【推荐2】Why do people lie? Many psychologists agree that lying can start from childhood. There are various reasons why children make false statements. They usually tell untruthful stories to cover up the mistakes that they have done in the past. Lying is also a way to avoid receiving punishments from parents. If parents fail to reprimand their children for making up false stories, then there is a possibility that they will continue to lie during their teenage years.

Teenagers lie because they want to be accepted by their friends. This is the main reason why they create stories that are not true just to become presentable and acceptable to other people. In some instances, teenagers tell untruthful statements to avoid criticisms from their families and friends.

As teenagers grow, lying becomes one of their habits. Their knowledge on making up untruthful stories becomes more developed. People lie in workplaces if they fail to meet the deadlines and if they fail to accomplish and do their tasks efficiently. Some of the common lies made in workplaces are getting sick and having emergencies at home. The danger involved in frequent lying is when it becomes a character. Frequent lying causes the development of the condition known to doctors as pathological lying.

Pathological lying is a mental health condition, which is associated with individuals who have the urge to tell untruthful statements. Patients suffering from it make up stories about everything and anything. These individuals pretend to meet the standards of other people who they want to please. These patients cheat other people because it gives them an unexplained pleasure. One of the best ways of treating pathological liars is to help them tell true statements and stories at all times. This may be hard for them, but as they are accustomed to it, they will start to realize that they will be more accepted by their families and other people if they stop themselves from making up false stories.

【推荐3】A study led by Oleguer Plana-Ripoll, a researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark, tries to deal with a fundamental question that has bothered researchers for more than a century-what exactly causes mental illness?

In the hope of finding the answer, scientists have piled up a large amount of data over the past decade, through studies of genes and brain activity. They have found that many of the same genes underlie seemingly distinct disorders and that changes in the brain’s decision-making systems could be involved in many conditions.

The researchers are also rethinking theories of how our brains go wrong. The idea that mental illness can be classified into distinct, separate categories like “anxiety” has been disproved to a large extent. Instead, recently they’ve found that disorders shade into each other. There are no hard dividing lines.

The researchers are trying to understand the biology that underlies mental illness. They have a few theories. Perhaps there are several dimensions of mental illness, so depending on how people score on each dimension, they might be more likely to have some disorders than others. An alternative idea is that there is a single factor that makes people easier to suffer from mental illness in general: Which disorder they develop is then determined by other factors. Both ideas are being taken seriously, though the former one is more widely accepted by the researchers.

The details are still unclear, but most researchers agree that one thing is specific: The old system of categorizing mental disorders into neat boxes does not work. They are also hopeful that, in the long run, replacing this framework with one that is grounded in biology will lead to new drugs and treatments. The researchers aim to reveal, for instance, the key genes，brain regions and neurological processes involved in psychopathology(精神病理学)，and target them with treatments. Although it might take a while to get there, they are optimistic in the long term if the field really does its work.

【推荐1】In so many ways, cyberspace (网络空间) mirrors the real world. People ask for information, play games, and share hobby tips. Others buy and sell products. Still others look for friendship, or even love.

Unlike the real world, however, your knowledge about a person is limited to words on a computer screen. Identity and appearance mean very little in cyberspace.     1     So even the shyest person can become a chat-room star.

Usually, this “faceless” communication doesn’t create problems. Identity doesn’t really matter when you’re in a chat room discussing politics or hobbies. In fact, this emphasis on the idea themselves makes the Internet a great place for exciting conversation. Where else can so many people come together to chat about their interests?

    2     They are looking for serious love relationships. Is cyberspace a good place to find love? That answer depends on whom you ask. Some of these relationships actually succeed. Others fail miserably.

Supporters of online relationships claim that the Internet allows couples to get to know each other intellectually first. Personal appearance doesn’t get in the way.

But critics of online relationships argue that no one can truly know another person in cyberspace. Why? Because the Internet gives users a lot of control over how others view them. Internet users can carefully craft their words to fit whatever image they want to give. And they don’t have to worry about what their “faceless” communication is doing for their image.     3    

All of this may be fine if the relationship stays in cyberspace. But not knowing a person is a big problem in a love relationship.     4     This inevitably leads to disappointment when couples meet in person. How someone imagines an online friend is often quite different from the real person.

