. It feels good to no longer be the "outsider" walking on eggshells so as not to offend anyone or say something with the wrong accent or incorrect grammar.

While attending a Student Safety Summit for Notre Dame students traveling abroad, one of the speakers noted that living in a foreign country will "change you in ways you can't even imagine yet," including the way you interact with others, how you dress, what you eat, and how you perceive(感知)the world. Before living abroad, I thought to myself that nothing could influence my sense of identity, let alone the way I dress! However, those words have stuck with me, and I believe the speaker was right!

【推荐2】She’s rarely seen without an elegant handbag on her arm, but the question of what the Queen keeps inside it has long remained a mystery. Now a new book claims to cast light on the contents of the royal matriarch’s main possession.

What’s In The Queen’s Handbag: And Other Royal Secrets reveals that though the 81-year-old British monarch(君主) doesn’t carry cash, keys or passport—since she doesn’t own one—her bag is far from empty. Inside are a collection of little presents from her children, a make-up case, some family photos, and a camera sometimes. There’s also an s-shaped metal hook that she places on the dinner table’s edge to hang her bag from so that it doesn’t touch the floor.

Should you ever meet the Queen, it’s not what’s in her bag but what she does with it that should concern you. She uses her bags, of which she has about 200 made by London-based firm Launier, to send signals to her staff.

Before dining with Queen, a point is made to inform guests that dinner will end in about five minutes after she places her bag on the table top.

On walkabouts, she holds the bag to one side to show she intends to move on, at which point a lady-in-waiting joins the conversation, allowing her to slip away without causing offence.

When at a banquet, if the Queen’s bag is placed on the floor then it’s a sign that she’s not finding the conversation interesting, and wants nothing more than to escape. However, if the royal bag is dangling happily from the crook of her left arm, she is happy and relaxed.

【推荐1】From the moon to Mars, scientists have been hunting for alien life in the solar system for decades.

However, Venus was not regarded as an ideal place because of its hot temperature and dry atmosphere. But a recent discovery of traces of a gas in the clouds of Venus has excited astronomers, as it may serve as a potential sign of life.

On Sept 14, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced that scientists have detected phosphine (磷化氢) in the clouds of Venus. Phosphine is a colorless, poisonous gas that has a smell of garlic. Though poisonous, it is viewed as a possible sign of life because on Earth the gas is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments.

“I was very surprised, in fact,” astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales and lead author of the research, told MSN. “There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organism in the clouds of Venus.”

This layer of clouds is about 48 kilometers above the Venus surface, with its temperature ranging from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (about -1 to 93 ºC). Scientists have concluded that if life exists on Venus, the clouds are likely the only place where it would survive.

Scientists went through every possibility that could have led to the formation of phosphine gas in Venus’ clouds, including volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites (陨石) falling into the atmosphere. But they ruled all of them out. It was concluded that there is no explanation for the existence of this gas in Venus’ clouds, other than the presence of life, USA Today reported.

Although the detection of phosphine is not solid evidence for life, this finding is great enough to change scientists’ view on Venus, which is thought to be a completely inhospitable (不适合居住的) planet.

【推荐2】Brriiinnng... ... The alarm clock announces the start of another busy weekday in the morning. You jump out of bed, rush into the shower，into your clothes and out the door with hardly a moment to think. A stressful journey to work gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the   office, you glance through the newspaper with depressing stories or reports of disasters. In that sort of mood，who can get down to work, particularly some creative, original problem-solving work?

The way most of us spend our mornings is exactly opposite to the conditions that promote flexible,open-minded thinking. Imaginative ideas are most likely to come to us when we’re unfocused. If you are one of those energetic morning people, your most inventive time comes in the early evening when you are relaxed. Sleepy people’s lack of focus leads to an increase in creative problem solving. By not giving yourself time to tune into your wandering mind, you’re missing out on the surprising solutions it may offer. The trip you take to work doesn’t help, either. The stress slows down the speed with which signals travel between neurons(神经细胞)，making inspirations less likely to occur. And while we all should read a lot about what’s going on in the world, it would not make you feel good for sure, so put that news website or newspaper aside until after the day’s work is done.

So what would our mornings look like if we wanted to start them with a full capacity for creative problem solving? We’d set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed，following our thoughts where they lead. We'd stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower，stopping thinking about tasks in favor of a few more minutes of relaxation. We’d take some deep breaths on our way to work, instead of complaining about heavy traffic. And once in the office —we’d click on links not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the web has to offer.

【推荐3】Awe is not an everyday emotion. You don't wake up awestruck. A satisfying lunch doesn't leave you filled with awe. Even a great day is unlikely to leave you in a state of breathtaking, all-knowing fear and trembling.

Then what is awe? Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt suggested that awe typically includes feelings of grandness. That means awe is inspired by something larger than a person's self or experience. And it usually helps expand the person's understanding of the world. For example, awe might come from seeing a mountain taller than you thought a mountain could be. Or it might come from listening to a symphony that contains both shockingly loud and touchingly quiet notes. People can be awe-inspiring, too: think of meeting a political leader whose power seems limitless.

In order to find out more about the mysterious feeling, the psychologists laid out a research plan. In the years since, they and other researchers have been testing awe. What is it? How does it work? What seems awesome, and why? For the first time, they're starting to understand both what awe does to us and what it might do for us.

When psychologists first started studying awe, one of the unanswered questions was: What do we look like when we're feeling it? Emotions come with facial expressions.