So, before looking for love in cyberspace, remember the advice of Internet pioneer Clifford Stoll: “Life in the real world is far richer than anything you’ll find on a computer screen.”

【推荐2】Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York’s public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a ‘whole article’ sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

I am not nostalgic about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock ’n’ roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

School newspapers are in decline because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press’ challenging, researching or slowing the message.

But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

【推荐1】Elephants are able to know the difference between a man and a woman, and can tell an adult (成年人) from a child—all from the sound of a human voice. This is according to a study in which researchers played voice recordings to wild African elephants.

The animals showed more fear when they heard the voices of adult Masai men. Usually Masai people hunt elephants, and this suggests that animals have grown to listen for and avoid them.

Prof. Karen McComb and Dr Graeme Shannon from the University of Sussex led the study. They explained that in former research they had used similar experiments to show that elephants could tell—from the sound of a lion—whether the animal was a female (雌性) or a more dangerous male (雄性).

Prof. McComb wanted to find out if the animals used their very sharp sense of hearing to recognize danger from humans.

The scientists recorded Masai men, women and children saying, in their own language, “Look, look over there, a group of elephants are coming.” They also recorded Kamba men saying this phrase.

Masai people often come across elephants, which can result in violent (暴力的) hunting. Kamba people, however, mainly feed on agriculture, which does not generally bring them into violent touch with the animals.

When the team played recordings of these different voices through a hidden speaker, they found that elephant family groups showed more fear in response to the voice of a Masai man, than to a Kamba man’s voice. And the adult male Masai voices caused far more violent response than the voices of women or boys.

【推荐2】Gases, like black carbon, methane（甲烷）and the ozone in city smog, are called “short-lived climate pollutants（污染物）”, which exist both outdoors and indoors and decrease agricultural crops.

WHO says emissions（排放物）from these climate pollutants cause many serious illnesses, including lung cancer. And these pollutants are responsible for many of the more than 7 million premature deaths each year that are connected to air pollution.

Maria Neira in WHO says the pollutants have a strong impact on climate change. But the good news is that they only stay in the atmosphere for a few days to 10 years. That is much shorter than carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that can remain for hundreds, or even thousands of years.

According to Maria Neira, when you address the short-lived pollutants, you can reduce emissions very rapidly, and then improve air quality. You will have an immediate reduction in the ill-health and diseases caused by the reduction of air pollution.

WHO has many available and affordable ways to reduce these short-lived climate pollutants. At the top of their list: cutting vehicle emissions by requiring higher emissions and efficiency standards. More emissions are released when engines are running.

Indoor air pollution also contributes to bad health and premature death. WHO reports that nearly 3 billion low-income households rely on “dirty fuels”. Coal, wood and kerosene used for cooking and heating are examples. Cleaner and more efficient stoves and fuel alternatives could cut down on the health risks.

Another way to cut back on these pollutants is to have more investments and policies for rapid transport. These include buses, trains, bicycles and pedestrians or walking routes. These investments could have many benefits, including safer travel, reduced health risks from noise and air pollution and more physical activity.

The WHO report also calls for encouraging high and middle-income populations to include more plant-based foods in their diets. It says this could reduce heart disease and some cancers. It could also slow the methane gas production that comes with some animal-sourced foods.

【推荐1】Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), also named COVID-19 by WHO, there is a general fear of the unknown virus as its full effects remain to be seen. Fever, coughing, sore throat, difficulty breathing —the NCP’s symptoms are similar to the common cold or the flu, but it’s potentially more dangerous.

Viruses could be deadly, like HIV and Ebola. But what are viruses? How can they cause so much trouble?

Viruses are non-living organisms (有机体) approximately one-millionth of an inch long. Unlike human cells or bacteria, they can’t reproduce on their own. Instead, they invade the cells of living organisms to reproduce, spread and take over.

Viruses can infect every living thing – from plants and animals down to the smallest bacteria. For this reason, they always have the potential to be dangerous to human life. Sometimes a virus can cause a disease so serious that it is fatal. Other viral infections trigger no noticeable reaction.

Viruses lie around our environment all of the time, waiting for a host cell to come along. They can enter our bodies by the nose, mouth, eyes or breaks in the skin. Once inside, they try to find a host cell to infect. For example, HIV, which causes AIDS, attacks the T-cells of the immune system.

But the basic question is, where did viruses first come from? Until now, no clear explanation for their origin exists. “Tracing the origins of viruses is difficult”, Ed Rybicki, a virologist (病毒学家) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told Scientific American, “because viruses don’t leave fossils and because of the tricks they use to make copies of themselves within the cells they’ve invaded”.

However, there are three main hypotheses (假说) to explain the origin of viruses. First, viruses started as independent organisms, then became parasites (寄生者). Second, viruses evolved from pieces of DNA or RNA that “escaped” from larger organisms. Third, viruses co-evolved with their host cells, which means they existed alongside these cells.

For the time being, these are only theories. The technology and evidence we have today cannot be used to test these theories and identify the most plausible explanation. Continuing studies may provide us with clearer answers. Or future studies may reveal that the answer is even murkier (含糊不清的) than it now appears.

【推荐2】The Pacific nation of Palau will soon ban many types of sunscreen in an effort to protect its coral reefs.

President Tommy Remengesau Jr, signed legislation (法令) recently that bans “reef toxic” (对珊瑚有毒) sunscreen beginning in 2020. The law defines reef toxic sunscreen as containing any one of 10 chemicals, including oxybenzone. Other chemicals may also be banned.

Officials will take banned sunscreens from visitors who carry them into the country, Businesses that sell the banned products will be fined up to $1,000.

In a statement, Remengesau said that the punishments find the right balance between “educating tourists and scaring them away.”

The law also requires tour operators to start providing customers with reusable cups, drinking straws and food containers.

The president said the legislation was introduced based on information from a 2017 report. The report found that sunscreen products were widespread in Palau’s famous Jelly fish Lake. The lake was closed for more than a year because of a decrease in jellyfish numbers. It was recently reopened.

The president also noted that plastic waste, chemical pollution, and climate change all threaten the country’s environmental health.

Scientists have found that some chemicals in sunscreen can be toxic to coral reefs. The reels are an important part of the ocean environment and popular with tourists, But some critics say there are not enough independent scientific studies on the issue. Others worry that people will suffer from too much sun contact if they stop using the products.

Some manufacturers have already started selling “reef-friendly” sunscreen.

Palau is located east of the Philippines and north of Indonesia. The nation is home to 21,000 people. Its economy depends on tourism and fishing.

【推荐3】It is not easy to eat perfectly for all time-even for dieticians! But when bad habits become common practice, you may end up with health issues ranging from weight gain to heart disease. So which unhealthy habits are getting us into trouble? Among the many, we’ve chosen six common ones that we should all avoid.

1.Poor Meal Planning

Based on our survey, one of the biggest obstacles to healthy eating goes to"time". Leave your meal for last-minute decisions, and it usually ends in fast food and pizza delivery. Planning your weekly meals may only take a few minutes, but will save your money, calories, and time in the long run.

2.Too Many Meals Away from Home

Despite being convenient, food served in restaurants and takeaways also tends to have larger portions with more calories and sodium. Preparing your meals at home, instead, would be a wiser and healthier choice.

3. Too Many Processed Foods

When shopping at the supermarket, you will find a large variety of salty, fatty and sugary convenience food with few nutrients. But it is the fresh and whole foods that you actually need. So next time when going shopping, read labels first before you go for more highly processed goods

4. Too Much Added Sugar

Not limited to sweets, chocolate, cakes and sweet drink, Sugar is also hiding in foods you might not think of, such as salad dressings, ketchup, bread and fat-free yoghurt. Keep records of the total sugar in your diet and figure out how to cut back on those empty calories.

5. Mindless Eating

Instead of eating when hungry, many of us would take a bite when we're bored, tired, stressed happy, or sad. You'd better not eat when your stomach isn't empty.

6. Too Many Liquid Calories

It's easy to forget that calories from soda, juice and other sugar-sweetened beverages count! Choose calorie-free drinks like water and plain tea instead