Keltner and two workmates guessed that an awe-filled person would widen her eyes and raise her head, eyes and eyebrows, just a bit. And they were on track. When they asked people to perform awe, they found that people indeed often raised their eyebrows and widened their eyes. They also opened their mouths and dropped their jaws.

Another question was the purpose of the emotion. “We developed emotions to help us deal with and survive certain dangers," explains Craig Anderson, a student in Keltner's lab, “When people are scared, they freeze or run away. People that behaved like that tended to survive long enough." In the same way, awe should have some sort of reason for existing.

So far, it seems that the purpose of awe might draw people together. When people are awestruck, they feel like time has slowed down somehow, and when they feel so, they are more willing to use it to help others. The study also shows that awe promotes generosity. It improves people's moral decision making. A paper still under review indicates that awe can make people more modest, too.

“We actually experience awe a lot more often than we think," says one of the researchers, Rudd, “We meet something in the big wide world, our minds open as we look for an explanation, and as a result we open up to connecting to other people. But if you are keeping yourself in your own small world, it's going to be hard to experience that feeling. Just go out into newness and you're going to be more likely to run into something that's awe-inspiring.”

【推荐1】Anyone who believes that teenagers no longer read has it all wrong, according to Christi Showman Farrar at the Woburn Public Library. She said because reading is a lonely activity, adults don’t always realize that teens do enjoy it.

“Teens have so much going on today between all of the out-of-class activities that it may seem like they aren’t reading,” said Showman Farrar. “But they do manage to read. We just don’t see them at home.”

Showman Farrar runs the summer reading program at the library and said there are 85 readers this summer. “So far they have logged 1,200 hours of reading,” she said. “Last year I challenged them to read 1,000 hours and if they did I would dye(染) my hair pink. I still think there is some pink in my hair.

Teens are allowed to read anything they want. A popular book series like Harry Porter or Twilight certainly gets kids and teens reading. As long as she can get what teens are interested in in their hands, they’ll read. “I truly think there is something out there for everyone,” said Showman Farrar. “Adults define(定义) reading as sitting down and reading a novel, but that doesn’t interest everyone.”

“So much of teen life in online and teens have become used to reading online,” she said. “I think the best way to get people to read newspapers would be to cover events that they are interested in.”

Nicole Gariepy, a junior, said she likes to read a newspaper if it includes more articles about things she is involved with. She enjoys reading fiction books, or anything with a good story. “I probably read about 10 hours a week,” she said. “I like reading because it gets you thinking a lot about other ideas and it’s another way to learn.”

Mikayla Essigmann, another teen volunteer at the library, said, “I like everything. Reading is a good way to pass time.”

【推荐2】Although the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have English as an official language, the United States does not have an official language. This is how it’s possible to become a US citizen without speaking English. Canada also has French as an official language, though it is mostly spoken in the province of Quebec. Because many of the English speakers who originally inhabited (居住) Canada came from the US, there is little difference in the American and Canadian dialects of English. Similarly, Australian and New Zealand English have few differences, except Australia was originally settled as a penal colony (流放地) and New Zealand was not.

British colonialism has spread English all over the world, and it still holds prestige (影响力) in South Africa, India, and Singapore, among other nations. In South Africa, English became an official language, along with Afrikaans and 9 African languages, in the 1996 constitution (宪法). However, only 3% of the country’s 30 million people are native English speakers. Twenty percent are descendants (后代) of Dutch farmers who speak Afrikaans, and the rest are native Africans.

India became independent from Britain in 1947, and the English language was supposed to be phased out (淘汰) by 1965. However, today English and Hindi are the official languages. Indian English is characterized (具有…的特征) by treating mass nouns as count nouns, frequent use of the “isn’t it?” tag, use of more compounds, and a different use of prepositions. In Singapore, Chinese, Malay and Indian languages have an effect on the form of English spoken. Everyone is taught English in the school system, but there are a few differences from British English as well. Mass nouns are treated as count nouns, “use to” means usually, and no articles (冠词) are used before occupations (职业).

【推荐3】I grew up in a family that was middle class in terms of finances. Dad worked hard to support the family and mom tried to save a little bit of money while making sure we had enough food to eat and clothes to wear. One of their greatest desires was to raise decent and loving children who had an opportunity to finish college.

Of their four children, my brother, Gener, seemed to be the most sociable. He experienced life by doing simple things that none of us risked doing.

Gener never hesitated to learn new things. He tried his hands at a number of things. He did a lot of things for friends, often not being paid for them.

Gener did not have a history of any health problems from his very young age to adulthood. However, one day he came home, ate his dinner and informed mom and dad that he was retiring to bed. That evening, my “healthy” brother died suddenly of cardiac arrest. All my family were so sorrowful. At the funeral, along with the sadness, my parents and brother felt so much pride. There were so many people that came. Strangers to my parents, each were relating a story of how they were touched by Gener.

A janitor (看门人) came to say that practically every day Gener brought him a sandwich. Finally mom found out why Gener took so many sandwiches to school! Gener never told her what he did with the sandwiches.

Then there was a man who came in bringing money saying that Gener lent him some when he was down and out. Gener never asked him back for the money.

From the school president to the janitor…people came because of his goodness of heart and deeds.

In the end, my parents realized that even at a young age of 26, my brother lived a full life and was very instrumental in helping others live theirs a little better.